by Ian Douglas
Slang, profanity:
easy feed: Slang expression for "no problem," or "that's okay."
gok, goking: Sexual obscenity. From Japanese goku, "rape."
I'm linked: I'm with you. I'll go along with that.
jackin' Jill: Girlfriend, especially as a casual RJ sex partner.
nork (also NORC or NORC-Socket): Colloquial for an idiot. From nonregistered C-socket, it refers to the common practice of illegal "back-alley" implant surgery for people who don't have the money or the connections to secure a legal (registered) implant. Many such operations result in permanent brain damage.
nullhead: Stupid. Empty-headed. By association, crazy.
odie: Let's odie = let's do it, let's move. From Japanese odori, "dance."
pulling strings, jerking strings: Slang expression: "You're kidding me."
scut, scutting: Worthless. A useless person. From medieval scuttage, a tax paid in feudal times to avoid military service.
staticjack: Mild curse. Expression of disgust or amazement.
static free: Easy, direct, simple, problem-free.
straight hont: The truth. From Japanese honto no koto.
Slot: 1) Linkage module for human controller. Warstriders have one, two, or three slots; a three-slotter strider has places for a commander, pilot, and weapons tech.
2) Space for equipment aboard transport. Ascraft have "slots" to carry four or six warstriders. (Slang) By popular usage, a place for a person in an organization, i.e., a "slot in the infantry."
Software: The programs run by computer hardware, up to and including AIs.
Stridertink, tink: Personnel who perform routine repair, maintenance, and service on striders, vehicles, and heavy equipment. Also called techs or techies.
Synchorbit: That point, different for each world, at which a satellite has an orbital period exactly matching the planet's rotation. Planetary sky-els rise from the world's equator to extensive constructions—factories, habitats, and other orbital facilities—in synchorbit.
Synchorbital: Facilities built at synchorbit.
Tacsit: Military slang for Tactical Situation.
Teikokuno Hoshi: Star of the Empire. Imperial medal for supreme service to the Emperor.
Teleop Weapons: Long-range missiles operated by weapons technicians at remote locations. Control can be by radio or—to avoid battlefield jamming—laser or a molecular fiberline unreeled behind the projectile.
Tenno Kyuden: Palace of Heaven. Seat of Imperial government, located at Singapore Synchorbital.
Thermal: Military slang for any infrared sensory device or scanner.
TO: Table of Organization.
Towerdown: The base of a sky-el tower, a busy terminus for freight and passengers.
Transplas: Synthetic building material, transparent and very strong.
T-socket: Temporal socket. Usually paired, one on each side of subject's skull, in temporal bone above and behind the ear. Used for full-sensory, full-feedback jacking in conjunction with an AI system, including experiencing ViR, full-sensory communications, and computer control of ships or vehicles.
VCH: Vehicle Cephlinkage Helmet. Allows direct human control of warstriders ascraft, or other military vehicles. Internal leads plug into the operator's temporal sockets, while external sockets receive leads from AI interface.
ViR, Virtual Reality: Made possible by cephalic implants, virtual reality is the "artificial reality" of computer interfaces that allows, for example, a human pilot to "become" the strider or missile he is piloting, to "live" a simplay, or to "see" things that do not really exist, save as sophisticated computer software. An artificial world existing within the human mind that, through AI technology, can be shared with others.
ViRcom: Full sensory linked communication. Linker enters a chamber and plugs into communications net. He can then engage in conversation with one or more other humans or their computer analogues as though all were present together.
ViRdrama: Recreational jacking allowing full sensory experience through cephlinkage. Linker can participate in elaborate canned shows or Al-monitored games. Two or more linkers can share a single scenario, allowing them to interact with one another.
ViRnews: Also ViRinfo. Jack-fed informational programs permitting viewer interaction and questions with programmed "guides."
ViRpersona: The image of self projected in virtual reality dramas or communications. Clothing styles and even personal appearance can be purchased as a cephlink program, much as someone would buy new clothes.
Warstrider: Also strider. Battlefield armor on two or four legs, giving it high mobility over rough terrain. Generally consists of a fuselage slung between two legs, and equipped either with two arms mounting weapons or with interchangeable weapons pods. Sizes include single-slotters (eight to twelve tons), dual-slotters (ten to thirty tons), single-slotters three-slotters (twenty-five to seventy tons), and special vehicles such as Armored Personnel Walkers that carry large numbers of troops.
Wetware: The human brain, the ultimate computer.
Whitesuit: Slang for Hegemonic naval personnel. From their dress uniforms, which are white with gold trim.
Who-was: Rumor, scuttlebutt Corruption of Japanese uwasa.
Xeno, Xenophobe: Human name for the life form that first attacked the human colony on An-Nur II in 2498. So-called because of their apparent hatred or fear of other life forms. Investigations within the Alya system in 2541 proved Xenophobes are machine-organic hybrids evolved from fairly simple organisms billions of years ago. They are defined by their technlogy, much of which has been borrowed from other civilizations.
Yukanno Kisho: Medal of Valor. Imperial decoration awarded in ten orders, or dans, for bravery in the line of duty.
Japanese Words and Phrases
Baka: Foolish, stupid, or silly.
Daihyo: Representative. In twenty-sixth-century usage, the Emperor's representative to a government or local military force within the Shichiju.
Dan: Order or ranking.
Fushi: Eternity, immortality. Era-name of current Emperor: Fushi 84.
Gaijin: Foreigner, specifically a non-Japanese.
Hema: Damned mess. Bungled situation.
Kichigai: You're crazy!
Nengo: Era-name, determined by each new Emperor, for purposes of dating.
Nettena-yo: Wake up!
Sen-en: One thousand yen (en in Japanese).
Sensei: Master. Title of respect for the teacher of a given discipline.
Sheseiji: "Bastards." Related to shesei, "posture" or "attitude."
Shoko: Military officer.
Tatami: Padded floor or floor mat.
Tenno-heika: Formal title of address—His Majesty, the Emperor.
Uwasa: Rumor, gossip.
Yujo: Camaraderie. It has taken on the special meaning of "warrior's bond."
Zugaikotsu: Skull.
Warstrider:
REBELLION
by
Ian Douglas
Originally published under the
name William H. Keith
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter
34
Terminology and Glossary
Japanese Words and Phrases
Prologue
There was Rock . . . and there was »self«, the former parting for the latter in the flux of powerful magnetic fields. A universe of rock subtly textured and diverse surrounded »self« in a warm and comforting embrace that flowed around »self's« shell with semimolten plasticity as it burrowed upward through the yielding strata. Behind lay the depths of Mother Rock; ahead, closer now was the goal, a concentration of riches undreamed of a magnetic anomaly tasting of deliciously, dizzyingly pure metals, ceramics, and hydrocarbon compounds.
»Self« could sense its universe in myriad ways: through density and water content and something that might be called the taste of silica, quartz, limestone, metal-sharp ores, and hydrocarbons: through the tug of gravity: through magnetic fields and the far weaker trickle of electrons within the Rock; through the life-giving heat of encompassing Rock and the dimly sensed "flavor" of remarkably concentrated metals now so close ahead.
Though »self's« concept of time was not, strictly speaking, linear, it knew that it wouldn't be much longer now.
Dimly. »self« remembered Self, a far vaster progenitor of »self« now far below and behind the upward threading fragment. It shared Self's perception of the universe, of course, though it remembered only dream-vague slivers of its past life. Self's view of the universe was shaped by its evolutionary genesis eons past in the bowels of another world light-millennia distant, and by a harshly Boolean logic that perceived its surroundings in terms of yes and no, of Self and not-Self, of Rock and not-Rock. It did not, could not, recognize the concept of other worlds. In Self's curiously inverted reality. Universe was an infinite sea of Rock, growing ever denser and ever hotter in all directions out from the Center, while at the Center itself lay a vast emptiness, the Chasm at the Heart of Creation. Self's former Selves, its predecessors that had vaulted the gulf from another world to this, had passed down memories of the crossing as frozen lattices of magnetic bonds between Self's subcellular, nanotechnic components, but those memories held images only of black emptiness and slow-dragging eons of time, and not of separate worlds or stars or the basis of astronomical theory.
Tunneling through rock turned plastic. »self« was suddenly aware of near-vacuum, of a flood of radiation, of alien sensations that recalled the memories of the central Chasm. Breakthrough! Self had emerged in the emptiness at the universe's heart!
Disorientation swirled within the several parts of "Self" dizzying, mind-wrenching. This particular local expression of Self had never pierced the walls of the Great Cavern, and inherited memories were weak and fragile things compared to this new perspective on the world.
Analysis . . .
The vacuum was not absolute. There was matter beyond the cavern wall, a thin gas of recognizable elements combined in unfamiliar molecules. Oxygen was present, for instance, but as free O2 instead of the usual SiO2 or Fe2O3 of Rock. Self's knowledge of astronomy was nonexistent, but its understanding of physical chemistry was superb, its analysis of its surroundings flawlessly precise. »Self« was bathed in electromagnetic radiation as well, energy in two separate frequency bands, one between 107 and 1010 hertz, and another between 1014 and 1015 hertz. It suspected that the gap between the two sets of frequencies was the result of absorption by the tenuous gas that blanketed this place.
Self »self« lived by absorbing energy directly through shifting, nanotechnic surfaces, but the high-energy end of the spectrum was more than it was used to, or needed. Adjusting its surface to a dazzling, reflective silver, »self« began to morph from the slender, streamlined shape used in through-rock travel to the more utilitarian, globular shape of an explorer. Tentacles flicked out, questing. Weapons formed, a precaution in case of attack.
But »self's« movements were painfully sluggish, slowed by the bombardment of raw data from eighteen separate senses. Reality was far stranger than second- and third-linked images of transmitted memory, imperfectly perceived, imperfectly understood. Emptiness clawed at »self«, the raw wonder and terror of the not-Rock Void at the Heart of Creation. And . . . and there were things here, things at once not-Self, yet, impossibly, they moved, reacted, acted in all ways alive . . . like Self, yet not. . . .
And they were attacking.
Through fragmentary recollections of past encounters, transmitted to its progeny by Self, »self« knew of the not-Self 'things that could not be alive because they were not-Self, yet nevertheless seemed to have some alien, unreachable life of their own. Something perhaps twice »self's« mass, something of intricate and literally incomprehensible form, was already probing the outer shell that protected »self« with a barrage of various radiations. Something like a smooth-shaped rock penetrated »self's« shell, then detonated.
Hurt! Dysfunction! Appendages lay on the ground, uselessly writhing, now little »selves« of their own and independent of »self's« control. Pivoting, »self« brought weapons of its own to bear. . . .
Too late! »Self« could feel its consciousness dwindling, lessening with each new, explosive impact. »Self« was, in fact, a cascade of separate consciousness, of many »selves« nested within one another. Dominant was »self«, but »self« was the sum total of hundreds of separate Nodes, and each Node was composed of trillions of cells, some biological, some technological, and each capable of an independent, if limited, existence. Many Nodes working together made »self«, just as many trillions of »selves« together composed the far vaster Unity of Self.
Flame, a white-hot plasma, scorched the writhing tendrils and seared away »self's« outer layers. Worse, the Adversary's own nanotech weapons had been loosed and were disassembling »self's« molecular structure almost atom by atom.
Then »self« was gone, replaced by the random gropings of the Nodes, those that had survived the explosion, at least. And under the deadly assault by radiation and flame and nanotechnic disassemblers, even the Nodes were beginning to dissolve. The memories of other places were gone now, as was any memory of »self's« personal past or of the glory of lost Self
And then, even awareness itself was gone.
The LaG-42 Ghostrider stood at the crater's edge. Within the Ghostrider's protective armor, Lieutenant Vincent Creighton, 3rd New American Mechanized Cavalry, surveyed the scene through the warstrider's senses, probing the milk-white haze above the disintegrating Xeno.
The Xeno was dead . . . and it was damned lucky Creighton had seen the thing when it first nosed clear of the ground. Xeno snakes were always a bit slow shapeshifting to combat mode, and that was definitely the best time to hit them. This one had been a Mamba, a big son of a bitch, and more than a match for a LaG-42 when it was fully morphed and ready for a fight.
Grimly, Creighton turned his attention from the crater to his surroundings, a densely forested hillside beneath an azure-green sky. The domes of Winchester, the planet's capital, glittered in the distance. Closer at hand, scattered pastiches of red and gold forest reminded him of New America . . . though the gauzy, mushroom-shaped trees of the Wilderland only remotely resembled the arboreal forms of either 26 Draconis IV or Earth itself. Eridu was a lovely world, one of the Hegemony's richest and most promising extrasolar colonies.
Or it had been.
Now that the Xenos were here, Creighton knew better than most that the world's eerie loveliness was doomed. More of the subterranean monsters would appear . . . then more. Nuclear weapons would be used. Eridu would become a wasteland, her native ecology ravaged, her population herded into camps. The terraformers would have their way at last.
The thought filled Vince Creighton with a bitterness that left him, momentarily at least, unable to link fully with his warstrider. For several seconds, he stood motionless on the crater rim, concentrating on the largely automatic process of safing his weapons and reporting the Xeno kill over his tactical net. Then, finally, he was able to swing the big machine about and start it stalking back toward his base.
A gentle rain b
egan falling an hour later, washing the milk-thick mist back into the ground, until little remained of the Xenophobe machine save blackened lumps of twisted metal.
Chapter 1
Nippon's ascendance to world domination during the twenty-first century was scarcely surprising. By stepping into the high-tech void left by the former superpowers when they abandoned space research in the late 1900s and early 2000s, Japan assured its preeminence in space manufacturing and materials sciences. These advances led directly to even greater revolutions: nanotechnic engineering, biocomputer implants, and ultimately, of course, to the K-T drive that gave Man the stars.
—Man and His Works
Karl Gunther Fielding
C.E. 2448
North, the glowing white thread of the Singapore Sky-el slashed vertically out of the sky, ruler-straight against the night. East, the full moon rose silver above the glittering pillar of its own reflection.
With a dwindling hum, the magflitter settled gently onto the teak landing platform beneath hovering glowglobes. A scarlet-clad attendant was at its side at once, sliding the canopy aside and assisting the slender young man from the vehicle.
"Konichiwa." the attendant greeted him with a crisp bow, his Nihongo perfect though his features looked Malaysian or Indonesian rather than Japanese. He held out a book-sized facereader, its slick black surface drinking the glowglobes' light. "Identity, please?"
Dev Cameron extended his left hand, bringing the intricate pattern of golden wires and circuits embedded at the base of his thumb into contact with the reader. Somewhere beneath this mountaintop, the estate's computer would be scanning his interface and, through it, the cephlink plexus embedded between the hemispheres of Dev's brain, reading his service record and ID data.
The black surface of the reader flashed green. "Domo arigato gozaimashte," the attendant said, bowing again, and Dev sensed, rather than heard, the marginal relaxation of unseen figures in the darkness outside the circle of light on the landing deck. Kodama's personal guard, no doubt, watching for uninvited guests. "Welcome to Lord Kodama's estate. Chuisan. A servot will store your vehicle. Please, this way."