“Have you got that thing finished yet?” asked the Admiral.
“I’m trying, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “But I’m only getting a marginal response from the satellites. It’s not on our end, sir, but on their end.”
“The Kuno Enterprises Satellites are currently realigning themselves,” said Nabiki, looking at the images onscreen. As far as she knew intellectually, the satellites were programmed to realign themselves should they ever fall out of their predefined orbits, something likely to have occurred since Adam threw his little temper tantrum. As such, the satellite system put into orbit by the Kuno Enterprises was going to take some time to align themselves, let alone work with Nabiki’s satellite phone. “I just hope they finish soon.” The longer she stayed out of contact, the less likely she would discover everything was fine. She was certain quite a few people would try and rush her being declared ‘legally dead’.
“I just hope someone answers,” said the Admiral. The lack of responses along the coast of South America had not been encouraging. In fact, the tsunami had not left many ports available to the wounded ship, and those left behind had barely been adequate for a fishing boat, let alone a naval ship. Even if they could, the riots and lawlessness would likely leave them in even worse shape.
Nabiki just continued to sit close by; offering the codes when needed to access whatever Kuno satellite was currently above them. Several days later and still no contact with the UN, no contact with Kuno Enterprises. If she was lucky, some files she uploaded to one of the satellites would make its way to a receiver within Tokyo. If so, then her orders would have been sent out.
Collect certain people and move them to a predefined shelter.
It was a breech of protocol. Those areas were only supposed to be for the Board, those who were needed to ensure the continuation of certain projects, family; basically anyone who was considered a valuable asset to the company.
Not surprising, it had at first only existed for the Kuno family members. It had been a fortunate bit of luck that she discovered that protocol. To be honest, it was probably a holdover from when a Kuno ran the company, one that had a more professional pursuit other than kendo, girls, Hawaii themes, or poisons.
But she was using it now, using it to get those few she cared about out of Tokyo. If the world descended into chaos, she would prefer to at least keep those she cherished from experiencing it. There was after all a nice little house kilometers outside of Tokyo where she wanted to go and relax, a place with the comforts of nature and technology, where she could still stay in contact with work yet ditch the assholes if need be.
Not that she told the other board members about that little plan … or reminded the Kuno clan of it. Let them wallow as she had Security get her family out of harms way. Hell, she even had them go out to fetch Ranma’s parents.
The friends and fiancées? Well, they would get a call and a strongly worded suggestion to hall ass. What did they expect for free?
“Can we get anything from them?” asked the Admiral.
“Nothing good,” sighed the ensign, as several screens came alive.
The satellites were multipurpose, meant to offer the best performance range without sacrifice. So not only were they used for communications, but mapping, weather observations, just about anything that could be stuffed in them.
And that included observation.
“LA,” the ensign said, showing a cloud of smoke rising up into the sky.
“Riots in LA,” spat the Admiral. “Like that’s something new.”
“Riots all over the place,” said the ensign, as several other images popped up, showing the closest highly populated cities within the North American continent. “Severe flooding along the coasts as well,” he murmured, as the images of smoke around New York City showed several dozen skyscrapers sitting in the water.
Nabiki rubbed her temples. Oh, the economy was going to be in the toilet for a while. Most of the world’s trading centers were built along the coast for a reason. But with the chaos, it was pretty easy to see that some militaries were going to get a chance to flex their power, either by cracking down on their own citizen or perhaps a neighboring country’s.
She had a momentary weird thought of Canada conquering the United States, she didn’t know why, and for a moment, she had to smile at the image. After all, no one suspected the Canadians.
Shadow smiled as his plane flew towards Tokyo. Ah, so much chaos, he’d hardly met any resistance getting the C-130 from the American air base, what with most of them either off assisting in restoring order or drowned from the tsunami. Hell, he didn’t know how Lorenz had gotten such accurate information.
He didn’t want to know either. Knowing too much about a client caused strange things, sometimes the client decided you knew too much to be allowed to live.
If I didn’t have my own backups in place should Lorenz decide to terminate our contract, I’d be worried.
A powerful man did what his clients ordered; a powerful man who died of old age had enough plans in place to ensure his client didn’t betray him. More than a few former clients learned that the hard way.
“Attention stolen aircraft, land or be—”
Shadow sighed as he flipped off the radio. Their aircraft was in the air sooner than he expected. “Only time for a pass then,” he said, as he pulled a remote from his vest. It wasn’t like they’d shoot him down over downtown Tokyo, not with the chance of civilian casualties to be so high.
It was nice for the military to set up a remote for the N2 weapon.
And it wasn’t that hard to spot the intended drop zone. After all, Kuno Enterprises did have that outlandish sign. Seriously, how did they ever get clearance to put up those images of those two girls like that? And what the hell did coconuts have to do with technology?
“Is the piece in position?” asked Keel Lorenz.
“Yes sir,” said one of his aids.
“What of the pawns?” he asked.
“All accounted for, minus Ms. Nabiki Tendo,” said the aid.
“No matter, she died during Second Impact,” he replied. And soon, any and all evidence about what was occurring there would join her, as well as the entire controlling board and family of Kuno Enterprises, who just happened to be having an emergency meeting at the moment, personal attendance mandatory.
“Time to gather a piece for our play,” he murmured, as he withdrew his own remote.
No witnesses.
In the converted room, on a gurney, a pair of red and blue eyes snapped open.
“Mother…”
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by The Demented Redhead
(Posted Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:16)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.