-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: TSG-25.txt
He could feel the wind as it rushed over his wings at close to seven
hundred kilometers per hour, could feel the lift generated by the warm air
rising from the blistering hot pavement of the deserted two-lane freeway a
few meters below. The shriek of his fusion turbojets rebounded from the
macadam, filling his ears with its hollow keen. He was in Airmech Mode,
an armored bird-of-prey bristling with weapons as it raced across the scrub
desert, and he was just sixteen years old.
The feel of the old LAM in his hands and in his mind was an unconscious
comfort to him, having learned the skills and nuances of both aerial combat
and close quarter land battle with this formidable machine. Since he had
been old enough to care about such things, the LAM had been an imposing and
inticing mystery, a thing that he must conquer and control if he was to make
his father proud and carry on the family tradition. In time, he had mastered
the LAM, and at sixteen, tradition didn't mean as much to him as the chance
to fly, fight, and prove himself in battle.
As the Phoenix Hawk LAM raced along the deserted freeway that linked
the contested planet's two major cities, he reflected on his role in the
conflict. He and his father had contracted with the planet's lords to defend
them against the predations of one of the Periphery's many bandit kings, one
of whom had felt sufficiently ambitious to invade the world and add it to
his holdings. This was no major set-piece battle, but a series of small,
fast engagements, as neither the bandit king nor the petty lords who
contested for possession of the planet had a large army, and had only a
handful of battlemechs between them.
He questioned his father's insistence that they remain merely scouts
in the conflict, in spite of the fact that a 'mech like the LAM could have
a significant effect on the battle's outcome. His father had overruled him,
declaring that the LAM was too important to risk damage - given its rapidly
deteriorating condition and the dearth of critical replacement parts that
were available. He was under strict orders not to fight the enemy unless
it was absolutely necessary, and then only as a means to escape.
The Airmech sped along the highway, adjusting its leg thrusters to
slalom through gentle curves as the flat expanse of desert gave way to
arid hills. He was looking for a fight, heedless of his father's wishes.
The 'mechs of a bandit king were frequently in bad repair, and the chance
to knock off a beat up Warhammer or Thunderbolt single-handedly had great
appeal for him - as well as provide them with bonus cash from the sale of
the salvage.
He was looking for a fight, but with the majority of the action
consisting of isolated raiding actions for water and other spoils that were
over practically before the word could get out, he was having a tough time
of it. His best chance was to find a bandit group moving into position for
the next raid, or else catch one as they made their escape.
Plumes of dust rising on the horizon stirred his hopes.
He vectored for an intercept, confident that he could catch them by
surprise. As his LAM cleared a low dusty hill, he spied his quarry; a
column of beat up trucks and 4x4 wagons that looked like props from some
post-apocalypse video - which he supposed parts of the Periphery, this
world included, resembled. Escorting the column was a red Warhammer.
Show time! he thought eagerly, and pushed his throttles over to maximum.
The aerodynamic housing retracted on his starboard engine pod, revealing
his twin medium laser projectors, and he made a low level strafing run down
the length of the column. Trucks exploded at a touch from the twin beams,
bursting apart in oily black clouds of smoke. Gasoline and high energy
coherent light did not mix well, he noted with a laugh, and banked into a
turn for another pass.
The Warhammer reacted slowly to his first attack, but now it was
bringing its tube-like PPC arms to bear on him. Bolts of lightning ripped
from the muzzles in alternating blasts of fire as it tried to shoot him
down, but he was flying low and fast against the rolling hills, and
narrowly avoided the fusillade as he charged back to attack.
A beam from his heavy laser set off another huge explosion, catching
one of the trucks he had missed in his first pass. The heat and the smoke
obscured him from the Warhammer's sights for a moment, and he swooped
overhead to land behind it.
His own heat levels were high thanks to a few defective heat sinks,
and he was forced to resort to the twin 20mm machineguns in his left
forearm. He hammered on the thin rear torso armor with the guns, the shell
casings flying from the ejection ports in a torrent of brass. Sparks and
bits of metal cascaded from the host of hits he had scored, though his
burst had not penetrated the armor.
The Warhammer pivoted at the torso, twisting completely around to face
him. On the battered red hull was the white and purple fishcake device of
the Nerima Confederation, and the voice of his fiancee cried out in anger
over the tac-net.
"Ranma, you jerk!" she screamed at him. "What do you think you're
doing to me?"
He froze up in his ejector seat. What was SHE doing here? he wondered.
The Warhammer brought one of its massive Donal PPC arms down on his
fuselage, smashing armor and breaking off both medium laser tubes. His
LAM buckled at the knees, and the bird-of-prey Airmech pitched forward,
burying its radome in the sand.
"Akane!" he shouted back. "Stop it! I just made a mistake, that's
all!"
She pounded him again, starring the canopy and nearly knocking him
senseless with the force of the impact. The other PPC arm fell, smashing
him up even more.
"RANMA, YOU JERK! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"
___________________________________________________________________________
J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present:
BATTLETECH: THE SAOTOME GAMBIT
PART TWENTY-FIVE
by J. Austin Wilde
Safety Control Rod Axe Man,
Fission Park Press
wildeman@gci-net.com
http://www.gci-net.com/users/w/wildeman/
The characters and situations of Ranma 1/2 are the
creation and property of Rumiko Takahashi and
Shogakukan/KITTY/Viz Video. Battletech and its
related materials are the property of FASA, inc.
No infringement of copyright is intended nor
should be inferred by this work of fanfiction.
___________________________________________________________________________
Chapter One
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Test Region Four-West
Planet Ryuugenzawa, Ryuugenzawa System
The Magistracy of Canopus
8 June 3025
Ranma awoke with a start to find himself dangling ten meters above
the ground. He looked up to see that he was hanging in his parachute straps,
and that his reserve chute canopy was tangled in the branches of the trees.
Sap from broken branches had run cold and sticky into his cracked helmet
crown and down into his hair and his neck ring seal, adding to the discomfort
he felt upon awakening.
It was just a bad dream, he moaned, though his head did not hurt any
less for that simple truth. Just a bad dream. Akane doesn't hate me, he
assured himself. I know she doesn't.
He looked around, wondering how he had ended up like this. He only
vaguely recalled the process of ejecting. The blow to his helmet had
stunned him, and as he pitched over in his seat straps he had made a
desperate grab at the yellow and black striped ring between his legs. The
shock of the instantaneous thirty-gee acceleration had succeeded where the
impact against his helmet had failed, and he had blacked out.
He regained consciousness to find that he was falling, and falling
rapidly through the cold black sky. His nylon main chute had malfunctioned,
giving him the dreaded "cigarette roll," where the friction of deployment
had melted portions of the canopy to the shroud lines and itself. Shaking
off his stupor, he remembered frantically cutting away the main chute, and
deploying the reserve. He was lucky that he had one. Mechwarriors and the
pilots of purely atmospheric craft didn't have reserves.
He was so low when the reserve finally opened that he had come
screaming into the treetops at close to sixty kilometers per hour. A
frantic tug of his control lines flared him just shy of the treetops,
and he remembered nothing after that.
He was awake now. Awake and alive. A quick inventory determined that
his limbs were intact. The padding of his pressure suit had absorbed some
of the pounding he must have taken as he broke through the trees, and the
helmet had spared him a fatal head injury, though it was clear that his
suit was ripped and torn beyond repair. He was intact, but bruised and
battered all over his body.
He noted this as he lifted his arms to release the neck seal ring.
Popping the ring was so tasking that he was forced to lean his head forward
to help remove the helmet, letting it slide off his head to fall to the
musty ground cover below. He panted with the effort it had taken him to do
such a simple thing.
The thought of sustaining a ten meter drop in this condition was not
appealing. The thought of hanging there until he starved to death was worse.
He studied the ground below him carefully, ensuring there were no nasty
surprises waiting for him before tugging at his releases.
His somersault was stiff and clumsy, and he hit harder than he would
have preferred, rolling with the impact to sprawl out breathless and
gasping painfully from having the wind knocked out of him.
When he was breathing normally once again, he pulled himself into a
sitting position against the spongy trunk of a tree. His survival kit was
lying half covered by piles of dead leaves nearby, but he didn't have the
strength or the willpower to retrieve it just yet. He decided to rest a bit
first.
It was midday when he realized that he had passed out.
He felt a little strength return to him over his nap, but his limbs
were even more stiff and sore. It was a struggle to pull himself to his
feet, and he had to pause often to massage the knots out of his strained
muscles. The survival kit was his goal. It had his radio, his food and
water, and his change of clothes. The pressure suit was heavy on his body,
too heavy to want to drag it around with him.
The bag appeared to have broken loose from his parachute harness on
impact, and he could see that his rescue radio had not survived. The food
was crushed within its vacuum sealed pouches, but was probably still edible.
One of the canteens had opened, soaking his clothes.
He shrugged off the pressure suit anyway, letting it drop around his
ankles as he pulled his feet out of his boots. His sensor-studded 'long-
johns' were damp with sweat, and he peeled himself out of them gratefully.
The forest was absolutely deserted, by his appraisal, and so there was no
need for modesty where it conflicted with comfort. The clothes would dry
soon enough.
* * *
He ate sparingly, regaining his strength, and trying to put together
a mental picture of what had happened that night. He had seen Akane eject
from her falling Warhammer. She had to be around somewhere, and he needed
to find her.
As he thought about it, he realized that they might be separated by
quite a distance. Assuming that her parachute had functioned normally,
bailing out at such a high altitude meant that she would have been carried
by the wind, whereas he had plummeted nearly straight down most of the way
with his damned cigarette roll of a parachute. With his radio broken, there
was no way to get in touch with her.
The first thing he needed to do, he decided, was to find the crash
site. It was the landmark most likely to be spotted by Yuka and Sayuri from
the air - though that was assuming the girls hadn't been shot out of the
sky by their attacker. Once he found the crash site, he could follow the
direction of the prevailing wind, and hopefully, find his not-so-uncute
fiancee.
She might have been a stupid macho tomboy, but he was worried about
her all the same. His own landing in the trees hadn't been pleasant, and
the thought that she was hurt and alone somewhere on this stinking planet
made his heart seize in his chest.
"You've gotta be okay, Akane," he said as he rose unsteadily to his
feet. It was late in the afternoon, and it would getting dark within a
few hours. He had to find her, to see with his own eyes that she was alive
and well. "You've just gotta be okay."
He had other concerns, like whether or not the _Palomino_ had been
able to land safely, who or what had attacked them without warning, and
how he was going to be able to find his father and his friends. His only
desire was to find Akane. Nothing mattered more to him than knowing that
she was all right.
Assuming his estimations of his trajectory were correct, the crash
site probably wasn't far from where he had landed. He picked a direction
and began to walk, slinging the survival kit over his shoulder. The
pressure suit and helmet he left behind; they were useless to him now,
and too heavy to carry in his injured condition. His dark green mandarin
blouse and black drawstring trousers were mostly dry, and he dressed
himself stiffly. He hadn't been this sore even after his last big fight
with Ryouga on Tiber.
The colors of his clothes probably weren't the best for being spotted
from the air, he noted grimly, but they did help him blend in to the foliage.
The planet was a complete unknown to him, and while he did not imagine that
there many dangerous predators lurking about, there was always the chance
that he might run into the people responsible for this mess.
He walked about a hundred meters along a meandering game trail before
being rewarded with a scrap of burnt metal that had fallen through a gap in
the canopy. It was probably a piece of his LAM, he reflected. He continued
on, the loss of his Phoenix Hawk only now hitting home with him.
He was Dispossessed once again, and in less than six months...
The trees began to thin, and soon the woods opened up onto a wide
plain that was littered with debris. Steam wafted from a blackened crater
near the center of the field, and he knew that he had found the crash site.
He started for the crater, picking his way around the bits of burnt LAM.
Akane's Warhammer was surprisingly intact. The legs were smashed to
bits under the force of the impact, but the torso was largely in one piece,
if blackened by an intense heat. Upon a closer inspection he could see the
long rent along the side of the torso where the breached reactor vessel had
vented plasma through the hull. The innards of the battlemech were probably
gutted.
Mindful that the area was probably contaminated with tiny radioactive
particles, and heedless of the slight risks associated with exposure, Ranma
pulled himself up the still warm hull of the Warhammer to inspect the
cockpit. The escape hatch in the roof was blown, and as he peered down into
the darkness of the cockpit, he could smell the lingering traces of the
solid fuel rockets that had lifted Akane free of her plummeting 'mech.
She had ejected. At least she got that far, he thought to himself.
All he had to do now was follow the prevailing wind, and he would find her.
He licked his fingertip and held it up over his head. There was only a
slight breeze to guide him, but he took it anyway.
The breeze led him to the top of a low hill nearby. He paused to look
around and get a feel for the terrain. It was mostly woods, though in the
distance he could see some kind of swampy mire. He hoped that she hadn't
landed in the trees.
As he began making his way down the hill, a flash of movement in the
distance caught his keen eyes. He could see two figures walking into the
woods opposite from the crash site. One, the taller of the two, was dressed
in dark clothing. The other was wearing an olive drab coverall that looked
suspiciously like survival kit issue.
"Akane?" he asked himself aloud. There was one way to find out. He
cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted her name. The two in the distance
continued on, heedless of his repeated calls.
Cursing in frustration, he rummaged through his survival kit to
produce his signal gun. He checked that a starshell was loaded and fired
it into the air, hoping that the sudden radiance would attract their
attention as the sunlight faded.
The red star shot into the air with a hiss, its parachute deploying
to let it fall slowly from a height of two hundred meters. If they saw
it, they did not notice, and Ranma lost them in the trees.
"Dammit!" he swore, and started after them at a hobbling gait. By the
time he reached the treeline, the sky had darkened, lit only by the thin
sliver of an orange crescent moon and a handful of stars that shone through
the broken cloud cover. He stumbled on blindly in the near darkness of the
woods, forgetting that he had a small box of chemlights in his kit, and
nearly cold-cocking himself as he ran into a low branch.
When he shook away the pain and the dizziness, he realized that they
were long gone. The game trail branched off in two different directions.
He stood at the fork in the path for some time, agonizing over his decision.
If he guessed wrong, their trail would grow cold by the time he realized
this and backtracked.
Finally, he took the path on the right, and stumbled on under the
eerie glow of a green chemlight. He cried Akane's name from time to time,
but received no answer other than the chirps, warbles, and moans from the
local nocturnal wildlife. After what seemed like an hour to him, the path
opened up into a broad swampy meadow.
There was no sign of Akane.
He turned wearily to start back the way he came, when he heard a
distant and familiar rumble in the sky.
He squinted against the darkness, and was rewarded with the blue
flash of an aerospace fighter's HEPLAR drive. It was far across the meadow,
circling over what he assumed by dead-reckoning to be the crash site.
Again, a agonizing decision came over him. Did he try to flag down the
fighter in the hope that it was Yuka or Sayuri, or did he continue the
search for Akane?
He started across the meadow. If it was one of the girls, they could
take word of his survival back to the _Palomino._ He didn't figure Ryouga
would have any problem going out in his BattleMaster to look for Akane. If
Akane had found one of the locals, it was probably safe to assume that she
was going with him to whatever passed for a settlement on Ryuugenzawa.
Finding that settlement couldn't be too hard, he supposed.
The fighter began to turn towards him as he struggled through the mire.
He raised the flare gun and fired his second starshell, mindful of the fact
that he only had one left.
The fighter, a Sparrowhawk from the look of it, screamed overhead,
and turned hard to come back around for another look. He decided to risk
his last shell, and fired it as the fighter came back around. The light of
two stars was enough to illuminate the meadow and make him stand out clearly
from the air.
The Sparrowhawk reduced speed, made another pass, and turned once
again to return. Ranma sighed with relief as the landing lights came on,
and the pitch of the fighter's turbojets increased as it shifted over to
vertical propulsion for a landing.
He dashed as fast as his tired legs would carry him to the fighter.
The canopy was rising as he reached it, and the voice of a girl he had
once considered an enemy addressed him.
"Ranma!" Sayuri cried. "Is that really you?"
"It's me," he returned.
"I'd almost given up hope," she said to him, leaping down from the
cockpit to catch him up in a completely unexpected hug. "Have you found
Akane?" she asked as she released him.
"Maybe," he replied, bewildered by her show of affection. "I think I
might have seen her a few hours ago, but I lost her in those woods behind
me."
"She's all right then?" Sayuri asked, her voice cracking with
weariness. In the light of the Sparrowhawk's landing lamps, he could
see how bone-tired she was.
He shrugged. "If it really was her, I think so. She was with someone,
from what I could tell. Probably a local."
Sayuri blanched. "A local?"
"I guess," he replied.
"Come on, then," she told him. "If she's that close, she should be
within my radio range."
He had to agree with that. Sayuri clambered up to the cockpit and
began fiddling with her commo set.
"Akane, this is Sayuri," she said hopefully. "Do you read me? State
your position if you know it."
There was no answer. Sayuri repeated her request.
"Oh come on," she protested. "Answer me already."
"Maybe her radio's on the blink," Ranma suggested. "Mine doesn't work
either."
"It's possible," she admitted. "But then how is she going to contact
us?"
"Did the _Palomino_ make it down safely?" he asked her instead.
"More or less," she sniffed. "The ship's beat up pretty bad."
"Go back to the ship," he told her. "Send Ryouga and Ukyou out at first
light in their 'mechs."
She gave him a dubious look. "What about you?"
"I'm gonna see if I can catch up with her."
"Do you need anything?" she asked him. "You said your radio wasn't
working."
"Does your Sparrowhawk have a remote?"
She yawned wearily, nodding her head. "It does, and you can have it.
I want to make a few more passes before we head back to the ship. She might
hear my engines and shoot up a flare the way you did."
"Sounds good to me."
Sayuri strapped herself into her seat, then removed the remote radio
relay from her commo console. Removed from the fighter, it had a very short
transmission range, but it would allow Ryouga and Ukyou to contact him once
they were within ten kilometers. She handed it to Ranma, then lay back in
her ejector seat for a moment, looking absolutely exhausted.
"Maybe I should fly us both home," he offered. "You look pretty bushed."
She yawned again. "Yuka and I have been searching non-stop since early
this morning, but I can handle it."
"Are you sure?"
She levelled a hard look at him. "Go find her, Saotome. I'll be all
right."
"I'll do that," he said.
"Good luck," she said as she lowered the canopy. "I really mean that,
Ranma. Not just for Akane's sake, but for both of you."
He stepped away from the fighter as it powered up for lift off. The
Sparrowhawk rose into the sky on a column of superheated air. Ranma watched
her as she increased speed and flew out over the woods. Their radios were
tuned to the survival bands, so if Akane could hear the fighter's engines,
she would know to contact them.
There was no response, not even a flare, to indicate that she had
noticed them. Sayuri made passes for twenty minutes, and still there was
no answer from below.
"Nothing," Ranma grumbled, listening in over his remote. "Come on,
Tomboy, say something."
"I hope she's all right," Sayuri sighed over the commo.
Ranma closed his eyes for a moment. "I hope so too."
"It's good to hear you say that," she returned.
He blinked in surprise. "What's up with this?"
"What?" she murmured.
"You being nice to me."
"You've finally earned it," she yawned.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Everyone knows what you did for her last night," she said so softly
that he had to strain over the radio static to hear her. "How you risked
your life and your 'mech to save her. How you wouldn't give up even while
we were getting shot at." She turned for the DropShip and increased her
speed. "Even Yuka admits what you did for Akane, and why."
He took this in silence. The reasons why he had done what he did were
never clear to him. He had simply acted, as he had done before, to protect
her. There were no thought processes behind it that he was aware of.
"Why do you think I did it?" he asked her, but she was already flying
out of his range, and didn't hear him ask.
He set the remote to 'standby' and turned for the woods once more. As
the prospect of meandering through the darkness loomed, he found himself
wishing that he had gone with Sayuri back to the DropShip. But Akane was
out there somewhere, and he had to find her.
* * *
Akane dozed in the hammock Shinnosuke had lent to her. There was a
distant rumbling to the east, like thunder, and she hoped that it wouldn't
rain tonight. With the clouds rolling in as they had before they entered the
dense woods, she would not have been surprised by it.
Shinnosuke slept like a rock in a nest of dead leaves that he had made
for himself. He seemed much very at home in the outdoors, living a life so
primitive that she could hardly imagine it. Was this all that Ryuugenzawa
had to offer?
Chapter Two
The DropShip _Palomino_
8 June 3025
Yuka watched as Sayuri's Sparrowhawk circled once over the _Palomino,_
and sighed wearily.
"I guess it's my turn," she lamented.
Genma Saotome cleared his throat for attention.
"Don't bother," he said to her. "You and Sayuri should get some sleep.
You're too tired to fly."
She whirled on him. "And who's gonna search for Akane and your son,
you?"
He cracked his knuckles noisily. "If necessary."
"Do it with Sayuri's fighter then," she insisted. "If she'll allow it."
"Don't get your panties in a bind," Genma growled. "You know you're an
even bigger bitch when you're tired?"
She shot him a dirty look. "Get bent," she told him. "Sir."
Sayuri settled down on the grass during their exchange. The canopy
hadn't finished rising, and she was already squirming under it to escape
the cockpit.
"I found them!" she cried excitedly.
Yuka and Genma rushed over to her at the news. They were joined by
Ukyou, Konatsu, and Ryouga.
"Where?" Ryouga demanded. "Are they all right?"
Sayuri was nearly breathless with excitement.
"I found Ranma, actually," she began. "But he said that he had seen
Akane, and that she appeared to be okay. He tried to follow her, but he
lost her in some woods. He's still out there, looking for her."
"What about their 'mechs?" Genma asked.
"Destroyed, from what I could see. They both must have ejected."
Ryouga looked to Genma. "Request permission to assist Ranma," he
asked.
"Denied," Genma grumbled. "We still need your 'mech for shore power."
"What about your damn Griffin?" Ryouga shot back. "You aren't using
it."
"Take the Griffin," Genma said. "But I don't want you to leave until
sunrise."
"What for? They could be in trouble by then!"
"I don't want you getting lost as well," Genma pointed out. "You're
bad enough in daylight, let alone on a dark night."
"I'll go with him," Ukyou threw in. "That should keep him out of
trouble."
"Not until morning," Genma growled. "We're short on physical security
around here as it is, and furthermore, we don't know what happened to
Master Happousai since he took off this morning. There could be hostile
elements nearby."
He paused for a moment as a voice spoke to him from the _Palomino's_
Flight Deck through his ear bead.
"Everyone mount up," he ordered. "Radar has painted multiple airborne
contacts approaching our position from high altitude."
Ranma and Akane were quickly put aside as the mechwarriors and pilots
ran to their respective machines. Ryouga knew that he might have to separate
from the DropShip if he was to fight, and that doing so would reduce the
_Palomino_ to its emergency battery backup.
He watched his radar display as the targets approached. They were still
very high in the sky, well beyond his PPC's range. What puzzled him was that
while two of the targets were about the same size as a heavy fighter, the
other eight were much smaller - too small to be a threat.
He watched as Ukyou's Hatchetman stomped towards the western treeline.
Her battlemech had an excellent air-defense tracking suite. If anyone could
divine the nature of the inbounds, it was her.
"That's odd," he heard her remark over the tac-net.
"What is it?" Genma asked her.
"I've got one of the smaller contacts locked in my bifocal unit," she
replied. "It just deployed a parachute." There was pause. "There goes
another one!"
Ryouga trained his telescopic camera into the sky. Sure enough, the
smaller contacts, mere smudges of reflected moonlight in the darkness,
were deploying blaze orange parachutes. Strobe lights flashed from them
as they sank lower in the sky. If he didn't know better, he'd have to say
they were...
"Life pods!" he cried. "Those are life pods!"
"_Palomino,_" a voice crackled over the radio. "This is _Nymph._
Request immediate landing support, over. I say again: _Palomino,_ this is
_Nymph._ Request immediate landing support, over."
Ryouga turned pale. The _Nymph_ was one of the _Dragonfly's_ boats.
If the other large target was the _Sylph,_ plus all those life pods, then
that meant that the _Dragonfly_ had been abandoned!
"Copy _Nymph,_" Genma replied. His Griffin turned its floodlights on,
illuminating the clearing around the DropShip. "What happened up there?"
"We were attacked in space," Captain Ninomiya's voice declared over
the tac-net. "The _Dragonfly_ was destroyed."
Ryouga's heart sank. They were marooned on this worthless mudball
forever!
"Say again, _Nymph,_" Genma requested, not believing what he had
heard.
"I'll explain when we land," Hinako snapped. "_Nymph,_ out."
* * *
"Whatever they were, Orochis or some other kind of orbital defense
system, is moot," Hinako said to the assembled officers and mechwarriors
of the two ships. They were in the Crew's Mess aboard the _Palomino._
"The point is that we have no JumpShip to get us out of here."
"The _Palomino_ isn't going anywhere for awhile either," Grant
remarked. "Not until we can patch up the reactor coolant system. The
starboard loop looks like swiss cheese, and the port loop started
springing leaks about two hours ago."
"So, we're stuck here then," Genma observed. "We're down to two
fighters, three battlemechs, a busted DropShip, and we're missing Ranma,
Akane, and Happousai. What else could go wrong?"
"Whatever it was that blasted us could decide to wipe us out on the
ground," Hinako said gravely. "I'm both grateful and surprised that you
haven't been attacked since you landed here."
Genma shrugged. "Blind luck more than anything, I think."
Doctor Tofu cleared his throat for attention. "Can I make a suggestion?"
The officers turned to him.
"Go ahead, Doctor," Hinako said.
"I think the first thing we need to do is find Ranma and Akane," he
said to them. "It's good that you know they're alive, but we need to get
them back."
"I think the doctor has a point," Hinako noted. She looked to Genma.
"What can you spare for the search?"
"The girls are toast," he replied, referring to Yuka and Sayuri. "I
sent them to bed an hour ago, but they'll need a full night's rest before
they can do us any more good as airborne searchers. We've got two 'mechs
we can send out, plus the two six-by's in the cargo hold, plus the two
Boomerangs - but I'm the only one qualified to fly one since Ranma isn't
here."
"And you say you haven't seen Happousai since this morning?"
Genma nodded. "He took off sometime between two and three hours after
sunrise, local time. He probably went to investigate the ruined starport
about thirty kilometers northwest of our position. He hasn't responded to
our hails, and we haven't had the resources to go looking for him."
Tofu gave him a dubious look at this last remark, but held his tongue.
It was no secret among the officers and crew that Genma Saotome cared very
little for his master.
Grant sipped from his coffee mug. "We'll need to think about sending
an expedition to the starport sometime soon," he said to them. "We need
tools, parts, and supplies that we don't have on board if we want to put
the _Palomino_ back together, and there's the chance that we might be able
to scrounge together what we need from there."
"If we patch the Griffin into shore power, I can take my BattleMaster
to the starport to give fire support to the salvage team," Ryouga offered.
"Fair enough with me, sugar," Ukyou added. "I'd just as soon go
looking for Ranchan."
"No one's made any decision on that," Genma rumbled. "I agree that we
need to find my son and my future daughter-in-law." Ukyou winced. "And that
the starport may contain materials that we need to repair the DropShip. But
I'm reluctant to go releasing all of our protection at one time."
"What good does it do to just sit here and twiddle our thumbs?" Ukyou
riposted. "I say we act, and act now."
There was hearty agreement from the rest of the crew following her
declaration, and Genma found himself in the firm minority of opinion.
"All right," he conceded. "I'll see about getting my 'mech hooked up
to the DropShip. But I still think that this is a dangerous plan, and I'm
asking you all to wait until Yuka and Sayuri are rested enough to provide
air cover."
"A reasonable compromise," Hinako declared, desiring to keep the level
of contention between the group to a minimum. "We could all use some rest,
and I suggest that we take the opportunity while we can."
* * *
9 June 3025
"Good morning, Ryouga dearest," Akari greeted Ryouga, giving him a peck
on the cheek before settling into the rear cockpit seat of the BattleMaster.
Ryouga smiled back in a blissful daze. He could hardly believe that his
miserable life had turned around so dramatically and in such a short time by
making her a part of it.
"Let me know when you're ready to go," he finally managed to say to her.
She finished strapping herself to the ejector seat. "Ready, dearest."
He turned to face the canopy as it locked into place. The BattleMaster
took a hesitant step forward as he eased the throttle forward, its wide
armored foot sinking into the soft ground.
"I hope this doesn't get any stickier," he said aloud.
He followed behind the two 6x6 trucks as they slogged through muddy
grass drenched with early morning rain. The ruined starport was thirty
kilometers away - a good hour's journey at the pace they could manage in
the mud.
Their primary mission was to search the ruins for materials they could
use to repair the DropShip. Akari was leading this end of the mission, as
she was familiar with what was needed most. Ryouga would provide protection
with his 'mech while the techs and crew did their work.
Finding Happousai was their other mission. No one was eager to discover
the whereabouts of the lecherous little pest, but his Locust was too valuable
to leave behind. Doctor Tofu had been a mechwarrior before his career in
medicine, and could always take over piloting duties in the event that
something terrible had happened to Happousai.
There was something of a third mission, which was to discover if any of
the fuel processing and delivery stations were operable. Captain Ninomiya
wanted to investigate the orbital space station - particularly the drydock.
There was a thin shred of hope that a servicable JumpShip might be found in
orbit, though Ryouga didn't think it was likely.
They needed fuel for the two Ship's Boats, _Nymph_ and _Sylph,_ since
they had expended nearly all of their reaction mass getting to the planet,
and did not have enough left over to reach orbit. The two boats represented
their only means of reaching space with the _Palomino_ out of action. Since
there were no assurances of anything useful remaining in orbit, the search
for a fueling station had been given the lowest priority.
Ryouga had no great expectations for either of their other missions.
What did it matter that they repaired the _Palomino?_ he wondered. They
couldn't risk going into orbit with the Orochis waiting to blast them to
bits, and it had been agreed that they would instruct the Confederation
transport fleet to remain where they were once they arrived in-system.
They were stuck here until the Orochis could be neutralized, and he had
few illusions about them succeeding.
"I hope Captain Saotome finds Lady Akane soon," Akari said behind him.
"He will," Ryouga assured her. Since he had confessed his feelings for
Akari, a sense of fulfillment had come over him. He still loved Akane, but
knew and accepted that his feelings had shifted further in the direction of
love in the Platonic sense.
Akari, of course, was as blissfully happy as himself. One of the things
that had drawn him to her in the first place was her cheerful industry. She
frequently hummed or sang while she worked, and since yesterday's confession
her considerable fatigue in the face of the _Palomino's_ engineering woes had
given way to a new burst of optimism and energy from her.
That he was the wellspring of her joy exorcised the ghosts of loneliness
and misery that had long haunted him, and he felt like a man reborn. Now if
only he could get up the nerve to kiss her the way he had in Berthing so many
weeks ago!
"Konatsu and I are off to find Ranchan," he heard Ukyou call to him on
the tac-net. Her Hatchetman strode off to his left flank, the figure of her
pet kunoichi visible on the shoulder of the 'mech, and the massive axe like
battle-spatula clutched in its metalshod fist.
"Good luck," he called back.
"Luck is not a factor, honey," she returned with a smug grin, and
signed off on his cockpit display.
He wished them well anyway. His opinion of the former brigadier was
in a state of continuous flux. He appreciated what she had done for the
expedition on Genevieve, but her motives were obvious and questionable.
She was in love with Ranma, though the gods only knew why, and she did
seem to have a legitimate claim to him. He may not have been the most
observant of people sometimes, but it seemed clear to him that Ranma did
not love her in quite the same way that she loved him.
"I feel sorry for both of them," Akari remarked to him.
"P-Pardon?" he returned.
"It's no secret that Mechwarrior Kuonji is in love with Captain
Saotome," Akari said evenly. "But she doesn't seem to realize, or at least
accept, that he doesn't feel the same way about her."
Ryouga nodded. "You're probably right."
"But the worst part is that poor dear Konatsu is in love with Ukyou,"
she continued. "And he knows that she doesn't feel the same way for him, but
it doesn't stop him from serving her so devotedly."
He didn't know what to say to this, so he kept silent.
"What makes this so sad is that both of them will do anything for the
sake of the one they love, and yet it won't change anything between them."
I know the feeling, he thought grimly. Even with Akari in my heart, I
know that I would die to protect Akane, and Akane... loves Ranma. Nothing
will change that either.
They continued on.
* * *
The starport was overgrown with vines and weeds, making it difficult
for the six-bys to traverse the tarmac without churning up a storm of
shredded greenery. The BattleMaster trudged on without such hindrances,
crushing the vines under its feet and splattering green juices up to the
ankles. From his high vantage, Ryouga scanned the area for a sign of
Happousai's Locust, and found it standing under a quonset hut style
hangar that was overgrown with vegetation.
"I see the 'mech," he told the crew in the two trucks. "I'm going to
investigate."
The men in the trucks agreed to wait where they were. Ryouga stomped
towards the hangar.
"What hit this place?" Akari asked.
"A weed bomb, if you ask me," he replied.
"Before the weeds," she clarified. "Look around, Ryouga dearest. This
place was blasted from the air."
Taking a closer look at the facilities, he could see that Akari was
right. Craters filled with plants pocked the tarmac. Buildings overgrown
with clinging vines were scarred with black streaks of carbon. What he had
mistaken for a crumbling hill a hundred meters away was actually the burned
out hulk of a Leopard Class DropShip.
"You're right," he muttered. "Something terrible happened here."
"Do you think it was the Orochi?" she asked.
"Possibly," he hedged. "I can't imagine why, though. You would think
that something designed to protect the planet from invaders wouldn't do
this to the place it was supposed to be defending."
He stopped the BattleMaster outside the hangar, which was too low to
accept his 'mech.
"I think you should stay here," he said to Akari.
She gave him a pouty look. "You're going to leave me all alone?" she
simpered, batting her eyelashes at him.
He crumbled. "Well, okay, I guess... But stay close to me." He produced
a stout red shamboo umbrella from his personal storage locker and hefted its
reassuring weight.
The two of them climbed down the 'mech to the dingy concrete pad of
the hangar floor. The vines and weeds had a tougher time getting established
in the smooth, mostly intact floor, leaving their path clear to the Locust.
It stood silent and still on its spindly, reverse-articulated legs.
Both could tell that it was shut down by the silence that filled the mostly
empty hangar.
"I don't see any damage," Akari noted.
"The cockpit hatch is open," Ryouga added, pointing up to the top of
the hull.
"Do you suppose he left his 'mech to go looking for something, and
never returned?"
Ryouga shrugged. "One way to find out." He shimmied up one of the legs
to the hip and then pulled himself over on top of the hull. Akari watched
breathlessly as he crouch-walked over to the open hatch.
He kicked something loose accidentally, and an object flew from the
hull to shatter spectacularly at Akari's feet. She shrieked in surprise and
alarm, drawing a worried look from him.
"Are you okay?" he hissed. "What was that?"
She composed herself, and stooped to examine the remains.
"It was a sake bottle," she declared, holding up a piece of glass
that remained glued to a paper label that was yellowed and stiff with age.
"Is that what I smell?" Ryouga returned, wrinkling his nose in distaste
at the foul odor. "I thought it was paint thinner."
She chuckled softly and pointed to the label. "Well, Ryouga dearest,
this bottle *is* almost two hundred years old."
Ryouga looked down into the cockpit through the open hatch.
"I found him," he said dully. "Passed out drunk in his cockpit, with
about ten more empty bottles inside, plus one half-full that's about to
spill in his lap."
She let the piece of glass fall from her hand. "What should we do with
him?" she asked.
Ryouga shrugged back. "I dunno. Let him sleep it off?"
"We do have a lot of work to do, my love," she agreed.
* * *
It was several hours march for Ukyou to reach the place where Sayuri
had claimed to find Ranma. The ground was swampy and difficult to traverse,
and the recent rainfall had generated broad puddles of indeterminate depth
that made the trip slow and difficult.
"Any sign of him, Konatsu?" she asked her kunoichi.
He leaped off the Hatchetman's shoulder to investigate. She watched
him bound about the swampy mire, searching for clues in the mud. She didn't
expect him to find anything useful after all the rain that must have fallen
on the ground.
What kind of blockhead was he that he would insist on staying out
here instead returning to the ship to get help? she thought angrily. It
was because of HER, she lamented. He had stayed behind to search for Akane.
It just wasn't fair. She would give anything to have him feel for her
what he obviously felt for Akane. What was she even doing out here looking
for a jerk like that, anyway?
Konatsu returned, clutching a scrap of olive drab nylon cloth.
"I found a parachute, sir," he said to her, holding the piece of
material up so she could see it clearly.
"Terrific. We know where one of them landed now. Too bad we have no
idea where they went."
Konatsu stuffed the cloth fragment into a pocket. "What should we do
now, sir?"
Ukyou sighed. "What else? Look for Ranchan. I'm not going back until
we find him."
Though if the jackass doesn't answer his radio, it might take days!
Chapter Three
Planet Ryuugenzawa
10 June 3025
They had been walking for two days now, and Akane's feet ached. Most
of their travels had been through woods of varying size and density, and
Shinnosuke's expert fieldcraft had provided them with nourishment and fresh
water for their trip, while avoiding the numerous pitfalls of an unknown
biosphere.
He was quiet most of the time, their infrequent conversations turning
towards the Inner Sphere at large. He seemed disappointed by the total
balkanization of human space and the three major wars that had been
unsuccessfully waged to regain unity. Once, she had even overheard him
cursing Kerensky's name. He also seemed to be a touch absent-minded, asking
her questions about matters that they had discussed several times before.
The subject of why she was here had not come up. She was reluctant to
tell him that the only reason why the _Dragonfly_ had come to the system
was to see if they could plunder the Star League proving grounds for lost
technology. She certainly hadn't expected to find anyone living on the
legendary world when she arrived.
The fact that he wore the device of the Star League Defense Force on
the back of his coat also gave her pause. It was a large embroidered patch
of some sort, and from her casual examinations, it seemed as if it had
been cut directly from a coat of similar make and sewn into place. The
patch looked very old, much older than the material of Shinnosuke's coat.
"We're coming up on the village," he said to her as they carefully
picked their way through a tangling web of stinging vines. "It's been
awhile since they've seen me, so we should have a pretty good reception."
"You mean you don't live there?" she asked him.
"No," he replied. "I live with my grandfather deeper in the forest."
"I see," she remarked. "What exactly are you doing out there."
Shinnosuke stopped walking. "Grandfather and I are caretakers for
the facilities," he replied. "Living out in the forest puts us close to
where we're needed."
At this revelation, Akane decided to take the plunge.
"Would these be Star League facilities?" she asked.
He nodded. "There isn't much to do anymore," he said to her.
"Grandfather says that we're mostly there to make sure the place doesn't
completely fall apart before Kerensky's army returns." He fished an ancient
text pager from his pocket. "What little still runs is all automated," he
explained. "When there's a problem, the automation system pages me or
grandfather, and we go out to take a look. Usually it's something cool to
fix like a leaky pipe in a basement, or a blown fuse somewhere." He put
the pager back in his pocket and shrugged indifferently. "But mostly we
just keep everything clean."
He started walking again, as if unwilling to continue the subject.
She supposed that he must have felt a little overwhelmed by her being a
mechwarrior, with him nothing more than a custodian for an abandoned
facility. General Kerensky was long dead by now, and his descendents were
somewhere very far from the Inner Sphere. They had been gone for over two
hundred years, so it was safe to say that they weren't coming back.
The village was a mixture of old technology and new improvisation.
Structures made of advanced building materials like cement and glass stood
alongside primitive log cabins, teepees, and lean-to's made of corrugated
metal and crumbling sheets of plastered drywall. Most of the place was under
the shelter of a few carefully placed trees. The ground cover and the smaller
trees had obviously been cleared, allowing the remaining trees to spread
their canopies wide and conceal the place from the air.
At first glance, Akane judged that the village was home to at least
three hundred people. Children played a game of baseball in the middle of
the dirt lane that passed for main street. Women hung homespun laundry on
lines, and yelled at their young ones to keep the dust down. She saw a man
in a lash-up watchtower carrying a lethal automatic rifle at sling arms.
The weapon might have been a few centuries old, but it had been kept in
pristine condition.
When Shinnosuke appeared, the children stopped their game and began
shouting with glee. The laundry women looked up from their chores and
offered waves. The man in the watchtower threw him a jaunty salute. It was
as he had said; a good reception.
One of the older women, her face carefully aged with crow's feet at
the corners of her eyes and deep laugh lines on either side of her generous
mouth, took the two of them aside with an offer of lunch.
"Shinnosuke!" she cried happily as she seated them at a small table
on the porch of her log cabin home. "It's so good to see you. You rarely
come this way anymore."
"Well, Grandfather does keep me busy," he replied sheepishly.
The woman looked Akane over approvingly. "Allow me to congratulate
you on your new wife," she gushed. "She's quite a beauty! Did you find her
at one of the Outsider camps?"
Akane turned crimson, as did Shinnosuke.
"This is, uh..." he replied weakly, looking mortified at having
forgotten his companion's name.
"Akane," she prompted quietly
"Uh, yeah," he stammered. "Akane. I'm sorry to say that she isn't my
wife."
"Shinnosuke is helping me find my way," Akane added.
The woman frowned slightly at Akane's accent, before offering them
both apologetic smiles. "I see. You're a true gentleman, Shinnosuke, to
be escorting her through the forest. It's a dangerous place for young
ladies."
She went inside to fetch lunch. The children playing ball clustered
around the wooden fence that separated the property claimed by the woman
from the street.
"Hey, Shinnosuke!" an older kid cried. "You get married?"
Shinnosuke shook his head, his face red.
"I'll take her if you don't want her!" the kid added, then tried to
cajole his comrades into playing another inning.
Shinnosuke turned to Akane. "I'm sorry about this," he said to her.
"I should have known this would happen. Girls get married pretty young
in the village, and since I haven't been by in awhile, they must have
thought..."
"It's all right," Akane insisted. "I understand."
"I know that Grandfather has had some of the men of the village
offering their daughters as a wife for me," he continued uneasily. "They
were all pretty, some even as pretty as you, Akane, but... I-- I guess
I'm just not ready to get married."
"You don't have to tell me this," she returned, sharing in his
embarrassment to some degree. "It's none of my business."
He looked away shyly. "I guess it's because I'm waiting for the
perfect girl to come along."
"I'm sure she will," she said, trying to lift him from his sudden
melancholy. "So tell me about these 'Outsider camps.'"
He looked back at her. "Grandfather knows a little more about them
than I do. They're the descendents of people who were marooned here by the
Orochi after Kerensky left. Most of them are decent people, but some of
them are bandits who raid the outlying farms - even this village - for
food and clothing. No one here really trusts outsiders because of that."
"Everyone must think that I'm an Outsider," she remarked.
"As far as these people are concerned, anyone who doesn't live here
or at one of the nearby farms is one," he pointed out. "They're good
people, really, but with all the raids, they've lost their ability to
trust strangers."
"I can see how well you're treated here, Shinnosuke, but are you an
outsider to them?"
He shook his head. "Grandfather and I don't count. It's a long story,
and he'll explain it better than I could. We'll get going as soon as we're
finished with lunch."
Lunch came, light and refreshingly civilized after eating berries and
the various roots, mushrooms, and tubers Shinnosuke had procured for them
in the woods. Meat was something Akane hadn't thought she would miss, but
after three days without, the sight and smell of a sizzling tray of skewers
made her mouth water. She ate with gusto, and their host gave an approving
nod.
They talked for some time afterwards, in spite of Shinnosuke's
assurances that they would get on the road again. Akane didn't mind, so
long as the conversation stayed away from who she was and where she had
come from. To his credit, Shinnosuke seemed to sense her desire to remain
anonymous - although his absent-mindedness probably had something to do
with it - and did not mention that she was a mechwarrior from another
planet. Akane noted that it might have been easier for both of them to
pretend that they really were married.
The woman talked mostly of life in the village, its gossip, and
predictions for the coming harvest and the winter that would follow.
Shinnosuke politely declined the casual offer of the woman's daughter
as a bride for him, earning a wry look from the lady. Apparently, she
remained unconvinced that Akane wasn't already filling the position.
As the men came home from the fields, they were at last able to beg
leave. They offered thanks for the meal, and were about to sit up from the
table when the woman ran inside to fetch something for them.
She returned with a dark red cape of rich homespun cloth.
"For your lady friend," she said, handing it to Shinnosuke. "You've
got another day at least in the woods, and I know how cold it can get out
there at night."
"I couldn't..." Akane said, trying to beg off. She could tell by the
weave of the cloth that it was quality work, and from the lack of similarly
colored clothing among the villagers, she knew that the pigment used to dye
it was rare.
"I insist," the woman said. "Think of it as a wedding present."
She blushed uncomfortably and bowed, knowing that it would be rude to
press the matter. "Thank you."
They started onto another forest path that lead steadily uphill. The
boys followed them for some time before finally withdrawing to the village.
Apparently they couldn't get enough of gawking at her, and more than one
had offered himself for the position of her husband.
She was glad they were gone. Obnoxious boys drove her up the wall
when she was sixteen, and they weren't getting any more tolerable at
nineteen. In another month she would be twenty, and she doubted that her
opinion of them would be any different.
What was it that made her love Ranma then? she wondered. He was
pretty obnoxious most of the time. Was it those few moments when he had
been mature and thoughtful that gave her hope? She was still tickled over
the flowers he had picked for her, even though some of them had turned out
to be poisonous.
Please don't let him be dead! she offered in prayer to the heavens.
In the meantime, she would follow Shinnosuke to meet his grandfather,
and then ask him questions about Ryuugenzawa. If there was any chance that
the expedition hadn't been in vain, she would seize upon it.
* * *
11 June 3025
"Grandfather!" Shinnosuke called to the neat wooden structure that was
his home.
"Shin-boy!" an aged voice called from within. "You're back!"
Shinnosuke stepped through the door with Akane.
The small home was a one room affair divided by a few folding screens
into a sleeping area, a living area with a floor pit fire, and a small
kitchen. The floor was made of sanded wooden slats that were as finely
crafted as the simple but fine construction of the rest of the home.
The fire pit was lined with large river stones, and a bed of red coals
filled the house with warmth, cutting the chill she had felt in the woods.
Stew simmered in a crude cast iron pot. It was all very rustic, but she also
noted the bits of high-technology Shinnosuke and his grandfather possessed.
They had a laser rifle hanging over the door, looking functional even
after all these years. A portable photovoltaic array was on the roof, and she
could see the power cables running down to an inverter and to several charging
stations. A pager like the one Shinnosuke carried was plugged into one of
them, and so was a laptop terminal. On the opposite wall was draped the flag
of the Star League. Ancient photo and stereographs surrounded the flag,
presumably the ancestors of Shinnosuke and his grandfather.
"Who is this?" Shinnosuke's grandfather asked with some surprise.
"This is... uh..." he supplied for his elder.
She nudged him gently and whispered her name.
"Akane," he finished, again mortified that he could have forgotten her
name.
The old man had a bushy grey beard and thick eyebrows that accentuated
his bald pate. Though he was laying in bed with the sun still up, he seemed
to possess a fiery vigor about him.
"Akane," he said, rolling the name over in his mouth. "It's a pleasure
to meet you, Akane."
She curtsied for him. "The pleasure's all mine, sir."
"Akane's a mechwarrior from another system," Shinnosuke supplied. "The
Orochi must be awake again."
The old man frowned deeply at this. "That's a terrible thing to suggest,
Shin-boy. In any event, the satellite units are autonomous from the Orochi.
I think we'd know if it was active again."
He rose from his bed and looked Akane over. "Is this true?" he asked
her. "Are you from another a system?"
She blushed meekly. "Yes sir," she replied. "My DropShip was attacked
several nights ago."
"A pity," he sniffed. "You're probably stranded here, then. I'm sure
the boy told you that."
"I'm not going to give up hope just yet," she replied.
The old man grunted something under his breath. "I was a boy Shinnosuke's
age the last time a ship came to Ryuugenzawa. The Orochi satellites destroyed
it, and the survivors landed here. The ones who were able to adapt to our,
ahem, primitive conditions ended up marrying into the village, or else joined
one of the Outsider camps."
"Shinnosuke told me about them," she said.
"Did he tell you how they're bandits, murderers, and thieves?" the old
man asked her in an acid tone. "How they came to plunder this world?"
Akane tensed at his accusations. He was not going to be sympathetic
to her plight, because this was exactly the reason why she had come to the
system.
"Shinnosuke said to ask you about it," she said at length.
The old man put on a dark coat similar to his grandson's. "Liars,
too," he added. "Talking about how the Star League had collapsed, how it
was everyone for themselves."
She knew it might be dangerous for her to disagree, but it was clear
that he was wholly ignorant of the Inner Sphere's current state.
"It's true," she said. "The Star League collapsed into civil war over
two centuries ago. Kerensky's army never returned. No one's heard from them
since they left."
He gave her a sour look. How could he not believe this? she wondered.
They had been waiting for generations on this planet for Kerensky or his
people to return. One would think that after all this time, they would
have given up hope.
"Who exactly are you?" he asked her.
She swallowed hard. When in doubt, give them the truth. "My name is
Akane Tendo, youngest daughter of Grand Duke Soun Tendo of the Nerima
Confederation."
She could see him rifling through the stacks of his memory, trying to
place names with what his ancestors had taught him.
"A Tendo, eh?" he said finally. "So you're one of the people who tore
the Star League apart."
His accusation was filled with bitterness.
"I'm a Tendo," she returned evenly. "But I didn't have anything to do
with what happened two hundred years ago. How could I? All I know is that
the Furinkan Combine is trying to conquer the Inner Sphere, and if I don't
find a way to stop them, they will."
He gave her declaration some thought. "So you came here for what
purpose? To steal technology? Are the stories of the collapse really true?
Have things become that bad in the Inner Sphere?"
"We didn't come here to steal anything," she insisted. "We didn't even
expect anyone to be here. To the Inner Sphere, Ryuugenzawa is just a legend.
A myth." She shook off the cape the woman in the village had given her. "And
yes, the stories you heard about the collapse are true. We've lost the
ability to make Jump Drives, HPG arrays, and so much more. It was our hope
that we would be able to recover that technology here."
Shinnosuke's grandfather folded his arms across his chest. "I see. So
you can defeat the Furinkan Combine and rule the Inner Sphere yourselves."
"That's not it!" Akane protested. "We're just trying to protect our
families and our property, not conquer everything. We just want a better
life for our people again. Is that so wrong?"
He looked her over gravely for several minutes, apparently locked in
a battle with himself over her plea.
"I believe you, young lady," he said at length. "I shouldn't, but
there is a sincerity in your voice that I find difficult to ignore."
"Will you help me then?" she asked him.
"I'm afraid that you might be disappointed," the old man intoned.
"When General Kerensky asked the SLDF to desert and join him in exile, most
of the Proving Grounds staff and their projects went with him. A few of the
scientists, engineers, and their families remained behind, thinking that
they would better their positions when the Star League moved back in. Aside
from them were the colonists Kerensky had brought in to make the place more
habitable for the research staff, and the representatives of the various
military contracting firms whose equipment was being evaluated for use.
They had no way to leave the system and no place to go if they did.
"Those who were left behind suffered terribly. After a few years
without contact with the rest of the Star League, there was an ugly war
here as the colonists vied for control of the remaining facilities and
food production areas. Most of the colonists died in the years of violence
that followed, and all the survivors could do was buckle down and try to
carve out a new life in the wilderness. Shinnosuke and I represent the last
of a line of caretakers for the facilities, keeping the hope of Kerensky's
return alive for the people of this world."
He seemed beaten down by his recounting of the world's turbulant
history, but continued.
"What attacked you was the Orochi; a network of defense satellites
that was supposed to preserve the planet from harm. I do not know when
the Orochi began to malfunction - it happened before I was born - but I
do know that it nearly completed the destruction of the colony here. It
also destroyed all the ships that entered the system, turning their
survivors, most of them nothing more than bandits and treasure hunters,
against us.
"Even as we keep watch over the bandits, we must also keep hidden
from the Orochi, as it becomes active from time to time, and causes great
damage to us before it goes dormant once again. All sources of advanced
technology are its targets, which is why we live so simply these days."
Akane thought this over. "So anyone bringing in advanced technology
triggers an attack by the Orochi?"
The old man nodded. "This has never specifically been put to the
test, but yes, when the Orochi becomes active, it will destroy any targets
that it cannot identify as friendly."
"Why doesn't it distinguish between the colonists and a real military
target?"
"That, I do not know. My own grandfather theorized that the powerful
solar storms that rage every few years have caused some kind of malfunction
within the computers that direct the Orochi network. It no longer recognizes
certain facilities as friendly targets - like the starport - and subjected
them to a terrible bombardment. Most of the colonists killed by the Orochi
died when it levelled the starport and the outlying colony town. It seemed
prudent after that to build shelters away from any remaining facility, and
better still to conceal them from the air."
"There isn't any way to stop the Orochi, then?" Akane asked.
The old man shook his head. "There is a bunker to the north of here,
where the Orochi network can be controlled, but we lack the authentication
codes to send it any commands. My grandfather tried for many years to bypass
the security system, but it proved to be too difficult. The best we can do
is monitor the network."
"I could take her there, grandfather," Shinnosuke remarked. "I had to
go there to change out a sump pump in the basement about a month ago, so I
know where it is."
The old man pursed his lips in thought. "I don't see what good could
come from it," he said at last. "As I said, there is no way to control the
Orochi network. They were designed for autonomous operation and to resist
all unauthorized attempts at controlling them."
The matter was settled as far as he was concerned, so he returned to
his sleeping mat.
"There is food if you are hungry," he said, pointing to the pot over
the coals.
* * *
"It's not much, but it'll do, won't it?" Shinnosuke asked her.
Akane looked over the steel drum sitting on cinder blocks above a bed
of coals that was to be her bath.
"It should," she replied, wanting a bath desperately, and not caring
that was under such primitive conditions. Running water was nice, but a
bath was a bath.
"Let me stoke the coals a bit first," he said, pointing to a hollow
tube of fibrous wood that resembled shamboo. He blew through the tube,
forcing air over the coals and making them glow brighter. Wisps of steam
wafted up from the water in the drum after several minutes of this.
"It should be ready now," he said, and left her to bathe.
She smiled for him as he went. Once he was around the corner of the
house, she began to strip out of her olive drab coveralls. The mud on her
legs had dried on, and she knew it would take a good soak to wash it away.
Her filthy tank top and shorts she cast aside. She could wear the coveralls
until she had a chance to launder her other garments.
The water was very hot, forcing her to ease herself in gently. Once
she was covered up to the shoulders, she relaxed, letting the heat soak
into her tired and sore body. Wisps of steam drifted past her eyes, further
soothing her.
It was primitive, but she could get used to living like this. Fresh
air, lots of exercise, sleeping under the stars; there was a lot to be said
for Shinnosuke's way of life. If his grandfather knew what he was talking
about, there was a good chance that she would be living like this for the
rest of her life. The _Dragonfly_ must have been destroyed or else driven
off by now, perhaps after an attempted rendezvous with the _Palomino._ It
was a sobering thought, because the crew had done so much for the expedition,
and she cared for all of them in a certain sense.
Ranma, Ryouga, Yuka, Sayuri, the others... Were they dead? Were they
alive and stranded somewhere on this planet just like she was? She had no
answers, only the faith that Ranma had somehow survived.
Shinnosuke knew most of the facilities that made up the Proving Grounds,
and it was possible that he could lead her to a radio transmitter powerful
enough to reach the Jump Points in time to warn the transport fleet away.
It would mean being marooned forever on Ryuugenzawa, but there was no sense
in endangering the lives of so many of her people for nothing. Perhaps a
rescue force could be assembled someday that was powerful enough to destroy
the Orochi network, but she wasn't counting on it. Whatever secrets
Ryuugenzawa had left to it might have to stay secrets forever.
There was another thought that disturbed her. After all of the struggle
to get to this planet, the fact that they were stranded here meant that there
would be no relief against the Furinkan Combine. Sooner or later, Prince Kuno
would win, and he might learn of the coordinates to the Ryuugenzawa System.
With his Nightlord Class battleship, _Imperator,_ there was the possibility
that he might be able to destroy the Orochi network and seize the planet for
himself.
She sighed. To be rescued by Tatewaki Kuno, of all people...
She finished bathing and stepped out of the drum, wondering where
Shinnosuke had put the towel. As she did so, he came around the corner,
clutching the towel in question. His eyes slammed shut at beholding her in
all of her naked glory, and he placed a hand over them for good measure.
"I--I'm sorry!" he stammered. "I forgot about your towel, and..."
She walked over to him and took the towel from his hand. When she had
wrapped it around herself, she stepped back and told him it was safe to open
his eyes.
He did so reluctantly, his face burning with shame.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
She cocked her head to the side. "Uh huh... An accident, right?" she
teased.
"R-Right!" he concurred. "It'll never happen again, I promise!"
"I forgive you," she chuckled. She had been ready to explode, but his
obvious embarrassment and effusive apologies had defused her. He was kind
of cute in a bumbling, self-conscious way; like Ranma, only without the ego.
She walked past him, smiling, to retrieve her coveralls and get changed
for bed.
Shinnosuke could only watch, breathless, as she passed him.
Chapter Four
12 June 3025
"Oh man, what the hell have I gotten myself into?" Ranma Saotome asked
herself as she slogged uphill through the dense forest growth. For four days
now she had been searching for Akane, and had nothing to show for it except
hunger, fatigue, and more bruises. She wasn't even certain where she was
anymore, as the sky had been overcast for much of the past two days, catching
her in more than one cloudburst, and making it difficult for her to navigate
by the sun.
She was just wandering now, and wondering if this was what Ryouga felt
like when he got lost. Her only link to her friends lay in the radio that
Sayuri had given her, but she could only receive at long range. Transmissions
were only good for about ten kilometers.
If there was anything to feel hopeful about, it was that she must be
close to what passed for civilization on Ryuugenzawa, as she had discovered
a fairly wide path through the forest that spoke of human intervention. She
had been following it since that morning, when it abruptly petered out into
a forked set of narrow twisting paths.
There was a hill nearby, so she resolved to climb it and get her
bearings. If there was a settlement nearby, as the road possibly indicated,
she might be able to see it. Climbing the hill meant scrabbling up the loose,
muddy ground, slicked with fresh rainfall, but she was already so flithy that
she didn't care.
She was exhausted by the time she reached the top of the hill, and
paused to nibble on the last of her survival rations. She had stretched
them as far as they would go, and now she was out of food. If she did
find a settlement, she hoped that they would be friendly enough to offer
her something to eat. If not, well, it wouldn't be the first time she had
stolen food to survive...
Having eaten what was left of her rations, she perched herself on a
fallen, rotting log and scanned the horizon. The sky was hazy and indistinct
in the distance, but through the mist she could see what looked like tilled
fields, and the tiny dots of people tending them.
She whooped in delight. Civilization at last! She judged the distance
to be close to ten kilometers, perhaps a two hour walk if the trails held
up.
As she sat up from the log, she spied a glint of metal in the distance
near the fields. Squinting against the mist, she caught sight of a battlemech
approaching from what she thought was the south.
She pulled out her radio remote and set it to a Confederation tac-net
frequency.
* * *
"It looks like farmlands," Ukyou said to herself.
Konatsu peered down through the open hatch.
"Shall I take a look, sir?"
"Let me get us a little closer first," she said, spying a muddy road
lying nearly parallel to their course and turning to follow it.
As she approached, she could see people tending the fields. They hadn't
noticed her yet, but as her Hatchetman drew near, they would feel its feet
pounding into the ground.
She was surprised when she saw a flare rocket into the sky from the
other side of the fields. The farmers immediately scrambled for the road
and started running away from her.
"I think they've spotted us, sir," Konatsu said. "I can hear a bell
ringing in the distance."
"Stay cool, sugar," Ukyou replied. "We aren't here to hurt anyone."
She switched her optics over to the thermal-imager, which cut through
the mist to reveal the tiny, fuzzy shapes of people moving into what
appeared to be a good sized village. There was no telling what kind of
hardware they might have had handy, but she doubted that they had anything
that posed a threat to her battlemech.
All the same...
"Konatsu, honey, you might want to take some cover. I'm an awfully
big target, you know."
Konatsu agreed. He leaped down from her 'mech and scrambled to a
position behind her right leg, jogging to keep up with her pace. She
reached up and dogged her hatch shut as a precaution against grenades.
She continued her ponderous advance. A few people showed up on her
thermal imager, leaving the buildings to take up what were likely to be
defensive positions. They had firearms, but it was difficult to tell if
they possessed anything big enough to cause her harm.
"That's far enough!" she heard a voice shout. She trained her parabolic
mic around to pinpoint the source, and found an old man pointing a rifle up
at her cockpit.
She stopped the Hatchetman fifty meters short of the village perimeter
and waited. No man-portable SRM launchers appeared from cover to take a shot
at her. The village militia didn't seem to have anything bigger than a light
machine gun set on a rusty tripod mount. She could cancel it with one of her
lasers with a mere thought if she had to.
She decided to take a chance and prove her peaceful intentions to them.
She undogged the hatch and raised it, then slowly came out, hands first so
they could see that they were empty. She peeked up out of the hatch, waiting
for a bullet, but none came.
They were cool customers, she decided.
"I'm looking for some people," she shouted. "Have any of you seen a guy
with dark hair in a pigtail in the last few days?"
There was no answer.
She pulled herself up out of the hatch and threw her legs over the brow
of the Hatchetman's head. "How about a girl with short, dark hair, answering
to the name Akane?"
The old man with the rifle advanced from cover, keeping the weapon
handy, but not raised against her.
"Get that thing out of here, and maybe we'll talk!" he shouted back,
pointing to the battlemech.
She faced him. "Look, pal. If I wanted to turn your village into
smoking ruins, I'da done it already. Lighten up." She offered her hands to
them in a gesture of supplication. "Now could you please answer my question?"
"The answer's no to both your questions!" the old man replied. "Now
git!"
She kept her temper, understanding how something like her Hatchetman
would strike fear into a village like this one.
"Thanks for your help," she said dryly, and dropped down the hatch.
She turned the battlemech and started heading back the way she came.
Konatsu pulled himself back up onto her shoulder.
"Do you think he was lying to you, sir?" he asked her.
"Hard to say," she replied. "We certainly weren't welcome." She shook
her head wearily. They had been out for days now, and their supply of food
was running low. "Perhaps we should go back to the _Palomino_ and resupply,"
she remarked.
Konatsu appeared at the hatch. "I shall stay behind and continue the
search, if you wish it."
"Don't do that to yourself, honey," she replied. "You're just as tired
and worn out with the search as anyone. Besides, if you got caught sneaking
around, they'd probably lynch you."
She turned back to her instruments, calling up the map her battlemech's
computer had been able to generate of her surroundings. The DropShip was a
good hundred and thirty kilometers away - too far for a radio message without
a satellite relay, and while there were probably commsats in orbit, she did
not possess the codes or commo protocols to access them.
"Heya, Ucchan," a voice crackled over the radio as she pondered this.
"Ranma?" she cried in surprise. If it was him, he was currently a 'she'
- which was no surprise given all the rain they had endured of late. She
clicked her mic. "Ranchan? Is that you?"
"Where are ya goin'?" Ranma asked. "You're walking away from me!"
Ukyou brought her 'mech to a halt. "You can see me?"
"With a radio as wimpy as mine, I'd almost have to."
She turned her 'mech around in a circle, trying to spot her.
"I don't see you," she said finally.
"I'm near the top of a hill," Ranma said to her. "I can see some
farmland in front of me, southeast of my position, I think."
"I just came from there," Ukyou replied. "They told me they hadn't
seen you."
"Makes sense," Ranma agreed. "I haven't actually made it to the village
yet."
"Don't bother. They aren't very friendly towards strangers."
"Did they know where Akane was?"
Ukyou frowned. "No. At least they said they didn't."
"Dammit! Where could she be?"
"I don't know, Ranchan, but I think you had better come with me. Hold
your position, talk me in, and I'll be there in a few minutes."
"Copy that, Ucchan," she said. "I'll be the one freezing his butt off
in wet clothes."
"Shouldn't that be 'freezing *her* butt off,'" Ukyou teased.
"Oh, ha ha."
* * *
"I'm really glad you're showing me where this bunker is, Shinnosuke,"
Akane said to him.
"Grandfather won't like it, but I don't see the harm in showing you,"
he replied. "He's right though, there isn't any way of controlling the
Orochi. People in my family have been trying for as long as we've been the
caretakers."
The mention of family raised a question within her that she had been
wanting to ask, but had held back for fear of upsetting him.
"It's just you and your grandfather now, isn't it," she said.
His pace slowed a bit. "Yeah," he replied. "I've got a few older
cousins living in the village, but that's it."
She almost hated to ask. "Your parents?"
He stopped, and turned towards her. His face held a grief that had
long since passed into a dull ache.
"They died years ago. I was very small then. I don't even remember
it." He pawed at the muddy ground. "Grandfather's been taking care of me
ever since."
"I'm sorry, Shinnosuke," she said softly. "I shouldn't have pried."
"No!" he protested. "Don't be, Akane. I feel like I could tell you
anything about myself, no matter how painful."
She blushed shyly at this. Shinnosuke was such a sweetheart that it
was amazing that he hadn't found a girl to settle down with.
"Well, lead on," she said sprightly to him. The bunker would be
connected to a radio relay for communications with the Orochi network,
and she could use it to warn the transport fleet.
They continued on, passing between a pair of hills near the village
on their way north to the bunker. As they took the leftmost path in the
fork, the surrounding forest became very quiet and still.
"Something's wrong," Shinnosuke said, gripping his pushbroom tightly.
"More of those bugs?" Akane asked worriedly.
"No," he replied. "Something else. Be careful, Akane, and keep your
eyes and ears open."
They continued warily. Akane could feel eyes upon her, but nothing
was visible in the dense forest growth to either side of the path. She
found her hand slipping into her survival kit. The pistol was there, but
it was empty. She would need to put the spare magazine in before --
Movement on the path in front of them caught her by surprise. She
watched as three men wearing loose strips of cloth dyed to match the
foliage jumped out of cover, two of them armed with crude spears, the
third with an ancient and rusty pump shotgun.
"Run!" Shinnosuke cried to her. She turned to find three more behind
them, two of them with guns.
"We're surrounded!" she cried, fishing in her kit for the extra
magazine.
"Hey, Shin!" the man with the shotgun called to them. "Make ya a deal!
Give us the girl and you can go on sweepin' floors!"
"That's not gonna happen, Graham," Shinnosuke replied. He raised his
pushbroom. "Go back to your own lands before you get hurt!"
The man called Graham jerked his head in Shinnosuke's direction.
"Teach the boy whose lands these are," he said with a grating laugh. "This
whole goddamn planet is mine, kid!" he called after Shinnosuke as his spear-
armed cronies advanced down the narrow path. "Don't you be forgettin' that!"
Shinnosuke braced for a charge, turning his head briefly to Akane.
"I said run! These people don't play games!"
Akane loaded her pistol instead. "I'm not leaving you!" She pulled back
the slide to chamber a round, and took aim at the men behind them. "Back off,
or I'll blow holes in you big enough to drive a battlemech through."
The three scattered to either side of the path, taking cover.
"The girl's packing heat!" one of them called, presumably to Graham.
"So?" he called back from behind the safety of the two spearmen. "What
do think you're carrying, slingshots?"
"You want us to shoot her?" one of them cried. "I thought you said you
wanted her alive?"
"Shoot her in the leg or something!" Graham hurled back impatiently.
"Do I haf'ta explain everything myself?"
One of them found his courage and popped around the tree he was using
for cover. Akane fired a snapshot, the 10mm hollowpoint striking the trunk
of the tree near eye level, and sending the thug ducking back behind cover
with a girlish shriek of fright.
"I'm not joking!" she called to them.
"Akane..." Shinnosuke grunted tersely to her. "Run!"
"We'll both run," she replied, nearly quaking with fear. They only
had one way to go, and that was up. Trying to move down would put them in
a tangled mass of brambles and stinging vines. "I'll start shooting to
keep their heads down, and we'll start running up the hill."
She began firing a sustained series of shots at the ones behind them
while sidestepping up the hill. As Shinnosuke started to move, she pivoted
and fired twice more at the spearmen, catching one in the bicep and blowing
a very satisfying chunk of meat off his arm. His hollow wail of agony
drowned out the angry voice of Graham exhorting his thugs to action.
They clambered up the hill, clawing desperately at the muddy ground
for purchase as Graham shouted curses at them. A blast from his shotgun
sent crude cast lead buckshot pellets whining through the air just over
their heads to explode in the foliage on the hillside above them. The
strong sulfurous scent of blackpowder filled the moist air.
"They don't even have smokeless powder!" Akane shouted indignantly
over the din. "I can't believe I'm about to be killed by something that's
practically out of the stone age!"
"Keep climbing," Shinnosuke grunted. "We're not out of range yet!"
A second blast from the shotgun confirmed this. A pellet lodged in the
back of his leg, centimeters below the knee. He spasmed in pain, stopping
his progress.
"Shinnosuke!" she cried, trying to drag him up the hill. His leg
twitched uncontrollably, making it impossible for him to use it for
purchase, and he was too heavy for her to drag through the mud.
"Now we've got 'em," Graham hooted from below.
Akane pulled the still warm pistol from her coveralls and fired at
the cur. The bullet struck a branch over his head, dusting him with green
needles. He didn't even flinch as he raised the shotgun at her.
She saw that the slide was locked back on her pistol, and threw it
at him with a curse, spoiling his aim. The shotgun blast ripped into the
hillside well to her right.
"That'll be enough outta you, missy!" he snorted triumphantly. His
remaining thugs formed a skirmish line and began moving with methodical
patience up the hill towards her.
"Go to hell!" she screamed at him, and tried dragging Shinnosuke
up the hill once more. He tried to assist her, but his wounded leg had
gone limp.
She managed to pull him up to a level patch of ground, but the hill
became much steeper beyond, and she knew she could barely climb them
herself, much less help her wounded friend. She unzipped her coveralls to
the navel to give herself some room to move in them, and dropped into a
fighting stance.
They were going to have to kill her.
"Akane, what are you doing?" Shinnosuke cried to her.
"I won't let them hurt us," she snapped. They were almost upon them.
"Akane, no! Your life is more important than mine! Run, I'm begging
you!" He pulled himself upright, his left leg supported by the pushbroom.
"I'll hold them off."
"Shinnosuke!" she cried. There wasn't time for more, as one of the
spearman lunged at her. She wasn't there for the blow, however, since
Shinnosuke pushed her aside with a grunt of warning. As she fell to the
ground, she watched the spear sink into his shoulder. The thug kept the
spear inside, throwing his weight behind the shaft to pin Shinnosuke down
and hold him while his comrades continued their advance.
"Shinnosuke!" she cried again. One of the rifle-armed thugs swept at
her head with the butt of his weapon. She ducked the blow easily and landed
a kick to the solar plexus that sent him tumbling down the hillside.
"Don't play with her," Graham yelled at them. Naturally, he was behind
the remainder of his men. "If she's a little bruised and bloodied, it's no
big deal. She'll heal in time."
The spearman twisted his weapon in Shinnosuke's shoulder, making him
scream in agony.
The scream distracted Akane, and she was caught flat-footed by the
second rifleman's buttstroke to the stomach. She reeled over, about to be
sick, when he reversed his stroke and took her in the jaw. She saw stars
then, and tumbled to the wet ground by Shinnosuke's side, too dazed to act.
"Akane!" he cried to her.
Graham was laughing. "See boys! She ain't so tough."
He started the rest of the way up the hill, chuckling evilly.
"Bastard!" a girl's voice cried. A green and black blur flew down from
the hill at the man who had laid Akane out. He barely had time to look up
before a savage kick to the side of the head snapped his neck like a twig.
His body became as limp as spaghetti, and he slithered down the hill to
pass the stunned Graham.
The girl then lunged with her elbow at the spearman who kept
Shinnosuke pinned, catching him square in the throat and crushing his
windpipe. He fell down the hill, choking for breath that would not come.
The remaining thug charged at her as she recovered from her lunge,
his spear sliding into the narrow gap between her arm and side. The girl
clenched up, spun on her heels, and ripped the weapon from his grasp with
her maneuver. As he backpedaled, fumbling for a knife at his waist, she
brought the butt end of the spear against the side of his temple hard
enough to splinter the shaft.
"Who the hell are you?!" the shotgun-toting brigand shouted at her as
the last of his men on the hill fell stone dead.
The girl in the green mandarin blouse and the black drawstring pants
jerked a thumb at her buxom chest.
"I'm Ranma Saotome, asshole, and I'll make sure you don't forget it
for the rest of your miserably short life!"
Graham jerked his head to work out the kinks in his neck, and raised
the shotgun to Ranma's chest.
"Somehow, I doubt that."
When Ranma did not try to duck or evade, he had to give the savage
girl credit for spunk. He did not realize that a 10 centimeter spot of red
coherent light had materialized on his chest as he peered down the length
of his shotgun barrel.
There was a brilliant flash of light, a deafening crackle of ionized
air, and then the wet *whhooommmphh* of ninety kilograms of human being
and several dozen kilograms of dirt and vegetation behind him being rendered
instantly into a rapidly expanding cloud of moist steam.
High atop the hill, a Hatchetman stood, a wisp of vapor wafting from
the focusing optics of the medium laser embedded in the shaft of its battle-
spatula.
Ranma turned and waved to the battlemech.
"Good timing, Ucchan!" she cried. "Though I think you gave me a
sunburn from that blast."
"I was wondering what the hell you were doing running away from me,"
came her reply over the mech's external speakers. "You could have said
something more specific to me than 'Hey, Ucchan, something's up. Come
quick!'"
"Yeah, well, I didn't have any specifics 'til I got here."
She turned, looking at her fiancee with concern as the adrenaline
rush of combat faded from her system and left her feeling shaky and
anxious. Blind chance had put her on the same hill as Akane, close enough
to hear the gunfire and fearful cries and to act in time to save her. She
didn't know who the men in the makeshift ghille suits were, but it didn't
take a genius to figure out where they stood on the scale of enemies and
allies.
"Akane," she said softly to her.
Akane pulled herself up onto all fours and crawled over to the body
of the young man she had fought beside. The spear which pinned him to the
ground was still lodged within him, and an expanding stain of wetness
soaked his coat. He was still alive, his eyes glazed over with pain.
"Shinnosuke," she whispered fearfully, and buried her face in his
chest. "Please don't die... Oh, Shinnosuke!"
Ranma's jaw dropped. After four days of searching for her, after
saving her life not once, but *twice* in those four days, the first thing
she does is worry and cry over some strange guy from the forest?
"Akane..." she grunted, anger and stunning injury creeping into her
voice.
Akane, her eyes spilling tears and her lip bleeding, turned up to
face Ranma.
"We've got to help him, Ranma," she pleaded.
She could feel an icicle sinking into her heart. Akane... how? Why...?
The stench of the vaporized brigand that lingered in the air became
overpowering to her, and she nearly retched where she stood.
"What's going on down there?" Ukyou asked over the radio.
"Better get down here," Ranma replied numbly. "We need a medevac."
"I'm sending Konatsu with an aidkit," she replied.
Chapter Five
Ukyou Kuonji looked through her cockpit viewport at the extended
hands of her battlemech as it tromped across the grassy plains of
Ryuugenzawa. Cupped within them were Akane, Konatsu, and the injured
young man. Konatsu was keeping an eye on his patient, while Akane hovered
worriedly over the two of them. Ranma perched silently atop the head,
and though the hatch was open, did not feel up to conversation with her.
She did not understand what was going on. The strange young man
was obviously Akane's new-found companion, and she was certainly
concerned for his well-being, despite Konatsu's assertion that the injury
he had sustained was not immediately life-threatening. All she did know
was that Ranma was acting like he had been crushed, and that Akane had
done the crushing.
She didn't know what to make of that. On the one hand, any kind of
relationship problems between Ranma and Akane were good news for her,
and at the same time, seeing her beloved Ranchan so miserable made her
wish that she could do something about it - even if it meant patching
things up between them. Not that she would have made that option her
first choice. As soon as she got the chance, she resolved to try and
comfort him in her own special way.
"How much longer?" she heard Akane ask her with a shout.
She checked her map display. Lacking the codes to access the
planet's GPS network, she could only rely on her Inertial Navigation
System to fix her position, and that was subject to error. She was
familiar with the present terrain, and confident that she was heading
in the right direction to reach the _Palomino,_ but not exactly sure
how far away it was.
"Probably another forty-five minutes," she replied over the
external speakers. "Why, is your friend's condition getting worse?
I'm in radio range now. I can call for help." The two Ship's Boats
from the stricken _Dragonfly_ had enough fuel remaining for short
hops if necessary, and she wanted very much for this Shinnosuke fellow
to remain among the living. Her future with Ranchan depended on it.
"There's no hurry, sir," Konatsu assured her, his voice losing
some of its falsetto as he shouted to be heard.
It was actually closer to thirty minutes as they neared the
perimeter treeline. The _Palomino_ was concealed beneath its netting
and tarps, making it blend better with the surrounding forests.
Genma Saotome's Griffin continued to provide external power, she
noted - not a good sign. Ryouga's BattleMaster and Happousai's Locust
were parked close by.
She keyed up the alert frequency the DropShip was using, and
clicked her microphone switch.
"_Palomino,_ Kuonji; I'm approaching the perimeter from the southwest.
Request that Doctor Tofu and a medical emergency team be standing by when
I get there."
"Copy that, Kunoji," one of the _Dragonfly_ crew replied.
As she slipped under the camouflage netting, she could see Doctor
Tofu, the _Dragonfly's_ hospital corpsman, and two of the starship's
cooks standing by with a stretcher. Genma, Captain Ninomiya, Ryouga,
Yuka, and Sayuri were also present.
She came to halt, and knelt carefully to place her charges on the
ground. Tofu and the others took them from her battlemech's hands, with
Shinnosuke being placed on the stretcher. Doctor Tofu went to work
immediately as Yuka and Sayuri exchanged tearful hugs with Akane.
"What happened?" Tofu asked as he listened to Konatsu give a
report of treatment administered thus far.
"Never mind that, Doctor!" Akane cried. "Will he be all right?"
Tofu examined the wound, taking Shinnosuke's pulse as he did so.
Shinnosuke was conscious, but suffering mildly from shock, his eyes
dull and unfocused.
"I think he'll pull through," Tofu declared. "The wound looks
more serious than it probably is, but I won't know for certain
until I get him under the scanner."
Ukyou pulled herself through the hatch of the 'mech, watching Ranma
as she watched the drama unfold below.
"You look like you could use a shower and something to eat," she
observed.
Ranma bowed her head, her blue-grey eyes glinting with sharp lights
of hurt and betrayal, but said nothing in reply.
Ukyou bit her lip, wishing she hadn't come across so flippant.
She took her place by Ranma's side and put an arm around her. When
Ranma eased out of her shell enough to lay her head against Ukyou's
shoulder, she kissed Ranma's brow tenderly in reply. A month ago she
could not have imagined being so intimate with another girl, but she
had quickly come to learn that Ranchan was still Ranchan, even if he
had boobs some of the time, and that her feelings for him had not
changed.
"Come on, honey," she said in a quiet voice to Ranma. "Let's get
cleaned up. After four days of being cooped up in a 'mech, you're not
the only one who could use a shower. After that I'll see about making
us some okonomiyaki." She gave Ranma a squeeze. "Though I shudder to
think what we'll have in the way of fresh ingredients."
Ranma rose with a wordless nod. Shinnosuke had been carried into
the DropShip, and most of the onlookers had followed. Only Genma and
Ryouga remained behind, waiting for him to come down from the Hatchetman.
She pulled herself down from the head, when Ukyou had expected her
beloved to leap. She followed after her. Genma Saotome stood across from
his son, his arms folded across his chest.
"Good work, boy," he said to his son. "I knew that if anyone could
save Akane's life, it was you."
Ranma gave a bitter half-hearted laugh, and shambled past her
father without another word. Ukyou had nothing to say to him either,
and caught up to Ranma on the bounce.
Ryouga was next, bowing slightly in gratitude. "Thank you, Ranma,"
he said evenly. "For saving Akane's life, I can't hold anything against
you anymore."
"Heh," Ranma snorted. "Just wait, Ryouga. I'm sure you'll have
something to hate me for very soon." She continued on, leaving Ukyou
to make a helpless apologetic gesture in reply.
* * *
13 June 3025
"Has anyone seen Ranma lately?" Akane asked the people in the Crew's
Mess.
"I saw him with Kuonji last night, ma'am," one of the _Dragonfly's_
engineering techs replied. "Last I saw of him."
"He missed chow this morning," his _Palomino_ counterpart added.
"It's the first time I've seen that happen since the transit from Capra
to the Jump Point."
Akane frowned. She remembered it clearly. He had been jealous and
upset over her giving Ryouga a kiss on the cheek. Now what had gotten
into him?
Another thought worried her. What was Ukyou's part in this?
"Thanks anyway," she offered. "If you do see him, could you tell
him that I'm looking for him?"
"Will do, ma'am," the two replied.
As she left the compartment, she ran into Petty Officer Howard,
who wore the gunbelt and carried the clipboard of the Roving Watch.
"Hi, Tad," she greeted him.
He smiled shyly. "Good morning, ma'am," he replied.
"Have you seen Ranma?"
"Captain Saotome?" he asked. "I saw him not too long ago, actually."
Akane brightened. "Really? Where is he?"
"I saw him in the dorsal transverse passageway while I was making my
rounds," he replied. "Said something about getting a little fresh air. He's
probably up on the hull."
"Thanks, Tad!" she cried, and headed for the stairs up to the Upper
Deck.
She found him where Tad had suggested, sitting with his knees pulled
up to his chin on the armored deck of the DropShip. The flutter of the
camouflage netting just a few meters above them made a snapping sound
in the breeze that offset the shrill noise of grinding tools and welding
equipment from the engineering techs who worked on the hull damage below
them on the starboard side.
He took note of her as she pulled herself through the dorsal airtight
hatch to stand on top of the hull with him, but said nothing.
"I've been looking for you," she broached in a friendly voice.
"How's your friend?" he asked sullenly in return.
She was taken aback by his tone. "He'll be okay. Doctor Tofu says he
should be up and around in a few days, actually."
"Well good," Ranma snorted. "I bet you're very happy about that."
Akane knew something was wrong with him, but couldn't for the life
of her figure out what. His hostility was absolutely bewildering to her.
"Ranma, are you feeling okay?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" he growled. "After all, I only spent the last
four friggin' days wandering through the forest; soaked to the bone,
half-starved, and all beat up from falling four thousand meters through
the air - most of it without the luxury of a working parachute - trying to
find you."
She winced at this. "That's why I've been looking for you," she said
to him. "I wanted to say thanks for what you did for me."
"You're welcome," he grunted, and turned back to watching the
camouflage netting sway in the breeze.
She stood in fuming silence for a moment, watching him ignore her.
"Do you mind telling me what the hell is wrong with you, Ranma?"
"Nothing's wrong with me," he barked. "Does it look like there's
something wrong?" he added, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Then why are you so angry with me?" she demanded. "Why have you
been avoiding me ever since we returned to the ship?"
"Avoiding you?" Ranma snapped. "Get real. I've been on the ship
the whole time. Where were you?"
Her jaw hung open. She was incensed with him, and yet found herself
incapable of giving words to her ire.
"Lemme guess," he continued. "You spent the night in Sickbay."
She pursed her lips. "So what if I did?"
He shrugged. "It don't mean nothin' to me," he replied. "You do what
you want. Isn't that how it's always been?"
Akane stood in silence for some time. She wanted to pound him for
being such a jerk to her, but even if he deserved it, which he probably
did, she knew it wouldn't help matters between them.
"Well, whatever I did that has you so pissed off at me, I'm sorry,"
she said to him. "Okay?"
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Whatever."
She huffed at him. "What is with you, Ranma?" There was a pleading
edge to her voice that forced him to look at her. "I mean, we nearly
died together five days ago. The next time we saw each other wasn't
until yesterday - when I almost died once again - and now all you can do
is treat me like dirt!" She started to reach out to him, then pulled her
hand back to her lips apprehensively. "This really hurts me, you know."
The hard glint in his eyes wavered for just a moment before he
spoke.
"What do you know about gettin' hurt?" he snarled. "You've had it
easy your whole life. Money, power, respect, you've always had those
things - never once had to work for 'em. Probably the only time in your
entire existence when you didn't get your way was when you got stuck
with me, and even then it ain't like it ever mattered. It sure as hell
don't seem to matter now."
He held up something which glinted in the mid-morning sunlight.
Akane saw that it was the silver and brass collar insignia of a
Mechwarrior Captain of the Confederation, the only one she had been
able to find on the _Dragonfly_ to give to him after he accepted his
commission, and even that one had been a lucky find sitting in a dusty
corner of the tiny ship's store.
"It looks like we ain't ever getting off this mudball," he went
on, still fingering the collar insignia. "No chance of ever passing the
paperwork on to higher authority, so what's the point?" He threw the
collar device away, glittering in a slow arc as it fell to the grassy
field far below them. "So we made it to Ryuugenzawa. Screw it. I resign
anyway."
Akane was speechless. When she finally found her voice, it was
tremulous and weak.
"I-I refuse to accept that," she said to him.
"Get used to disappointment," he returned. "Maybe you'll understand
me better that way."
He sprang to his feet, startling her with his swiftness, and stepped
past her to drop down the dorsal hatch.
She raced after him. "You swore an oath!" she cried.
"So what if I did?" he retorted from the bottom of the ladder.
"You didn't just swear it to the Confederation," she returned, her
voice cracking with emotion. "You swore it to ME...!"
He looked up at her, his blue-grey eyes trembling.
"Let's get one thing straight between us. I didn't betray you, Akane,"
he said in a quiet voice that she somehow heard crystal clear over the din
of the repairs. "You betrayed me..."
END OF PART TWENTY-FIVE
Author's Note:
As you can probably guess, this will continue beyond the 25 installments
of my revised estimate. I've told several people already that it will
probably bleed over into 27 parts, but now I feel that I can't hold myself
to any artificial limits. Let's just say that I know quite firmly how this
will end, and how to get there, but that I have not Clue One on how long it
will take to do it. This is the final arc of the story, as you've no doubt
come to understand, and things will naturally get a little hairy as I fit
everything together in the finale.
On a further note, Let me add that I will probably not continue "Ruler of
the Raging Main" with the kind of zeal that I have pursued the writing of
"The Saotome Gambit." In fact I won't even say that I'll work on it in the
near future, but take things as they come. Consider me effectively retired
from the world of fanfiction after this. I'll most likely noodle around a
bit as the inspiration takes me, but I'm swearing off the big projects for
the foreseeable future.
Am I burned out? A little. I'm eager to finish TSG because the ending is
something that I've been visualizing for almost a year now (has it been
that long? eleven months at least...) and I'm still excited about this
story, but I don't seem to have the enthusiasm to look beyond the project
at hand.