The Underhill Journal

Here, after a slight delay, is the third part of my serial.The Rebel Empress
Episode 3
Hawk

In the last episode Sakura Hachi began her training on Enceladus at the Elite School. She was assigned to Commander Lee Chen as her instructor who had been censured for failing to follow orders exactly. Within the first week of her training, they had fallen in love. Knowing that the penalty for becoming involved in such a way would be extremely severe, they decided they must keep it secret.
Sakura Hachi survived her implant operation entirely intact, unlike many other Elite hopefuls. She woke to find that her telepathic skills were particularly acute and that she had a deep telepathic bond with her lover, Lee Chen.

“We get to see the best of our parents, and we get to see the worst of parents,”
She thought about his voice as he'd said that, the way he'd closed his eyes and gently shook his head, then he'd continued, looking directly at her in the way he'd developed since her operation. Nothing could be hidden from that steady look. “In my family, all the young men were expected to go and join the war on Earth. We came from a tight-knit community in the South China Sea district of Titan,”
She had heard of The China Sea. It was a vast, sprawling network of suburbs in the Southern hemisphere of Titan.
“But my mother,” he went on softly, his eyes becoming suddenly distant as he looked into the past through the depths of his thoughts, “My mother was not from our community. My father brought her to live with his family at the end of his time fighting in the War.
Everyone welcomed her to begin with – after all she was a refugee from the War, but once my brothers and I had been born, things began to change. She didn't want her sons to go back to China, she didn't want them to die. Father didn't want to break with the family tradition, he didn't want to disobey Grandfather.
I was the youngest, and I remember when my eldest brother went off to the War. He was fifteen years old, and my mother wailed and tore at her hair as Grandfather took him away. Father held her tightly and said nothing. My brother never came back.
When my second brother was due to leave, my mother pleaded and begged my father not to send him. They argued and fought over it, waking me up in the night to hear my mothers screams and my fathers anger. My second brother went to war, and my mother ran crying down the road after my Grandfather's car. All our relatives had gathered in the street to say their own goodbyes, but as she ran by them, one by one, they turned their backs on her. My second brother came back, wrapped in a thick black plastic body bag. I remember my parents weeping over it together, clutching at each others hands.
I was their only remaining son, and my father no longer wanted me to join the War in China. My Grandfather ordered everyone in the community to shun my parents, and we had to move away. Dad took a poorly paid job as a security guard and taught Martial Arts, Mum ran a flower stall in a market.
Out of all my brothers, I was the most talented at Martial Arts, and because of this, Grandfather came often to visit us where we lived. He repeatedly tried to persuade my parents to send me to the war. There were many arguments, but my parents refused to give in to his demands and eventually my father asked him not to return,” he stopped then and looked away. Sakura could felt the swell of regret inside him. She guessed at the source.
“When you told your parents that you wanted to join the Elite, they did not take it well, did they?” she asked gently, thinking of the look in her fathers eye when she had chosen to follow the life of a Samurai.
“No, they did not,” he answered, turning to look at her again, “But they did not try to stop me,”
“What about your Grandfather? Did he find out what you had chosen to do?”
“He found out, and he let me know just how displeased he was, but like any dutiful grandfather he has not disowned me. That would be a waste of the chance to remind me how wrong I was to defy him,” Chen's words were leaded with dark irony. Sakura could tell he would have preferred to have been disowned.


She twisted the yoke in her hands, sending her Hawk into a deep, spinning dive after Chen's. They plunged together, Hawks flying back to back in a tight spiral towards the ground. It was a wildly dangerous maneuver, with Chen less than an arms length away from her as they dropped at full throttle, but she could feel the ship as she felt her Katana. It was a part of her and an extension of her. She could make the most minute changes in her trajectory by thought alone, and she could react to anything with the speed of those thoughts.
Not only that, but the depth of the bond she had with Chen made it easy for her to know exactly what he was about to do – she could feel his presence as strongly as she could feel the presence of her Hawk. Dangerous as it seemed, there was very little danger to either of them, and they pulled up together at the very last second and headed for the skies again, their flights intertwining like those of courting swallows in spring.
“Damn it!” Chen suddenly exclaimed over the channel, and she could feel his irritation.
“What's wrong?” she asked him.
“We've got to go fly a mission – a squadron of 2nd Levels have run into trouble down in the Underbelly on Titan. There's no-one else to give them support, so we've got to go,”
“My Hawk isn't armed,” she reminded him.
“That's a quick stop at the Elite Platform, it won't take more than a couple of minutes to arm her up,” he told her.
“Ok Commander, let's go,” she responded, already lifting her Hawk towards the subtle skies of Enceladus again. Pulling the throttle back, she blasted towards space, with Chen arcing upwards in parallel with her. Enceladus shrank below them, it's tropical forests quickly becoming a green smudge between the deep blue of it's oceans. They rose quickly above the SimSun, the glass on the cockpits darkening automatically to prevent them from being blinded from the Fission Satellite's glare. Titan was hanging on the dark side of Saturn, hidden in it's own night, so they swung fast around the rings and arrowed towards the Elite Platform that orbited the City Moon.
“EP1, this is Elite 21 requesting permission to re-arm for Elite 30,” Sakura heard Chen hail the platform, “We kind of need to make this quick guys,”
“Hi, Commander Lee. Elite 30 is listed as “in-training” here – I take it this is your student?” came a voice back from the Platform. Sakura felt Chen's irritation again.
“Yep, so let's rock and roll guys – we've got a situation in the Underbelly to deal with,”
“Affirmative, Commander, swing by Bay 4 – everything is ready to go there for you now,”
Sakura spun her Hawk and made for Bay 4, with Chen close behind her. He hovered above her ship as the robots in the bay got to work, filling the chambers in her Hawks empty guns and packing it's missile bays, and they shot towards the surface of Titan together at high speed the very second the bots were done.
Sakura rode the thick atmosphere of Titan with expert assurance. She followed Chen as he bulleted round the curvature of the moon, heading for the southern pole and the suburb known as The Underbelly. It was the part of the moon that got the least light, and the part that seemed to accumulate the majority of Titans vast criminal community – possibly because of the long hours of darkness.
The firefight lit up the night sky, with the red laser fire from the Swifts of the 2nd Level Elite competing with the yellow incendiary fire from the S.A.M.'s om the Surface among the rooftops of the Underbelly. Sakura saw a Swift turn into a ball of fire and heard the scream of it's pilot just as they came in range of the firefight. There was no time for instructions, Chen barreled forward in his Hawk and Sakura followed suit, trusting to her instincts and battle experience to carry her through. She fell into perfect sync with her lover, feeling his movements as she had done earlier and twisting her own ship into them. There was no thought in her as she threw the switches to release missiles at the S.A.M. sites below, and it took only thought to guide them to their targets.
One of the sites locked on to her, and she felt it like a cold breath running down her spine. She plunged her ship downwards at full throttle, then pulled it up again just as the wingtips were about to brush the top of a squat low-rise that housed another site. The S.A.M. Missiles didn't have the agility to cope, and slammed into the low-rise as she twisted her Hawk away. There was a wild cheer from over the comm links from the 2nd level Elite, and Sakura smiled quietly to herself.
Above her, Chen was involved in a dog fight with three Mafia Stingers. He'd thrown his ship into a tight corkscrew spin to avoid the small, agile, short-range fighters. They were spitting rounds at furiously high velocity from dual Mini-guns mounted on each stubby wing while they swarmed round him in an attempt to shred the fuselage of his Hawk.
A Swift plunged, burning past him, another three stingers following it while the pilot screamed over the comm links. Chen followed the path of it down with his eye, trying to get a clear shot at the pursuing Stingers even as he twisted his Hawk to avoid the one's on him. From a hangar below another 30 or so Stingers swarmed out, making a b-line for Sakura as she pulled her ship up to assist him. They scattered as the burning Swift plunged through them and hit the ground.
“This situation is completely out of control – we have to regroup!” Chen yelled over the comm links, “Everyone make a break for the upper atmosphere – the Stingers can't follow us there,” he barked.
Sakura followed his order, pulling her Hawk up and gunning it so that she shot upwards, breaking away from the Stingers that were closing on her and outrunning them easily. Chen appeared on her right wing, flying in tight formation with her, while the Swifts began to congregate around them as they all headed upwards.
“Swifts form up and be prepared to cover us as we dive in. We're going to blitz the Stingers with machine fire while you guys work the S.A..M's with missiles. Stay above us and keep as tight a formation as you can – that will keep the Stingers away from you,” then he switched to a private channel and added, “We do a corkscrew dive and keep up continuous fire. Follow my lead and keep within a wingspan of me – we're going to have to skim pretty close to street level,”
“Yes, Commander Lee,” she replied without a trace of irony. There was no way of telling who might be listening in to their conversation. She felt a wave of love from Chen, and smiled to herself.
“On my mark, Elite,” Chen spoke across the open channel, watching while the Swifts formed up into a tight vee across the dark Titian sky, “Three, Two, One - “ he hesitated a breath as the Swifts shifted to their final position, “Drop!”
Sakura and Chen plunged downwards, twisting around each other, the Swifts following them and blanket firing their missiles at the S.A.M.s below. The Stingers rose up in a swarm towards the Hawks, but were scattered suddenly as the Hawks pulled up sharply and began firing. Sakura and Chen were still locked into a tight spiral and spinning so fast that it was impossible for the Stingers to target them. They peeled apart suddenly, following the scattering Mafia ships, then pulled back together as soon as they had the Stingers attention. All around them the S.A.M. sites were exploding, the Swifts taking advantage of the activity below to take them out.
Sakura entered that flowing state of mind where she did nothing more than act. She could never accurately recall afterwards what happened when she entered mushin, but it never mattered. The Stingers swarmed towards them again, but the depth of her bond with Chen meant that they could not match the Hawks for co-ordinated movement, and the swarm began to disintegrate, with many of the tiny ships being shredded by the machine fire of the Hawks.
Then she and Chen were flying at street level, their Hawks belly to belly through the narrow lanes of The Underbelly. Sakura was aware of people fleeing for cover as they flew by, but her attention was focused on the Stingers coming up behind and ahead of them. As one, Chen and Sakura slammed the brakes and flipped their Hawks down a side street. Although the Stingers were more agile than the Hawks, the Stinger pilots didn't have Elite reactions and there was a large explosion as several of the tiny ships slammed at full speed into buildings as they failed to turn in time. The Hawks flipped up in the air, rising above the rooftops and then turning back down so that they faced the remaining Stingers and unleashed a volley of bullets. What was left of the Stingers broke off their pursuit and Chen and Sakura climbed back into the sky to give support to the Swifts.
After the battle, Chen and Sakura followed the Swifts back to their Titan base, while Eagle Marines cleaned up at the weapons depot that had been the mission objective.
“Thank you Commanders, we couldn't have done it without you,” the Swift Captain told them over the comms as they flew, “Our intelligence was way out on their Stinger capacity and on the number of S.A.M.'s they had,”
“I'd get Intel to check it's sources again. If they've got a squealer then I'd say you were being set up by the Mafia,” Chen told the Captain.
“I will be doing just that. Commander, right after the Press Conference,”
“Well, me and my apprentice here will hang ten for the debriefing, but we'll have to shoot off before “meet the press” time. I'll leave you to that pleasure,”
Sakura grinned to herself again, and flipped to a private channel.
“You seriously don't want to bask in the publicity you just made?”
“I seriously do, Sakura, but unfortunately there's a couple of small details I have to pay attention to. Quite apart from the fact that General Deuce needs just the smallest excuse to roast me, you're to avoid any publicity whatsoever until you graduate, so we debrief quickly and head home,”
But, things did not turn out quite so simple when they arrived a few moments later at the Swift Base. There were journalists on the landing strip at the base, waiting with camera's in hand to film and photograph and question Chen when he arrived.
“Well I hope the General has got his coals good and hot, I have no idea how I'm going to talk my way out of this one,” Chen sighed as he brought his Hawk into to land. Sakura dropped hers next to his and quickly climbed out of the cockpit. By the time her feet hit the tarmac, Chen had already been swarmed by members of the Press, each shouting over the top of the rest to try and get their own questions heard. Chen was trying in vain to raise his own voice above all of theirs. The level of noise was not particularly pleasant to Sakura's heightened senses, and judging by the sense of discomfort that Chen was broadcasting to her, she knew that being in the centre of it all was more unpleasant still.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Chen bellowed suddenly, losing his cool altogether. The pack fell silent, “Thank you! I can't give you any more than a statement today because I am with my Trainee Elite. We received a distress call from the Southern Swift Squadron and as we were the only available Elite in the vicinity of Saturn, we had to respond. We achieved a significant victory against Mafia forces and have dealt a blow to their weapons manufacturing capabilities. There will be a press conference with the Swifts after debriefing and you can have all your questions answered there,“ The noise of the pack began to rise again, so Chen had to shout over the top of them, ”I'm sorry, but that's all I can give you,”and he began to wade his way back through the pack towards Sakura.
The Press, seeing that there was nothing more to be had from Chen, mostly began to head towards the conference room. A few held back still, with a photographer taking pictures of Chen and Sakura, and one standing staring at the two of them, chewing on a pencil and scribbling notes on scrap of paper.
“General Deuce will ban the publication of any pictures or articles with a rooky Elite in them!” Chen shouted back over his shoulder. The scribbling journalist looked up as if startled and came hurrying over to them as they began to head for the Briefing room.
“Dmitri Jones of the Saturn Telegraph, Commander Lee. We've spoken before,” the man said breathlessly, holding out a hand to Chen which Chen ignored. The journalist took it in his stride and turned to Sakura.
“And you'd be Sakura Hachi, the Shogun of Japan's top Samurai. It seems rather unusual for you to be an Elite rooky – there must be quite a story there,”
Sakura did not need Chen's sense of urgency to choose not to reply to the question. There would be a diplomatic firestorm between China and Eagle Empires if her face got plastered all over the Media in Elite Uniform, and of course relations between China and Japan would be plunged to new lows. She did not want that kind of thing to happen while she was not there to fight the ensuing battles.
“Dmitri, go and speak to General Deuce. You know what he's going to tell you, but that's as much story as you are going to get,” Chen snarled, before turning away. Sakura didn't give the journalist a second glance before following Chen, but if she had, she would have been surprised by the thoughtful look on his face.

Later that night, Sakura stood alone in the hangar with her Hawk. It hadn't received so much as a scratch during the battle, but she couldn't help running her hands over it's sleek black hull to be sure. She could feel the whisper of the ship's circuitry under her fingers as it responded to her touch, reminding her, achingly, of her sword. She still felt incomplete without her Samurai blade at her side, and neither the docile, puppy like AI of her Hawk nor the intense love of Chen quite filled that hole in her psyche. After all, she had been bred for the Blade.
You are sad, why? The words formed in her mind, although in truth they were less words than simple feelings. Under her fingertips she felt a sympathetic warmth radiating from her Hawk. It made her pause and think.
Was she simply sad because she missed the symbiosis with her Katana? Or was there more to it than that? She was now several months into her training, and there were only slightly more than two months to go. She should really feel elated about that, because she felt exiled from the war here, and helpless for it. She was also passing every assessment with flying colours, which meant she was guaranteed to graduate.
But there was Chen, and she knew, instinctively, that leaving him behind would be much more painful than leaving her sword in the care of her family. Knowing him, loving him and coming to understand his side of the war that she was fighting had left her with questions and feelings she could not simply deny. Her father had questioned the war, but now, through Chen, she could see first hand the futility of it, as well as the way that Eagle Empire was manipulating the whole thing. China and Japan would constitute a serious threat to their hegemony if they ever joined forces.
That was a distraction though, she realised as she pulled her mind back from that tangent and forced herself to contemplate again what she would feel without Chen. She had never contemplated love before, had never had time for it as she plotted her long course of vengeance against her fathers killers, and now she had found it, she was reluctant to let it go. But how could she do anything else?
I will always be with you, she felt the ship's response to her distress, and she ran a soothing hand over it's hull again.
“I know, and I am glad. I'm sorry I can't explain to you properly why I am still sad,” she said quietly, trying to bring her love for the Hawk to the fore in her mind to settle the ship.
A sensation like a soft, caressing touch, running up her spine distracted her entirely. Chen was coming towards the hangar door. She glanced across at it, waiting for him.
You are sad because of Commander Lee, the Hawk told her, surprising her. There was some resentment in it's tone, and a certain edge of protectiveness too. She shook her head and laughed softly.
“Yes, but it's very complicated. It's not his fault, so please don't be angry with him,” she soothed the ship.
I will try, the Hawk responded, calmed by her words and the feeling of anticipation flowing through her as she waited for Chen.
The side door into the School slid back with a hiss, and Chen stepped into the gloom, quickly crossing the huge space of the Hangar to wrap Sakura in an embrace. Here, in the cool darkness of the Hangar, there was no need for secrecy. Sakura's Hawk and it's cooling engines concealed them entirely from the surveillance cameras, and there was no-one else about at this time of night.
“General Deuce is screaming for Dmitri Jones's blood. Apparently he actually submitted an article about you to his editor, who sent it straight to the General,” he told her at last, when they finally broke.
“It will be better for everyone, I think, when I am gone from here,” she told him, sighing.
“It won't be better for me. I'm trying not to think about what it will be like when you're gone,”
She closed her eyes, straining to think through the white noise of thoughts in her head. She wondered if she would find calm again, and hoped that her sword would bring her equilibrium back.
“Do you think we will ever see each other again?” she asked him, voicing the fear that she had so far held back.
“I don't know,” he replied, and she could feel the bleakness that that statement made him feel. They were skating close to the void with this conversation, and she knew she had to bring them back from that brink, for now. She wrapped her arms around him, held him tightly and whispered softly in his ear.
“I do know we have time left. Let's not waste it with this,”
Then she said a gentle good night to her Hawk, and led him away from the darkness of the Hangar, back towards the sleeping quarters of the School.