Jackers (28 page)

The room was a fiction, a virtual reality construct designed as an electronic working space for Kawashima’s battle staff. For convenience and for decorum’s sake, there was the illusion of gravity, though there were no chairs since ViRpersonas did not grow tired. A well in the center of the deck projected a three-dimensional view of New America and the space surrounding it. Golden points of light swarmed about the planet, each accompanied by a block of data giving ID, mission, and vector.

As Kawashima materialized next to the display, the other officers—there were twenty in all—faced him and, as one, bowed. The voice of
Shosho
Fusae Eto insinuated itself into his mind, speaking for the entire team. “
Konichiwa, Chujosan.
”

“
Konichiwa,
” Kawashima said, returning the salutes with a measured, courteous bow of his own. “Carry on, please.”

In fact, there’d been no distraction from necessary duties, and no need to tell them to go back to work, since the linked minds of the battle staff continued to process information, whatever their virtual reality personas appeared to be doing.

The personas of his officers appeared relaxed, attentive to their duties, but he could feel the undercurrent of tension. No one, he knew, cared to risk the
chujo’s
wrath by mentioning what had happened.

It would have been easier, Kawashima thought glumly, if his orders permitted him simply to reduce the surface of New America to radioactive glass and slag. Such wholesale destruction was certainly within his power… but it would also be counterproductive. The discontent and outright anger such an act would provoke would undoubtedly do more harm than good. Fear, by itself, was never as useful a tool of government as were good public relations… an arcane science he’d learned about in his studies of Western history.

But his own job would be so much simpler if he’d been permitted to make an example of this world.

Bad enough had been the news that the Kyodaina had been destroyed, the Imperial thrust up Gaither Valley to the rebels’ Stone Mountain base stopped cold. Less than thirty hours later, one of Ohka Squadron’s destroyers, after rendezvousing with several ascraft from the surface, had broken orbit and accelerated toward the fringes of the system. Kawashima’s subordinates thought nothing of the event at the time; ships were always coming and going, traveling to or from Imperial bases for maintenance or servicing, returning to Earth with field reports, or arriving at New America with reinforcements, orders, and news.

This particular destroyer, the
Arasi,
had only been in orbit around New America for a few days. According to its log, which had been routinely downloaded into the squadron’s HQ data base,
Arasi
had been stationed in the Chi Draconis system—at Eridu—but had received special orders from Earth to transport several teams of
Kurogun
to New America’s surface.

Kurogun.
The word shocked in its sudden coldness. The “Black Forces” were the Imperial military’s covert special operations unit. Swift, deadly, and secretive, with advanced training in
Kokorodo
and in numerous martial arts traditions, they carried the reputation of modern-day Ninja. No wonder no one in Kawashima’s command had brought the matter to his attention. The
Kurogun
were never discussed, and it was widely assumed that the less one knew about them, their missions, or their whereabouts, the better for all concerned.

In any case,
Arasi
possessed all appropriate codes and clearances; its captain,
Taisa
Ihara, had exchanged greetings via laser ViRcom link with the commanding officers of several Imperial picket vessels, and nothing had appeared out of the ordinary. When the
Arasi
accelerated clear of New American orbit, no one had even bothered to alert Kawashima to the fact; Ohka’s commanding admiral, after all, had more important things to occupy his thoughts than the movements of individual ships.

That had been four standard days ago. Today, early that morning by
Donryu’s
shipboard clocks, another vessel had arrived in-system. She was
Nagara,
a Sendai-class light cruiser under the command of Taisa Kakeui Matsushida. Thirty-five days earlier, Matsushida had left the Chi Draconis system, also under routine orders from Earth to report to Kawashima at 26 Draconis.

When
Nagara’s
log was downloaded to the HQ data base, however,
Donryu’s
command AI had sounded an alert. There was a discrepancy. According to
Nagara’s
records, the fleet it had left behind at Eridu had included the Amatukaze-class destroyer
Arasi,
and that had been a full five days
after
the
Arasi
had claimed to have received its “special orders” from Earth and left for New America.

The entry was specific and detailed. According to
Nagara’s
records, the pacification of Eridu had already begun.
Arasi
was taking part in the operation, bombarding key cities and facilities from orbit in support of the marine landings there. In fact, Captain Ihara was listed as receiving a special commendation from Admiral Takernura for his part in breaking up a concentration of rebel warstriders seeking to escape from the enemy capital at Babel.

The commendation was dated two days after
Arasi
was supposed to have left the Eridu system.

There was no doubt that
Nagara
was the ship she claimed to be; Matsushida had been a senior
chu-i
under Kawashima’s command aboard the old
Aoba,
and he knew the man well.
Arasi
was the imposter; without question, her captain had been a rebel masquerading over the ViRcommunications channels as Ihara.

Which meant that the people the Empire was most interested in seizing on New America, Travis Sinclair and the Confederation delegates and the leadership of the Confederation’s army, had all almost certainly fled. The enemy destroyer—she must have been the old
Tokitukaze,
reported lost at Eridu, he realized—had slipped into the very midst of Ohka Squadron, taking advantage of the inevitable confusion and bureaucratic blind spots that hampered any ponderously large military formation to conduct an evacuation right under the collective noses of the fleet.

“Please excuse me,
Chujosan,
”
Taisa
Eto, his chief of staff said, giving a rigidly precise and formal bow. “
Shosa
Yoshitomi has submitted another request for reinforcements before mounting his next attack on the rebel base. He insists on speaking personally to you.…”

Kawashima felt his face clouding, saw Eto’s face go carefully and emotionlessly blank as he braced himself for the storm. With an effort of will, Kawashima controlled his thunderclap of anger.

“Very well, Etosan. I will speak with him. We will discuss carefully and in detail the necessity of carrying out one’s orders with the men and matériel at hand.”

“
Hai, Chujosan!
”

The bird might have flown from its New American cage, but Kawashima was still determined to take that cage apart, bar by bar. The ruin might well offer some clue as to where the bird had fled.

Chapter 19

Needless to say, the development of cephlink technology, as with all technology, carries with it a terrible potential for abuse.

—
Man and His Works

Karl Gunther Fielding

C.E.
2448

Over a week after the escape of the rebel destroyer,
Chujo
Kawashima had left his accustomed surroundings and cephlink simulacra aboard the
Donryu
for the direct experience of a reality of a different kind. It was a moonless night at Port Jefferson, and the grounded Imperial transports bulked huge and shadow-edged beneath the glare of glowglobes and the harsh illumination of a hovering, aerostat mirror reflecting the output from an array of mobile spotlights set up on the field. Technicians and maintenance workers were everywhere, readying ships, servicing heavy equipment, and swarming about the hulking, motionless forms of black-armored warstriders, prepping them for new missions.

Accompanied by his coterie of staff officers and assistants, Kawashima strode rapidly from the lowered ramp of his personal aerospace shuttle. Soldiers along the way offered stiffly formal rifle salutes, while others stopped what they were doing and bowed. Neither slowing his stride nor acknowledging the salutes, Kawashima crossed the open field swiftly and entered a low, heavily guarded building with bunker-thick walls. A young marine
chu-i
met him at the door, bowing low.

“
Konichiwa, Chujosama.
”

“
Konichiwa.
I need to see them. Now.”

“
Hai, Chujosama!
”

Once, this had been a storage warehouse at the edge of Port Jefferson’s primary launch field, which accounted for the massive construction. Since the Imperials had taken the spaceport, however, it had been pressed into service as a command bunker, and the jackstraw tangle of sensor instrumentation and communications lasers still cluttered the roof.

And now that both Jefferson and Stone Mountain had fallen, it was being used as a holding place for special prisoners.

The final battle on the slopes of Stone Mountain had been savage, the casualties to Yoshitomi’s marines staggering. The rebels had fought like fanatics, taking on Imperial warstriders in close-assault charges with explosive packs and homemade bombs. Kawashima had never heard of such insane tactics—rebel troopers had actually swarmed onto the feet of warstriders, jamming packs of explosive into their ankle joints.
Ankle-biting,
the ground commanders were calling it, a tactic that had claimed at least nine marine warstriders.

Finally, however, just two days ago, an Imperial assault team had at last reached the main blast doors leading to the Stone Mountain labyrinth, but only after a prolonged laser bombardment from orbit had finally broken the rebel static defenses. A one-kiloton nuclear charge had breached the door; another had been used to clear part of the mountain’s interior. The rebels would not be using Stone Mountain as a military headquarters ever again.

After that, the rebels had begun surrendering.

Almost certainly, the majority of the rebel troops had fled deeper into the wilderness, the… what was it New Americans called it? The Outback, yes. The Imperial garrison here would face stiff guerrilla resistance from those survivors for years to come, but that was not his problem; guerrillas would not be able to carry out an interstellar campaign or incite revolt on other worlds of the Shichiju, which was Kawashima’s primary concern.

But if many rebels had escaped, thousands had surrendered or been gathered up by far-ranging patrols of warstriders and infantry. Camps had been set up outside Jefferson, and a small army of Imperial intelligence personnel were interviewing the POWs now.

Most would eventually be set free. The soldiers of every army in history were, at heart, much the same—ordinary people doing what they thought right, and only too willing to go home and pick up their lives when the fighting was done. Some, those with strong beliefs about the rebellion and about independence, might be released after having a
kokennin
implanted in their cephlink hardware, or else they would be shot. It was unlikely that their number was greater than five percent of the whole.

There were a few prisoners, however, of special interest to the Imperium, and these, at Kawashima’s orders, were being held in the warehouse at Port Jefferson. There were some eighty of them assembled in the bare-walled emptiness of the building’s main room. Most wore military fatigues, though some were in the rags of what once had been civilian clothing. They sat quietly as the
chu-i
ushered Kawashima into the building, each in a near-identical posture to all the rest, arms folded on knees, eyes staring vacantly into space. Each had a small, gray-white apparatus embracing the back of his head from ear to ear, from which tiny constellations of green and amber lights glowed. The
kanrinin
—the word meant
controller
—jacked into a person’s T-sockets and overrode his or her voluntary neural input.

Of course, the
kanrinin
could only be used on people with temporal sockets. “Where are they?” he asked the
chu-i
who’d admitted him. The lieutenant bowed and led the way.

The big, central storage room was lined with smaller rooms, which might once have been offices or storage areas for special materials. Some had been appropriated for Imperial use. Others were now holding cells for prisoners who could not take the
kanrinin.
At the far end of the building, one such room was under heavy guard, the door sealed shut but phased to transparency.

Many of the prisoners taken at Stone Mountain had been Nulls, men and women unable or unwilling to take the cephlink hardware. Such people were of little importance and less threat; most had already been released.

But
these…

They were genies, two males—a worker and a techie—and a breathtakingly beautiful
ningyo.
The males paced the narrow confines of their cell; the female sat, cross-legged, in a corner. Their fatigues were torn and caked with dust, and the techie had his left arm tucked into his blouse, using it as an improvised sling.

“They surrendered?” Kawashima asked his guide. “I heard the creatures preferred to die rather than give up.”

“You heard correctly,
Chujosan.
All three were discovered unconscious inside a room under Stone Mountain. A wall collapsed, trapping them. The marine captain in charge was going to kill them but decided that their unusual behavior warranted special attention.”

“Exactly so,” Kawashima said, studying the prisoners with interest. Unlike full humans, even Nulls, genies were usually killed out of hand when taken unless they could be put immediately to work. These, however, were extraordinary. Throughout the battle there’d been numerous reports of genies, of
genies,
attacking Imperial troops and even warstriders with hand weapons and explosives. Astonishing. “Creatures bred and conditioned for docility and obedience are unlikely warriors,
neh?
We must learn what happened to alter their personalities so.”