Kuno Iwao was very upset that the Great Patriotic War ended before he completed his training as a kamikaze pilot. There is no other explanation why the Kuno family now owned the most heavily armed business jet ever conceived. On being informed that his great-nephew was in hot pursuit of a criminal escaping the country by air, the septuagenarian had immediately set about pre-flight checks in preparation for a quick departure. When he received notification of a brief delay while his great-niece insinuated herself into the expedition, he ordered the adjustment of the stores loaded, replacing the air-to-surface missiles with additional fuel tanks.
It would have been more helpful if he had done this before topping off the tanks, but the elderly would-be national hero can surely be forgiven some memory failures at his advanced age.
As soon as the younger members of his family had embarked, he pulled his flying goggles down and opened the throttles to their stops for his takeoff run. JAL flight 4507 braked sharply and swerved off the hardpan onto the grass as the Learjet darted across its nose. Air Singapore flight 2121 aborted a landing on Runway 07West, and British Airways flight 3459 was thankfully quick enough that Iwao shot across Runway 07 East behind it. Hauling back on the yoke, he directed his mount into a screaming climb for the heavens.
Sasuke dragged himself inside, briefly noticed the undignified postures of his master and mistress against the rear pressure bulkhead (Kodachi had preceded her brother into the aircraft, and was actually facedown in the small lavatory), and shut the door. The airstairs fell off at 4,000feet, and thankfully missed the engine. They didn’t miss the wheelhouse of a medium-sized seagoing tug, but news of that would take some weeks to reach Nerima.
There wasn’t much to see at cruising altitude. They had accepted Ace’s invitation to join him in the cockpit of the plane, and after dragging out the inflatable copilot Ranma now sat beside the pilot with his wife snuggling in his lap. Kasumi sat quietly in the seat behind him. However, now that they were sitting comfortably, there wasn’t much for them to do but watch as Ace did arcane and mysterious things with the banks of switches, levers, knobs and buttons on the control panel.
“Is there a problem?” asked Akane, after watching Ace inspect a small screen intently for some time.
“Huh? No, just weird, I think,” replied the pilot. “The Radar Threat Warning System is identifying this contact as the JASDF F-3XX prototype air superiority fighter, but I know that’s grounded, so I’m wondering who’s got a copy of the radar unit.”
The three Nerimans exchanged looks. “Kuno,” pronounced Akane seriously.
“One of them, yeah,” replied Ranma. “No one else has the money. But,” he waved a hand at the Wurlitzer-like control panel in front of Ace, “could any of them manage to fly it?”
“No,” said Ace. “My buddy Youta told me the Fly-by-Wire system crashed in flight last week, so they’ve got half the avionics pack dismantled for inspection. Even if you knew what you were doing, it would take a couple days just to put everything back together so you could start the engines. That’s why I think someone has copied the radar; there were some questions about a spare unit, I think.”
Ranma and Akane shared a moment of silent thought. “Still Kuno,” declared Ranma. “Are they following us?”
“Difficult to tell at this range,” said Ace, “and I don’t want to waste fuel on manoeuvres to find out yet, either. They’re still on scan mode, though, so they haven’t found a target to lock on to. I’ll keep an eye on them.”
The armed business jet droned tirelessly onward, carrying the scions of House Kuno and their faithful, multitalented minion forward in search of their abducted beloveds.
No, none of the occupants actually thought that. Kuno Iwao was mentally leading the first wave of divebombers on USS Coral Sea, and listening carefully to the intercepted radio traffic in hopes of filtering out vital intelligence. Kuno Tatewaki was meditating in preparation for his triumphant clash with the foul sorcerer, making certain that his locutions would be adequate for the occasion and considering modifications of his usual approaches to take advantage of differing angles of sunlight to improve his mighty appearance. Kuno Kodachi was – ah, let’s not go there, the human body won’t react like that even with her most potent stimulants and roses don’t have thorns that long anyway. Sasuke Sarugakure was struggling with the operators’ manual for the radar system; it was his responsibility to find the fleeing Saotome, and a Japanese-built masterpiece of electronic warfare would surely have the means to identify and locate the aura of corruption the monstrous demon emitted.
Or so the young master said.
So far, the only interruption to the flight had been a long-range demand that they drop in on the beach house the Principal maintained on Maui to collect his second-best ukulele and check for a mail-order delivery of hair clippers, but both the younger Kunos had decreed that their pursuit was of greater import than pandering to their father’s bizarre fetishes and worse musical tastes, and they had flown straight on through the centre of Hawaiian airspace. If – and only if – their condition permitted it, they might accede to his request as they returned home, although all aboard were of two minds on the possibility. Iwao doubted that the four of them could successfully capture so large an area of enemy territory without reinforcements, the siblings worried about the escape of captives (though Tatewaki understood that the beaches of Hawaii had a certain beauty which would no doubt be enhanced by the presence of his adoring maidens), and Sasuke worried about the effects Hawaii would have on other members of the Kuno family. One cocoanut was more than enough, in his view.
Sasuke looked up from his reading material, and carefully began entering the command sequence into the radar console. [MODE] [LEFT] [LEFT] [UP] [RIGHT] [ENTER] [1] [2] [7] [ENTER]
AwooAwooAwooAwooAwoo
[CANCEL] [CANCEL] [CANCEL]
BleeBluBleeBluBleeBluBlee
[RESET] [RESET]
AWOOgaAWOOgaAWOOga
[CANCEL] [CANCEL]
bipbipbipbipbipbip
[RESET]
“Where be the foul sorcerer, faithful Sasuke?” demanded the imposing figure in the door. “I heard the alert from yon device e’en from the depths of mind meditations, so it surely signals that the demonic... Egads!” His roaming eyes had traced across the myriad dials and screens of the instrument panel and fallen upon the most lurid of the lot, which was currently glowing red with a flashing amber border. “Surely that signals the beast is veritably upon us,” he opined, sweeping his sword from its scabbard ready to defend their transport from the forthcoming assault through the windscreen.
“No, brother,” replied his sister testily, also having been roused from deep and restful – ahem. “If I recall Uncle Iwao’s instruction from when he took me to our holdings in Seoul for the International Rhythmic Gymnastics Tournament last April, that instrument is the fuel gauge. However, I do not recall it having that pattern then, Uncle?”
“Indeed, young lady,” said the pilot serenely. “That is indeed the fuel gauge, and it is presently indicating that the tanks are too empty for the gauge to register.”
“Does that not mean the engines shall shortly cease to function?”
“Indeed it would, but that I took the time to install additional underwing fuel tanks in anticipation of a long pursuit.” The elderly pilot reached out with assurance and operated some controls on a small panel beside the gauge. “You see? By connecting the additional tanks, the engines shall continue to operate for some hours; we can...”
The gauge turned wholly red and started flashing in a vitally annoying double strobe. Simultaneously, a squealing siren became audible over the utter silence left behind after the engines cut out.
“That’s interesting,” said Iwao, in the tone test pilots occasionally refer to as ‘Gagarin’, after the mythical version of Yuri Gagarin’s death initially released by the Soviet authorities, who hadn’t wanted to ruin the reputation of the first man in space when he performed the fighter jet equivalent of drunk-driving a car into a wall. “There’s no fuel coming from the tanks.”
“The fiend must be close,” asserted Tatewaki, “to so maliciously affect our glorious transport! And that being so, he must be close enough to smite mightily, for he cannot escape the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High!”
On his first encounter with Ranma, Kuno cut down a tree large enough that his opponent could comfortably stand on its trunk, and (perhaps more impressively) through a masonry gatepost some half-metre square, and a couple of metres of the attached wall. He did this with missed strikes with his bokken, a simple wooden training weapon.
The primary structure of a business jet is made out of aluminium alloy sheet, nowhere more than three millimetres thick. His katana punched through with no discernable resistance at all.
Now, one of the most terrifying things that can happen to a modern aircraft is a fuselage puncture. Contrary to the depictions presented in various movies, the aircraft will not instantly burst like a popped balloon (usually), and passengers will not be dragged screaming from their seats to be extruded through the opening. However, a slit puncture (as, for instance, formed by a sharp sword) will propagate rapidly fore and aft to form a gash reaching from the top of the windscreen to the back of the cabin, and all the air inside will rush out. Loose objects (papers, flowers, clothing, and Kodachi’s ribbon) will be drawn upwards with air and expelled in a confusing swirl of insubstantial clutter. The occupants of the aircraft shall soon begin suffering from the lack of oxygen, and the other loads on the fuselage will start to bend the front half of the aircraft downwards, completely ruining what’s left of the aerodynamic shape and, thus, any hope of retaining control, and dooming the wrecked airframe to an uncontrolled and uncontrollable dive into the unforgiving ground (or, in this case, ocean) below.
Kuno Tatewaki, the Blue Thunder, will not experience any of this. The lightning strike called up by his exposition, and conducted through his katana, will see to that.
Incidentally, one of the other most terrifying things that can happen to a modern aircraft is a lightning strike. They do nasty things to the avionics, without which one can neither fly a straight course nor call for help...
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(Posted Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:04)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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