Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “What was that?” asked Sadako. “The console flashed off and on a dozen times.”

  “I trust more in this machine’s ability to fly itself. Sometimes I question if humanity was ever meant to leave the Earth.”

  “Do you think the Kami exist out here?” Sadako leaned close to the side window.

  The awe in her reflected face made her seem innocent, and filled his head with memories of who she used to be. “It is mostly empty. Perhaps there is a spirit of nothingness.”

  “Mother did not hate you.”

  He shot her a pointed stare, which softened as he sighed. “She did not care for me. Despite being harvested from her body, I was a project from father’s work.”

  “You were still her child. She tried not to form a bond, but as she watched you grow, she could not help but be your mother. You never saw it, but she cried many nights, fearing they would take you away. She tried to stay distant, knowing the day would come when you were gone, but could not do it. Does it matter that she did not bear you into the world? She cared for you.”

  Disbelief took over Mamoru’s face.

  “It is true. She would argue with Father while you were at school, trying to convince him to take us and flee.” Sadako narrowed her eyes at him. “He, too, had much honor. Father would not disobey his company.”

  “I… was too weak to save them. Father tried, but all I wanted to do was play my video games.” His knuckles creaked. “If I had only applied myself and trained, I might have saved them.” Mamoru forced himself to look her in the eye. “…Saved you.”

  She moved from her seat, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Do not blame yourself, Mamoru. You were only a boy then. If you had trained as Father wanted, they would have taken you sooner. They had the data, which they thought was far-fetched fantasy. They waited and watched to see if you would prove your power.” Her head touched his. “Turn us around. Let us go somewhere far away from all of this.”

  “I gave my word that I would help Archon. I do not expect you to understand why I must finish this.”

  “You still care about Minamoto?”

  “I do not know, but I will never return to Japan.” He hesitated, tapping his fingers on the console. “It would mean death for you.”

  Sadako stood and folded her arms. “I will not let you do this alone. If you are to die, I will be with you. Tell me what we must do.” She glared at the way he looked at her. “I’m not the little girl you remember.”

  Mamoru studied his lap. “No, you are not. No matter how much I want you to be happy, you are not. In my dreams, you are still a little girl up to her knees in the Sumida, smiling.”

  Her expression fell to one of regret.

  “I am sorry for injuring you in the parking deck. You were trying to force me to kill you, and your skill surpasses mine. Only by virtue of my”―he waved his hand around―“chi, psionics, kinetics, whatever I should call it…”

  “You already apologized. I forgive you. I should not have put you in that position, but why didn’t you tell me you fried my kill switch?”

  Mamoru muttered and poked the button to set the shuttle’s autopilot to active. “You were unconscious.”

  “You left me there.” She clutched his arm. “I thought you had forgotten who I was.”

  “Minamoto wants me dead. Your people would have killed you for failing. I hoped to lead them away from you by making it look as though I had beaten you.”

  She glared down, trying to stay angry, but could not think of a way to fault him. She flopped in the seat, elbows on her knees and chin in both hands. Mamoru chuckled.

  “You haven’t made that face since your sixth birthday.”

  “We didn’t have enough land for a horse.” She sighed.

  The shuttle rumbled from short bursts of maneuvering thrusters as it reoriented itself. Inertia pressed him against the cushions as the main engines came on. Lines appeared on the windscreen, defining the edges of a virtual road on which the shuttle traveled. A green box highlighted empty space, a destination too far away to see.

  “I am to steal a larger starship. We must infiltrate a remote construction facility, gain entrance to the vessel, and depart.”

  “Those ships have crews of over a hundred, how do they expect one person to steal it?”

  Mamoru’s face was somber. “That is why Archon sought me out.”

  She leaned forward, desperation in her voice. “He means for you to stay with them to operate the ship. You’re going to be trapped.”

  “No, it is possible for him to find a crew. It is impossible to have a large number of people sneak on board to steal it.”

  “It is fortunate I am trained to be stealthy.” Sadako offered a sad smile. “What kind of security do they have? Did you obtain any intelligence about the facility or are you planning to rush up there in typical samurai fashion?”

  “They gave me a disk with information. This is a military facility out beyond Mars. Despite the isolation, their security around this ship is quite high.”

  Over the next thirty minutes, he went over the schematics of a small military space station.

  The console crackled to life, displaying a hologram of a young man in a neat green cap. “Attention Sierra Tango Two-Nine-Nine, you are on approach to a secure facility. Challenge Greenfield.”

  Mamoru and Sadako looked up. The previously empty targeting box now surrounded a thumbnail-sized speck of bright metal.

  “Roger that Crucible, challenge response Wakefern.” A man’s voice with a pronounced southern accent came out of nowhere. “Requesting approach vector.”

  Sadako tilted her head at a small screen, and gestured at a caramel-skinned man with a raised eyebrow.

  “Program,” whispered Mamoru.

  “How did it know the answer?” whispered Sadako.

  Mamoru smiled. “It’s in their database.”

  “Two-Nine-Nine, your flight is not”―the hologram-head looked up and to the right―“oh, there it is. Damn ground pounders, they never fill these templates out properly. What is your cargo?”

  “Crucible, we’re on a funerary escort detail, no cargo… We’re picking up. Over.”

  The holographic head leaned away and looked off to the side, seeming eager to get off the comm and cease talking of such things. “Uh, roger that. Stand by for Nav uplink.”

  Sadako glanced at Mamoru. “That’s good, right?”

  “Good is often a matter of relativity.”

  For the Taking

  rucible station grew to dominate the viewscreen as they approached. Four thick ring-shaped sections orbited a central spindle four hundred meters long. The first and third rings rotated clockwise while the other two moved opposite. Each ring looked tall enough to contain eight levels, and glimmered with thousands of tiny windows. At the relative ‘top’ end of the main shaft, an enormous starship in gleaming white dwarfed the station. Close to double the length of the spindle, the CSS Angel resembled a giant whale with a bizarre needle jammed in its side.

  “That’s it?” Sadako’s eyes widened. “It’s bigger than the station. He wants you to steal that?”

  “Yes.”

  Mamoru’s program guided the shuttle to a rectangular access hatch along the outer face of Ring Two. The shuttle slid sideways, matching the travel of the rotation to stay lined up with the door. Yellow lights flashed for a second before the flat grey portal split in four sections, each retracting to a corner. The ship slid through, as if rising vertically through the opening with less than four feet of clearance on either side. Mamoru was grateful the autopilot could land the craft. Even had he embodied the ship, the maneuver looked tricky. Brilliant light from the edges shimmered in a black halo effect as the nose end went through the door. The windscreens, armor-plated electronic displays rather than glass, filtered out the blinding glare.

  Inside, greenish-metal walls seemed to writhe as the shuttle’s passage through the band of light caused shadows to shift among dozens of pipes and struts. Eno
rmous, square block letters spelled Bay S2-9C on a wall that crept dangerously close to the nose. Sadako backed out of the cockpit as their craft slid deeper into the chamber, as if two steps away would keep her alive if it hit the wall. Mamoru’s knuckles whitened on the seat as the space between the nose and the station seemed to disappear.

  Sadako leapt close and held on to his arm, bracing for a collision that never came. The outer door closed, becoming part of the landing bay floor. Mamoru’s stomach fluttered as the shuttle executed a quick vertical drop, and settled on its pads. The initial strike of the landing gear made Sadako stumble. She flailed, keeping her balance for a second. When the craft bounced up on the spring-loaded struts, she fell seated in his lap.

  “I thought ninja are supposed to have good balance.” He grinned.

  She frowned. “It doesn’t feel right here. I shouldn’t have fallen.”

  Mamoru lifted her on to her feet and put a hand on the console to initiate the power-down sequence. Once the shuttle’s engines went offline, he opened the exit ramp. The shuttle’s frame vibrated with whirring motors. It stopped with a heavy thud that resonated through everything, and got them moving. Mamoru led the way to the exit hatch, and waited for the flashing red lights on the wall to stop. A few seconds later, the atmospheric sensors turned green and the door opened with a hiss and a cloud of fog, revealing the extended ramp.

  They flew down the steps, rounding the bottom and sprinting for a pile of storage cartons set against the inner wall. Exit from the docking chamber was on the left, by virtue of a stairway along a raised deck that ran the length of the bay. Above him, the shuttle’s nose had a few inches of clearance to the wall. He blinked, captivated at such a low margin for error. Mamoru peered over their cover, watching the door. He ducked when it opened, admitting three soldiers. One wore a dress uniform and appeared unarmed, the other two were in grey fatigues and each had a pistol and a white armband. The trio stopped in the door, waiting.

  Several minutes passed in silence. Mamoru put an arm over Sadako, pulling her near. Eyes closed, he focused on nonpresence to hide them from sensors and video feeds.

  She squirmed, whispering. “This is not the time to get cute.” A subtle white glow danced over his shoulders. She cringed. “Sorry.”

  After several minutes of silence, a voice echoed in the metal room. “Are you planning to disembark any time soon, soldier?”

  “I got nothing on thermal, sir,” said another voice. “Shuttle looks empty. Bay looks empty. There’s no one in there.”

  Boots clanked on metal; the pitch changed as they went from catwalk to grated stairs to flat plastisteel tiles. Sadako pushed herself backward into Mamoru, wearing him like a cape, guiding him deeper amid shadow. The sudden activation of her head covering almost made him jump as she shifted to use the black of her suit to hide his face.

  The three soldiers approached the entry ramp, the two with pistols in the lead. They had not drawn weapons, but kept their hands on them.

  “This is Lieutenant Fuentes. Whoever is on that shuttle, disembark immediately.”

  All that answered was the lieutenant’s voice echoing back out.

  “Nothing,” said the one on the left, glancing at an arm covered in holographic displays. “There’s no one on board.”

  “I-I don’t like it, sir. This shuttle commed in as a funerary mission… and there’s no one on board.”

  “Yeah, sir,” said the other man. “This is right outta a holo-vid. Ship of the Dead or some shit.”

  Lieutenant Fuentes gestured at the ramp. “Check it.”

  The two MPs gave each other a ‘that figures’ look, drew their pistols, and moved around the ramp. Sadako tensed. That put them facing forward, right at their hiding place. Fortunately, their expressions gave away how uneasy they were about a scenario of their own imagining. Single file, they went up the stairs.

  Sadako disengaged her body from Mamoru, patting him twice on the leg as a signal to let go of her.

  “Try not to kill them,” he whispered.

  She froze as the lieutenant turned at the noise. He looked in her direction, but did not hesitate or seem to notice her. As soon as he had his back turned, she sprang over the boxes. Myofiber augmentation in her legs flung her lithe body through the air in a fifteen-foot arc. She landed noiseless on tiptoe and stole up behind him. In one fluid motion, she pinched his nose and covered his mouth with her left hand while jabbing him in the neck with tiny metal pins that sprouted from the index and middle finger of her right. After a flash of electricity at the base of his skull, she eased a hundred ninety pounds of unconscious officer to the ground. Squatting low, she grabbed his shirt and struggled to drag him.

  When it became apparent it would take her too long, Mamoru ran over to help, hauling the inert solider by one arm behind the pile of cargo boxes. She rearranged the unconscious lieutenant to mold with the surroundings a little better, and pressed a small air hypo she took from her belt to the side of his neck.

  “He will sleep for an hour or more.”

  Mamoru ran to the shuttle. With one hand on the landing strut, he sent his thoughts into the machine. A minor program formed, first as an idea, then as a desire, and last as actual code. The shuttle would go dark for two hours, ignoring all commands. The ramp closed and locked, and soon the muted sounds of banging and shouting came from within.

  “They’ll think it was a ghost,” said Sadako.

  Rather than jump, Mamoru’s reaction to her sneaking up on him took the form of a few seconds of paralysis followed by a dire glare. She winked. He shook his head and jogged across the shuttle bay, up the stairs and over to the panel on the wall by the door.

  “This will not take long.”

  Sadako nodded, flattening herself against the wall at his side and watching the shuttle. Noting the height of the platform, she grabbed his arm. “They can see us.”

  “No, they can’t. The whole thing is dark. Everything’s off. Those aren’t real windows. They’re black painted shapes.”

  “They’ll be telling that story until they’re old men.”

  “Hmph.” Mamoru placed both hands on the terminal and focused.

  An eerie glow settled over him and threaded around his arms, which the console seemed to absorb. Without a deck between his power and the network, Mamoru experienced visions of digital space as fleeting hallucinations and daydreams superimposed over the real world. He could use the network, but any combat construct or hostile operator could hurt him for real.

  Mamoru’s online clone walked through the closed door. Tunnels of multicolored light raced past, a fast-forward maze navigated by a disembodied consciousness. Violet, silver, amber, and blue shifted in his imagination. The sense of the station’s size filled in as he mapped every wirepath and fiberoptic connection. It was too massive for him to embody in the usual manner, but he did not need to.

  Minutes of digital wandering brought him to the part of the network that handled the security system: cameras, biometric locks, pressure sensors, and antipersonnel turrets. The false reality in his mind became more prominent as he tapped psionic power in earnest. Spiraling ribbons of azure light wound together, strings of letters, numbers and symbols took the form of a second digital Mamoru made of light. The program construct, created at a thought, brought its hands together in a double clap, homage to the Shinto spirits. It turned with a spray of luminous hair, and looked up at an array of amethyst crystals―manifestations of CPUs. The construct leapt among them, connected by crackling lightning for several seconds before diving through the opaque surface, which rippled like liquid for a second before becoming glassy once more.

  Mamoru released his power, leaning on the wall to catch his breath.

  Sadako held on to him, keeping him on his feet. “Are you all right?”

  He pushed the button to open the door. “I am fine, just tired. None of the station’s security systems will react to us. My program will edit us out of surveillance cameras in real time, and we have ful
l access to the entire facility.”

  “I thought you didn’t like this sneaky stuff?”

  Her smile didn’t show through her facemask, but was evident in her voice and body language. He jogged along the corridor.

  “It is less complicated than killing everyone between where we are and where we need to be. These people do not need to die so that we may steal.”

  “You are still the same impatient boy in a rush to go back to his room and play games.”

  He frowned, head down. “I have not played a game since that day.”

  Sadako hugged him from behind. He clasped a hand over hers. After a moment, they continued down a hallway that circumnavigated Ring Two. The curvature lent a noticeable bend to such a long, open tract, reminding him he was in a place so removed from natural as to defy belief. The passable map of the station in his short-term memory guided him past a dozen other shuttle bays on the left to a round-walled shaft on the right, which led to the inside edge of the ring.

  A cluster of tall cylinders, the type used to store compressed gas, sat in racks behind locked cage doors on the left side. Two power-assisted pallet jacks were parked against the other wall. Gleaming white reflected overhead lights, making him squint. At the far end, the passage opened to a cargo elevator. He slid past a pair of heavy-duty loader carts, ducking under the claws made to grip hexagonal one-ton containers, and moved into the forty-foot square lift. Rather than hit the button, he climbed a maintenance ladder and convinced the roof hatch to open with a short mental prod.

  Sadako did not question his route. The elevator was far too loud, slow, and confining, and probably only capable of traveling among the four rings. They needed to get all the way to the top of the central spire. Mamoru hauled himself along a recessed ladder, thanking whatever designer had the foresight to afford it enough space to allow the lift to pass without killing him should it begin moving. Shining plastisteel beckoned above, lit every ten feet by a band of white strip-lights demarcating each floor. They climbed four stories before he paused to look around, grumbled, and climbed a little farther to a mechanical protrusion along the side of the shaft.