Chapter 39: The Rising of the Sun, Foreglow
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(Thank you to Sunny and MetalDragon for editing this chapter, and to KoreanWriter and all the others over the last few months for help beta-writing and brainstorming.)
September 7, 2016 ATB
Port District 3, (Occupied) Tokyo Settlement, Empire of Japan (contested)
0724
Six years ago, Britannian bombs had fallen like rain on Tokyo.
Shinichiro Tamaki was ecstatic to return a little bit of the favor back to the Brits, courtesy of his 81-millimeter mortar. That he was one month late for the anniversary did little to dampen his enthusiasm.
Sprawled out on his belly on the roof of an anonymous, low-slung, gray office building, the faux-redhead peered through his binoculars at the whitewashed frontage of the District 3 Police Station and carefully noted the bearing, distance and the direction the wind was blowing. Pocketing the compass, Tamaki took one last glance at the station's gated entrance and then turned away, confident in his measurements. He'd gotten quite good at working out basic firing plans in his head back at the School, good enough to become an instructor along with the rest of his boys.
Quite the long walk for a guy who got his ass handed to him by an unarmed kid back in the day, Tamaki thought to himself, grimacing at the memory. But, everybody's gotta start somewhere. Me and the boys did good helping Naoto hold down Shinjuku, and now that Tanya's cut us free at last to deliver some whoop-ass to the Brits, we'll do good here too!
Grinning at the thought of vengeance long deferred, Tamaki shimmied back down the folding ladder to rejoin his squad. There they were, the once-gangsters once led by a braggart, now each of them a soldier of Japan in service to the girl who had raised them up from the trash they had once been.
"Alright, Inuyama," Tamaki said, clapping the man in question. "Seven hundred meters out, eighty-six degrees east, and the wind's southwest. You know what to do."
The soldier grinned, yellow teeth bared in humorless defiance as he spun the various dials on the mortar's base. Of course he knew what to do; they all did, every single soldier of every single squad fanning out across the Tokyo Settlement and all the people backing them from Shinjuku and hidden camps spread out across half a dozen prefectures. Weeks of planning must have gone into this operation; months of training certainly had.
The mortar at Inuyama's feet thumped its support, like a happy drunkard hammering on a table. Even through Tamaki's hands, pressing firmly over his ears, the blasts – one after another after another as Inuyama and the rest blazed through the six-pack of shells – were nearly deafening, but Tamaki couldn't care less about the noise and heat. He could barely care about the pounding headache the percussive blast always gave him; Tamaki could only look forward to the moment, only seconds away now, when he and the rest of Squad 16 would join Squads 17 and 18 and attack the ruptured police station, guns blazing as they cut the stunned and bleeding Brit pigs, standing or running, down.
This was it! At last, at last! The Day of Liberation had come, and with it the first hour of vengeance. Revenge for family, friends, and acquaintances, dead and crippled and lost in a churning and chaotic sea. Revenge for hopes and dreams quashed, homes and livelihoods turned into rubble. Revenge for petty slights and breathtaking cruelties.
Revenge for Japan.
"Alright, boys!" cried Tamaki, yelling over the ringing in his ears, savoring the fact that he was speaking in Japanese while standing outside Shinjuku's looming walls, "Let's not keep them waiting! C'mon! Follow me!"
"For the Commander! For the Empress! Expel the barbarians! For Japan! Banzai!"
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku Ghetto Check Point, Tokyo Settlement, Area 11
0730
When the 26th Infantry Regiment arrived in Area 11, the unit's officers and rankers alike had been delighted. Everything they had heard about the still-recently proclaimed Area spoke of opportunity and excitement, free from the constant political worries that invariably accompanied deployments back in the Heartland or Homeland. The Area even had just enough dead-enders clinging on to keep things from getting too boring, an extra entertainment whenever the whores grew dull and the regular Numbers too enured to being pushed around.
Two years on, Private Charles Klark was well past having second thoughts and starting to venture into third regrets.
"Every Britannian a lord!" they said! "All the Eleven girls you could plow, ready for the taking!" they promised! Stupid! How in the Emperor's name could I be taken in so easily?
Moodily, the young soldier prodded a discarded beer can with the toe of his boot; when it failed to explode, he kicked the rubbish away from his sentry box and back across the threshold into Shinjuku Ghetto where it could be with all the rest of the trash.
Those bastard recruiters… Klark growled, his black mood entirely unleavened. They always promise assignments where the beer flows in rivers and girls spread their legs like butter on toast… And it's always a lie. Dammit, dammit, dammit!
Frustratingly, even that wasn't quite true.
It used to be like that… the Britannian private thought sourly, casting his mind back to fond recollections from the first months of his tour of duty in Area 11. Back then, it was all brothels, cathouses, and bars past this checkpoint, up and down the streets! You could buy anything… well, any girl you wanted or anything you wanted to snort or shoot up, at least. No letting the Elevens buy weapons, after all. But anything else…
Oh, those had been the days. The Elevens were hungry enough and desperate enough that even a private's pay went a considerable distance, and since Charlie Klark had been stuck on sentry duty in and around the Tokyo Settlement more nights than not, the leverage of "overlooking" a sufficiently grateful Number trying to get in or out of the ghetto without a work pass had gone still further towards ensuring that the party never really ended.
All of that had come to a screeching halt right around the same time everything else had gone sour.
Fucking Purists, burning all the best Honorary dives and cathouses down… Bastards…
Not that the precipitous decline in the Tokyo nightlife was entirely the Purists' fault, much as it galled Klark to admit as much; the yellow-bellied Honoraries were at least as much to blame. It was, in his opinion, almost incomprehensible how quickly the Honoraries of the Tokyo Settlement had all but vanished from the streets.
A little rough-housing and suddenly all of the Honorary grog-shops were closed up! The ones who hadn't been looted bare, at least.
Still, at least for the first few months of the year, all the pleasures of Shinjuku were still spread wide open for his approval, even if prices had gone up just a bit. Sure, it hadn't been quite as fun after last Christmas – the vibe had been ruined, for one, and suddenly there seemed to be a lot more Numbers watching his every move every time he went into Shinjuku to blow off some steam – but the ghetto had still proven a reliable source of girls and giggles for an enterprising Britannian soldier with money to spend, and his gate income still provided said money.
Then, all at once, shit went sour again but in a way that hit far closer to home for Charlie Klark. The Kennel, his favorite establishment, run by a gang of Elevens who made a living providing for the appetites of their betters, had turned into a charnel house one sweltering April night.
I could have been there, Charlie thought, not for the first time, and shivered. One of those bodies could have been mine…
He'd volunteered to help out with the retributive killings the next day, of course, showing up bright and early nursing a bitter hangover courtesy of the inferior watering hole that had saved his life, showing up despite his leave pass extending to noon.
The experience had helped settle him down, but only a little. It rankled that only a fraction of the lawful punishment those who had lifted their hands against their betters had earned had been executed before other, more pressing matters down in Yokohama and along the Area's western coast had distracted the powers that be. Even worse, higher command had come down hard on all of the little allowances that had made the life of one Charlie Klark, perpetual sentry, more livable.
The perpetrators of the slaughter at the Kennel were entirely unknown, somehow escaping scot free from justice. Apparently devoid of any other answer, word had come down from on high that soldiers could enter the Shinjuku ghetto only in platoon-sized or stronger elements, and only on official orders. Given the circumstances, Charlie found it hard to blame them, but the directive had still badly damaged both his recreational funds and social life.
Why the hell am I even still here? Private Klark wondered, glaring at the empty patch of road where truck traffic usually queued. Why is this fucking gate even open? Traffic's been shrinking over the last month; over the last week, it's been dead quiet! Why not just brick this damned gate shut and have done with it, eh? Not like there's any point to having access to a ghetto full of Numbers if I can't use them…
Sparing a moment from his pity party, Klark glanced over at the pedestrian gateway to see how Corporal Wiggins – a real piece of work, in Charlie's opinion – and the rest of the fireteam were getting on. If they were busy, he'd better find something to do so nobody would call him over to help…
The pedestrian queue's empty too… Somewhere far in the back of Charlie's head, warning bells began to clamor. It's not even eight yet, isn't it? Where are all the Elevens with work passes?
"Klark!"
Charlie winced, hearing the familiar tones of Area Three on Corporal Wiggins' voice. He'd been caught looking around, and now the non-com was going to give him something to do.
"I'm falling asleep on my feet out here, Klark!" bellowed the noncom from across the road. "You're up for a coffee run! Make sure mine's double strength. Extra cream, you hear?"
"You got it, Corp!" Klark replied, tossing off a hasty salute. It wasn't strictly appropriate to leave the sentry box while on duty for something like this, but he didn't have any intention of questioning the brawny corporal's orders; he'd joined in with enough blanket parties before to have no intention of ever being on the receiving end of one.
Besides, the nearest convenience store was only a block or two away from the Kawadacho Gate into Shinjuku. He'd only be away from his post for fifteen minutes, tops.
And some coffee really would hit the spot, wouldn't it…?
Turning to trot away, Charlie heard something zip right past his ear. A wasp, maybe, or perhaps a mosquito.
It's pretty late in the year for mosquitos, isn't it?
He was on the ground before his ears had a chance to register the flat crack! of a distant rifle. His rifle, hanging over his shoulder, tangled around his left arm as he tried to unlimber it as he crawled. Charlie cursed as the butt thumped against his knee in a numbing burst of sparks.
Through the buzzing in his head, Charlie heard what sounded like distant shouting. He dimly recognized the voice as Wiggins'. Chancing a glance back, he saw that someone in Britannian gray was down, their blood shockingly bright against the asphalt. Wiggins was kneeling, his coilgun raised to return fire though Charlie couldn't see what he was aiming at.
The world swam before Charlie Klark's eyes. Suddenly dizzy, he glanced down at himself, wondering if he'd been shot. He didn't see anything but the movement had been enough to send the whole world swirling around him.
I'm still out in the road… he thought, and was alarmed at how muted and far away his own internal monologue sounded. Need to get into cover… Sniper…
There'd been something with an Eleven sniper recently, hadn't there?
Yeah… Bitch down in Yokohama… She must've had some friends…
Across the road, Wiggins toppled over, hands scrabbling at a ruined throat.
Bitch… Klark thought, dully satisfied. Not gonna yell at me… Heh… Oh God…
Why was he so tired? What was he doing, lying down on the sidewalk like this? Moving fingers like lead, he found his rifle, strap still tangled around his arm. Dully, questing fingers found the release and unsnapped it.
There. Got my gun back.
Woozily, Charlie looked up, rifle in hand, and peered off into the distance, into Shinjuku, looking for whatever Wiggins had been shooting at.
He saw a crowd coming his way, many of them armed and all with hard, angry faces.
Elevens, he thought disgustedly, and spat. The sputum came out pink and foamy. Bastard Number scum…
Almost carelessly, Charlie lifted his coilgun in the approaching mob's direction and pulled the trigger. His aim was bad, but he thought he saw at least one of the fuckers go down with roses blooming on his chest.
Just ninety-nine more to go… Gotta balance the scales… Or is it nine hundred ninety-nine now?
Before his puzzled mind could quite answer that question, before his increasingly numb hands could fit a fresh clip into his suddenly heavy rifle, the crowd was upon Private Charles Klark, and suddenly very little mattered.
Except for the horrifying, all-consuming pain that not even the peculiar lassitude burdening his limbs could conceal.
The last thing the Britannian private saw before dirty-nailed thumbs found his eyes was the flat-eyed stare of an Eleven slut he remembered tupping a time or three. No simpering smile for him this time, nor "gifted" service, only a hateful sneer of purest satisfaction.
For Charlie Klark, that pain would last forever; for the mob of angry citizens of Shinjuku, out to take a bit of private revenge before following the directive to evacuate underground, the last survivor of the Kawadacho Gate's small garrison only lasted a disappointingly brief ten minutes.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0800
Forty stories up, Kaoru was keenly aware of how the burnt-out remains of the Kabukicho Tower groaned with each chilly breeze. Now, almost at the top of that rotting steel and cement tree, he very much regretted his rash decision to volunteer for the "special morale-boosting assignment."
Not that he had the slightest intention of revealing that change of heart to any of the other seven lucky kids chosen from Missus Tsuchiya's school. Especially not after how much he'd whined and begged until she'd at last given in to his wheedling and allowed him to go along with the other kids. At eleven, he was the youngest of the crew by two years except for Kotori, who was a month younger than him, and it had taken a lot of pleading and cajoling to work his way onto the crew; if he backed out now, he'd never hear the end of it. Especially since Kotori, who had taken advantage of his urgent pleading to come along too, looked supremely unconcerned.
Still, though… Kaoru gulped and tugged ever so slightly on his tether, making sure the rope was still firmly tied off to the guide-line Manami, the oldest of the group at fifteen and thus the leader, had strung out behind her from anchor to anchor. If I'd known that the special assignment Teach was talking about meant climbing to the highest point in the Ghetto, up to the top of a skyscraper that could topple over at any minute… That there were heights involved…!
He tugged the rope again. Still firm, still holding.
That reassurance was almost enough to make him forget how all the windows this far up were long-gone, as were the topmost eight floors of the building, and how a forty-story fall waited less than half a meter away from where he was standing right here and now.
"Kaoru, c'mon! Hurry up!" one of the others called back, waving him forwards. "Get your ass over here! We need the flag!"
Grimacing, Kaoru tried to ignore the yawning precipice beside him and how Manami was swatting their foul-mouthed classmate over the head for cursing. He had more luck with the latter than the former as he hurried forwards, sure to keep one hand on the guide-rope at all times. With his other hand, he kept the package, neatly wrapped in brown butcher-paper, pinned tightly against his chest, terrified that if he didn't, his great responsibility would slip between his fingers and fall those forty stories down to the recently repaved streets of Shinjuku far below.
And what a responsibility it was, that package entrusted to his care! The other kids, who were all, except for Kotori, older and bigger than him had carried larger and more structurally important burdens up the forty flights of stairs, from the improvised flagpole to the steel cables and hooks that would hold the thing in place, but none of it would mean anything without the package cradled in his arm!
And Kotori lucked out, Kaoru grumbled to himself, being the smallest one of all. She just has to carry that weird Brit's camera! Funny how her size didn't matter when it came to joining the crew, but all of a sudden when it came time to carry all this crap up…
The honor of his burden aside, Kaoru was looking forward to putting the package down and, hopefully, scampering quickly back downstairs and out of the ominously creaking tower. Heights aside, the burden was heavier than he'd really been expecting. Cloth was light, after all, but enough cloth tightly folded could apparently turn into almost a brick, especially after such a long climb up. Since the flag was fully three times his height in width and almost double that in length, that was quite a lot of cloth indeed.
"Here," grunted Kaoru, eyes focused entirely on Manami and her extended hands, and definitely not thinking about how he was now at the very ravaged edge, out by the corner with nothing but air to his left or his right. Incredibly, Manami was even further out in the corner of what might have been some boss's posh office, almost standing on the three spans of rebar bound together with wire and anchored with cable, the flagpole they'd improvised. "Take it."
"Surly~" Manami teased with an easy smile that made Kaoru's nerves jangle. Didn't she understand that she was standing on the edge of a massive cliff?! "Getting a little anxious about how high up we are, Kaoru?"
"No!" As soon as he blurted out the denial, Kaoru knew he'd overplayed his hand.
They know!
The teasing smirk on Manami's face stretched almost into a grin before she seemed to remember that she was the leader and supposed to set a good example, per Missus Tsuchiya's instructions.
"Don't worry," Manami reassured instead of teasing Kaoru further, shooting a quelling glance over his shoulder, no doubt stifling his fellows who were giggling behind his back. "The guide line is perfectly safe. I could rest my entire weight against it and, so long as I stayed in my harness, I wouldn't fall."
He almost yelled at her to not do that, to not take the risk. Thinking he saw the grin in her eyes again, Kaoru decided to keep silent and ignore how he could feel his neck heating with embarrassment.
The byplay was not lost on Manami.
"Relax," she sighed, turning around to kneel by the flagpole. Carefully, the leader of their little group unfurled the flag, wrapping more salvaged electrical wire through its eyelets to hold it firmly against the rebar pole. "We'll be heading down soon, and then we'll be heading even further down. You won't be seeing another view like this for… Well, for a while. Enjoy the view while it lasts, because we'll be seeing a lot of basements for a while."
Privately, Kaoru couldn't wait to see nothing but safe, sheltering, and unmoving walls. He hoped he'd never see anything but firm pavement under his feet ever again.
He did not share these thoughts with Manami, nor with Kotori or any of the others as he carefully picked his way as far back from the edge as he could.
Instead, Kaoru focused on the flag as it slipped free from Manami's fingers and billowed in the wind, tugging against its anchors.
It was a work of art, in his opinion, and it was different than any flag he'd ever seen. There were still plenty of old Republican flags left over from the old government and Kaoru had seen the familiar meatball on a field of snow hanging in many different apartments throughout Shinjuku. This one was different, larger than all of those and the white and red had switched places. A large white chrysanthemum blossomed in a scarlet sea, its petals and stem piped with gold thread "liberated" from the Viceregal Palace itself, or at least that was what Kaoru had heard. In the four corners, stitched in broad white lines, the four kanji of the Rising Sun's new battlecry flanked the Imperial flower.
"Revere the Empress; expel the barbarians."
Old Miss Tsuchiya had practically come alive when she'd handed the flag over to Kaoru and the rest, going on and on about "historical context" and "symbols for our future," but most of that had gone over Kaoru's head. As far as he could tell, the most important thing about the flag he'd cradled against his chest was that it would be the first Japanese flag, old Republican or whatever this new one was, that Kaoru had ever seen fly out under the open sky under the light of day.
It was enough to really make him believe that the sun was rising at last, at so very long last.
They might be going back underground to hide from the Brits, but their flag would still fly high above them.
"Missus Tsuchiya said it's a modi-fi-cation of some old imperial flag," said Kotori, carefully enunciating each word to avoid her usual lisp. The youngest and smallest of the crew had moved over to stand beside Kaoru, her borrowed camera in hand. She looked like she was staring at the flag too, but when she lifted her camera again and Kaoru followed the line of its lens, he realized his classmate was aiming past the flag billowing in the morning wind to capture the hulking elevated platform atop which the Britannian Concession squatted. In the middle of which loomed the Viceregal Palace, a tower atop another tower.
Kaoru wondered if the governor, Prince Clovis, ever looked down from his massive palace to see Shinjuku glaring back at him. He wondered if the blond Brit bastard would be able to see their flag from his balcony.
He hoped the prince could see; he hoped it made him wet his fancy underwear to see a new flag for a new people rising up from beneath his feet.
"They'll know we're here now," said Kotori, her voice thoughtful. "No going back now. One way or the other."
"No going back," Kaoru agreed, not that he could really remember any "back" he could have gone to. As long as he could remember, life had sucked and times had been hard. Even with the Rising Sun's help, his mom had still died last March from the wet coughs. "But that means things can only get better from now, right?"
Kotori turned, met his eye, and smiled. Kaoru thought it was a sad smile for such a happy moment.
"I really hope you're right, Kaoru. I really, really do."
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0820
"No pushing, no shoving!" Shimura Terauchi bellowed so his voice could carry over the tumult. "No pushing and no shoving! Keep your hands to yourselves and keep moving! There's room for everyone, so keep your damned hands to yourselves and keep moving!"
Fortunately, the crowd shuffling down the stairs into the pump station-turned-gateway to the sprawling subterranean network underneath Shinjuku was mostly calm, and mostly moving with a purpose down into the tunnels. Parents ushered children, both with backs bent under the weight of any movable supplies, and youngsters with Sun Guard hachimaki leant supportive elbows for elderly neighbors to lean on as they picked their way down the stairs.
Every one of them had drilled for this moment. Everyone had known that this day would come soon, even if most of the people of Shinjuku had been surprised to hear Commander Hajime's morning declaration crackling out across the radio waves.
And, Terauchi thought, privately smug, they have the benefit of a voice of authority to reassure them that not everything has been entrusted to a twelve year old girl.
And isn't that still an absurd thought to have… even more absurd that it doesn't sound all that unreasonable anymore now.
Unlike that old sailor and crook Nishizumi Tsutsumi, his former fellow councilor in the dissolved Chamber of Notables and a perennial pain in the ass, Terauchi's dislike for Shinjuku's new despot wasn't particularly personal. Sure, he didn't enjoy being beholden to a child for protection and supplies, and he certainly didn't enjoy taking orders from a hafu no matter their age, but then, who did?
Frankly, Tearuchi didn't even particularly resent the forceful dissolution of the Notables; that was only politics and it had barely diminished his personal powerbase. The chamber was created to consolidate Rising Sun's power, and it was dissolved for the same reason, all perfectly logical to Tearuchi. After all, his appointment to that body had only been a recognition of the authority he already enjoyed, the product of two decades spent as a key player at the Bureau of Waterworks of the old Tokyo municipal government, and that authority and institutional knowledge guaranteed his place at the table.
It isn't personal, Terauchi told himself again. It just isn't right that a girl with foreign blood should set herself up as a dictator over us! And an empress…? Another girl, and this one a former collaborator to boot?
It wasn't personal, his dislike, but it was strong.
But his hatred of the Britannians who had taken his left arm in their damned invasion and whose starvation and cholera had taken most of his family was much stronger.
And if that blonde bitch really can make those Brit bastards drown in their own blood… his mouth quirked up at the dream, of pallid faces and gray uniforms heaped on every street corner, of guidons crammed down the throats of captured officers. Make them pay the blood price for even a fraction of what they took from us… Or better yet, hold out until the real soldiers from the JLF get here… Perhaps the sun is rising indeed. And once the new day comes…
Terauchi cut off that line of thinking and resumed his business exhorting the stragglers to hurry up and get underground. There was plenty of trouble in the here and now to worry about, enough that he didn't have the luxury to consider his plans for a future that he might not live to see.
Survival for now, but for tomorrow… There will be opportunities, oh yes. And there will be no need for any drop of Britannian blood to remain on the Home Islands to see them.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Near a road leading north from the Tokyo Settlement, Area 11
0830
It would have come as a significant surprise to Albert Hanlon's coworkers at B & N Transport Solutions that, while his pleasant affability was no act, his complete disinterest in anything resembling politics, religion, or any of the other topics which fell under the umbrella of "what was really going on" most assuredly was.
If there was a substance more poisonous to the beleaguered commoner class of the Holy Britannian Empire than the vile rotgut that was its most common solace, it was curiosity. Short of outright defiance in the face of noble, or worse, imperial authority, no road led more swiftly to death for a commoner than an unfortunate tendency to ask too many questions, or ones of the wrong type.
From an early age, Albert had warred with the soul-deep need to know that clung to his shoulders like a gnawing demon. Growing into a man in the Britannia of Emperor Charles and serving a four year tour of duty in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Services as a combat engineer, the penalties for overt curiosity in an empire wearied of backtalk were abundant and obvious.
Nothing, not even witnessing the consequences of surplus curiosity and inquisitiveness paired with a lack of due caution had been enough to quench his boundless thirst for secrets. Just like every other engineer in his detachment back during his time in uniform, Albert had stood assistant to the regimental executioner from time to time, ready to hand the man any tool he required to extract a wagging tongue or one or both of the wandering eyes formerly in the possession of some fool or another. From that experience, bloody and wet and sizzling and heated by turns, Albert had derived the lesson that one's superiors misliked it when their lessers asked questions they ought not, and so he had been very careful not to ask those questions where such superiors ran the risk of hearing them.
And yet, with each skeleton he unearthed, his addiction to context only intensified. Albert still needed to know, despite the emptied chairs and the comrades called away to private meetings who never returned and especially the ones who did return, albeit in the hands of the military police and below the gloves of the executioner. He needed to know whether the reforms of Archbishop Warren had any grounding beyond the demands of an emperor's insatiable libido. He needed to know whether the scheming of the remaining and reformed noble factions would bring about more war, or whether the ever-busy hand of DIS would keep the weeds of aristocratic cliques at bay. He wanted to know what had happened to turn the tide and finally end a civil war that had lasted for decades.
Most of all, Albert needed to know what really happened the day Marianne, sometimes called the Flash and later known as the Commoner Empress, had breathed her last, shuddering in a pool of her own blood. What had happened to the darling of the people, the evidence that sufficient talent could lift even one of their own up to the heavens? Moreover, what had happened to her children, to Prince Lelouch and Princess Nunnally? Could they truly have been slaughtered by the Elevens in a pitiful act of defiance, their royal bodies thrown into some common ditch or even defiled in a barbaric ritual as some last act of desecration?
His suspicions regarding that last question, Albert buried deepest of all. Not once did he admit to even the slightest of doubts about the tragic fate of the Flash's Lost Children. Not to chaplain, nor to drinking buddy, nor even to the wife he had taken a year after Area 11 was declared. Every time he bit his lip, the imp's talons dug deeper into his back, the devil's whispers in ear grew a little harder to ignore. He'd had no choice but to bear the burden of his curiosity in silence. At least, he'd had no recourse until recently…
When word had gotten around that there were opportunities for honest Britannian families willing to claim the new clay on the rim of the Pacific and to make it truly part of the Empire, Albert had jumped at the chance. He had told Teresa, his wife, that there would be plenty of work for a man with his skills, both the skills the Imperial Army had taught him in Combat Engineer School and the ones he'd picked up in his post-military career as a teamster.
His military service in particular had been a plus when it had come to securing a place in the New Areas. The administrations of newly conquered Areas gave preference to veterans when it came to recruiting settlers, especially those healthy enough to be called back to the Colors should the Empire have need of them once more. A comparatively small amount of paperwork had seen Albert, Teresa, and their two small children on a boat out of Holy Angels, bound for the Tokyo Settlement.
It had been in Area 11 that Albert first found his quiet, slow, careful way to a local message board of fellow "Lelouch Truthers". Unsurprisingly, their numbers were much larger in Area 11 than in the rest of Britannia combined; it was hard not to wonder about the children of Marianne when the Princess Nunnally Memorial Hospital saw to the medical needs of the bulk of the settlement's Britannian population. It was harder still not to ask questions about the official narrative when the evidence of Eleven terrorism was practically ubiquitous.
The Elevens, in Albert's opinion, were absolutely proud enough and stubborn enough to cut the noses off their faces out of petulant defiance. He had no trouble believing that they had murdered the prince and princess entrusted to their care. That being said, after seeing so many grandiose yet altogether ineffectual attacks reported on over the years, Albert had a much harder time believing the savage Elevens would simply throw the bodies into a hole somewhere and bury the evidence.
If these defiant Elevens truly slaughtered the royal children in a savage act of barbarity, where is the evidence? Where was the theater? Where was the macabre ceremony celebrating their triumph? Albert had reasoned to himself during many moments of introspection. I would have sooner expected defiant savages to nail the severed limbs of their young victims to the gates of the Kururugi shrine and dare us to pull them down than to bury them in a hole no one in the Empire has yet managed to find in six years of searching. Especially since, if they were murdered prior to the Conquest of Area 11, someone involved would probably have run to the hills and survived to create propaganda about the murder of a prince and princess.
So, why haven't they?
Unfortunately, Albert's illusion of relief in finding a community of like minds in the anonymous corners of the message boards quickly evaporated. There was nothing of real worth there, no insights or information, just the wild imaginings of fevered minds. Worst, the only ones who had anything even potentially interesting to contribute were also far too naive, or too arrogant to realize the dangers that came with digging so deeply. Either way, Albert carefully shunned those accounts, knowing full well that they wouldn't last long. Sure enough, those verbose and temeritous accounts would always fall suspiciously silent after a few weeks, only to briefly revive with notably different word choices and grammar.
After a few months, the familiar old demon of needing to know spurred him on again with renewed vigor, and so Albert began once more to search for the truth.
When a pamphlet slipped out from the pages of a pew hymnal after Sunday service and fell into Albert's lap, it had felt like a message from a god Albert had only occasionally ever believed in. There, in large letters across the front of the pamphlet, printed in cheap ink, were the words 'THE TRUE PRINCE RETURNS TO US!'
Albert had slid the pamphlet into his pocket without alerting Teresa, had continued pleasantly about his day, and that very night had slipped away to a certain street corner. A shadowy meeting with a drab little man had been followed by a much brighter meeting with a pleasant young lady who had been all too willing to answer some of the many, many questions Albert had been keeping pent up inside, and…
And there it goes! Albert crowed to himself as the engine of the hotwired truck turned over at last. Finally!
"We're ready to roll," he helpfully informed the woman perched uncomfortably in the bucket seat next to him. "Didn't I say it'd be nothing?"
"Yes," she curtly replied, voice taut with the realization that her part in their holy conspiracy had just translated from mere talk into action.
At least, that was what Albert assumed had left her so agitated. It certainly wasn't because the woman, whose name Albert didn't know and whom he had only met earlier this morning when one of the brothers spearheading this mission introduced them to one another and told Albert to get her over to the route leading out to Chiba before embarking upon his own appointed task, had been subject to Albert's sterling and nonstop conversation for the better part of an hour and a half by now.
"Yes'm!" Albert happily replied, talking loudly over the engine's roar, "I told you I could get us in and get the truck – and not just any truck, but the one we were told about, no less! – moving just as easily as Old Chuck takes another wife! Yes'm, I told you that!"
Ignoring a murderous look from his captive audience, Albert put the garbage truck with the discreet Chi-Rho chalked on the left rear tire into gear and carefully navigated a path out of the Tokyo Settlement Municipal Sanitation maintenance lot, the pair of bolt-cutters he'd used to gain entry via the fence knocking against his knee. It had been quite some time since Albert had driven such a large vehicle and longer still since he'd driven one burdened with a load as heavy as the heap of scrap metal crammed into the back of the garbage truck, but it was like riding a bicycle and familiarity returned shortly. Even the hotwiring had been an old army trick, as sometimes one had to strategically transfer equipment to alternative locations, such as a truck, without the previous owners needing to know.
Presently, he was rolling down one of the primary arterial roads, heading for the prefectural highway headed north to Ibaraki and on to the Sendai Settlement.
"You just passed the exit for Chiba," his irritable passenger pointed out, breaking twenty minutes of sullen silence.
"Oh, piss on the exit!" Albert declared. "I know a better way!"
He lifted a hand from the wheel and placed it over his heart, a man on the cusp of swearing a solemn oath, "Why, I wager I could out-route and out-fox any damned taximan in Tokyo! I tell you what, I was born with roads in my veins and an interchange for a vena cava. Why, this one time, back in New Wight, I–"
"Let me out at the next exit," his sister in the True Church commanded. "I'll find my own way."
It didn't rub him right, taking an order from a woman. It wasn't how he'd been brought up and it wasn't how things usually were done when it came to matters outside of the classical feminine sphere. Blood of the Martyred! They were engaged in war here, not bloody flower arranging or maths proofs!
But, something in the nameless woman's voice indicated that her patience was hanging by her very last thread; years of marriage had taught him to heed that voice, and so, reluctantly, he pulled over at the next eastbound exit.
"You be careful now, you hear!" Albert admonished his sister as she wrenched herself free of the belt and all but hurled herself free of the cab. He rolled down the window of her slammed door so she could still hear him. "Go with God, sister! And don't forget to… and she's gone."
Alone now, Albert wondered as he continued north if Teresa had noticed the red paint he'd splashed across their front door that morning before leaving to steal the truck. If she had, he hoped she didn't try to remove it or worse, leave the house to go buy paint remover.
Albert didn't quite know why Father Alexander had warned all his people to daub a red sun on their doors, and on the doors of other random houses and apartments to confuse the authorities. But, beyond the theological symbolism, he had a few suspicions founded both on the orders Brother Roger had passed along to "sow thorns in the roads" and some specific details regarding the truck he was now at the wheel of, and on the sounds of gunfire he'd heard fifteen minutes earlier, when he'd been trying to jimmy the lock on the cab door open.
The fact that his unnamed sister in the True Church had a sidearm poorly concealed under her coat and pockets full of mysterious bulges had also been something of a clue about the day's planned events.
Now, idling to a slow and careful stop alongside the southernmost pylon of the bridge across the Naka River, over whose broad back much of the northbound traffic leaving the Tokyo Settlement for Ibaraki, Sendai, and parts north traveled, Albert did his part to further the works of the True Prince and his sole and holy Church on Earth by kicking the dump truck's manual brake and going to work.
As a combat engineer in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Forces, Albert had picked up a trick or three. He'd already used one of his old army skills in hotwiring the truck earlier in the morning; now, he used a second.
Ordinance had never been a particular passion of Albert's. He was not a sapper at heart, as so many of his fellows were, and he lacked the sheer love those men and women had possessed for all things explosive, which was why many of his old comrades had predeceased him. But lack of fatal obsession didn't change the fact that, when it came to the refined art of removing obstacles, often in an explosive fashion, he remained a trained professional.
And professionals… Albert thought, looking over the mass of miscellaneous scrap metal at whose heart sat a chemical surprise another previously unknown brother or two had left waiting for him. A surprise sufficiently mighty enough to tear a garbage truck's thick steel sides open like so much orange peel. It had taken every bit of his carefully cultivated lack of outward reaction not to shake his head in disgust when he'd opened up the back of the garbage truck back in the yard and had his first glimpse… Have standards. Probably for the best that Sister Tightass didn't try to peer in over my shoulder; she was sour enough even without knowing she was sitting on top of a bomb!
It hadn't been a particularly horrible job, that bomb, all things considered. Albert wasn't so snobby that he couldn't admit as much, at least in the privacy of his own head. It was just that it was so clearly the work of a talented amateur or some well-practiced hobbyist instead of anybody with actual demolitions training. At most, the whole thing had been cobbled together by a civilian whose job provided some vague familiarity with the ins and outs of do-it-yourself chemistry, not someone schooled by His Imperial Majesty's finest lads to bring down the work of years in a brace of seconds.
But again, needs must when the Devil drives… Albert eyed the bridge, and where he'd parked the truck. …It'll do. Damn well better. Not terribly efficient, but it'll work.
Just have to get the blasting caps set up… he thought, gloved hands retrieving the five homemade caps he'd previously fashioned in his home garage from their beds in a heavily padded cigar box he'd kept close to his heart, and then get the timer rigged up…
The timer's design was Albert he had picked up from an old buddy, and God alone know where that miserable old cuss had happened across it. All it required in its base design was a cheap watch, a battery, and a few copper wires. For this holy job, however? Albert had improvised, just a bit. He had, he'd reasoned, needed a bit of an extra kick to guarantee that all five blasting charges went off at once.
He hadn't mucked with the principles, though, though, so in no time at all each blasting cap found a home in the bags of gritty, metallic dust nestled within the onboard compactor's heavy maw, then each cap was mated to one of the nest of copper wires wound about the head of the screw driven through the face of the watch. A last lone wire stretched from the terminal of the salvaged boat battery to the watch itself, whose remaining hand was already ticking its way around the mangled circuit towards its date with destiny.
Twenty minutes ought to be plenty, thought Albert, wiping the remnants of the chalked symbol away before stripping his gloves off and briskly walking away from the still running garbage truck, whose doors he had closed to shield his gorgon-head of a detonator from the view of any casual passerby, and a truck full of dusted metal and fertilizer should be plenty to crack that bridge in half.
Just as Brother Rodger commanded.
Just like how Albert didn't approve of taking orders from pushy women, sister in the communion of the True Church or not, he didn't approve of doing dirty work on behalf of the Eleven savages. Not that anybody had said that was why Father Alexander had ordered Brother Rodger to set loose his collection of veterans and volunteers, but Albert wasn't a stupid man; he could put two and two together. On the other hand, the tantrum the savages were pitching back in Tokyo was fantastic cover for such otherwise impossibly audacious acts as, say, blowing up key pieces of mission-critical infrastructure. Anything the True Church did now would surely be pinned on the rampaging Elevens, giving the Bureau and Inquisition no reason to go looking for them.
Win, win, win, all the way around!
Smiling to himself, Albert tossed his gloves and cigar box away into the Naka River and strolled along at the unhurried pace of a man on his day off, waving politely at a few old men sitting with their fishing poles down by the river. He continued to casually saunter until he judged that he was out of their sight, at which point the teamster and father of two began to stride with a great deal more urgency, humming the tune of 'Sleepers, Awake!' between breaths as he sought to maximize the distance between himself and the truck bomb he'd just abandoned.
After ten minutes and the better part of a mile, Albert slowed down and switched over to the decidedly more secular 'Bonnie King Charlie.' It had been a good, enlivening day already, and he expected the rest of the day would be nothing short of exciting.
Enamored with his good works and praying that whatever nonsense was sure to overtake the Tokyo Settlement wouldn't find its way to his doorstep and the family that was, at least legally, his, Albert trundled off down the road in search of some nice public house he could disappear into, vanishing into the morning crowd of punters and layabouts as one unremarkable face among many. The True Prince was coming and Albert had no intention of becoming a martyr before his suspicions about Marianne's children were resolved, one way or another.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0830
Long, long ago, in a different world, in a different life, in the skies over a place called Norden by some, called our own sovereign soil by the empire I had served…
I had fallen.
Plummeted, really.
Computation jewel shattered, every scrap of magic expended, boneless with exhaustion, I had tumbled from the sky with the supreme grace of a duck shot on the wing.
In that brief moment of freefall, I had been convinced that, by dint of death or near fatal heroism, I had left war and all of its dangers forever behind me in the clouds above. Utterly unencumbered by stress or fear for my future, I fell with a smile upon my face and a song of purest freedom in my heart.
In a strange way, I felt I had reached the absolute bound of freedom in the tumbling moments of that fall. Bereft of jewel and of magic, I had been equally bereft of any obligation to choose or to act, for I was incapable of changing my present situation. The burden of agency had been lifted. All but guaranteed to die when I hit the ground, I was free; I did not know whose responsibility dealing with the aftermath of that skirmish would become, but it was highly unlikely that it would fall upon my cold shoulders.
Standing at the central podium in the school gymnasium previously fancied as the Chamber of Notables, I felt the familiar weightlessness of freefall again.
That's the exhaustion, I told myself firmly, gazing out across the assembled crowd with all of the stoic dignity I could muster. Sleep deferred is sleep lost, and magic can only go so far.
And how far it had carried me already! I could never have done all that I had for Shinjuku and the Kozuki Organization without the help of my previous life's inheritance. The scraps of magic had been my only slim edge for long years, after all.
And now it has become my crutch, one that yields ever diminishing returns. Fresh casting no longer brings euphoria and energy, only a surcease from the drag and a step back from complete collapse.
Too late for second thoughts now.
Just as they had at the show trial of Lieutenant Ichiya almost two months ago, Inoue and Koichi stood at my shoulders, Sun Guard hachimaki brazen across their brows. A three-headed monster all our own, we were a lesser sculpt of the triumvirate Ohgi, Naoto and I had brokered so many months ago. Lesser troika or not, Shinjuku rested now within our sweat-soaked palms.
The remainder of the Leadership Commission assisted, of course, as did the many officers both Inoue and Koichi had promoted from within the ranks of their respective organizations. However, with the dissolution of the Council of Notables and the more final dismantling of other rival powers, all responsibility for the city had come to rest upon our three shoulders, upon mine most of all.
I'd thought the idea of me holding absolute authority over Shinjuku was a bad idea once, but… Peering out across the eager sea of faces, of healthy faces, faces no longer lined with starvation, of bright-eyed faces, I could only reflect that perhaps my fears had been misplaced.
The results, after all, spoke for themselves.
Oh yes, I chided myself, the results do indeed speak for themselves. Remember that thought in four hours, when the first blows of Britannian retaliation fall on these oh-so-eager faces.
My eyes sought out Junji, across the room. The skinny communications lieutenant looked up from his recording equipment and gave me a thumbs up, assuring me that he stood ready to broadcast my words across the lines criss-crossing Shinjuku and, via the relay system spanning three prefectures, most of central Honshu as well. Doubtless, recordings would also be distributed under some vague idea of boosting morale. Perhaps it would soften the hammerblow of incoming artillery, but I very much doubted it.
Behind him, Tanaka Chika stood, owl-eyed and solemn behind her glasses.
As if I needed some damned memento mori to remind me of just how mortal I am and how fallible! As if I were ever free of that knowledge!
I took a deep breath and forced my hands to uncurl, my fingers to straighten, and let the impulse to simply lash out disperse.
Everything was ready to go.
I could rest soon.
"Brothers and sisters!" My voice rang out across the gymnasium and all within fell silent. "Men and women and children all across occupied Japan, I come to you this morning with good news!
"Here in Shinjuku, in the very lap of our subjugation under the foreign tyrants… the Sun has finally risen."
It was interesting how the subtleties of pitch could so easily modulate a receptive crowd's reactions. A slight inflection and they all knew they should rise to applaud.
I had included no such inflection; my voice, low and intense, held them spellbound, pressing them down firmly into their chairs and keeping the gym as quiet as a tomb. Applause would come later.
"After a long Night of Sorrow… the Sun has finally risen. And yet… a dark fog of terror and pain lingers over us all, blanketing Tokyo and all of our beautiful islands. And unless the beams of our brilliant sunrise burn that fog away, it shall remain blanketed over us always, occluding the light of our new day.
"How fortunate we are that those purifying rays of sunshine are descending already, cleansing our holy land of the flesh and false security of our enemies even as I speak to you.
"This is not a homecoming, my brothers and sisters, my comrades! Our home is gone! Our past is crushed!
"This," I bared my teeth, hand gripping the sides of the podium, leaning forwards towards my audience, "is a reconquest! Nothing short of a complete and total victory will appease our righteous demands! Brothers and sisters across Japan, hear my voice and know that today, known now and forever as the Day of Liberation, the Kozuki Organization declares war in the name of Kaguya, Empress of Japan, and in the name of the millions of restless dead!"
My voice began to rise along with my hands, reaching for a crescendo. "In cooperation with the Japanese Liberation Front, with the Six Houses of Kyoto, and with all Japanese of true spirit, we declare war to the hilt against Britannia and all her might!"
That last line carried that inflection, the one that told the crowd that this was the time to applaud. Rapturous, they obeyed, rising to their feet like a crashing wave surging past a breached dam. Each person in attendance seemed to compete against those to their right and left to clap and cheer the loudest.
I could only hope that applause carried out beyond the walls of Shinjuku.
If everything's proceeding according to plan, Fuji will already be in Naoto's hands, I reminded myself. That's where the real crux of our plan is. This? This is just…
I grit my teeth as I surveyed the crowd of cheering masses, all so uproariously happy to finally fight for Japan reborn. …A show. A distraction. A stage performance designed to hold the Britannians' attention for as long as possible.
The sense of tumbling, plunging freedom was on me again, the pressure of a future beyond a week sleeting away. After so long spent in careful deliberation, careful planning… I took a deep breath, and tasted a liberty that could not last, and so was all the much sweeter for it.
"I will not waste any more of your time, my comrades!" I spoke over the sound of the applause and the rising chants, meeting eye after eye in the assembly, striving for that personal touch, seeking the individual in the crowd. "Today will be a very busy day for us, as will tomorrow and every other day until no Britannian breathes Japanese air. You all know what is expected of you and what your duties shall be! Follow your leaders and take heart that, come what may, we are all Japanese and shall live and die as such!
"I am honored to have you all by my side."
I only hope you do not curse me when you meet the fate you all so ardently wished for.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Port District 3, (Occupied) Tokyo Settlement, Empire of Japan (contested)
0724
Six years ago, Britannian bombs had fallen like rain on Tokyo.
Shinichiro Tamaki was ecstatic to return a little bit of the favor back to the Brits, courtesy of his 81-millimeter mortar. That he was one month late for the anniversary did little to dampen his enthusiasm.
Sprawled out on his belly on the roof of an anonymous, low-slung, gray office building, the faux-redhead peered through his binoculars at the whitewashed frontage of the District 3 Police Station and carefully noted the bearing, distance and the direction the wind was blowing. Pocketing the compass, Tamaki took one last glance at the station's gated entrance and then turned away, confident in his measurements. He'd gotten quite good at working out basic firing plans in his head back at the School, good enough to become an instructor along with the rest of his boys.
Quite the long walk for a guy who got his ass handed to him by an unarmed kid back in the day, Tamaki thought to himself, grimacing at the memory. But, everybody's gotta start somewhere. Me and the boys did good helping Naoto hold down Shinjuku, and now that Tanya's cut us free at last to deliver some whoop-ass to the Brits, we'll do good here too!
Grinning at the thought of vengeance long deferred, Tamaki shimmied back down the folding ladder to rejoin his squad. There they were, the once-gangsters once led by a braggart, now each of them a soldier of Japan in service to the girl who had raised them up from the trash they had once been.
"Alright, Inuyama," Tamaki said, clapping the man in question. "Seven hundred meters out, eighty-six degrees east, and the wind's southwest. You know what to do."
The soldier grinned, yellow teeth bared in humorless defiance as he spun the various dials on the mortar's base. Of course he knew what to do; they all did, every single soldier of every single squad fanning out across the Tokyo Settlement and all the people backing them from Shinjuku and hidden camps spread out across half a dozen prefectures. Weeks of planning must have gone into this operation; months of training certainly had.
The mortar at Inuyama's feet thumped its support, like a happy drunkard hammering on a table. Even through Tamaki's hands, pressing firmly over his ears, the blasts – one after another after another as Inuyama and the rest blazed through the six-pack of shells – were nearly deafening, but Tamaki couldn't care less about the noise and heat. He could barely care about the pounding headache the percussive blast always gave him; Tamaki could only look forward to the moment, only seconds away now, when he and the rest of Squad 16 would join Squads 17 and 18 and attack the ruptured police station, guns blazing as they cut the stunned and bleeding Brit pigs, standing or running, down.
This was it! At last, at last! The Day of Liberation had come, and with it the first hour of vengeance. Revenge for family, friends, and acquaintances, dead and crippled and lost in a churning and chaotic sea. Revenge for hopes and dreams quashed, homes and livelihoods turned into rubble. Revenge for petty slights and breathtaking cruelties.
Revenge for Japan.
"Alright, boys!" cried Tamaki, yelling over the ringing in his ears, savoring the fact that he was speaking in Japanese while standing outside Shinjuku's looming walls, "Let's not keep them waiting! C'mon! Follow me!"
"For the Commander! For the Empress! Expel the barbarians! For Japan! Banzai!"
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku Ghetto Check Point, Tokyo Settlement, Area 11
0730
When the 26th Infantry Regiment arrived in Area 11, the unit's officers and rankers alike had been delighted. Everything they had heard about the still-recently proclaimed Area spoke of opportunity and excitement, free from the constant political worries that invariably accompanied deployments back in the Heartland or Homeland. The Area even had just enough dead-enders clinging on to keep things from getting too boring, an extra entertainment whenever the whores grew dull and the regular Numbers too enured to being pushed around.
Two years on, Private Charles Klark was well past having second thoughts and starting to venture into third regrets.
"Every Britannian a lord!" they said! "All the Eleven girls you could plow, ready for the taking!" they promised! Stupid! How in the Emperor's name could I be taken in so easily?
Moodily, the young soldier prodded a discarded beer can with the toe of his boot; when it failed to explode, he kicked the rubbish away from his sentry box and back across the threshold into Shinjuku Ghetto where it could be with all the rest of the trash.
Those bastard recruiters… Klark growled, his black mood entirely unleavened. They always promise assignments where the beer flows in rivers and girls spread their legs like butter on toast… And it's always a lie. Dammit, dammit, dammit!
Frustratingly, even that wasn't quite true.
It used to be like that… the Britannian private thought sourly, casting his mind back to fond recollections from the first months of his tour of duty in Area 11. Back then, it was all brothels, cathouses, and bars past this checkpoint, up and down the streets! You could buy anything… well, any girl you wanted or anything you wanted to snort or shoot up, at least. No letting the Elevens buy weapons, after all. But anything else…
Oh, those had been the days. The Elevens were hungry enough and desperate enough that even a private's pay went a considerable distance, and since Charlie Klark had been stuck on sentry duty in and around the Tokyo Settlement more nights than not, the leverage of "overlooking" a sufficiently grateful Number trying to get in or out of the ghetto without a work pass had gone still further towards ensuring that the party never really ended.
All of that had come to a screeching halt right around the same time everything else had gone sour.
Fucking Purists, burning all the best Honorary dives and cathouses down… Bastards…
Not that the precipitous decline in the Tokyo nightlife was entirely the Purists' fault, much as it galled Klark to admit as much; the yellow-bellied Honoraries were at least as much to blame. It was, in his opinion, almost incomprehensible how quickly the Honoraries of the Tokyo Settlement had all but vanished from the streets.
A little rough-housing and suddenly all of the Honorary grog-shops were closed up! The ones who hadn't been looted bare, at least.
Still, at least for the first few months of the year, all the pleasures of Shinjuku were still spread wide open for his approval, even if prices had gone up just a bit. Sure, it hadn't been quite as fun after last Christmas – the vibe had been ruined, for one, and suddenly there seemed to be a lot more Numbers watching his every move every time he went into Shinjuku to blow off some steam – but the ghetto had still proven a reliable source of girls and giggles for an enterprising Britannian soldier with money to spend, and his gate income still provided said money.
Then, all at once, shit went sour again but in a way that hit far closer to home for Charlie Klark. The Kennel, his favorite establishment, run by a gang of Elevens who made a living providing for the appetites of their betters, had turned into a charnel house one sweltering April night.
I could have been there, Charlie thought, not for the first time, and shivered. One of those bodies could have been mine…
He'd volunteered to help out with the retributive killings the next day, of course, showing up bright and early nursing a bitter hangover courtesy of the inferior watering hole that had saved his life, showing up despite his leave pass extending to noon.
The experience had helped settle him down, but only a little. It rankled that only a fraction of the lawful punishment those who had lifted their hands against their betters had earned had been executed before other, more pressing matters down in Yokohama and along the Area's western coast had distracted the powers that be. Even worse, higher command had come down hard on all of the little allowances that had made the life of one Charlie Klark, perpetual sentry, more livable.
The perpetrators of the slaughter at the Kennel were entirely unknown, somehow escaping scot free from justice. Apparently devoid of any other answer, word had come down from on high that soldiers could enter the Shinjuku ghetto only in platoon-sized or stronger elements, and only on official orders. Given the circumstances, Charlie found it hard to blame them, but the directive had still badly damaged both his recreational funds and social life.
Why the hell am I even still here? Private Klark wondered, glaring at the empty patch of road where truck traffic usually queued. Why is this fucking gate even open? Traffic's been shrinking over the last month; over the last week, it's been dead quiet! Why not just brick this damned gate shut and have done with it, eh? Not like there's any point to having access to a ghetto full of Numbers if I can't use them…
Sparing a moment from his pity party, Klark glanced over at the pedestrian gateway to see how Corporal Wiggins – a real piece of work, in Charlie's opinion – and the rest of the fireteam were getting on. If they were busy, he'd better find something to do so nobody would call him over to help…
The pedestrian queue's empty too… Somewhere far in the back of Charlie's head, warning bells began to clamor. It's not even eight yet, isn't it? Where are all the Elevens with work passes?
"Klark!"
Charlie winced, hearing the familiar tones of Area Three on Corporal Wiggins' voice. He'd been caught looking around, and now the non-com was going to give him something to do.
"I'm falling asleep on my feet out here, Klark!" bellowed the noncom from across the road. "You're up for a coffee run! Make sure mine's double strength. Extra cream, you hear?"
"You got it, Corp!" Klark replied, tossing off a hasty salute. It wasn't strictly appropriate to leave the sentry box while on duty for something like this, but he didn't have any intention of questioning the brawny corporal's orders; he'd joined in with enough blanket parties before to have no intention of ever being on the receiving end of one.
Besides, the nearest convenience store was only a block or two away from the Kawadacho Gate into Shinjuku. He'd only be away from his post for fifteen minutes, tops.
And some coffee really would hit the spot, wouldn't it…?
Turning to trot away, Charlie heard something zip right past his ear. A wasp, maybe, or perhaps a mosquito.
It's pretty late in the year for mosquitos, isn't it?
He was on the ground before his ears had a chance to register the flat crack! of a distant rifle. His rifle, hanging over his shoulder, tangled around his left arm as he tried to unlimber it as he crawled. Charlie cursed as the butt thumped against his knee in a numbing burst of sparks.
Through the buzzing in his head, Charlie heard what sounded like distant shouting. He dimly recognized the voice as Wiggins'. Chancing a glance back, he saw that someone in Britannian gray was down, their blood shockingly bright against the asphalt. Wiggins was kneeling, his coilgun raised to return fire though Charlie couldn't see what he was aiming at.
The world swam before Charlie Klark's eyes. Suddenly dizzy, he glanced down at himself, wondering if he'd been shot. He didn't see anything but the movement had been enough to send the whole world swirling around him.
I'm still out in the road… he thought, and was alarmed at how muted and far away his own internal monologue sounded. Need to get into cover… Sniper…
There'd been something with an Eleven sniper recently, hadn't there?
Yeah… Bitch down in Yokohama… She must've had some friends…
Across the road, Wiggins toppled over, hands scrabbling at a ruined throat.
Bitch… Klark thought, dully satisfied. Not gonna yell at me… Heh… Oh God…
Why was he so tired? What was he doing, lying down on the sidewalk like this? Moving fingers like lead, he found his rifle, strap still tangled around his arm. Dully, questing fingers found the release and unsnapped it.
There. Got my gun back.
Woozily, Charlie looked up, rifle in hand, and peered off into the distance, into Shinjuku, looking for whatever Wiggins had been shooting at.
He saw a crowd coming his way, many of them armed and all with hard, angry faces.
Elevens, he thought disgustedly, and spat. The sputum came out pink and foamy. Bastard Number scum…
Almost carelessly, Charlie lifted his coilgun in the approaching mob's direction and pulled the trigger. His aim was bad, but he thought he saw at least one of the fuckers go down with roses blooming on his chest.
Just ninety-nine more to go… Gotta balance the scales… Or is it nine hundred ninety-nine now?
Before his puzzled mind could quite answer that question, before his increasingly numb hands could fit a fresh clip into his suddenly heavy rifle, the crowd was upon Private Charles Klark, and suddenly very little mattered.
Except for the horrifying, all-consuming pain that not even the peculiar lassitude burdening his limbs could conceal.
The last thing the Britannian private saw before dirty-nailed thumbs found his eyes was the flat-eyed stare of an Eleven slut he remembered tupping a time or three. No simpering smile for him this time, nor "gifted" service, only a hateful sneer of purest satisfaction.
For Charlie Klark, that pain would last forever; for the mob of angry citizens of Shinjuku, out to take a bit of private revenge before following the directive to evacuate underground, the last survivor of the Kawadacho Gate's small garrison only lasted a disappointingly brief ten minutes.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0800
Forty stories up, Kaoru was keenly aware of how the burnt-out remains of the Kabukicho Tower groaned with each chilly breeze. Now, almost at the top of that rotting steel and cement tree, he very much regretted his rash decision to volunteer for the "special morale-boosting assignment."
Not that he had the slightest intention of revealing that change of heart to any of the other seven lucky kids chosen from Missus Tsuchiya's school. Especially not after how much he'd whined and begged until she'd at last given in to his wheedling and allowed him to go along with the other kids. At eleven, he was the youngest of the crew by two years except for Kotori, who was a month younger than him, and it had taken a lot of pleading and cajoling to work his way onto the crew; if he backed out now, he'd never hear the end of it. Especially since Kotori, who had taken advantage of his urgent pleading to come along too, looked supremely unconcerned.
Still, though… Kaoru gulped and tugged ever so slightly on his tether, making sure the rope was still firmly tied off to the guide-line Manami, the oldest of the group at fifteen and thus the leader, had strung out behind her from anchor to anchor. If I'd known that the special assignment Teach was talking about meant climbing to the highest point in the Ghetto, up to the top of a skyscraper that could topple over at any minute… That there were heights involved…!
He tugged the rope again. Still firm, still holding.
That reassurance was almost enough to make him forget how all the windows this far up were long-gone, as were the topmost eight floors of the building, and how a forty-story fall waited less than half a meter away from where he was standing right here and now.
"Kaoru, c'mon! Hurry up!" one of the others called back, waving him forwards. "Get your ass over here! We need the flag!"
Grimacing, Kaoru tried to ignore the yawning precipice beside him and how Manami was swatting their foul-mouthed classmate over the head for cursing. He had more luck with the latter than the former as he hurried forwards, sure to keep one hand on the guide-rope at all times. With his other hand, he kept the package, neatly wrapped in brown butcher-paper, pinned tightly against his chest, terrified that if he didn't, his great responsibility would slip between his fingers and fall those forty stories down to the recently repaved streets of Shinjuku far below.
And what a responsibility it was, that package entrusted to his care! The other kids, who were all, except for Kotori, older and bigger than him had carried larger and more structurally important burdens up the forty flights of stairs, from the improvised flagpole to the steel cables and hooks that would hold the thing in place, but none of it would mean anything without the package cradled in his arm!
And Kotori lucked out, Kaoru grumbled to himself, being the smallest one of all. She just has to carry that weird Brit's camera! Funny how her size didn't matter when it came to joining the crew, but all of a sudden when it came time to carry all this crap up…
The honor of his burden aside, Kaoru was looking forward to putting the package down and, hopefully, scampering quickly back downstairs and out of the ominously creaking tower. Heights aside, the burden was heavier than he'd really been expecting. Cloth was light, after all, but enough cloth tightly folded could apparently turn into almost a brick, especially after such a long climb up. Since the flag was fully three times his height in width and almost double that in length, that was quite a lot of cloth indeed.
"Here," grunted Kaoru, eyes focused entirely on Manami and her extended hands, and definitely not thinking about how he was now at the very ravaged edge, out by the corner with nothing but air to his left or his right. Incredibly, Manami was even further out in the corner of what might have been some boss's posh office, almost standing on the three spans of rebar bound together with wire and anchored with cable, the flagpole they'd improvised. "Take it."
"Surly~" Manami teased with an easy smile that made Kaoru's nerves jangle. Didn't she understand that she was standing on the edge of a massive cliff?! "Getting a little anxious about how high up we are, Kaoru?"
"No!" As soon as he blurted out the denial, Kaoru knew he'd overplayed his hand.
They know!
The teasing smirk on Manami's face stretched almost into a grin before she seemed to remember that she was the leader and supposed to set a good example, per Missus Tsuchiya's instructions.
"Don't worry," Manami reassured instead of teasing Kaoru further, shooting a quelling glance over his shoulder, no doubt stifling his fellows who were giggling behind his back. "The guide line is perfectly safe. I could rest my entire weight against it and, so long as I stayed in my harness, I wouldn't fall."
He almost yelled at her to not do that, to not take the risk. Thinking he saw the grin in her eyes again, Kaoru decided to keep silent and ignore how he could feel his neck heating with embarrassment.
The byplay was not lost on Manami.
"Relax," she sighed, turning around to kneel by the flagpole. Carefully, the leader of their little group unfurled the flag, wrapping more salvaged electrical wire through its eyelets to hold it firmly against the rebar pole. "We'll be heading down soon, and then we'll be heading even further down. You won't be seeing another view like this for… Well, for a while. Enjoy the view while it lasts, because we'll be seeing a lot of basements for a while."
Privately, Kaoru couldn't wait to see nothing but safe, sheltering, and unmoving walls. He hoped he'd never see anything but firm pavement under his feet ever again.
He did not share these thoughts with Manami, nor with Kotori or any of the others as he carefully picked his way as far back from the edge as he could.
Instead, Kaoru focused on the flag as it slipped free from Manami's fingers and billowed in the wind, tugging against its anchors.
It was a work of art, in his opinion, and it was different than any flag he'd ever seen. There were still plenty of old Republican flags left over from the old government and Kaoru had seen the familiar meatball on a field of snow hanging in many different apartments throughout Shinjuku. This one was different, larger than all of those and the white and red had switched places. A large white chrysanthemum blossomed in a scarlet sea, its petals and stem piped with gold thread "liberated" from the Viceregal Palace itself, or at least that was what Kaoru had heard. In the four corners, stitched in broad white lines, the four kanji of the Rising Sun's new battlecry flanked the Imperial flower.
"Revere the Empress; expel the barbarians."
Old Miss Tsuchiya had practically come alive when she'd handed the flag over to Kaoru and the rest, going on and on about "historical context" and "symbols for our future," but most of that had gone over Kaoru's head. As far as he could tell, the most important thing about the flag he'd cradled against his chest was that it would be the first Japanese flag, old Republican or whatever this new one was, that Kaoru had ever seen fly out under the open sky under the light of day.
It was enough to really make him believe that the sun was rising at last, at so very long last.
They might be going back underground to hide from the Brits, but their flag would still fly high above them.
"Missus Tsuchiya said it's a modi-fi-cation of some old imperial flag," said Kotori, carefully enunciating each word to avoid her usual lisp. The youngest and smallest of the crew had moved over to stand beside Kaoru, her borrowed camera in hand. She looked like she was staring at the flag too, but when she lifted her camera again and Kaoru followed the line of its lens, he realized his classmate was aiming past the flag billowing in the morning wind to capture the hulking elevated platform atop which the Britannian Concession squatted. In the middle of which loomed the Viceregal Palace, a tower atop another tower.
Kaoru wondered if the governor, Prince Clovis, ever looked down from his massive palace to see Shinjuku glaring back at him. He wondered if the blond Brit bastard would be able to see their flag from his balcony.
He hoped the prince could see; he hoped it made him wet his fancy underwear to see a new flag for a new people rising up from beneath his feet.
"They'll know we're here now," said Kotori, her voice thoughtful. "No going back now. One way or the other."
"No going back," Kaoru agreed, not that he could really remember any "back" he could have gone to. As long as he could remember, life had sucked and times had been hard. Even with the Rising Sun's help, his mom had still died last March from the wet coughs. "But that means things can only get better from now, right?"
Kotori turned, met his eye, and smiled. Kaoru thought it was a sad smile for such a happy moment.
"I really hope you're right, Kaoru. I really, really do."
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0820
"No pushing, no shoving!" Shimura Terauchi bellowed so his voice could carry over the tumult. "No pushing and no shoving! Keep your hands to yourselves and keep moving! There's room for everyone, so keep your damned hands to yourselves and keep moving!"
Fortunately, the crowd shuffling down the stairs into the pump station-turned-gateway to the sprawling subterranean network underneath Shinjuku was mostly calm, and mostly moving with a purpose down into the tunnels. Parents ushered children, both with backs bent under the weight of any movable supplies, and youngsters with Sun Guard hachimaki leant supportive elbows for elderly neighbors to lean on as they picked their way down the stairs.
Every one of them had drilled for this moment. Everyone had known that this day would come soon, even if most of the people of Shinjuku had been surprised to hear Commander Hajime's morning declaration crackling out across the radio waves.
And, Terauchi thought, privately smug, they have the benefit of a voice of authority to reassure them that not everything has been entrusted to a twelve year old girl.
And isn't that still an absurd thought to have… even more absurd that it doesn't sound all that unreasonable anymore now.
Unlike that old sailor and crook Nishizumi Tsutsumi, his former fellow councilor in the dissolved Chamber of Notables and a perennial pain in the ass, Terauchi's dislike for Shinjuku's new despot wasn't particularly personal. Sure, he didn't enjoy being beholden to a child for protection and supplies, and he certainly didn't enjoy taking orders from a hafu no matter their age, but then, who did?
Frankly, Tearuchi didn't even particularly resent the forceful dissolution of the Notables; that was only politics and it had barely diminished his personal powerbase. The chamber was created to consolidate Rising Sun's power, and it was dissolved for the same reason, all perfectly logical to Tearuchi. After all, his appointment to that body had only been a recognition of the authority he already enjoyed, the product of two decades spent as a key player at the Bureau of Waterworks of the old Tokyo municipal government, and that authority and institutional knowledge guaranteed his place at the table.
It isn't personal, Terauchi told himself again. It just isn't right that a girl with foreign blood should set herself up as a dictator over us! And an empress…? Another girl, and this one a former collaborator to boot?
It wasn't personal, his dislike, but it was strong.
But his hatred of the Britannians who had taken his left arm in their damned invasion and whose starvation and cholera had taken most of his family was much stronger.
And if that blonde bitch really can make those Brit bastards drown in their own blood… his mouth quirked up at the dream, of pallid faces and gray uniforms heaped on every street corner, of guidons crammed down the throats of captured officers. Make them pay the blood price for even a fraction of what they took from us… Or better yet, hold out until the real soldiers from the JLF get here… Perhaps the sun is rising indeed. And once the new day comes…
Terauchi cut off that line of thinking and resumed his business exhorting the stragglers to hurry up and get underground. There was plenty of trouble in the here and now to worry about, enough that he didn't have the luxury to consider his plans for a future that he might not live to see.
Survival for now, but for tomorrow… There will be opportunities, oh yes. And there will be no need for any drop of Britannian blood to remain on the Home Islands to see them.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Near a road leading north from the Tokyo Settlement, Area 11
0830
It would have come as a significant surprise to Albert Hanlon's coworkers at B & N Transport Solutions that, while his pleasant affability was no act, his complete disinterest in anything resembling politics, religion, or any of the other topics which fell under the umbrella of "what was really going on" most assuredly was.
If there was a substance more poisonous to the beleaguered commoner class of the Holy Britannian Empire than the vile rotgut that was its most common solace, it was curiosity. Short of outright defiance in the face of noble, or worse, imperial authority, no road led more swiftly to death for a commoner than an unfortunate tendency to ask too many questions, or ones of the wrong type.
From an early age, Albert had warred with the soul-deep need to know that clung to his shoulders like a gnawing demon. Growing into a man in the Britannia of Emperor Charles and serving a four year tour of duty in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Services as a combat engineer, the penalties for overt curiosity in an empire wearied of backtalk were abundant and obvious.
Nothing, not even witnessing the consequences of surplus curiosity and inquisitiveness paired with a lack of due caution had been enough to quench his boundless thirst for secrets. Just like every other engineer in his detachment back during his time in uniform, Albert had stood assistant to the regimental executioner from time to time, ready to hand the man any tool he required to extract a wagging tongue or one or both of the wandering eyes formerly in the possession of some fool or another. From that experience, bloody and wet and sizzling and heated by turns, Albert had derived the lesson that one's superiors misliked it when their lessers asked questions they ought not, and so he had been very careful not to ask those questions where such superiors ran the risk of hearing them.
And yet, with each skeleton he unearthed, his addiction to context only intensified. Albert still needed to know, despite the emptied chairs and the comrades called away to private meetings who never returned and especially the ones who did return, albeit in the hands of the military police and below the gloves of the executioner. He needed to know whether the reforms of Archbishop Warren had any grounding beyond the demands of an emperor's insatiable libido. He needed to know whether the scheming of the remaining and reformed noble factions would bring about more war, or whether the ever-busy hand of DIS would keep the weeds of aristocratic cliques at bay. He wanted to know what had happened to turn the tide and finally end a civil war that had lasted for decades.
Most of all, Albert needed to know what really happened the day Marianne, sometimes called the Flash and later known as the Commoner Empress, had breathed her last, shuddering in a pool of her own blood. What had happened to the darling of the people, the evidence that sufficient talent could lift even one of their own up to the heavens? Moreover, what had happened to her children, to Prince Lelouch and Princess Nunnally? Could they truly have been slaughtered by the Elevens in a pitiful act of defiance, their royal bodies thrown into some common ditch or even defiled in a barbaric ritual as some last act of desecration?
His suspicions regarding that last question, Albert buried deepest of all. Not once did he admit to even the slightest of doubts about the tragic fate of the Flash's Lost Children. Not to chaplain, nor to drinking buddy, nor even to the wife he had taken a year after Area 11 was declared. Every time he bit his lip, the imp's talons dug deeper into his back, the devil's whispers in ear grew a little harder to ignore. He'd had no choice but to bear the burden of his curiosity in silence. At least, he'd had no recourse until recently…
When word had gotten around that there were opportunities for honest Britannian families willing to claim the new clay on the rim of the Pacific and to make it truly part of the Empire, Albert had jumped at the chance. He had told Teresa, his wife, that there would be plenty of work for a man with his skills, both the skills the Imperial Army had taught him in Combat Engineer School and the ones he'd picked up in his post-military career as a teamster.
His military service in particular had been a plus when it had come to securing a place in the New Areas. The administrations of newly conquered Areas gave preference to veterans when it came to recruiting settlers, especially those healthy enough to be called back to the Colors should the Empire have need of them once more. A comparatively small amount of paperwork had seen Albert, Teresa, and their two small children on a boat out of Holy Angels, bound for the Tokyo Settlement.
It had been in Area 11 that Albert first found his quiet, slow, careful way to a local message board of fellow "Lelouch Truthers". Unsurprisingly, their numbers were much larger in Area 11 than in the rest of Britannia combined; it was hard not to wonder about the children of Marianne when the Princess Nunnally Memorial Hospital saw to the medical needs of the bulk of the settlement's Britannian population. It was harder still not to ask questions about the official narrative when the evidence of Eleven terrorism was practically ubiquitous.
The Elevens, in Albert's opinion, were absolutely proud enough and stubborn enough to cut the noses off their faces out of petulant defiance. He had no trouble believing that they had murdered the prince and princess entrusted to their care. That being said, after seeing so many grandiose yet altogether ineffectual attacks reported on over the years, Albert had a much harder time believing the savage Elevens would simply throw the bodies into a hole somewhere and bury the evidence.
If these defiant Elevens truly slaughtered the royal children in a savage act of barbarity, where is the evidence? Where was the theater? Where was the macabre ceremony celebrating their triumph? Albert had reasoned to himself during many moments of introspection. I would have sooner expected defiant savages to nail the severed limbs of their young victims to the gates of the Kururugi shrine and dare us to pull them down than to bury them in a hole no one in the Empire has yet managed to find in six years of searching. Especially since, if they were murdered prior to the Conquest of Area 11, someone involved would probably have run to the hills and survived to create propaganda about the murder of a prince and princess.
So, why haven't they?
Unfortunately, Albert's illusion of relief in finding a community of like minds in the anonymous corners of the message boards quickly evaporated. There was nothing of real worth there, no insights or information, just the wild imaginings of fevered minds. Worst, the only ones who had anything even potentially interesting to contribute were also far too naive, or too arrogant to realize the dangers that came with digging so deeply. Either way, Albert carefully shunned those accounts, knowing full well that they wouldn't last long. Sure enough, those verbose and temeritous accounts would always fall suspiciously silent after a few weeks, only to briefly revive with notably different word choices and grammar.
After a few months, the familiar old demon of needing to know spurred him on again with renewed vigor, and so Albert began once more to search for the truth.
When a pamphlet slipped out from the pages of a pew hymnal after Sunday service and fell into Albert's lap, it had felt like a message from a god Albert had only occasionally ever believed in. There, in large letters across the front of the pamphlet, printed in cheap ink, were the words 'THE TRUE PRINCE RETURNS TO US!'
Albert had slid the pamphlet into his pocket without alerting Teresa, had continued pleasantly about his day, and that very night had slipped away to a certain street corner. A shadowy meeting with a drab little man had been followed by a much brighter meeting with a pleasant young lady who had been all too willing to answer some of the many, many questions Albert had been keeping pent up inside, and…
And there it goes! Albert crowed to himself as the engine of the hotwired truck turned over at last. Finally!
"We're ready to roll," he helpfully informed the woman perched uncomfortably in the bucket seat next to him. "Didn't I say it'd be nothing?"
"Yes," she curtly replied, voice taut with the realization that her part in their holy conspiracy had just translated from mere talk into action.
At least, that was what Albert assumed had left her so agitated. It certainly wasn't because the woman, whose name Albert didn't know and whom he had only met earlier this morning when one of the brothers spearheading this mission introduced them to one another and told Albert to get her over to the route leading out to Chiba before embarking upon his own appointed task, had been subject to Albert's sterling and nonstop conversation for the better part of an hour and a half by now.
"Yes'm!" Albert happily replied, talking loudly over the engine's roar, "I told you I could get us in and get the truck – and not just any truck, but the one we were told about, no less! – moving just as easily as Old Chuck takes another wife! Yes'm, I told you that!"
Ignoring a murderous look from his captive audience, Albert put the garbage truck with the discreet Chi-Rho chalked on the left rear tire into gear and carefully navigated a path out of the Tokyo Settlement Municipal Sanitation maintenance lot, the pair of bolt-cutters he'd used to gain entry via the fence knocking against his knee. It had been quite some time since Albert had driven such a large vehicle and longer still since he'd driven one burdened with a load as heavy as the heap of scrap metal crammed into the back of the garbage truck, but it was like riding a bicycle and familiarity returned shortly. Even the hotwiring had been an old army trick, as sometimes one had to strategically transfer equipment to alternative locations, such as a truck, without the previous owners needing to know.
Presently, he was rolling down one of the primary arterial roads, heading for the prefectural highway headed north to Ibaraki and on to the Sendai Settlement.
"You just passed the exit for Chiba," his irritable passenger pointed out, breaking twenty minutes of sullen silence.
"Oh, piss on the exit!" Albert declared. "I know a better way!"
He lifted a hand from the wheel and placed it over his heart, a man on the cusp of swearing a solemn oath, "Why, I wager I could out-route and out-fox any damned taximan in Tokyo! I tell you what, I was born with roads in my veins and an interchange for a vena cava. Why, this one time, back in New Wight, I–"
"Let me out at the next exit," his sister in the True Church commanded. "I'll find my own way."
It didn't rub him right, taking an order from a woman. It wasn't how he'd been brought up and it wasn't how things usually were done when it came to matters outside of the classical feminine sphere. Blood of the Martyred! They were engaged in war here, not bloody flower arranging or maths proofs!
But, something in the nameless woman's voice indicated that her patience was hanging by her very last thread; years of marriage had taught him to heed that voice, and so, reluctantly, he pulled over at the next eastbound exit.
"You be careful now, you hear!" Albert admonished his sister as she wrenched herself free of the belt and all but hurled herself free of the cab. He rolled down the window of her slammed door so she could still hear him. "Go with God, sister! And don't forget to… and she's gone."
Alone now, Albert wondered as he continued north if Teresa had noticed the red paint he'd splashed across their front door that morning before leaving to steal the truck. If she had, he hoped she didn't try to remove it or worse, leave the house to go buy paint remover.
Albert didn't quite know why Father Alexander had warned all his people to daub a red sun on their doors, and on the doors of other random houses and apartments to confuse the authorities. But, beyond the theological symbolism, he had a few suspicions founded both on the orders Brother Roger had passed along to "sow thorns in the roads" and some specific details regarding the truck he was now at the wheel of, and on the sounds of gunfire he'd heard fifteen minutes earlier, when he'd been trying to jimmy the lock on the cab door open.
The fact that his unnamed sister in the True Church had a sidearm poorly concealed under her coat and pockets full of mysterious bulges had also been something of a clue about the day's planned events.
Now, idling to a slow and careful stop alongside the southernmost pylon of the bridge across the Naka River, over whose broad back much of the northbound traffic leaving the Tokyo Settlement for Ibaraki, Sendai, and parts north traveled, Albert did his part to further the works of the True Prince and his sole and holy Church on Earth by kicking the dump truck's manual brake and going to work.
As a combat engineer in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Forces, Albert had picked up a trick or three. He'd already used one of his old army skills in hotwiring the truck earlier in the morning; now, he used a second.
Ordinance had never been a particular passion of Albert's. He was not a sapper at heart, as so many of his fellows were, and he lacked the sheer love those men and women had possessed for all things explosive, which was why many of his old comrades had predeceased him. But lack of fatal obsession didn't change the fact that, when it came to the refined art of removing obstacles, often in an explosive fashion, he remained a trained professional.
And professionals… Albert thought, looking over the mass of miscellaneous scrap metal at whose heart sat a chemical surprise another previously unknown brother or two had left waiting for him. A surprise sufficiently mighty enough to tear a garbage truck's thick steel sides open like so much orange peel. It had taken every bit of his carefully cultivated lack of outward reaction not to shake his head in disgust when he'd opened up the back of the garbage truck back in the yard and had his first glimpse… Have standards. Probably for the best that Sister Tightass didn't try to peer in over my shoulder; she was sour enough even without knowing she was sitting on top of a bomb!
It hadn't been a particularly horrible job, that bomb, all things considered. Albert wasn't so snobby that he couldn't admit as much, at least in the privacy of his own head. It was just that it was so clearly the work of a talented amateur or some well-practiced hobbyist instead of anybody with actual demolitions training. At most, the whole thing had been cobbled together by a civilian whose job provided some vague familiarity with the ins and outs of do-it-yourself chemistry, not someone schooled by His Imperial Majesty's finest lads to bring down the work of years in a brace of seconds.
But again, needs must when the Devil drives… Albert eyed the bridge, and where he'd parked the truck. …It'll do. Damn well better. Not terribly efficient, but it'll work.
Just have to get the blasting caps set up… he thought, gloved hands retrieving the five homemade caps he'd previously fashioned in his home garage from their beds in a heavily padded cigar box he'd kept close to his heart, and then get the timer rigged up…
The timer's design was Albert he had picked up from an old buddy, and God alone know where that miserable old cuss had happened across it. All it required in its base design was a cheap watch, a battery, and a few copper wires. For this holy job, however? Albert had improvised, just a bit. He had, he'd reasoned, needed a bit of an extra kick to guarantee that all five blasting charges went off at once.
He hadn't mucked with the principles, though, though, so in no time at all each blasting cap found a home in the bags of gritty, metallic dust nestled within the onboard compactor's heavy maw, then each cap was mated to one of the nest of copper wires wound about the head of the screw driven through the face of the watch. A last lone wire stretched from the terminal of the salvaged boat battery to the watch itself, whose remaining hand was already ticking its way around the mangled circuit towards its date with destiny.
Twenty minutes ought to be plenty, thought Albert, wiping the remnants of the chalked symbol away before stripping his gloves off and briskly walking away from the still running garbage truck, whose doors he had closed to shield his gorgon-head of a detonator from the view of any casual passerby, and a truck full of dusted metal and fertilizer should be plenty to crack that bridge in half.
Just as Brother Rodger commanded.
Just like how Albert didn't approve of taking orders from pushy women, sister in the communion of the True Church or not, he didn't approve of doing dirty work on behalf of the Eleven savages. Not that anybody had said that was why Father Alexander had ordered Brother Rodger to set loose his collection of veterans and volunteers, but Albert wasn't a stupid man; he could put two and two together. On the other hand, the tantrum the savages were pitching back in Tokyo was fantastic cover for such otherwise impossibly audacious acts as, say, blowing up key pieces of mission-critical infrastructure. Anything the True Church did now would surely be pinned on the rampaging Elevens, giving the Bureau and Inquisition no reason to go looking for them.
Win, win, win, all the way around!
Smiling to himself, Albert tossed his gloves and cigar box away into the Naka River and strolled along at the unhurried pace of a man on his day off, waving politely at a few old men sitting with their fishing poles down by the river. He continued to casually saunter until he judged that he was out of their sight, at which point the teamster and father of two began to stride with a great deal more urgency, humming the tune of 'Sleepers, Awake!' between breaths as he sought to maximize the distance between himself and the truck bomb he'd just abandoned.
After ten minutes and the better part of a mile, Albert slowed down and switched over to the decidedly more secular 'Bonnie King Charlie.' It had been a good, enlivening day already, and he expected the rest of the day would be nothing short of exciting.
Enamored with his good works and praying that whatever nonsense was sure to overtake the Tokyo Settlement wouldn't find its way to his doorstep and the family that was, at least legally, his, Albert trundled off down the road in search of some nice public house he could disappear into, vanishing into the morning crowd of punters and layabouts as one unremarkable face among many. The True Prince was coming and Albert had no intention of becoming a martyr before his suspicions about Marianne's children were resolved, one way or another.
September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0830
Long, long ago, in a different world, in a different life, in the skies over a place called Norden by some, called our own sovereign soil by the empire I had served…
I had fallen.
Plummeted, really.
Computation jewel shattered, every scrap of magic expended, boneless with exhaustion, I had tumbled from the sky with the supreme grace of a duck shot on the wing.
In that brief moment of freefall, I had been convinced that, by dint of death or near fatal heroism, I had left war and all of its dangers forever behind me in the clouds above. Utterly unencumbered by stress or fear for my future, I fell with a smile upon my face and a song of purest freedom in my heart.
In a strange way, I felt I had reached the absolute bound of freedom in the tumbling moments of that fall. Bereft of jewel and of magic, I had been equally bereft of any obligation to choose or to act, for I was incapable of changing my present situation. The burden of agency had been lifted. All but guaranteed to die when I hit the ground, I was free; I did not know whose responsibility dealing with the aftermath of that skirmish would become, but it was highly unlikely that it would fall upon my cold shoulders.
Standing at the central podium in the school gymnasium previously fancied as the Chamber of Notables, I felt the familiar weightlessness of freefall again.
That's the exhaustion, I told myself firmly, gazing out across the assembled crowd with all of the stoic dignity I could muster. Sleep deferred is sleep lost, and magic can only go so far.
And how far it had carried me already! I could never have done all that I had for Shinjuku and the Kozuki Organization without the help of my previous life's inheritance. The scraps of magic had been my only slim edge for long years, after all.
And now it has become my crutch, one that yields ever diminishing returns. Fresh casting no longer brings euphoria and energy, only a surcease from the drag and a step back from complete collapse.
Too late for second thoughts now.
Just as they had at the show trial of Lieutenant Ichiya almost two months ago, Inoue and Koichi stood at my shoulders, Sun Guard hachimaki brazen across their brows. A three-headed monster all our own, we were a lesser sculpt of the triumvirate Ohgi, Naoto and I had brokered so many months ago. Lesser troika or not, Shinjuku rested now within our sweat-soaked palms.
The remainder of the Leadership Commission assisted, of course, as did the many officers both Inoue and Koichi had promoted from within the ranks of their respective organizations. However, with the dissolution of the Council of Notables and the more final dismantling of other rival powers, all responsibility for the city had come to rest upon our three shoulders, upon mine most of all.
I'd thought the idea of me holding absolute authority over Shinjuku was a bad idea once, but… Peering out across the eager sea of faces, of healthy faces, faces no longer lined with starvation, of bright-eyed faces, I could only reflect that perhaps my fears had been misplaced.
The results, after all, spoke for themselves.
Oh yes, I chided myself, the results do indeed speak for themselves. Remember that thought in four hours, when the first blows of Britannian retaliation fall on these oh-so-eager faces.
My eyes sought out Junji, across the room. The skinny communications lieutenant looked up from his recording equipment and gave me a thumbs up, assuring me that he stood ready to broadcast my words across the lines criss-crossing Shinjuku and, via the relay system spanning three prefectures, most of central Honshu as well. Doubtless, recordings would also be distributed under some vague idea of boosting morale. Perhaps it would soften the hammerblow of incoming artillery, but I very much doubted it.
Behind him, Tanaka Chika stood, owl-eyed and solemn behind her glasses.
As if I needed some damned memento mori to remind me of just how mortal I am and how fallible! As if I were ever free of that knowledge!
I took a deep breath and forced my hands to uncurl, my fingers to straighten, and let the impulse to simply lash out disperse.
Everything was ready to go.
I could rest soon.
"Brothers and sisters!" My voice rang out across the gymnasium and all within fell silent. "Men and women and children all across occupied Japan, I come to you this morning with good news!
"Here in Shinjuku, in the very lap of our subjugation under the foreign tyrants… the Sun has finally risen."
It was interesting how the subtleties of pitch could so easily modulate a receptive crowd's reactions. A slight inflection and they all knew they should rise to applaud.
I had included no such inflection; my voice, low and intense, held them spellbound, pressing them down firmly into their chairs and keeping the gym as quiet as a tomb. Applause would come later.
"After a long Night of Sorrow… the Sun has finally risen. And yet… a dark fog of terror and pain lingers over us all, blanketing Tokyo and all of our beautiful islands. And unless the beams of our brilliant sunrise burn that fog away, it shall remain blanketed over us always, occluding the light of our new day.
"How fortunate we are that those purifying rays of sunshine are descending already, cleansing our holy land of the flesh and false security of our enemies even as I speak to you.
"This is not a homecoming, my brothers and sisters, my comrades! Our home is gone! Our past is crushed!
"This," I bared my teeth, hand gripping the sides of the podium, leaning forwards towards my audience, "is a reconquest! Nothing short of a complete and total victory will appease our righteous demands! Brothers and sisters across Japan, hear my voice and know that today, known now and forever as the Day of Liberation, the Kozuki Organization declares war in the name of Kaguya, Empress of Japan, and in the name of the millions of restless dead!"
My voice began to rise along with my hands, reaching for a crescendo. "In cooperation with the Japanese Liberation Front, with the Six Houses of Kyoto, and with all Japanese of true spirit, we declare war to the hilt against Britannia and all her might!"
That last line carried that inflection, the one that told the crowd that this was the time to applaud. Rapturous, they obeyed, rising to their feet like a crashing wave surging past a breached dam. Each person in attendance seemed to compete against those to their right and left to clap and cheer the loudest.
I could only hope that applause carried out beyond the walls of Shinjuku.
If everything's proceeding according to plan, Fuji will already be in Naoto's hands, I reminded myself. That's where the real crux of our plan is. This? This is just…
I grit my teeth as I surveyed the crowd of cheering masses, all so uproariously happy to finally fight for Japan reborn. …A show. A distraction. A stage performance designed to hold the Britannians' attention for as long as possible.
The sense of tumbling, plunging freedom was on me again, the pressure of a future beyond a week sleeting away. After so long spent in careful deliberation, careful planning… I took a deep breath, and tasted a liberty that could not last, and so was all the much sweeter for it.
"I will not waste any more of your time, my comrades!" I spoke over the sound of the applause and the rising chants, meeting eye after eye in the assembly, striving for that personal touch, seeking the individual in the crowd. "Today will be a very busy day for us, as will tomorrow and every other day until no Britannian breathes Japanese air. You all know what is expected of you and what your duties shall be! Follow your leaders and take heart that, come what may, we are all Japanese and shall live and die as such!
"I am honored to have you all by my side."
I only hope you do not curse me when you meet the fate you all so ardently wished for.