Japan in Alagaësia

No Russian

No Russian

Satoshi got what he wanted when the government announced the following morning that trading would be halted for the entire day. At the same time the Governor of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda did a Draghi by promising to do "whatever it takes" to prevent the collapse of the Japanese markets. Minato suspected that trading would be halted for quite longer than a day.

But at this point market stability was not among the major issues that Minato was concerned about. Even the COVID-19 crisis, which had threatened to reach three thousand confirmed cases in the Kansai region alone the previous day, barely crossed his mind now. Instead, one thought dominated his mind more than any others... What the hell was going on?!

The missing airliners had still not been found. Worse still, the list was piling up as subsequent scheduled arrivals were suffering the same fate, every single arrival that had been due before the national grounding had taken effect after taking into account the grace period. Not that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism had actually managed to notify the rest of the world of the grounding with the communications blackout, which only added to the uncertainty. At this rate, Japan would have the world's worst commercial aviation accident on its hands, and the press would exorcise Minato and his cabinet even harder than they had done yesterday. The JMSDF had even started deploying almost its entire fleet of Aegis destroyers that had been available, in the hope that their radar systems, practically designed to locate and target air targets, would be able to locate the lost airliners. And the Japan Coast Guard had started sending out vessels to conduct underwater searches...

Minato exhaled deeply as he continued to look out the window from the Kantei. The views were, as always, excellent, the shades of green from the leaves and the needles filling much of his field of view. The trees before him almost gave the sense of a small forest, if one ignored the surrounding buildings of bricks and stone, as well as concrete and steel and glass, along with all other appearances of modern infrastructure. They would often provide him a measure of peace, yet today simply staring at the woody perennials proved to be not enough.

One cabinet staffer interrupted his musings. "Some ships that were scheduled to dock at Japanese harbors this morning seem to have disappeared," she said while handing out a report with her gloved hands, keeping her distance as some staffers were wont to do with the pandemic raging on, along with the growing use of surgical face masks. "In light of this, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has ordered all outbound ships to remain docked in Japan for the time being. The MLIT has also issued a recommendation that all ships registered in Japan that are currently at sea promptly return to Japanese waters." Minato could only wonder why it had taken the cabinet this long to decide in the first place. Given what had been found out earlier this morning, none of this should have been unexpected.

Minato took the report and quickly skimmed it through. Of course, the list of missing ships had to include oil tankers. At least there won't be any more Diamond Princesses, he thought despondently. The only silver lining from the report was that the MLIT had confirmed that as many as fifteen percent of all ships registered in Japan that had been at sea yesterday had not disappeared as of 7:30 the present day, and they were being notified of the recommendation to recall to Japanese waters.

Staring out at the trees did nothing for his mood at this point. He knew what would; a brisk walk through the neighborhoods in and around Kasumigaseki. But he could not, had not been able to, for the past week, as new safety measures had been introduced because of the COVID-19. Instead, he had to stay and listen to the interminable reports, which were becoming increasingly troubling, and all the while he had to figure out how he was going to address the press with the most absurd news he himself had yet heard.

Apparently, around five in the morning the JMSDF had dispatched a P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft to the eastern end of Eurasia. The reconnaissance mission had been to gather intel on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, flying northward from its southeastern tip and turning back toward Japan just before reaching Russian airspace. It was hoped that more insight on the peculiar situation could be gained from surveying the state of the telecommunications infrastructure outside Japan, particularly in South Korea. The navigation methods had to be adjusted somewhat, for not only had the GPS been disabled, but something odd was also going on with their radar systems, or so he had heard from the scattered reports. Apparently the Korean peninsula was no longer visible on the instruments...

The officers on board had received instructions to avoid committing airspace violations as much as possible, and to be on watch for possible responses from the two Koreas. The fact that diplomatic relations with the North were strained was nothing new, but diplomatic ties with the South had also plummeted to perhaps a record low in recent times, and the higher-ups in Tokyo were concerned about possible reactions from the South Korean side over a Japanese military aircraft closing in on their country. Perhaps they could have sent some escort fighter jets to accompany the larger aircraft, but a military incident was something Tokyo wanted to avoid. The crew on board would also have to be careful when they later were to approach the airspace of the Russian Federation, another country Japan had uneasy relations with... Honestly, Minato could not think of a neighboring country that had decent relations with Japan.

But it turned out Minato and the Ministry of Defense did not have to worry about possible Korean responses. Because the peninsula was no longer there.

When this fact was communicated to the Ministry of Defense through the radio transmitter, along with some high resolution images of a blue sparkling sea at the supposed coordinates of Busan, it had sent the staff into a cacophony. Perhaps the navigation system was faulty, some suggested. After all, it was bereft of GPS navigation, and something had glitched the radar systems. So the aircraft was instructed to continue flying north, to where the southern tip of Primorsky Krai was supposed to appear, guided by TACAN. With the tension palpable in the conference room, Nakano had excused himself for a smoke, which was quite out of character for him. It was clear he was frustrated by the tight-lipped attitude of the U.S. Forces in Japan. Apparently the Americans had not revealed anything not commonly known at their meeting with his cabinet yesterday.

The people at the Ministry of Defense had awaited with trepidation in the room the reports from the P-3C. More than an hour later, the voice of one of the pilots echoed in the room, and the gathered crowd fell into despair.

"No Russian lands."