A giant loomed in the depths of night.
A dim glow arose from its direction, revealing the giant’s identity as a majestic cumulonimbus cloud ten times larger than its terrestrial counterparts. After a five-hour-long night, dawn had arrived on planet FBB.
The inaugural trawl with Diode was finished. Terra's pillar boat had its back to the morning sun, flying west almost as if trying to return to the night. It would be time for the egression jets soon.
FBB’s rotation period lasted 10 hours. The base ships and a mixed-use fleet orbited the planet at an altitude of 6000 kilometers, their inclined circular orbits taking 10 hours and 33 minutes to complete. To put it simply, they were nearly in geosynchronous orbit.
Terra could more or less picture the mechanics of a quasi- geosynchronous orbit, but if she were to try explaining to others, it would sound awfully vague. What she could say was that while the pillar boat descended into the atmosphere, the orbiting base ship continued traveling over the horizon. Ten hours later, it would approach them from the opposite direction as it completed an orbit. Its return opened a launch window they couldn't miss if they wanted to go back.
The pillar boat’s belly was a little swollen. It stored the besshu they'd netted, but it wasn’t the splendidly executed surfer catch from eight hours earlier. They had moved to another fishing ground afterwards and caught five and a half hai totaling 96,000 tonnes with a simple pillar trawl.
The average pillar boat catch was six hai, and seven hai was celebrated as a large catch. One hai equated to between 10,000 and 20,000 tonnes and accounting usually treated it as such. While five and half hai sounded close to six hai, it was still several thousand tonnes short. It wasn’t the worst catch, but it was an unremarkable one. And because their catch had been unremarkable, Terra found it unsatisfying.
“Whyyyy... why would you go that far...” Terra hugged her knees, occasionally complaining from the rear pit. “We caught so much, and yet...”
A 315,000 tonne catch was absolutely absurd. Everyone would have heaped praise on them for the massive profit they turned for the clan. It had been their chance to become heroes among twisters and decompas...
However, Diode didn’t respond to her.
“Please set up the guide-container properly. No, don’t guess. Give me the actual measurements. Use the full-element!”
After Diode threw out their first catch, she hadn't said anything about it beyond, "I’ll explain after we get back." From the moment they began hauling sweet mackerel, Diode focused on piloting.
Following Diode’s demand for the full-element, Terra ran her eyes across the sky. The future orbital position of the base ship was projected there as it approached from behind. If she wanted to take it easy, she could predict the location based on the trajectory. They could make small adjustments with the boating system if that put them on a collision course with the orbiting spaceship.
However, that wasn’t what Diode wanted. With no other choice, Terra requested the latest information from the navigation satellite. Navigation was the decompa's duty, even though she was terrible with numbers.
The full-element contained the orbital inclination, eccentricity, right ascension of the ascending node, argument of periapsis, mean motion, and mean anomaly of the Idaho’s orbit around the planet. Once acquired, they were projected onto the target-container.
“There, is that okay?”
“All good. Let’s get on course now.”
The impulse from the rear washed over them like the current of a mudflow. Over 200,000 tonnes began to accelerate enormously as the pillar boat worked to attain orbital velocity. As it did, the thrust reverberated like kicks to the side. The two bodies swayed in the biofluid buffering gel as g-force grew under the acceleration and the boat fired impulses from its route-correction thrusters.
“I wonder if this is good enough... Alright, phew, now we’re on a rendezvous trajectory!”
The bow’s spiked nose cone pierced through the high-altitude air. In the cockpit, Dioded leaned on her backrest and quietly exhaled. Chin in hand, Terra studied her with deep curiosity from behind.
In the end, just what kind of person is she?
Diode’s piloting style was considerably different from the usual twister. Terra had been too absorbed in work to put her finger on it, especially since it was their first day together, but the one thing that had left an impression was how in Diode acted surprisingly ferocious one moment and bizarrely calm the next.
Speaking of, beginning from the first year of high cruise-school, twisters usually added the fundamentals of piloting a pillar boat to the curriculum on their own. Both men and women, across all sixteen clans, studied for the sake of becoming twisters and decompas. Diode should have received that education, too.
However, since she had been raised in a Tsunami Search, her core curriculum might well be blowing on the wind. At any rate, Terra didn't know enough about her.
Diode disappeared immediately after the conclusion of their first meeting three days ago. The hadn't seen each other again until they met up that morning to go fishing. Terra extended an invtation for a breakfast chat but was borne away by Diode’s haste to get to the fishing grounds.
They left the boarding preparation room in complete silence. They also descended into the atmosphere in complete silence. It was only during a minimal exchange regarding the weather and fish species at theit destination that they found the surfers.
The beginning was very, very hazy. Even under normal circumstances, Diode’s overbearing proposal alone was cause enough for concern. But that morning, Terra felt even more apprehensive. As soon as she saw the girl show up, the fact she was really about to go out fishing with another woman started to fully sink in.
She wanted to at least talk it over but hadn’t been allowed to. Harboring those doubts and dissatisfactions, Terra muttered, “You’re going to operate it manually until we’ve returned, huh? Ah, was it a manual descent too?”
“Yes.”
“...You're just doing whatever you feel like, is that it?”
As far as the return home was concerned, the boat could handle that on its own. However, Diode shook her head. “We did lots of showy things, so we really don't have all that much of a propellant surplus left. I wanted to be more precise than the auto, so I did it with my own two hands.”
“Ah, is that so...”
“Let me turn that question around,” Diode asked, facing Terra. “What do you think about twisters who can't perform a manual descent or rendezvous?”
“Huh?” Terra was taken aback. “Uh, it’s a bit... too soon for me to say. You’re the first person I’ve ever seen do that manually, Diode-san.”
"We manually input everything into the spaceship's boating system from the moment we disembark for FBB to the moment we return, right?"
“Mhm” Terra nodded. “You don't depart without going through the periodic maintenance and pre-flight checklists, right...?”
“Well, there's your answer.”
“Even still, is there a reason for doing it all manually?”
Diode stared pointedly into Terra’s eyes. Why is this response so suffocating? I'm only asking the obvious, Terra thought. She averted her eyes in discomfort before Diode spoke emphatically.
“I get that a lot of things don’t really make sense to you, but I’m a twister. There are things you won’t understand unless you’re a twister. Could you please be patient?”
“I can, but...” Terra was rather troubled.
Diode’s tone changed. “Terra-san.” She quickly spun around in her pit. She brought her face level with Terra’s and leaned in, but it wasn’t her eyes that captured Terra’s attention. It was the dashing blade-shaped necktie wrapped around the base of her throat. “Am I bad at this?”
“Huh?”
“What did you think of my piloting, Terra-san? This is just my own opinion, but I think that it lives up to the standards in its own way.”
Her eyes averted as if to say ‘Probably’. It was like she was seeking affirmation. Her timid posture disoriented Terra.
“Uh, let me see...”
How should I reply to that...?
Diode’s passionate, highly responsive piloting in flight was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Diode’s abilities were in an entirely different dimension from Terra's Fundamentals teachers and no less than five previous twisters. Terra really felt that way.
So why's she sitting there with her lips clamped like a kid about to be scolded? What should I say here? Is there anything I should avoid?
Terra didn’t know, and because she didn’t know, she went with the following, “...It does meet the standards in its own way, I think. No, I wonder if it surpasses them...?”
She thought Diode's piloting met the standard eight times over, but worried that would sound like a lie or exaggeration, tried to moderate her praise.
“Is that so?” Diode lightly pressed her chest in relief. “If that’s the case, then please have my apologies for everything.” She finished with a confident snort before shutting her mouth. It was that same overbearing attitude from back when she first proposed pairing up. Proud, but with hints she was expecting a rejection. Terra started getting a strange feeling when she noticed.
This girl... she’s different inside.
When she was doing something that needed to be done, she did it with reckless, unyielding cool. It probably only looked that way from the outside. She was putting on a strong act.
I think I had trouble getting things like that across to adults too when I was around that age.
“Ufu.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I get it. I'm leaving it to you, Diode-san.” After she said that, she mouthed ‘Diode-san’ again and corrected herself. “Die-san.”
“DIE?”
“Do you mind if I call you that?”
The girl immediately raised an eyebrow, “That sounds like you’re just telling me to die, though.”
“It was that kind of ‘die’?!” Terra was surprised. Thinking back to when they first met, Diode had quickly mentioned the origin of her name. “I thought that it was the lovely kind of ‘die’, like short for ‘Diana’ or ‘diamond’... so is Die-san not okay?” She innocently brought her face closer as she spoke.
At that, the tip of Diode’s nose gently flushed. She quickly turned to face forward in the cockpit. “If you want to call me that, then fine. It’s only a name, after all,” she replied bluntly.
“Okay! Die-san.”
She didn’t respond again, and instead increased the boat’s acceleration by one level with a thump instead.
Over the span of the next thirty minutes, they transitioned from vast brick-colored skies into the starry darkness of outer space. As they neared the apex of their orbital trajectory, the gigantic disk of the Idaho steadily closed in from behind. Docking wasn't possible if the approach wasn't close enough, but getting too close posed a collision risk. A rendezvous distance of around 500 meters was considered ideal.
Although they had been aiming for that when they started accelerating through the atmosphere, it was still firing a missile at a target in the sky 6000 kilometers away. It wasn’t rare to require a final adjustment ten kilometers out. However, this time they achieved a close approach of 545 meters, adjustment-free. The accuracy was worthy of a yearly record. Terra squealed in admiration.
It was common practice to end fuel calculation the apoapsis just achieved a zero relative velocity rendezvous. The full journey had consumed 92,500 tonnes of propellant in total. Since their catch was 96,000 tonnes, they were slightly in the black with a profit of 3,500 tonnes.
Since that was a good performance for a first outing, Terra pretty much forgot about the 310,000 tonnes they had discarded, satisfied—at least until they approached the catch inspection and receiving tower in Idaho’s core.
“What? Giving up your share? No, we can’t do that,” the Catch Duty Officer said over the video line. That was when the trouble started.
He wore a nametag with with ‘Bonus’ written on it. He had slightly swollen eyelids and sat with his back hunched. He looked at Diode’s face and asked, “Whose decompa are you?”
“I’m the twister.” Diode answered blankly. The response was incongruous, so naturally, the officer didn't follow.
“Twister? Where is he? Wait, this pillar boat belongs to the Intercontinentals. Where’s Terra-chan?”
Terra raised a hand in the rear pit. “Ah, I’m here. Good evening, Bonus-san.”
In the front pit, Diode repeated herself. “So, as I said, I’m the twister and Terra-san is the decompa.”
Naturally, as the boat's owner, Terra was acquainted with the duty officer. The job was supposed to operate in assembly line fashion, but Diode's presence was almost like an outside interruption. Officer Bonus frowned once he noticed Terra.
“This sort of thing's not going to fly, Terra-chan. A pair of women can’t be doing this. What, you went down with this girl? Woah, and you caught something? Oh boy, this is...”
“Excuse me, but we caught five and a half hai. It’s not much, but we did turn a profi–”
“No, this isn’t about the profit.” The worker closed the VUI plate on his hand and scratched his temple with a finger. “It’s fine you’re in the black—no, that's not quite fine either, but this is going to turn into a reciprocity system violation. You had to take lessons, weren't they in your curriculum? They're lessons for junior students.”
“Umm, did I? Maybe I didn’t take them?”
Terra was almost certain she had, but she got the feeling she spent the lesson drawing imagined besshu species instead, thinking it had nothing to do with her. So, she pleaded ignorance.
“You did. You just forgot, didn't you? Alright, you’d better listen up.”
Still frowning, the officer's lecture went something like this: It was the norm for a twister and a decompa to be spouses. The vast majority of married couples were composed of men and women from different clans. They had to follow two directives.
The first directive was the preservation of genetic diversity, the so-called bloodline mixing. With the ships remaining separate for two years, the bloodlines would become inbred if a clan’s population of roughly 20,000 only married among themselves. As a result, the sixteen clans sought to bring in as much new blood as possible from the population of 300,000 whenever a Bow Awow was held.
The second directive was to guarantee societal stability. The so-called reciprocity system aimed to redistribute the clans’ earnings. Once the sixteen clans dispersed, their profits were what see them through the next two years of abundance or adversity. Catches were inevitably unequal, but that inequality could also spark conflict. As a result, the Circs shared their catch as much as possible. It was for that purpose that the men and women working the pillar boats each received half of the catch.
Although the catch was divided, there was no way to send the husband or wife’s half of the catch to their distantly orbiting home clan. Instead, what normally happened was that half of the pillar boat’s earnings were converted into the equivalent monetary value for accounting purposes. Then, during the Bow Awow year, the accounts were drawn from to settle a wide range of payments. The payment structure preserved stability, as that way, the sixteen clans all supported one another.
“I already knew that’s how it works...”
“That’s because you’re a marriage meeting veteran, Terra-chan.”
“You really didn't have to say that.” Terra scowled and Diode cut into the conversation.
“In that case, please report that I freely surrendered on my clan’s share. Record it all as the Endeavours’ catch. I don’t have an issue with it.”
“Erm, listen, I think you still don’t quite get how this works. You don’t have the right to do that, you know.” He spoke as if he were lecturing a clueless child.
“It would be nice if we could take it all for ourselves, but if we did that, your clan wouldn't get anything. We'd be stealing from them, in other words. What you say is irrelevant, because the catch is a matter of public record. That’s the rule. If we allowed individual discretion, there would definitely be a profliferation of accumulation conspiracies to rip off outsiders. It would destabilize our Circ society. That’s why there’s a strict mandate for us to split the catch equally between the two parties. That's a resolution from the Bow Awow.”
Profit distribution was the primary purpose for the Bow Awow to begin with. The clan suffering from the lowest profits held rights to the orbit predicted to be the most productive for the next two years. The Circs had only made it to Year 303 thanks to those discussions.
“That’s why I can’t allow you to give up on your share. Diode-san, you have the obligation to take half of the catch for transfer send on to your clan. Alright, your real name please.”
“Real name...”
“If you can’t give me your name, I can’t receive the fish.” The officer’s expression was composed, and he lifted his chin as if to add, ‘This is not a negotiation’. Diode hung her head and ground her teeth.
Terra anxiously watched the two, and making up her mind, brought her pit closer to the girl’s side. “You don’t have to do it.”
“...What?”
“It's okay if you don’t want to give your name no matter what. You have a reason, right?”
Diode absentmindedly opened her mouth. “That’s–” she replied. “If I don’t tell him, then we’ll have no choice but to throw it all out again...”
“Well, it’s fine,” Terra said, flapping a hand. “After all, it was our first time for starters, and a pair turning a profit on their first trip isn’t really a thing. It was just practice. You know, practice! Just learning how we work together is good enough, isn't it?”
Terra was lying, it wasn’t good enough. The truth was she really, really, really wanted that catch, but she felt it was more important to stand up for Diode. She tried to finish her statement with a smile, but it was Diode's turn to bring her face closer.
“Why are you saying that? I thought there were a lot of things you wanted to know, Terra-san.”
“Huh?”
“You don't want to hear anything about me, now that you have the opportunity? Didn't you want to know where I came from or why I’m here? Here you are now, telling me it’s okay not to say anything... ”
Ah, she noticed.
Terra was a bit moved. She stopped to think for a moment and then smirked. “You haven’t told me anything yet, so I'm frustrated Bonus-san will get to hear it first... You know?”
Diode's stiff expression loosened up when she heard that. She looked like she was about to laugh in relief.
With that, she turned back to the duty officer. In a single breath she said, “My alias is Diode, real name Kanna Ishidoro Gendo. Ishidoro family from the Gendo clan. Do not report the name to ‘Fuyō’, please. There shouldn't be any objections to that.”
“Okay. Gendo clan, eh?” The blunt officer reopened the VUI on his hand and poked at the screen, then said “But the deposit information will be sent to the Gendo clan’s base ship immediately.”
“So you were hiding your name.”
“I was, yes, but there wasn’t any deeper meaning behind it. You easily could have found it out by looking me up.”
“Ooh, so you’re from the Gendo clan, Die-san.” Terra was a little surprised. Of the sixteen modern clans, it mingled the least with the others and had a reputation for being mysterious.
“Does that mean that I can fish with Terra?” Diode glared at the officer.
He grunted with a pout. “Not if you aren’t spouses. I don’t make the rules.” He looked up again, clearly bothered.
“Well, it's the fishing that's illegal. I'm not aware of restrictions on other activities. If you're just going down and back, then it doesn’t fall under Fishing's jurisdiction. That would be Cruising's jurisdiction.”
“No fishing?”
“It would be for personal use. Playing, if you will. And since you're not fishing, you’ll have to pay fees for things like satellite and docking. You’ll also have to buy medicine and the like at general pricin–”
“If it’s like that then there are–” Diode stopped mid-sentence and turned around with worry. Terra nodded gently.
“So it’s fine?”
“—no objections!”
“Please entrust the catch with the proper department. Okay, 96,000 tonnes of sweet mackerel accepted!” The duty officer’s face said ‘I dunno anything anymore’ as he quickly signed the VUI.