“Well, Persimmon, two days from this very moment we may be toasting amid rubble,” Tetsuo Genji said.

“Perhaps, Vice President. But there are matters which still concern me,” Persimmon replied.

Tetsuo looked at his subordinate over the cup of warm saké pressed to his lips. He set it down on the wooden tray laid out for them outside a hangar at the Boruhizu airstrip. Farther afield, below a cold, steel-gray sky, gunships and warfighters were taking off and landing from interception runs. According to intel, the air above Tо̄tо̄shi was almost theirs

“Matters such as Sayuri Ueichi?”

“Her among them. Two matters are of immediate concern regarding capturing Tо̄tо̄shi, the third pertains to the long-term success of our coup. May I speak freely, Vice President?” Persimmon said, standing at ease.

“You may.”

The Vice President of Genji Heavy Industries was in an unusually good mood. The initial setback of failing to secure Sayuri and frame the Momojin had, for the past week, turned him into a one-man tempest of rage. The worst of it had come when it appeared Ueden had rallied their allies. Several of his pillows were hospitalized and had to be paid off.

However, of the consequential conglomerates, only Kintoki Arms Services had answered Ueden’s call. As the long week dragged on, it became clear Ueden’s own mobilization efforts had been torpedoed by succession squabbles. Kintoki alone presented a threat to Genji hegemony, and it was only a matter of time before they surrendered.

As a paramilitary company, their organization, training, and equipment were second to none. But unlike Genji Heavy Industries, they did not build the little things. They built aeroplanes but not the tools to maintain them. They built trucks but not axles. Tinned meals with other conglomerate’s ingredients. But Genji built everything. Now all he had to do was strangle Kintoki logistically, by land, sea, and air.

Even worse for Kintoki, their business model was in services. Services meant people, and people were unreliable. Once their employees learned they would not be paid for putting their life on the line, old man Kanichirō, Kintoki’s clan patriarch, would come begging for mercy. All that was left was for the Genkai-Wabu to spark a riot among the lard-eaters and even the Genji factories Kintoki had requisitioned would be useless to them.

“Repeat that. I wasn’t listening,” Tetsuo said.

“Of course, Vice President. I was saying that my first concern is that we have lost track of Sayuri Ueichi. We know from satellite surveillance she arrived in Tо̄tо̄shi—”

“Our plans no longer require her. Even if Kintoki acquires her, they do not have time to cut her open and reverse-engineer her kinkawa. We have all the time in the world to track her down,” Tetsuo said, proud of his own growing capacity for patience.

“I understand, sir, but as we lack complete knowledge of what her hatsuden is capable of—”

“I will make those determinations, Persimmon. Not you. I appreciate your respect for hierarchy. Show it to me by not questioning my judgment.”

“Yes, Vice President,” the man-ape said.

Tetsuo motioned for his executive assistant to pour him another glass of saké. “So, concern two of… three was it?”

“Yes, Vice President. The other immediate concern is Thomas Chester. That would be the ex-Grenadier we intended to frame for the assassination.”

“I don’t care about his name, Persimmon. Why is he important?”

“He’s a kinketsu. He was part of the experimental squadron the Imperial military was playing around with. Are you familiar?”

Tetsuo raised an eyebrow. He was not, but the only reason he cared was that the “kin” in kinketsu, was “gold,” and ketsu…

“They stuck kinkawa in their bloodstreams? Why? What for?”

“The Emperor, or more specifically Defense Minister Koizumi, wanted soldiers with the advantage of hatsuden but without the ability to use it against their superiors. Gold leaf, like all solutes, cannot pass the blood-brain barrier. The electrical currents are not under the control of the soldier injected with it, and the kinkawa lies dormant until one of two conditions are met.”

“Which are?” Tetsuo asked, his anger rising at his executive assistant who had yet to intuit his desire for another cup.

“Normally it’s activated by a command from an ISF soldier with a specific oral kinkawa implant. This was how they were controlled during the war. I know, because I was given this implant. Sayuri Ueichi, I suspect, may also be able to do this.”

No longer willing to wait, Tetsuo took the glazed decanter from his assistant and drank straight from it. “So the girl has an Æfrian pet! Charming. And this scares you, why?”

“It does not scare me, Vice President, but it makes Sayuri difficult to intercept when Thomas accompanies her. Some kinketsujin were reported to continue fighting after being shot in the head. Perhaps this will not be an issue, but benign tumors can become malignant.”

“You don’t intend to become a doctor, do you Persimmon?” Tetsuo said with a smirk.

Tetsuo found his joke rather funny. As did his executive assistant and three reserve staff standing around the two of them. Persimmon did not find it funny, which is how Tetuso knew that it was not funny after all. Tetsuo despised when Persimmon turned the mirror back on him, but he forced himself to stomach it. Persimmon was his clearest path out of self-delusion when surrounded by sycophants.

Persimmon’s only blemish was that he clearly disdained the conglomerates and harbored delusions of a return to military governance. Most of Genji’s ex-ISF employees did.

Fortunately, this strain of disloyalty was easy to manage. Tetsuo found it trivial to anticipate the man’s intentions. He predicted Persimmon would attempt some kind of mutiny if he thought he could use Sayuri Ueichi for his own ends, perhaps try to turn her against Genji so that he could set up his fantasy military junta.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Tetsuo had contingencies for that.

“And condition number two?” he asked.

“When they become suicidal, kinketsujin have been known to acquire a sort of instinctual usage where their lower-order thinking takes over. It renders them unpredictable threats.”

“Interesting factoid, but these are tactical concerns. Do you have any matters at the level of grand strategy?”

Persimmon nodded. “One. It regards the operation to destabilize Kintoki by escalating the strike into a riot.”

“Do you have issues with the plan? Persimmon, it was your plan,” Tetsuo said.

“I know, Vice President, but my job is to inform you of all possibilities.”

Finished with the saké, Tetsuo dropped the decanter onto the tarmac where it shattered into pieces. One of the reserve staff leapt to sweep it up. A pretty young Kaihonjin with a bob cut. Persimmon was making Tetsuo want to hit her.

“You have another thirty seconds of my attention before I must return to business,” he said.

Persimmon cleared his throat. “Since launching this operation, the Genkai-Wabu has been made aware of rising membership in the Grand General Union of Workers, or GGUW, colloquially known as the Zukunashi, or “Zooks.” Additionally, the strikes are shifting in tone from being anti-Kintoki to anti-Kaihon and anti-Propertist. I believe there exists the possibility of our artificial riot escalating into a revolution.”

Tetsuo laughed at that and begrudged Persimmon’s ability to tell better jokes than he.

~~~

It took most of the afternoon to deal with Mamoru’s body. Milly had to negotiate with the striking workers to lower the river boom and then they had to find a place to dock and hide the boat with a human body in it.

After asking someone for pen and paper, she wrote a letter detailing who Mamoru was, where to find him, and what had happened to him. Once written, Milly could think of no better delivery device than folding the letter into an airplane and launching it at the first colonial policeman she saw. Whether everything worked after that was up to Loothsa.

Her and Thomas’ next step was to find a Lofhearth to bed down in. While attempting to find one, they ran into a major issue. Surrounding every old tower, abandoned temple, and decrepit meeting lodge were demolition crews wearing Kintoki colors. Thomas and Milly arrived at one in time to witness a controlled demolition turn a pre-Colonial cobblestone tavern into rubble.

The neighborhood gathered in the square out front of a tenement row to watch. The children were excited by the fun explosions, but the adults observed the destruction of their environment through steely eyes. Milly could tell what was going through their minds: A desire for revenge, and the feeling that they had no power to achieve it. The people who owned the soil under their feet could choose to make these decisions for the neighborhood on a whim.

“Why? What is Kintoki doing!?” Milly said.

“Smoking out the Zukunashi,” Thomas replied.

“By knocking down thousand-year-old inns?”

“I guess so.”

Milly didn’t dare think after a quarter century living under the Shroud now would be the moment the Æfrians finally did something about it.

Thomas took a sip from Mamoru’s donated flask of whiskey. “Anti-insurgency was one of my duties during the occupation. It took us a few years to learn what works and what drives people into supporting radicals. And that—” Thomas pointed at the smoking rubble in view of hundreds of tenement windows “—makes radicals. Kintoki is forcing them to pick between them and the zook.”

That was oddly comforting to Milly. She didn’t consider herself either a member of the GGUW or a Companionist, but she was tepidly sympathetic towards them. After the nationalist movement she grew up in collapsed under the Shroud, the Grand General Union of Workers was the only organization still fighting for a free Æfria. Even the less-radical unions were content to bargain with Kaihonjin management.

When they were done staring at the wreckage, dusk was beginning to settle. Street-lights came on which meant the strike hadn’t turned into total anarchy yet. Somewhere further up the coast the Shroud must have been active.

“Well, we’ve got some money left. Should we try and find a proper inn?” Milly asked.

Thomas nodded. There wasn’t much point looking for one girl in a strange city in the middle of a political crisis and while processing a companion’s death. But if Milly hadn’t said anything, she knew Thomas would’ve done exactly that.

The best they could find was a wide, flat, dodgy-looking building pressed up against the riverfront with shuttered street-level stores. The only thing that announced there was an inn in it was a neon sign that hung over a steep set of stairs.

The “lobby” doubled as a record store. Thomas had to ask where the inn was to learn that it was the inn, and that another narrow staircase in the back led up to a spare loft on the sixth floor. Milly convinced Thomas not to haggle over the inflated rate.

“How much for that?” Milly asked, pointing at a half-drunk bottle of Tim Hartley’s sitting on a stack of records.

“500 dō,” said the pimply-faced young man running the inn and record store.

“What!? It’s 100 for a full bottle!” Thomas said.

Milly handed the boy the money, snatched up the bottle, and led Thomas by the wrist to the hallway stairs. “Supply and demand, Tommy. He’s got us by the balls.”

Even in the squished building, the room they got was twice the size of Milly’s room at the Silk Pillow, with a double bed, dresser, bathroom, and radio set. A door facing the river opened to a narrow balcony with only enough room to stand. So that’s what Milly did.

The stink of the river and the salt from the ocean and the odor of burning rubber from the tire fire across the river filled her nostrils. She sucked it all in until her chest hurt. Thomas stepped up behind her with the uncorked bottle of Tim Hartley’s and passed it to her and set his forearms down on the steel handrail. She took a few hard pulls and recorked it.

“How the fuck did we get here, Tommy?”

He said nothing for about a half a minute and then said, “by boat.”

That earned half of a chuckle. She changed her mind about corking the bottle and drank from it more and passed it back to Thomas who drank more as well. Milly looked up at the darkening sky where supersonics were bypassing Éstfýr and penetrating into the heart of Æfria.

Milly sighed. “I knew you cared about her, but then I went and got attached too. The little shit…”

Thomas said nothing as he watched workers throw things onto the tire fire. Dark smoke from further inland hinted at similar scenes. His body wasn’t in the best shape she’d seen, but it was still solid, with the kind of sturdy reliability of a hometown hill. You thought it was just a hill until you came back years later and there it was, and there it would continue to be.

Milly went behind Thomas and started pulling the jacket from around his shoulders. “Let’s get you out of this smelly old jacket.”

“I thought you liked my grenadier’s jacket?”

“What do you mean?”

“Years ago, back when… well, when you finally started to warm up to me working at the brothel, I wore my jacket to work one day and you said it looked good on me.”

Tears drained from Milly as she laughed so hard her chest hurt. Her hand covered her mouth and every time she tried to uncover it to say something, more laughter burst out. A confused Thomas waited for the fit to die down.

“Oh gods Tommy… Is that— pffbt! I-Is that why you’ve been wearing that thing this whole time?”

“You don’t like it?”

Milly wiped her eyes. “No! No, it’s a fine jacket, it’s just… well-used. When things settle down, we’ll go get it cleaned.”

After that, he let her pull the jacket off. Then she started on his shirt.

“Wait, Milly, are…”

“Of course we’re going to fuck! This is the first night we haven’t been on a boat with a little girl and an old geezer,” she said, exposing his big hairy gut.

“But didn’t you not know if—”

“If I’m in love? I still don’t. That doesn’t mean we can’t fuck. Are you complaining?”

He shook his head and pushed her down to the bed and started rolling her dress up.