He examined it, searching for a way to disengage the combination fan/security grate from the wall. It had hinges on the left, but two heavy bolts held it in place on the right.
“How would you get past this?” he whispered.
Sadako climbed up, peering around his hip at the obstacle. “I’d take the fan out and slip through the hole. I don’t think you’d fit.”
He grumbled, not liking the precarious location for a feat of kinetic strength. Even if he was able to tear the thing loose, the amount of force needed to do it would fling him off the ladder.
Her hand pulled at his belt. “Sometimes tools are better than mind powers.”
Mamoru leaned away to give her room, and she pulled a four-inch straight-bladed Nano knife from her thigh, severing the bolts with two quick wrist motions. He tugged at the entire fan assembly, swinging it away from the wall like a door. She climbed in first, setting the severed bolts on the bottom of the vent shaft.
A few meters in, she lay flat on her stomach and waved him past. “You know where we are going.”
Distinct awkwardness seized him while squeezing over her. Whenever he thought about her, he saw the little girl from the river. To him, she would always be innocent. He swallowed his near-crippling sense of inappropriateness at being pressed against a full-grown woman who was his sister. Mamoru held the image of his angry sensei in his mind as he crawled forward, but guilt came anyway. How many opportunities had he ignored to get her out of the NSK because of his loyalty to the shogun? His eyes narrowed at the thought of Minamoto awarding her to him as a pet. The mere thought of Sadako with a detonator around her neck caused a daydream of him perched on Minamoto’s desk, katana rammed through the old man’s chest into his throne.
“W-what’s wrong?”
Mamoru shuddered at the echo of her voice behind him. “Nothing.”
“You seem consumed with rage all of a sudden.”
How could she know? “I… have many regrets.”
She remained quiet until they reached a ninety-degree turn to the right. When she could catch his eye, she put a hand on his shoulder.
“I forgive you.”
He clasped her hand, lost for a moment in a haze. What the hell am I doing here? Mamoru stared into his sister’s eyes. Her struggle to smile as though everything was fine hit him in the chest. He looked down, fingertips squeaking over the smooth metal conduit.
“I will avenge you.”
“Mamoru…” She put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “No. Let it go. I would rather they go unpunished than you get yourself killed. Nothing can change the past. You could kill every person in the NSK, raise them from the dead, and kill them again, but it won’t change what happened to me. You have Nami and I have plenty of time to make a life. We have no reason to ever go back.”
He held her hand against his face for a few seconds of quiet acceptance. “Let us finish what I came here to do, and be rid of the tasks of others.”
Sadako withdrew her arm and activated her hood. Black liquid-rubber oozed up and over her face. A wave of matte finish swept over the shiny material as millions of nanobots made it solid. Dark lenses formed over her eyes, reflecting Mamoru’s face in duplicate. She nodded.
A softball-sized orb floated down the shaft, dark grey with a red ring of light around the central lens. They leaned against the sides to give it room. The sentry paid them no heed, continuing on its route. Several tunnels and two ladders later, the air grew colder and gravity ceased. Heavy rumbling shuddered through the walls, no doubt caused by the mechanism that drove the rings. Based on Mamoru’s estimation, they floated through an air conduit connecting the central spindle to the ring assembly. The rotation provided gravity to their sections, but the spire did not seem to move. He grasped the floor, pulling himself ahead in short bursts of floating. The passage connected at a vertical T junction, offering the ability to go up or down. Air rushed from above, tinted with the smell of coffee. Mamoru chose up.
After a twenty-foot section, he glided into a room filled with power management boxes, batteries, and circuit breakers. Red light saturated the area from square LED bulbs in tiny cages. He navigated it by grabbing at the component housings and pulling. Sadako sliced open another ventilation cover. Her blades were mere tools, not sacred like a katana. He led the way in, starting a hundred and forty some-odd meter climb. I could get used to this lack of gravity.
When they reached the fourth ‘floor’ of the pod at the end of the central spire, he diverted to the right down a square-walled duct. Thirty feet later, a patch of light shone on the ceiling ahead through a grating, joined by the fragrance of coffee and the sound of a woman’s voice.
“I don’t like it, Senator. Not one bit. The Angel has not even had a shakedown run yet, and you want to pack it full of a hundred civilians in some kind of idiotic PR maneuver? Do they drag people into a dark room somewhere and lobotomize them when they win an election?”
A weaker voice, tinted with static and pops replied, “I respect your position, general, but this came down from on high. We don’t need a vacation cruise. Take them around the moon and back. Given the size of the Angel, I hardly think ‘packing it full’ is an appropriate descriptor.”
“I don’t appreciate the security risk associated with a media stunt. This installation has never been exposed to the public. No civilian has set foot on Crucible Station, and I intend to keep it that way. What is the Senate prepared to do if something happens?”
Mamoru raised an eyebrow. Sadako slipped a small, black tube from her belt. As big around as a light pen, its length allowed her to conceal it in a fist. She crept to the vent slats, and held up a finger.
“We can work around any eventualities, general. The guests can board via shuttle directly from the moon. All we need you to do is fly around out there for an hour or two and make nice with the NewsNet people. This is for morale, for recruitment, and to show those corporate weasels that space belongs to the UCF.”
The general sighed, rubbing the frustration out of her forehead. “They have more colonies than we do.”
“With all due respect, General Whitaker. Six tents and some half-alive peasants forcibly transplanted to a remote observation post doesn’t count as a colony in the eyes of the Senate.”
“This is not going to end well, Anders. Never in our history have we waved top-secret advantages in the public eye. Something will go wrong.”
“Have a little faith, Jenny.” A blurry face on the Vidphone winked. “See you Friday.”
“Arrogant son of a bitch.” The general seethed for a moment and stood. The room seemed to have some manner of artificial gravity, but weaker than normal. “I didn’t put in twenty goddamned years for some bureaucrat to call me ‘Jenny.’”
As soon as the Vidphone went dark, Sadako held her fist to her mouth and bit down on the end of the tube. A tiny capsule of pressurized CO2 ruptured, firing a one-inch dart into the back of the woman’s head.
“Ouch, what the―?” The general reached for what stung her, but slumped over her desk before her fingers made contact.
Sadako burst through the vent, sliding like a wraith into the room. She stuffed the general into the hollow beneath the desk and reclaimed the dart. Mamoru pulled himself through the hole, hung on his fingertips for an instant, and dropped to his feet. He crouched, touching a finger to the floor. Some electronic component under the tiles created an effect similar to gravity, attracting matter downward. The effect felt about half as strong as being on Earth.
That must use an enormous amount of power. “A blowgun?” He cocked an eyebrow. “That’s a little old-school.”
“Hands free.” She pantomimed hanging on the ceiling while using her mouth to aim and fire it. “Aside from the pressure capsule, the design has been the same for thousands of years. A tool does not need to be complex to be effective.”
He moved to the window and peered through silver blinds at a long concourse. Most of the far wall was viewport, separ
ated in ten-meter segments by bulkheads with emergency blast doors. Outside in space, the hull of the CSS Angel gleamed. Its long, boxy silhouette, wider than it was tall, filled the windows. It had the shape of a battleship, if a battleship did not have to care about hydrodynamics. Multiple batteries of turrets on the fore section were the most startling feature of all.
Mamoru sighed. “Where mankind goes, he brings war.”
Sadako tucked the chair in on the General and rounded the desk. “We might encounter aliens one day. No telling how friendly they’ll be. I’d rather we had weapons and did not need them than need and not have.”
“The main boarding tunnel is forty yards away.” He pointed. “Two men and four bots are in the way.”
“I thought you said the bots won’t bother us.”
Mamoru nodded. “They should not.”
She leaned up to the window. “I do not see another option but to go through them. They will notice us leaving this room. I would not have time to use my suit.”
“Then I shall go through them.” He removed his katana from his belt, wielding it with the scabbard on.
He raised the weapon in a two handed grip, closing his eyes as light swam over his arms and back, in time with ripples through muscle. Sadako hit the panel, causing the door to squeak to the side. Mamoru surged forward into the hall and his sprint accelerated over fifty miles per hour. Weak gravity made the task far less draining than he’d expected. The farther soldier crumpled from the blunted sword across his skull before any realization of attack showed on his face.
Mamoru had swung as if to cut the man’s head in half, spinning through the stroke and delivering a stepping stroke at the second guard. The other man opened his mouth from shock, fingers flexing as his hand flew towards his pistol. His eyes crossed as the black, curved sheath collided with his forehead. Both sentries were unconscious before the first finished falling.
The quartet of orbs hung in midair as though nothing happened.
Sadako sprinted over, the tilt of her head conveying awe her eyes could not project through dark lenses. With a pleasant beep, the security doors opened on their own as Mamoru took a step towards them. The boarding corridor lacked gravity, and fanned the growing sense of unease in his gut. Only a few millimeters of plastic separated them from a death most horrible. He accelerated himself, hand-over-handing along a heavy blue safety line. Mamoru reached the other side and had the ship’s hatch open before Sadako made it a quarter of the way across.
“Nervous?” she asked with a hint of a laugh in her voice.
“I do not like space.” He pulled her through and closed the hatch. “Too much can go wrong. They should have left it as it was when it took years of training to leave the planet.”
Sadako hugged him. “They said the same thing about pilots when hovercars went mainstream.”
“It is not the same. Space is far riskier than flying.”
She pushed him inside. “We do not have much time. Someone will see those men lying on the ground.”
“Yes,” said Mamoru.
A rectangular corridor with truncated corners led perpendicular to the keel. Down the center, a raised central grating covered a shallow trench full of wires in neat bundles. An airlock cluster on the far away port side occupied a room at the other end. At the halfway point, it intersected another hallway of larger size that ran from bow to stern.
“We are below the operational decks in the engineering and cargo areas. We must find our way up several levels.”
She nodded once. “I remember the schematics. Left up ahead.”
He jogged to the intersection and went left. Several meters later, he entered an elevator capsule and linked with the computer. After closing the door, Mamoru sent the pod up five levels and stopped. Sadako clenched her hands into fists and released, watching the door, waiting for it to open. Minutes passed of nothing before she glanced up at her brother who appeared lost in meditation.
Lights went from white to red and the CSS Angel flooded with alarms.
“Warning: Primary reactor chamber has reached critical temperature. Malfunction detected in control rod assembly one through seven. Secondary cooling loop failure. Warning: Reactor control rod assembly malfunction. Uncontained criticality event imminent.”
Sadako covered her mouth with both hands. Mamoru opened his eyes and winked at her.
“It is false. There are a few technicians and workers on board still.”
“I am going to hit you for that when we are safe.”
He laughed.
They ducked out of the elevator on the upper level among junior officers’ quarters. Mamoru went right, towards the stern. Sadako ran behind him, cringing from the blaring alarm, trying to yell something at him over the noise. Mamoru opened a security door leading to the senior officers’ quarters, and sprinted to the center of the hallway where a ten-foot wide cylindrical elevator waited.
It took them up to the bridge superstructure, which extended above the highest deck. The door rotated out of their way, creating an opening almost as wide as the elevator itself. Much to Mamoru’s pleasure, there was no one else on the bridge. Stark white against the blackness of space, the CSS Angel’s hull filled the forward viewscreen. Mamoru stomped with an imperious gait to the captain’s chair, spun on his heel, and sat. Almost as soon as his weight hit the cushions, every viewscreen filled with a cartoon caricature of Minamoto: fat, bald, with bright red makeup spots on his cheeks, and clad in ill-fitting samurai armor.
Sadako giggled.
“I modified the ship’s AI,” whispered Mamoru. “Minamoto-chan, as soon as the workers are evacuated, get us out of here.”
The animated warrior snapped to attention, shouting, “Hai!”
Mamoru imagined absolute confusion spreading through Crucible station as the ship broke moorings and powered away. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. Sadako grinned at him, fluffing her hair out after lowering her automatic hood. His pleased smile faded with a sharp pain in his left thigh where she punched him on a pressure point. It took a moment to rub the paralysis out of his leg.
She turned away from his accusing look. “That’s for scaring the hell out of me with the reactor nonsense.”
“I thought of it while inside. There was no time to warn you.” He shook his head at her before glancing at one of the screens. “Minamoto-chan, find a location where we can hide this ship for a while.”
“What is a while?” replied the console, sounding like a bad impression of an ancient samurai video dubbed in English. “Also, I humbly request that you discontinue this ridiculous avatar.”
“I will change the avatar once we are done. I need the ship to be hidden for at least a few months.”
“There are several debris fields between Earth and Mars, closer to the Red Planet. We could conceal the ship among the Periculum Belt.” One of the large display screens on the left wall displayed an image of Mars and a light-grey shaded blob about four planet-widths away. “The Periculum Belt contains a number of massive debris chunks that I could use for cover. In a minimal power state with sensors on standby, it would take close-range exploration by small craft to find us.”
“Excellent,” said Mamoru, glancing at the plot on the screen. “Since we have about fourteen hours to wait, does this thing have baths?”
Minamoto-chan bowed in a posture of groveling subservience. “Deepest apologies Mamoru-sama. This is a military vessel. The bathing facilities consist of large banks of autoshowers without privacy partitions.”
“Damn,” muttered Mamoru. “Oh, well. Hot water is hot water.”
Destiny
og trailed off in the breeze as Mamoru exhaled. The fragrance of pine needles kept him from focusing on the anxiety gnawing at the back of his mind. He amused himself trying to spot Sadako in the snow, but her suit’s camouflage electronics made it a daunting prospect. Light flurries flared violet and blue as they passed through the display above his NetMini. Mamoru frowned at the ‘no signal�
�� message. The wind picked up to a howl.
“When are they coming?”
Sadako’s question, so sudden and close, brought his katana out by reflex. She committed to a dodge even before he stalled his swing. Each offered the other apologetic looks. He braced the tip on his finger and sheathed the weapon. She stood two steps away, but he found it difficult to differentiate her from the background. Two black lenses seemed to float at the top of a vague woman-shaped outline of ghostly white, flecked with brown and green hints of pine tree.
“He is already late.”
She looked down. “It’s so cold. Why did you agree to meet here?”
“Scattered Lands…” He shifted, surveying the horizon. “Lawless, yet free of the dangers in the interior, I imagine he did not want to risk spies.”
Her hand alighted on his shoulder. “Perhaps he wanted to take you away from technology to keep you at a disadvantage?”
“Why? The one who calls herself Pixie claims he wishes to protect The Awakened from the world. Why would he seek advantage over me?”
“It is the way of men who crave power. Trust is the bedfellow of a fool.”
Mamoru put a hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry, Sadako. You are so young to be jaded.”
“Am I wrong?”
He patted her arm. “You are not.”
An approaching whirr broke the silence. Mamoru shifted, glancing up at the tops of distant pine trees. Needles wavered as cones of headlight in the flurries preceded a dark blue hovercar. The downdraft kicked snow from branches as the vehicle brushed through the treetops, descending to a landing a short distance away. Mamoru let go of his sister, letting his arms hang straight.
“Be calm. At best, they are allies. At worst, employers.”
Sadako shifted her gaze to him until the sound of doors brought her attention to a man and a woman emerging from the vehicle. The driver’s brown tweed coat and scarf left him looking a bit like an out of work university professor, while his long, thick brown hair lent a hint of anachronism. He hesitated, one hand on the corner of the door while squinting through the snow. At the sight of Mamoru, he smiled and shoved the door closed. Anna, in a dark navy coat and knee-high boots with short heels, rounded the front end of the car and walked at the man’s side. They approached to within three steps.
Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3) Page 32