Ten Thousand Years of the Kusari Republic (redux)

[SupcommMonroee]

Up until the evening, Chokai remained diligently on station at the Kepler gate. No more escape attempts were made by rogue KNF personnel, which was a great relief to both Kyoko and her crew, but the atmosphere remained altogether tense. The stale taste of anxiety was in the air; bridge crew jumped at the passage of little phantoms in the vast expanses of the Keiun Cloud, and shifted whenever a convoy coming down the lane from Deshima Station wasn’t immediately identifiable in composition by ship silhouette alone.

The Chrysanthemums, too, seemed to have caught the scent on the air. Surely they knew of the developments in New Tokyo as soon as or even before Honda and her crew. A single small attack had been attempted by a group of six fighters, but they resolved not to test their luck when the Chokai came into view. It seemed that the Chrysanthemums did not have sufficient fighters and bombers at the ready that day, as they did not return with reinforcements or heavier equipment. Instead, they skirted the edges of the destroyer’s sensor range, popping in and out of sight alone or in groups of two, three, or four. Altogether, those tense hours standing watch at the Kepler gate were anxious and stressful in equal amounts.

Some hour and a half before Honda would’ve ordered supper to be brought to her crew’s duty stations, KNF command had finally sorted itself out. The Chokai was ordered off of sentry duty and directed to return to Deshima. Kyoko sincerely hoped that their patrol wouldn’t be examined with exceptional scrutiny. She trusted her crew and their respect for her and her status as a minor legend, but nobody yet knew how sternly the new government would look upon allowing traitors to escape without a fight. Naturally, she would not divulge this information herself unless pressed, but others might not assume that such knowledge could prove harmful for her career, or possibly, her life.

The captain shoved these thoughts to the furthest recesses of her mind. For the time being, the priority would be sorting fact from fiction about any changes in Naval Forces command and the government itself. KDS Chokai moored at Deshima, alongside a batch of reinforcements in the form of two destroyers and five gunboats. Kyoko assumed they would be deployed to watch the Kepler and Galileo gates soon enough.

Once aboard the station itself, Kyoko, with the help of Nobuyuki, dug up whatever KNF orders or reorganizations had been sent out amidst likely administrative chaos.

“I’ve received one response from command regarding our orders, Captain. We’re to stay at Deshima for the time being, but we must be ready to sortie out on an hour’s notice.”

“I assumed as much. We can be ready in half that time. Anything else?” Kyoko leaned forward at her desk in the station’s Naval Forces Shikoku Squadron offices. A bit cramped, but they served their purpose; only a few captains and administrative officers were there even once a week. Other times, they’d either be on duty aboard their ships, or aboard the Myoko.

“These other ships moored with us are from the Center Reserve Squadron out of Yukawa. They’re the destroyers Mikuma and Mogami, and gunboats Banjo, Atago, Ataka, Chiyodagata, and Tsukushi. I’m sure more ships will arrive soon, but for…”

Honda became too preoccupied with her own thoughts to continue to actively listen to her second-in-command. The Mogami. That was still his ship. At least, that’s what Kyoko thought. She had fallen out of contact with him in the previous few weeks, and the last she had ever heard from him was that there was discussion of scrapping some of the Naval Forces’ older destroyers, the Mogami among them. Surely if that idea had fallen through, he would still be in command. The Onna Bugeisha’s lips curved upward.

“...so that estimate may be off, but I doubt it’s too far from what the figure will turn out to be.”

“I’m going to meet with Commander Takenaka, and discuss what’s going on. Maybe he’ll be privy to information that hasn’t reached Shikoku.”

“He’s the captain of the… Mogami, correct?”

“Yes. Dismissed, Lieutenant Commander. Join the rest of the crew for supper. Kill any rumors or ideas before they get off the ground if you get the opportunity.”

Kyoko stepped out of her claustrophobic workspace. Almost adjacent to the KNF offices was the receiving point for moored State Police and Naval Forces vessels and their crews. It was an inglorious chore for Kyoko to force her way through the tide of disembarking crews from the reinforcing gunboats and destroyers as they pushed onwards to the food courts, but she finally found an officer managing the flow of crew with a datapad in his hand. His collar devices clearly designated his rank.

“You there, Ensign!” To the officer, Kyoko’s commanding tone, pointing, and aggressive way of pressing through the crowd were all warning signs that he had broken some critical regulation and was about to be on the receiving end of a stern lecture and disciplinary action. He froze and stared like a deer in headlights, until Kyoko clarified, “Where is Commander Takenaka? Are you with the Mogami?”

The ensign softened his stance, pressed a few buttons on his datapad, and replied. “Yes ma’am. The captain wrote that he’d be out in the biodomes when he signed out, in case he was needed. If you’re from Fleet Forces, I can-”

“Thank you Ensign, that’s all I needed.” Kyoko turned on her heels just as the words left her mouth.

It was easier for her to exit. Kyoko was at the tail end of the crew mob, and fortunately, her route caused her to part ways with it just as the hundreds of destroyer and gunboat crewmen reached the bottleneck entrance to the food courts. Through the myriad twists and turns and corridors and modules, it took at least ten minutes for the destroyer captain to arrive at the biodome entrances.

Unfortunately, she had neglected to ask which biodome Takenaka had resigned to. Even if she had, he probably hadn’t even specified when he signed out. Kyoko reasoned that the domes to the left and right of the central management module wouldn’t be ideal places to go for a stroll, due to their designation as strict farming domes, but that still left two domes ahead of her.

It couldn’t be exceptionally difficult, at least. For all their size and abundance of flora, the biodomes not restricted to subsistence agriculture didn’t offer many different walking paths. When Kyoko stepped inside the first dome, a rush of cool, fresh air blew past her face and through her hair. She had certainly been inside biodomes before, but the feeling of comfortable and natural air was a special delight to anyone used to working long-term aboard starships.

Honda did her best to take in the refreshing atmosphere of the biodome as she fast-walked through the twisting paths, passing the occasional civilian or Guild member every now and then. When passing through an intersection of walkways in a particularly densely-forested section of the dome, the sight of a yellow leg was caught in the corner of her vision just before it disappeared behind a corner. A yellow leg was a Kusari uniform. The Naval Forces. Takenaka. Kyoko sprinted after it, but just as she turned the corner she saw the yellow uniform disappear behind, she found that she was at yet another intersection.

The destroyer captain sighed. It was almost like he was trying to lose her in the artificial forest. But just as she began to walk down one of the three directions at random, she heard a wonderfully familiar voice behind her.

“Looking for me, Commander Honda?”

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Royce.O'Hannigan / KDS-Hiei

"Real G's move in silence like lasagna."