It is He That Saith Not Kismet, it is He That Knows Not Fate

“A representative legislature? After the Anglo-American fashion? Why would I want that? The samurai are doing a fine job running this country. Why should I hand it over to the merchant class?”

–Date Yorimune, Shogun of California, to an American journalist, 1914.

Jen Higuchi read Otto von Reibnitz’s email for a third time. It wasn’t a language issue that was getting in the way– his Japanese was excellent, and he was even beginning to sprinkle it with California’s peculiar English and Spanish idioms, though his habit of writing it out in Latin characters with every noun capitalized could be a bit jarring. It wasn’t a complicated subject matter, either– he just wanted her to call up a supplier and ask if they could make some cast parts on short notice. No, she had a hard time absorbing it because of what else weighed on her mind.

She glanced out her office window, the inward-facing one that opened to the factory floor. Chris was walking over to Cristina’s station, his legs still shaky from hours in the simulator. The welding tech tousled his hair as she showed him the receiver of Don Juan’s new weapon system.

No arrogance of caste at all. He only ever got haughty about what he could do from the cockpit of a Ki-16C, and now from the cockpit of a Duelist. It frustrated her, and fascinated her. This was not how samurai were supposed to behave. Not that there had been many samurai out in Salt Lake City– U of U was more of a Third Estate school– but she hadn’t imagined another way they could behave except coldly imperious.

Chris laughed warmly at something Cristina said, then glanced up at the row of engineering offices. Jen turned abruptly to face her computer screen.

It was stupid of her to try to sleep with him when she did. She’d only tried it because of the intelligence she might get out of him– at least, that’s what she had led Jensen to believe, though that line fell flat when she muttered it in the mirror. Well, whether she listened to her ideological part, that wanted Chris to get crushed like a bug by some American, or to the emotional… maybe just carnal part that wanted… other things for him, there was no point now to anything but keeping a respectful distance and trying again later. CIA didn’t need her information yet, after all, and she didn’t want them screwing up and leaking more of it to MSI. That was needlessly dangerous, to her and to Chris. After all, wouldn’t the personnel file she was building on the Shogunate’s pilot be useless, were he killed before he ever fought the Americans?

Damn it, Jen, what are you even trying to accomplish anymore?

Her phone rang. It snapped her out of her brooding so abruptly, she didn’t check the caller ID.

“Yes! Hello?”

“Higuchi!” General Earp drawled over the line. “You gonna make it for the Cuba trip?”

“The what, general?”

“Well, shit, I must’ve forgotten to loop the engineers in. Yeah, soon as that new weapon’s done, we’re shippin’ Chris down to Cuba for a few days. Propaganda thing, mostly, Shogun’s court wanted a few photo ops, but I reckon it’ll also be a good field test.”

“The hell? Begging your pardon, my lord, but Cuba?”

“That’s why I’m givin’ the civvie ground crew a chance to opt out. Should be fine, though, we’ll be in and ‘round Santiago de Cuba. Bourbonists have the city… seventy, eighty percent under control. As clear of battle lines as you’re gonna get in a guerilla civil war.”

“I’ll… have an answer for you by EOD, general.”

“Won’t be nothin’ to it, Higuchi.” Earp clicked off.

Jen blew on her bangs as she leaned her office chair back. Fucking Cuba?

On one hand, she didn’t sign up to go to a warzone. Not with the Security Directorate, and not with Jensen and his spy outfit. But hell, maybe it was safer than staying here and letting the Gendarmes trace the leak back to her. Santiago wasn’t that far from Guantanamo Bay, maybe she could make a run for it, have the CIA hide her away somewhere in northern Maine or the Texas panhandle.

No, probably not something to plan for, at least, but she’d see if the opportunity presented itself. In the meantime, she owed Chris and the people of Mexico City a little risk– really, she didn’t want Chris to lose this Duel. Unlike some people who got into the whole Smithian thing in college, she didn't believe for a moment that Colombian central planning made for a less tyrannical state than the modernized feudalism of the Shogunate. She didn't sycophantically idolize the American system, either, but at least they had a foundation both just and sane in Lockean liberalism. The samurai rhetoric about the States being a mercantile oligarchy disguised as a representative democracy wasn't baseless, but Utah would do it better. Just as soon as they got rid of the Omura daimyo…

Chris, meanwhile, was admiring Cristina's handiwork on a giant welded tube with a passing resemblance to both the American Stinger and the Russian RPG-29, scaled up to fit the Don Juan's proportions. It wasn't an actual rocket launcher, more like a cross between a recoilless rifle and a coilgun, but the projectile was where the real engineering had gone.

“So, mijo, I think I understand the gun itself,” Cristina said as she marked a step complete on her work order, “but the, eh, shell is like a… taser, for a Duelist?”

“Not a bad metaphor, but the way Shinzo explained it to me, it's functionally closer to something between a flashbang and a neurotoxin. Ever heard of an EMP?”

“My nephew brings them up from time to time. He’s something of a, uh… prepper. Something to do with nukes?”

“It's a secondary effect of nuclear weapons, but these shells will produce them from a much, much smaller explosion. Big electromagnetic disturbance, tends to knock out electronics. I think the high explosive in it is just to drive a little piece of metal through a charged coil, if I understood Shinzo right, but EEs really have their own private engineering language not meant for normal ears, don’t they? I did understand that the coil gets charged from the main reactor through the conductive plates they just installed in the Don Juan’s hands.”

“I do remember the wire harnesses getting put in for those, before we had to rush to finish for the first match. Could you use those plates like a stun gun?”

Chris shrugged. “Maybe if I could grab a motor or something, complete a circuit through a metal part. But at that point, the hands should be able to crush whatever it is, anyway.”

Cristina eyed the tube for a moment, then looked up at Chris with a start. “Could this knock out your electronics?”

“Don Juan is pretty well hardened against an EMP. Maybe it could cause a few issues at point-blank, but nothing more.” Chris hesitated, remembering what General Earp had told him about the classification level of the Shinobi Corps’s source. “We… have data from the first match suggesting the Colombians have been less careful on that front.”

“Well, I would tell you to be careful about showing your hand before the match, mijo, but even if the Cubans figure out every one of your capabilities and tell Bogotá in perfect detail, I don't think they’ll have enough time to do anything about it. Say, do you think you might run into that Major Quispe while you're there?”

Chris shook his head. “Both sides have all kinds of foreign backing, but only the League of Vienna has boots on the ground, and that's mostly us giving the Bourbonists air and artillery support. No, I don’t think I'm going to be up against any sort of near-peer forces, unless the Colombians have been giving them something nicer than old FAM-95 rifles and A20 fighters.”