A War Most Modest (JNC Edition)

by Hiroyuki Morioka

  Furthermore, Tlife had the reconnaissance half-fleet, Ftuné.

  Upon hearing the words “reconnaissance half-fleet,” a person not versed in matters military would probably think it lightly armed and almost purely for support, but in fact, little could be further from the truth.

  It is the reconnaissance half-fleet’s mission to rely on their brute strength to peer into hostile sectors. Slow and heavy battle-line warships and weak assault warships would only get in the way. All of their tactical forces are made up of patrol ships. In addition, the dihosmh (supply ships) that accompanied them were the smaller variants, around the same size as the patrol ships themselves, and with the sheer maneuverability and destructive power to match.

  The strength of the fleet was even said to be five times greater than the standard assault fleet. Though it would be difficult to achieve owing to cost-efficiency and operational flexibility issues, there was also an endless supply of zealous believers in the Star Forces who believed that all of its main forces should be composed of reconnaissance half-fleets.

  They were the so-called heavy cavalry unit, galloping across the heavens. And there was no more suitable unit to be the detached force for the pincer attack.

  Tlife considered it for a few seconds. Then, with reluctance, he shot the idea down.

  “No can do. Our goal isn’t battle, per se. It’s simply the retaking of the Sfagnoff Marquessate. This war won’t be over for a while. Even if victory would be absolute, we can’t afford to lose vessels or fleets in a purposeless battle.”

  “But sir...” Chrir tried to object.

  “Shut your mouth, and don’t tempt me any more than you have already!” said Tlife.

  “Yes, sir.” To her chagrin, Chrir held her tongue.

  “So, we’ll be intimidating the enemy as we march, then,” said Cahyoor.

  “Right.” In his heart he was all for the pincer attack, yet he nodded. “We’ll display our might through a horizontal single-line formation, and slowly march our way in. Seeing that, they’d have to jump ship.”

  “Understood. I’ll draft a rough plan along those lines.”

  “How long will it take before we can depart?”

  “What will we do about the patrol ships that are currently on the reconnaissance mission?”

  “We won’t wait for them to finish, of course. We’ll pick them back up on the way.”

  “In that case, it will take under two hours.”

  “No easing up. Do it in an hour.”

  “Understood.”

  Tlife frowned. That Cahyoor accepted that time reduction so readily meant they could in fact take even less time. But it was too late now; he was the one who said, “do it in an hour.”

  “Good. Now do it. If I don’t see a fine strategy in an hour’s time, my disappointment in you will be immense.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He watched the staff officers withdraw to the chicrh ïocsscurhotr (strategists’ room), and at last, Tlife took a seat on the Commander’s Seat.

  Exactly one hour later, Cahyoor presented a ranking order for the march and the scheduled route.

  While Tlife had run his mouth earlier, ultimately, he trusted his Chief of Staff, so he approved the plan without even really skimming through it and issued the order to the fleet.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be retaking the Sfagnoff Marquessate. Unfortunately, we’re going to do it without engaging. If by some unexpected windfall we do plunge into battle, I look forward to watching your beautiful warriors’ dance. Now lift off!”

  Two thousand vessels spouted their propelling flames simultaneously.

  Appendix: Abh Metrology

  The aspect of Abh culture most reminiscent of Earth is their measurement of time. A year in the Abh calendar is also 365 days.

  Naturally, as they have no need to differentiate between a calendar year and the sidereal year, there are no leap years, nor leap seconds. A year to the Abh is always 365 days; a day, 24 hours; an hour, 60 minutes; a minute, 60 seconds.

  Other measurements used by the Abh are based on Earth antecedents. Namely, the meter, which was established based on the length of the equator, and the gram, which is defined as the weight of one cubic centimeter of water under Earth gravity.

  However, care must be taken, because in Baronh, they have their own distinct words for metric system measurements, and the prefix changes with every increment of four digits.

  With the exception of time measurements, measurements are denoted as follows:

  Length... dagh = centimeter (cm)

  Mass... boc = gram (g)

  The following prefixes are attached those basic units to represent larger units. For example, 3 zesadagh is the same as 30 million meters, while 800 üésboc is 8 tons. However, the Abh also use light-seconds and light-years, so units of distance above zesadagh aren’t used all that often.

  Moreover, there is vocabulary for a minute unit system based on the Planck length and the Planck mass, but I won’t get into that here.

  As for flat space, which is governed by different laws of physics from normal space, a different set of units and measurements is of course necessary. That is the “astro-mile” (cédlairh) and the “astro-knot” (digrh).

  1 cédlairh is defined as equivalent to the distance travelled by a space-time bubble of one seboc (100 tons) in one second of space-time bubble time. Meanwhile, 1 digrh is the speed needed to traverse one cédlairh in one hour in space-time bubble time.

  Afterword

  I once read that what Robert E. Howard wrote down — that seminal heroic fantasy series — was what Conan himself dictated to him.

  I’m not normally one to believe in the occult, so I understood that as an episode of subconscious greatness. I thought it an amazing feat of the mind. I was still in school at the time, and I envied Howard, thinking that I’d love to be an SF writer and experience that very same phenomenon. More than anything else, because it seemed so fun.

  The months and years passed by, and some time after I managed to put out my debut shortform story, it happened.

  As I was busy being lonely, staring at my bottle of booze and absorbed in my contemplations, a beautiful woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties swooped down where I was. Her hair colored a deep forest green, and adorned with an exquisite crown, she looked down at me with her striking jet-black eyes.

  What luck, I thought. Since I’m a healthy, red-blooded male, a youthful beauty like her was much preferable to a filth-ridden muscle man like Conan.

  On the dime, I booted my word processor in preparation, ready to listen to her tale. “Err, may I ask you your name first?” I asked.

  Haughtily, she raised her chin and proclaimed: “You will call me ‘Lafier’!” And with that, she vanished.

  “Wait, what about your story!?” But no answer came. All I was left with, or rather all my brain was left with, was the name “Lafier,” and her vivid look and feel.

  I still want to try writing her saga, though, thought I.

  Yet her story as she was now would be too much for a novice writer like me to do justice. As such, I decided to depict her childhood. I don’t necessarily think the inner life of a girl is less sophisticated than that of an adult woman’s in every case, but there is an order to events one ought to follow.

  ...Of course, whether or not you choose to believe such drivel is entirely up to you! Honestly, though, I have faced moments of doubt wherein I question myself whether these people really only exist inside my head.

  For instance, the scene in Volume 2 where Jinto and Lafier are walking.

  Lafier is in a bad mood. A bad mood that even the author doesn’t fully understand, because the author’s point of view is Jinto’s point of view. All I know at that moment is what I know through Jinto, which is that she’s seething.

  What on Earth is she fuming over? And to think, she’s not usually one to shy away from making it clear what exactly is ticking her off... I found myself thinking, much like another charac
ter of mine would be.

  Then, when I stepped out of Jinto and assumed Lafier’s viewpoint, the source of her discontent became abundantly clear. Ahh, of course, given her personality, it’s only natural that would anger her.

  It was a strange experience.

  At any rate, I’m sure you all know the word “slump.” I fear Volume 2 might have been a bit on the plain side, comparatively. On the other hand, it’s the volume that contains my favorite scene. If I told you which scene was my favorite, it would ruin the mystique, so on that I’ll keep my lips zipped.

  Next is the final volume, entitled The Return to Strange Skies. Not only is it the climax, but the increasing roster of characters will also serve to make it a boisterous ride.

  Look forward to it!

  Bonus: The Origins of Baronh

  Now that you’ve read Volume 2, you know the Abh hail from a faction of far-future Japanese cultural restorationists (the reference to a “volcanic archipelago” wasn’t fooling you). That’s part of what makes the concept of Baronh fascinating. It’s a constructed language comprising the distant evolution of what amounts to an in-universe constructed language, albeit one rooted in real-world Japanese. Specifically, a new, purportedly culturally “pure,” atavistic Japanese with all foreign loanwords plucked out (including Sino-Japanese vocabulary), replacing them with constructions using phonology and morphemes deemed to be of homegrown Japanese origins, including archaic language from the time of the oldest texts (as for an analog regarding how different ancient Japanese was, think Beowulf, not Shakespeare).

  For example, this translation opted to call 昇降筒 “elevator-tubes” ( dobroriac in Baronh), but that term actually avoids using the word modern Japanese people would use, which is... the English word “elevator.” Instead, they replaced it with a neologism using the characters for “ascending” and “descending,” which describes an elevator’s functionality clearly and succinctly. You may have already drawn the comparison to the way the French government handles English loanwords. The tension between linguistic pride as cultural pride on one side, and the inexorable flux of language on the other side, has dogged humanity for some time, and will no doubt continue to do so.

  Speaking of linguistic evolution, let’s detail how, exactly, that putative “pure Japanese” shifted over time into the Baronh of the books, in order.

  Change #1: Vowel elision and fusion. (Almost every syllable in Japanese is open, meaning that every consonant is followed by a vowel, but with this shift, Baronh obtains closed syllables, or syllables that have a consonant following the vowel. You can see this in action in the chart below.)

  Change #2: In order to avoid too many homonyms, an increase in distinct kinds of vowels, due to the remaining vowels being influenced by the vowels that had dropped out.

  Change #3: Changes to consonant sounds, such as the denasalization of nasal sounds.

  Change #4: Fusion of word stems and case-marking particles, as well as the accompanying change in the pronunciation of some consonants.

  Through natural linguistic evolution, much like how Old English is incomprehensible to modern speakers, so too did Baronh change drastically from its ancestral tongue (of course, not only phonologically, but also grammatically).

  In addition, MORIOKA has provided four different examples of the step-by-step transformation of words into their modern Baronh counterparts.

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  Copyright

  Crest of the Stars: Volume 2

  by Hiroyuki Morioka

  Translated by Giuseppe di Martino

  Edited by Brandon Koepp

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1996 Hiroyuki Morioka

  Cover illustration by Toshihiro Ono

  First published in Japan in 1996 by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation

  The book is published by arrangement with Hayakawa Publishing Corporation

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

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  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Ebook edition 1.0: August 2019