Ao no Kiseki

Ao no Kiseki Volume One
Sanshirou awakens from a year of coldsleep on his first "Paradise Flight." He is part of the four-member crew in charge of the second shift of a three-year journey. His anticipation turns to dismay when he discovers that his assigned "buddy" is male. Although the question of sexual orientation is a thing of the past for most people, Sanshirou has an old-fashioned preference for women. Further analysis of the Federation computer's mistake in choosing his partner is forestalled as an alarm sounds.

Sanshirou and his new partner rush to the Bridge, where the other two crew members attempt to compensate for a sudden ion storm wreaking havoc with the equipment. Sanshirou expediently corrects the problem by pulling the plug on the subcomputer--a method that is quick yet potentially dangerous, as his by-the-book partner Kai lectures him. A round of introductions follow. The pair sharing their shift consists of the civilian officer Lord, a former professor of theoretical mathematics, and the military officer Sandra, in training to become a military starship captain.

Lord and Sandra are astonished to find that Kai's black visor is concealing the Kaleidoscope Eyes of a pure-blooded Lunan, the vanishing race that is rumored to have the ability to turn any other human into a love-slave. Their surprise is compounded when they hear that Sanshirou is not a Federation officer but a mercenary. The most amazing fact of all, however, is that the two partners appear to have completely opposite personalities and bicker constantly. Neither has any intention of being the other's "buddy" in the commonly accepted sense of the word.

The problem that led to the ion storm danger is that the ship's computer had taken them slightly off course. It was not mentioned by the previous year's crew, nor did a computer scan turn up any clues. Sanshirou doesn't believe a more thorough search will do any good; he chalks it up to the "siren" effect that is reported in mercenary tales, a phenomenon that beckons ships toward dangerous regions of space like the sirens of myth. Kai thinks the notion is ridiculous and recommends an organized investigation of every component related to navigation, which would take nearly a month.
Kai's plan is postponed when Sanshirou discovers that the Lunan has a fever from his first coldsleep experience and orders his partner to rest. Sanshirou hates talking to someone who hides his face, so he slips off the visor. Kai attains an unexpected revenge by getting in close and zapping him with an incapacitating jolt of electricity.
Discussing the incident with the others, Sanshirou hears that Kai must be an Empath. A Lunan Empath can both feel the emotions of others and project his own emotions to someone else. Kai has practiced and strengthened his emotional amplification and projection skills for use as a weapon. What Kai finds curious is that Sanshirou doesn't treat him any differently after such a harsh punishment. People usually either keep their distance from him due to his powers as an Empath or attack him driven by lust for his Lunan appeal. No one has ever been so casual around him. Sanshirou treats him as just another guy, neither guarding his emotions nor harboring sexual fantasies.
One difficulty is that they each suspect the other is a spy, based on the improbability of the Federation computer matching them together without some kind of manipulation. In an effort to deepen the level of trust between them, Sanshirou tells his life story, allowing Kai to read his emotions as he does so. He is one of many siblings--including a twin brother--and has been fighting his whole life.
Eventually, the two develop a comfortable friendship. Just like a child fascinated by a toy kaleidoscope, Sanshirou adores gazing into Kai's eyes, which change color with his mood. He also takes advantage of opportunities to snuggle up innocently against the Lunan's higher body temperature.

Lord, in particular, feels tension from his unintentional sadistic fantasies about Kai. He follows Kai to the library in an attempt to explain and apologize, knowing the Empath probably perceives feelings he would never act upon, where he discovers the Lunan receiving a secret transmission. Not quite convinced that Kai isn't a spy, he eavesdrops on the private conversation.

Kai grew up as an average Lunan, exchanging sex as other races exchange greetings. At the age of fourteen, he was adopted by an Earth human, Admiral Grant. Grant wanted to teach him that there were other pleasures to be had, yet Kai took his advice to the extreme and forbade himself any kind of physical contact. Kai highly respected Grant, to the point of falling in love with him. One day, as a test to see if his nature had truly changed, Kai asked permission to sleep with Grant. The admiral consented, probably in the hope that Kai's former smile would return, but it only made Kai hate himself for not having changed at all. That encounter prompted his decision to take a solitary deep space mission. It had been Grant who changed Kai's application, requesting instead a "buddy" mission.

Kai makes Lord promise not to reveal anything to Sanshirou. He knows that his partner has antiquated and strong opinions about sexuality. His budding friendship is important to him, and he doesn't want Sanshirou's attitude toward him to change from finding out that Kai had committed a form of incest.
Kai and Sanjirou investigate why the computer keeps shifting their ship off course. Sanshirou discovers that they have a "black box," a device the Federation installs inside the main computer. It has all the important orders for the ship, which may include things the Federation wants to keep top secret, so the crew has no way to access or change it--even if their lives depend on it.
Sanshirou devises a tracer program that he slips into the black box to find out what orders it's giving their computer. The black box's defense mechanisms badly damage the program, however, and the only information they are able to get out of it is the phrase "search for blue." Oddly, the moment the tracer is removed from the black box, Kai is struck with a wave of emotion that doesn't belong to any of the other crew members.
Sanshirou feels rather put out that the other two crew members accuse him of being abnormal for not having a sexual attraction to Kai. He asks permission to kiss Kai, to see what it feels like. What he had in mind was a brief peck on the lips. Kai practically sucks his tonsils out.

Unfortunately, Kai misinterprets his comments and thinks Sanshirou wanted to know what it was like to kiss a *Lunan*, and didn't care about him as a person. Since Kai's mind is awhirl with confusing feelings for Sanshirou, he's hurt that his partner apparently doesn't feel the same for him, so he blasts Sanshirou with his power and then starts avoiding him as much as possible.

The crew members have to pilot the ship manually, because the computer keeps taking them off course whenever it can. It wants to go to an unexplored region of space that is filled with black holes. Kai begins to worry that the computer will resort to stronger tactics if they don't do something about the black box, since their lengthy piece-by-piece investigation reveals nothing. Also, the strange mixture of sadness and a little anger that was released by the black box keeps plaguing him, and his emotional barriers can't keep it out. It's wearing away at his endurance, and he knows he won't be able to function much longer before collapsing.
Kai comes up with a drastic solution. The ship's cargo is a group of scientists in coldsleep who are going to analyze a new planet, plus all their equipment. He tells Sanshirou that they should substitute the scientists' main computer for their malfunctioning one. It is an incredible risk, because they will have to write all the necessary programming themselves and trust that they can make it run the ship's functions properly. Sanshirou decides he's willing to agree to the project, putting his life in Kai's hands.

Sanshirou declares that, for the first time, he sees Kai as sexy. He lists all the things he admires about his partner--none of which have anything to do with being Lunan, to Kai's delight. Sanshirou wants to form an intimate relationship with Kai, but he wants to take it slowly and enjoy the process. (Besides, he still has to psych himself up to consider sleeping with another man.) Just then, an alarm goes off, warning them that the computer has finally taken complete control of the ship.

They rush to the Bridge and explain Kai's plan to the other two. After Sandra and Sanshirou leave the Bridge to start working on their part of the project, however, Kai tells Lord that he's been sensing emotions from what he believes to be the ship's computer. He wants to try to use his powers as an Empath to synchronize with the strange emotions, ferret out the cause, and perhaps solve the problem of the ship's malfunction.

The catch is that after attempting to synchronize with such powerful emotions, his body will be worked up to a high state of arousal, and he needs someone to help him achieve physical release. He asks Lord to do it. He refuses to explain that he's asking Lord because doesn't want Sanshirou--the one person who views him as more than a Lunan--to see him in such a pathetic, biology-driven situation. Unfortunately, Sanshirou had come back to the Bridge to return something Kai had dropped and overheard the whole thing.

More than his jealousy that Kai would choose someone else, Sanshirou feels betrayed. He had entrusted his life to Kai's plan, and then Kai went behind his back to do something else entirely. He strikes out at Kai in the way he knows will hurt worst, threatening to rape him with the argument, "If all you care about is someone to take care of your physical arousal, with no feelings involved, you shouldn't be picky about who does it!" Luckily, Sandra breaks in and separates them, but now both sides are emotionally wounded.

The two go about their business, ignoring each other as much as possible. As they near the black hole region, they pick up a Morse code warning signal from something calling itself "Blue," instructing them to stay away. Their main computer starts putting all power into increasing the ship's speed, cutting down on "inconsequential" functions such as the library and communications. Their high rate of speed begins straining the propulsion system, and Sandra predicts that the ship won't last long enough to reach "Blue."

Realizing they'll fall into a black hole or have their ship break apart if they don't hurry, they decide to go ahead with the computer switch, even though they haven't tested everything. Sandra and Lord are left on the Bridge, in charge of altering their course once the new computer is online. That leaves two jobs: disconnecting the malfunctioning computer from its hookups in the control center and starting up the new computer.

The disconnection is the tricky part, because if the computer senses that it's in danger, it will defend itself with deadly force. If all else fails, the control center can be cut off from the rest of the ship with an external switch. That roughness will not only make the switchover more difficult, it will trap inside whoever was trying to disconnect the computer, leaving him to die of suffocation. Kai wants to do the dangerous job, but Sanshirou doesn't give him the chance, briefly paralyzing him with a jab to the neck to make him stay behind. As Sanshirou makes his way to the control center, he apologizes for having hurt Kai's feelings and promises to make love to him after he returns.

Kai gets worried when the initial time they had set passes and Sanshirou hasn't finished. He begins yelling frantically until his partner responds. Of the four leads he had to disconnect, he was able to get three, but the fourth is out of reach. He can't retreat, either, because the computer raised a deadly electric field behind him. Their only hope is for Kai to throw the cutoff switch. Kai refuses, begging him to try one more time, and Sanshirou finally agrees to try for one more minute.
As the countdown reaches the last few seconds, Kai feels a searing pain in his shoulder. He figures out that he's empathically synchronized with Sanshirou, who dislocated his shoulder to reach the last connection. With that taken care of, the new computer is activated.

As Sanshirou recovers and the ship makes its way back to safe territory, Kai sends a drone shuttlecraft to find out what the Morse code message was all about. It was a buoy left a century before by an astronaut named "Jou," written with the kanji "ao" (meaning "blue"). While exploring, he had stumbled upon the region of treacherous black holes and managed to leave the buoy as a warning before he died. Back on Earth, his good friend (probably *more* than a friend) was a brilliant Telepath computer expert named Shiva. Shiva was the one who designed the black box technology. He hardwired the black box to "Search for Blue" and incorporated his feeling of sadness at losing his friend into the computer.
Kai comes to Sanshirou's room and explains about his past. He was raised as a typical Lunan, with no sexual inhibitions. Then he was adopted by an Earth man and came to respect his new father's ways. He became ashamed of his Lunan identity and tried as hard as he could to suppress it. Finally, he became afraid that he would never have a meaningful physical relationship again, because he couldn't break free of the controls he placed on himself. Sanshirou insists that he doesn't care about Kai's past, not even the story of incest; all that matters to him is that he loves Kai the way he is in the present.
Now, synchronized with Sanshirou, he knows what it's like to love someone without guilt or self-loathing. He climbs into bed with his partner and proceeds to demonstrate a Lunan's skills. Plus, as an Empath, he can absorb pleasure from Sanshirou, amplify it with his own, and send it back in bursts through physical contact. They have quite a satisfying night.

...However, on the Bridge the next morning, Sanshirou announces for all to hear that Kai needs to keep his fingernails trimmed.

End Volume One

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