So, two from One Land, leading three local bandits with no real team training? It would be a way for the terrorist organization to leverage its remaining numbers after its losses at Whittier Base.
Was Heavenly Dragon dead as Jacky’s two? Remembering my Comparative Mythology course, Chinese dragons were elemental creatures. His elements had probably been air and water, an ice-storm personified. So could he drown? If he hadn’t, would he heal?
Zhejiang Air Control handed us off over Anhui and I returned to my outside escort station, but we touched down on HWB Anhui South’s airstrip without any more attacks. HWBAS shared their strip with a joint League-Anhui military training base, and armored trucks waited with their drivers for us to unload in the warm rain.
The base’s military police took away our prisoner, and then taking inventory and dividing up the pallet loads took an hour as the trucks pulled away one by one, headed for the towns and clinics of south Anhui. With each departing truck, my heart lifted a little. Daoshi Ren shook our hands before climbing into the last truck out.
“C’mon, girls.” Eight Ball heaved his flight bag over his shoulder. “Let’s all get something hot in us.”
“Nowhere to go until tomorrow,” Chowder seconded. “And the local cuisine is very good.”
We fell in behind them to cross the half-drowned runway to the HWB building, and I couldn’t help asking, in Japanese-accented English, “Chowder-san?”
“Ma’am?”
“I understand Eight Ball and Cue Ball’s names.” I tapped my head. “But why are you called ‘Chowder?’”
“Because in just about every storm system we fly through, I lose my chowder.”
They took our picture, a group shot of all six of us together to go on the HWB building’s crowded hero’s wall. The base was small and empty now, more a waystation than a base since the major fighting had moved elsewhere. South Anhui hadn’t seen much destructive fighting in the past couple of years; according to Eight Ball its army-stiffened militia system was standing up nicely and its regulars—breakthrough and normal—were forcibly bringing peace to the hill country and rooting the “liberating” bandits out of the mountains. Heroes Without Borders capes hadn’t been needed to help protect the civilian population centers for a while, but like the Shibushi base, Anhui South had all the amenities visiting capes might need. The food sent from town in insulated pails was tasty and filling, and the hot showers were even more welcome.
Alone in the shower, I turned up the hot water until I stood in billows of steam. Wrapped in a towel and wringing my hair out, I found a little coffee-and-cream colored cat sitting on my clothes and tongue-bathing itself. I was so tired I didn’t recognize it.
I tickled it under the chin. “Hello, furball. Are you the station mascot?”
“As if. You’re my human.” The cat stretched luxuriously, jumping down to rub against my naked calf.
“Shell?”
“In the fur. Ozma thinks we need more than cellphone contact when we go back. Did you know she’d packed the drone in her box? Her witchy majesty is pretty smart for royalty.”
I reached down and scratched behind Cat-Shell’s ears, making her purr and arch. “And how are you more than a holographic projection?”
“Oh that feels good. She did her bibbity-bobbety-boo on the drone after I’d powered it up and linked to it. It’s temporary and not like Nox or Nix, but for now I’m an internet-prowling quantum ghost who also really wants some fish. More on the ears now.”
Sometimes my life is too happily ridiculous for words. I sat on the bench beside my clothes, lifted Shell onto my towel covered lap, and proceeded to give her the kind of allover body scratching Graymalkin got if he was a good kitty. Resting my chin on her head, I let her buzzing purrs vibrate through me until the tight cold knot inside untouched by the shower loosened and fell away.
God made cats for a reason.
When I kissed the top of her furry head and set her on the bench she flopped into a boneless purring heap and let me dress without commentary. I picked her up again before opening the bathroom door. Sleep that night found me back on a now-familiar cloudhome, where Mistress Jenia spent the dark hours patiently drilling me on Japanese honorifics, bows, and other modes of politeness.
We didn’t return to Shibushi.
* * *
Jacky said it first the next morning—flat-out stated it. We weren’t returning to the Shibushi base with the Draw Shot. And we weren’t telling Mr. Konishi in advance.
“But he said he would help us!” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter. We don’t need his help now except for the plane ride that gets us back into Japan, and he could just as easily have the Eight Excellent Protectors waiting at the runway for us.”
“He wouldn’t—” I shut up; we didn’t know that, and like Jacky had said, we didn’t need his help now. In an operation requiring secrecy, needless trust was what Blackstone called an unnecessary point of potential failure.
“The thing that worries me,” Jacky went on, “is that he might be twisty and smart. If he is, or whoever he talks to is, then the Eight Excellent Protectors will be waiting for us when we cross into Japanese airspace.”
We still needed to get back into Japan, and if I flew us myself we’d never hit the coast without being shot down or intercepted, so we explained our problem to Cue Ball, Eight Ball, and Chowder. Chowder provided a mechanical problem he needed to fix, promising to finish the job too late for us to get back before nightfall. Which gave us time for other things; we needed to rebuild our “tourist bags.” Fortunately the military base attached to the station was a miniature town with the shops we needed; we found three sets of rolling luggage and bought more clothes, toiletries, and even cheap cellphones.
Staying beyond breakfast meant we got debriefed by Anhui Military Intelligence after all, but they followed the Heroes without Borders rule of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell regarding our identities—HWB had “contracted” us and so presumably vetted us, and that was good enough for them. The fact that we were apparently Japanese (with our chosen codenames it was hard to claim otherwise) kind of shook the two captains doing the interview—Mr. Konishi hadn’t been lying when he told us that Japanese capes just didn’t do East Asia—but they were more than grateful, and now the Three Remarkable Ronin (I still winced at the name) had officially come to China.
The mechanical problem “fixed,” we flew out with the Draw Shot in the late afternoon—timing the flight so that we entered Japanese airspace after nightfall. I flew escort along with a pair of Zhejiang fighters just in case someone was looking for retribution, but nobody popped up to trouble us. Cutter didn’t talk to me, hadn’t in fact said a word after making sure I cleaned him up. The sword gave new meaning to “laconic”—he could out-silence Jacky—and I came inside before reaching Japanese airspace on our pre-approved flight path.
We overflew Kyushu in the dark. Here was where anyone who was going to meet us would say hello, but as I sat in the cockpit with Eight Ball and Cue Ball watching the sky and Chowder manned the radio and radar, nobody rose to meet us or told us to land.
I sighed. “Thank you Eight Ball-san, Cue Ball-san, Chowder-san. Will you thank Konishi-san for us?”
“Sure kid,” Eight Ball laughed. “And be safe—we’ll see you around the world sometime.”
I stepped back into the cargo bay where everyone else waited. Since I was the load-master for this, I’d thought a bit and finally tied our new luggage pieces together, wrapped them in black plastic trash bags, and hung them on two lengths of rope. Jacky could do a free-drop carrying Shell, going to mist to break their speed at the end, which left me Ozma. Her majesty was fine with perching on the luggage bundle with a safety-clip to the rope. Jacky had suggested she play green jar again, but she demurred to save her magic reserves.
Hitting the button, I ignored the flashing red light as the ramp half-lowered and wind filled the bay. I stepped off to fall with Ozma and luggage held snug, turning to watch Ja
cky perform a very nice swan dive into the night above me before orienting to the ground and watching our horizon. When no one came for us in the air where we were most vulnerable, I released a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
The lights of Kagoshima spread out in a hatch-pattern east of us, irregular outthrusts of neighborhoods and absorbed towns reaching into the dark wooded hills below. Our L-zone was Higashisakurajima, a little village with a big name, west of the city. I’d picked it for the proximity of forested hillside to the train station, and nobody raised an alarm when we dropped silently into the trees. At nine o’clock we boarded the train, and at nine-thirty we checked into a trackside Kagoshima hotel to sleep. The infiltration of Japan, take two.
With Shell curled up and cat-snoring on top of me, I didn’t dream of the tree.
Chapter Thirteen
Defensenet Report, Shibushi Alert Development: Asset-in-place at HWB Shibushi Base reports arrival and departure of Active Non-Government Powers, heard to identify themselves as the Three Remarkable Ronin. See subsequent report of HWB Anhui mission. According to the asset, the ANGPs did not return to HWB Shibushi Base; current whereabouts, inside Japan or mainland China, are unknown.
Defensenet Recommendation: Stand down Shibushi alert, issue restricted countrywide watch notice to all observer assets.
DR106-BV [Classified]
* * *
The next morning we bought an epad and a carry bag big enough for Shell at a local corner store.
Despite being a flesh-and-blood cat, Shell was totally handy with our earbugs and the satellite uplink, and she synced herself with the epad to download our travel directions. Watching a cat work an epad is an interesting experience.
I couldn’t imagine how I could have gotten around without Ozma and her Comprehension Drops. I’d been an anxious child, bothered or scared by a lot of things: doctors (with good reason), frogs, loud noises, trees (bad movie experience), and even existential things like unfamiliar places (I’d hated sleeping in hotel rooms, and not being able to read directions had given me the willies). I was a long way from that scared little girl and I’d eventually seen a lot of Europe, but at least the signs there had been written in an alphabet I knew—here I wouldn’t have even been able to sound out what signs said unless they were also in English (and while a lot of them were, you couldn’t count on it).
We used a teller-machine at the hotel to stock up on yen, then found a place to eat breakfast that served recognizably American entries (the ramen had been nice, but I think we all wanted a little of the familiar). Cat-Shell insisted on trying the breakfast sausages. Remembering how much Graymalkin liked them—and the inevitable aftermath—I saved some napkins.
Trains run everywhere in Japan, or almost everywhere; the Shinkansen lines, Japan’s system of high-speed trains, would get us from Kagoshima to Osaka by way of Fukuoka. From there a train ride and then a taxi would get us to Tenkawa, the little village in the shadow of Mount Omine where we would find the Miyamoto family grave. I paid for our tickets with yen while Ozma used a casually carried mirror to “do something” about the station’s security cameras. As usual her explanation didn’t make sense, but it boiled down to “Visual review and facial recognition systems won’t recognize us.”
So she was concerned about Mister Konishi’s reliability, too—or assumed that our fight over China had been reported by somebody.
And we’d left a group picture on the wall of the HWB base—even with the black shades, enough for facial-recognition software to scan for matches…and why don’t I think of these things? I needed to kick my own ass.
We took a pair of facing seats at one end of our train car, and Jacky used her vampire mojo to push the other passengers until they were uncomfortable enough that our end emptied and we could let Shell out of her bag.
Nobody said “The cat’s out of the bag.” I was very grateful.
“First the good news,” Shell said. “I’ve piggy-backed on the epad and I’ve got great news access. The Eight Excellent Protectors are back in Tokyo and none of the other Defensenet teams are making any big moves.”
I bit my lip. “Who did you hack for that?”
“I signed up to a dozen fan sites under a dozen dummies. Over here nobody watches capes—powers—like their fans do.”
“Worse than home? How—” I shook my head; I really needed to stop getting sidetracked. “So it looks like nobody’s looking for us?”
“Not in the cape-crowd, anyway, and if anyone was connecting an explosion offshore of Kyushu with the Three Remarkable Ronin that’s what you’d expect.”
“That’s good. So what’s the bad news?”
Shell hunkered down, nervously kneading her claws in the seat. “There’s an obstacle I didn’t know about. I should have.”
Jacky folded her arms and I took a moment to smile; with Ozma and me easily able to pass for sweet-sixteen, she looked like the long-suffering college grad babysitting her teenage cousins and pet. “Talk. I can hurt you when you’re like this.”
“Tenkawa’s haunted. Well, the graveyard is and that’s where we’re going.”
* * *
A haunted graveyard. Really. Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t know about ghosts; Jacky had one living in her residence, twenty-four hour coffee shop, and private investigator practice. Acacia treated it (him, he was a dead gang kid) like a pet and knew how to keep him happy. Whether ghosts had always been around and were just “stronger” in the Post-Event World, or they were simply breakthroughs who thought they were ghosts and behaved accordingly, they were real enough. And the ghosts in Japan were scarier.
A lot scarier. The Japanese love their ghost stories, and their stories give them real teeth. Sometimes literally.
Shelly spelled it out—a bit over four years ago, the little graveyard in Tenkawa became deadly ground and reports were pretty clear about what was there: a shinigami, a death-spirit. Stories about shinigami vary—in some they’re demons, in others they’re yurei, evil spirits of the dead fueled by a serious hatred that twists them and won’t let them “move on.” In life their hatred might be focused on one person, but in death it becomes a hatred for all that lived.
Shinigami can kill. This one could apparently kill with a touch: seven victims had been found in the graveyard in the last four years, hearts stopped, faces frozen with horror, guilt, or grief. The last victim had been a supposedly powerful onmiyoji—an imperial sorcerer, servant of the Chrysanthemum Throne. Since then nobody had entered the graveyard even in daylight. Nobody knew why it was there (there hadn’t been any deaths and burials corresponding to its appearance), and so nobody knew how to get rid of it. The only reason anyone still lived in Tenkawa was it couldn’t leave the graveyard.
Great. Just, great.
“So now we’ve got to be ghost-busters?” Jacky asked. “Does it attack everybody who enters, or just the randomly unlucky?”
“It used to be just the unlucky, but the onmiyoji ticked it off. Now everyone who enters sees it—and runs real fast.” Shell was almost hissing, and I wondered if she realized how instinctively her cat-body was reacting.
“Is it stronger at night?” Jacky dug.
“Nobody knows, best guess is no.”
“Good. Ozma could level me up so I can mist in the sunlight again, but I’m really still best at night.”
Ozma nodded, shook her head. “My magic really does not deal with spirits—I’m afraid there is not much that I can do directly.”
Good to know. “Shell? What was the physical cause of death for its victims?”
“Heart failure from extreme pulmonary stress. Why?”
“Um.” I thought hard. “Then I might be immune. At least partially. I can take a lot of stress and I do heal fast. Even if it takes a shot at me, I should be fine long enough for me to get what we need and get out. Right?”
Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games Page 12