And Death is in the Phial, and the End of Noble Work

San Francisco is a city in Kitamori Han, California Shogunate. It is a major commercial and cultural center for the far north of California, forming the center of a metropolitan area with a population of over nine million. It was first settled in 1770 as a mission by Spanish Franciscans on the invitation of an adventurer cadet branch of the Mori samurai clan (later named the Alcatraz clan, for the island in San Francisco Bay where its chief castle stands). The city saw most if its formative developments in the middle of the 19th century, particularly during the California Gold Rush of 1836. Immigration from the United States and outside of North America during and after this time shaped the hybrid Anglo-Oriental culture of the city, and the development of the distinctively Japanese-influenced Northern Californian dialect of English.

–New Cornell Encyclopedia, Cornell University Press. Ithaca, 2026.

“We've got a serious problem.” Shinzo pointed to Don Juan de Austria's fusion core with his pen, Chris's and Jen's eyes following. “We ran the simulations before we implemented the EMP gun, and confirmed a direct hit from Juan's own shell wouldn't permanently knock out any critical systems. Except we only tested for one shell at a hundred percent strength. Turns out, three shells going off simultaneously at about forty-five or fifty percent strength is enough to fry the core. When I say ‘fry’, it didn’t go critical or anything, but it's kaput. Needs to get rebuilt basically from scratch. There's one facility in the country that can do that, and sixty days is their optimistic guess for a lead time, so odds of getting it through in the four weeks and change we have until the last match are slim. It's basically a one-off unit, so we don't exactly have a replacement handy.”

Chris nodded, his face placid but his forehead flushing red. “What about the scrapped prototype whose cockpit got rebuilt into the simulation pod?”

“That was one of the issues that prototype helped us iron out. We'd never built a reactor that small before, fission or fusion. It had a reaction decay issue. We could dig it up, but it'd have maybe… fifteen, twenty percent the output of this one, and decay further as you used it. Every time you pull the trigger on that EMP gun, your control system's going to blackout, and after three or four shells, it won't reboot.”

Jen scratched her head. “Can't one of our allies spot us one? Japan, maybe?”

“They're in the same boat as us: only one working miniature reactor, and they need it for their Miyamoto Musashi right now. Trouble with India over some islands. Austria-Hungary's uses a very… experimental power system, even more so than us Empire states. It’d probably take at least as long to ship it over and adapt it to the Don Juan as rebuilding ours would. Australia doesn't even know how exactly they're gonna power theirs. I'm supposed to go help them with that, as soon as I work out this kink.”

“What about one of the Colombians’ miniature fission reactors?” Chris asked, not sure if one of the engineers was about to explain how the question made no sense, “I think the Don Quixote just uses a modified core off one of their P-28 tanks.”

“I did work with a captured P-28 unit when we were designing our core. We only had the one, and ended up doing some destructive testing on it, but if we could get our hands on another, we could rig it to the Don Juan pretty quickly. It’ll weigh more, but the difference won’t be too dramatic. Probably give you sixty or seventy percent as much output, which'll realistically just mean you can't fire the railgun and the EMP gun at the same time.”

“I’ll let General Earp know. Maybe the Cuban rebels have an intact P-28 they can send us.”

“I've got Infanta Alicia's personal number,” Jen added, “think I should give her a call?”

“Oh, is that what's got you all gung-ho since Cuba? Invigorated by the idea of helping your new friend's cause?”

Jen went suddenly, starkly silent at that, and the three of them could hear a plane coming in for a landing at Oakland International Airport overhead.

On that plane, Frankie Alejandrez reviewed the bits of info he’d extracted from George Jensen, first through charm and promises of riches, then with his fists, before folding him up into a barrel of cement and rolling him into the Great Salt Lake. No exact address, but he knew Jen Higuchi lived in an Oakland apartment about a fifteen-minute commute from the Project Lepanto assembly fab and about ten minutes from a country bar called Shootin’ Shinji, which narrowed it down to two clusters of complexes. He new she frequented that bar, though probably less often now with her work on Project Lepanto. She drove a red Toyota sedan. He’d found a couple social media accounts of hers, though she had purged much of that when she took a government job. She hadn’t uploaded many pictures since, either, but there were enough for Alejandrez to note her appearance had changed little since she had graduated, except for her longer hair and more formal wardrobe.

When he landed and left the terminal, the sleeper agent was waiting for him in civvies. His Asian features caught Alejandrez by surprise, though he had an air of trying too hard to blend in that just screamed undercover cop, and Frankie would have been suspicious had the agent not been embedded in a law enforcement institution.

As they exited the airport, neither man picked up on their CIA tail. Joseph Cooper had caught the same flight after the hidden camera he had placed in Alejandrez’s apartment had captured his computer screen as he booked the ticket, a welcome break from the MSI agent’s pornography searches. He had suspected MSI was up to something when Jensen went missing, but the hairs on his neck went up when he heard this Bay Area Colombian asset say, “I managed to cash in some favors and get transferred to the Project Lepanto espionage case. They’re closing in on Aldonza, we don’t have much time.”

Though the CIA spy camera’s microphone had malfunctioned before it could pick up anything worthwhile, and it hadn’t always been able to capture this Frankie guy’s reports in detail as he typed them up, they had learned that Aldonza was the source Jensen had referred to as “Jen”, that her full name was Jennifer Higuchi, and that she was of such an ideological bent that she might come quietly if CIA came to extract her, but wouldn’t willingly cooperate with MSI in a million years. As soon as the Colombian agents stepped into a taxi, Cooper called the American embassy in Shinkyo. If MSI didn’t have much time, then CIA didn’t have a second to spare.

At the same time, another call bounced off the same geostationary satellite above the Bay Area. Chris went over the prospect of getting a Colombian miniature fission reactor for the Don Juan with General Earp, along with other points about the project timeline and strategy going into the next match.

“Looks like the Colombians decided on a place.” The general said. “Cuba, right smack dab next to Guantanamo. The minefield will be partly inside the arena, though I’m sure Don Juan don’t hafta worry. Damndest thing. Must be one last jab at the Bourbonists, before they have to recognize them as the real Cuban government. Anyway, Chris, one heads-up I really oughta give ya.”

“Yeah, general?”

“Gendarmerie wants to confirm a couple leads ‘fore they make an arrest, but they’re closin’ in on the MSI mole. They… they reckon it’s Jen.”