The warboats’ bows cut through the river like on-rushing guillotines. Around the four river monitors swarmed a dozen or more patrol boats, faster and better-equipped than Fukuzawa’s Kasetomi-era antique. A kilometer away, their small craft would have shown up on radar already.

Teleporting all four of them far enough away to be safe from naval surveillance was a horrifying prospect. Sayuri felt phantom burning sensations just thinking of it, and taking the Daisagi-Maru would be outright impossible.

“Perhaps I can try to camouflage us?” Sayuri said.

Chester pursed his lips, eyes locked on the approaching boat. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

He looked at Sayuri, then at Fukuzawa piloting the boat. The man was unaware his passengers bore any kinkawa, let alone the only human being on the planet with kinkawa covering her entire body. Even if he knew kinkawa could do more than generate electricity, turning an entire boat invisible was a fantastical proposition. But with all other solutions exhausted…

“We shall have to deliver ourselves into his trust,” Sayuri said.

Chester frowned. “Bad idea. Genji would pay him a fortune if he hands you over.”

“Fukuzawa himself said he cares little of money!”

“Everyone says that until someone offers them millions.”

Perhaps Chester was underestimating Sayuri’s capacity for detecting subterfuge and deceit. Survival in the upper echelons of power demanded an intuitive understanding of deception. Her own life had been a master class in misdirection, requiring her to hide the research experiment conducted inside her own body for the past five years. If there was a single thing in this world of illusion Sayuri understood, it was a lie.

“He tells the truth,” Sayuri said.

“Sayuri, maybe he’s trustworthy, but if we’re wrong—”

“You brought that woman into this! What about that!? She stands to gain just as much by turning me in,” Sayuri said.

“Milly is different. I’ve known her for eight years. We met Shuu yesterday.”

“And I met you two days ago, but I have placed my life in your hands.”

“Because I don’t have the option to take the money and walk away, Sayuri!”

His words froze her blood. Surely, Chester could not truly mean them? They distressed her, but why should they? He was merely a contractor. That was their relationship to one another. Employer and employed. Her own words took on a frightening new inflection: She had only met him two days prior, and had placed her life in his hands.

Ignoring Chester, she went to the bridge. “Mr. Fukuzawa? I may have a way to deliver us from this conundrum, but I must warn you first.”

“What’s that?” he asked with the tone one addresses a child interrupting adult matters.

“I can… probably… turn our boat invisible. However, they may still be able to detect us by radar or by our effect upon the water. I propose we pilot straight towards them and when we make a close pass, I shall turn us invisible and you shall bring the boat behind to disguise our wake.”

“I’m sorry, ya mind runnin’ that one by me again, lass? Did I hear ya say "turn invisible?”

“I… have kinkawa. Special kinkawa. I can explain in more detail, should our plan prove successful.”

“S’pose I’ll have to trust ya, lass,” Fukuzawa said.

He turned the Daisagi-Maru around to face the steel ships laden with armaments. Sayuri’s main fear were the long, flat, hexagonal barrels of the monitors’ railguns, whose cyclopean eyes had the boat fixed in their gaze. Their tungsten-tipped projectiles fired at a speed of three kilometers per second, hitting their boat the same second they left the barrel. The force of the projectile when it hit the water could probably capsize them without harming anyone on board.

“Mr. Fukuzawa, is there any chance you might know the resolution of their radar?”

“It’ll be a Type-242 Tsukiyama Technical Instruments model. Made for short-range engagements and…” he paused, switching to Kaihongo to find the words, “low pulse width, low receiver gain. If you’re tryna disguise our blip, we’re gonna be gettin’ real close, miss Sayuri.”

“How close?”

“A dozen meters.”

“Can we do it?”

“That’s a question for the railguns.”

“Let us pray to Wotenha,” Sayurai said.

“No use prayin’ to the God of the Ocean when you’re on a river. I prefer Fleothe myself,” Fukuzawa said, referring to what was probably an Afujin kami or heathen idol god

The river exploded in an angry geyser off their portside as 40 million joules of energy smashed into the water and almost flipped the Daisagi-Maru. The moment of impact had a curious unreality to it. Her adrenaline and fear stilled to empty numbness like the Shroud had suddenly washed over her.

When Sayuri regained her wits, she realized her hatsuden had not redirected the projectile. The gunner had simply missed with a weapon that reached its target in a fraction of a second. Either luck or Fleothe had interceded.

In the next moment, the Daisagi-Maru disappeared. They were ghosts floating freely across the water with only the rumbling deck confirming their corporeality.

Fukuzawa proved his maritime mastery when the choppy waves threw Sayuri so close to one of the monitors they were passing between that she was confident the Daisagi-Maru must have cracked into it. Yet they emerged from the steel ravine behind the last two monitors. Swarming patrol boats provided a radar cover for them to slip into the flotilla, whereupon Sayuri heard but did not see Milly throw up.

Ahead, Sayuri watched Genji sailors scramble to catch sight of them. Patrol boats shot up and down the river to widen the net, not realizing their prey was already in it. Others peeled off to land at Aldwithy. She was more than a little proud of herself for that maneuver. A liability she was not.

After they had trailed the monitor for a few minutes, she heard Fukuzawa above the engine noise. “How’s all this work then?”

“As stated previously, I have special kinkawa capable of doing such things as turning a boat full of people invisible.”

“Special kinkawa? Don’t s’pose that’s why we’re pulled up into the arse of a Genji warboat?”

Fukuzawa did not sound especially perturbed, or even surprised. Sayuri wondered if there were more screws loose than usual for a royalist. Although, upon reflection, she realized everyone but her was currently under the effects of the Shroud.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I am… well, I suppose it might not be inaccurate to categorize myself as a living research specimen of sorts.”

“Uh-huh. And who was conducting this research?”

“The Ashimoto Fireworks Company?”

“C’mon lass, since we’re all being transparent right now, who are ya really?”

Fukuzawa, rudely and brazenly, targeted her weakness for puns and got a giggle out of her despite the tense circumstances.

“My true name is Sayuri Ueichi. I suppose I need not elaborate upon my clan’s business.”

“Nay, ya need not. Gods above and below, what in Hel is an Ueichi whelp doing on my boat? You and Genji having a row?”

“A row?”

“Bit of a quarrel?”

“Yes. At our Innovation Expo, we held a private exhibition to demonstrate this special kinkawa that I carry in me, and—”

“Your own dad made you a research specimen? Cruel.”

“How insolent of you to suggest such a thing! I agreed to the project for the betterment of our clan of my own free will. I was not coerced into anything!”

“Who taught you to be filial, lass?”

“‘Tis irrelevant! Dost thou not wish mine account to hear?” she snapped, slipping into her natural speech.

“Not right now.”

The impudence infuriated her. He, like Chester, was essentially her contractor through indirect transaction. To be totally unconcerned with her circumstances was negligent.

He had expressed some disdain for clan-conglomerates, had he not? If not in words than in deeds by the raising of the Imperial flag. Perhaps he was seething with animosity towards her, knowing she was an Ueichi. No, she must think logically. Animosity was impossible to entertain in the Shroud. Yet, what had the workers been entertaining when she inadvertently dropped the Shroud at the battery plant strike?

~~~

Senses reduced to rushing water and droning engine noises, Thomas fell into a weird state of detachment. His mind was equipped to gather up and work with the graspable. Usable. Advantageous. Being free left him in a kind of existential dizziness. Below, the rushing water whisked him to that same river hundreds of kilometers downstream.

He was outside the town of Burnehithe where it nestled into the triangular confluence formed by the River Cleif’s sapphire blue waters joining with the River Glær’s murky red-brown. He swam in the middle of the Cleif, in the shadow of the great limestone clocktower which had stood sentinel over this confluence for centuries.

Beside him swam his younger sister Miriam, eight or nine, trying to coax their younger brother and sister, Theodore and Audrey, into the river. Their younger siblings were frightened of the colossal river barges and tankers passing, hulking and sublime, through the River Glær.

His whole world could be seen from where Thomas doggy-paddled: the Burnehithe clocktower, the stone cottages dotting the grassy shore, and the Ueden Turbine Factory. The gigantic factory ran the length of the shore opposite from their cottage and reflected the setting sun off its crystal glass body. Their father, like most of the town, would soon be winding down work and crossing back over the bridge to home in Old Burnehithe for supper.

“Get in you babies!” Miriam yelled to the shore, words ricocheting across water and time.

Then, the world exploded. The river trembled. Glass burst into the sky and glittered with the golden sunset before falling into the river with a million tiny ripples. Smoke and fire flickered in the newly formed gap in the turbine factory. Alarms wailed. His brothers and sisters screamed.

~~~

Mildred felt like she was somersaulting backwards endlessly. The frothing white lines in the water reminded her of chalk lines on a schoolhouse blackboard full of little X’s and numbers and equal signs. Her schoolhouse’s rough wooden benches formed under her, legs dangling over the floor.

“Everyone, take out your Æfrian primers,” said the teacher, a young woman named Beth with bright blonde hair. She was a year out of normal college. Milly liked her a lot.

Her seatmate, a girl named Sunngifu who was her best friend, took out their shared primer and laid it on the desk between them. Usually, Sunngifu was whispering jokes to her, but on this day, she was silent.

“Now everyone, I told you last week your homework was to bring in a new word to share with the class. What new words did you learn? Paul?”

The little boy sunk into his seat.

“You didn’t do as I asked, did you, Paul?”

“I’m sorry, I forgot…”

Ms. Beth shook her head. “Paul, you need to take your schooling seriously.”

“Da’ says I don’t need fancy words to work in a factory, I just gotta know how to write and count.”

Ms. Beth slapped her chalk down on the podium and got the fierce, fiery look in her eye that set Mildred’s own soul on fire. “Take what I’m about to tell you back to your old man, alright Paul? Tell him Bethany Padley said your schooling is about more than getting a job at a factory! If Æfrians ever want to own those factories ourselves, we’ve gotta get educated. Our people need to get smart and beat the invaders at their own game. Will you tell him that?”

“Yes ma’am!” the boy said.

“You children are the future of our people, and if you want that future to be a bright one, you need to take schooling seriously. On Wednesday, you’ll come back with two new words to share with the class, got that, Paul?”

“Yes ma’am,” the boy said, less enthusiastically.

“Next up is Sunngifu. What new word did you learn?”

“The um… the word I learned was “half-breed.” My mum told me it,” Sunngifu said.

Mildred tried to imagine what the word meant based on her limited vocabulary and came up with a mental image of horses for some reason.

“Could you tell the class what it means?”

“My mum said it means what Milly is…”

The horses dissolved in her head. Milly wasn’t quite sure what half-breed meant or how it applied to her. She was young, short, brunette, and a girl, that was about all there was to her. She didn’t know what else she could possibly be.

“Make sure to define words clearly. What about Mildred?”

“That her mum is Æfrian, but her dad is a grenner, and that they’re dangerous cuz they think they’re more Kaihonjin than Æfrian,” Sunngifu said.

Milly was baffled. How did Sunngifu know who her father was? Her mother said he lived very far away, not that he was a grenner. How would she know unless she’d met him? And Milly didn’t think she was better than anyone other than boys, and that was only because they were stupid and dirty. She suddenly felt both hot and cold at the same time.

“That’s mostly right,” Beth said, her eyes kind and sympathetic, “but half-breeds aren’t necessarily dangerous. Our Mildred has no control over who her father is. Some of you have short parents, and there’s no helping being short. The only thing you can control is who you become, and our Mildred is learning how to become a good Æfrian every day she comes to class. Isn’t that right, Milly?”

“Y-Yes ma’am!” Milly said.

A wave of comfort washed over her. She was still upset at learning she was really a half-breed without knowing it, but that made her all the more certain she had to be a good Æfrian. She was certainly no filthy, money-stealing, fishy-breathed invader, even if her father was.

“Nonetheless, I want to warn you all that not all half-breeds get the schooling our Mildred is receiving. Some do believe they’re better than us normal Æfrians, and are willing to do anything to get ahead. Even hurt other people. I want you all to be careful, do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am!” the class said.

~~~

The dark water resembled the early morning sky, when the sun was washing away the twinkling stars to herald a new dawn. It waved and boiled, like a rocket fuel heat mirage.

The patrol boat’s invisible controls shimmered into existence as an orange starfield of electronic lights, displays, dials, and switches. Peach-colored plastic formed the background of this constellation. From a set of mesh speakers came numerous, tinny voices. They were the voices of those who had come together to make the impossible possible.

“Guidance?”

“Go.”

“Payload?”

“Go.”

“Booster?”

“Go.”

“T-Minus forty seconds and counting.”

“Switching to on-board power.”

“Go for start sequence.”

“T-Minus eighteen seconds and counting.”

“Fifteen.”

“Twelve.”

“Ten.”

“Ignition sequence start.”

“Seven, six, five—”

Heart pounding, the dawn contracted into a shroud of blue, waiting to be pierced to the dark beyond.

“—two, one, zero. All engines running. We have liftoff!”

The slit of dawn between the cockpit electronics vibrated with Energy. Energy deserving of a capital E. This Energy was the result of a human equation that started in a throne room by imperial command, added together a planning room’s slide rules and calculators, the dreams of a young boy and warfighter pilot, and the fruits of an incomprehensibly complex logistics network.

When the adrenaline wore off, when the vertical Gs relented their tyrannical downward push, Mamoru Hoshi felt the full force of what he’d been trusted with. This wasn’t about his own boyhood dreams. This mission was about delivering a new dream of what was possible to billions of onlookers on the planet receding behind him. His eyes filled with tears that were neither sad nor joyful, but something more complex and more powerful than he could ever describe.