Hakusan Angel (3 page)

"Ikeda linked up with you."

"Yes," Kaede confirmed.

"On purpose?"

"No, it was an accident. I was trying to stop her."

"Whose energy did she expend in the final release?"

"Both of our energy."

"Which one of you is the Level 1?"

Kaede froze.

"Neither of us. We're Level 3," she said, trying to keep her voice even.

"We've calculated it over and over and all the extrapolated energy expenditure estimates say that the blast radius was far smaller than the range of the actual blast. Even with exchanging one Level 3 for a Level 2 in the equation still gave us an area exponentially less expansive."

"How ..." Kaede cleared her throat. "How big was the blast radius?"

"Fifty kilometres."

"That's impossible," Kaede said, clenching her hands in her hospital gown.

"It's true. You two caused a prefecture-wide power outage. The entire base was down for three days before the engineers could figure out how to rewire the central generators. Even the back-up systems were down. The whole east coast was completely defenceless against attack until we had it back up."

Oh. This was so much more trouble than even she could have reckoned.

"I'm a Level 3," she repeated firmly.

"That's funny. That's what Ikeda says as well, and one of you is lying."

"It's not me."

"I for one, think it
is
you." One of her interrogators leaned in close and stared into her eyes. "Any source who was trying to hide the true magnitude of her power would not go flaunting it in a bar, especially not in such an uncontrollable and risky manner."

"It's not me."

"No, Ikeda was just showing off, and she knew that in the worst case scenario of one, lone Level 3 Source losing control, the damage would only affect those in the bar. That's what she meant to happen, but you yourself said that the power surge was an
accident
. Your involvement was an accident, the link was an accident and the surge was an accident. The revelation of a Level 1 Source was an accident, too. You were the one that caused Ikeda to lose control, and so I think that
you
are the Level 1 Source."

She was well and truly caught. The evidence was stacked against her and clearly irrefutable. Yet Kaede could barely contemplate it, her head mired in panic at the thought of all the things that could happen to her now that they had found out her secret. There was one way to find out.

"So what if I am the Level 1 Source? What are you going to do about it?"

Kaede found that she really didn't like the looks on their faces.

Mari didn't know what was happening anymore.

She and Matsura smoked beside an open window, careful not to let the fumes spread to the rest of the compound. All of the pilots who had been at the bar the night of the incident were in the building with them. What Mari didn't know was why they were there in the first place.

The night they'd woken up, they had all been questioned. None of them were blamed for the incident, not even Mari, who admitted to having provoked Sae into action. They weren't being punished. They had the same food, they were allowed drinks and cigarettes and to use the flight simulators provided for them.

The thing was, none of them were allowed outside. They could talk to each other, and sometimes officers would come in to check up on them, but they had no outside contact. Their comm systems had all been put offline, and none of the computers in the building would hook up to the net.

"I asked one of them this morning whether they were going to let us go," Matsura said, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette on the side of the window. "They didn't say."

"They haven't said anything for a week. I don't understand what we've done to deserve this." Mari followed suit, and they wandered back over to the rest of the group.

They settled down into yet another card game, but Mari spent the whole while trying to figure out what was going on.

They weren't being punished, because they'd done nothing wrong. She was the only one who might have done something to deserve reprimand, but the other pilots were also here. It was only the pilots from the bar who were here. There were over a hundred Level 3 Pilots, but only about a third of them were present here. None of the sources were here with them.

"It must be something we know," she said, startling the other pilots into lowering their cards to stare at her sudden outburst.

"What do you mean?" Matsura asked, throwing down a pair of aces.

"I mean, we must have seen something in the bar that High Command doesn't want us to spread around to anyone else. We must have witnessed something top secret."

"So why can't we just sign a confidentiality contract and get on with life?" Honda complained. "I just want to get out of this building. It's maddening, being locked up in here."

"This secret must be so vital that they can't risk even the possibility of us talking about
anything
, even by accident. What was it, then? What did we see? It has to be something to do with the sources, otherwise we'd all be in the same place," Mari said, becoming more certain she was right the more she talked.

"Are you sure you want to know, Mari?" Matsura asked, still more focused on the game than on her theories. "Maybe that's why we aren't in with the sources, so they don't tell us what happened. We're a threat to national security!"

Their speculation ended when one of the officers came into the room with a clipboard. The room fell silent as all attention was turned on her.

"Ishigaki Mariko?"

"That's me," Mari raised her arm.

"You're wanted by High Command. Come with me. Stay right behind me; do not stray from the path."

"What about the rest of us?" Matsura demanded.

"The rest of you remain. Only Ishigaki Mariko is required at this time."

Mari followed the officer, staying a couple paces behind her. As soon as they left the building, a pair of armed guards fell into step on either side of them. Mari wasn't sure whether they were a protective escort or if they were preventing her escape. Both, perhaps.

"Do not speak to anyone you see."

She was led to a Level 8 ground vehicle, and was seated in the passenger seats in the back. Mari had always been a pilot when inside a machine, so it was odd to be in a vehicle with nothing to do. She hadn't been a Level 8 Pilot since she'd first started working with the military, but she knew exactly how the ground vehicle functioned.

It didn't take them long to get to High Command, and the escort tapered off once they were inside the building. She was led to a conference room which was already full of people, all of whom turned upon her entry.

"You," she cried, forgetting her order not to speak upon seeing a familiar face. "I know you!"

It was the other source, the one that had tried to prevent Sae from attacking everyone. What was her name? Keiko? Kasumi?

"Nomura Kaede, meet your new pilot. This is Ishigaki Mariko."

"I'm not anyone's pilot," Mari said in surprise. "I'm a Level 3, we're interchangeable. I was recently promoted to start training on Level 1 driving sims."

"Yes, we know who you are. We have your file. That's how we know that you're the only acceptable candidate for Nomura's new partner."

"New partner?" Mari looked around the room, but no one was smiling, not even Kaede, who avoided her gaze as Mari focused on her. Something important and possibly bad was happening, and she was part of it.

"Yes, you were there the night of the incident, and you were the only one of three pilots approved for Level 1 that has any knowledge of it. Therefore, you were the logical choice."

"I don't understand!" Mari said, voice rising. "Why am I her partner in particular?"

"This is Nomura Kaede, recently promoted to Source Level 1. She is your new partner because you are the only pilot skilled enough to drive a Level 1 machine that was also part of the incident that revealed her true nature. We are trying to keep the fact that we have acquired a Level 1 Source secret from Morwe, and the less people that know, the better."

Mari thought that she had better sit down.

It didn't take long for Mari to realize that the majority of the meeting was a discussion on logistics regarding how to keep the secret under wraps. Mari listened with half an ear, but turned most of her attention on her new partner.

Kaede appeared to be ignoring the rest of the room with a stony face and silence. She was a small thing, bird-like in her size and the way she sat perched on the edge of her seat. Maybe her bones were hollow, too. Mari thought she could lift her up with one arm without any difficulty. Sources tended to be small, but Kaede was taking it to an extreme. Mari wondered how such a tiny person could hold so much power.

The meeting ended, and guards escorted the two of them to shared quarters. Mari took note of the cameras guarding the halls and realized that she was under as much observation as she had been when stuck in the compound with her fellow pilots.

"Whoa," Mari whistled upon seeing their quarters. "This is ... rather a lot of room."

That was putting it mildly. She had been fine, back on base and sharing tight quarters with her fellow pilots, but it seemed that someone was trying to persuade them to be amenable to their changed status. There was so much space that Mari felt a bit out in the open, especially surrounded by furnishings that probably cost more than she made in a year. For Mari, as a military person, such a lavish and decorous room made her uncomfortable. She wanted to stand in the very middle of it and stay as far from the polished wood and lush fabric as possible––and they expected her to live in it!

"What are they playing at?" Kaede asked, surveying the room with a critical eye. "They could stick us in a hall closet and get no protest from either of us. Why are they giving us all this?"

"What?" Mari couldn't believe that. "I thought sources were given pretty much anything they wanted. They live like royalty, by all accounts. You're the only Level 1 Source in the country. You could probably ask for anything, and they'd give it to you."

"This isn't what I would have asked for, had I been given a choice." Kaede looked around the room with a sneer. "What kind of manipulation are they thinking up? It looks like they're giving me what they think I want."

"You just said that you wouldn't protest though," Mari pointed out, thinking that if Kaede was a source that was actually here for duty and not because of selfish monetary gain, then perhaps they could get along.

"I can't really protest anything, not after what I've done," Kaede answered. "It's either serve out my contract until retirement, or I get an automatic prison sentence."

Mari goggled helplessly at her. "What?"

Kaede rolled her eyes and explained the widespread damage that she had caused with the accident at the bar, not to mention the fact she had been purposefully hiding her true power range for years. In reparation, she had agreed to an amended contract that would keep her as a servant of the military until she was of an age to retire.

So she was a self-serving source after all, just one that had been backed into a corner.

"Why did you hide your power?" Mari asked.

"It's dangerous to be a Level 1. I'd be a target, especially since Morwe is just looking for a reason to attack. What is the point of living in luxury if I might
die
at any moment?" snapped Kaede. "You wouldn't understand. You would probably consider it an
honour
to die for your country."

Mari jerked back, stung. Kaede was right about that, but whereas Mari was proud of that fact, Kaede made it sound like an unspeakably stupid way to think.

"Look at you, with your nose in the air. You think you're so smart! Finding ways to squeeze benefits out of the military, taking advantage of the arms race and our need for sources. You think we're stupid for wanting to serve and you have no respect for us because pilots are so replaceable and you aren't. Well, you know what? I'm happy to serve, because my payment isn't in money, it's the knowledge that I'm helping to keep my country and my people safe!"

Kaede raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"You're just a scavenger, a harpy. I feel no pity for you, because now you might finally do your duty to your country instead of hiding out in a more comfortable place and using the system to keep you happy and rich."

Mari stomped away, and finding a door adjoining the separate halves of the suite, slammed it closed.

*~*~*

Kaede didn't care what Mariko thought. She didn't.

She was just like all the other pilots, thinking that they were better than sources for having the high moral ground. They didn't ever stop to think of how lucky they were. Those pilots with their swaggering about, camaraderie and willingness to serve were all exactly where they wanted to be. They were happy doing this.

Sources, though, were never given much of a choice in the matter. High level sources were actively pursued by the military, and worn down until they agreed. The military knew everything, they had all the information they needed to find out what would make a source sign a contract. Holding out for the benefits was better than signing and getting nothing at all in exchange for their lives, and most sources were smart enough to know that.

Giving their lives didn't mean dying, although she didn't like the idea of being in danger either. She might have wanted to be something else: a writer, a scientist, an archaeologist. There was no way that the military would allow a high level source to do anything like that though, not with the constant threat of Morwe starting a war hanging over their heads.

Kaede had never understood what made Morwe want to attack them. They were an aggressive nation and had already annexed several smaller countries before the Inner Kingdom had threatened to intervene. Their own government had started stockpiling weapons, not trusting the Inner Kingdom to keep their word, initiating the current arms race situation.

Sources made the best of it, they bragged to each other about their benefits and commiserated about their jobs together because that was all they had left.