Breaking of the Hatches Up and Bursting of the Holds

The Great War did have a short-lived front in North America, once both the Empire of Japan and the United States of America had entered, on the side of the Central Powers and the Entente respectively. Battles fought in the Rocky Mountains and the Chihuahua Desert had no decisive impact on the outcome of the war, a loss for the Central Powers which Japanese intervention on the whole managed to mitigate somewhat. The Empire itself was not negatively impacted by the Treaty of Versailles, and its most valued European ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was preserved by the leverage it was able to exert, albeit with reduced territory after the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the Kingdom of Serbs and Croats. The handful of skirmishes between the United States of America and the California Shogunate in the war’s final days made up the last direct military conflict between the Anglo-Saxon and Japanese cultural spheres, though periodic diplomatic tensions and proxy wars have come about since as part of the larger Cold War.

–Japan and Britain: Two Archipelagos, Four Centuries, by Albert Spitzer, PhD. McGraw Hill. New York City, 2024.

A bag had been put over Jen's head just before she was led out of the submarine, and she had felt herself taken outdoors and up a ramp before it was removed. She spent the next several hours in the belly of an armored personnel carrier, all its hatches and gunports closed to the outside world, surrounded by– mostly female, she noted– armed guards, some in business casual civvies with MSI badges, some in the brown uniforms of the Interior Ministry. At one point, she tried to make conversation, and was ignored, but she later said she needed to use the restroom, and was promptly bagged again, handed a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of hand sanitizer, and led out into a patch of foliage by the road. From the number of hands leading her out and the sounds around her as she did her business, she suspected every last one of those female guards surrounded her tightly the whole time.

When next they stopped, the air was thin and full of urban white noise– Bogotá, she guessed. They took on one more passenger, an Interior Ministry officer: a petite woman, but lean and hard-bodied, Jen's own age or a little older, with blonde hair in a braid and cold blue eyes that made Jen feel naked under their gaze.

“Jen Higuchi? I'm Rafaela Hoffmann. You can call me Ela. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She spoke in English– not British or American English, either, but NorCal English with all of its added vowel sounds and Japanese loanwords. She almost would've pinned the woman as a native of San Jose. “I'm the new pilot for the Don Quixote. You'll be helping me out, though I expect once I help you get settled in, you'll mostly be working with Admiral Castro directly.”

She was making friendly affectations, but Jen really didn't like the way she said “help you get settled in.”

Later that day, from a thin alpaca trail overlooking the Project Windmill site, two men in unmarked winter camouflage fatigues traced its perimeter, one through a pair of binoculars, the other through the thermal scope of his SOPMOD Block IV M4 carbine.

“Your boys in place, Yank?” the Shinobi Corps paramilitary agent behind the binoculars asked.

“Ready to blow that wall as soon as we have a visual on our girl.” His CIA counterpart said, “We already have a couple contacts inside the camp who’ll take care of handing out the rifles.”

“How’d you swing that?”

“Handwritten notes tossed in and out of the camp as paper airplanes, if you can believe that. A sheet of white paper with black ink blends right in with the mountaintops.”

“American fieldcraft is… creative, I’ll give it that.”

An SUV, known to the Shinobi team, pulled in the main gate.

“Looks like Admiral Castro’s decided to join in the fun.” The Shinobi said idly.

“Those ornithopters of yours able to lift an extra body out at this altitude? If not, we could just kill him.”

“One of them is going to carry a nuclear reactor out, remember? Capacity isn’t going to be an issue. Only problem is, that bodyguard he’s got is our informant, and he’s made it clear he won’t turn on his principal for us. And I’m not killing one of ours unless he shoots at me first. We’d need to take them both alive. Not a bad objective, but it would have to be tertiary. Higuchi first, then the reactor, the admiral last.”

The binational team of agents laid low in the mountaintops through the night and the following morning. A little after noon, Mountain was dismissed while his principal took a siesta, and despite being within spitting distance of the equator in late spring, he felt the need to warm up. He ducked into a guard shack adjoining the main assembly hangar, where two other visitors had gotten the same idea, and were now playing cards with one of the Interior Ministry grunts. Both were dressed more like Californian civilians than Colombian government workers, and one was Asian, but both wore MSI badges on lanyards.

“I won’t pretend I’m enjoying being back just yet,” the native Colombian said, “but I was getting a bit old and fat to chase little hafu college girls.”

“I am already looking forward to reassignment. Perhaps I can help liberate my own people, next.” The Asian man’s Spanish, while grammatically fine, had a Japanese accent a mile thick. He turned to the Interior Ministry man. “When will this Admiral Castro see us? I would like to get this debrief over with.”

“Give him just another hour or two,” Mountain interjected, “he’s been putting in a lot of long days. I’m his bodyguard, by the way.”

The facility guard glanced to the main gate as tires crunched on the gravel road, and the others followed his gaze. An APC parked, and a haggard part-Asian woman in her mid-twenties was led out by a blonde Interior Ministry officer with a cruel grin.

“And there’s our prize.” the MSI agent who had apparently been stationed near a college campus said.

“Is that… Captain Hoffmann?” The Interior Ministry guard shuddered.

“You know her?”

“By reputation. Wouldn’t want to be that crazy bitch’s prisoner.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mountain caught a smoke trail stretching fast towards the Project Windmill site, from somewhere in the surrounding mountain peaks. “Holy shit, that’s a rocket.” he said, the flatness of the remark surprising even him, then, “Get the fuck down!”

The missile, probably from some infantry antitank weapon, impacted one of the two apartment-block-style buildings along the facility’s sides. In a panic, Mountain tried to process which one. South building is quarters for officers and engineers. North is the barracks for guards and overseers. North got hit. Admiral Castro’s still alive. He sprinted out of the shack, before that could change.

Smaller explosions went off all around the compound as Mountain bolted through. Holes were being blown in the perimeter, and men in snow camo were driving in on ATVs. They stopped among the laborer cabins and dumped out sacks and crates of FAM-95s and M16s, each with one magazine already in the gun and a second either coupled with the first or taped to the handguard. As Mountain barreled into the officers’ quarters, he heard some of those guns start to go off as the guards scrambled to return fire.

As all hell broke loose around them, Jen felt Hoffmann drive the muzzle of a pistol into the small of her back. “Keep moving, slut.” she growled in Jen’s ear. They shuffled along toward the main hangar, the rest of the MSI and Interior Ministry guards breaking off to trade fire with the men in ragged jumpsuits that seemed to crawl, shooting wildly, out of every corner of the compound.

The two women came to a guard shack adjoining the fabrication hangar. “Open the door.” Hoffman commanded, and Jen jerked the handle to see a familiar face. “Frankie,” she spat, “what’s your real name, I wonder?”

Out of the top of her vision, Jen saw two metal tubes sail over the MSI agent’s head and into the room beyond. She ducked, closed her eyes, and covered her ears.

A flashbang went off, followed closely by a tear gas grenade. Jen glanced behind her, saw Hoffmann blinking unfocused eyes, and spotted mottled gray-and-white shapes approaching fast, rifles leveled. She dove for the ground beside the door.

Hoffmann recovered, bared her teeth, and pointed her pistol at Jen, but Frankie grabbed her by the collar and pulled her inside. Automatic fire rang out as the door closed, and Jen thought she saw Frankie go down, a bullet sailing over Hoffmann to punch through his forehead. A man in a snowy uniform with no insignia lifted Jen bodily, and an ornithopter came down in the wide clearing between the gate and the hangar. Joe Cooper emerged from behind the door gunner. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” the agent shouted merrily amid the wind and the gunfire, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!”

A second ornithopter landed near the hangar doors, and black-clad Shinobi leaped out to push them open. They found several P-28 nuclear reactors, one of which was already loaded on a massive cart, and shoved that one quickly into a wide cargo container latched to the bottom of the Ki-25. They were about to climb back up into the passenger cabin when two figures dashed from a side door and climbed one of the massive humanoid frame-structures on the factory floor. They turned and dumped lead from their Type 27 rifles, sending a man in civvies toppling to his death, but the cockpit slammed shut, and the Duelist’s autocannon started spinning up and dropping to its firing position.

“Take off!” the Shinobi squad leader screamed into his radio, “We’ll extract into the mountains with the Bolivians!”

The ornithopter lifted off, and half the ground team was taken out by one barrage of 30mm shells. The rest dove for cover, hiding helplessly as the Don Quixote stepped out of the hangar to take aim at the shrinking aircraft.

A missile from on high knocked the Duelist off its feet, and when it recovered, it opted instead to scoop two men exiting the officers’ quarters, one in a suit and the other in a bathrobe, onto its back, and make a run down the mountain. The Ki-16C fighter that had struck the blow banked and followed the ornithopters in escort. Its pilot hailed them.

“EVAC-1, EVAC-1, this is Crabshack. Is your package in transit?”

“Crabshack, EVAC-1 confirms. Aldonza is on board.”

“Can I speak to her?”

He heard a scratching sound as a headset changed wearers. “Chris?” Jen’s voice came through, unbelieving.

“Hey, Jen. Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, just a little… spooked. The interrogator on the way up never laid a finger on me, but she was an unnerving woman. She claimed she was the new pilot for Don Quixote. Be careful out there, Chris.”

“Careful? I pull off a daring rescue like this, and you’re telling me to be careful?”

“Damn right, I am. Crabshack, huh?”

Chris was glad she couldn’t see him blush. “Some of my old squadmates had fond spring break memories, from the bars and restaurants on my hometown’s waterfront.”

“Puerto Peñasco, right? Will I ever get to see it?”

“Jen, I… you’re with the Americans, now. I’m sorry, that was the deal the Shogun cut. They help get you out, and they can keep you. You won’t be extradited, but you haven’t been pardoned. You can never come back.”

“I… I’m sorry, Chris. For everything. I guess this is goodbye. Will they at least let you visit me in the States?”

“Tell you what, Jen. I’m gonna kick this scary lady’s ass, then your friend Alicia’s dad is gonna become the king of Cuba, then we’ll grab a drink together in Havana. How’s that sound?”

“I would like that, Chris. Hey, I left a scarf in my desk drawer at work. I want you to take it. Call it a… favor, for a gallant knight. Bring it with you in the Don Juan. I’ll want it back when you get to Havana.”