5 comments/ 12227 views/ 8 favorites It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 01 By: TaLtos6 **This was meant to be a finite story, though I guess that it could be added to. I'm posting all of the chapters at once so that I can get back to some other tales. I just wanted to get this one story out since it's been bugging me for a while like a literary hangnail. It's a little odd, but then ... ~shrug~ o_O --------------------- Silke woke with a start and tried to sit up at the same instant. The maneuver would have worked well ordinarily. It was how she sometimes woke up from a dead sleep if she'd been up far too late the night before, puzzling and poring over pages and pages of testing data and calculations. After a night like that, and faced with a heavy schedule planned for the next day, World War III couldn't wake her as a rule, no matter how much she'd intended to get out of bed and get a move on. But for some unknown reason, the comparatively quiet ring-tone of her cell phone could wake her from the sleep of the dead. It had saved her from sleeping through her day many times. Today, it almost killed her. Her eyes snapped open and she sat up instantly – slamming her forehead straight into the compressed air pipe which ran not all that far above her head. She saw the flash from the impact in her vision and fell right down again, flat onto her back with a groan before curling into a fetal position on the bunk. "Scheisse!" she hissed in pain through her teeth. Great. She now felt as though she'd left half of her brain on the pillow and bashed the rest of it out against the pipe. And still the fucking phone rang. She raised herself cautiously and swiveled around to sit on the edge of the bunk and look around at the empty bunks of the crew's quarters. She'd been here for the past fifty-three hours to run a few preliminary 'wet' tests on the bottom of the channel of the harbor at Kiel, Germany. For this, she'd allowed no volunteers. Since a guinea pig was required, she'd decided to do this herself. Feeling as though she could finally sleep near the end of the second day, she'd racked out in here. She made a mental note that the pipe be padded and other things such as this searched for. For what she was going to be charging for these things, the least that she could do was to make certain that nobody killed themselves trying to sit up in their bunks. Silke shook her head very carefully and tried to make some sense of it. She was alone in the first of her boats; on the bottom of a channel close to the pen that this hull had been towed to so that it could be fitted out after it had been launched weeks ago. If there was one place on Earth – one sanctuary where the curse of modern telecommunications could not reach her - it had to be here. And yet, she heard her phone ring. Since when could cell phone signals penetrate forty feet of water and the thick rubber-coated metal hide of a submarine? It wasn't possible. So why was the damn thing ringing? She searched through the pockets of her coveralls where she'd put them after taking them off the night before. Stuffing her fingers hurriedly into all of the pockets, she searched in vain for the offensive little device and cursed under her breath, swearing to God and any other deities who might be within earshot that once she'd felt her fingers close over the thing, she'd heave it as hard as she could against the wall. It was time for an upgrade anyway. But it wasn't there, and yet she could hear it ring. It dawned on her that the sound was coming to her ears from the cabin intercom and PA system. "Fur dammt noch mal!" She yelled before switching to English, "Shut that thing off or there'll be hell to pay, I promise!" It took a few seconds longer before the strident chirping ceased. The cheerful voice of her assistant Ginger replaced the chirp, "Are you awake, Boss?" Silke snorted as she cradled her still-pounding head, "Are you enjoying the last few minutes of your employment?" "Time's long past up, and you weren't answering anything else. I had to do something, didn't I?" the clipped, professional and very British tones replied. "Finally, I thought of your ring-tone, and I had the lads here pipe it in." "Very ingenious – and also very cruel," Silke smirked. "You do know – as I keep telling you, that the war is over now for nearly seventy years, yes? I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't born until more than forty years after that," she said, as she saw her silicon dildo lying on the blanket of the bunk. Custom-made to the shape and dimensions of one particular man, she'd brought it along because it helped when she was feeling stressed and because she missed him so much. These days, with the testing of her design set to begin, Silke was feeling stressed quite a lot and had little time for much in the way of the meditation which normally calmed her. She wrapped it in the small towel that she'd brought and shoved in into her knapsack. "Right," the voice agreed, "where the hell are you now? You're not on any of the monitors." "I slept in a bunk in the crew's quarters. There are no cameras in here," she said as her feet hit the floor and she reached for her underwear, "I'm in the crew quarters. I'll be moving forward toward the captain's cabin in a minute. I need some ice from the refrigerator for the goose egg that I'm wearing on my forehead. I wasn't about to sleep in the captain's bed, since I know that you had a camera installed there for this test. There were none installed where I spent the night." She grabbed her coveralls and began to shuck them on. "What's the big deal?" Ginger asked, "They were only put in to make sure that you were alright. It's a little much to expect the head of a company to be out of sight for two days and nights. Safety is a concern, Silke. We just wanted to –" "We've been over this ground," Silke said, "You just wanted to capture me snoring the carpeting off the floor. I know you, Ginger. You'd love something like that. You'd torture me over it for years to come, probably release a few minutes at a time to put up on YouTube. You know that I snore terribly. I have enough to feel ashamed about. I won't provide you with footage of me with my mouth open and drooling while I cause any closed door in the area to bend back and forth from my snoring. Besides, it's not all that much of a concern. I just wanted some privacy while I was down here. You never know, I might have hidden a man away down here. Even you can't say that you've had a man in a submarine." Ginger wanted to laugh, "That's true," she said, even though it wasn't. Long before she'd enlisted in the Royal Navy, she'd gotten laid in an old sub on display in the Submarine Museum one night as a teenager. Silke looked around the compartment noting that it smelled like sex. She sighed to herself. If only that were true. "What was that about a goose egg?" Ginger asked as Silke came into view on one of the monitors. "When I woke up thinking that I was hearing the alarm on my phone, I sat up in a hurry and hit my head on a pipe," Silke said, as she pulled a tray of ice cubes from the fridge. She had a handful loose in seconds, laying them on a towel which she wrapped up and held to her forehead. "It's all your fault," she said. But the retort which she expected never came, and knowing her assistant as well as she did, Silke made a simple deduction. "You're not alone now, are you?" "I wasn't alone before, not really," Ginger smiled, "though it was private enough for our talk. Right now though, I've got your father here and he wants to talk with you, so I'll shove off for a while." Silke nodded unconsciously as she wondered why her father would be here some three days ahead of time to meet with her. She didn't think that it boded well, whatever it was about. One thing that could be counted upon with respect to her father's personality was that issues were always met head-on if there was the time for it and in a pre-emptive manner if at all possible. She had planned for this test to be concluded long before he'd even arrived. He'd pre-empted her again. "Papa?" she said as she looked for a mirror, "What's happened to make you come so soon? We weren't scheduled to expect you for another few days." She cursed the lighting which had been set to a low level to conserve battery power for this test as she tried to get a good look at the lump on her head. "I can see that, Hertzchen," the man replied, "Why are you performing a static leak check yourself? You couldn't hire anyone else to do this for you?" Leopold Kriechbaum was every inch the modern day German industrialist, and these days, that meant that in order to survive, let alone succeed; one had to be fairly detached toward a lot of things while hanging on to the gist of whatever was up. He had no trouble asking the most pointed questions and the delays that he might hear before he got his answers told him as much or more than the carefully-worded replies a lot of the time. But though he was a feared tiger in the boardroom, Leopold told himself that he loved his daughter more than anything. That boundless father's love was usually more than enough to buy his daughter a pass for quite a lot of her transgressions – not that there ever were all that many which needed forgiving. But she was the head of a rather large and expensive project, and the thought of a mishap and the cost, both to his heart and to his empire was just one of the things on his continually calculating mind at the moment. "I am having a bit of trouble here," he said in a way that made Silke want to groan, since she could already see the approach that would be used. It was one which she hated, the gentle, self-effacing lead-in which always ended with a loud question. The fact that he wasn't artfully trying out several light feints in a few different ways made her want to search for some ear plugs. "Perhaps I am just too old and slow to see the obvious and logical reasoning for why the head of one of our corporations, and leader of one of the most costly forward-looking ventures ever attempted by any division in our company's long history needs to hide herself inside a U-boat on the bottom of a channel for TWO DAYS! Have you lost your mind?" Silke was already sitting at the engineering officer's console, stepping through the pages of automated status reports on the four screens in front of her from the system which was almost capable of running the boat by itself. So far, the only things which had changed were a very slight decrease in the available oxygen level along with the reasonable and corresponding increase in the carbon dioxide level. No surprise there, she reasoned, the ventilators were off and so were the scrubbers. Switching screens, she noted a slight drop in the state of battery charge, and even less than she'd anticipated. She smirked, though she didn't look toward any of the cameras. "It has to be done, Papa," she said, "It wouldn't say a lot about my project or my convictions if I wasn't able to show any trust in my own designs. How are you for time? If it's important, I can have this sow on the surface in a few minutes." "No," he said, "Complete what you were doing. We can talk like this, ja?" Silke wanted to throw something. She knew why he wanted to continue now. She was locked up safely away from him so he could just drop his fiscal and financial bombs on her in relative comfort and safety. She looked down at the floor and drew a deep breath. "Very well, let's begin then." They talked as he sat there with his briefcase open and his laptop out on the empty chair in front of him. His daughter listened and they discussed many points while she ran her tests in the channel outside and far below the sunny morning which was already growing warm. Now and then, she asked him to wait for a moment or two as she examined some detail, or ran a quick side-test as she consulted the hand-written test list in the small paper notebook that she'd carried in her overalls. "In summation," he said, "your corporation is doing far better than passably well. It's quite remarkable, really, when one considers that it is really a working research arm. Almost all of those lose money faster than a fool in a whorehouse, yet you are set to return a very modest and quite unexpected profit this year even if you do not land one of the larger contracts." He sat back and accepted a cup of coffee from Ginger with a smiling nod of thanks. "I see how you're managing to do it, with a few careful offerings of licensed technology for sale, but it is more than that. You run a very tight ship in a lean way. That's even more remarkable when one considers the length of the hair of many of the inmates in your zoo here, "he chuckled, "I can see that everyone here is quite busy and happy to be so." "Danke Papa," she smiled, sensing just a hint of an opening. She had to be careful here, she knew. Her father was masterful at setting traps when he tested her. "I think they all realize just how fortunate they are to have dream jobs as they do in the current economic climate. They also trust me implicitly," she said," and one of the strongest reasons for that is that they know that I wouldn't accept anything less than perfection and as safe as it can be made to be – safe enough even so that the president of the corporation herself can sit in perfect safety on the floor of this channel. Look around, Papa. I know that you'll see a lot of tired faces in the control rooms. Many of them haven't been home since I climbed in here and sank myself to the bottom for this test. I had a watch schedule drawn up, but nobody actually went home. They all stayed for this, sleeping the watch schedule in the lounges." Leopold looked around. He could see that Silke was correct. It was remarkable the way that they all loved working for his daughter. He slurped his coffee and set the mug down, "Well you may have a point in your firm belief in this wonderland of maritime miracles that you have built yourself. I really can't poke too many holes in your purse over it, since it seems to be running so well. But now we come to the rock in the road, Silke," he said, his voice taking on the edge of the hard-nosed businessman. "As you know, our family's business has grown and traveled far from its humble beginnings as a little shipbuilding yard in the time of your great-grandfather. We are now not completely a private concern any longer. There are others who have quite a lot of their fortunes at stake. Where once I would have been able to ride roughshod over any opposition, I must now at least listen and hear the concerns of the other stakeholders. What I have heard lately is a bit of a two-pronged fork." Silke brushed one of her long blonde bangs out of her eyes as she stepped through screen after screen of sensor data. "And what am I to be speared with now, Papa? We already have preliminary orders for a half-dozen boats. The deposits alone are worth many millions of Euros. The very first one that we land in two months will spring my division deep enough into the green to cause our bankers to have erections. When just one more comes after the first boat is only half-built, it would surely make them wet their silk handkerchiefs in joy and financial lust. What could they have to find fault with me over now?" "Your main product is wondrous, Hertzchen," he smiled, "a scientific vessel which may be configured in so many ways to study everything from wildlife migration to oceanographic current testing to even measuring environmental impact in hundreds of ways, all while minimizing its own. But there are a few who have seen other uses. By the way, you ought to button up your overalls. The boys here can almost see your nipples in the camera on that console." Silke's eyes blazed, recognizing that while what he'd said might be true, he was also trying – unsuccessfully - to throw her off her stride. She didn't even look down. "I will not build submarines for military purposes," Silke warned. "Aren't we still living that down after all of these decades? You can call it whatever you like, from deterrence to monitoring to peacekeeping to covert operations platforms, I will not build them. We have a division which does that already, and I know that it returns a huge and handsome profit year after year, selling to navies all over the world. All of my life, people look at me because of my name. "Ah yes," they say to me, "your family built a third of the U-boats in the war. Do you have any idea how that feels? Half of them wish to bow to me and the other half thinks that we had it easy during the restoration afterwards. And then there are those who think that I ought to be crucified for reasons that make no sense at all. All that I've gotten are the looks all of my life and in every engineering class at school. Oh look – it's U-Boat Girl! I wanted to strangle the reporter who came to interview me when she mentioned it. So please don't pick on my dream, Papa. I'd walk away from it first. And as far as my nipples are concerned, let them all dream. The first one who says one word or performs a screen capture will be escorted out of the gate. If it wasn't for the cameras that Ginger insisted on, I just might be comfortable here and not sweating my ass off inside this polyester rag. I'm still pissed that I can't get cotton coveralls." "I hear your concerns, Silke," he said, trying to sound conciliatory, "That wasn't what was meant. Yes, we make boats like that, but all of them are the latest and the best. And among the most expensive. What some of us see is another market emerging altogether, one which is most definitely not suited to our more usual sort of projects." He smiled, "Finish up your testing programs. I'm not going anywhere. We can speak of this over lunch." With the open intercom connection closed, Silke sat thinking for a minute as she saved all of the accumulated test data to both the system servers and her laptop and then she switched the control system to an active mode. She felt the ventilators start, and navigating to another set of screens, she turned on the hot water heater in the captain's cabin. She needed a shower at the very least, she thought as she wandered toward the rear of the control room, headed for the ladder to the conning tower. She climbed up a little absently to emerge on the inside deck there. She glanced at the closed hatch which would lead to the open cupola on top of the boat. Since the boat was submerged now, going up there was obviously out of the question. She sighed, wanting now to be away from here and feeling the sea breeze in her hair. She performed a little arithmetic as she adjusted her Bluetooth headset. Forty feet of channel depth, minus the eighteen feet from the bottom of the keel to the horizontal datum where the waterline would be if the boat were floating on the surface, minus another eighteen feet from there past the deck line and the height of the conning tower, minus the last of the forty feet and allowing a little for the tide. That would still leave her about five or six feet of periscope height at full extension. Plenty for a look around a dead calm channel. "Voice Mode," she said. There was an answering chime from the intercom system, one-half second before the speech chip activated for its response. Silke knew that the voice and speech recognition systems were already online, but she paused anyway. "Authenticate," the voice said in her ear. "Authentication code Kriechbaum golt, einz einz null einz," she said. "Authentication recognized. Loading user profile. Do you require system status?" "No. Up main scope," she said, and the silver column before her rose out of the floor with a soft whine. She grabbed one of the handles and unfolded it. The upward progression stopped instantly and she unfolded the other handle. As she brought her face toward the small LCD screen she hissed once from the sensation as the bump on her forehead made light contact with the padding on the scope. Silke walked around in a tight circle as she surveyed the scenery around her for a few moments while she thought. There was something wrong here, but she couldn't get a handle on it, other than some strange intuitive sense that she had. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 01 She derived a little satisfaction as she watched the GPS information update itself in the scope display. In seconds, the boat knew exactly where on Earth it was to an error of ten feet or less. The time and date were displayed, along with the air and water temperatures. Atmospheric humidity level came up next, followed by wind direction and strength. A soft cheeping sound intruded on her thoughts to indicate that there was an incoming message over the intercom. Silke idled the Bluetooth for the moment. "Why have you raised the scope?" Ginger asked through the temporarily hardwired connecting harness from the main building to the sub. "Because," Silke replied dryly, "I felt like it." "Can you see me waving from the window?" Silke stopped and swung the scope back, looking over the windows of the building for a moment. She thought that she could see some motion from one of them, so she added a polarization filter to remove the glare and stepped up the magnification. Ginger came into view, waving to her. "No," she lied more than a little uncharacteristically, "It's too sunny outside. Sorry, but I can't wave back. Who's there with you now?" "Just the blokes in the rest of the room at the other end," Ginger replied, "Your father's gone to the board room. It looks like he's preparing a PowerPoint presentation for you for when you come up." "I guessed that might happen," Silke said, "he must want to show me something and have the facts there to back it up. I'll be a little while yet. Will you have lunch with us?" "Don't know if I can," Ginger said, "I might not be allowed to." "Nonsense," Silke said, wanting to test a little, "Just make sure that you bat your lovely eyelashes at the right moment, and you'll be in. If there's one skirt that my father would love to chase, it's yours, Ginger. " Silke chuckled as she heard Ginger's surprised laugh, "Not a bad idea – as a daydream. I'd be right set then, wouldn't I?" "Oh, probably," Silke agreed, "but you'd better save your serious follow-up for some months from now at the earliest. I almost can't imagine working without you, my friend, but the second that you're involved with him, you're not my assistant anymore. I can't allow that, and you know it". "Why?" Ginger's voice carried just a hint of an edge to it, "Since when is my personal life any of your business?" "Since the second that you signed on and signed the confidentiality agreement. Since the second after you accepted the automatic bonus that was compensation for this aspect of your employment. Since the second that I gave you control over my itinerary," Silke snapped right back. "Why am I finding myself going over old ground with you today, Ginger?" Silke asked, "This is not a new requirement for me, and you know that. It's not just a matter of my sensitivity here. Papa is a businessman, and for some things, even I don't trust him for a second. Sorry for your luck and sad to say, but, ..." "Right," the clipped tones were back instantly, "I'll just gird my loins then, shall I? I'll prepare to repel all boarders." "You know what I meant, Ginger," she said a little apologetically, "I meant no insult. This job is what will either make or break me for the rest of my life. Security is paramount for this project; even from my father. I determine what he can see with regard to the overall content and that's right in line with what I must report to the head of the board and no more. Given a chance, he'd want to know the grade of every bolt that I've specified – so that he can criticize. He leaves all of the other division chiefs alone, never questions a thing with them, but I will always be subjected to so many unreasonable questions that I'd spend all of my time defending my choices. I'm the designer who has won awards, none of the others have, not even Papa. I'm the one with international recognition, not them. Yet I am always questioned, and only by him. He'll stop me and demand that my design be MILSPEC. Well, I've already specified beyond that. It wastes my time and then he says, "Oh, very well then, carry on," And then he fires off his next flurry of questions. I can't work like that. I'm only asking you to steer clear of him until the first boat is – " "I hate to be pointed about it, Boss, but you're sitting in the first boat at the moment. I'm looking at your periscope, aren't I? It's in the water and everything." Not that Ginger could see it, but Silke rolled her eyes, "This is the final working prototype that I'm in. Once the first production boat is sold and delivered to a buyer, I don't care what you do – and in the meantime, I'm paying you a mountainous salary as some compensation for the hardships of the job, aren't I? You agreed to that as a job requirement as did I. You earn more than I do. I know that it's been three years, Ginger, and neither of us is getting any younger for all the work that this has been. But we're almost there, and I'd really prefer that we stay the course for another reason. I think the world of you. You know that. I'd much rather that we conclude our agreement and then if you find that my father is as truly smitten with you as he appears to be, you can do as you will." "Ah," Ginger replied, "so you're thinking that he'd only be interested in me to get information about the project that he might not get in any other, more controlled and filtered ways. Thanks for your heartfelt concern and trust." "You're beautiful and you're brilliant," Silke said, "two qualities that he holds in high regard. I only wonder if he'd get his desires confused, and I'd rather not find out in the aftermath of anything sad, that's all, not this close to completion. Do you really fancy him?" "You have no idea," Ginger replied, laying on the sarcasm, "He's handsome and powerful, two things which a girl like me finds irresistible. And of course, there's that other lubricant, almost guaranteed to pry a girl's knees apart, the best panty remover ever invented." "You mean that he is wealthy?" Silke grinned, knowing that she'd hit a nerve that Ginger normally wouldn't ever show any sensitivity over. Now she wondered about that. "Yes," Ginger laughed. "Ooh, I've just thought of something. If we hit it off and I manage to land him, why, I'd be your stepmother, wouldn't I? I can see it now. Think of-" Silke was quick to interrupt, "I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you. He's my father and it's just a little unsettling to hear you speak like this, whether you're angry with me now or not. Do me a huge favor before we have lunch. I want a running crew waiting when I come up, and not a word to my father. If he asks, it's for debriefing. I'll call before I surface." Silke reactivated the Bluetooth connection. "Tube load-out status," she said, in no mood to listen to her assistant's derision all of a sudden. She thought about the presentation that she was sure now that she didn't want to sit through as she climbed back down to the control room. "Tubes one to four empty," came the reply. "Flood tubes one to four," Silke said, "Monitor for seal leaks, monitor bilge level. Bilge pumps on standby." The same soft cheeping sound was there in her ear as the system confirmed her commands. "Why are you flooding tubes?" Ginger asked. Silke sighed as she listened to the system as it confirmed that the tubes were flooded with sea water from the channel. "Ginger," she said, trying to hold onto her temper, "must I ask and clear everything with you now? The purpose for all of this is to test for leaks, is it not?" "Well yes, but –" Silke could hear her assistant hesitate, and she even knew the reason for her question. The control room up in the offices had noted what she'd done. Though all of the staff there, Ginger included, knew that a tube leakage test was on the schedule, her father had questioned it. That was just one of the reasons that she hadn't wanted him to be here for this. But there was something else to it that made the woman on-board the submarine wonder. She chuckled bitterly, wishing for a video feed from the control room now. She wanted to see her father's face. "I deeply regret two things today," she said, "I wish the schooner that Papa had built for himself was moored at the end of this channel – and for that reason, I'm sorry that I don't have at least one dummy torpedo to test. It would give me such satisfaction right now to knock a hole in the side of his dream for a change, so that he might know how it feels. Tell Papa that it was scheduled, Ginger, and that there is nothing in any of the tubes, no swim-out research vehicles – not even any torpedoes, since we don't have any, BECAUSE THIS IS A SCIENTIFIC BOAT WHICH HAPPENS TO RETAIN TUBES IN ITS DESIGN TO SEND OUT PROBES!" She drew a breath, "And please tell my father that if he wishes to question any more of the test schedule, then he can ask me himself." Funny, she thought, that she could almost smell what her father had in mind for her project, and yet he balked at her leak-testing the tubes. She could already feel the first tingling tendrils of his micromanagement. He demanded the best from his own people – but he didn't micromanage them. Since she'd been a little girl, everything that she'd done had needed his personal stamp of approval. No matter how hard she'd worked to prove herself, no matter what honors others had heaped upon her for her designs, there was always this thing about their relationship. Soon, he'd suggest that she use some of his hand-picked specialists, no doubt to review and look over what she'd done. She'd been here before. Twice. It was what had caused her to leave the business the first time. Her father had talked her back in with promises which he was now going to ignore. Funny how history repeats itself, she thought. Once a tiger, always a tiger. Suddenly, she knew why Ginger had asked for the cameras to be installed. That edict must have originated from her father. It made her wonder what else he'd asked of her assistant. Silke snorted angrily as she tossed a Styrofoam bowl of noodles into the microwave in the galley. She was so done with this. When the mike was finished, she fished a plastic spoon out of her knapsack and headed for the control room. Silke ordered the intercom system shut down and leaned forward to look at the screen which monitored for leakage. There was nothing. Not bad, she thought, but she was only in a calm channel and not very deep at all. It might easily be a different story deeper down. "Open outer doors." She said quietly. After fifteen minutes of sitting on the bottom with four torpedo doors open and no apparent leakage, she ordered the doors closed and the tubes pumped out. She tossed the empty noodle cup, went back up into the tower and grabbed the periscope handles again. Walking the front of the scope around, she looked at the building windows again as she thought about the little nagging thing in her mind that she'd heard – or thought that she had – in her assistant's voice. She was about to fold the handles and order the scope to be lowered when a slight motion in the windows of the floor above the control room caught her eye and she stepped up the magnification as her thumb nudged the button to begin recording the scope video feed. Silke's mouth opened slowly in amazement. She wanted to do something as she took her eyes from the viewfinder. She found herself wanting to do any one of several things; burst into tears, throw up, rage and smash something, those being only a few of the items on the list. She ignored the tenderness of her bruised forehead and jammed her face against the scope's objective once more – just in case she was imagining this. But she knew that she wasn't. There, very near the windows of the board room, her personal assistant had temporarily welded herself to her father. She watched as the pair worked their way backward in their passion so that Ginger's backside was against the edge of the boardroom table. A few moments later, Ginger's skirt was high up on her hips and her underwear was off as they began what appeared to Silke to be something that looked nothing at all like a professional relationship anymore. To her eyes, it didn't even look as though they were fumbling at all. They were quite obviously used to doing this sort of thing often, since none of the uncertainty of a first pairing came to her notice. "A PowerPoint presentation," she mused. She watched for a time, certain that this was getting to the hard drives of the system. When it was quite obvious to her that they were at the critical moment, she waited for just a few seconds longer before she stopped recoding and slammed up the scope handles, ordering the scope retracted into its well. Three years with Ginger as her personal assistant, Silke thought. She now wanted to slap her forehead as she thought of the year before that which Ginger had spent in working her way toward close friendship, earning Silke's trust. Silke wondered if she now ought to feel like a fool. She supposed that it was already too late for that. She thought about what her father was here to attempt as she went downstairs and walked to her knapsack for some blank discs. She began to feel the familiar detachment inside herself that she felt whenever she was about to cause someone an unpleasant surprise. She was a little surprised at herself as she thought that it felt no different if the other person was her own flesh and blood. She reviewed the video to be certain that it would show what she wanted it to show before she saved it to her personal file on the boat's servers as well as her laptop. That done, she unplugged the laptop from the system and burned three copies to disc. This was why her father had come early; to pat her little head and compliment her on the job that she was doing before he tried to sell her a bill of goods and subvert the direction of her project. The old tiger knew his cub very well. Here she was sitting in a box underwater while he was screwing her assistant, and when that was done, he'd no doubt be sitting in air conditioned comfort, sipping sparkling mineral water and smoking one of his cigars as he finalized his preparations for their discussions. But this was all timing and she knew it. She had her material ready. The cub had claws of her own. She just wondered if there was anything to what she'd seen. She knew that her father loved her, but couldn't keep his fingers out of the pie. Was Ginger brought in as a plant? What was her personal stake in this? Did she really believe that, ... Silke shrugged. It didn't matter anyway. She looked at the walls of the submarine around her. The original design might have been for a wartime purpose, but she'd made this version something that wasn't meant for that. She felt a little sad that she'd never get the chance to at least sail on the thing once. Then again, she thought... She activated the headset again. "Orders." She said, and the system responded that it was ready for commands. The first of those had been to surface just enough to keep the grating of the outer conning tower above water. She ran up into the tower and waited for confirmation. When she heard it, Silke opened the hatch and stayed outside only long enough to disconnect the communication cables and toss them far enough away so that they fell into the water of the channel. She was back inside and dogging the hatch as she gave the command to submerge to twelve meters. She had confirmation as soon as she was at the consoles again. She switched them over to navigation mode and by the time that the control room personnel realized that they'd lost communication with the test boat, Silke was motoring out of the channel into the main harbor, her periscope up enough to give her positional data and the radar showing her on screen what other shipping was out there, which way it was headed and at what speed. Anything that might represent the slightest possibility of being a collision hazard would cause visual and audible warnings. The screen was all green. She grinned, with the scope slaved to a joystick on the control panel, she didn't even need to be there with her eyes to the thing. She could watch it all from where she sat. It was the best video game in the world. The second that her charts showed that she had the depth for it under her keel, Silke was there with her periscope down, headed for the North Sea. She wasn't at it long, sadly. She'd have liked to be out here all day, but there was Hell to pay for even this and she knew it. She'd just wanted to say goodbye to the greatest thing that she'd ever designed. She ran rough tests for speed and projected battery life both submerged and surfaced, and then she switched over to the diesels for a little while and noted that the batteries were topping up their state of charge from it. Finally, she turned around and began to make her way back. This time, she stayed on the surface. She switched the radios to the company channel and announced her arrival, running along dead slowly on the surface and then coasting the rest of the way. She switched the radios off right after announcing that she'd be up at the conclusion of the test period. With the boat stopped in the middle of the narrow channel, she ordered a gentle descent to 13.3 meters and the boat settled onto the bottom again. Three hours later, Leopold Kriechbaum stood on the quay, looking at the spot in the water where the intercom cables ran. From there, he looked out toward the center of the channel and waited in the sunshine, feeling a little droplet of his sweat run from his hairline down his handsome face. He was about to wipe it away with his handkerchief when he heard the voices over the radios of the company's dockhands as they acknowledged the warning that his daughter was on her way up. Out in the channel, just the barest flat bulge of water could be seen to foretell that something was happening underneath the murky darkness, and then the top of the conning tower rose slowly out of the water. Leopold smiled. He knew that Silke was bringing her lifelong dream into the sunshine very slowly and under full control for dramatic effect. As more of the coal-black seagoing dragon rose, he admired it again, his eyes going to details everywhere on the thing. At last, it stopped rising and sat there dripping quietly. It was far different from the modern products that his firm produced today, and yet, this design had sired those ones – all of them. Though this iteration was only a few months old, built from modern materials and carrying the latest equipment not even dreamed of by its original designers, this beauty was a direct reincarnation of a Type XXI, the first Elektroboot. Her lines were almost as majestic as the Type VII which had been the workhorse of the wolfpacks. The shape was not as modern and functional as the boats of today, but there was far more elegance to her anyway, and in every way, Silke had corrected the deficiencies to a point that even exceeded the new designs in some respects. To a shipbuilder such as Leopold was, it didn't matter that the newer ones were made for military service while his daughter's work was intended for science. None of that mattered. It was a thing of beauty and grace. Up to this design, submarines had really been surface ships which could dive for short periods. From this point onwards, they had become true underwater craft. Even the nuclear missile subs owed much to this stallion. Even though he was furious, he thought of his lovely daughter with at least a little pride as his eyes slid from one end of her creation to the other. She'd corrected all of the structural weaknesses and chosen non-magnetic steel for the hull. Her purpose was to lessen the boat's impact on any underwater geomagnetic surveys, if that was what any customer desired to use the boat for. Well that was fine, he thought, it also made the thing a lot more difficult to find using magnetic anomaly detection methods. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 01 The original had two 4,000 horsepower diesel engines, but Silke had found a way to stuff more powerful ones inside. The electric motor specifications were tossed as well, and the replacements which she specified offered more muscle for even less draw on the batteries than the originals, due to advancements made in motor design over the years. Those batteries, the hidden heart of any electric submarine, were light-years from the level of technology available in the 1940s. And the screws, ... the very latest and quietest in underwater propeller design, if you please. As a result, Silke's design was faster and quieter, both on diesel and electric power, and its range was almost triple that of a newer boat - over 15,000 nautical miles – though to be fair, most today weren't built for the same extended war patrols that the original was. His daughter had decided to keep the fuel tank structure and sizes intact to offer maximum range far from dependable sources of diesel oil. The whole thing stretched out to almost 252 feet in length, 26 feet in width, and now sat majestically before him – a new way for the family concern to make money. Originally designed for a crew complement of 57, she could now house less than half of that, much of the space saved being given over to spaces for sensor suites and room for scientific experiments. Her peacetime passive sonar arrays were optimized for collision avoidance, biological observation and seismic study, though they would work just as well to track other submarines and surface ships. The core operating crew was pared down to just thirteen including the captain – all of them cross-trained to handle or lend aid with other areas of the boat in a pinch, and only half of them on-duty at any one time. The vast majority of the almost constant small trim and buoyancy changes required to operate a submarine were handled by the ship's processors, all of them overseen by the main computer. Surface navigation was by GPS, and underwater positional information was by ring laser gyroscope. The whole thing was a marvel, and other than dock handling and tying off to a pier, docking could be handled by one person, as Silke was demonstrating now, though two sets of eyes would have been preferable. She stood on the conning tower bridge with a remote pendant in her hand just in case as she docked flawlessly via her spoken commands only. She'd found her cell phone at last, and getting a strong signal now, she pressed one of the speed dial buttons. She identified herself in German to the switchboard operator. It was a hard and unchanging rule for her company, even in today's business world. Silke demanded that there be a living person at that desk at all times. "It's a lovely day, Gretel," she smiled as she watched the boat slide backwards perfectly to line up next to the pier, "Get me Security, please." When that call was complete, Silke asked to be routed to Human Resources. As she waited for HR to pick up, Silke thought back to a day in her life like no other. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 02 ** Just a reminder that this story is already in the can and each of the chapters has already been posted. I hope that it's enjoyed. 0_o --------------- To recap, these are some moments of Silke's recollection as she's docking one of her designs. --------------- It had been perhaps the bleakest winter of her life, though there was the dim glow of a little bit of promise on the horizon by late spring. Silke at twenty-five years of age and she felt as though the world had kicked her in the gut. Two years before, she finally had her degree, and though she'd had a falling out with her father over his lifelong need to micromanage and second-guess her, she'd done perhaps the best thing and left the family business. She'd been snapped up in an instant by another shipbuilding firm which liked her designs. More importantly, their insanely wealthy clientele loved them and clamored for her to design their yachts for them. Her signing bonus alone paid off almost all of her student loans and she and Karl-Heinz could actually eat a decent meal fairly regularly. She became something of a minor-league celebrity whose looks drew almost as many customers as her work. The gorgeous young Teutonic ship designer was very much sought after and her employers had been forced to put in another slip and set of ways to keep up with the demand which her success had brought to them. She dove straight into her job and cranked out one design after another. She always had her nose in her sketchpad, and armed with those sketches and with her knowledge; she could lay out the designs in Autocad before turning the preliminary designs over to her team of Autocad minions. The amazing thing was that her placement of the bulkheads and other structural features was always within perhaps 10 centimeters of where they ended up in the final drawings, and she had a flair for knowing almost intuitively the type and horsepower rating for the engines which would be required for optimal performance, given the shape of the desired hull. There was actually a three month period where she had no less than four yachts being built and she oversaw the construction and testing of each hull. Things such as these got her noticed very quickly and two of those designs won her rather prestigious awards within the industry. And then she found herself alone. All of their debts were paid. They had the house that she'd dreamed of and a pair of Mercedes; a sedan and a coupe. Everything was finally coming to pass for her. But it all came with an added feature that she'd never seen coming – her divorce. Karl-Heinz told her next to nothing of his reasons – nothing which made any sense to her, at any rate. He wanted nothing of what they now had, he'd said, he only wanted out. Silke had to assume that there was another woman, but he denied it vehemently, all while giving her nothing else as the cause. It was the only time that he'd ever gotten really angry with her, when she'd said that there must be someone else. He'd looked really hurt when she'd said it. "If that is what you believe," he'd said quietly the day that he'd come to hand her his keys, looking as though he wanted to cry – something that she'd never seen in him before. He looked as though he'd been shot through the chest and hadn't had the thought to lie down and die yet. "If that is what you see, then you truly are an idiot, Silke." He'd walked out then, not even closing the door after himself. She'd watched him walk away, his hands in his pockets looking down at the sidewalk. He was walking away from her, back to what he'd been before they'd met. She stared, looking at him walking voluntarily back to near-poverty, choosing that above life with her. What was there that would make a man choose that? What had she done to him to cause him to desire it over her? She'd stood there, hearing nothing but his final words over and over as her tears began again. She'd slammed the door to cut the connection, but she could still hear his sad voice saying the words as she fell to her knees weeping. She'd even had a private investigative service on his tail for a time, but after four months and a huge bill, all that she learned was that he now lived alone, working shit jobs as he always had. He went nowhere and did little. He didn't date at all and had no one close to him in his life, though after a time she learned that he'd sought counseling for his depression. All that there was to know was that Karl-Heinz was a very unhappy man growing bitter all alone. Silke threw herself deeper into her work, but there came a time when the hollowness inside of her caught up to her, no matter how hard she tried to outrun or forestall it. The emptiness just took the wind out of her sails. She kept up to her schedules and cranked out more designs, but nothing gave her any satisfaction anymore. She was only going through the motions and she knew it. Though the men around her – colleagues and customers alike, did their very best to woo her, she wanted none of it. Try as she might, Silke felt like an empty failure and nothing could fix that. After all of her dating back in the past, she'd found the man for her. Handsome, thoughtful, strong, and completely dedicated to her, quietly intelligent Karl-Heinz had been the love of her life and now she'd lost that love. She couldn't even say that she knew when it had happened. She stopped designing, finished up the last of her projects and gave her employers notice. She didn't want to do much of anything anymore. As luck would have it, Leopold Kriechbaum called up his daughter with an offer. He was careful to point out that he was not acting as her father in this, but rather he was coming to her as the representative of a shipbuilding firm who needed her abilities. And so she'd accepted the lucrative offer to head up the design of something much different. She had nothing on the go, and little to feel useful about, so she decided to take up the challenge. And while the building and facilities that she would require were being upgraded and modernized by a small army of some three hundred and sixty workers and tradespersons from the small and little-used light freighter overhaul yard into something where her dreams could take on the mantle of reality, Silke took the summer off to research and prepare. Even she knew that she needed to take a long overdue vacation. There were things which she needed to do, and things which she had always wanted to do. Years before, she'd been impressed by a picture of a nude woman with a tattoo which ran from her thigh up her back, over her shoulder and back down to her thigh. The scenes portrayed there amazed her, and so she found an artist whose work she could admire and commissioned a tattoo something like that for herself. The work took over a fortnight in sections so that as one section healed, another could be begun. Then it began all over again as the coloring and shading was added. She now wore fronds of green grasses and shoots of bamboo which stood close to pools where Koi swam and a crane stood watching. As the last of it was healing, she booked her flight. That brought her to Japan. She'd always admired the culture and history and so she went. It was as much a need to get clean away from industrialized Europe as it was to immerse herself in something as different as day and night, once she was away from the industrial centers. She got the sightseeing out of the way, traveling to see the things which she had always wanted to see, and after that, she just began to wander. She'd taken up residence in a little inn smack in the middle of the plains of Iga and she fell into just hiking through the countryside. She had no plan anymore other than the vaguest sense that she was searching for something. She only had a few weeks of time during which she tramped all over with her knapsack and her camera. She felt refreshed and invigorated – almost completely healed, she told herself, but though her heart thrilled at the things that she saw and the simple pleasures of her walks, she knew that the darkness inside her was only minimized. But it was the best that she could do and so she just accepted that it would likely always be that way for her. She'd sometimes sit in the dining room with local maps stretched out over the table, poring over the local features and landmarks as she picked at her meal. That was how she came to the attention of one of the staff, a young woman named Riko. Silke asked for a little help, and after smiling and indicating that she'd be back in a minute or so, Riko returned and did her best to help. Silke struggled to frame her questions, and seeing this, Riko offered a small smiling laugh, "Do you speak English?" Silke stared for a moment and nodded, laughing herself, "Yes," she chuckled, "I can manage that a little better." She asked Riko to sit, and since there were no other guests in the room, they spent the next while together with Riko asking where her guest might wish to go and offering suggestions and the best walking routes. It turned into the beginning of a friendship with Silke doing the hiking and returning to the dining room most evenings to report to Riko on how it had gone. Riko was impressed with what Silke knew of the country's history – even a little of the region's, and so she did her best to think of new places which might be strung together to create interesting and informative hikes. She even tagged along twice and became an informal guide on a couple of days where she had nothing else planned. She was happy to give up a little of her own time for the chance to get to know Silke better. One of those ambling solitary walks led Silke into the forested mountains which surrounded the plain, and cresting a small rise, Silke stopped to find herself looking at a very small clearing. Even getting here had been a bit of a problem. She'd seen one mountainside which looked to offer the best view, though it was heavily wooded and looked to be a fair walk. She'd mentioned it to Riko twice before, but that particular mountain had always been overlooked and forgotten in the discussion somehow. Silke didn't realize it at first, but her friend was actually steering her away from there as she offered other places to go and sites to look at and enjoy. On a Friday evening with almost all of the guests having signed out and oddly, no new ones booked to arrive for a few days, Riko had suggested to her friend that she might like to take advantage of the availability of the inn's large bath. Silke countered by asking when Riko was off-duty, and said that she'd try it if they could just make an evening of it and if she paid for dinner at a good restaurant in the area as some compensation for Riko's help. "I'd never have found and seen a quarter of the things and places that I've been without your help, and if you have no objections to it, this is what I'd very much like to do this evening as my way of thanking you." Riko stared for a moment and then quickly agreed and it became a girl's night out with Riko guiding Silke around. Before they left, Riko hastily added a personal touch by arranging for a masseuse before the bath. They had a great time together and ended up back at the inn later, talking over a little more wine. "I wish to ask a question," Silke began, "but I don't know how to ask it because I don't wish to offend you." "Ask me anything," Riko giggled, as she poured them each a little more wine, "A question by itself is useless. One learns from the answer alone." Silke pulled her map out and unfolding it, she pointed to the one hillside which had eluded her to this point. "I've asked about this one twice, and we always end up with another route which does not go here. I only wish to know if there is a rationale or explanation for that. Is it because it's forbidden or anything like that? It's fine with me if that's the way that it is, Riko. I was only wondering." Riko held up her hand for a moment while she looked at that one place on the map. She was considering several things, but finally she leaned forward and spoke quietly. "I know that you have an interest in history," she said. "The mountainside that you ask about is quite close to an old place of death. There is a ruin there, the scene of a siege and much killing. This area is a little famous in a quiet way for some of the local history regarding some of the families who lived here then. Some of them are still here. Do you know any of this from your studies?" "No," Silke replied, "Can't I walk there or something?" Riko looked at her friend and decided she'd come to like her a great deal in the short time that they'd known each other. She considered what she knew of the woman and then weighed a few risks. At last, she shrugged with a smile, "You can go there. I just didn't know if you would want to. I once went to see the battlefield at Gettysburg." "You have been to America?" Silke asked. "Yes," Riko replied, "I have family there, not far from Baltimore. Anyway, I didn't think anything of it at the time, I was only interested in the history of the American Civil War, so I went. What I found was that I almost couldn't stand there. Perhaps I am only sensitive to death," she lied, "but I had to leave not long after arriving. I didn't want you to tramp all of the way there only to experience a similar feeling. I found it most unpleasant. Of course, if you are only interested in the scenic view of the valley from there, then you only have to remain below the top of the ridge and turn around. You'll find the view very pleasing from there." Silke awoke early and set off in the dim light of the dawn. It took her almost two hours to reach the bottom of the slope and begin her trek up the hillside. The day to this point had given her many reasons to stop and admire the scenery from the wooded hillsides as she hiked. But this was different to her for two reasons. The first was that she'd wanted to go here, and she felt as though she'd won a small victory. She wasn't sure about Riko's reluctance to lay the route out for her, but here she was in any event, nearing the place where she'd wanted to be. The second reason was even less definite for her and it was why she'd wanted to come so much in the first place. She had no idea really, other than she'd wanted to and she could find no reason for even that. As she neared the top, she was surprised to find the slight depression which she'd had no warning of as she'd gotten near. She walked up a small rim and found a little dell. It was just another little place, much like many others that she'd seen on her way up, but the scenery in this one so close to the top took her breath as she seemed to be catapulted into a separate space. Silke was quite aware of everything, the sunlight through the leaves, the gentle breeze up the mountain through the trees, everything. It just seemed to her that time had expanded, that was all. It was still a series of finite moments, but the length of the moments seemed to stretch somehow as she stared at the scene before her. There was a man. She had to look carefully for several minutes to be certain that he was actually a man and not some realistically modeled statue. He was sitting, quite naked, on a blanket and looked to be meditating. Back in university, the strain of her studies caused her to have severe headaches until a friend suggested Taoism and though she wasn't very well-versed in any of the doctrines, she found that the meditation helped once she'd gotten some instruction from the monks at the small shrine in Kiel, she so she still practiced it. Silke had no idea what the man was doing here, other than obviously meditating. And she had determined that this was a living man – as obvious a conclusion as that was to draw here. It had taken her several minutes to determine that he actually was breathing. She felt drawn to him out of curiosity and a deep sense of peace, and – she admitted it to herself openly – the wonder of him. She walked slowly and carefully around him as quietly as she could manage from a distance of maybe thirty feet, completing her circumnavigation in about fifteen minutes because she had to stop and look every now and then at some part of him which caught her eye. He wasn't a bodybuilder type; that much was certain, but he was muscular. His body spoke to her of power, though not of brawn, necessarily. If some god or goddess had a thought one day to create Silke's personal ideal of the human male in one living example, well, this was what she was looking at now. He was perfect. She'd never seen anyone like this before in her life. He might have been thirty years old but it was hard to tell. He might just as well have been twenty-two or thirty-seven, for all that she could determine. His face was another enigma. He had features which spoke to her of Oriental origins, though she was almost certain that she could see Caucasian features as well. It confused the heck out of her. His handsome face wore a mask of absolute serenity. His limbs were long and well-shaped, and the small amount of body fat which was distributed over him did little to hide the tendons and sinews which told her of an active life. She wanted so badly to turn on her camera, so that she might capture something of this human wonder. But she didn't, knowing that it would be rude. She felt badly enough for intruding like this in the first place. She almost didn't dare to breathe. In fact, there were a few moments when she had to remind herself that she was a mere mortal and it was required of all mortals to respirate now and then and she'd had to force herself to let out her breath as silently as possible and inhale again. She found that in order to do that, she had to open her mouth slightly. His long hair was another mystery which added to her confusion over his apparent age – or lack of it. He was blonde, though the texture of his hair was the same thick fullness of many Japanese. It was tied back loosely, though he had long bangs which had escaped the tie. She didn't know what to make of him, other than she couldn't pull her eyes from him for very long. The tattoos on him would have been worth the photos by themselves. Though she had a small beginning ability to read the characters, what she was looking at confounded her. They looked as though they had no pattern to them, and were only single characters or patterns, but if one looked at the whole, what was there augmented his form, each being placed perfectly. She stepped a little closer as she came around to the front of him and she saw that there was little pubic hair to be seen, though what was there told her that his was not blonde. Other than that, from this angle, he looked like a normal man, complete with the normal male genitals. She took a long look and stepped to the side of him. He sat completely naked – no clothing, no rings or other jewelery of any kind. The single item on him which could be said to be not a part of him was the tie in his hair. She looked down and noticed that he sat at one end of the blanket, the rest of it lay before him. Silke wondered about even that. Why? She reasoned that if it were her here doing this, she'd have seated herself in the middle of it. She stepped away a little and turned back to look again. That was when she'd come to her first decision. She decided to remain here. She'd stay for as long as it took, but she was determined now to at least try to make this man's acquaintance, though the introduction might be a little awkward, given his state of dress, her poor skills at Japanese and his probable lack of another language which might be common to them both. It didn't matter, she thought. She'd be respectful about it, but she had to meet him. She took her knapsack from her shoulders and set it down. A moment later, she was sitting on the ground in front of him about ten feet away. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 02 She looked around the clearing, listening to the birds for several minutes. When she looked back, she saw that his hands were moving slowly, so she watched fascinated as he lifted his hands from where they'd been resting on his knees and he brought them together in front of his solar plexus and bowed his head slightly to look at them, she thought. It was true, she noted after a few seconds, she could see that his eyes were open slightly and his fingers began to move slowly in what looked to be patterns of movement. It took her several repetitions of those patterns for her to see the cycle. She didn't dare to breathe as she watched his hands move gradually faster. She was a little concerned, knowing that she'd feel even worse for her intrusion if he suddenly noticed her now. As she watched, she found herself wanting to give in to something, though she had no idea what it might be at first. She sat thinking about that, and decided that what she felt was a desire to allow herself to feel better. It astounded her in a way. She wanted to give up the load that she'd been unconsciously carrying for so long now. Her eyes drifted downward to her own hands for a few seconds. She felt the same helplessness that she'd always felt, but now it was as though she could find it in herself to allow that rather than fight it any longer. Given the way that she'd been just going about her life a little mechanically, it was surprising that she didn't want to weep with the release of it. But she didn't. She just felt better. She came to her second decision at that point. She needed very much to be closer to him. Now that she'd thought about it some more, she knew somehow that this odd feeling deep inside her came to her from him – though she still couldn't answer her own question about whether he even was aware that she was here at all or if he was, just how this was possible. She only knew that it was. When she looked up again, his eyes were closed, though his hands still performed their odd ritual before her. Silke sat for a time with her hands around her knees. She shifted, looked at her hiking boots and considered the laces for a few minutes and thought things over. The very few times that she'd been in any danger of physical harm in her life had left her with a sort of sense. She could sometimes feel unease if she was somewhere that she should not be, or near someone who made her feel this sense – even if she hadn't seen him yet. She felt nothing of that here, though she did feel a questioning sense inside her. With her second decision made but not yet acted upon, she reached for the laces on her boots. Her motions were slow and measured, though there was no hesitation. She had time. With the boots and her socks off, she spent a few minutes wiggling her toes in the grass. At last, Silke stood up very slowly and began to remove her clothing as cautiously and quietly as she could manage. Aside from the rest of what she was feeling, she decided that she wished to be here just as he was at this moment, and though it surprised her, it only felt right to her. She hoped that this didn't turn into anything that she might feel foolish over. She tossed the notion as quickly as she could. In this secluded little dell, on this mountain hillside inside a forest, it only seemed right to do this. Standing before him naked herself now, Silke considered what she ought to do next. It took no thought at all, really. She stepped forward, hoping that the weight of her feet on the blanket wouldn't tug it so that he'd notice right away and placing her feet, she sank down into a lotus position about three feet from him and closed her eyes. A sense of well-being flooded over her immediately and she sighed silently as she gave herself over to it. It took her only a minute or so and she had her own breathing at a low and calm level. Another minute and the songs of the birds faded from her consciousness and a minute after that, and she couldn't even feel the slight mountain breeze. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting like this, but after a long while and feeling much better, she opened her eyes. The man was gone. Silke closed her eyes again. She had to, otherwise she'd be forced to give in to what she felt and burst into tears at her foolishness. She'd only wanted to be close to him for the way that she felt so peaceful. All of her inner storms had been quelled while he was there in front of her, and now he was gone and she'd missed her chance to meet what was likely the most extraordinary man that she'd ever come into any sort of contact with. But then she knew in an instant that he wasn't gone, not really. In the peaceful little clearing, she couldn't hear him. He was out of her field of view now, but she could feel that he was still here. She knew somehow that he was now walking around her just as she had done earlier. Before an unreasoning fear could raise itself, she took a breath and let herself go once more. The next time that she opened her eyes, it was quite obviously some time later, judging only by the angle of the dappled sunlight on the blanket and her skin. She opened her eyes a little wider and looked up. He sat in front of her, even closer now –perhaps only twelve inches of air was all that separated their knees. He was looking at her with light gray eyes. Behind him, she could see the edge of the ridge and beyond that, she could make out the clouds which rolled by, puffy and white at the top of them, but carrying a dark gray underbelly. His eyes opened a little wider as well. They sat looking at each other for over twenty minutes, by her estimation. Neither of them spoke. But he did smile a little. Silke wanted to cry out in joy and leap to her feet and maybe dance for only that. When the notion had passed, she considered. What she felt now was a direct question. Unspoken, and not forced in any way, but she felt it as surely as she could feel her own heart now. She watched him tilt his head just a little as he regarded her body and the ink on it for a moment from this angle. When he looked at her face again, the question returned. She elected not to think anymore at all. And so, Silke made her third decision. She rose up on her knees and held perfectly still, trying to ask her own question. His answer came when he rose up on his, and she slid her arms around his neck. His ear received her first soft kiss and she felt herself smiling when his quiet gasp came to her in response. When she felt his arms encircle her, it felt as though they'd known each other all along. He pulled her the rest of the way to him and when she felt her breasts crushed against his chest, she thought that her heart might leave her. He felt delicious and new to her and it was obvious that he shared the sentiment from the other side of it. They drew back only as much as was necessary so that they could smile at each other a little for just a moment. Neither of them spoke a word to the other. Their first kiss surprised them both as well. There was no hungry need there, though she recognized it in herself and she assumed that the same need burned in him. He kissed her as though he really meant it, though he didn't crush her lips with his own. His kisses weren't tentative, either. He meant them, he just wasn't in a hurry, not even as his penis rose to press against her furrow so softly. Even that had a comforting feel to it. They pulled apart again just a little and she reached for his manhood slowly. He watched her eyes as she moved both what she held and herself so that the tip grazed her cleft in little motions along its length. The sensation caused them both to close their eyes momentarily and when he sighed from it, she felt his gentle breath against her. He'd known that someone was coming up the rise through the trees for some time from the changes in the songs of the birds. As she drew closer, still out of his sight, he listened as they paused, unsure of the newcomer and her intent. The next thing which came to him was that this was indeed a female, judging by the length of her stride coupled with the lightness of her footfalls. At just over one hundred feet away, he'd sensed her and needed no other indicators. He just felt that she was there. He'd had plenty of time during which to do something. He could have melted into the trees and gone unnoticed by almost anyone. But he sensed something which had caused him to remain there. Though his eyes were closed, he knew it when she'd crested the rim of the dell. As she'd walked around him in wonder, he'd estimated a lot of things about her only from what came to his ears and through the ground. His nose confirmed to him that this was a female by the faint remnants of the soap that she'd used in the shower early that morning. Other than to cause him to pause now and then, her intrusion didn't bother him at all. Her silence told him that she wasn't offended and so he'd continued. He saw that she sat before him, but he'd already begun the kuji kiri and nothing short of an attack could cause him to cease. But when he was finished, the sight of the woman before him stopped his breathing when he did open his eyes to regard her at last. He made no sound as he locked his eyes on the center of her breastbone. His gaze didn't waver, and her features came to him in a rush of details and impressions as he noticed features and aspects – all coming to his sight without moving his eyes from that spot between her breasts. How the gods had managed to create a kami such as this lovely one before him with Caucasian features and then to bring her here was beyond his ability to fathom. It didn't matter, he supposed. That was why they were gods after all. After observing her for a time, he'd gotten up and walked around her, astounded at what he saw. He'd felt it when she'd noticed him gone from her view and froze where he was behind her, but she'd gone back to her trance and so he moved close to her and sat down to wait respectfully for her. When at last she'd opened her eyes and they looked at each other, he had a sense of her unintended purpose and he waited for her to begin. But for all that he was and had become, for all that he could do and had learned, there was nothing that could prepare him for her touch and her embrace. They began it between them as something needed and wonderful, loving the rest of the afternoon. At each pause, they rested, holding each other tightly as though there was a fear within each one's breast that the other would disappear into the mountain breeze at any instant. Their hands were in motion almost constantly passing caresses from one of them to the other and gathering information at the same time. No matter what they did together, in any position, it remained the same. The sense of wonder never ceased for either of them. Each one took in details through as many senses as possible, and there were surprises between them, all of them pleasant and often profound. Silke noticed things which he did that changed her perceptions of acts which had never held any interest to her before. Now, with this man, the same things were wonders to her. While resting between couplings, he sought to lick her as though he could receive the essence of life from that place on her which he seemed to need at that moment. She thought nothing of it, other than seeming to know that he did. It raised a hunger in her then and she reciprocated – something that she'd have never even considered after coitus before. The sudden need within her once she'd begun only seemed to make sense then and she found that she needed this as well from him. And when they began to kiss once more afterward, it took nothing away, though before this, it would have been enough to make her go cold instantly. He found ten thousand things about her which fascinated him, angles and curves, lines and textures. No one had held his interest like her. There were times when she would open her mouth just a little in response to what he was causing her to feel and those instants, whether her eyes were open or closed caused him to stare at her slight overbite and feel so many things, not the least of which was his want to never let her out of his reach while they both lived. She found that no matter how they loved, she felt as though she had to reach out to him at some point, in some way, to lay her palm on his marvelous body somewhere, whether she slid her hand over his chest or wrapped her fingers as far around his bicep as she possibly could. Even if all that she could manage was to lay her little finger over his while their hands were close to each other as he took her from behind, it was enough – but it was also necessary to her as well. The thing was - and she had no way to know why - she knew that he needed that touch from her as well. Neither of them would have thought that it was possible, but it spoke to him of her acceptance of him in this and her desire of him at the same time. To her, his promise and need of her came to her, along with the mounting emotion which matched hers. Along with the tactile expressions, there were audible ones. Sighs, gasps, groans, moans and cries were exchanged between them, and for each partner at some point in this, there came a moment of realization that this was really a rather pure thing which they shared. The purity was preserved because for all of the sounds made, both loud and soft, whether it was a tiny gasp or a long shuddering wail, there was not one word spoken to dilute or muddy it. They loved right through the afternoon and into the evening. They carried on the sweetest copulation that either of them had ever experienced right through a five minute sun shower, a torrential, though short-lived downpour an hour later, and they grinned at each other and laughed a little in the warm summer rain which began after that. Silke didn't know about him, but she'd never in her life made love in the rain even once, and that day, she'd done it three times so far. The air was warm enough so that when the rain stopped each time, all that it raised was their passion again, as well as perhaps a few goosebumps, and certainly nothing that would cause them to stop. As it began to grow dark, the warm soft rain began again and kept on as he did his best to shield her with his body. Only then, as the rain began to cool enough to begin to chill the two lovers, did it occur to them to try to speak. They lay on the sodden blanket and smiled at each other in the rain. Silke moved her leg over him again and rolled him onto his back, careful to try to keep this wonderful man from drowning by leaning over him as he'd done for her earlier. He asked her a question which she didn't comprehend and she shook her head with a shrug. She asked him if he understood German. He'd heard the phrase before and even knew roughly what was being asked, but he had no reply and so he mimicked her earlier answer with a smile and tried something else. "English?" he asked, and Silke laughed a little, wondering why she hadn't thought of it. "Ok," she smiled, shrugging again. "What is your name?" His smile grew a little wider as he answered, "Tatsuya Mochizuki." She had it in two tries. "So, my mysterious lover has a name," she sighed, "I am Silke." She had to help him with the pronunciation of the first letter, since the sound of it lay between an 'S' and a 'Z'. When he had it, his expression melted her heart for the way that his chest expanded a little under her and he heaved a sigh and spoke it purposefully and with obvious pleasure. But then, his face grew a little serious as he brought forth his next question. It had been what he'd wanted to know from the outset and what she'd felt as they'd looked at each other hours before. "Why have you come here?" She had to think for a moment, since her answer to it had changed from her original thought. If there was one thing which this whole interlude demanded of them both, she realized, it was absolute honesty. She'd had no thought to hide anything, but she wanted her thought expressed with clarity. "I came originally because I am here on vacation and I wished to see the valley from here, but that purpose changed after I saw you. To say the truth – I think now that I came for you. I only knew that I wanted to be here." To her surprise, he accepted her answer with a single nod. "I felt you come closer, and I didn't want to leave or step into the trees. I wanted to stay." She watched his eyes move from one feature of her face to the next for a moment, and then he said the thing which sealed it for her. "As you came, I heard your heart. When we looked at each other, I heard your heart again, even stronger than before and I knew then that I had to be here." It caused her to sigh in spite of herself and she eased herself down to lick along his lips before she wandered, kissing him until she could cover his face with her long wet hair and drag her lips over the rim of his ear, "I came because I needed to." It was a long moment before Silke thought past his answer and realized that his English was better than hers as far as the lack of an accent went. Her own English came from what she'd learned at school and it was more British than his. "Are you American?" she asked. "Close enough," he said with a small smile, "It's a long story. Are you cold?" "Not yet," Silke replied, "but I think that I will be sooner or later. I have a room at the inn down below, but after this, I really don't want to go back right now." She looked into his eyes for a moment and resolved that she had no wish to be very far from them for at least a while longer. "I want to be with you." He nodded as he looked at what was to him certainly the most lovely throat that he'd ever seen. He glanced at one of her collarbones and from there to her eyes, "I am a little afraid that if I look away for longer than a moment, I will be alone. If you can put up with some strangeness, I can lead you to a warm place for tonight and stay with you." She asked about what strangeness would be required, and he regretfully answered that at some point, if she would tolerate it, she would have to allow him to blindfold her for a few minutes. "The place is an old secret, not meant for outsiders. There's no danger to you if you can trust me. If you find that you can't, I'll understand and I'd be happy to walk with you to any place where you are confident that you know the rest of the way to the inn, but not to the inn itself." He was actually saddened. To have met someone like Silke and been given the wondrous gift of this day, ... But he supposed that it was to be expected. To put it in Western terms, you were dealt what came to you and that was what you played with. If you couldn't make it fly, then that was just what it was. From an Eastern side, he just accepted it and waited for her response. She considered while looking at his eyes and then to her own surprise, she agreed. "I want to be with you," she said again in a quiet but determined way, "I've never felt like this before in my life. I've been deeply in love and I haven't felt what you tell me with one touch. Sometimes, you just have to accept things as they come. If my purpose for being here is true – the way that I feel it, then this is where I have to be for now." She leaned down and kissed him as softly as she could. Keeping her lips in light contact with his, she whispered, "All that I know is that I am here because of you. This is not over. I don't want it to be. I am here for you – unless I can't be for some reason. Until then, I am yours if you give me the same gift of yourself." When she lifted herself to look at him, Silke watched as he inhaled a little, and then he smiled and nodded once before the smile disappeared and he became solemn. "If we are trading gifts, then I think that I might have found a kami who I could give my life over to." It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 02 She thought that she might cry. They gathered their things a little later and it happened pretty much the way that she imagined it. Within five steps, once he'd led her under the eaves of the forest, she was lost, seeing almost nothing. After a few minutes, he stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. "I'm not going to blindfold you, Silke," he said, "since I don't really have anything but my own soaked shirt. I'm sure that you can't see anything of where we are anyway." She nodded and kissed him quickly. "What was that for?" he asked. He felt her shoulders move as she shrugged, "I needed it." As he led her through the dark, there came a point where she felt herself easing under something thick and stringy and then she was in a place where the quiet sounds that they made came to her ears with a touch of reverberation. She noticed that immediately. She also noticed that they were out of the rain. It was a little cool where they stood and she wondered about it. "How much farther?" she asked, "When can I open my eyes?" "Why did you close your eyes? I didn't ask for that," he said. "You said that this wasn't for outsiders. I respect that," she smiled. "Only a little farther then," he answered, wondering how it was that she hadn't stumbled. But he knew that she was being truthful and in a few moments, he brought them to a stop and told her to open her eyes. The air was warm here and the place was lit by a low fire in an old pit. Tatsuya added some wood and she could see better as she turned around in a bit of wonder. The walls were lined in a rather rustic way with objects which were at first foreign to her. They had the appearance of well-used and worn agricultural implements. Silke looked at him and she still felt no threat. She also still felt the emotion that had built up in her toward him over the afternoon. "What is this place?" she asked him. He shrugged, "Really ancient history," he said. "At first, long ago, this was a hiding place where one could disappear for a time. It was added to, and there are other chambers beyond this one. Now?" He looked around himself and smiled a little, "it's more of an exhibit, I guess. It's a place of comfort to me and others. I've spent time in here for periods of my whole life." Tatsuya looked back over his shoulder a little to her, "There was a time long ago when this was such a secret that for only being here, your life would be forfeit – mine as well for bringing you." He smirked, "Even so, there will be questions asked of me – and you, later, I suppose, but I know enough about you to say that you need answers to some things in your life and perhaps you seek some new ways to help you deal with them. This place wasn't made for that, but you may find some of your answers here." Silke understood only a little of what he'd told her, though the parts that she did grasp made sense. She stepped forward and pressed herself to his body, looking around the chamber from a little behind his shoulder as she enjoyed the scent of him. "You come from here?" she asked, as she slid her arm under his so that she could pull herself closer to him. He nodded, "I wasn't born here, though I've always felt that I should have been, so It's almost, though not quite my birthplace in my heart. This belongs to my clan – what's left of it. There have been times when I've lived here alone as I sought my own answers. I live in both countries – Japan and the states, and sometimes it feels as though I've got about the longest commute in the world." Silke didn't question beyond that; not yet, anyway. The whole day felt like such a gift to her that it was difficult to put the pieces into place in her mind, but she knew that it would come later. He felt her soft kiss on the back of his shoulder and he sighed, knowing that he'd done the right thing to bring her here. "Are you hungry, Tatsuya?" she asked, "If the rain hasn't gotten to everything, I have some sandwiches in my pack." Her question brought his focus to her body and he grinned, "I can go a long time without food. But I know that you're starving now. I could eat," he nodded, "and I think that you ought to." As though his words had some control over her body, it answered him at that moment with a growl from her empty stomach. "Let's sit and eat then," he smiled. Her sandwiches were indeed still dry and they sat close together, touching as they shared. Sadly, she had only brought enough for her, not knowing what would come to pass later, but he smiled, "The amount doesn't matter to me. It's that you offered and we ate together. There will be more food for us later, I think." The statement would have sounded absurd t her in about any other circumstance, but Silke wouldn't have been surprised at all if he'd just snapped his fingers in the air and a pair of four-course meals arrived out of nowhere. Still, she had to ask what he'd meant. "I'm here on a sort of vacation myself," he said, "I'm struggling over an issue and I came to seek my answers in the place that is much like the heart of my family." He stood up and walked to a simple table. There was a hurricane-style lantern there and he lit it using a match from a little wooden box. "I am fighting myself over many issues," Silke said as she looked down, but then she looked up and smiled at him, "but I have found at least one answer. It might sound a little silly, but I have discovered that underneath all of my troubles, I am still a woman." She smirked, "Not very profound, I know, but lately I think that I've become a little bit removed from what I am at the heart of things. " He reached for her hand, "Would you like a bath? This place is a bit rustic, but there are at least a few civilized amenities." Silke nodded and took his hand so that he could lead her into a dark opening. As they walked through what appeared to be a passageway carved into the stone, the sound of running water came to her ears and a moment later, she stood in a little amazement as the passageway opened up to a rock pool under a cascade which poured down from above them to disappear into another opening on the floor of the cavern. Setting the lantern down carefully on a ledge, Tatsuya stepped into the pool and under the stream. She watched him shower quickly and taking a deep breath, she stepped into the cold water. "This is, ..." she struggled for the rest, but she saw him nod with a smile. It was about the most businesslike shower of her life. "I know," he said quietly in her ear, "Come this way now." He took her hand and picking up the lantern in his other hand, he led her to another chamber. It was as though she'd entered another world. There was a square bath set into the floor. It was perhaps ten feet square, surrounded by a bare wooden deck. The air was warm here and very pleasant. He gestured toward the gently steaming surface of the bath, "Please, make yourself comfortable. I'll be back in a moment. I want to hang up our clothes near the fire." Silke found herself alone a moment later. She was about to step into the bath, but she thought that she heard quiet speech - strange whispers which seemed to come from the passageway where he'd gone, back toward the chamber with the waterfall. Stepping closer to the opening, she heard his whispers as he conversed with someone – two others, she decided. She wondered why she wasn't alarmed, but decided that since he'd said that this place belonged to his clan – whoever they might be, so the possibility that there might be others here didn't seem to be a stretch. The reticence of many Japanese to intrude on the privacy of others was one of the things which had impressed her about these people. Her own culture was capable of this same behaviour at some levels. She inched forward just a little. Tatsuya stood, still naked, near the cascade. Facing him in the darkness were two figures, both smaller in stature than he was and wearing dark capes with the hoods up. She saw nothing of their faces. Their conversation was earnest, though not very animated. Silke withdrew and walked back to the bathing room. She stepped slowly into the hot water, deciding that at this temperature, a quick entrance was out of the question and she sank down slowly into a cross-legged position with a long sigh. It took her a couple of minutes, but it felt wonderful. Tatsuya joined her a few minutes later, sitting on the edge with his legs in the water as he admired her. "We are not alone here?" she asked. He shook his head, "We were, and will be again, soon. The others were just, ... 'passing through' would be a good term, I think." He thought about it and smiled, "I have learned that there will be no questions of us tonight." She wondered about it and he held up his hand with a quiet laugh. "I know that all of this must seem very mysterious to you, and I'm very surprised myself. It seems that you and I have a pair of well-wishers. I was expecting my aunt to stop by, since she told me earlier that she'd bring a meal for me. She came with my cousin and they've brought more than the simple meal that I was expecting. Our clothing was already hanging when I got there." "Doesn't your family live in regular houses?" she asked. He shrugged, "Usually, but for hundreds of years, some of us have lived in shadows at least part of the time, in places like this and others. If you were born into a family such as mine, all of this," he said, indicating the room with his hand, "wouldn't even raise your eyebrows." Silke nodded as she leaned forward and moved closer to him on her hands and knees with her long hair hanging into the water. When she got to where he was, she sat back on her heels and she reached for him. She laid her head on his thigh and her fingers caressed his maleness lightly. "Sooner or later," she said quietly, "I know that I will have to wake up from this dream, Tatsuya. I find that I have no wish to at all. I suppose that I'm a normal woman who has had a few lovers in her time." She smirked, and he felt her cheek follow the motion against his thigh as she continued the thought. "Maybe I've reached the end of the cycle which seems to be normal these days. I fell in love and married. Now I'm alone and so lost. Until today, I think that I've been trying to just ignore everything. All that I felt was that I've failed in something important somehow and don't know how to correct anything anymore. I wonder if I even want to." Her fingers wrapped around the shaft of him as it rose up in response to her tender touch. With a soft kiss, Silke lifted her head so that she could look at it without crossing her eyes. "So beautiful," she sighed, "just like the rest of you. After all of this day, I still want to love you. I've never done anything like this, never wanted to for this long. But inside me, now I don't ever want to stop." She looked up, "This is like a fantasy or,.. or a dream to me. I don't want to wake up anymore. It's a little sad that I find someone like you. I know nothing about you and already I am sad to have to go back to my life next week. I just had the thought and I want to cry. If I could have one wish, ..." He put his hand on her shoulder and he smiled softly. "Tell me your wish then, Silke, and I'll tell you mine." "Could you make it come true?" she asked, already knowing that likely reply. "I don't know," he said, "You haven't told me yet. " He sighed as he leaned down to kiss the top of her head. "Probably not, but that doesn't mean that I'm not willing to try. I'm not foolish enough to want to walk away from something like this without at least knowing more." "I don't really know," she said, "but I know how I feel inside. If I could – if anything were possible, I think that I would like to stay like this with you forever. I'd want to live in a more simple way without all of the complications and schedules which I know are waiting for me." She moved the side of his penis so that it brushed her cheek and she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them again and looked into his, "In my complex world, I am a prisoner. Here, and in this moment, I am happy and content. Right here, in this old and simple place where you have brought me, I think that I could live and devote myself to you if I knew that I could have, ..." She drew her head back and kissed the end of him wetly, not so much to be sensual about it, though the sensuality was there unmistakably. She did it to express her feelings. She shook her head. "Nobody loves like this in my life," she said, "I can easily feel that this is not usual for you either. I guess that I am saying that if you wish for my heart, ... I have no idea how the practical side of things might be accomplished for two people like us, but if ..." She closed her eyes, fearing that she'd said too much, praying that she hadn't just ruined this by expressing her wish. Besides, he hadn't said what she was listening for. This was still a loving out of nowhere for her in so many respects. But after a second she knew that she hadn't ruined anything from feeling his fingers in her hair and they were quiet for a long minute before he spoke. "I am in the same place – if there is this cycle which you speak of, Silke. I feel the same way. I have the same thoughts about things. From the way that you sound to me when you speak, I know that the truth of it is that we are in one place now when our lives are in two places on almost opposite sides of the world. I don't care about anything in that world right now. I have no wish to be anywhere else but here with you. I don't even know what we have, other than each other right now." He lifted her chin and she raised her head, throwing her arms around his neck. They kissed very slowly and he pulled away after a time, leaving her with soft little kisses which told her that he didn't even really want to stop long enough to speak. "We shouldn't even try to think about later for now," he said, and before she could come to any conclusions, he said, "but I want very much for you to know that I wish for there to be a later." Silke decided that from a practical side, the odds were long against what was here between them even being able to survive away from this magical mountain. But she'd never made love like this before with anyone. Before today, she'd never have believed that something such as what they'd done was even possible. All that Silke knew was that neither of them wanted this to end. She still hadn't heard what she was listening for and had a doubt that even like this, that it could ever exist, but it changed nothing for the moment. She wet her lips and took him into her mouth. Long minutes later, she took his seed from him again, swallowing and searching for more with her fingers as she looked up at him. He slid into the water and lifted her so that she sat on the edge and she watched as his face came slowly closer to her chest. She felt her heart lift as though it wanted to soar away when she held him against her and his lips sought for her nipple. "I came here this time," he said after a time as he caressed her body, "because I was in a lot of pain which wouldn't leave me or grow weaker over time. I sought the comfort that I've always gotten here. The wound has healed, but now, ..." His words stopped and he looked up. They looked at each other for a moment and then she leaned down a little and kissed him. "Ssh. Just tell me that you are mine for now," she said, "we have this for the moment. I don't want to talk for a little while. I just need you against me." Sometime later, he told her to sit back and he kissed his way to where she offered herself then. When she couldn't hold herself up any longer, he reached and laid her onto her back gently before he returned to finish what he'd begun. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 03 ** Just a reminder that this story is already in the can and each of the chapters has already been posted. I hope that it's enjoyed. 0_o ------------------ Long after the point at which they'd both turned to prunes, they walked past the cascade again and back to the room with the fire pit. Silke found that after the hot bathwater, the trip through the coolness didn't even affect her. The table now had two place settings and there were stoneware pots waiting for them. "Our shadowy well-wishers?" she asked as they sat down to eat. Tatsuya laughed and nodded, "Yes." "I don't understand," she said. "I'm not all that sure that I do," he laughed, "I think that our meeting was set up in some way, though I'm not certain of it yet." He looked at her, "I'm not about to question it too much, but I will find out eventually, now that I have a pair of suspects in mind. I'll tell you what I learn since we seem to want to be stuck together, but so far, this is way out of the ordinary for either of them -- especially my aunt. They told me that they knew that I'd bring you here. That she'd have no problem with that alone bends my brain a little." She paused and set her chopsticks down for a moment. "If you don't think that it might break the spell," she said with a little smile, "I'd like so much to know who it is that I've made love with today." "I'm a little bit of a lost child here," he said without a hint of sadness, "Aside from his own heritage in the family, my father was a pilot who was hired for a job because of his skill at getting into and out of small, mountainous landing strips flying small to medium-sized transports. He was recruited in a rather strange way -- even by his standards - by an American. The money was far better than good enough to draw him. I ought to point out that he wasn't in it for personal gain so much as he was interested in the return to his family. That, and the challenges which that sort of work presented to him every day on every flight. It was work for an airline which he'd heard very little of before. I don't think that he ever put it together, who he was really working for, but I doubt that the knowledge would have stopped him. My mother was an American who worked for that company. She'd just started working for them in the states and worked her way up from selling tickets at her first posting in Taiwan. It was years before she learned who they really were. She wore a lot of hats there at the company offices, from clerical work to teaching the children of the American families who worked there. The company had large facilities and shared space with the U.S. Air Force on the Udorn base in Thailand. To hear her tell of it, they fell for each other within about five minutes while she helped him with his paperwork as he was hired on. He began flying the same day, and they were together whenever they could manage it. I'm told that they lived every second of a great love between them. When they managed to work things out for a vacation, my father brought her here. They were married in these mountains and she was the first person outside of my family to be allowed to come to this place. I was born a year or so afterward. By accident of birth, I'm Thai, and I learned the language from our housekeeper. I was about five when my father was shot down over the Plain of Jars in Laos. My mother quit her job and we came here where she was welcomed by the family that she was now a part of. I guess that she worked through her grief with their help and we moved to the states. Because I was the dependent of a pair of employees of a company set up by an American intelligence agency, I was given citizenship because of my mother's, since everything in Thailand was coming to an end as the airline was dismantled. I spent my childhood shuffling back and forth because she wanted me to know about my heritage and make the most of both cultures." Tatsuya looked at the flames of the fire for a moment. "I was here the summer that I turned eighteen when I was told that my mother had been killed in a car accident. I flew back with my uncle and he helped me to make sense of everything that I needed to do. I found that with my mother's passing, a lot of my American family didn't really care all that much about me. I sold everything and came back here." He looked around for a moment before he turned to Silke with a smile, "I stayed right here for almost a year, learning from my uncle. After that, I used some of my money and went to university in the States, working part-time jobs to keep myself alive so that I didn't need to use any more money than I needed to. Whenever I had time, I flew back. Then I went to school here, working at the family businesses on the side. We produce man-machine interfaces, speech recognition firmware and like that." He smiled at her, "There's a bit more, but it's not important, really. The most important thing is that I'm a bit of an oddball here and in America. But I'm accepted more here, though I can survive easily in either place. I own a martial arts school in Maryland. Sometimes I compete in tournaments, and if I feel like it, I sometimes compete in Mixed Martial Arts competitions as well, though I never take those as seriously. They're more for fun to me. I can also say that you're not the only one who has failed at marriage, either." They decided in a mutual way to leave their stories for the moment, and neither one of them ever minded the silence which fell between them now and then as long as they touched somewhere. "Does your name have a literal meaning?" he asked. "Yes," he heard her soft reply from under his jaw, "It is a form of Cecilia. Does your name mean anything?" He chuckled, "I guess that it's either presumptuous of just bloody hopeful, but it means 'Dragon To Be.' Are you suitably impressed?" "Mm-hmm," she sighed as she sucked one of his nipples against her teeth to make him gasp. After the meal, he led her to his bed and they began it again. Silke wasn't sure just when it happened, but she became absolutely certain that she could love Tatsuya forever in his own right. This was nothing like anything that she'd ever experienced and she wanted to have him against her now more than anything. It seemed to be turning into a need. She couldn't help herself once and said what she felt in the middle of their passion -- breaking what was perhaps the oldest rule in the book. Silke found that she'd astounded herself by saying it. She was certain that she'd have denied it even if she'd asked herself beforehand. Now that the echoes of her cry were all that was left in her mind, she realized that she did feel that way -- though it made no sense to her. Then again, she thought, this whole long day was like nothing that she'd ever, ... She knew it as soon as it was out of her, and he stopped instantly to stare into her eyes for a long moment. Silke once again thought that she'd ruined everything, but she hadn't been able to keep the emotion inside of herself. Tatsuya slowly smiled and shook his head. "This isn't possible," he said, "No one has ever said something like that to me at a time like this and meant anything more than that they were feeling pretty good at the moment. But I can feel that you only wish for a more powerful way to say it, don't you?" "But, ... "she felt her features take on a look as though she was a young doe who was caught in the beams of a car's headlights, "but I said it in German." Before she could come up with a lie to cover it, hating that she'd have to break her silent vow of honesty to him to lie to him now, he told her. "That doesn't matter. I knew what it means when I heard it. I love you too, Silke. I'd never have the courage to say this looking at your eyes if you hadn't meant it like that, but I love you. I just hope that it can exist outside of this place -- that it isn't dependent on us being here." "You'd never have the courage? What does that mean?" she asked. "After my marriage fell apart, I've never wanted to hear those words again, because I doubted that anyone ever really means it when they say it," he said, "Until today, I didn't think that I'd ever allow myself to feel this way ever again, but I just knew that I was lost with you as soon as you touched me. I just didn't think that you could feel the same thing as I felt. I thought that it was just me wanting what I could never have, since I've never had it in the first place." She stared for a moment, "So you are saying that we can love each other and just be honest about it? Please, Tatsuya, I'm not a young girl at this. Grown women learn never to say what they really want at times like this. I've been careful to say only the truth to you. Please, if I'm right, please tell me that it's so." He kissed her softly, putting as much into it as he could. "I'm sure," he said at last, "I love you, Silke Whatever-your-name-is, since you never mentioned it. I really do." "Kriechbaum," she said, "Silke Kriechbaum. I've gone back to my maiden name." He did his best and it bought him the sweetest smile that he could ever remember seeing, other than the way that his cousin used to smile at him when they were growing up. But in this case, there was nothing enigmatic to Silke's soft grin. She knew that he'd have trouble with the soft 'CH' sound in the middle. To his credit and her amazement, he had it inside of four tries. "So you love me?" she asked, not yet being able to allow herself to admit that she'd really heard it. "I love you, Silke Kriechbaum," he said solemnly. "I'd even take a lie detector test -- if you've got a polygraph machine inside your knapsack. We could do it right here. You could hook me up on the spot. You can even put one probe on my -- " She felt him swell inside her as he contracted his muscles there on purpose. Silke threw back her head and laughed, and at far more than the absurd image that she'd formed of it in her mind. Tatsuya gasped and groaned as his penis was forced almost right out of her from the way that her abdominal muscles had tensed from her laughter. "Put it back!" she chuckled, "I'm sorry for that, I couldn't help it, but please hurry and put it back in." They were joined again and they only moved a little now and then as they looked at each other. "This will take some care," he said, "If we live as far apart as we do, and I assume that you can't drop everything just as I can't right now. If this is going to grow, ..." "I know," she sighed, "but I really want this. I've never wanted anything more. I just don't know how -- " "Never mind," he smiled, "let's just try it and do our best. We still might find that we can't even get along." "I have an idea," she said, "and it's crazy. I was thinking that people's lives are the big problem. Hundreds of years ago, people got married and almost all of them stayed together. Some didn't, but most did. They needed each other and stayed together. What did they do here?" "The same thing," he said, "though there was always the thing that a wife lived for her husband and always obeyed him. I've never liked that personally, and worse, a woman wasn't even the master of her own home if her father was dead. The man's mother moved in and she became the old one's slave, so that's out. I'd never allow that." "But your mother is dead, you said," she smiled, "I'm safe." He shook his head, "My aunt. She's close enough." "Would you protect me," she asked a little playfully, "so that she couldn't beat me as I did the washing?" He smiled, "She's not like that, though her involvement in this little conspiracy makes me a little worried that she's feeling hopeful." "How about if we just tried to do our best and see where we end up?" she asked, "I don't think that either of us has that much to lose in it. I will want a full and honest account from you about your marriage, and I will do the same for you. I'm beginning to see a few things that I might have been wrong about." "What are you saying?" he asked, "that you --" He paused for a moment, "You're very serious, aren't you?" "Have you ever made love to anyone like this before, the way that we've done it?" she asked, "Look, I've locked myself away with a man before and never wanted to go on and on the way that I do with you. My God, you only have to look at me and I'm ready again, and I've seen how you react when I only smile at you in a certain way. I'm telling you, I want this with you. I've decided that I came here for you. I'm only saying that we should do what we can to keep going if this is what we both want. Let's just try for each other," she said, "if this is something that you'd want with me, all that I am suggesting is that we try. If I came to you as the bride in an arranged marriage and you had a heart, would you try really hard?" He nodded after a second, "I would then, yes." "What about now?" she asked him, "Want to try something crazy with me? Would you want to be my man -- at least until we can figure out if this can work if we try at it?" It made him chuckle, "Yes," he nodded, "I'm all yours, then." Silke sighed as she pulled her knees up as high as she could to get him deeper inside of her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, "Then I am yours too, Tatsuya," she said, "Just don't go too hard and deep like this, and don't mind whatever other nonsense that I might say." ------------------- Somewhere, deep into the night as they writhed together, they found themselves back in the same position, with Silke under him and her legs far back. They still went at it as though it meant everything to them, just a lot slower now. Silke still hadn't gotten over how he could make her cry the silent tears that she felt as she gasped softly with every long stroke. She'd feel her closeness now and then and she'd lower her legs just a little to heighten it for herself so that she'd shudder a little. It was in the middle of it that she thought that she could see the others as they slipped past the bed and prepared to leave. The two figures looked at her for a moment from under their hoods and Silke was surprised to see that all that she could see of their faces were their eyes. Tatsuya looked up, noticing them and the pair nodded at both of the lovers once and then they were gone. She whispered to him, urging him to take his pleasure now if he was close and he finished after a few minutes. As they tried to twine their bodies together, she asked him about what she'd thought that she'd seen. "I was distracted," he admitted, "or I'd have known that they were still here. I'm sorry for that." "Do you mean that they were here the whole time? Watching us all of these hours while we were together? Why, Tatsuya?" "I don't know," he said, "I guess I've got another thing to figure out now. I can't say that they'd have been upset with us or I'd have known about them before now." He rolled onto his back and Silke was on him in a heartbeat. "That's for tomorrow, I guess," she said, "I hope that I haven't done anything wrong. I wouldn't want to offend them. Can I try to sleep on you like this?" "I think that I'd be at least a little upset if you didn't try it at some point," he smiled as she laid her head onto his chest. --------------------- Silke woke up alone in the morning. The fire in the pit crackled a little and from that, she deduced that someone had given a thought to her comfort. She sat up and wondered what to do. Should she look for him? She thought about walking back to the inn, but she didn't know the way and she couldn't see a way to leave him a message. She looked around, hoping that there might be a piece of paper in sight. That was when she'd seen one of the other figures again, standing in a doorway waiting for her. As soon as their eyes met, the hooded person bowed low to her. Silke was astounded, but she had enough presence of mind to return the bow, noticing that this time, the other figure's legs and feet were bare. The figure beckoned to her several times. Silke thought about it and got out of the bed. She walked over and the person turned away and walked to the opening that led deeper into the cave, beckoning as she did so. Silke followed and found herself in front of the cascade again. The one in the cloak stood in the doorway leading to the bath and indicated the cold waterfall with her hand. Knowing that one must be clean to use the bath anywhere in Japan, Silke steeled herself for another brutally cold shower. It wasn't as bad anymore she decided, and thought that she could get used to it. A few minutes later, she followed down the next corridor and was met by both of the mysterious figures. They pulled their hoods back and Silke wasn't astounded at all to find Riko and the beautiful older woman who she'd seen often at the inn as she'd worked cleaning. The women bowed and removed their cloaks. Silke wondered what to say, but before she could think of anything, her friend smiled, "Did you sleep well, Silke?" "Yes, thank you." Silke replied a little cautiously. The older woman bowed again and began to speak. "My mother's English is not as good as mine, "Riko said, "She wishes to apologize to you for our eavesdropping last night and asks for your forgiveness." Silke turned to the woman and bowed back, "Please tell her that there is nothing to forgive. I just don't understand the reason for it, if there was one." When she'd finished translating, Riko said, "My mother asks that you bathe with us this morning. I am the one who must offer my own apology to you, my friend. Tatsuya is away until this afternoon and we would welcome the chance to sit and talk with you in the way of women in the past. The bath was always one of the best places for free talk among the women of a family, and Mother sees no reason why it still can't be so." Silke caught what was said and when she looked at Rico, the young woman grinned, "Forgive us, but we heard what was said and we both feel honor that you care for him so much. The reason that we stayed was so that we could see if you were a good match for each other. We are both very happy for you." The other woman spoke at that point and then her daughter translated. "She asks if you meant what was said -- that you would try together to be as a married couple. She asks why not just marry him. You can always just divorce him if it doesn't work." Silke looked at them both and tried to choose her words with care. "I was married once and because of that, I want to be at least a little more certain if I do it again. I found that I have very strong feelings for Tatsuya," she began, "and I think that if it weren't for this mountain and this place, then what happened between us wouldn't have happened. But it did, and we are both so happy that it did. I wish for it to continue and I want for it to grow between us even away from here. We both need to talk so that we can find ways to bring our lives together." After the translation, Riko said, "She wishes to know why you do not just give up your job and live with my cousin as his wife." The woman moved so as to get behind Silke. "And," Riko said, "My mother offers to wash your back for you. She says that you are very beautiful and she likes your tattoo very much." Silke smiled and nodded as she began her reply. "Yesterday, I wished for the ability to just live with him simply and be happy. I would still want that, but it cannot be easily done. My work employs many people, Rico, I design ships." For the first time, Riko's face showed her surprise, "What kind of ships, Silke?" "Big ships," Silke said, "Ocean-going ships. When I get back home, I'm going to begin on a new design. I think that it will take me at least two years to finish so that the ships can be sold and more made. Once that happens, I can leave. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 03 My wish now is that by then, Tatsuya and I might have found a way to be together. I really want that, Riko. One day with him and my life has changed." The other woman spoke and Riko began her translation, "My mother says that it is an honor to have one such as you here with us. Tatsuya doesn't know this, does he?" Silke shook her head, "No, and I'm a little nervous about telling him. I'm not sure how, but I think that my career was one of the reasons that my marriage failed." "Then you need to tell him, so that he knows and he ought to tell you why it is that his own marriage failed. Now my mother wishes to know if you really want this and if you know what it is that our family has done in the past." "I don't know a thing about your family," Silke said, "other than I love Tatsuya and I consider you to be my friend, Riko. I don't know why you did what you did to bring us together, but I think that I've got a lot more to be thankful to you for." There was a long pause while the two women discussed, and then Rico turned to smile at Silke again. "Can you stay with us for perhaps a week longer?" Silke nodded, "I had already planned to make a call about something like that. I can't imagine that the work to prepare the place that I was given to work in would be completed yet. It's a shipbuilding and repair yard which really hasn't been used in a long time. It will need to undergo a lot of changes to be ready for me. Why, Riko?" The other woman laughed, "Because my mother likes you very much, Silke. I knew that she would. She now wishes to show you our history and she wants you to learn who you now are, since she accepts you into our family. She says that I must warn you that some of it will be hard, but if you try, then she will be very happy to have a new daughter, almost the same as a daughter to her. She thought of Tatsuya's mother as her own sister and she still grieves over her loss. If you are willing to learn, then she will see to it that her nephew marries you." Silke understood only some of what was said, but her mouth fell open at that point and both of the women laughed. "What she means is that you will be married here, just as our people were long ago. She can arrange to have a priest -- a distant relation -- travel here for the ceremony. We heard what was said about how it was done before, both here and in your country. My mother agrees. So you would be his wife, even though you need to live apart for a time. I'm sure that my cousin would go to see you and you can travel to see him. It is a way for you to be together when you can." Silke smiled, "I think I'd like that, Riko. But there would need to be a lot of talk with him first." The translation caused more laughter and Riko said, "Don't worry, sister. There will be lots of talking. Only please try hard to stay for a while." --------------------- As it turned out, Silke stayed for another month. Her education amazed her, taking her from washing the floors at the inn to learning to move silently dressed all in black to learning the beginning of fighting arts that she'd never heard of in her life to a great deal of almost tantric sex with Tatsuya. When she'd asked, her "new mother" as Riko's cousin referred to her had smiled in a grim sort of way. "It is tradition that is almost all gone now," Riko translated, "the men of our family long ago sometimes had to be away for months at a time. The women had to protect everything then. Both husband and wife had to know how. Tatsuya's mother learned. My mother is happy now and says that it will be the same with you. The need might be gone now, but the way prepares you for almost anything in yourself." He'd been amazed that this had been offered to her, and he was astounded that she'd not only gone along with it, but that she excelled at it -- though she was only just scratching the surface and had a lifetime of it before her if she continued. It didn't matter, she always told him. This was what she wanted with him. She was happy if they only walked together when he took her to any of the little quiet places that he knew of, scenic gardens or places with natural beauty and wonder to them. They were wed in a simple ceremony on the mountainside with only a very few others in attendance. Afterward, they flew to Thailand for their brief honeymoon as a gift from his family. Tatsuya had a friend there. She was the daughter of Tatsuya's mother's housekeeper and they'd been playmates together. Silke thought it remarkable that they'd stayed in contact over all of the years afterward, and she wondered about it for a time. But everything became clear the moment that they arrived. She heard her husband's name being called from far off and then a little human tornado came shrieking at them to jump into his arms and wrap herself around him. Pak was a very lovely diminutive woman less than five feet tall and as Silke came to see, at least four feet of that was all heart. She'd found Pak hugging her to death right afterward, so genuinely happy to meet her old friend's bride. From the airport, they'd been loaded into a Toyota Landcruiser and driven to the fishing village where Pak's family had been forever. After a night of drunken celebration, they were loaded onto a steel-hulled scow and taken to an island. They were dropped off on the beach along with food for a week and some fuel for the generator which powered the refrigerator whenever anyone was there. It took a little translation, but as Pak made ready to leave, she told them that they were the only people around for miles and that they ought to take their clothes off and practice making babies. There must have been something to it, Silke realized afterward, because wherever and wherever they met, once they were alone, they had no need of their clothing and she was pleased at that, because it wasn't just a honeymoon thing. Silke loved to look at Tatsuya anytime. She hadn't gotten tired of it yet, and neither had he, though it had made things a bit of a challenge for their week in Finland once. During their lovemaking on their wedding night, he'd asked her why she'd done everything in this way. He knew the answer, and she knew that he knew it. But then, there had been times when she'd needed a little reassurance herself. "Because I meant it, Tatsuya," she smiled, "For the first time, I have a family. I was not born into it, and I came to it because of the way that we met, but I have never felt anything like the way that they show me that I am a part of everything. Nobody questions what I do and why, other than maybe a simple question and my answer is accepted instantly each time. Believe me, it's a far cry from what I have always had. I want this with you more than ever now, and I know it's what you want. We have a long way to go even still, but now we have our beginning, don't we?" ------------------------- When she'd left to take up her job once more, there had been tears, but Silke felt as though she wasn't alone. She had her new family in her heart always. It might have been because of the events in her former life, but she was very secretive about it, as though she was not prepared to have anyone in her everyday life even know of it for fear that they might ruin it somehow. She didn't know if or how they could, she just knew that she wanted to keep this one secret from everyone -- most especially the woman who seemed to be trying so hard to gain her confidence as they began to work together. Ginger was always questioning where Silke went on her vacations and over Christmas and why, but Silke never told her a thing and kept her private life very close to her chest. Silke booked her own flights, and she met her husband in a few odd locations over the time -- twice in Baltimore, once in the Canary Islands, twice in Japan, and once each time, she'd even taken the train to Brussels and Marseilles. But every year, they met in Thailand for a week on that island. There had been a near-miss last year, but so far, they'd been three times and planned to continue for as long as they could. Another thing that Silke never spoke of were the times when she'd just book a hotel room in Kiel so that she could go there after work on a Friday night to meet Tatsuya when his business took him close by. It was a strange relationship by likely anyone's standards, but they were happy and they were still growing closer. They also worked on her exit strategy together. --------------- "Both engines stop," she said into the headset a minute later with her fingers on the pendant controls until she heard the confirmation of her command in her ear. U-1101 slid to a stop a minute later and the lanyards were looped over the stanchions of the dock. When the crew had jumped aboard and climbed the conning tower ladder, Silke smiled and led them below. She made a few changes from the engineering console ,and then she turned to them as she lifted her knapsack. "Run the diesels so that the batteries are fully charged, and then bring her back into her pen. The self-management firmware and the speech recognition software are not loaded now, so it's a totally manual boat, understand?" When they'd nodded to indicate their understanding, she completed her instructions, "Voice mode is off-line. I've done a look around, but I'd like you to look harder for any leaks in the engineering spaces, in case the system is lying to itself." She slapped the man's shoulder lightly, "You have the boat." With his smiling congratulations over the success of her testing program, Silke slung her knapsack onto her back and climbed up the conning tower ladder to the top deck and then she clambered down the outside to the main deck. She jumped to the quay and ignored her father's shouting as she walked to the support van parked nearby. The driver and the support techs were astounded when she told them that she was changing her plans, and that those changes did not include them. She dropped them off at the garage and continued on to her home. Once there, Silke pulled all of the drives from her home server and placed them into one of the black nylon bags that she had in her closet in the main bedroom. They'd been kept packed and ready for the past year. With a long glance at what she was leaving, she drove off after changing the security code on her home system. She'd have the place listed for sale within the week. Silke drove to a small house that she'd rented and dropped everything off there but the bag with the drives in it. In one of the pockets of the bag, she found a different cellphone -- one that was pay-as-you-go. It had been purchased for only one purpose, so that she might be able to place calls that had nothing to do with her employment. She placed one call to a number where she knew that she could leave her husband the one message that he'd been waiting for the past year. Then she dialed another number and when she hung up three minutes later, Silke had another job in her back pocket and maybe even two -- it depended upon whether they wished for her involvement in their off-shore racing program. But she was fairly confident that they would, since it would give them one hell of an advertising kick to be able to say that they had Silke Kriechbaum designing for them. They were willing to talk about anything, they said, and they had no trouble with the time-off periods that she told them that she would require. They also had no trouble with her designing from wherever she was, which was a good thing, since she planned to be wherever Tatsuya was, as much as possible. She changed her clothes and drove back to the office. It had taken her less than an hour, and she was still in time for lunch. The only thing that she'd missed had been her father's presentation, and she guessed that unless he had somewhere pressing to be, he'd wait for her and express his displeasure. And of course, he'd be at least a little reluctant to do that, because then, Silke would express her own displeasure, wouldn't she? And he sure wouldn't find that pleasant now, since she wasn't stuck in a position where she'd be forced to listen to him as she'd been there on the bottom of the channel. ----------------------- Leopold was more than a little annoyed at his daughter's disappearance and even more so at her refusal to offer an explanation, other than it was a bad time of the month for her. He knew bullshit when he heard it. He called her reckless and irresponsible. He bellowed at her that he was considering having her charged with the theft of company property. She waited for him to either work off the head of steam that he'd built up or have the cardiac arrest that he seemed to be heading for. When he'd wound down, she just said, "Oh shut up, Leopold. It's not as though I took the family station wagon without permission, is it? I designed it, and I'm in charge of the test program, so I'll take it out if and when I feel that the time is appropriate." "Then you're not in charge of the testing, as of this moment," he said flatly. She smiled, since his reaction only proved to her where she would always be in his eyes and it felt infinitely better than crying, "As you wish," she said with an undertone of warning. "You KNEW that we'd be having lunch," Leopold said, trying to regain his usual calmness. "I wish to speak with you about a different segment where you would likely find buyers for the boats. There are huge losses now to pirates in some places, such as off the coast of Somalia. They stop ships and take hostages. It costs hundreds of millions every year." Silke wrinkled her pretty nose and shrugged, "So? You call them pirates. I see only poor people who have been driven to other occupations because there has been no effective government there for so long that toxic waste has been dumped for years off their coast with impunity. Their fishery is almost dead. They still have to eat, and so they've found other ways to get an income. I'm not saying that I sympathize. I'm only telling you that I understand it. I know that there are victims in this, but, ..." Silke stared as she fell silent for a moment. "You want to sell my boats to who? Security forces? Is that it? You will now tell me that , ..." She sat back. "I don't believe it. Even from you, this is low. You can't do that anyway. There are international laws. You'd only be creating a different brand of pirates who hunt pirates." "There is nothing wrong with a shipping company having the wherewithal to protect its assets in an arena of lawlessness," he said, "Their ships could meet a submarine to be escorted through the most dangerous waters. With the tanks in your design, one boat could remain there for months, perhaps even offering itself for hire to other shipping firms with ships in the area." Silke smirked, "So you've found another way to subvert something that I have created. It took you a while, but we're back at the same place again." Lunch had been only some cold sandwiches from a local deli anyway. Silke pushed her lunch plate away. "I'm sorry, but I'm not hungry. I had a bowl of noodles while I watched for seal leakage at the tubes." Leopold leaned forward, his face darkening with his suppressed anger as he repeated himself, "You knew at that we'd be having lunch." His daughter shrugged, "So? What does it matter what we agree to? You do it all the time. We agree on something and then you do something else. You weren't supposed to be here yet anyway. I had other plans and commitments. You've done that of all of my life, haven't you? And before you roll your eyes and tell yourself that I'm just acting up like the spoiled brat that you didn't raise because you were too busy, tell me that you're not here to do that very same thing today, so I can laugh in your face." She leaned forward, "I didn't ask you for this job, Papa. You were the one who sought me out for this. I was happy working for another house, designing outlandish yachts for the ultra-rich. You told me that it was only right that I worked for our family, that talent such as mine -- and those were your words -- ought to be put where it could do the most good. You gave me carte blanche to set up a new division. You told me that you wished for a design which could be sold for umpteen dozen scientific missions, and I designed it for you, exceeding all of your specifications. Now you're going to tell me that it will be used for other purposes and if I don't like it, ..." "Come on, Boss," Ginger began, "Aren't you going off a little half-cocked here?" Silke looked over and just said, "Shut up, Ginger. You mistake trust for stupidity. My test program was known only to the control room crew and you. They know that Papa has no love for them. Yet somehow, he came here today as though he knew, didn't he? Well I know that he was supposed to be on his schooner in the Caribbean, fucking the newest replacement for my mother. Only something like this would have made him leave. By the way, I've met her, Ginger, and believe me, you haven't got a hope to compete." Before she could reply, Ginger's cell phone chirped at that moment and Silke waited while her assistant took the call. "I'm in a meeting," Ginger said into the phone testily, "I'll stop in later -- fine, but it had better be important." She looked over at the others, "Somebody in HR's got a bee up their ass," she said, "I'll be right back. Count on it." Silke nodded but she only said, "No, you won't." Silke opened her laptop and took it out of sleep mode before turning it around so that the screen faced Ginger. She tapped the touchpad and then she sat back to watch the other woman's expression. "I'm not your boss anymore," she said a little sadly, "You are being reassigned. There's another month and a half left on your contract. I've instructed HR not to renew it in this division, though you can ask to have it put up on the company HR list in the other divisions. In the meantime, you're being transferred to Logistics. Security has your laptop and any personal effects in your office may be found in boxes at the Security Office. The lease on your Mercedes is terminated and you'll have to drop it off at the lease company this week, since you won't need it in your new posting. Human Resources has a copy of the video that you're looking at. It'll go into your files there. I did warn you." Ginger looked at Silke and screeched until Security came through the doors twenty seconds later to escort her out of the room. But the one thing that Ginger didn't do was take the swing at Silke that she'd wanted to, because Silke stood up and was obviously prepared to defend herself. When they were alone, they sat for some minutes in silence. At length, Silke turned to her father, "What you do is your business," she said, "for the most part. What happened today occurred with one of my employees in my boardroom. Right over there. It's cost me a friendship that I now wonder if I ever had. I'll quite obviously never speak to her again. I have thoughts now that you might even have placed her yourself. Nothing surprises me anymore about you. But I have a sense that you'll never speak to her again either." She stopped the looped playback of the video and hit the eject button. Taking out the disk, she laid it on the table between them. She hit the ALT-TAB keys a few times to get the Word document up that she'd written. Silke barely even looked at it and then she sent it to the wireless printer there in the boardroom. "What are you doing?" Leopold asked. It almost caused her to laugh for the way that it signaled one of the few times that she could say that his voice had sounded a little unsure. "Nothing that concerns you," she said quietly. Reaching behind her, she took the document from the printer and she signed it, knowing the finality of what she was doing. She got up and gathered her things. It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 03 "What do you know of me, Papa? Whenever we are together outside of this place or the corporation offices, we can only talk business. Since I've been back here, we've never spoken of anything else. I don't think that you know me anymore, and I doubt that you'd want to anyway." "That's ridiculous," Leopold said, "Of course I know you. You're my daughter." "Your statement refers to a biological incident which occurred a long time ago," she said, "If it weren't for the company letterhead, you'd likely not have known that I went back to the family name when I came back to work for you. Even so, it's incorrect. You've never asked me once about how my vacations went, so I saw no need to tell you. My last name has been Mochizuki for the past three years. As far as your project goes, I'm out. Since I doubt that you know, the firmware and the voice recognition software were test programs which belong to a third party firm. You'll find the contact information on my desk, if you wish to purchase the programs. It will be expensive, and they will stipulate that their property not be used in any military or quasi-military purpose." She smiled coldly, "I've ended the agreement this afternoon and uninstalled the programs as per the agreement, so what you have out there is a boat much as it was back in the day, only much faster and more powerful. I personally think that it would be beyond stupid to try to run that boat without the self-management programs, but that's up to you. As far as I'm concerned, you may shove all 252 feet of my dream up your ass." "Good day," she said as she walked out on her way to Human Resources, "and goodbye," she said quietly as she walked along the hall. She dropped off her laptop, company phone and her keys, along with the drives from her home server, explaining what was on them, and then she handed the startled manager there her resignation, effective instantly. She wished him the best, and asked that a notice be put up with the usual nonsense that she'd gone to seek other opportunities, etcetera, ad nauseum. "Would you do me a favor and please call me a taxi? Tell them that I will meet the cab at the gate." Silke walked out then, thinking that if Tatsuya could rearrange his schedule, they might have as long as two weeks together. Fiji sounded good as a place, she thought, and if nothing else worked out, there was always their island in Thailand. As she saw the taxi a few minutes later, Silke smiled at the sense of freedom that came over her at finally being able to begin her life with Tatsuya properly. They'd begun and continued to work at it, this marriage that they'd arranged themselves. She took Japanese courses, and he took German ones, so that they had more than one language between them and Silke also did it so that she could speak with his aunt directly. Silke struggled with learning Thai, and he was a washout at French. There were disagreements, but never fights. They just agreed to go on. She'd gone to watch him fight now and then and his speed and power amazed her. But what had amazed her more was when he'd asked to see her in a tournament as she fought with the naginata - an ancient weapon often wielded by women warriors from out of the mists of time. She'd caught his look as she saw him between matches. It brought her a lot of quiet pride to see how proud he was of her, and that was matched by the women of her family. Riko would easily be a champion, but she'd said that she was too shy for something like that and she preferred to teach Silke instead. The last time that Silke had been 'home' to the ancient cavern, she'd been asked by her aunt to accompany her one night. They'd brought a meal there in the darkness and it had been Silke's turn to observe so that the match between Riko and her new man might be judged. As they'd passed by to leave, that man had noticed nothing, but Riko had seen them. She'd smiled up at Silke there in the darkness and Silke slid two of her fingers against Riko's knee in passing to signal her approval. She'd been very careful to ask, but her husband had sworn six ways from Sunday that when she slept in his arms, ... Silke didn't snore.