by Ian Douglas
Vaughn's implant picked up the strider's ID: Gocho Krysta McIntyre. Damn. It didn't look like here was enough left to bury.…
"Where the hell did that come from?" Lance Corporal Jason Kiel called.
Vaughn was already analyzing the trajectory, captured by his strider's radar. "Up there," he said, painting an icon on the flight's battle map. "On those cliffs."
They were emerging now from the built-up portion of the city periphery, entering the belt of parkland and habitat domes surrounding Abundancia. From here, as they moved clear of the taller buildings, the Catarata Cliffs were visible some twenty kilometers off, rising against the high-stacked billows of orange clouds, golden in the early-morning light. The water of the falls tumbled into space above mist and a spectacular rainbow, its thunder muted by distance. From the cliff's edge on the near shore, a semimobile brooded.
Semimobile fortresses were just that… massive fortifications that could be moved at need, but slowly. They were tanks taken to the extreme, mounting dozens of heavy weapons and with armor meters thick, but their diamagnetics could just barely lift them from the ground, and it took nearly their entire power output to move at a man's slow walking pace.
But once positioned, they had the firepower of a major planetary fortress. These commanded the city of Abundancia from their overlooks.
The orbiting Confederation cruisers had been picking off the semis one by one, but that was tricky work. Heavy shielding tended to deflect incoming kinetic-kill rounds and particle beams which might take out a large swath of the city with a ricochet. "Forward shields up, people," Vaughn ordered, and the four other surviving warstriders of Green Flight began spreading out as they advanced, putting a hundred meters between each machine. High-velocity gatling fire swept down on them from the heights. Under that onslaught, the NewAm striders were changing form again, morphing into low-slung, organic-looking shapes with the bulk of their Naga-mass piled up forward in a shield. KK projectiles slammed into Vaughn's strider, staggering him, but he kept moving. Those shields weren't enough to shrug off antimatter rounds, and the larger high-velocity kinetic rounds could pound a warstrider to fragments in fairly short order. But they did do a good job of dispersing the heat from laser and particle beam fire, and they protected the soldier on board from small-caliber stuff and high-velocity shrapnel.
A string of hivel rounds slammed into a church off to the right, bringing down the steeple in a showering cascade of debris. Vaughn's external mikes picked up the shrill screams of civilians. Ah… shit!
"You!" he called, his voice booming across the church compound. "Are you okay?'
Faces peered from a mangled, open doorway. Women and children…
"¡Esconderse!" he yelled. Vaughn had downloaded Spanish into his implant as soon as he'd learned he was being deployed to Abudancia. "¿Tiene las iglesia un sótano?"
"¡No hay un sotano!" someone yelled back. Shit. No basement in the church. An explosion ripped through the street behind the structure, showering the surrounding area with debris.
Vaughn felt an agony of paralyzed indecision. What the hell could he do with all of those civilians? Should he tell them to stay put… to make a run for the rear?…
¡Refugiarse!" Vaughn called. "¡Mantanerse abajo!"
Telling them to take cover and stay down might help… but what would help a hell of a lot more was to stop the shelling. He considered telling them to get out of the church and move to the rear… but discarded the idea. The life expectancy of a human caught in the open in this kind of firefight was measured in seconds. They would be cut down almost immediately.
"Vaughn! This is Vanderkamp!"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"You think you can suppress that nearest fortress? We're getting clobbered down here!"
Vaughn considered the implant display painting itself inside his mind. The nearest semimobile fortress was over twenty kilometers away and at the top of a thousand-meter cliff. Getting up there without getting killed would be… challenging.
"Yes, Ma'am!" He hesitated. "Bravo is down to six effectives, sir! Can we have some help?"
"You'll have back-up. But get your asses up that cliff now before I have to come over there and kick them up!"
"Yes, sir."
Asshole…
"C'mon, people!" Vaughn called. "Time to get ourselves airborne!"
And he broke into a run.
2
Japan, a tiny island nation with few resources and too many people, seemed an unlikely candidate as a significant world power, but these limitations served in the long run to make the Kogane Jidai, her Golden Age, all but inevitable. Where the earliest advocates of space exploitation fell by the wayside—the Soviet Union, the United States, and the People's Republic of China all collapsing in political turmoil, corruption, economic chaos, and governmental myopia—the Empire of Japan managed to hang on, and eventually to prosper. By the late 21st Century, she had grabbed the high ground of space, and she never let go.
—Man and His Works
Dr. Karl Gunther Fielding
C.E. 2488
Chujo Yoichi Hojo kneeled on the tatami in his office, relaxed, tranquil, allowing the sights and sounds of battle wash through him. The sensation, channeled through his cerebral implants, was… stimulating, even cathartic, and served as a kind of meditation. The appearance of Confederation rebels in this sector had been unexpected… but was not in the least unwelcome.
The images were coming in from optical scanners mounted on the upper deck of Yosai Ichi—of Castle One—positioned atop the stunning cliffs overlooking the rebel city. Telephoto enhancements showed the near edge of the city, alive with erupting geysers of black earth and the bright flashes of explosions as Ichi and the other mobile fortresses continued to hammer the place with hivel kinetic-kill rounds, particle beams, and plasma fire. The AI flagged movement, and he ordered the cameras to zoom in for a closer look. Yes… as he'd expected, the newly arrived rebel warstriders were deploying for an attack.
"Colonel Tamaguchi!" he snapped over the mind link with his subordinates. "You see?"
"We see them, Lord General. We will sweep them from the sky!"
"Allow them to get close, Colonel," Hojo replied. "Keep them from landing on the fortress itself, but permit them to approach. I intend to destroy them with our special reserves."
"As you wish, Lord General."
Hojo wondered if he heard disapproval in the Colonel's mental voice… but decided that he had not. Tamaguchi was an excellent chief of staff and a good soldier. He would not permit emotion to ruffle a link with his superiors.
Light flare in the sky, a second sun flaring close to the zenith, then fading. Those two rebel cruisers had been launching heavy KK rounds at the fortresses from orbit and managed to destroy two of them. One ship was passing over the horizon now, however, and the other would not be overhead for another thirty minutes. Smaller projectiles launched by other ships in the enemy fleet—destroyers and frigates—were easily handled by counter fire from the fortresses. Another projectile streaked in from the west, a line of white fire. Yosai Ichi's planetary defense batteries tracked it and fired… and, again, a new sun shone briefly in the sky.
If the enemy warstriders were fighting in close to the yosai, the next cruiser to pass overhead would hold its fire for fear of hitting rebel troops.
And it would let him unveil… something special.
"Tai-i Yamatami is here to see you, Lord General," the voice of his electronic secretary announced.
"Very well. Have him come in."
The shoji doors at the far end of the room slid open, and a man in a black Imperial special forces uniform entered and formally bowed. "Tai-i Yamatami, Lord General. Reporting as you commanded."
Hojo nodded his response, and gestured for Yamatami to kneel on one of the tatami mats on the floor. The room, as tradition demanded, was spartan, almost bare—a return to the classical kanso, the aesthetic simplicity of earlier ages. Hojo's private quarters within the
fortress were far more luxurious, but he preferred to display the traditional values of Shinto and bushido to his subordinates, a means of focus, a memory of origins and purpose, a lack of distractions.
"The enemy approaches," Hojo said, inviting the army captain to link in through the implant display. "When he reaches the fortress, he will either plant explosive devices or attempt to gain entrance… probably the latter. The Nekomata will stop them."
Yamatami bowed deeply. "As you command, Lord General."
Hojo had to work to overcome the distaste he felt. Even after several years with the Nekomata project, the basic idea was… unpleasant. Through his implant link, he could feel the alien crawling in Yamatami's brain… or he imagined he could.
"Your unit is ready?"
"We are, Lord General. We await only your order."
"You have it."
Yamatami bowed once more, rose, and left the bare room.
Hojo returned his full attention to the battle unfolding outside. Much depended on the success of his plan, not least of which was the name and honor of his family. Clan Hojo once had been a powerful offshoot of the Ise family, and related by marriage to the Imagawa Clan. In the 15th Century, a member of the Ise family had taken the name Hojo after the earlier line of Kamakura Shogunate regents, and in the 16th Century their power had rivaled that of the immortal Tokugawas. All power and high station were transitory, however, and the clan fell at the Siege of Odawara. Hojo had remained a fairly common family name throughout the centuries that followed, but no longer were they intimates of shoguns, emperors, or the halls of power.
The family had regained some measure of power with the rise of the Empire in the late 21st Century, however, primarily within the military sphere. After today, however, the ancient clan would attain true immortality, and all would know the prominence of the dragonscale mon, Imperial and rebel alike. Hojo had managed to get hold of Naga fragments, and with them he would transform the Imperial warstrider regiments.
For almost a century, the alien Naga had been completely misunderstood. Found inhabiting a number of worlds across the human sphere, they'd been called Xenophobes, with the assumption that their merciless onslaughts against human cities and their apparent unwillingness to communicate indicated that they feared all life other than their own.
In fact, the Naga—while technically alive under the best definitions for that state available—were an artificial life form created by a machine intelligence at the Galactic Core, a poorly understood network mind called the Web. The Web had designed the Naga many tens of millions of years in the past to prepare new worlds for assimilation. Rebel forces had managed to make direct mind-to-mind contact with the Naga several years before, and the alliance had resulted in a true interspecies symbiosis, with humans merging with aliens to create… something new. The Naga appeared to be nothing more or less than nanotechnic lifeforms, their fluid bodies composed of individual cells of nanoscale size operating as minute, massively parallel computers joined into networks of staggering complexity. Such material, organized for maximum efficiency in data processing, colloquially was known as computronium.
So-called Naga-chunks of computronium broken from the main bodies could merge with human nervous systems, link with human cerebral implant technology, and boost human neural responses and functioning to unimaginable heights. There were rumors that one of the humans who'd discovered this, a rebel named Dev Cameron, had used his symbiosis to transcend corporality… to become a kind of high-tech god.…
Most civilized people—meaning those of Japanese ancestry, of course—were both conservative and fastidious, especially when it came to allowing outside contamination—osen—to come into contact with their bodies. General Hojo, however, knew that sacrifice could be necessary to achieve victory. The one reason the rebel forces had survived as long as they had, he was convinced, was their willingness to merge with the living alien computronium. Imperial intelligence had been quite clear on this point; rebel troops with Naga-infected implants possessed an advantage on the battlefield that simply could not be measured.
And only when Japanese mechanized warriors learned to overcome their inhibitions and fully embrace the alien technology would they have a chance against the gaijin.
It was a matter of military necessity. And, more, one of survival.
* * *
Vaughn fired his warstrider's main jets, a sharp, jolting burst that got him moving fast enough that his diamagnetics could react smoothly with the planet's magnetic field. His strider made the transition from walker to ascraft smoothly, unfolding itself as it left the ground, growing wings and taking on a sleeker, more streamlined shape. Swerving from side to side to throw off enemy targeting AIs, his Gyrfalcon shrieked as it plowed through the heavy air. The other five Black Griffins followed, an echelon formation rising as it emerged from the constriction of the cities outlaying streets. White fire slashed down from the cliff tops ahead… but not as thick, not as deadly as Vaughn had been expecting.
Corporal Laris Palmer, Green Four, loosed a trio of missiles. They swooped high, then veered toward the enemy fortress… then vanished in a swift one-two-three as enemy counter-missile fire burned them down.
"Hold your fire, Green Four!" Vaughn snapped. "Put your PDLs on auto, but can the offensive stuff!"
Point Defense Lasers were generally automatic in any case. Human reflexes simply weren't fast enough to target something as small, fast, and maneuverable as an incoming missile at close range and knock it down.
The squadron descended once more, dropping to NOE flight—nape of the Earth—and moving so quickly that they kicked up towering clouds of red-gold dust. If they didn't see us before… Vaughn thought, but then his full concentration was engaged by something else, something new appearing along the main deck parapets of the grounded fortress.
The mobile fortress was massive, over half a kilometer on a side and almost two hundred meters high, with towers twice that in height at each corner mounting dozens of high-energy weapons. The idea behind them was to create a strongpoint, either for the defense of a planet, or as a firebase that could be placed as a part of a siege, as here. Massing hundreds of thousands of tons in a one-G field, it couldn't move fast… but its power tap generators could induce diamagnetic fields strong enough to lift it clear of the surface and slowly drag it from one position to another—hence the term semimobile fortress. The things were big enough to engage capital ships in orbit. Their key weakness, strangely enough, was their vulnerability to individual troops in armored suits, like warstriders, troops who could get in so close that the fort's weapons couldn't be turned on them. Their main defense against close assault was to maintain their own on-board defensive garrisons of armored personnel.
Which was exactly what he could see now as his sensors picked up and highlighted movement along the structure's upper deck. Warstriders were emerging there from below. Several carried banners with the Hojo mon.
"I don't recognize those striders, Sosh," Hallman called. "What the hell are those things?"
"Warbook says they're an unknown design," Wheeler reported. "Something we haven't seen before.…"
"Kuso!" Newburg added. "More bad news! Those things are hull-morphing!"
By zooming in on the image of one of the enemy striders, Vaughn could see a portion of the machine's black armor deforming, like clay, could see it flowing from the aft portion of the war machine to the front, thickening the forward hull. Long-barreled weapons emerged from the black material… probably railguns. They looked a lot like Gyrfalcons, in fact… but with more heavy weapons. They might be Taifus… but not with that living Naga-matrix.
Green Flight, what was left of it, was well into the open now, skimming a couple of meters above the ground in broad, sweeping turns as the land began to rise. Vaughn led them into a wide patch of woods, thick with the fuzzy orange growths that filled the ecological niche occupied by trees back on Earth. The canopy gave a precious few moments of welcome cover, but then the striders
emerged on the other side, twisting into sharp, almost vertical climbs to race up the sheer face of the cliff.
The good news was that the enemy couldn't hit them here, at least not with the heavy weapons of the fort. The Hoshikumiai warstriders, however, were launching themselves from the parapets and going ascraft. As they banked and turned, maneuvering to attack the rebel forces, they had Green Flight pinned against the face of the cliff.
Three missiles slammed into Newberg's strider, the detonations flashing in a rapid-fire triplet each as brilliant as the sun and strewing flaming wreckage up and out across the rocks.
"Damn it!" Palmer cried. "Why didn't his PDLs work?"
"Too close!" Vaughn replied. "They're too close! C'mon… we need to mix it up with these people. Break on my mark… three… two… one… break!"
The four surviving Gyrfalcons of Green Flight arced back and away from the cliff, passing through the flight of Japanese ascraft-mode striders behind them. Vaughn's strider AI handled the flight controls; no human brain could react quickly enough to fly the warcraft that close to a cliff and anticipate enemy flier movements and weapon releases. The pilot could only shape general commands through the machine interface, a series of unvoiced mental nudges to go there or shoot that.
An enemy war flier filled his forward view, a flattened wedge shape with a rough and uneven surface so black it made human eyes water when they tried to track it. At a range of scant meters, Vaughn and his AI together triggered both of the strider's charged particle weapons, sending a searing bolt of protons along a magnetic beam to slam into the Hojo craft's belly.
His shot, he decided, must have holed the enemy machine's meta tanks. The exotic fuel was stable only at extremely low cryogenic temperatures, and any breach of the heavily shielded containment fields resulted in the instant release of energy—a very great deal of energy. The air-space craft disintegrated in white flame and a heavy thump of concussion; Vaughn flew through the fireball, twisting up hard to avoid crashing headlong into the cliff.