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 was arriving on planet FBB.
Inaugural trawl with Diode completed, Terra's pillar boat had its back to the morning sun, flying west almost as if trying to return to the night.
It would soon be time for the egression jets.
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’d sound awfully vague. What she'd be able to say was that while the pillar boat descended into the atmosphere, and the base ship in outer space continued traveling over the horizon. Ten hours later, it would approach behind them after completing a single orbit, opening a launch window they couldn't miss if they wanted to return.
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 8 hours earlier. They’d moved to another fishing ground later 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 big catch. One hai usually equated to 10,000 or 20,000 tonnes and accounted 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 unremarkable. And because their catch had been average, Terra found it dissatisfying.
“Whyyyy... why would you go that far...”
Terra hugged her knees, occasionally complaining from the rear pit.
“We caught so much, and yet...”
A catch of 315,000 tonnes was absolutely absurd. Everyone would have heaped praise on them, and the clan would have turned a massive profit. It had been their chance to become heroes among twisters and decompas…
However, Diode didn’t respond.
“Please set up the guide-container properly. No, don’t speculate. Give me the actual measurements. The full-element!”
After Diode discarded their whole catch, she didn't say anything beyond, "I’ll explain after we get back."
From the moment they began hauling sweet mackerel, Diode was 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 things easy, she could predict the location based on the trajectory, and if it put them on a collision course with the orbiting spaceship, they could make small adjustments with their boat's systems.
However, that wasn’t what Diode wanted from her. With no other choice, Terra requested the latest information from the navigation satellite. Even though she was bad with numbers, navigation was a duty for the decompa.
A 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.
“Here, is this 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 towards achieving orbital velocity. At the same time, the thrust reverberated sideways like kicks. The two bodies swayed in the buffering-biofluid gel under the acceleration’s g-force and route-correction thrust impulses.
“I wonder if this is good enough… Alright, now we’re on a rendezvous trajectory, phew!”
The bow’s spiked nose cone pierced through the high-altitude air. Diode, leaning on the backrest, quietly exhaled in the cockpit. Terra stared intensely at her from behind with deep curiosity, chin in hand.
—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 tell precisely how, especially given it was their first day together, but the one thing that left an impression was how Diode acted surprisingly violent one moment and bizarrely calm the next.
Speaking of, beginning from the first year of high cruise-school, twisters usually added the fundamentals of pillar boat piloting to the curriculum on their own. Both men and women, across all sixteen clans, studied for the sake of becoming twisters and decompas. So, Diode also should have received that education.
However, given that she had been raised in a Tsunami Search, her core curriculum might well be blowing in the wind.
At any rate, there wasn't enough information.
Diode disappeared immediately following the end of their first meeting three days ago, and the next time they saw each other had been meeting up that morning to go fishing. Terra invited her to breakfast for a chat but was borne away by Diode’s rush 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 during a minimal exchange regarding their destination, weather, and fish species that they found the surfers.
The beginning was very, very hazy. Even under normal circumstances, Diode’s overbearing proposal alone would have been cause for concern. But that morning, Terra was faced with more apprehension. As soon as she saw the girl show up, she began to feel the weight of the fact that she really was going out to fish with a woman, not a man.
She at least wanted to talk it over, but hadn’t been allowed to.
Harboring those doubts and dissatisfactions, Terra murmured, “You’re going to operate it manually until we’ve returned, aren't you? Ah, was the descent manual too?”
“Yes.”
“...You feel like doing it, so that’s what you’re going to do, is that it?”
As far as the return home was concerned, the boat could do that on its own. However, Diode shook her head. “We did lots of showy things, so we really don't have 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's your opinion on twisters who can't descend or rendezvous manually?”
“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 it manually, Diode-san.”
"We input everything into the spaceship's boating system from the moment we embark 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 you go.”
“Even still, is there a reason for doing it all manually?”
Diode stared fixedly at Terra’s eyes. She thought that she’d just asked the obvious, but why was the response so suffocating? She averted her eyes in discomfort, then 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. Would you please be patient?”
“I can, but…”
Terra was rather troubled.
Diode’s tone changed. “Terra-san.”
Diode quickly spun around in the pit. She leveled her face with Terra’s and leaned in. It wasn’t her gaze that captured Terra’s eyes, but a dashing blade-shaped necktie wrapped around bare skin at 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 averted eyes said ‘Probably’, like she was seeking affirmation. Her timid posture disoriented Terra.
“Uh, let me see...”
How should she reply to that…?
Diode’s passionate, highly responsive piloting during flight was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Diode’s abilities were from a completely different dimension compared to her teachers in Fundamentals and no less than five previous twister partners. That’s how Terra really felt.
And yet, why was that very same person tightly pursing her lips and making a face like a kid who expected a scolding? What words should she use for this situation? And were there any she should avoid?
Terra didn’t know, and because she didn’t know, she said the following: “...It does meet the standards in its own way, I think. No, I wonder if it surpassed them…?”
She thought Diode's piloting met the standard eight times over, but tried to moderate her praise in the worry it would sound like a lie or exaggeration.
“Is that how it is?” Diode lightly pressed her chest in relief. “If that’s the case, then please have my apologies for that.”
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 to feel strange when she noticed that.
—This girl, she’s different inside.
She was cool, reckless, and unyielding when accomplishing something that needed to be done, but that was probably only how it seemed from the outside. She was putting up a strong act.
—When I was around that age, I think I had trouble getting those things across to adults, too.
“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?”
“Is it okay 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’... Die-san isn't okay?” She innocently brought her face closer as she spoke.
Just then, the tip of Diode’s nose gently warmed. She quickly turned around to face forward in the cockpit. “If you want to call me that, then fine. It’s just a name, after all,” she sharply told Terra.
“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 thirty minutes, they crossed 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 approached from behind. Docking wasn't possible if the approach wasn't close enough, but getting too close posed a collision risk. A close approach of around 500 meters was considered ideal.
Although that was where they had been aiming when they started accelerating through the atmosphere, it was still firing a missile into the sky towards a target from 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 voiced ‘Oooh’ in admiration.
It was common practice to end the fuel calculation once a zero relative velocity rendezvous was achieved with the apoapsis jets. The full journey had consumed a total of 92,500 tonnes of propellant. 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, and that was when the trouble started.
He wore a nametag with with ‘Bonus’ written on it. His eyelids were a bit swollen, and his back was 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 understand it.
“Twister? Where is he? Wait, this pillar boat belongs to the Intercontinentals. Where’s Terra-chan?”
“Ah, I’m here. Good evening, Bonus-san.” Terra raised a hand in the rear pit.
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 like an assembly line, but Diode's presence was almost like an outside interruption. Upon noticing Terra, Officer Bonus frowned.
“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 turning a profit.” The worker closed the VUI plate on his hand and scratched at his temple with a finger. “It’s fine that 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 besshu species she was imagining instead, thinking it had nothing to do with her. So, she pleaded ignorance.
“You did take them, you just forgot, didn't you? Alright, you’d better listen up.”
Still frowning, the lecture from the officer went something like this:
It was the norm for a twister and a decompa to be spouses. The majority of married couples were composed of men and women from different clans. They had to follow two directives.
The first directive was bloodline mixing, the so-called preservation of genetic diversity. 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 Bow Awows were held
The second directive was to guarantee societal stability. The so-called reciprocity system aimed to redistribute the clans’ earnings. After the 16 clans dispersed, their own profits would support them through the next two years of abundance or adversity. It was inevitable that catches would be unequal, but that could also lead to conflict. As a result, the Circs split their catch as much as possible. It was for this purpose that the men and women working with pillar boats each received half of the catch.
Although the catch was divided, there wasn’t any 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, a wide range of payments are settled by drawing from the accounts. That way, the sixteen clans all support one another, the payment structure preserving their stability.
“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, report that I freely gave up on my own clan’s share. Add it all to 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 your clan would get nothing if we did that. In other words, we’d be stealing from them. What you say is irrelevant, because the catch is a matter of public record. That’s the rule. If we allowed individual discretion, it’s certain that accumulation conspiracies to rip off outsiders would proliferate. Our Circ society would destabilize. That’s why there’s a strict mandate for us to split the catch equally between the two parties. This is the resolution from the Bow Awow.”
The main purpose of the Bow Awow was profit distribution to begin with. The clan suffering from the lowest profits held rights to the orbit predicted to be most productive for the next two years. It had only been thanks to those discussions that the Circs had made it to year 303.
“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?”
“If you don’t want to give your name no matter what, it’s okay. You have a reason, right?”
Diode absentmindedly opened her mouth. “That’s–” she replied. “If I don’t give it, then we’ll have no choice but to discard it all again...”
“Well, it’s fine” Terra flapped one hand up. “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! Us just learning how the other works is good enough, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t good enough. Terra was lying, and the truth was she really, really, really wanted that catch. But she felt like standing up for Diode. She tried to finish her statement by smiling, but this time it was Diode who brought her face closer and spoke.
“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 any of it, now that you have the opportunity? Like 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 yet, so it's frustrating Bonus-san is going to hear it first... you know?”
At hearing that, Diode’s stiff face loosened up like she was about to laugh in relief.
With that, she turned back to the duty officer again, and in a single breath said, “My alias is Diode, real name Kanna Ishidoro Gendo. Ishidoro family from the Gendo clan. Do not report it to ‘Fuyō’, please. There should be no 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 it 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 this mean that I can fish with Terra?” Diode glared at the officer.
He pouted and gruntled, “Not if you aren’t spouses. I don’t make the rules.” He raised his face again, clearly bothered.
“Well, it's the fishing that's illegal. I don’t know of any restrictions on other activities. If it’s 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, in other words. And since you're not fishing, you’ll have to pay fees for things like the 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.