"I'm glad you were all so eager to talk to me," he began with a smile, eliciting a nervous chuckle from the villagers. "And I hope you don't mind that I invited a few close friends along." Parameswara's hand swept around, taking in the more than two hundred that accompanied him.
That earned another mass chuckle, a bit more sincere than the first. After all, why not? He hadn't killed anyone yet and it never hurt to laugh at someone else's jokes. Even Chang Tsai, the chief of the village, joined in the laugh. He, most especially, feared being dead soon. What better reason to try to ingratiate himself with Parameswara?
The Malay chief had a gift for oratory. He spoke of the rising sun and the setting sun. He talked of the low tide always returning as a new high. He talked of the Prophet and he spoke of the Buddha. He waxed eloquent over the future and the past.
What he means is, we join him or he kills every man, woman and child in the village, thought Chang Tsai. It would be better to join.
15/3/467 AC, Kamakura, Yamato
Yamato had this much difference with the Salafis; whereas the Salafis emigrated to Terra Nova to recreate the seventh century of Old Earth, Yamato had preferred recreating the latter third of the nineteenth and earlier third of the twentieth, with a profound nod of respect to the thirteenth through seventeenth. About the entire Pearl-Harbor-to-the-deck-of-the-USS Missouri fiasco, back on Old Earth, they preferred to forget (though the rebuilt Yasukuni Jinja had some hundreds of thousands of mementos). They were none too interested in delving too deeply into the mistakes of the Great Global War, either.
That meant, in practice, that the Imperial Court still had tremendous power within the country, though the power was almost always expressed subtly. Indeed, it was usually expressed so subtly that no one could really be certain what the Emperor actually meant, most of the time. Some of this was, of course, in the way questions to the Throne were phrased.
"His Highness said what?" asked Mr. Yamagata of his colleague, Mr. Saito. Each was a representative of a major shipping company. Yamagata's brought in oil; Saito's exported finished goods.
"I mentioned to His Highness," answered Saito, "that ships bringing oil to our land endured many dangers. He answered, 'Sometimes we must endure the unendurable.'"
Yamagata took off his bottle-thick glasses and cleaned them with his tie.
"That is a remarkably forthright answer from Him," he observed. "It seems clear enough, then, as clear as it ever is, that the Imperial Navy is not going to help us. What do we do then?"
"I came to the same conclusion. As to what we must do, I asked the Emperor, 'Shall not the sons of the Son of Heaven resist tyranny and robbery?' He answered with the questions, 'Does not the law forbid private persons from bearing arms? Has the land not seen untold misery from uncontrolled violence?'"
"Shit!" exclaimed Yamagata.
"Shit," echoed Saito more softly. "It was a curious audience. Before I left, His Imperial Highness said, 'Sometimes, we must allow ourselves—like Miyamoto Musashi—to be tossed about by the waves of the sea.'"
Yamagata's left eyebrow lifted, subtly. "Wave tossed? Ronin?"
Ronin meant, in Japanese, "wave man," as a masterless samurai was said to be tossed through life on the waves. Many ronin, throughout the history of Japanese culture (which history and culture were largely carried over to Yamato on Terra Nova), became mercenaries. Miyamoto Musashi—old Japan's "sword saint"—had been ronin.
Saito shrugged. "That much of His Highness' words I did not comprehend."
"Perhaps I do," answered Yamagata.
BdL Dos Lindas, Mar Furioso, 3/22/467
The seas were calm and the waves were light, the ship barely taking notice of them.
Montoya took his meal standing in the crowded wardroom. There were seats, a few of them, available, but he'd discovered he really enjoyed watching the maintenance crews in the hangar deck at work. There was a euphony to it, a symmetry. Of course, the irregular pounding from the engine repair shop next to the wardroom was anything but euphonious.
Working in harmony together or not, the crew was frazzled; there was no better word. Montoya had flown three training missions yesterday and two already today. This was bad enough on him; on the ordnance, fuel, maintenance and deck crews it was simply exhausting. And that bastard Fosa showed no indication so far that he intended to let up for an instant.
Is he going to push us until half of us are dead? Already, half a dozen pilots and twice that in deck crew had perished under the relentless drilling.
From the speakers Montoya heard played six notes of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, then, "Battle stations; battle stations. Pilots . . . . "
Seems he is.
Montoya's plate was dropped and he was out the door before the speaker had a chance to finish, " . . . man your aircraft. RPV pilots to your stations. Cazadors to the assembly area on the hangar deck."
A few weeks ago there'd have been a mad dash for the hatch and a human traffic jam both there and at the ladders leading topside. The sailors and pilots moved just as briskly now, but they'd learned the techniques of transforming themselves from a mob to a mass. Montoya waited his turn at the hatch, then again at the ladder, before easing himself into the only kind of river that flowed uphill.
* * *
Topside, Montoya saw what he'd expected to see. Three Crickets were parked in a shallow upside down V just forward of the carrier's Island. Well behind those were half a dozen Turbo-Finch Avengers in two Vs. On the port side the men of the alert company of the Cazador demi-cohort struggled to organize themselves before boarding the eight Yakamov helicopters lined up along the angled deck.
At the top of the ladder Montoya turned half right, which is to say toward the stern and the Finches, and began to trot to where a staff officer of the air group was sorting pilots to planes.
"Montoya!" the staff weenie shouted to be heard over the growing roar of engines and the loudspeakers on the island playing Ride of the Valkyries. "Number four spot. Your load is rocket and gun pods. Tribune Castillo is Air Mission Commander. Orders will be radioed just prior to take off. Go, son!"
* * *
The crew chief for the plane gave Montoya a leg up onto the wing. Standing, he threw one foot over onto the aircraft's seat, then pulled in the other. To save half a second he'd developed the technique of simply tossing his legs out from under and letting his ass slam into the seat. As his ass hit, his hands were reaching for the helmet. Only when it was on, and a commo check made, did he begin to strap himself in.
The radio crackled. "Boys, this is Castillo. Target is a small boat about seventy five miles from here on a heading of Three One Two, I say again, Three One Two. Just FYI, the skipper informed me that the target boat is small, fast and under radio control so it is going to be a bitch to put down. There'll be a control boat about two miles to the north of the target. DON'T go after the control. It's painted white while the target is sea green so even you blind bastards ought to be able to stay away from it. Now let's wait for the Crickets to get out of the way and we'll take off in standard order, One through Six."
"Any questions?"
32/3/467 AC, FSS Ironsides, Xamar Coast