“Nice shooting,” I said to them, once they were in Chopper Two, strapped and with headsets on.
“You didn’t tell us you were coming in right over the damn treetops,” Niamh said. “I barely had time to signal Kahurangi. We almost missed it.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t.”
“How did you get her to follow you?” Kahurangi asked.
“We enraged her,” Aparna said.
Kahurangi nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“Let’s hope kaiju don’t have good memories,” Satie said. “Otherwise life is going to be very uncomfortable for Chopper Two when we get back.”
“Do you think she’s safe?” I asked Aparna. “Bella, I mean. There wasn’t a lot of time between her intervals.”
“I don’t know,” Aparna said. “I think so. But I don’t know. What I do know is that she has a chance now that she’s back where she belongs. She didn’t have one here.”
“We did our job,” Kahurangi said. “We preserved a kaiju.”
“Maybe,” Aparna amended.
“I think maybe counts this time.”
“What happened to that asshole Sanders?” Niamh asked me.
“The same thing that happened to everyone else here,” I said. “Just on the other side of the barrier.”
* * *
We landed at Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay at five a.m. and with Chopper Two flying on literal fumes. Because we were entirely unscheduled and appeared as if from nowhere, with no itinerary, we were welcomed by an impressive array of Canadian military.
“That’s nice,” Niamh said, eyeing the layout of military. “How are Canadian military prisons? Asking for a friend.”
“You’re not going to prison,” Satie said.
“What are we going to tell them?” Aparna asked.
Satie looked back at her. “You aren’t going to tell them anything. None of you are. You’re going to leave this to me.”
“Happy to,” Kahurangi said. “But why are they going to listen to you?”
“Because of who I am,” Satie said.
“It matters to them that you’re a pilot?”
“He also has a doctorate,” I said.
“They won’t care that I’m either of those,” Satie said. “They will care that I’m a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force.”
“Which means what to them?” I asked.
“Among other things, it means I outrank the base commander here.”
“Look at you,” Niamh said, admiringly. “Slumming all this time.”
“Not slumming,” Satie said. “Official Canadian liaison to the KPS. You can ask MacDonald and Danso when you get back.”
“So why do you fly Chopper Two?” I asked.
“I fly Chopper Two because being a liaison is boring,” Satie said. “This is much more fun. Now, you all stay in here and shut up. Let me do my thing.” He got out of the chopper and went to talk to the soldier in charge. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, took out a card.
He showed it to the soldier.
The soldier saluted Satie.
So did the rest of them.
CHAPTER
28
We did not have to go to Canadian military prison. Or any prison, for that matter.
We didn’t go back to Tanaka Base right away, either.
First, because we couldn’t; the gateway at Honda Base was still down and would be down for the full length of time. Satie—Colonel Satie, I should say—had relayed the information to the crew of the Shobijin, who forwarded it back to base, albeit waiting for him to go through the barrier in Chopper Two before they did so. As soon as he made it through, the Shobijin hightailed it out of the area.
This was a good thing, because once Bella came back through, she set fire to most of the surrounding jungle. For a week, it was unclear whether she would be able to restore her internal function and her complement of parasites. Then she settled back in, splashed out a final clutch of eggs, and brooded for several more weeks.
She survived. We had, indeed, preserved her.
The second reason we didn’t go back right away was because KPS had to investigate the incident, and we were the star witnesses. After we left CFB Goose Bay, we spent two weeks in a St. John’s hotel, having Zoom meetings with KPS higher-ups and various other stakeholders, explaining what Rob Sanders had done and why, and how it related to Tensorial, his family’s company, and its predecessors. We were backed up on this by Dave Berg, a.k.a. Dave-barely-above-an-intern, who survived thanks largely to being unconscious and sprayed with kaiju pheromones. All things considered, he forgave Niamh for the zapping.