by Mark Wandrey
“She would no longer be in pain.”
“And she would no longer remember her husband and the good times.”
“Or the bad,” the Wrogul insisted. “I believe this balances out.”
“That is not your decision to make,” Sato told the young alien, which ended the conversation.
Rick wondered on their flight from Detroit if Dakkar was considering these moral issues, or if it had simply stopped thinking about it. Sato was quite right, the Wrogul didn’t think like a Human. Of course, his very presence with Sato was living proof that the alien didn’t have any sort of moral code to justify its action.
He remembered that there were Wrogul working in lots of places doing pinplant and surgical work. He’d heard it was the Wrogul who’d adapted pinplants for use by Humans. He shuddered at the thought as he considered what the aliens could do if they ever became mad at Humans.
“We going to be here long?” Rick asked Sato.
“I don’t think so.” He examined the taxi landing as he used the local Aethernet to summon a ride. “We need a hotel for a short time so we can keep Dakkar out of trouble while I follow this lead.”
“From the box in Houston?” Rick asked.
Sato nodded. “Leaving our Wrogul friend unattended is not an acceptable option right now. So I’ll go on this one alone.”
“Not an option, sir.”
Sato turned and looked at him. “I think I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m not convinced of that,” Rick admitted. Sato’s eyes narrowed as the flyer he’d ordered came in for a landing. “We’re both in the same boat; we’re both suffering from memory loss and intermittent recall. You’re being led down a rabbit hole by your memories. Who’s to say which ones are real and which aren’t?”
Sato took the key out of his pocket and dangled it before Rick. “Are you saying I’m imagining this?”
“No, I’m saying you don’t know what comes next. We’re on Earth because of a hunch. We went to Houston on the same hunch. Now we’re halfway around the world, based on a key you found in a storage box. What does it mean? What will you find there?” He’d told Rick about the museum the key was linked to, but not what it meant. Rick had researched the museum, and it was mainly Japanese history of space flight starting with JAXA, on through first contact, and then to the Japanese space navy unit Night Birds.
“You’re making me sound a little crazy.”
“We’re both a little crazy.”
“What about Dakkar?”
“We’ll find a hotel we can be sure he’ll stay out of trouble in.”
Sato made a face but then slowly nodded. “We can probably find somewhere to keep him buttoned up.”
“We’ll have to pick a place better than the kind of dumps we’ve been staying in,” Rick said.
“At least we can get Dakkar some fresh seafood to munch on.”
“After that last stunt he almost pulled back there, we should leave him to eat recycled food in the module.”
Rick looked at Sato, and the two grinned. They moved the module aboard the flyer and flew away from the port.
* * * * *
Chapter Eight
Rick’s points proved too difficult to counter. Ultimately Sato was forced to concede; having the Æsir-equipped former marine accompany him was smarter than leaving him to watch Dakkar.
They stopped off at a fish market first. It was now early morning in Tokyo, the ideal time for such a trip. The fishing ships had just offloaded their catches from the night, and a thousand vendors were selling all manner of sea life for consumption. The Japanese people, a massive population on a tiny chain of islands, had long ago learned to appreciate everything, from sea urchins to kelp.
As they maneuvered the long lines of stalls and tanks, Sato felt a memory tickle his mind, though nothing fully materialized. In the end, they settled for a bag of live crabs and another with half a kilo of seaweed. Dakkar kept up a running dialogue the entire time, everything from his desire to try several different crustaceans to how he didn’t appreciate them talking about him. Sato wondered if he should have left the two-way communicator off in the module.
Dakkar really wanted to eat the crustacea fresh out of the tank.
“Do you want us to pop your tank open in an open-air seafood market?” Sato asked.
“What difference does it make?” Dakkar asked.
“You look like seafood.”
Dakkar was quiet for a long pause. “Oh.”
An hour later via surface cab, they’d checked into a hotel. Sato found it via the Aethernet as specializing in aliens. When they’d pulled up to the hotel, a trio of MinSha were having an animated conversation. The three didn’t seem to pay any attention to the Humans and their cargo. At least Sato didn’t think so. Since the MinSha were similar to praying mantises, their compound eyes made it difficult to be sure what they were looking at.
As the hotel catered to aliens, there were no Human personnel. Instead, it was operated by bots exclusively, including at the door. A pair picked up the support module and loaded it onto a similarly robotic cart to be taken to their room. There wasn’t even a desk, only a Tri-V-style kiosk, where a simulated AI would answer any questions or requests.
“Modeled after a hotel you’d find on many space stations around the galaxy,” Sato said.
“How come there aren’t any like this in Houston startown?” Rick asked.
“Japanese are a little different in the way we adopt technology and processes.” Sato shrugged. “Goes back to the era of the Shoguns. In 1869, we were a feudal country; by 1900, a network of trains ran throughout the country, telegraph was in every city, and local rule replaced feudal lords. It happened really fast. Of course, it also created an overly patriotic attitude fueled by xenophobia. That didn’t end well.”
“World War II,” Rick said.
“And then some.” Sato might not remember much about his earlier life, but his memory of Japanese history and the never-quite-admitted atrocities committed in the name of the Japanese Empire were firmly on his conscience. After the war, the country had all but committed ritual seppuku for its former warrior spirit. It had taken nearly a century to find their will to defend themselves again. Of course, nuclear weapons had a way of adjusting your attitudes.
The hotel might be the most modern in Galactic Union terms, but it was also the smallest, reminding Sato about a fact of Japanese hotel rooms. Space was at a premium on an island nation, especially one of many hundreds of millions. Once the bots deposited Dakkar’s module in the center of the room, Sato and Rick had to carefully maneuver around it, as it took up nearly a quarter of the total floor space.
“Pretty tiny for 500 credits,” Rick muttered.
“This is actually fairly roomy for a two-bed,” Sato said. “Since you’re good standing or in a chair, I almost went for the one-bed, but there wouldn’t have been room for Dakkar.”
The module door popped with a hiss, and the Wrogul immediately surfaced. “Food?”
“Well, priorities first,” Sato said, and got the bag of crabs. Rick fished one out of the bag. He wasn’t concerned about the pincers. They were rubber-banded closed, and even if they slipped, the crab would shatter its claws on the alloy of Rick’s hands. He didn’t even get the flailing crab into the water before a tentacle shot out and relieved him of it.
“You’re welcome,” Rick said as the alien disappeared below the water to eat.
Sato helped ensure Dakkar had eaten his fill, eventually releasing the surviving crabs into the support tank, where they’d be sustained as well until its owner was hungry again.
Sato went around the room, inspecting the design. He’d known the alien architecture was on purpose to make off-world visitors feel more at home. However, he also knew it likely meant it was compatible with space borne construction. After a short time, he confirmed. “It’s airtight.”
&nbs
p; “Why would they do that on a planet’s surface?” Rick asked.
“I doubt it was the intention. Likely it’s just a side effect of the designs they purchased. Whatever the reason, that means we’re safe leaving our Wrogul friend in his food-induced coma.” Dakkar floated on the surface of his tank, lazily paddling through the water and toying with a dismembered crab claw.
Rick glanced around and at the Wrogul, then nodded. “You were expecting this?”
“I suspected an alien-centric hotel would be like this. Glad I was right.”
“Okay, we need to head out?”
“Yeah, the museum opens in two hours,” he agreed.
After taking a few minutes to once again be certain their Wrogul charge couldn’t easily make good an escape—relatively confident—Sato donned his old uniform, once again bereft of insignia, and the pair left the hotel. The MinSha were gone, but a solitary purple ursine Oogar towered over them by the door, using an improbably small slate, and roaring his annoyance at whatever he was reading.
Staying off public transportation, though it was extensive and cheap in Tokyo, they took a flyer instead, now that they didn’t have the bulky, heavy support module. Robotic, like the hotel, it took them up into the carefully controlled traffic patterns.
Tokyo had more flyers of all types by population than any other state on the planet. They’d also largely stayed out of the merc war of occupation because there were so few Japanese mercs and they made an official statement of neutrality. This was chafing relations with other states, who held more loyalty to the mercs who’d kept the planet fed than to a government that only treated them as a cash machine. The end result was even more traffic than before the war, as proportionally more commerce shifted to the Tokyo Starport.
“I hope we’re not at a higher risk being here,” Rick said.
“Probably some,” Sato admitted, “but this is where I need to be.” He had the key in his hand and was turning it over and over. “After I’m done, we’re in a good position to go wherever we want from here, too.”
Rick sat quietly as the turbojet-powered flyer carried them onward. Sato examined the cab’s controls. The robotic vehicle was capable of independent flight and was currently following specific control from a ground-based traffic control computer. Various status indicators explained how it was operating at the moment.
The flyer was Human manufactured. Sato had seen more than enough such machines to know they weren’t made by aliens. However, there were clearly a lot of alien-manufactured components. He knew this because Earth manufacturing had never reached the point of being independent of alien component suppliers for any meaningful quantities. Out in the galaxy, somewhere, existed manufacturing bases vast enough to fuel the many thousands of races. Most date back to the Dusman, he thought. Once again, a bit of information bubbled up from his screwed-up memory. He deeply wished he could know just what he knew. Not to mention why a trip to 2nd Level Hyperspace had begun to cause this info to float up from the depths of his damaged memory.
His fantasizing about disassembling the flyer was interrupted as it beeped to notify passengers it was descending toward the requested destination. Sato looked out the transparent side bubble of the canopy at the museum complex approaching below them. The dome over the outdoor exhibits was partially translucent, so he could only see vaguely ship-like shapes.
Beyond the museum in the near distance was Tokyo Starport. Dozens of starships squatted in their landing bunkers. Several were warships. A fat orbital transfer ship lumbered into the sky and side slipped into an ascent corridor. A moment later the launch laser fired into the ship’s booster engine, ablating the material and generating thrust. The ship climbed, quickly accelerating into the early morning sky.
The flyer dropped below the level of the dome, blocking his view of the starport, as the fans increased power, bringing them to a smooth landing at the designated zone.
The Museum of Aeronautical and Space Sciences had once been in Narita, which was annexed when the airport became Japan’s starport. The Japanese, never one for lawlessness (in their opinion), and firmly against personal firearm ownership, had created the startown on the opposite side of the starport. A high perimeter fence and careful security checkpoints kept anything from spilling out into the sanguine countryside. The museum had once been on starport property, but only briefly.
Once they exited the flyer and it had leaped back into the sky, the pair looked up the long rise of stairs to the modern concrete building. The main doors were flanked on either side by a pair of old-style chemical rockets. On the right was a Lambda rocket and launcher, the first used by Japan in the 1960s. The left was an H-IIB. The Lambda was only a dozen meters tall, transporter included, while the H-IIB towered over it at 56 meters.
“We didn’t study the Japanese space program,” Rick noted as he looked at the rockets.
“Japan didn’t go big into space,” Sato said. “We were making progress just before First Contact, though. We’d even sent a sample return mission to an asteroid.” He walked toward the entrance. “The H-II family was manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.”
“Didn’t they help develop the CASPer?”
“Actually they did it all, at least the Mk 1 through Mk 3, before things kinda fell apart. I never found out what happened, something about an internal political thing at MHI.” Sato shook his head. “We’re an overly proud people when it comes to technological developments. The only thing we would never take credit for is failing. Eventually when internal squabbling stalled the development, Cartwright bought out MHI and formed Binnig. The rest is history.”
Inside they paid 1,000 ¥ each to a robot kiosk. Sato plunked a 1 credit chit into the machine, curious what it would do. It dutifully provided change in yen. He gave a little smile, proud of his people. They walked through the doors into the museum proper.
The first thing they saw was a large, round atrium with a skylight admitting the morning sun. In the center was a fusion plant. The sign stated it was a 12-C Fusion Plant, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2030.
“Just five years after first contact,” Rick noted after reading the sign.
“We were a lot closer to sustained fusion than the aliens realized. We just hadn’t figured out the lasers for initiation—and, of course, F11. Without F11, it was a bitch and a half controlling the radiation and containing the reaction.”
“But no reactors are made on Earth.”
Sato nodded. “We could, the problem is all the components that aren’t made here.” He narrowed his eyes, and information bubbled to the surface. “The flow of F11 began to dwindle when we tried to tool up to manufacture fusion plants, too.”
“Well, that’s dirty pool,” Rick said.
Sato laughed and patted Rick on his armored shoulder. “The guilds are all out for themselves. It might keep government from favoring any one business interest over another, but it helps those businesses become monopolies and pick who they want to do business with.”
“That goes on here, too.”
“Yes, but not on the same scale as out in the galaxy.” Sato shrugged. “‘Every form of government is inferior to whatever you’re using at the time,’ is an old saying. Most aliens grudgingly like the Union because there have been no all-out wars in 20,000 years. However, there have been thousands of small- and medium-sized ones.”
“How big is this war on Earth?”
“On the scale of the Union? Barely worth noticing. Outside of the Cresht Region, home sweet home, I doubt it made the news.”
The 12-C fusion engine was flanked by massive Tri-Vs showing films of Japanese scientists building the reactor. These movies were playing on a loop. There were maybe a dozen people in the atrium looking at the reactor or watching the movie. The museum had opened 15 minutes before they arrived. What with it being a weekday, he wasn’t expecting many others this morning.
The museum was laid out in such a way as to encourage guests to follow a route that would le
ad them through Japanese space development starting with the Lambda, and ending with current projects. Deciding he didn’t want to buck the trend, Sato strolled along the indicated display route.
There were branches off the route covering rocket-era flight, airplanes, gliders, and even balloons. He passed those, as well as early rocketry and the obligatory national flagellation over WWII.
Finally they reached the first starships. These were Tri-V presentations of Japanese citizens visiting ships in orbit. Sato read that these were the few who’d joined in the Alpha Contracts. Japan’s warrior spirit, Bushido, wasn’t quite dead. She’d sent 42 of her boys and girls to the stars, mixed within six newly-formed mercenary companies. None of them had returned home.
Further on was the Kōkishin, Japan’s first spaceship post-first contact. Capable of continuous thrust via a fusion torch, it went out to Saturn for a month-long exploration, fulfilling its namesake, Curiosity. The entire ship was in the museum, carefully restored to the condition it was in when used. The Kōkishin had suffered irreparable fusion core damage after a bad landing. Sato moved on, though Rick lingered a few moments.
Sato passed two more ships. Both were like the Kōkishin in that they weren’t starships. The first true starship was near the end of the tour. Sakura Maru was a Maki-designed ship purchased essentially as scrap by the Japanese government. Refitted as best as the nation’s industry could manage, it was crewed with the best and brightest the nation had to offer, and sent to the stars to explore, make friends, and trade.
It was similar to the Chinese Zaoshang, the first Human starship. Japan had never liked learning about the universe from unknown peoples or aliens. The expense of buying, outfitting, and supplying a starship was immense for a nation as poor as Japan was, at least on a galactic scale. The population was overwhelmingly in support of it.
Sakura Maru, Cherry Blossom, was like Kōkishin, a permanent part of the museum. The main crew gangway was open, allowing guests to visit. It was recreated in detail, and a Tri-V was playing a scene from the ship’s departure ceremony.
