Still at a level-one link, he felt something happening. Querying the base AI, he learned that Tanemura was busily purging data files. Reluctantly, he drew his hand away, breaking the link. His eyes met Cynthia Collins's. "What is it?" she asked. "Who's attacking us?"
"Must be rebels," he replied, grinning wryly as he said it. Damn, either the rebels had picked up one hell of a lot of delta-V, lately, or the government had been lying to them all about how good the rebels were. They'd snuck on Daikoku out of nowhere, launched a sharp, short, professional attack, and crippled the station in the space of seconds.
Through the dome, the destroyer loomed above the station, terrifying in its size, its scale made evident as a second ship passed slowly between the destroyer and the Yards. The newcomer looked like a K-T drive freighter, considerably modified; there were laser turrets attached to its long, square-angled body, but they had the look of improvisation about them… as well as haste.
Thrusters flared briefly, outshone by the pulse of anticollision strobes. The freighter was drawing closer to the control center's external lock.
Lloyd squared his shoulders. "I guess we'd better square away to receive visitors."
As if to prove his words, a hollow clang sounded from the main airlock beneath the control deck.
* * *
Chapter 5
In all the military works it is written: To train samurai to be loyal, separate them when young, or treat them according to their character. But it is no use to train them according to any fixed plan. They must be educated by benevolence. If the superior loves benevolence, then the inferior will love his duty.
- Tokugawa Ieyasu
early seventeenth century
Resistance had ceased throughout the Daikoku orbital base, a victory more sudden and more complete than Dev could possibly have hoped for. With Vindemiatrix docked directly with the station's main airlock, New American troops were storming aboard, armed with laser rifles and slug pistols and wearing combat armor instead of their accustomed warstriders.
Dev remained aboard Eagle, surveying the prize through electronic senses. Though he was linked to the tactical channel being used by the boarding party, his attention was on the take. Eighteen warships, including three Yari-class destroyers. He felt a thrill there. His father had been put in command of an Imperial Yari destroyer, the Hatakaze, the ship with which he'd saved the refugees over Lung Chi.
They'd done it! He'd done it, and with only four casualties out of his strike force, and seven warflyers damaged.
It was too bad, he thought, that there wasn't some way to take over this entire facility. New America and a few other worlds in the Confederation had shipyards, but they weren't as large or as well equipped as this one.
In theory, it would one day be possible to grow an entire starship, complete right down to the brightwork and the loaded AI programming, by turning appropriately instructed nano loose on a lump of asteroidal iron and assorted, raw trace elements. In practice, the sheer size and complexity of even a small starship required each vessel to be grown in sections, which were extracted from the nanovats and assembled like enormous three-dimensional puzzles by swarms of remotes, workpods and constructors, or even genegineered workers. The assembled hulls were then repeatedly bathed in a nano flux that added their durasheathing, layer upon layer of diamond, monomolecular duralloy, and ceramics, together with the microscopic superconducting grid that afforded protection from charged particle radiation in space. Finally, highly specialized nano flowed through the ship's interior nervous system, programming AI components, plating out and completing electrical connections, and hardwiring the control circuitry. Weapons, except for the largest and most massive systems like spinal mount PPCs that were part of a ship's overall design, were added later, dropped into hardpoints and wired into the control network by specially programmed nano.
From the embrace of his slot aboard Eagle, Dev surveyed the assault force's prize with growing excitement.
Through the crisscross of girders, Dev could make out long, black ships moored between gantries and docking access tubes on the facility's third level, eighteen military vessels of various types, ranging in size from cutters and corvettes to three small destroyers. All appeared to be brand-new, their gleaming, durasheath hulls night-hued, unmarred by dust impacts or wear. They hadn't even been painted yet with unit markings or the insignia of Imperium or Hegemony., More ships were visible in the fitting and drawing yards close by, still resting in their nanovat cradles or newly emerged from their armoring flux and awaiting only the finishing details of drive controls or weapons or AI installations to make them fully operational.
All that most of those ships needed were crews and full loads of cryo-H in their tanks. Several more - a close inspection would tell them how many - -were ready save for weapons. Even unarmed, they would be valuable additions to the Confederation fleet, and something could be done about arming them back at New America.
As for the rest, Dev studied each with a small pang of regret. They included the monster frame of a half-assembled Kako-class cruiser and two Naka-class light cruisers, as well as twelve smaller vessels; if only they could be made operational!
Unfortunately, there was no time. Imperial or Hegemony ships could arrive at any moment, and it was critical that Dev both get the captured ships back to New America and preserve the original members of his squadron. All he could do was order the destruction of the unfinished ships.
After the shipyard was secured. According to the boarding party, most of the base's complement of Imperial Marines were either on the ground or still in their barracks, a duralloy cylinder attached to the control center by a long access way, already sealed off as though they were expecting a siege. A handful of marines in the station proper resisted; the firefight - the firefights, actually, since the skirmishing was widely scattered and completely uncoordinated - were over in minutes.
"We've got 'em," Lieutenant Gary Langley reported over the net. "Control center secure!"
"On my way." Dev broke contact.
Minutes later, he made his way through the zero-G tangle of corridors toward the orbital base's control sec-lion. With him were several members of his shipboard staff, including Simone Dagousset, a Confed computer expert with his command team. Bodies floated there, broken and bloody, though mercifully few. More of the Imperials had chosen to surrender than to fight, it seemed.
A door dissolved open, and he pulled himself hand over hand onto the main control deck, a large, circular room cluttered with electronic consoles, the gray bulk of a dozen full-linkage couches, a projection dome over all set to view surrounding space. Eagle hung there beyond the fragile barrier, a most convincing inducement to surrender.
Langley met him. He carried an unholstered blast pistol, and there was a blackened, half-melted slash across his armored plastron. "This was the control crew, sir," he said. "The Nihonjin were linked when we came in. The others weren't."
"Thank you, Lieutenant."
"Uh, if you'll excuse me? Some of my boys are busy with the Impie Marines."
"Go ahead, Gary. I've got the watch."
The prisoners watched him narrowly as he moved closer. They'd segregated themselves into two groups, Nihonjin and gaijin, beneath the guns of the Confederation troops who'd burst in here moments ago. The Japanese - there were five of them, all men - looked sullen and resentful. The gaijin, four men and three women of various skin shades and ancestries, seemed less monolithic in their emotions, which ranged from fear through confused uncertainty to outright hostility. All wore bodysuits of utilitarian gray; moments earlier, they must have been linked through the station's AI to its defense and communications systems. They clung, like Dev and the others, to handholds in deck or bulkheads to keep from drifting. Giving the others scarcely a glance, Dev centered his attention on the oldest-looking Japanese, assuming that he would be the one in charge. He appeared to be in his fifties, with a long, creased face.
"Konichiwa, Shikikansan," Dev sa
id formally. By addressing him as commander - the word meaning position rather than the rank - Dev hoped to put the proceedings on a less-than-hostile footing. "I am Taisa Cameron, of the Confederation Navy." How strange that sounded in his own ears!
The Nihonjin officer did not sneer, not quite. "You seem somewhat young for such high rank." His English, if stiffly precise and formal, was perfect.
A bulldog-faced Japanese at his side snickered and said something low. Dev caught the word shiro - an epithet meaning, roughly, "white boy." Kuso! He had no credibility with these people at all. No kao…
Heat brushed his cheeks. "Sergeant Fillmore?" He turned to the armored noncom Langley had left in charge of the Confed troops. "Find a place for these people. I want to have a peek at their datanet."
"Yes, sir," she replied. She holstered her handgun and rasped out an order to part of her squad.
"You will get nothing, kaizoku," the bulldog snapped. The Nihongo word meant pirate. "You're too late! The storage banks have been purged."
"He's right, I'm afraid," another voice said from the second group of prisoners, which was positioned now at Dev's back. "They were busy killing its memory when your people barged in. My God, Dev… Cameron is it? Is that really you?"
Dev tugged on the handhold he was clinging to and roatated his body. It couldn't be -
"Lloyd?" He had to search for a first name, so much had happened in intervening years. His cephlink helped. "Randi Lloyd?"
Randi Lloyd had been First Helm on the freighter Mintaka, years ago when Dev had first signed aboard that ship. He'd taken Dev under his wing, a raw newbie with his sockets still slick with sterile shipping fluid, showing him the feeds on his first shipboard slot, junior cargo officer. He'd left not long after, reportedly to join the Hegemonic Guard. Dev had admired him; his own decision to join the Guard had come at least in part from Lloyd.
"You know this guy?" Sergeant Fillmore asked.
"I certainly do." Dev gestured. "Simone? Check out the computer."
"Yes, sir."
"Small galaxy, eh?" Lloyd said as Dev drew nearer. "When did you turn pirate, son?"
Older than Dev by fifteen years, his face was seamed and he was showing some gray at his temples. He'd aged a lot since the day Dev had last seen him. No wonder he'd not picked him out immediately.
"Who says I did?" Dev replied, smiling, more to hide his own uncertainty than anything else. "I'm fighting for the Confederation now. Maybe you've heard of us?"
He'd not seen Randi Lloyd for years now. He still felt as though he were the junior apprentice, and Lloyd the teacher, and had to suppress the urge to add the word "sir."
"Aye, I've heard," Lloyd said. He didn't return Dev's smile. "I never figured you to throw in with a bunch of losers like that, though. You know, don't you, that they've got the proverbial snowball's chance on Moloch?"
"You will all be utterly destroyed," the base commander added from the other side of the compartment.
"Well, I m not here to debate it with you," Dev replied. "With either of you. What's the word, Simone?"
Dagousset had just pulled her hand clear of a terminal interface. She shook her head, short red hair bouncing with the movement in zero-G. "I don't think they actually deleted anything," she said. "More like they locked it away under a password, with a false front to make us think we've come up dry."
"Really?"
"I don't know. Just a feeling, the way things're organized in there."
Simone Dagousset was the sharpest mind with a computer net Dev knew. Sometimes he thought she was more than half computer herself. "Okay, Simone. Thanks."
"I can whittle away at that password if you want."
He nodded. "Do it."
Lloyd raised his eyebrows. "What is it you're looking for, Dev?"
"Actually, all we're here for is a few of your new ships out there. But we're always interested in having a peek at the opposition's computer files. You never know what you might learn about prowords, general orders, fleet movements, that sort of thing."
"Fleet movements?" Lloyd said casually. "Like the one we had through here a week ago?"
"Damare-yo!" the Japanese commander shouted, lunging toward Lloyd. "Shut up!"
A struggle broke out with the Japanese prisoners. Fillmore kicked off a bulkhead, intercepting the commander with a shoulder block across his knees that sent both of them tumbling out of control. Other Confed troops closed in, blocking off the captives.
"Uragiri-mono! Kono yogore!" The bulldog-faced man struggled in the grasp of two of Dev's men, his face flushed with rage. "Traitor! Filthy bastard!"
"Get them the hell out of here!" Dev shouted above the confusion. The Confeds hustled the Japanese prisoners out of the room, and there was silence once more.
"I don't think you scored many points with your boss just then," Dev said. "You want to tell me what that was all about?"
Lloyd exchanged glances with the other gaijin. One of the women shook her head. "Randi, I don't think - "
"Damn it," one of the men snarled. "We swore oaths of allegiance!"
"You think we owe those bastards anything?" Lloyd replied, bitterness in his words.
"Jamis," Dev said, signaling one of the remaining Confed troops. "Take these people someplace else. Not with the Imperials. See that they're made comfortable."
"Right, sir."
"The rest of you wait outside, please."
In a moment, Dev and Lloyd were alone - except for Simone, who had jacked herself into one of the link couches and was now in the room only physically. Mentally, she was deep within the AI program running the base.
The Hegemony officer looked him up and down. " 'Taisa,' eh?" He chuckled.
"It's not something I'm real comfortable with yet, okay?"
"Oh, I wasn't criticizing. Every navy has its own ways of doing things."
"You wanted to tell me something?"
"You arrived here from New America, right?"
Caution stayed Dev's tongue. "No. What makes you say that?"
"1 was a merchant spacer quite a while, remember." He nodded toward the dome, to where part of the Vindemiatrix was visible at the base docking port. "I know a Newamie long-haul design when I see her."
"We get our ships from all over," Dev said, a little stiffly.
"I don't doubt it. Including, I gather, Hegemony automated shipyards."
"When we have to. What's your point, sir?" The honorific slipped out, unbidden.
"Tanemura didn't want me spilling the feed, Dev. We had a major fleet movement through here eight days ago. All Imperials, no Hegemony ships at all. They called it the Cherry Blossom Squadron, and it was under the command of an Admiral Kawashima. A tough old bird, I've heard. One dragonship, the Donryu. Thirteen cruisers, five of 'em big sons of bitches, Kako- and Atago-class. Ten destroyers, four of 'em Amatukazes, like your big boy out there. Eight transport marus, big ones."
"Good God," Dev said. "That's a major invasion force."
"On target. They pulled in here to pick up two new-grown destroyers and to take on a full load of slush-H. I was linked into the commnet just before they boosted clear, and I heard Kawashima talking to Tanemura."
"Tanemura's your boss here? The one with the long face?"
"That's him. One of 'em, anyway. I heard him wish Kawashima gambatte kudasai at New America."
"Good luck," Dev translated. The news left him numb. An invasion force of that size had passed through the Athenan system over a week ago, headed for New America? And the presence of eight troop transports suggested that when they got there, they planned to stay.
"You… you have proof of this?"
The other man shrugged. "It's all in the datanet. There should be a complete set of IFF codes in there, signal protocols, ViRcom frequencies, everything."
"I don't suppose you have the net's access password."
"Um… try fugaku."
Dev considered his old shipmate. The word, a poetic form for Mount Fuji, in Japan, could be a
code unleashing some sort of dump order in the AI's memory. He didn't think so, though. Lloyd looked sincere… and angry, and Dev could feel an inward bond with the man, a warrior's yujo. Besides, surely the system's Japanese masters would have already initiated a dump, if they'd had it set up that way.
Lloyd must have noticed Dev's hesitation. "That was the keyword for most of the secure fleet traffic stuff. If there's a higher security access, I don't know it. They kicked the lot of us gaijin off-line and took over just as you made your move out there. I imagine they put up security blocks once they figured nothing we could do could stop you."
Warstrider: Jackers Page 6