Warm countryside passed underfoot. Mamoru did his best to avoid making noise in the untamed brush. He could no longer see the car, stashed along the road a quarter mile or so behind him. Two military crews had set up at the base of electronics towers, making the prospect of driving closer impossible. Nothing had yet responded to his presence. He sensed only weak electromagnetism in the air, not the strong sensor fields he had expected. A strange sense of eeriness sent a shiver down his back. The old man had mentioned road crews. Has to be coincidence. They must need to fix them several times a week.
Up ahead, a trio of fences stood between him and Eglin Military Starport. Two electrified wire barricades on either side of a taller green energy wall shimmered between silver pylons. Mamoru had a feeling the wall of light was not as much a physical barrier as a warning of an active laser system. Kinetic energy barriers barely worked in small applications such as a personal defense unit. Something this large would draw far too much power to be practical.
He approached from the south side, behind a row of hangars that offered cover from a tarmac lit like daylight. Thoughts of Sadako’s warning made him seek the comfortable familiarity of believing his abilities were the result of focused chi. Mamoru brought his arms up in a wide swing, and pressed his right fist against his left palm. Power flowed from his mind to his body, manifesting as a glow over his back and arms. He forced the energy to his legs, staring at the white light as he sank to a squat.
“We all have quirks.” Anna’s words came back to him. “Aurora is… Aurora. I don’t get along with machines, and you light up like a wick.”
He grunted, the luminescence flared as he released a burst of psionic energy through his muscles and leapt. Annoyed at her calling him a candle, his irritation added extra force to the jump and put him on the roof of one of the hangars rather than the ground behind the field.
“What the fuck was that?” A woman’s voice almost stopped his heart.
Perhaps this was lucky. Mamoru flattened as three men and one woman in camouflage came running.
“Not a damn clue,” said a tall black man, looking at the fence. “Looked like someone shot off a magnesium flare.”
Mamoru slipped away from the edge as the soldier turned, following the arc of his leap with his eyes.
“I dunno, JJ. Sarge, this is Vaughn, over,” said the woman. Radio crackle followed. “We got any birds up now? Did anyone report any lost munitions or parts flying loose?”
“Fence is intact,” said an unknown male. “Not reading any fault codes.”
Mamoru let his cheek touch the cold metal roof, suppressing the urge to snarl. This is not the way of a samurai. I am hiding like a ninja. He relaxed, intent on quiet. What alternative, kill them?
“Are you sure, Sarge? Roger that…”
“The heck got into him?” asked JJ.
“You heard Sergeant Yost. It’s nothing to worry about. We’re to resume perimeter.”
“Probably some shit we ain’t got clearance to know about,” said a short man with a Spanish accent.
Mamoru waited until the sound of their walking became indiscernible from the wind. He slid to the edge and lowered himself to hang from his fingertips. Minor focus gave his leg muscles enough resilience to absorb a thirty-foot fall. He remained motionless, both to listen for anyone reacting to the noise of his landing and to catch his breath from the exertion. His last battle with Sadako played over in his mind during his moment of rest. She was right, his ability tired him fast―her mechanical augmentations could run forever. A protracted fight here would not go in his favor. As much as it galled him, he had no choice but to sneak.
Shadow blanketed the space between one hangar and the next, providing an alley packed with old barrels and long cases. They resembled the sort of container used to store missiles, and Mamoru could not help but peek―empty. At least they are not fools.
Anna’s disk contained schematics for the CSS Angel as well as access codes, systems diagrams, and an overview of the support infrastructure of a secret installation somewhere out in space, well beyond Mars. The transponder data was the most important. All he had to do was appropriate a shuttle. A military shuttle had the necessary hardware to locate the Angel, not to mention would not raise as many alarms as a civilian ship attempting to approach a military installation.
Mamoru crept along the wall, closer to where light invaded the passage between buildings. The tarmac buzzed with activity despite it being close to midnight. On the other side, past several hundred yards of wide-open pale concrete, the ring-shaped heart of the starport gleamed. Any craft capable of achieving orbit would be parked inside. These hangars, according to the files he had invaded, were used for atmospheric craft. If a shuttle happened to be in one, it would not be in any condition to fly.
He climbed the stacked boxes enough to reach a window. Shafts of dusty light pierced the darkness within. Glint highlighted shapes along a row of dormant fighter planes parked at a diagonal to the far wall. All six looked old, as well as tiny. By markings, they belonged to a training squadron.
Mamoru sensed a change in the air, the presence of electricity, in time to avoid being startled when a head-sized orb bot popped up right in front of him. Before it could sound an alarm, he clapped his hand over its lens. Curved sheets of program code appeared in his thoughts, surrounding him as his mind rearranged it line by line. Mamoru was now its friend. When he released the sphere, it hovered away to resume its patrol. A band of green light followed it on the floor and wall, warping over machinery and pushcarts as it glided off through the hangar.
Approaching footsteps hastened him through the window. Among racks of tools and testing equipment, he found six automated armament carts. The sight of medium-sized driverless forklifts with curved tines to hold missiles and bombs gave him an idea. With only the now-friendly orb in the area, he jogged over to the nearest one and crouched. One hand on the side allowed his thoughts to touch the machine. A non-self-aware AI slaved to a master armorer’s terminal controlled the loaders from remote. The cart’s bulk offset the inertia and weight of what it carried, despite its internal components not requiring a shell that large. He opened a side hatch and stuffed himself into the dead space.
Curled up on a battery unit with his knees in his face was far from comfortable, but still preferable to starting a small war on a military base. Mamoru pulled the panel closed and held on. After a moment’s concentration, awkwardness of his body position no longer mattered―he was the machine.
Unexpected disorientation came from sensors giving him full three-hundred-sixty degree vision as well as a proximity sensor granting the inhuman ability to feel solid objects within six feet. All four wheels could turn, enabling the cart to spin in place. He acclimated to this new way of seeing and moving within a few minutes, and rumbled out of the berth. The hangar door opened at his approach, unable to discern its operation as anything but normal.
A handful of soldiers moved about on the main tarmac in squads, some with weapons as part of a security detail, others off duty or in the process of changing shift. Men and women passed in front and behind, none paying any attention to the auto-loader whirring across the open space. At first, Mamoru headed in a beeline for a hangar closer to the main starport facility. When he turned away at the last minute and went for the ring-shaped structure, he got a few odd looks.
One of the recent routines run through the loader’s memory contained instructions for carting missiles to a waiting DS2, a military dropship that had to land inside the ring. Using the latent instruction set as a map, Mamoru followed the expected route to minimize suspicion. He rolled up to the side of the curved wall, where another automatic door opened as the cart got close. A red stripe followed a path through a low-ceiling access tunnel intended for these carts, a straight passage through sixty meters of building.
An incoming signal startled him as he neared the inside door. Someone was trying to access this loader to find out what it was doing. He halted in place, rea
ching back across the wireless transmission to the control system. Microseconds later, a process batch existed in the system attached to a random name he plucked from the authentication list. It looked as if someone had made an error entering the date for an ordinance loading, resulting in the sequence triggering now.
As soon as he finished constructing the lure, Mamoru opened the hatch and released his psionic link to the machine. He rolled out of the confined space, kicking the panel closed as the cart re-synced with the network. Motionless, he concentrated on nonpresence so the operator would not be able to see him with digital eyes.
The auto-cart spun in place, electronic motors whining as it accelerated back the way it had come. Mamoru waited for the portal to close and ran to the inner wall. It was a simple matter to fool the automatic door. One finger on the receiver for the weapon cart let him trigger the mechanism. He slipped through the opening and found himself on the landing area. Several dozen platforms, elevated hexagonal pads of dark metal, gleamed from strong overhead light. Around the outer ring, numerous landing spaces large enough to hold a fifty-foot interorbital shuttle surrounded four massive ones in the center.
He peered down a channel between the two largest landing platforms at a transport shuttle. The ship had an overall shape similar to a spearhead, starting at a point and widening in a curve to the rear end. The pad’s perimeter lighting caused the craft’s olive drab belly to glow. Mamoru waited for an opportunity and crept among the berths. Caustic vapors came by in drifts from Cryomil fuel lines, forcing him to squint every so often. One hand gripped the katana tight. I do not trust this. I am no master at infiltration. This should not be as easy as it is. He moved at a brisk jog over the unprotected tarmac, relaxing only when he regained the cover of darkness.
Consoles embedded in the wall flickered with various status updates, standby, or ready indicators. He crept to the intersection at the dead center of the facility, glancing in both directions to ensure his secrecy. A DS2 perched on a pad to the left near the wall, the right passage led toward empty landing areas. Straight ahead, the shuttle beckoned.
Muscles in Mamoru’s back tensed at the sight of the long bell-shaped craft. Flying the Fūjin had been awkward, due to its extreme maneuverability. Inhabiting a machine he intended to use to leave the safety of breathable air was another level of danger. He gazed up at the nose, passing under it while circling around the platform in search of stairs. The closer he got, the stronger his trepidation became.
On the next flat face of the hexagon, a gap in the wall contained stairs. As soon as he stepped on the first one, a twelve-inch head appeared to his right. Mamoru’s reaction occurred at the speed of instinct.
His katana failed to impress the hologram.
“Calm down, Mamoru,” said a dark skinned man in his fifties.
Hearing a British accent come from a UCF military colonel made him raise an eyebrow.
“Oh, I wish I could get a still of that face.” The colonel winked. “I’ve got the security diverted elsewhere, but the false alarm won’t keep them away from the pad for long.”
Mamoru squinted. “Aurora.”
“Innit? Buzz along then, I’m tired of feeling a scrotum between my legs. I honestly don’t know how you boys deal with it. S’like ‘avin a warm, dead, furless gerbil in my lap.” The older man’s face twisted in an expression of disgust. “I’d rather toddle off before the colonel here starts being asked questions I can’t answer.”
“You are not normal.” He shuddered.
“Well, you’ve got eyes like a shithouse rat, haven’t ya?” The colonel winked. “Took ya this long ta tell?” A hand floated into the hologram, shooing him off. “Go on then.”
Mamoru exhaled as he trudged over to the forward landing pad. He put a hand on the strut, feeling his way among the machinery. Imaginary camera flashes of wirepaths and program code unfurled through his brain as he read the systems. A blast of air came with a loud hiss, tossing his hair about and fluttering his coat. Three feet behind the forward landing gear, a slab of hull lowered, revealing a rear-facing ramp wide enough for a person. Mamoru jogged around and bounded up several steps to the pilot’s compartment.
Of the two pilot’s seats, he chose the left and settled in. After getting comfortable, he rested his hands on the console. Activity drew his attention to the windscreen, where doors around the perimeter opened at once to disgorge a tide of green. Dozens of soldiers swarmed in.
Mamoru closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “This should be interesting.”
A moment later, his consciousness melded with the shuttle. Sensors, cameras, and internal systems became his senses. He gathered the intent to fly in his mind, willing his new ‘body’ upward. Warmth spread through his belly and backside as thrusters roared to life. Soldiers rushed towards him, but he leapt skyward with enough force to swat them flat. Sixty men and women hit the ground and slid away from the downdraft, tumbling over each other like twigs in a hurricane. An uncomfortable sucking coldness at his throat reminded him of the access ramp, which he closed.
He did not look down. An impulse as if he meant to lean backwards tilted the nose up, and he accelerated. The Fūjin had felt as though he walked on a tightrope―one small miscalculation would fling the nimble craft to the ground; the shuttle was more akin to swimming in tar. Mamoru strained to the point of fatigue from the simple task of getting it off the ground.
The sudden sensation of a warm body in the other seat startled him. Internal cameras opened a separate display panel, which appeared to hover in the indigo clouds a few feet in front of the nose outside. A woman in black leaned across the center console and put a hand on his arm. Panic at being vulnerable roared within, but fear of an out of control shuttle kept his mind where it was.
“Mamoru,” said Sadako, “I think you are being used.”
Shadow Flight
ustrous midnight blue in the windscreen darkened through indigo to black. White points emerged clear from the smog as the shuttle left the atmosphere behind. The touch of outer space on the hull did not come with pain. Going too fast in the fighter jet had burned, despite not being a danger to the Fūjin. Out here, he had expected an agony of ice. Without the burden of a syrupy atmosphere, flying no longer felt as though he had to keep ‘running’ to avoid falling. In the vacuum of space, the shuttle seemed as graceful as could be.
Mamoru let it drift, bringing his mind back into his body. “What are you doing here? I told you to wait at my home.”
Sadako shied away. “I am sorry. The silence… it was so still there, my worry became too great to dismiss. I am afraid we will not know happiness.” She glanced at the floor by his seat. “I wanted to be with you for what little time the world gives us. Besides, the soldiers almost caught you nineteen times. You should be grateful I was shadowing you.”
He scowled at the console. The shame of having to use the dishonorable tactic of stealth grew heavier, compounded by his failure at it. “I have an agreement to fulfill. I did not want you to get hurt.”
Timidity vanished to a scowl. “I’ve had enough of your honor, Mamoru. Your honor left me alone, locked in a sad little excuse for a bedroom. I used to wake up in the middle of the night at every tiny sound, wondering if it was you coming to free me.” Her voice softened. “One day, I stopped expecting to see you. I knew you weren’t coming. Your honor wouldn’t let you.”
“No, Sadako.” He stared at the stars for a moment, resting from the effort of liftoff. “I had no idea where they had taken you, or if you were even still alive. Kutaragi sensei told me you had been killed soon after our parents. He said they wanted to spare me the sight of watching you die.”
She pouted, directionless anger dissipating to sadness.
“I did not believe him. They would not have carried you off if they meant to end your life.” She went to speak, but he spoke over her. “I feared the worst.”
“The NSK does not force anyone to be concubines. They may force the life of a geisha on a girl
, but that is not the same thing. That is a rumor. It is up to the girl to choose to take it beyond their normal duties. The women who do are pampered for it. It is not like the criminals you owned.”
“Sadako, you said you ran away to avoid that?”
“I did.” She shifted, gazing down. “I was a child then, I assumed… The way they treated me, I did not really understand what they wanted of me, but I was terrified.”
Mamoru clenched the controls. “It is as much my fault as theirs.”
Sadako shook her head. “No, Mamoru. You were a child as well. I could not escape my fate, but I did not allow them to make me a toy for men.”
“You did not.” Mamoru reached across the console and held her hand.
“I had other talents. Please, brother, can’t you see you are being used? That strange woman only wants you to do her master’s bidding.”
“I have seen nothing to cause me to distrust them. He wishes a new life away from all those who would harm us. We could find peace away from Minamoto, in a place where the NSK can never reach you.”
Sadako shivered, pleading eyes fixed him in place.
“What else then? Shall I become a pawn of these psionic police?”
“I do not trust that old man, either.” She squeezed his hand. “He is no better than Minamoto. I could see it in the way he looked at you. He wants to control your power.”
Mamoru focused on the console and linked with the flight computer. Outer space filled with dozens of streaming amber chains, letters and numbers connected in a swirling flow. The programming flooded his brain as though he had written it himself. Every nuance became known to him in seconds, even a useless piece of remark code calling someone named George an idiot. He set the autopilot for the navigation coordinates in Anna’s holodisk, and generated a program construct to emulate a military pilot over the communications channel.
Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3) Page 30