"Are you sure about that, Oba-chan?"
Nodoka smiled. "Tariko-chan, I do appreciate your concern. And your devotion as my daughter-in-law's oldest friend. But if my son's marriage to your friend is to succeed, I'll have to make sure a certain somebody doesn't try to interfere. For that — much that I am curious about what sort of spaceship you people work in — I have to remain in Japan for the time being."
"You've got our number, Oba-sama?" Narumi asked.
A smile. "Hai, Narumi-chan, I do. Now, what about you girls?" Nodoka then asked as she gazed on the Tendō sisters.
"I definitely want to see this!" Akane exclaimed, and then she winked. "Besides, it'll just be for a couple days; we can't go out on the ship when she deploys, after all."
"But how are we going to get back to Japan when they go?" Nabiki asked.
"Well, we do have our passports…" Kasumi noted.
Everyone exchanged looks. "The C.B.S.A. has a team at the dock," Narumi noted.
Tariko hummed, and then she nodded. "Okay, so we can help get the girls back to Japan when they're ready to go back. Arisa, what's the cloak status?"
Arisa glanced over to the readout. "Still stable, but I suggest if we're going to be using the materialiser more, we keep the number of trips to a minimum."
The detachment commander nodded. "Okay. One more beam-down to get everything for everyone, then one more beam-up. Can we handle that?"
Arisa grinned. "Easily."
The Tendō sisters and Kanami grinned. "Then let's get to work," Tariko said.
A half-hour later, the Star Flare finally de-cloaked itself as it passed over Asia, using Earth's natural rotation to allow it to return to Spacedock #112 with as minimal need for thrusters as possible. By then, the Tendō sisters and the Saotome siblings had managed to get overnight bags for their trip to Canada; Ranma had decided to bring his whole backpack along since he intended to stay in Canada while his wife was off on exercise, keeping watch over his wife's current place of residence (which she shared with Ryūnosuke and Tariko), which was currently located in Welland, a small city to the southeast of Hamilton on the shores of the old canal of the same name.
"It's a really smooth ride," Nabiki noted as everyone relaxed in the passenger compartment between the cockpit and the materialiser space. Everyone was gazing out the starboard windows as Kazakhstan passed by. "Do they know we're up here?"
"Only those who are in the know about the E.D.F.," Junko stated as she distributed cups of tea to the five teenagers. "We're being monitored right now by a Russian dockyard in orbit over Samara. Wait until we get over Europe itself; there'll be at least two dozen stations from as many countries watching over us."
"Doesn't that scare people?" Kasumi asked as the northern end of the Caspian Sea passed by. "I mean, with all the ships you now have in orbit…"
A shrug. "It concerns some people, but most Terrans now serving in the E.D.F. understand that the instant you pass the thermospheric boundary, nationalities have to be checked at the hatchway," the bespectacled girl with the dark blue eyes and the long deep purple hair (which she normally tied in two side-by-side French braids when she wasn't flying) stated. "We're here to defend the planet, not just each nation."
"Are all the nations in the U.N. involved now?" Akane asked.
"Most are. Still some holdouts like North Korea and the like, but we're wearing them down," Junko stated as her eyes picked up some movement as the Star Flare soared over the northern tip of the Sea of Azov. "Oh, look there!"
Everyone turned to see another Star Flare — the craft resembled the Lambda-class shuttle from 'Star Wars' with only the side wings (and shrunken down at that since they were designed to fold up and forward instead of fold straight up) and a small rudder fin on the back end — soaring to their right at about five hundred metres distance. A closer look at the craft revealed the gold-and-blue roundel of Ukraine on the hull with the stylised trident of the former Soviet republic on the rudder. "Same design," Nabiki noted as the Ukrainian craft waggled its wings in greetings, that followed by Tariko doing the same. "Why can't we feel the motion?" she then asked.
"Inertia dampeners and artificial gravity," Junko said as she leaned close to the window to wave at the pilot's cockpit of the other craft.
"Well, it certainly makes it comfortable," Kasumi noted.
Soon enough, the Star Flare — after flying past several other similar craft from a half-dozen European nations as it crossed the central part of the continent — soared over the Atlantic and eventually came close to the eastern shores of North America. As everyone aboard watched, they were quick to see a very big space station hovering right over the southern shores of Nova Scotia. "What's that?" Akane asked.
"That's Stadacona. Her Majesty's Canadian Starbase (Atlantic)," Junko provided. "The main base for regular force Canadian Navy ships assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. Bonaventure and Haida are based there."
"What ships are those?" Kanami asked.
"One of two aircraft carriers we have and our only battleship."
"But Shinobu-san always said that the Canadian Navy was dedicating itself to just be a professional escort force when colonisation begins in earnest," Akane protested.
"True, but since Canada was one of the first nations to accept Avalonians as refugees after Ganzo-ojiisan and Kyech helped them flee Phentax Twelve, they felt it was only right for the Dominion to have the proper 'status symbols' like all the other great powers possess," Tariko noted as she walked back to make herself some tea.
Everyone looked at her. "Have you ever thought of going full-time?" Nabiki wondered.
Tariko blinked, and then she shrugged. "I'm still considering it." She then chuckled. "Look at me. I'm a Terran-form Avalonian, a soul formed from part of Onii-chan's soul that got made separate when Onē-san was forced into our heads when we were six and I'm still considered a high school student even if I'm ALSO a captain in the Air Force, even if we're on Class B callout for the next two months."
"It must get confusing," Nabiki noted.
"Oh, it does, but doing this sort of job is much better training for life than learning it in a classroom," Tariko noted as she finished her tea, then moved to dispose of it in the trash disposal unit. "Buckle in. We're almost there."
Everyone nodded…
Ten minutes later, the Star Flare was nestled neatly inside the now-pressurised hangar on Fort Erie's aft upper superstructure. After everyone disembarked, they were met by Sakai Yuki, another air force captain from 119 Squadron who served as the ship's flight operations officer and detachment chief administrator. With her was an officer of the Canada Border Services Agency, who was glad to give the visitors from Japan free six month entry visas as tourists at Tariko's behest, especially after he heard that Ranma was the husband to the corvette's commanding officer. Gazing on her passport right after it was stamped, Nabiki was quick to notice that the entry point was marked as being the John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport (located south of the urban part of Hamilton itself, in the former township of Glanbrook), which was (ironically) a former Royal Canadian Air Force station that housed two schools of the famous British Commonwealth Air Training Plan before being fully turned over to civil control in 1964. Ranma also received a special "Welcome to Canada" kit from the customs officer to help him better prepare himself for when he made his official application for citizenship (which he could without his mother's permission as he was married to an Avalonian).
With that done, Tariko got Yuki to get Kanami and the Tendō sisters guest quarters in the officer cabins set aside for Fort Erie's shuttle detachment before she grabbed Ranma by the arm and dragged him through a hatchway into a hallway that led past some computer spaces to a doorway marked with the ship's crest surrounded by wreaths of laurel which normally went on the peaked cap of a senior officer's dress uniform. Before they walked inside, Tariko glanced into a side room — set up like a kitchenette — to see a male master seaman with the trade badges of a steward on the upper arm sleeves of his work shirt. "«Still asleep, John?»" she asked John Landry in English.
The captain's personal steward nodded, smiling. With that, Tariko silently opened the door and waved Ranma inside. "Go have some fun," she whispered to him.
Ranma nodded, and then slipped inside. Once inside the captain's day cabin, he gently put down his backpack, and then made his way to the closed curtains dividing the day cabin from Shinobu's sleeping area. Peeking through the curtains, he then smiled on seeing his wife asleep in her bed, hugging the teddy bear that had been given to her by her own mother Kimiki and Ranma's mother Nodoka, a gentle smile on his face. Quickly slipping out of his normal travel clothes, he slipped into bed behind his wife, pulling the covers over him and then he reached over to embrace her around her waist.
A surprised gasp then escaped her, and then she spun around to stare wide-eyed at him for a moment before a delighted smile crossed her face. "Anata…"
"Sorry I was gone so long," he apologised.
Shinobu blinked, and then she grinned as she drowned him with a kiss while we…
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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