SPACE BATLLESHIP YAMATO: A VOYAGE TO REMEMBER
A fanfic recapitulation of Series One “The Quest for
Iscandar” by
Frederick P. Kopetz
EPISODE TWO: GIRL
May 8, 2199
Near Mars, the mysterious vessel had reached the general vicinity of the dry, dead, and cold planet.
There were remnants of a prior Earth Colony on Mars; a colony which had been destroyed years ago in a local interplanetary war between Earth and its Mars colony, which was trying to secede, according to Earth, and which was seeking independence, according to the surviving Mars Colonists.
The alien vessel flew past the remains of those domed cities as she flew towards the North Polar Cap Region.
Lower in the atmosphere, the pilot of the alien vessel saw that there was no hope that the entire vessel could be guided to a safe landing, so a life pod was ejected from the main ship, which crashed in a fiery mess a moment later; with the escape capsule landing nearby.
On Mars, the alien bird’s crash was felt over much of the North Polar region as a ground tremor, including a heavy quake which shook throughout Mars Monitor Station Bravo.
Station Bravo currently had a crew of two new Ensigns, who stumbled to the deck in an undignified mess of arms and legs when the tremor hit.
The Ensigns were two young males who were twenty but on the edge of twenty-one.
The first Ensign was of Japanese descent, and his carved Roman nose nearly hit the deck when he stumbled in his blue and grey spacesuit. “What was that?” he yelled as he kept his face from slamming into the deck with his hands. He was the younger of the two males, and he had short black hair that tended to be curly, with bright eyes and heavy eyebrows. His name was Daisuke Shima. His skin had a slightly olive cast; he had been born on August 15, 2178.
“What’s going on, damnit?” yelled his partner and friend Susumu Kodai, with a birthdate of July 7, 2178. Kodai had a paler complexion than Shima, but his Japanese ancestry was more obvious in his “deranged matinee-idol features” as Shima described Susumu’s tougher, more roguish-looking face, with its burning brown eyes, and wild mop of chestnut brown hair that went everywhere and sometimes hung slightly in his eyes.
“Instruments say we got hit by something, Kodai,” said Shima as he looked at a readout near a set of meters.
“Yeah? Really?” retorted Kodai, who was always up for a verbal fight. Daisuke had a calm, easy-going personality, while Susumu’s personality was definitely not easy-going. Ensign Susumu Kodai was the classic Angry Young Man, filled with a visceral hatred for the Gamilas. Daisuke knew why, of course. One couldn’t be cooped up in a small station with a guy and not learn a lot about him, including the story of how a former girlfriend had done him dirty about a year and a half ago.
However, that was not relevant to our current story since an anonymous voice over the comm speaker said, “Orders to Mars Special Missions Monitor Station Bravo, check out unidentified spacecraft landing near your base!”
“Oh, that’s it!” said Susumu as he grabbed a spacesuit helmet. “There’s a battle going on near Pluto; one of the ships must have crash-landed here on Mars…Here!”
Daisuke caught the spacesuit helmet that Susumu threw at him and said, “Thanks! But I think we’re too far away from Pluto for that to happen!”
The two young men ran towards a small hangar, where a Type 100 Recon spaceplane, adapted with skis for Mars’ frozen surface, blasted out of the hangar after Susumu did a cursory pre-flight check on the ship. Both Susumu and Daisuke, like all recent EDF Cadets, had flight certification, but Daisuke usually let Susumu fly their bird because he was obviously the better pilot; even if he was, well, a bit wild. Literally.
Daisuke was sitting in the back of the recon plane taking scans while Susumu made his usual demented high-G takeoff.
First, they circled the wreck of the alien ship, which was still smoking.
The ship was of a strange design, and it was primarily of a golden color, with strange black and tan markings on her hull that neither of them had ever seen before.
“Hey, Shima!” Susumu snapped. “Have a look! That thing’s not Gamilon and it’s not ours! It’s got to be from some unknown planet!”
Susumu flew a tight circle around the alien wreck, and then he said, “Let’s land; we can’t see anything from here!”
“Take it EASY, Kodai!” Daisuke said as Kodai brought their plane to a skidding landing on the carbon dioxide ice-pack near another gold and black object stuck almost upwards in the frozen surface.
What is that? Daisuke thought. An escape pod,
maybe? Maybe the pilot survived the crash?
The two young men popped the cockpit, and, securely protected in their spacesuits and white and green helmets, they walked over the ice towards the structure.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before…I wonder where it’s from?” Shima said.
“Beats me,” replied Susumu. “It can’t be from Brooklyn.”
“Why not?” grunted Shima.
“There’s no graffiti painted on it,” quipped Susumu.
“Oh, grow up!” snapped Daisuke.
“Serious observation, Daisuke…I don’t recognize the marking on it. There’s no insignia!”
“There’s no identification at all!” said Shima as he looked over what had to be an escape pod; it had a hatch that was propped open. “Hmmm…what’s this?” he said as he picked a swatch of cloth off the edge of the hatch. It was a small bit of fabric, purple, with a rich reddish cast in it. It looked silken and delicate…a bit out of place around the mechanical escape pod.
“Hey, Shima…look over here!” called Kodai as he pointed at something.
Susumu and Daisuke looked in the snow. There was a trail of footprints in the snow. It looked as if there were small, left by a woman’s slippers. One of the slippers lay abandoned on a hillock of snow, where the footprints changed to one shod footprint and one bare footprint for maybe three or four steps…before they stopped.
“I wonder where she came from?” said Susumu as he gently picked up her frail form; she was limp, and a bit of her neckline showed as Susumu lifted her up. He could feel some slight bodily warmth through his spacesuit glove, but there was no reaction from the girl at all. “Daisuke, is she…dead…?”
Shima had gotten a life-sign scanner out of his pouch and scanned the girl’s limp form. “I think so…no life signs I can pick up…must’ve either frozen or suffocated. She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she was,” sighed Susumu as he picked up what he now knew to be the corpse of this girl to check her for personal effects.
An object, covered in crystalline material of some sort, fell from her limp hand and clattered on the ice.
“What the heck is that?” said Daisuke.
“It must have been very important to her; she had a death-grip on it,” Susumu said as he looked at the strange object before Daisuke picked it up. Something that looked like a few lights flashed on and off in its surface behind the crystal as Shima examined it.
Who is she…where is she from? Daisuke thought. She must be from some unknown planet.
Susumu looked at the dead woman again. He was transfixed by her willowy build, and baby-fine luxurious honey-blonde hair.
Susumu’s eyebrow went up as he saw that the dead girl was wearing a small necklace on a fine chain; the chain looked like gold, but the tiny pendant looked like an intricate Celtic-style cross of some silvery metal, trimmed in gold.
Why would some alien Queen be wearing a cross? Susumu
thought to himself as he again looked at that beautiful face, eyes closed in
sleep Until That Day, as he had been taught by the nuns in the orphanage which
he had spent some time in after his parents…had been killed in the bombings. Susumu
pondered her face, spellbound, as he again thought, I wonder what she was
like when she was alive? What color eyes did she have? What did her voice sound
like? Did she laugh? Did she know how to dance? Did she have a boyfriend?
A strange chill went down Susumu’s spine at that final thought…and he didn’t know why. Kodai, you always strike out with women, so you’d never know, probably. What good does it do, anyway? She’s dead. Who she is…is a mystery…I wonder…what did her voice sound like?
Susumu looked at this dead woman, and thought, offhandedly, maybe
this woman had that same mellow and magical voice? I would have loved to hear
this woman sing…but that’ll never happen now. She’s dead. And we need whatever
she was carrying…for evidence, I guess.
Susumu then thought, I’m so
sorry, Miss…whoever you are…but you’re going to end up on an autopsy table
eventually. I’ll try to be gentle with you. I swear it. I wonder. They say
every person who has ever lived has a twin somewhere in the Universe. I wonder
what your twin looks like?
Unknown to Ensign Susumu Kodai, the alien messenger had a twin, who was on Earth, quite alive and well, in the Physics Section of Headquarters.
Yuki was a little older than Kodai and Shima; having just turned twenty-one three months ago; birthdate, February 2, 2178. Her fine honey-blonde hair was in a shoulder-length shag cut, and she wore a white EDF Junior Officer’s uniform top and skirt in white, with a brown jacket and white ascot over it. Her features were just as fine as those on the alien messenger, probably due to her own Japanese/American/French ancestry, having been born in Boulder, Colorado…and, there were also factors unknown to her in her own ancestry that were…interesting. One of her white-booted feet tapped a little with nervous tension as she scanned again. “I hate to say this, Steve, but this telemetry is a mess. Have a look. This can’t be!” Yuki said as she locked her dark brown eyes on the computer data before her.
A somewhat older man, maybe twenty-seven years of age, clad in a dark green EDF uniform with a white ascot, leaned over Mori’s shoulder and muttered “Hmmm…if you’re right, and if the equipment is right, we’re down to three ships out there: the Kirishima, the missile ship Yukikaze, and the cruiser Northampton. I really hope the Yukikaze makes it. Nice job on the telemetry analysis, Yuki. Now the student shows her teacher what she can do, eh?”
“I guess so,” Yuki said with could only be described as a girlish blush. “Doctor Sanada,” she said as she addressed the physics genius who had been her professor in at three of her formal classes in the past, “what’s your connection to the Yukikaze?”
The stern-looking officer, recently promoted to Lieutenant Commander, never stood on ceremony with this girl, who was one of his prime students, as he said, “I have a friend out there on the Yukikaze, Yuki. A very close friend. I really don’t want to talk about it until the battle’s over. You need more coffee? How long have you been on watch?”
“Nine hours,” Yuki said with a yawn. “I only got up from here to go powder my nose before. Could you get me some coffee, please? You know how I like it!”
“Black and strong enough to melt the spoon?” laughed Sanada.
Yuki nodded. “I wonder where our robot friend is tonight?”
“Probably on duty in the Hospital Wing,” said Shiro Sanada as he brought Yuki her coffee.
“Where I have to serve a watch later on…” Yuki said as her seatmate came back from “powdering her nose.” Yuki found her co-worker, Senior Lieutenant Kaoru Niimi, to be just a little strange…a good friend at times, but strange, distant and almost obnoxious at other times. Niimi had dark blue hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and an observant but somewhat cold manner. Her skills were in intelligence, analysis of enemy transmissions and technology, and counseling, since she held a PhD in psychology. Her uniform was a dark blue jacket and skirt, with a trim necktie, and black pumps. She was five years older than Yuki, and obviously knew Sanada quite well from some time in the past.
“I like you. You complain a little, but you do your job anyway, Mori; not like some of the other goofballs in this unit.”
“Like Henson?” Yuki whispered.
“Affirmative, Yuki-chan,” Niimi said a little ironically, referring to Yuki by one of her two middle names. Niimi herself found Yuki to be a good junior officer but sometimes a bit too chirpy for her tastes.
“That Diane. She’s been gone for the past forty minutes, and I’ve been running her inputs as well as mine,” Yuki said.
“Emmmm…uhhh…,” Kaoru nodded with a knowing smile. Then, she looked at her screen and then at Yuki’s. “What’s with this damned telemetry?”
“They’re taking a beating out there,” Sanada said.
“Lovely,” Niimi said in a sarcastic voice. Yuki was keeping her mouth shut, concentrating on tracking her targets.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” sighed Sanada. “Niimi, any more communications from the enemy?”
“None,” she said. “They’ve been keeping quiet; except for shooting at our forces.”
“The telemetry from the Northampton’s getting weak,” Yuki said. “Sir, this does not look good for the mission.”
“No…it sure doesn’t,” sighed Steve.
The Kirishima took more hits after the Gamilas surrounded the fleet.
A Gamilon destroyer hit the Northampton with a
withering blast of fire and blew her apart.
In the meantime, another destroyer was making a death-dive straight for the Kirishima.
However, another ship was locking its sights onto the same destroyer.
“Locking on target,” said a crewman.
“Missiles ready!” snapped the weapons officer.
“Go for it, Shiro!” snapped the vessel’s young Captain.
The missile destroyer, the Yukikaze, fired her heat-seeking missiles, which followed the Gamilon destroyer’s engine heat as the enemy ship tried to evade.
“Comm, lock me in to the flagship,” said the Captain.
“Yessir,” he replied.
The Captain of the Yukikaze then said, “This is Missile Ship 17, Yukikaze, Captain Mamoru Kodai reporting! Destroyed one Gamilon destroyer; tracking a second!”
“Message sent, Kirishima acknowledging with signal lights,” said the crewman. “They’re reporting, Comm systems damaged. Should be back up shortly.”
“Kirishima? That’s Admiral Okita’s flagship! She’s badly damaged!” said Mamoru. “Any other vessels in the area?”
“Negative, sir,” said Kodai’s helmsman.
“Lock on course with the flagship,” ordered Kodai.
Aboard the Kirishima, Okita looked out at the Earth Defense Fleet, which, after less than an hour, was mostly wreckage.
We went out here, and they handed our tails to us on a silver platter, Okita thought miserably. I must admit this mission…has failed…
“How many ships do we have left now?” asked Okita.
“Only our flagship, and one missile ship.”
“Which one?”
“Number Seventeen; Kodai’s ship.”
Okita took a deep breath; he was in pain from his wound. “I see…this is enough; we’re going home!”
“Captain, are we retreating?” asked Eager.
“We’ve done all we can; there’ll be other battles to fight,” Okita replied. “Connect me to the Yukikaze.”
“What? We’re supposed to die like men!” said Mamoru over the Kirishima’s bridge speakers. “Let’s fight on and die!”
“Kodai, I don’t need or want your protection, but Planet Earth does!” Okita barked. “This is a direct order that I expect you to obey!”
Kodai retorted with, “I’m not turning the hell back. If you want to go back, sir, it’s your business. We will cover…your retreat!”
“Kodai, it’s an ORDER!” barked Okita.
“One-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn completed, Captain!” said Eager.
“Captain, Kodai isn’t following us!” snapped another officer on Kirishima’s bridge.
Mamoru, you are probably taking my son Shiro to his death, too, Okita thought. He’s your XO.
“KODAI!” snapped Okita.
“Good luck, Captain Mamoru Kodai,” said Okita.
A moment later, Okita and the crew on the Kirishima watched as the Yukikaze drew the fire of the enemy in a last, ultimately futile fight that drew all of the Gamilas to swarm his ship and attack it, allowing the Kirishima to escape.
“Kodai!” snapped Okita as he saw the burning Yukikaze retreating off into the distance with Mamoru saluting him as he went off to his destiny.
Okita returned the salute as the Yukikaze retreated so far into the distance that she could be seen no more. Then, there was an explosion…and she was gone.
Goodbye, Kodai, Okita thought as tears ran down his cheeks. Goodbye, Shiro. May God Bless and Protect you both…
The battered, smoking Kirishima sailed on in near-silence as Pluto shrank to a dot on their viewscreen.
They had lost.
Now, what hope was there for the people of Earth?
TWELVE HOURS LATER…
May 9, 2199
Underground Tokyo Megalopolis Earth Time…
It was 0200 Hours on the next day, 9 May, when Susumu Kodai and Daisuke Shima received new orders from Earth.
“Secure the Mars observatory and return to Earth in the Kirishima, which is heading towards your location.”
Susumu Kodai looked at the message capsule in his hand. They had secured Astra’s body in their plane’s cargo bay earlier.
Shima replied, “We’re all ready to go, sir.”
The comm signal from Earth continued, “Captain Okita’s ship will be in orbit of Mars in three hours. He’s expecting you. When you return, deliver your information on the unknown ship to the office of the Defense Forces Commander.”
Time passed.
The Kirishima arrived.
One of Okita’s officers stated, “The Mars search boat is approaching.”
“Reception airlock open,” he said.
The recon plane from Mars came in for a landing as Susumu Kodai looked around outside. “Hey, Daisuke…this is strange. We’re the only ship here. My brother Mamoru’s ship should be with the fleet. I wonder what happened?”
“Beats me,” Shima replied.
They made their landing. They left the ship, and two medics came to take the body of Astra. Her remains would be taken back to Earth to be autopsied.
A few hours later, the Kirishima made her landing on the ruined, dead Earth in an underground space dock.
Kodai and Shima left the ship, wearing the regular duty uniforms they had been assigned to wear as Special Operations officers. They were white: Susumu’s had a red arrow and insignia, and Daisuke’s had a green arrow and insignia; Susumu had been assigned as a Tactical/Combat officer and pilot, and Daisuke had been assigned as a Navigation officer.
He and Shima boarded an elevator tube which began to take them into the lower, habitable levels of the underground city complex of New Tokyo and its adjoining military bases.
Shima looked at a radiation indicator in the elevator tube as they descended.
“In the short time that we’ve been on Mars, Radiation from the planet bombs has seeped deeper into Earth. At that rate, in a year’s time, life on Earth will be impossible…even underground. At that rate, in a year’s time, Earth will be unlivable, even underground.”
Daisuke looked at his friend’s crestfallen face. He had known Susumu ever since they had been classmates and roommates at the Space Fighters’ Training School. They had been in class together, endured hundreds of inspections and military exercises, and they knew each other well. Daisuke looked sympathetically at Susumu and added, “About your brother Mamoru…I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” sighed Kodai as the elevator reached its destination, thousands of meters below the Earth’s surface.
They got out and walked down one of the many anonymous-looking corridors of the underground base.
Susumu spotted the back of Admiral Okita’s black and red Naval peacoat as they went down the passage, and he took this as an opportunity to introduce himself. “Admiral Okita, sir, I am Ensign Susumu Kodai!”
“Then you’re…?”
“Mamoru’s younger brother.”
Okita was expecting this, and he sighed, both due to the pain in his damaged and broken arm, which was in a sling, and from depression. “I see.” Okita took a deep breath, and he said, “Your brother stayed behind to fight a delaying action against the Gamilon Fleet. If he hadn’t stayed behind to fight, we wouldn’t have been able to get back to Earth. His status is missing, presumed…”
“YOU LEFT HIM BEHIND!” snapped Susumu in sadness and rage as tears filled his eyes.
“He chose to stay,” sighed Okita.
“He was under your command, sir!” snapped Susumu. “You could have ordered him back!”
“…He didn’t listen to my orders,” sighed Okita. “I’m truly sorry, Ensign Kodai.”
At that, he left. He needed to get to the Medical Wing to have his arm tended to ASAP.
Daisuke tried to comfort Susumu by saying, “What your brother did was very brave. He saved the lives of many men.”
Susumu didn’t reply. He just stood there and let the tears run from his eyes.
A few minutes later, when Susumu and Daisuke were in an aircar going through the city’s complex Tube system to EDF HQ, Daisuke said, “I heard Captain Okita’s own son was badly wounded in that battle near Pluto.”
“Wounded or not, at least he made it back home…but, Mamoru?”
Daisuke decided not to talk anymore as they sped towards Headquarters.
When they arrived at Headquarters, Susumu and Daisuke handed the message capsule found on Mars to the EDF Commander, General Charles Heihachiro Todo. Susumu didn’t know it, but Todo would remain the EDF Commander for the next thirty-two or so years, until a great tragedy happened in the future that Susumu, Daisuke, and other people they had yet to meet would be involved in.
Todo didn’t know it, but the long-haired, slightly nervous Ensign he was looking hard in the eye would someday be his successor as EDF Commander.
“So…this is the message capsule you found on Mars?”
“Yessir,” said Susumu.
“Good work, you two. We’ll analyze this capsule and let you know about our findings later. In the meantime, you will report all of your intelligence about the alien vessel to the Inter-Space Committee. For now, you two will be given orders to serve at the New Kure Naval Station underground. We may use you for other assignments later.”
“Yessir,” Susumu and Daisuke said as they saluted the Commander.
Well, so would Daisuke Shima’s life, but he would not be hit quite to the same degree as Susumu.
As they would report years later, Susumu would say, “Okay. We were lost. Two dweeb Ensigns, who didn’t quite know where we were or where we were going in that anonymous corridor in the underground city of New Tokyo Base. We were totally lost.”
“I mean,” Daisuke Shima also reported, “We were so lost that we didn’t even have an idea where the nearest head was, for Heaven’s sakes. We were never down here on this level before…”
Then, Susumu Kodai and Daisuke Shima almost ran into a nurse, who just stopped to look at them.
If it was any other nurse, they would have nodded, passed her by, maybe saluted if they saw she outranked them.
They had no idea of this nurse’s rank, because she wasn’t wearing a rank pin or epaulets.
She had on a simple marigold-colored nurse’s smock, trimmed in black, red cross on one breast, with matching marigold-colored rubber nurse’s clogs on her feet.
She was slender, with a willowy build, legs that seemed to go on forever, and…
She looked exactly like a living image of the dead
woman they had found on Mars.
The dead woman’s image flashed in Susumu’s and Daisuke’s minds as they compared the memory of the messenger’s corpse to this…obviously alive young woman.
Alive, but was she…a ghost?
This young woman had the same long, almost regal nose, with the same little pert flip up at the end.
Her hair was in a short, currently fashionable shoulder-length shag cut, but it was fine and the same color of new honey as the dead messenger’s hair.
She had the same lush eyelashes, but her dark brown, thoughtful eyes were (obviously) open.
Her eyes glittered with intelligence, and maybe a little bit of embarrassment as she gracefully walked past Susumu and Daisuke in silence, apparently lost in deep thought.
She glanced wordlessly at Susumu, and he was shocked inside
and shivered, thinking, this woman is a living Princess, and she just
glanced…at me? What was she thinking? Whoever she is…I’m way out of her
league!
“Where…where did she come from?” Susumu stammered
“Uh…this is the Medical Wing,” said Daisuke. “I just saw a sign over there. Maybe she’s a nurse?”
Then, Susumu and Daisuke heard the weirdest racket they had ever heard in their lives!
Hooves clattered down the corridor, and a…
…live pig came down the passage!
The pig had a rope around him…sort of.
A strange rotund little bald man in a set of white medical scrubs was trying to lasso the struggling, squealing pig.
He had wire-rimmed glasses hanging off his face, and his aged purely Japanese features were red with exertion as he yelled, “Hey, fellas, I could use some help here! Give me a hand!” he screeched in a voice just as strange as his appearance. “C’mon, you pig-headed porker, it’s time for your dinner!”
“Uhh…what was the name of that young nurse who just went down the passage?” Susumu stammered.
“Yeah…the pretty one in the gold dress,” Shima added.
As he struggled with his…pig…the strange man said, “Oh, you young fellas don’t miss a trick, do you? That nurse is Lieutenant Yuki Mori, best nurse I’ve got; and more! She just certified as a nurse-practitioner!”
The strange man lassoed the pig, and said, “If you’re so hungry, dinner’s in here! OUCH!”
Then, a robotic foot showed up and kicked the doctor, pig, and all into a doorway. The automatic door hissed open and then hissed shut. The racket of the screaming, cursing little man and the squealing pig still came through the door.
“Well, what’s this handy gadget?” Shima huffed as he looked at a slightly banged-up squat red robot.
“I am not a handy gadget!” huffed the robot in a high-squeaky electronic voice that was totally indignant. “I am ANALYZER, a genius robot!”
“And who was that…gentleman with the pig?” Susumu asked.
“You nosy Ensign! That man is Doctor Sakezo Sado, and he’s very eccentric…about five degrees! He has all sorts of pets, including pigs! He is supposedly intelligent, but not quite in the fashion that I compute intelligence!” piped up the robot.
“Why do you have all of those dents?” said Shima.
“Women like to kick me, including my girlfriend! She’ll understand there is no one as romantic as I one of these days!” ANALYZER screeched.
That’s weird, Susumu thought. I wonder what the
heck his…girlfriend…looks like? Probably some other robot or AI unit?
These robots get stranger and stranger every day!
Doctor Sado came out brushing his hands and said, “Now it’s time for **my** lunch!”
“Sorry, Doctor! I just linked to the computer in the cafeteria! They just ran out of lunch! Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Susumu and Daisuke slapped their knees and laughed at the strange robot.
“WHO ARE YOU TWO?” yelled Doctor Sado.
Daisuke tapped Susumu on the elbow and said, “We’d better go! See ya later, Doc!”
Susumu and Daisuke ran off.
ANALYZER turned his head and looked hard at Doctor Sado. “SHE would not approve of those Ensigns! They remind me of hooligans!”
“Who’s…she?” snorted Doctor Sado as he took his glasses off to wipe them.
“You know, who, Doctor! The greatest female ever created by the Almighty!” screeched ANALYZER.
“If you worship her, why did you steal her drink the other day? She was very upset!” huffed Doctor Sado.
“I needed to cool down, so I dumped her Passionfruit vitamin water all over myself!”
“And you call me eccentric,” huffed Doctor Sado.
Junior Lieutenant Natalie Fisher was another nurse in the underground hospital wing.
She was working as hard as everyone else, and she was in her small dorm room, shared with one other officer.
Natalie was about twenty-one, with dark reddish hair that went up over one eye in a strange little flip, and she had dark green eyes and often laughed. She had a regular-issue nurse’s smock on in white today, with standard-issue white boots.
“I wonder if I am gonna be able to eat all of this lunch in my fridge, or if my roomie will show up and request that she share it with me? What’s with that stupid cafeteria this week? They’re closing too early!”
Then, Natalie heard a tap at the hatch outside. She rolled up her eyes a little when she heard the familiar “shave and a haircut, two bits” pattern that her roomie, also her college, roomie, and for that matter, her closest childhood friend announced herself. She huffed a little and said, “Yuki, come in here! Is the cafeteria closed?”
“Uh-huh,” Yuki said as she strode in.
Natalie looked her friend Yuki Mori up and down and said, “Why the funky yellow smock? And those rubber clogs?”
“I was helping Doctor Sado with the pediatric cases today,” Yuki said as she came in, plopped down in her plastic desk chair, and kicked her clogs off. “You know the kids get scared when they see someone in white approaching! Consider my bright yellow dress camouflage for those poor little kids. They think I’m their buddy rather than just another nurse out to hurt them.”
“Okay, Yuki, I see your point. That’s logical, and kind of cute. Raiding the fridge already?”
“I’m hungry, Natalie!” Yuki said as she knelt bare-legged on the deck to dig out food that she liked that she knew Natalie probably wouldn’t. “You want the tuna roll? It’s your favorite. I’m happy with spicy salmon roll.”
“You’re a cute one. You’re even polite when you steal food,” teased Natalie.
“I paid for half this food, hush, would you?” Yuki said. “Oh, speaking of cute, I got a glimpse of some cute Special Forces guy a few minutes ago. He’s Japanese, I think, has these dark eyes, and the craziest hair I’ve ever seen on a human being! I wonder if he knows what a hair brush is,” Yuki chuckled.
Natalie didn’t know it, yet, but Yuki would end up spending the next several decades of her life referring to that individual as “the guy who has no idea what a hair brush is” in her lighter moments.
“So, what have you been up to in the past few days?” asked Natalie. “I’ve always been asleep when you’ve stumbled in here off watch, probably like a zombie.”
“Physics section, planet bomb casualties, physics section, study for a test on the computer about basic clinical methods with a patient with Alzheimer’s, physics section, eat, read stuff in the computer, go treat my patients, take another test, eat, report back to the physics section half asleep and have Niimi yell at me because I’m still in my white smock, eat, sleep, have weird dreams, and so forth and so on; rinse and repeat,” Yuki sighed. “Oh, heard from my Mom, too. She has more marriage candidates she wants me to meet when I get liberty again. Really? What’s wrong with her?”
Like many people of Japanese descent, the Moris/Moris wrote their children’s names in the old traditional Buddhist register even though they were Christian and Yuki had been duly baptized Catholic early in her life.
Yuki had truly met and committed to the King of Kings in her own heart at around twelve years of age, right before the bombings had started.
A moment later, the phone rang in their room.
Yuki picked up. “Nursing section, Lieutenant Mori reporting.”
“Ah, yes, Yuki!” said Doctor Sado. “In about an hour, please meet me in the main exam room. Admiral Okita, the Captain of the Kirishima, just came in. He has a broken arm that we need to reset properly. Get ready for some work. I’ll see to it that you’re released for the rest of the day after we’re done.”
“Yessir,” Yuki said. “Do I need to bring Fisher along?”
“No, just bring yourself. And please make sure that you’re somewhat regulation in your uniform. General Serizawa might be nosing around the area, and…”
“Oh, I know all about him,” Yuki sighed. “I’ll see you at 1300.”
Yuki hung up and said, “Well, I have to run again. It seems old Okita needs our help,” Yuki said as she sat down on her bunk to pull on her standard-issue marigold-colored boots.”
“Shouldn’t you change into your whites?” Natalie asked as she handed Yuki some salmon roll. Yuki began to eat the sushi while she made a bowl of spicy Instant Ramen for herself in the microwave.
“No, I’ll be fine. If Serizawa tries to write me up, I’ll let him know I was working in Pediatrics today.”
“He’s still a sexist jackass,” said Natalie as the microwave oven beeped. Yuki’s soup was ready.
There was a small bulletin board above the microwave, and on it, Yuki had pinned a sketch she had done of Shin Kazama, the long-haired pilot from one of her favorite manga and anime series, Area 88, which had been redone periodically over the centuries. Yuki had “adopted” the fictional manga character as a sort of mascot. She also knew how to fly herself, being checked out in a Type 100 Recon plane. Yuki had been trying to get the base maintenance officer to paint an emblem of the Unicorn or Firehorse on the tailfins of her ship, surmounted by a snowflake, for the past few months, but the officer told her that was an impossible dream.
Yuki’s other favorite anime series was Fullmetal Alchemist in its variations. She had once done a self-portrait of herself as Winry Rockbell, the female surgical genius and Automail (bionic limbs) technical wizard from that show. Considering that Yuki was a real-life Nurse-Practitioner, having just passed her last certification tests and earned her Master’s Degree, who sometimes worked with installing bionic body parts on people and maintaining them, Winry was a second “Mascot” for Yuki.
Yuki wolfed down her food, hungry from her efforts with the children earlier in the morning. Then, she gave Natalie a friendly “ta-ta” hug and she left.
“What a cheerful optimist she is,” sighed Natalie as she smiled at the closed door. “Amazing given the amount of crap life has dealt us.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
TO BE CONTINUED…