Warstrider

by William H. Keith

  “Like I said, you’ve got the makings of a great striderjack. I just have to know that what happened out there didn’t permanently scramble your brains.”

  “They’re no more scrambled than usual, Captain. I’m just… well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it. It might be a better idea to bounce me back to the infantry.”

  She shook her head. “I played back the recorder, going through your fight with the Cobra after I got knocked offline. You’re good, a natural linker. You’d be wasted with the leggers.”

  “Infantry,” he said, correcting her. “The trouble is that everybody’s making out like I was some kind of hero. I wasn’t. I was scared. When we were outside the Blade, trying to get up the ladder, I think I was more scared than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  So that was it. Burned once, he didn’t know if he could face it again. He’d be reliving the nightmare for quite a while to come, despite everything the psychtechs could feed him.

  “Kuso, Dev. The only people on a battlefield who aren’t scared are dead or unconscious. You think you’re something special?”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “Not me.”

  “You weren’t the only one scared on that ridge.”

  “You, Captain?”

  “Tell another living soul and I’ll hang your brain out to dry. But the only reason I fell was the fact that I panicked. Blind, sick, run-away-and-hide panic. If I hadn’t broken my leg, I’d still be running.”

  “That’s a bit hard to believe. Sir.”

  “Don’t jerk my strings, Cadet. I’m no different than you.” She watched him for a moment, aware of the succession of emotions mingling with her thoughts. She, too, was lucky to be alive, and she had this unusual young striderjack to thank for that. She still couldn’t remember her fall, worse, the fear, without a sharp inward wince.

  There was guilt, too. During her debriefing, she’d realized that the lone trooper she’d encountered had been Dev. She’d passed him by, leaving him for the Gammas; he’d left the Blade and braved those Gammas to come after her.

  She was realist enough to know that the two cases weren’t parallel. There was nothing she could have done, nothing she could have been expected to do, to save him, but the realization could not diminish her gratitude.

  Alive…

  Aware of the flush rising in her face, she changed the subject again. “I, ah, noticed you weren’t having trouble accessing codes up on that ridge.”

  “You noticed, huh?”

  “Looks to me like you were trying too hard before. Or maybe you were letting your fear tangle your wires. Either way, you’ve got it licked now. You know it.”

  But just the same, I think I’ll still put you in a one-slotter, she told herself. Just in case. There’s stuff going on inside your head that’ll never come out on a psych screening, and it might be better to let you find out about it on your own instead of teaming you with someone else. You certainly performed well on your own at Norway Ridge. “So you’ll come back to the Assassins?”

  “I guess so. Thanks.” He seemed embarrassed. “I’ll try not to let you down again.”

  “You ever do any horseback riding, Cadet?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve heard about horses,” he said. “On Earth. Never seen one, though.”

  “Some colonies still use them for transportation in the outback. They do on New America, where I come from. Big brutes. You can get hurt if you fall off.”

  The embarrassment was gone, replaced by a subtle, humorous twinkle. “Like falling off a strider?”

  “Like falling off a strider. The number one rule, though, is to get back on as soon as you fall off. Before you have a chance to think about it.”

  “Makes sense. I think I’d like to, ah, get back on.”

  “It’s still not the navy,” she said, sticking out her hand. “But welcome aboard. Again.”

  Grinning, he shook her hand, and she felt the inner surge of something she’d promised herself she would not feel again. I don’t want to get close to anybody, she thought. Not again!

  She dismissed the thought almost at once. Staticjack! You just get back on again!

  Chapter 19

  Therefore I say: Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

  When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.

  If ignorant of both the enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

  —The Art of War

  Sun Tsu

  fourth century B.C.

  They floated in golden light, three men, with Loki a cloud-wreathed sphere swelling against the night above them. The office of Rear Admiral Kazuo Aiko was located on the Asgard Ring, one hundred kilometers east of the Bifrost Sky-el, but the AI that enhanced and projected the image had purged it of the clutter of the orbital ring, leaving only clean stars and space and the storm-wracked globe of Loki. The room had taken on the rose-warm hues of 36 Ophiuchi C, but the atmosphere seemed chilly.

  None of the men in that room was happy.

  General John Howard, immaculate in army grays, clung to a handline and regarded the two Nihonjin who had invited him to this conference with some apprehension. Technically Howard outranked Aiko, but the admiral was the shosho in command of all Imperial forces currently in Loki’s system. Custom—and a healthy sense of career survival—dictated that even HEMILCOM lieutenant generals defer with respect and diplomatic courtesy to Imperial officers, whatever their rank.

  And as for the third man, he held no military rank at all, but that would not help Howard’s career if Shotaro Takahashi decided that a scapegoat was needed in the Loki affair. He was Daihyo, the Emperor’s personal representative, and his word was the Emperor’s command.

  Appearances, Howard reflected, could be deceiving, for Takahashi did not look like an Imperial representative. He was obese, a sumo wrestler without the beef in legs and arms that hinted at strength beneath layers of fat. His clothing, little more than a white cloth wrapped around hips and loins, furthered the similarity to sumo, but his body adornment, nano-tailored feathers, baroque metallic inlays, and patchworks of jewel-like color winding across half of his exposed body, was like nothing Howard had ever seen.

  The total effect was decadent… and threatening. Somehow the fabled human art of the Imperial Palace had crossed sixteen light-years to confront Howard here, in Aiko’s office. The Daihyo floated cross-legged in the center of the room, ignoring the conventions of up and down imposed by the room’s floor and meager furnishings. He seemed so at home in microgravity, and looked as if he would be so helpless on any world’s surface, that Howard wondered if his body tailoring extended beyond the superficialities of feathering, skin color, and texture. Takahashi might well be more Freefaller than Earth-norm human, incapable of setting foot on Loki or Earth.

  By contrast, Rear Admiral Aiko was completely human, as dour as ever in his severe Imperial Navy blacks, his bare feet slipped into footholds on the floor behind the silver-white console that served as comlink access and interface. Howard appreciated the gesture. He wasn’t used to zero-g, and his vertigo was made worse by the room’s rather unnerving background projection. Only floor, furniture, and Aiko’s pretense at an upright posture existed to combat the disquieting illusion that the three of them were adrift in space. Howard, who left Loki’s surface only when he had to, wondered if the projection was some kind of deliberate psychological ploy, a gimmick to keep groundpounder visitors like himself off balance.

  “Your request is most irregular,” Takahashi was saying, his voice a gentle and menacing rumble from beneath that massive chest. He spoke Nihongo, though Howard knew he always carried an excellent Inglic RAM feed. “And possibly illegal as well. You know the Imperial guidelines on this.”

  Howard’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the handline. He was angry, but he didn’t want his anger to turn this interview into a confrontation. He’d had experience eno
ugh with Imperial agents to know that he would never get what he needed through bluntness.

  “Of course, Daihyo Takahashi,” he replied evenly. “However, I feel compelled to point out that this new idea gives us our best chance to actually defeat the Xenophobes, rather than simply hold them at bay.”

  “We’ve not even been holding them,” Aiko put in. “Norway Ridge was a victory, true, but the Xenophobes should never have gotten that close to Midgard in such numbers.” He held up a thumb and forefinger, tips a centimeter apart. “We came that close to losing it all.”

  “Nuclear weaponry must remain the sole responsibility of Imperial forces,” Takahashi said, reciting the old doctrinal line. “It’s dangerous enough that Hegemony forces have access to tactical weapons in the fractional kiloton range. More powerful weapons require special training and handling. This new device your people have suggested has promise, but the Emperor will permit its deployment only under the control of his forces.”

  Special training, Howard thought. Right. A polite way of saying they don’t trust us with the damned things… especially if the Hegemony gets restless under the Empire’s thumb.

  “We’re fighting the same enemy,” Howard said, pointing out the obvious. “Four days ago, we acquired new intelligence, stuff no one’s ever seen before. From this data, we’ve evolved an idea, a weapon. But as I stated in my report, we need nuclear weapons for the idea to be viable. I would estimate fifty devices in the one-hundred-kiloton range, for a start. …”

  “Impossible,” Takahashi rumbled.

  Aiko gave the Daihyo a sidelong glance, then turned expressionless eyes back on Howard. “There is, in fact, no doctrinal conflict here, General. Hegemony forces rely on Imperial expertise whenever a Threat tunnel must be sealed. I imagine we could work out a similar arrangement here. We could provide nuclear warheads, but their deployment and activation would be under Imperial control.” He looked again at Takahashi. “Would that be satisfactory to the Emperor?”

  Solemnly Takahashi inclined his head, as though granting absolution.

  Howard had expected this battle. The Japanese had maintained strict control of all nuclear warheads for five centuries—since the Central Asian War, in fact, when they’d been the ones to go in and disarm both the Kazakhis and the Uighurs of the West China Republic. The Treaty of Karaganda had led to the Hegemony’s founding and implied—in what Howard thought was a deliciously ironic twist of history—that the Japanese Empire alone had the right to deploy weapons in the kiloton-or-larger category.

  Officially, unregulated use of fission or fusion warheads could interfere with the terraforming of the Shichiju’s worlds. That was true enough, Howard reflected… except that the Xenos had interfered with the t-form schedule of eleven worlds already far more completely than nukes ever could.

  He wondered if the Imperial staff thought that civil war, the Hegemony against the Empire, was inevitable. Plenty of Hegemony officers he knew felt it was, Howard among them. Between the Xenophobes and a restless Imperial Hegemony, the Emperor must be getting nervous.

  “I’m sure that would be the best way to handle it,” Howard said smoothly. “Of course, there is a lot of resentment in HEMILCOM already. They perceive… mistakenly, of course, but they perceive that we are carrying the brunt of the fight against the Xenos, that the Empire is standing in the background, out of harm’s way—”

  “Yoku iu-yo!” Takahashi spat. The Nihongo literally meant “How dare you say that,” but in a culture where directness was insult, the phrase was as charged with anger as profanity. “You have no right to speak that way!”

  “I merely report attitudes among the soldiers,” Howard said, spreading his hands.

  “A mutiny?” Aiko wanted to know. “A rebellion within the Hegemony forces?”

  “Nothing so melodramatic, Admiral-san. But there are bad feelings. How many Imperials died at Schluter?”

  “Imperial forces did not arrive until after the battle was over.”

  “Precisely my point.”

  “But we are on the same side!” Takahashi insisted. “Humans, together against these monsters! Earth is in as great a danger as is Loki, at least until we understand how the Xenophobes traverse space. We must cooperate together, your people and mine.”

  “Tell us about this new data you mentioned,” Aiko prompted.

  “One of our striders became stranded behind Xeno lines during the battle. It happened to be in the right place at the right time. Everything the pilot witnessed was recorded by his strider’s AI, broad spectrum, full sensory range. One of our combat engineers, when he saw the data and recognized its significance, came up with the idea for… our weapon.”

  “I would like to see this data for myself.”

  Howard nodded. “I thought you might, Admiral. Our comjacks assembled the sensory data from the warstrider to create a detailed Virtual Reality.” He gestured at Aiko’s desktop com unit. “If I may, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  Howard pulled himself over, placed his palm on the contact plate, and made a connection. “Gentlemen?”

  Aiko opened a panel on the desk and extracted three jack leads. Takahashi appeared reluctant to plug himself in at first, as though direct electronic contact would somehow contaminate him, but at last he extended a blunt-fingered hand, took a lead, and snicked the jack into a T-socket masked by a spread of white and scarlet feathers. Howard plugged himself in and then, exchanging glances with the others, brought his palm down on the desktop interface.

  Room, gold-orange sun, and cloud-wreathed world were gone. In their place was a desolate and war-swept landscape under oily, angry-looking clouds. A warstrider crouched atop a ridge edged with broken battlements, the ruins sharp-edged and ragged, like a predator’s teeth. Three hundred meters away, a column of smoke boiled from a fog-filled valley, where an alien, crystalline architecture grew from nothing. Dust and ash trickled from the bleak sky like rain, and a sound, like tinkling chimes, could be heard above a low and grumbling thunder. It looked as though it ought to be bitterly cold, but in fact, the surroundings actually felt comfortable.

  “What is this place?” Takahashi demanded. Howard noticed with mild surprise that the Daihyo’s ViRpersona was different in the AI-moderated universe of virtual reality. Here he was stocky and muscular, but not fat, and he wore the armor of a feudal Japanese warrior, a samurai. The effect was as unnerving in its way as the feathers and skin art.

  “A virtual simulation of the battlefield at Norway Ridge,” Howard replied. “That’s Cameron’s warstrider up there on the ridge.” Unlike a film recording, a ViRsim could be explored in three dimensions, with the AI filling in detail and hidden sides to create a simulated reality bounded only by the range and sensitivity of its senses.

  “I gather that Cameron survived the action,” Aiko said quietly. He looked the same as he had in the real world, stiff, erect, and immaculate. The ashfall stubbornly refused to touch his black uniform.

  “Yes, Admiral-san. He was badly wounded, but both he and the company commander made it back. Cameron’s still in the hospital undergoing nanosomatic reconstruction. He’s become… quite the hero.”

  “So it would seem from the man’s citation I received this morning,” Aiko said. “The company commander put him in for the Imperial Star. I had to turn it down.”

  “May I ask why, Admiral-san?”

  “There were… political considerations.” Aiko paused, staring at a rounded shape lying nearby. “What is that?”

  “This is what we found interesting, gentlemen,” Howard said. He led them to the object, a pearl gray hemisphere, open at the flat side, lying on the gravel at the edge of a sea of fog. The smooth-surfaced hollow within was considerably smaller than the object’s full volume.

  “Empty,” Takahashi said.

  “This one is. Look. There’s one coming up now.”

  He pointed. Thirty meters out in the fog-filled crater, another sphere was rising from the ground, shimmering, supporte
d by the pale blue wings of a traveler magfield viewed through a warstrider’s extended senses. It hesitated a moment, then began drifting toward the three watching men, hovering a meter above the mist.

  “Did that just rise out of solid ground?” Aiko wanted to know.

  “Essentially, Admiral-san, yes. We’ve known for a long time that the Xenos use powerful magnetic fields to warp rock.”

  “SDTs,” Aiko put in.

  “Yes, sir. They create paths where the rock has become plastic, almost fluid, and they can move along these paths the way a submarine moves through water.” He nudged the empty shell with the toe of his boot. “Until we caught these babies in action, the only Xeno equipment we knew of that could perform that trick were Alphas—their equivalent of our warstriders—and Betas, which are human machines they’ve captured and reworked. But in all the battles fought on twelve worlds during the last forty-two years, we’ve never been able to capture a Xeno machine. Why? Because even pieces of them seem to have a life of their own. They change shape, move… and anything of ours they touch, they destroy, either by dissolving it with nano disassemblers, or by changing it into something else. None of our intelligence people, yours or mine, has ever had a close look at a genuine piece of Xeno technology.”

  As the floating bubble neared the edge of the crater, it slowed and descended. Touching solid ground, it rolled half over, then opened.

  Half of the sphere vanished as completely as the bursting of a bubble. The other half lay inert on the ground, the squirming gray mass within exposed to Loki’s chill air. Takahashi looked startled. Aiko’s eyes narrowed as he watched the creatures begin to spill onto the ground.

  “And this,” Howard added, “may be our first close look at the Xenos themselves.”

  They were definitely creatures, organic life forms rather than machines. Each was the size of a man’s hand, flattened slug shapes like large, shell-less snails or some of the free-swimming marine worms of Earth’s ocean deeps. These were dark gray in color, but their surfaces glistened with prismatic displays of rainbow hues, like oil on water catching the light.