Blade Flyer (1)
I'd been up early, watching Franc draw a fine comb through Miho's tail, when a lieutenant commander of the U.S. Navy arrived to collect us. He led us down to the Ala Wai boat harbor, where a gunmetal military boat sat waiting. A fast assault craft—was that what they called it? Whatever the name, the fast assault craft was there for us.
We took it out into the waters off Honolulu, and before long we were closing on a warship more than a hundred meters stem to stern.
We transferred onto that lone ship and met the Pacific wind between Oahu and Kauai. An hour's sail to the northeast, and two aircraft carriers came into view on the open ocean, attended by cruisers, destroyers, patrol vessels, and warships of every other stripe.
So this was the famous Pacific Seventh Fleet?
Near the surface around the carriers, Spatial Perception picked out five cruiser-sized submarines, running quiet beneath the waves.
Put a price on all of that and you'd be into the hundreds of billions of dollars, easy. And yet... take it in with your own eyes, and against an aberrant the whole formation was nothing but one very large firework.
"Impressive."
Expensive fireworks, I'll give them that.
The lieutenant commander who'd come for us seemed to take the admiration in an entirely different spirit. He squared his shoulders, swelled up, and opened his mouth.
"It is certainly a rare sight, the U.S. Navy's Pacific Seventh Fleet and Russia's Pacific Twenty-Fifth Submarine Division gathered in one place. Turn over the history books and you will not find a precedent."
"Yes. Ships enormous enough to pass for structures at sea, all massed together—there is something in that which stirs a man. Against a Blade Flyer, though, they won't be able to do much."
"I-is that so..."
The remark must have struck bone. He turned his gaze toward the carrier, looking thoroughly awkward.
We boarded, and under his guidance I walked the narrow, tangled passages inside the hull. Sailors or marines—I couldn't tell which—saluted as they passed. The salutes were for the lieutenant commander. Their eyes were on Franc, Hwayeon, and Miho behind me.
He noticed, and apologized to the women for the marines' discourtesy. A new century or not, he said, beautiful women were rare aboard a warship cut off from land, and he hoped we would understand.
Leaving small ripples in the marines' hearts, I followed him and took in the carrier's bones through Spatial Perception, and somewhere in the middle of it I found myself running back over what I knew of the Blade Flyer I had to take down.
I'd be fighting the thing in a sea cruel to anything human, and the reason that didn't frighten me much was the Wall of Space. I had the Mermaid's Pearl besides, which would let me breathe underwater.
At last we reached the carrier's control center, the command room high in the island, and the people gathered there took one look at me and went rigid—well past mere tension.
The room was scarcely thirty square meters. Naval commanders and operations officers from Korea, the United States, and Russia stood around a large table fitted with a panel showing a map of the Pacific. They must have been in conference before we arrived. The air had a heat to it.
Eight commanders between the three nations, me and Hwayeon, two B-Class water-attribute ability users out of the G.S. Raid Team who were billed as its deputy raid leaders, and a woman who was a manager or something of the sort—thirteen people on their feet, and a command room that wasn't particularly large looked packed to the walls.
The moment I stepped in, I put Hwayeon out in front and dropped back a pace to watch them.
Silence had fallen the instant we arrived, and the generals—they were generals, weren't they?—had been doing nothing but eye one another. A young officer beside a bald man in a spotless white uniform, hung with a complicated spread of medals and rank, spoke up with a tense face.
"It is an honor to meet the distinguished flag officers and the foremost raiders gathered here. This is Vice Admiral Robert Phillips, Commander of the Pacific Seventh Fleet."
The bald man beside him removed an admiral's cap of white, black, and gold, and dipped his head.
Wait. They hadn't been in a meeting? Then what was that heat in the air a minute ago?
At the Seventh Fleet commander's nod, a middle-aged man on the opposite side—black uniform, three stars on the insignia—stepped forward and spoke for himself.
"Great honor, to meet commander of Pacific's supreme fleet in this manner. Vice Admiral Boris Isaac. I command Twenty-Fifth Submarine Division."
"Vice Admiral Kim Haehyeon. I hold the post of Commander of Naval Operations for the Republic of Korea Navy."
They hadn't even greeted one another? How sharp had the air been in here? A little thrown, I watched them trade introductions, and the man said to be the G.S. Raid Team's Second Boss turned his eyes on me.
Sharp-faced, he ignored the soldiers' looks and stared straight at me.
He was a B-Class water-attribute user, with hair the color of a pale sea, rippling as if it might spill. The clarity of that water-light seemed to show exactly how pure his ability ran—how unmixed.
Same B-Class, and the branch chief I knew had only ever managed a cloudy red.
Besides the man called Second Boss, another woman had hair of nearly the same water-light, and the faces were alike enough that I wondered... siblings? She and a red-haired woman who seemed to be the manager were visibly unable to keep still.
Why so uneasy? I watched the two of them a moment, then met the staring man's eyes with a look that said and what do you want me to do about it? His brow twitched. Slowly, he opened his mouth.
"Michael Granado. Sub Master of the Granado Sparta Raid Team."
Granado? Albert, the A-Class of the G.S. Raid Team, was a Granado too. What was the relation? The man hadn't taken his eyes off me for a second. At that, Hwayeon stepped forward.
"Yoo Hwayeon, First Boss of the Grand Blue Raid Team. This is the Master of Grand Blue, Chairman Jung Seoha."
"A pleasure. Boss Yoo Hwayeon. Chairman Jung Seoha."
Michael Granado answered her and still did not look away from me.
The officer types glanced my way as well, as if waiting on an introduction of my own. When I showed no intention of speaking, they coughed through the awkwardness and got the meeting properly underway.
The soldiers took the lead and began drawing up a raid plan against the Blade Flyer. I had neither much to say nor the knowledge to say it with, so I turned and looked down through the clear glass behind me into the command-and-control center.
Dim inside. Desks in long rows, computers and monitors packed tight, and electronic gear whose use I couldn't begin to guess. Navy personnel sat before it all in headsets, mouthing complicated strings of signal code.
The wall ahead of them was lined with enormous, paper-thin monitors. On the screens, the carrier's flight deck and a chart of the surrounding sea drew themselves out in dense figures and graphs.
"Does the Chairman of Grand Blue find the standard of those gathered here too low to take an interest in the meeting?"
I'd had my eyes on the oversized monitor showing the flight deck when a man's voice came from behind me, clear and bright.
I turned. Michael Granado was watching me now with a sharp look, and the generals around us were watching too, a little tense. I shrugged and answered.
"I stepped back because I thought a non-specialist with no relevant knowledge stepping forward would only be a hindrance. This room holds nothing but specialists in naval combat. A high school student with scant knowledge pushing in would be ridiculous. And in a place like this, our First Boss is far more capable than I am."
I said it with a slight smile, and the American and Russian commanders and their chiefs of staff let their stiff faces go and smiled, just a little.
Our own chief of staff and the operations officer, though—I couldn't tell you why they were still frozen solid.
"...I apologize for the discourteous remark. Even so, the Chairman of Grand Blue is a central figure of this raid. I judge it proper that he take an interest in the meeting."
"Sure."
Michael eased a little at that and, reasonably enough, drew me into participating. He wasn't wrong, so I agreed without a fuss and went to stand beside Hwayeon.
Meeting or not, the ones who'd be fighting the Blade Flyer were me and Miho, weren't they? As far as I knew there was no special file left on that flying fish. Hard to see why we needed a meeting at all.
"Of course the battle with the Blade Flyer is the Chairman of Grand Blue's to fight. Even so, ought we not settle the particulars, against the chance of signal jamming?"
There were a few things I wanted to point out. That challenging look didn't sit well with me, though, and the women behind him were flustered enough that I suspected some scheme. I didn't particularly want to mix words with him.
For the moment I did as he said and looked down at the panel. A three-dimensional chart of the North Pacific had come up on it, Hawaii and the west of the North American continent visible at a glance. On the sea between Hawaii and the western seaboard, a single red dot pulsed, throwing off a red wave at regular intervals. Off the waters northeast of Hawaii, countless blue dots crowded together, radiating blue.
Was the red dot the Blade Flyer?
I was staring a hole through the panel when Vice Admiral Robert Phillips, commander of the American fleet, spoke with a face that had loosened another degree.
"The red dot the Chairman of Grand Blue is looking at is the Blade Flyer's position."
"How are you tracking it?"
"Three days ago, in a joint operation with the United Kingdom, we succeeded in attaching a position-tracking transmitter to the Blade Flyer."
"Seriously?"
I looked at him in surprise, and Vice Admiral Phillips grinned and worked the panel until a video of a single scene rose in the center.
"As you see, from four days ago we set three enormous container ships running the Pacific route. The vessels were loaded with a great many tracking devices—powerful adhesive units."
The three ships had been looping from Japan through Hawaii to San Francisco on the American west coast, and back to Japan again. Three days ago, two of the three took a Blade Flyer attack and went down.
Whatever had pissed the thing off so badly, it hadn't stopped at tearing the container ships open. It had smashed them to pieces. The trackers packed into the containers were caught in the currents the Blade Flyer kicked up, jammed into the gaps between its scales, and a fair number swallowed outright. The flying fish was left, quite literally, swimming around with tracking devices stuck all over its body.
"That's something. Once electronics actually work, pinning down a location gets a great deal easier."
"Nothing grand is in this meeting. We give support only, so Chairman of Grand Blue has no inconvenience facing Blade Flyer."
That was Vice Admiral Boris Isaac, commander of the Russian submarine division, black uniform and all.
Support? Had he not seen the thing rip destroyers and cruisers apart in a single pass?
"The battle with the Blade Flyer will be conducted by our Chairman alone, with Miho and Darky. I was given to understand that this fleet's purpose is the recovery and salvage of the Blade Flyer's carcass, and the hunting of any school of them that might be out there."
Hwayeon said it from beside me, her face slightly set, and Vice Admiral Robert Phillips wiped the cold sweat from his brow with a handkerchief before he answered.
"Of course... by what was agreed beforehand, that is only natural. But however outstanding an ability user the Chairman of Grand Blue may be, this is the sea. Should any harm befall the Chairman's person, it would be no small loss to humanity."
"On the contrary, stepping forward would hinder the Chairman. Fighting alone, or fighting while minding something you are obliged to protect—which of the two is harder ought to be plain."
"If we take Boss Yoo Hwayeon's words as they stand, you mean to refuse even the aid of our G.S. Raid Team? A considerable number of Russia's wind- and water-attribute ability users are gathered on this carrier as well."
Michael Granado said it to her with a somewhat stiff face, as if he thought they were being dismissed. The American and Russian commanders wore the same stiffness.
These people seemed to think they were going to take the Blade Flyer alongside me. I caught Hwayeon by the shoulder as she started to speak again, and spoke in her place.
"Anyone here who can move at the speed of sound?"
"What are you—"
"Anyone who can land an effective hit on a Highest-Rank Variant from several kilometers out? Anyone with a means of stopping a Blade Flyer's attack?"
"..."
"Ten B-Class ability users, and a fleet of cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats, and they couldn't land a single effective hit on a Blade Flyer before they were wiped out. A fight has to be between things of roughly the same build. Send six-year-olds up onto a ring where heavyweight boxers are going at it, and what do you think happens?"
At that, the generals and the G.S. people all shut their mouths. Their faces pinched. Being likened to six-year-olds had clearly stung their pride.
"I'm not looking down on any of you. It's only that what we have to fight this time isn't ordinary. That's where the problem lies."
"Even so, is the Chairman of Grand Blue not also B-Class? However far your ability may stand outside the ordinary, I believe it will be dangerous."
"That's why I brought this one. And that one."
I said it to Michael, who was frowning and shaking his head, water-colored hair swaying. I drew Darky out of the breast pocket of my jacket to show them, and pointed at the giant monitor in the command-and-control center, where Miho was caught with her seven white tails.
Before we'd come up to the island she'd whined that it was stuffy, so I'd sent her out on deck with Franc to play.
Seven tails swaying, she was toddling all over the flight deck, fox ears flapping with delight as the U.S. Marines plied her with chocolate bars and lollipops. The personnel in the command-and-control center were watching the feed and breaking into giddy little laughs.
"...Surely that girl with the tails is not the high-tier subspecies called Miho, from the video the Chairman uploaded himself?"
"That's her. And this one's a Dark Matter Slime I tamed. Darky."
"Hk—"
At the introduction Darky worked his mouth and waved a hand with vigor, and the people startled so hard they backed all the way to the command room wall. They hadn't realized the head peeking out of my pocket was a Dark Matter Slime.
Michael looked startled too. A little cold sweat, a look at Darky, and then he nodded with a sour face.
"...A Highest-Rank Variant, and a high-tier subspecies. Reason enough, certainly, that you would find the rest of us in the way."
The other two commanders and the officers swallowed hard and wiped the nervous sweat from their brows.
After that, the talk moved at a clip.
Michael Granado didn't open his mouth again. He stood with his back to the wall and kept his eyes on Darky, perched on my shoulder.
The soldiers confirmed how I fought, and after a brief discussion it was settled. The fleet would hold here, and move if I spotted stray aberrants with Spatial Perception and sent a signal—or once I'd thrashed the Blade Flyer.
"Which would be more useful—the Blade Flyer, or the Rogue Imugi?"
The meeting ended. I traded brief greetings and names with the commanders who offered them—the G.S. lot still didn't come near me—caught Hwayeon by the waist, used Space Leaping onto the carrier's flight deck, and put the question to her.
She understood I was asking which of the two to dominate with mental manipulation. She thought a moment, glanced at the island, and whispered.
"Tame the Blade Flyer, put it to use when we fight the Imugi, and tame the Imugi after. Would that not do?"
I headed for Miho and Franc, standing far off at the carrier's bow, and felt the marines around us stealing glances at Hwayeon.
"That's not going to work. The Rogue Imugi is a land creature, and the Blade Flyer is a marine one. And if I'm going to subdue the Imugi, there's a good chance I'll have to absorb the Blade Flyer's Phase Power to do it."
"Hm. A foolish answer, then. The Imugi is a thing of the land. A Blade Flyer could hardly help in that fight. Still, the Imugi ought to be able to act underwater as well. If a choice must be made, I think it is the Imugi."
"Ah, that's not it either. The Imugi seemed to hate water, for some reason."
In the first run, when I'd swum for my life to get away from it, it hadn't followed me under.
"Hm? Is that so. Then both have their merits and their faults, and the choice looks difficult. But if we are to face more marine aberrants from here on, I suspect the Blade Flyer is the more efficient of the two. Land and sky, after all, we already have Miho and Hiarid."
"But think about how strong the Imugi is, and it's a shame to give that one up too... Even limited to land, factor in a wide-area lightning attack and the size bonus, and the Imugi would be far stronger."
"Hmm..."
I'd been hoping for a counter from Hwayeon, but she seemed to be turning my point over as well. Her mouth closed, and she sank into thought.
Which brought something else to mind. Even if I meant to dominate the Blade Flyer with mental manipulation, the question was how much Phase Power the thing had. The higher, the better—but too high, and with mine sitting near nineteen million, I wouldn't be able to dominate it at all.
An aberrant had to be paid for with half the Phase Power it held. Allow for a real fight along the way, and if the thing was at thirty-five million or above, I'd have to give it up. Wounding it into meekness and only then laying mental manipulation on it was never an option to begin with.
It was a Highest-Rank Variant. Fight it while holding back? I wasn't about to try anything that heroic.
Still walking toward Franc and Miho, ringed by marines in the distance, I looked around. The islands of Hawaii showed small on the northern horizon. Everything else was open sea, shouldering its waves.
A hard sea wind drove against me. I looked up, and far across the sky a bank of dark cloud was rolling in.
A storm, maybe...