PRAISE FOR
MECHA SAMURAI EMPIRE
“Intermixing the experience of cinema, literature, anime, comics, and gaming, this is the new generation of science fiction we’ve been waiting for!”
—Hideo Kojima, game creator
“How far would you go in pursuit of your dreams? What would you be willing to sacrifice? Set in the fascinating universe of United States of Japan, this is the story of a handful of people who will do anything to become mecha pilots. The characters are truly compelling, and the world Tieryas created is a joy to discover. And if you come for the giant robots, Mecha Samurai Empire has all kinds and the best robot combat you’ll ever read. Seriously, this is a whole new kind of badass.”
—Sylvain Neuvel, author of Sleeping Giants
“Fascinating and entertaining, Mecha Samurai Empire has a fabulous ‘what if’ premise that imagines an America controlled by Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany—and giant armored robots duking it out in arenas and on the battlefield. I caught myself thinking about the book long after I read it, and anxiously await the next installment.”
—Taylor Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen series
“Mecha Samurai Empire is a spectacular and thought-provoking roller-coaster ride through the United States of Japan that builds, section by section, as it explores profoundly original concepts about robotics and biology.”
—August Cole, coauthor of Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War and editor of the Atlantic Council’s War Stories from the Future
PRAISE FOR PETER TIERYAS AND HIS WRITING
“A searing vision of the persistence of hope in the face of brutality, United States of Japan is utterly brilliant.”
—Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award winner and author of The Grace of Kings
“This is a darkly fun, clever, and unrelentingly ambitious book.”
—Kameron Hurley, Hugo Award winner and author of The Mirror Empire
“A perfect patchwork of multiple sci-fi and anime subgenres rolled into one novel.”
—Esquire
“Mind-twisting and fiercely imaginative; Tieryas fuses classic sci-fi tradition with his own powerful vision.”
—Jay Posey, author of the Legends of the Duskwalker series and writer at Ubisoft / Red Storm
“It’s a tense and intriguing read, a blend of alt history and cyberpunk and thriller. Nineteen eighty-eight California where San Diego is a razed landscape home to American rebels, and Japanese mechas patrol the coast? Heck yes!”
—Beth Cato, author of The Clockwork Dagger
“United States of Japan is a powerful book, unsettling at times—surreal and hypnotic. There’s a bit of Philip K. Dick in here, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but Peter Tieryas is his own voice, a talented author, somebody to keep an eye on for sure.”
—Richard Thomas, author of Breaker and Disintegration
ACE
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Peter Tieryas
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tieryas, Peter, 1979– author.
Title: Mecha samurai empire / Peter Tieryas.
Description: First edition. | New York: Ace, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017059991 | ISBN 9780451490995 (softcover) | ISBN 9780451491008 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Alternative histories (Fiction)
Classification: LCC PS3612.I932 M43 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059991
First Edition: September 2018
Cover art by John Liberto
Cover design by Adam Auerbach
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Dedicated to my wife, Angela Xu, for being the best mecha copilot
CONTENTS
Praise for Peter Tieryas
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
GRANADA HILLSCHAPTER 01
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
QUIET BORDERCHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
CHAPTER 07
CHAPTER 08
BERKELEYCHAPTER 09
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
Acknowledgments
About the Author
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
OF THE UNITED STATES OF JAPAN
AND TO THE EMPIRE
FOR WHICH IT STANDS,
ONE NATION
UNDER THE EMPEROR, INDIVISIBLE,
WITH ORDER AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.
GRANADA HILLS
1994
WINTER
01
I don’t know why people say time heals all wounds. Time only aggravates mine.
My maternal grandparents were Japanese citizens who lived in Kyoto and immigrated to San Francisco during the early 1900s. My paternal grandparents were ethnic Koreans who moved to Los Angeles shortly after the Empire’s victory in 1948. There were more opportunities in the United States of Japan then, especially since the Empire was rebuilding so many of the cities that were in ruins. My parents met during the 1974 Matsuri, a festival at a Shinto shrine in Irvine. My father served as a mecha technician and worked on the maintenance of their armor plating. My mother was an officer who worked as a navigator aboard the mecha Kamoshika. She recognized my dad at the shrine for the work he did on their BP generator. They each picked out an o-mikuji from the o-mikuji box, wondering what fortunes those little strips of paper foretold. By pure coincidence, both of their messages read that a momentous event would occur that day and alter their destinies forever. After sharing jokes and chiding each other about destiny and politics in the corps, they agreed to go to their favorite ramen shop for dinner.
I was born two years later.
My earliest memory with them is at a mecha factory in Long Beach. The armored legs were bigger than most buildings I’d seen. By the time I was three, I was waging wars against the Nazis with mecha toys my dad had built for me. He’d made me a special jimbaori, and I loved the way the old samurai surcoats gave my mechanical warriors a regal bearing. Neither of my parents got to pilot an actual mecha even though both wished they could. Maybe they’d have gotten the chance if they’d had more time.
The greatest threat during their lives wasn’t the
Germans but American terrorists who called themselves George Washingtons. The George Washingtons were rumored to be so ruthless, they’d cut off the ears of our soldiers to wear as necklaces. In 1978, hundreds of the terrorists launched themselves at the city hall in San Diego and killed thousands of our citizens. Three months later, they carried out another attack, killing many innocent civilians in the Gaslamp Quarter, including the wife of an important general.
Mom and Dad were ordered to the front in early 1980. They came back home to visit every few months, but neither of them spoke much during their years of service. My father spent most of his time brooding, and the only time I saw even a hint of affection from my mother was when she’d be humming military songs to herself. The last memory I have of them is the morning they left. They told me they’d see me in three months. I still remember the bright colors of the jacketlike haoris they wore over their kimonos and how attracted I was to the golden embroidery. We ate our breakfast in silence. My eggs were too salty, my anchovies were hard, and the pickled tsukemono smelled funny. They usually left without saying much. But that morning, my mom stopped as she was about to leave, came back inside, and gave me a kiss on the forehead.
Nineteen eighty-four was a bloody year. Lots of kids in the Empire became orphans that year. I was no exception. My parents were killed in two separate battles four days apart.
The corporal who came to tell me wept as he spoke. Mom had saved his life in battle, so he had taken the news very hard. “Your mother loved nashis,” he told me, having brought a box full of the sweet Asian pears. “She used to cut them up into small pieces to share with her whole unit, and she’d always save one piece just to show she was thinking of you.”
Concepts like life and death were hard for me to grasp at that age. Even as he told me stories about my parents, I kept on wondering when he’d go away and my parents would return. It took me a full year to realize they were never coming back, and by then, I was living with a stingy “guardian” who’d been ordered by the government to adopt me, as I had no surviving family members. His primary business had been construction with the hotels in Tijuana and San Diego, but the revolt had put an end to all that. My adoptive father insisted that my adoptive mother measure the amount of rice she was scooping for me. If I left even a little bit of food on my plate, I’d get a severe scolding for “wasting food,” which both my adoptive brothers did without a second thought.
Knowing my parents had served aboard mechas, I glorified them. I swore I would grow up to be a mecha pilot protecting the Empire against its enemies. My adoptive parents called it a pipe dream and sent me away as soon as I was eligible for boarding school, in Granada Hills within the California Province, where I’ve been for nearly a decade.
Now, with my high-school graduation coming in a few months, I practice almost every day on the mecha simulations. Like most kids who grew up in the eighties, I play portical games. The mecha simulations take place inside arcade booths that re-create visuals captured from real-life footage, with surround sound that makes the experience immersive. I wear haptic controls and drive the mecha with a simplified interface that simulates piloting. While I engage in many battles, the one I go back to most often is the fight in San Diego in which my mother was killed.
The Kamoshika was an older Kaneda-class mecha, larger but less deadly than the Torturer-class mechas that were slowly replacing them. Samurai Titan was their nickname because they were so massive. The Kamoshika was essentially a mountain-sized warrior with robotic joints and a face mask protecting its bridge in the head.
It’d been called in to investigate suspicious activity by the George Washingtons. A rebel leader calling herself Abigail Adams led a surprise attack that decimated one of our battalions. The lieutenant colonel in charge of the security station had sent an SOS before communications were cut.
Playing the sim again, I watch as our forces disconnect all electricity to that region of the city. Our soldiers switch to infrared mode, but it’s like shadow dancing as they tiptoe their way across a blackened San Diego. The terrorists fire flare guns into the sky, causing bright orbs to reveal the presence of the mecha. There is a frenzied commotion as the GWs prepare for what is designed as the ultimate trap.
They’ve gathered twenty-two Neptune Tactical Missile Launchers they obtained from the Nazis (even though the Germans would later claim they were stolen) along with five Panzer Maus IX Supertanks. When the Kamoshika arrives at the scene, there is a simultaneous barrage. The pilot realizes it’s an ambush and has a split second when he can choose to flee. But it’s in an area full of civilians, and the Kamoshika has a sizable military escort that would be helpless against the Panzers and their biomorphs if it made a tactical retreat. It decides to stand its ground and fight, absorbing all the punishment it can. Its endeavor to protect those behind it is not very successful. I watch in slow motion as the armored suit gets incinerated and the BP generator gets exposed, resulting in total meltdown.
This is one of those battles that can’t be won in the simulation. If I choose to escape, a great portion of our armed forces gets eliminated and the civilian death toll is catastrophic. If I take the brunt of the blast and fight as hard as I can against the remaining terrorists, I die and leave a young me bereaved.
All these years since the battle, I still struggle with the nightmare scenario that haunted my childhood.
* * *
• • •
For some kids, academic achievement comes naturally. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I work all night, but my grades are only a little above average. I know that won’t cut it.
On the main island, the most prestigious military school is the Imperial Japanese Army Academy (Rikugun Shikan Gakko), and the principal way to get accepted is completion of a rigorous three-year course at one of the preparatory schools called Rikugun Yonen Gakko. That, or you show exemplary service as an enlisted soldier and are younger than twenty-five years of age.
If the entrance admission were based on my grades alone, my chances of getting into the top school in the USJ, Berkeley Military Academy (BEMA), would be nonexistent. It’s not as if I have a rich family who can buy my way in, either. The only path open to me is to get a good score on the military supplement to the weeklong imperial exams, then hope I can obtain a military recommendation from someone important who notices my test results. It’s something I pray to the Emperor for every day because I know I have only a one percent chance of success. Fortunately, the academy isn’t looking just for good potential soldiers. They want the best gaming minds to interface with the portical controls on their most advanced machinery. There is historical precedent. The most prominent was one of the best mecha pilots, a cadet with the code name Kujira. She too had average grades and did poorly on the general imperial exams. But her military simulation scores are the best in recorded academy history, and she is a legend as one of our most decorated pilots.
That’s partly why I’ve spent almost every night for the past two years playing the mecha simulations at the Gogo Arcade and why I’m here a week before we’re taking the test. My best friend, Hideki, is also here. Unlike me, he doesn’t want to be a pilot but rather a game designer, as he loves portical games and hopes to get into the gaming division at Berkeley, BEMAG. Both are extremely difficult positions to aspire to.
“I heard the new Cat Odyssey is on the floor,” Hideki tells me.
Even though I can download samples of all games to my portical, many of the new titles have exclusive deals with arcades, so you can play the full version only if you’re physically present.
Cat Odyssey is a series I’ve been playing since I was eight. It’s one of the most popular games in the Empire and shows the history of our Great Pacific War against the Americans from the perspective of a cat. The cat can gain knowledge points that translate to greater powers and acquired abilities, like climbing higher plateaus and dropping down with minimal damage. Part of its allur
e is its uncannily real visuals, photographic in its depiction of the late 1940s (different iterations take place in different years). The developers took two years to make sure the latest part maintained graphic fidelity to the past, including the deployment of the first mechas, which were originally symbolic figures. They were built by the military as embodiments of the Empire, clad in samurai armor, launching tactical weapons at our American foes but unable to do much else.
I prepare myself for disappointment in case the game doesn’t live up to my expectations. But I’m also playing because some of the endurance levels are said to be designed by Rogue199, the alias for the top developer at Taiyo Tech. She’s the mastermind behind many of the actual mecha simulations for the exam. I want to try it for a few hours to see whether there’s anything that can give me an extra edge on the test. Hideki thinks it’s a fool’s quest, but I’ve never been one to shy away from futile pursuits.
Hideki’s biological family had been in America for several generations, but they’d originally come over from Europe. He doesn’t know much about it, though, since his parents were killed in San Diego and he was adopted by a man who worked as an exterminator. His adoptive dad earned a good living hunting roaches, but Hideki was embarrassed about his profession. At school, Hideki made up stories about his real parents, narratives that would shift depending on his mood, the tales ranging from the exotically grand to the stupendously impossible. He created so many pasts, I think he stopped remembering which were true and which were fictional. He ran away from home multiple times before his guardian shipped him off to live with his aunt here in Granada Hills—which is where I met him. (Honestly, it took me a while before I figured out this much.) We became best friends because of our mutual passion for portical games.
Mac, he calls me, which is short for Makoto. Everyone in the Empire has a Japanese name, no matter their ethnicity. Most also have a nickname in the dominant language of their region. Mine is the name of one of my favorite USJ boxers. “There it is.”
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