A War Most Modest (JNC Edition)

by Hiroyuki Morioka

  Lafier wrapped her sash-belt around her thighs and holstered her phaser in it. Her compuwatch, meanwhile, was attached to her ankle, and concealed by her shoes. Finally, the pendant that contained the navigation log was hidden under her “one piece.”

  The deed now done, the two could leave for the city.

  Since it was noon, the road the two walked down wasn’t aglow. The path stretched around 100 dagh above the fields, curving every so often but continuing straight for the most part.

  It was already evening according to biological time, but Sfagnoff’s sun was baking their passageway as it climbed up to its apex.

  Jinto was jealous of Lafier’s hat, and he was kicking himself for neglecting to buy himself one.

  On the other hand, he knew how precious their money was. He’d already used around 200 of the 1,500 deuth he’d been given to buy all their clothes.

  Would it last them until rescue arrived? What would they do if they ran out of money? Was there anyone on the planet magnanimous enough to hire people who’d shown up out of nowhere? If that didn’t come to pass... well, he always had a phaser, and if he had to, he’d make use of it.

  Jinto smirked.

  A royal princess and a noble prince of a countdom. Thieves.

  They’d probably be the most esteemed criminals in human history. Their tale would find its way onto the screen or stage for sure.

  “What’re you smiling at?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Jinto reverted his expression.

  “I see you aren’t nervous at all.”

  “Look who’s talking. You were sleeping like a baby.”

  “Shut up, I was tired.”

  “Whatever you say.” Jinto changed the subject. “I wonder if we look like brother and sister?”

  “I don’t believe we do, given that we’re not brother and sister.”

  “Then we’ve got a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “Cuz I was thinking we oughta pretend to be siblings when in town.”

  “Why must we lie so?”

  “What are we gonna do, tell them the truth?”

  Speaking of which... what exactly was the “truth” of their relationship? Was he a sworn knight of a royal princess? She may have been a genuine princess, but he was no knight.

  Were they a pair of downtrodden refugees? Now that was getting closer to reality. He’d take that over “a trainee starpilot and her human cargo.”

  “Again with the strange remarks. Our relationship is a strictly private concern.”

  “Hey, I agree with you, but some nosy folks might ask. On Delktu, if an underage boy and an underage girl were to stay at a hotel or whatever, the crime prevention division would jump in.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I am NOT a child.”

  “I’m not a kid, either, but others’ll think we are.” Teal Clint’s face bubbled up in his head. “It’s like how whenever somebody tells whoever raised them ‘I’m not a kid anymore!’ They always say, ‘That’s just what a kid would say!’”

  Granted, when Teal said it, it had been true. Jinto had been so young, so innocent... so clueless.

  “But this isn’t Delktu.”

  “No, it’s not, but we don’t know what it’s like here.”

  If Clasbulian culture didn’t look down on marrying young, they had nothing to fret over. They could pretend to be a young newlywed couple — though they were poorly dressed for a honeymoon.

  “Is it that important?”

  “We want to attract as little attention as possible. To be as normal as—”

  “Jinto.” Lafier suddenly stopped. “Am I getting in your way?”

  Jinto was nigh lost for words. “What’re you on about all of a sudden?”

  “If you weren’t saddled with me, you would be able to stay hidden much easier, right?”

  “Look...” Jinto dropped his duffle bag and massaged his brow. He contemplated how best to explain this, and decided in the end to just be forthright with her. “I’ll give it to you straight, it’d probably be easier for me alone in some ways. After all is said and done, I’m a Lander...”

  “You are Abh. Or is being Abh to your dissatisfaction?”

  “Maybe. I do think of it as a bit of a burden. But it’s not like I hate it. It’s just that if somebody asked me, ‘am I Abh or a Lander,’ I’d answer the latter. I was born and raised on land.”

  “I never realized you thought that way.” Lafier bit her lip. “Do not worry about me. Nor the Empire. If you don’t mind renouncing your noble rank, then let’s part ways here. I’ve told you once before: I don’t want to be a burden on you.”

  “Are you serious, Lafier?”

  “I am. I’d be fine without you, anyway.”

  “Where do I start?” said Jinto. He found his voice had gotten tight, too. “I’d be more than fine with renouncing my noble rank, but I have no intention of parting ways with you here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I did that in order to survive, I’d be miserable, that’s why.” Jinto vented his spleen as the rage mounted. “You don’t want to be a burden? But you’d be fine without me? Which is it, Lafier? How’s somebody who’s a burden on somebody else gonna hack it alone, huh? Listen, you brought me here, and I’m thankful. I can’t pilot a spaceship. I needed you. Everyone’s got their strengths, right? You aren’t used to living on a terrestrial world. Well, not that I’m worldly or sophisticated, but at the very least, I know more than you do. As long as we’re using our individual strengths to help each other, why’ve you got to be so fixated on ‘being a burden’? Tell me I’m wrong, Lafier. Am I saying a bunch of nonsense? Or, maybe, I’m the one you think’s a burden. If that’s the case, there’s no helping it: then you can leave your pathetic cargo and get. I’ll let you walk away. But I don’t plan on being the one that breaks us up.”

  As Jinto spoke, a hovercover whisked by.

  “You’re right,” said Lafier, her eyes downcast. “Forgive me, Jinto. You are a man of great pride.”

  “I am at that,” said Jinto, his ire not yet dissipated. “I don’t honestly know if I’m Abh or a Lander, but what I do know is I’ve got pride. Fancy that, the Abh don’t have a monopoly on it. So would you stop coming out with that twaddle? I will NOT leave your side until it’s all safe out there.”

  It was only much later that Jinto would come to realize that when Lafier called him a “man of great pride,” it was the highest of praise.

  “Okay. I won’t ever say it again,” Lafier vowed.

  Jinto’s heart finally died down. “I needed you, and I’ll probably be needing you again. So right now, I’d like you to at least pretend to yourself that you need me at the moment.”

  “No need to pretend.”

  Hearing that, Jinto thought to himself that maybe being an Abh noble wasn’t as awful as he’d made it out to be.

  “Yo ho ho, you two, there, heated, reepee!” Words he picked up in pieces. “Is there, a fight, boy, plus, girl? Girl, there, morn! Girl, there, good, ditch, boy, looks like, shrip, so, come, together, us! Good time, piek, together, us.”

  Jinto turned to look at the source of the voice that’d suddenly accosted them.

  The hovercar that had passed by before had doubled back, stopping right by them. It was roofless. Three young men were craning forward, and jeering something or other. They seemed about the same age, slightly older than Jinto.

  Jinto switched his brain from standard Baronh-mode to Clasbulian-accented dialect mode, but the men’s speech was not only a bit too fast, but also peppered with slang, so he understood maybe half of what was said.

  He’d vaguely cottoned onto how they were mocking them, and extending Lafier a crude invitation.

  “What are these men saying?” asked Lafier blankly.

  “Nothing you need to hear,” said Jinto, slinging his bag back up off the ground onto a shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get a move on.”

  “Okay.” And so they started walking as though the men wer
en’t there.

  “Girl, there, morn! Boy, there, in the way, keepow!”

  “Sheek, reepee reepee, good, piek!”

  “Good, stay, morn, girl!” The hovercar was riding along at their walking speed.

  As for the next thing the men growled, Jinto understood it perfectly.

  “Don’t you ignore us, prick!” The bulkiest of the three young men nimbly jumped down off the car and blocked their way forward.

  “Phew, morn!” he whistled, and laid his hands on Lafier. “Come, let’s have some fun!”

  “No, stop it!” Jinto jumped at the arms manhandling her.

  “Zip it!” He thrust Jinto away.

  Pitifully, that one blow was all it took to knock Jinto off balance and send him rolling down the road back down to the fields.

  “Argh!” Jinto took out the phaser from out of his bag.

  Meanwhile, the man slid down toward the fields after him, charging with his nostrils flared like an ox.

  Jinto pulled the trigger. He’d lost his cool not because he’d been pushed, but because they were trying to harm Lafier. His rage was a frenzied rage; he couldn’t care less if they died.

  The beam that the phaser fired hit its mark, his aggressor’s abdomen... with a flashlight.

  The man stopped momentarily, but when he realized that it was nothing more than a stronger-than-normal flashlight, his lips curled with contempt, and he resumed charging.

  Panicking and flustered, Jinto tried switching the gun from asairtamh (illumination) mode to ultamh (shooting) mode, but couldn’t make it in time. The man was nearly on him, and reaching to rip the gun from his hand, but all of a sudden, he collapsed.

  “OWW!” he wailed, clutching his left leg as he writhed.

  It was her. She’d put a hole in the man’s leg with her phaser.

  In the eyes of Jinto, who’d finally managed to switch it to shooting mode and get back up on his feet, it was as though Lafier had been pulled back away from him.

  Since the man who’d attacked him seemed busy with his squirming, Jinto rushed back up the slope. One of the men had Lafier locked in a full nelson, and the other was trying to pry the gun.

  Lafier’s fighting style was truly striking. She was utterly expressionless, as if to say she didn’t care to so much as lift a single mouth muscle for these losers. She was a silent storm, never raising her voice once as she kicked off her would-be captors.

  The men looked totally confused; they thought the girl would yelp, scream, shriek. Yet things were still looking bad for her.

  “Let her go!” Jinto pointed his gun up to the sky for a warning shot.

  Sadly, his phaser didn’t make a sound. If they’d been shrouded in mist or smoke, a bright shaft of light would have caught their attention, but in this brilliant light of day, it was barely visible at all.

  Jinto aimed it downward. The concentrated light carved the road and instantly sublimated the pavement, triggering a small explosion. Now that caused the two men to freeze.

  “Put your hands up!” he shouted in Clasbulian Baronh.

  Jinto and Lafier then stood side by side, each pointing a gun at one of the men.

  “Don’t shoot, Lafier,” he whispered.

  “Of course not,” she said, shocked. “I don’t plan on shooting nonresistors.”

  “Good, I’m relieved.”

  “Part of me would rather like them to start trying to resist, though,” said Lafier.

  “Yeah, no, I totally do, too.”

  Perhaps Lafier’s sentiments had come across, for the men didn’t budge an inch, their hands still raised high.

  “All righty, boys,” said Jinto. “Your friend down there’s aching something fierce. Wanna bring him up here for me?”

  The two glared at him, but showed no signs of resistance, and went down toward the fields.

  “You are quite adaptable. You can already speak this world’s language?” asked Lafier.

  “There was a trick to it. It’s actually derived from Baronh.” Jinto then addressed the men. “I don’t mind if you make a sudden move; I’ve been wanting to get in some target practice.”

  “Shacoonna!” swore one of them.

  “Aw shucks,” said Jinto. “Thanks.”

  “What did he say?” asked Lafier.

  “Hell if I know. Probably nothing you’d every say in front of a blushing maiden,” he shrugged. “That aside, let’s jack their ride. It’d be nice to secure a mode of transport.”

  “So we commandeer it?”

  “No,” said Jinto, steeling his face. “We aren’t soldiers. We’re not commandeering it. We’re stealing it.”

  “Dispensing all pretense, I see.”

  “Right. We’ll be criminals from here on out.”

  Their actions and appearance made it clear the trio was a bad lot, and judging by how they’d come at them with their bare hands, he could tell there was no culture of carrying weapons on the streets here. So long as they were toting and using phasers, they couldn’t claim to be blameless victims with any persuasive power.

  As such, they were better off playing consummate criminals, but he’d been afraid the royal princess would poo-poo the idea.

  “Sounds interesting!” Surprisingly, she was down. “So we’re now like the robbers I hear tell of?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess.” Jinto had a bad feeling about this.

  The three hooligans had come up to the path. One of them lent a shoulder to his mate. He’d stopped screaming, but his face was still contorted in pain.

  Before Jinto could even open his mouth, Lafier made sure to impress upon them in the Baronh she’d learned in the royal court that they were most assuredly roving bandits, and not the least bit shady like an Abh or a Star Forces soldier might be. She further decreed that though they would be taking the car, this act made the utmost economic sense in light of their being bandits, as mentioned before.

  The men waited out her harangue with expressions of resignation.

  Jinto was perplexed, to say the least. They may not have understood what Lafier said, but they must have realized it was standard Baronh. He could only assume they’d been given away.

  “If you’ve compuwatches or anything else you can use to contact somebody, take ‘em all out, would you?” Jinto demanded, pulling himself together.

  The trio didn’t react. They just glanced at each other.

  “C’mon, look at things from our perspective,” said Jinto gently.

  Lafier had a suggestion: “If you’re afraid we’ll use them on you, then would you prefer we kill you first?”

  Jinto didn’t know how much they understood of her Baronh. Judging by how quick they were to finally react to his demands, they’d definitely picked up on the word agaime (kill), though.

  The men took off the boxes they had strapped to their waists and shoulders and emptied their contents onto the road.

  “That was one effective bluff,” he whispered.

  Lafier stared at him in puzzlement. Her expression, innocent. As if to say, what bluff?

  Jinto shuddered. He moved his gaze off Lafier onto the hooligans. You guys oughta be groveling at my feet in thanks.

  He issued an order to the one among them who had his hands free. “Gather them all together.”

  The young man did as he was told, and Jinto scrupulously blasted the pile of communications devices with his phaser. His aim had been a tiny bit off, but the sensitive equipment was instantly reduced to charred debris.

  “Now then...” Jinto peered into the driver’s seat of the hovercar. This thingie with the two poles sticking out had to have been the rudder. The foot pedal thing adjusted the speed, and there couldn’t be much else to it.

  However, just to be 100% confident: “Why don’t I have ‘em teach me how to drive this?”

  “I believe this one was the one driving,” said Lafier, pointing at the man who had lent a shoulder to his injured buddy.

  “‘Kay. Hop on in, friend,” ordered Jinto, gesturing toward the
driver’s seat.

  Lafier camped herself in the seat behind the driver’s seat beforehand.

  Her gun was aimed at him the entire time he was seated at the helm, while Jinto sat beside him.

  “You two,” said Jinto to the others outside the car, pointing toward the direction away from town, “why don’t you head that-a-way?”

  The man with the injured leg muttered something softly. Jinto brandished his gun. The two started walking, still muttering.

  “Now it’s your time to shine,” he told the driver.

  “As if I’d—” the young man moaned, but once the gun at his back was pressed into his head, he became decidedly more compliant.

  Jinto observed how he was driving, and laid question after question on him.

  It was as dead-simple as he’d expected. No need for any particularly difficult technique. It was a magnetic-resistance-type hovercar. Once the destination was input, the car would drive itself, and it was easy enough to steer by hand anyway. It couldn’t hover unless above the track, so any deviation would require releasing the wheels (much like a grounded car), but that too was just a straightforward twiddling of the controls anyway.

  “Has this thing got some kinda location marker on it?”

  “Location marker?”

  “Yeah, the thing that tips off the place in charge of traffic where it is? Through radio waves?” he explained in simple terms.

  “No. That doesn’t exist.”

  “What’s this?” Jinto poked at the communications-device-looking thing between their two seats.

  “That’s the navigation device. It’s not the car that emits the radio waves. The radio waves tell us where we are.”

  “Gotcha. Show me.”

  The man showed him. A map appeared on screen. The blue dot was probably their position.

  Jinto fiddled with it a bit. It was child’s play to change the scope of the map, as well as to drum up information on the distance to the nearest town, and even open guides on all the major cities.

  “Sweet. That’ll come in handy. By the way, are you sure there’s no location marker? The Traffic Control Office won’t be wanting it?”

  “No, there ain’t no damn location marker. If they knew where every single car was, they’d have access to people’s private lives. That’s why there ain’t any on this planet.”