Editing City Series:Volume6c Chapter2 (section)

===Part 2===

Hazel sat in a small room with a long sword wrapped in cloth next to her.

The room’s white plastic walls and floor were 6 yards across.

There were no windows.

“Oh.”

The only openings were the door made of the same material as the wall and an air duct.

The only decorations (if you could even call them that) were the clock built into the wall, the mirror, and the training pole sticking up from the floor by the wall.

This was a large ship’s martial arts training room. She was inside the flagship of the 5th Moonlight Resistance Squadron which was towing Corelle’s RB-21 two-hull transport ship to the Netherlands.

There was no sound in here, only the rocking of the ship.

She was seated by the wall with a notebook and pencil.

No one else was allowed in the training room when someone was using it, which made it perfect for doing some thinking, but…

“I shouldn’t be falling asleep in here.”

She smiled bitterly and then thought back on her dream.

“After that…they usually take me away. They force me to say goodbye to whoever is fighting in the distance and take me away.”

…''I’ve had the same dream since I was taken away from school back then.

She took a breath. She shook her head to shake the dream from her mind and change her focus.

She pulled a letter from her pocket. It was her orders from the AIF. M. Schrier had given this to her directly, so the military stamp, “no inspection needed” mark, and his name on the envelope were only a formality.

The letter inside was just her plain orders with no greeting or anything like that.

She had two orders.

The first was to act as Berger’s assistant while they helped Pale escape from the Borderson village and then support Berger as he used Schwarz Löwe to fire a range sensor onto the Gard-class warship in Cologne.

The AIF included a lot of Brits, so they were allowed to play a supporting role in the RAF’s Millennium bombing operation.

She had read and reread the order countless times and completed her mock training.

But she had another order as well.

“Convince Berger…to join the AIF.”

She read M. Schrier’s handwriting aloud and then stuffed the letter into her pocket.

She had no idea if she could do that.

Berger was on this ship, but she never seemed to see him. He may have been avoiding her. Corelle had said she didn’t know where he was and the other men in his cabin had teased her when she showed up asking after him.

She had so much she wanted to ask him and talk to him about. She didn’t even know if he had read the letters she had sent him once per season. Even here, all she knew about him were the rumors she heard.

“It’s been three years.”

She had decided to join the AIF shortly after returning to America after the destruction of the Gard-class’s #1 ship three years ago. She had completed the AIF entrance exams while going to school, so…

“It normally takes 6 months, but it took me two years. But I should be fine.”

She tried to cheer herself up and gripped the pencil tight, but then the floor tilted beneath her. The ship was rocking in the high altitude winds. The moonlight-resistant ships were flying near the stratosphere, so the winds and atmospheric barriers were thick and heavy even for this light cruiser-class flagship.

The shaking was intermittent but it never truly went away. This time, the ship tilted to Hazel’s right.

It was making a gentle turn.

Seeing the sword start to slide across the floor, she grabbed it and held it to her chest, the hilt resting on her right shoulder.

…''I wonder where we are now. Shouldn’t be too long until we’re on standby.

They had left America in Corelle’s RB-21 transport ship, crossed the Atlantic, and arrived in England the night before last.

She had been excited to see what that textual world was like, but other than feeling the atmosphere soaking into her body, it had just seemed dark and gloomy.

She sighed, opened her notebook, rested her head on the sword to her right, and readied her pencil.

She drew the UK on the left side of the notebook.

She accidentally drew an unspeakable silhouette and hurriedly corrected it.

Then she checked the clock on the wall to find it was 1:02 AM. They had to be on standby at 2 AM, so she had to prepare to board the RB-21.

…''I never imagined my first AIF job in Europe would be something so major.

She laughed bitterly when she saw the UK in her notebook.

“I wish we could have stayed longer, so I could see the sights.”

They had only been in the UK for 6 hours, including travel time. They had arrived at Bristol to the southwest and then flown to the Glasgow base far to the north. On the way they had been guarded by a rotation of escort craft from whatever RAF group was in charge of that particular region: first the 10th, then the 12th, and lastly the 13th. The 13th’s 3rd combat squadron had joined with the Moonlight Resistant Aerial Division’s 5th combat squadron at Glasgow Air Base, where they had resupplied and exchanged information.

“Then we went east.”

She drew a line from the left of the notebook, signifying the RB-21’s route. They had entered the UK from the left and traveled north through the UK. The line stopped in the northern UK. She sketched out Europe at the bottom of the page and sighed.

Then she resumed drawing the line. It took a 90-degreee turn to the right from northern UK.

“From Glasgow, we first traveled to Newcastle on the east coast.”

At the RAF’s Newcastle Headquarters Base, they had joined with the Big Signal, a two-hull aerial ship equipped with a Babel Gun which had been waiting at the base’s aerial shipyard.

“Then we flew west into the North Seat, but at a slower rate to match the sluggish Big Signal.”

She was now drawing two lines.

The first cut straight across the North Sea and stopped off the coast of Norway. She labeled that line “Big Signal – 3rd Squadron”.

She drew their own line below that one. She labeled it “5th Squadron” and it followed the Big Signal line for a bit, but ultimately entered northwest Germany through the Netherlands.

“We parted with the Big Signal earlier, so we’ve picked up speed on our way to Germany.”

Shortly after leaving the UK, she had been given all the details in the ship’s strategy meeting being shared with across the squadron.

Simply put, they would use Project Millennium as a diversion while…

“They fire the Babel Gun from the North Sea to sink the Gard-class waiting above Cologne.”

She added national borders and major city names to her map of Europe.

She had studied in the education department at college, so she thought back to the kids’ atlases they used.

First, she added Cologne in western Germany.

Then she drew a large circle in England and labeled it “Cologne Bombing Force - 1000 Ships”.

The words felt like a direct representation of the RAF’s pride.

“The RAF will be creating a multiday diversion from the west while we enter from the northwest today, the morning of the 30th.” She took a breath. “Once Berger and I are dropped off by the RB-21, we help General Pale leave Borderson, attach the range sensor to the Gard-class in Cologne late at night, and escape. Then the RAF makes their move at 11 PM.”

Her pencil drew a line across the North Sea, taking the 1000 ships to Cologne. But that was not all.

“For Project Millennium, the 1000 ships are sent in and the Gard-class will move out to intercept them.”

She added to the Big Signal line up near Norway, sending it into Germany and then added a “Babel Gun” line continuing on to Cologne. She added 3:00 next to that.

She recalled what the mission commander had said.

“One who was once pursued by Germany will create a path to Germany and eliminate a part of it.”

She thought she might understand what that meant, but then again, maybe not.

She tilted her head as she closed the notebook with the pencil held inside it and set it down on the floor.

She understood the situation and she knew what she had to do.

But then a phrase from her dream came back to her.

“I keep repeating this…but what is it I want to do?”

She grabbed the sword she was holding to her chest and let the cloth fall away.