Gasps erupted at the back of the chamber as the smoked glass doors swung open to admit a slight young woman. In her midnight blue skirted suit, she looked like a schoolgirl who’d broken off from a field trip. Her black hair flowed behind her as she swept down the center aisle. A growing din of muttering voices followed in her wake.
Megami took the podium below the Secretaries’ platform and spoke in an airy voice that nonetheless saturated the room like a thick mist.
“This isn’t a victory speech,” Megami said. “Look anywhere: North America, Africa, Arabia. You won’t find victory.”
A hush fell over the gallery. Even Mitsu found herself listening in puzzled fascination.
Megami pressed on. “Our coalition boasts a thousand space colonies with a combined population of a billion souls. We command the most advanced technology and the greatest wealth ever seen in human history. Every king, prime minister, and president who came before should envy our achievements. But they don’t. Because we lack the most coveted product of any civilization: victory.”
Mitsu began to wonder if she’d made a mistake. Megami sounded like Sanzen, but her words kindled a fire in Mitsu’s heart like Sanzen’s never had.
“Why have we suffered our people to be preyed upon, despoiled, and killed by those history left behind? We tell ourselves that answering force with force is stooping to their level. We say we’re better than that. We are better—by any conceivable metric—and it’s time we informed the earth of that fact.”
Mitsu couldn’t decide which surprised her more, the scattered mumbles of agreement from the gallery, or her own nodding along with Megami’s speech.
“Our protectors have failed,” Megami declared like a hanging judge. “They foolishly dealt with the earth as if its state of progress matched our own. Sanzen Kaimora at least spoke to Earth’s people in terms they understand, but he succumbed to demons of his own making. I will confront those demons and bind them to the cause of universal peace. I will defeat the lawless regimes that butcher our people, and I will make our coalition victorious!”
Riotous applause resounded throughout the chamber as the Council members rose to their feet in the gallery. On the platform above, Mitsu joined her fellow secretaries in giving their newest colleague a standing ovation.
19
Naryal soared over the Sudanese desert. The blazing sun beating down on the parched dunes made her glad for her climate-controlled cockpit. The four modified Grentos flying on either side of Jagannath lacked that luxury, but none of their pilots complained.
Loyal subordinates are even rarer luxuries these days. Naryal thought of her former security chief Davis, found hanged in his cell that morning. I should have passed his warning about Megami to Secretary-General Mitsu.
Naryal knew her self-rebuke wasn’t fair. She’d had no way to corroborate Davis’ claims until Mitsu had appointed Sanzen’s former aide Secretary of Defense. If she accused the new SecDef of planning the Jeddah bombing—and probably Sanzen’s death—Naryal’s warning would be dismissed as jealousy. She needed indisputable proof to challenge one of the most powerful people in the Coalition, and there was only one source left.
“Target acquired,” Raskin radioed from the gold-shouldered Grenzmark at Naryal’s right. The Grentos’ sensors were slightly superior to Jagannath’s, so it stood to reason one of them would spot her quarry first.
“Synch your targeting systems with mine,” Naryal ordered. Raskin immediately complied. The data he sent showed a lone combat frame flying southwest 120 klicks ahead. Its transponder had been disabled, but its RFID smart paint identified the unit as a Grento stolen from the scene of a triple murder at an Algerian petrol station. “Intercept that CF and force it down. I want the pilot alive.”
Naryal’s personal guard opened the taps on their upgraded rocket thrusters and surged ahead. Jagannath could easily overtake them, but Naryal’s encounter with Davis’ coilgun had taught her restraint. And Sieg Friedlander is far more dangerous than the late Commander. She drew the prototype Dolph rifle from its rack inside her shield and let her guard pull ten klicks ahead before she matched their speed.
“The target is heading toward a small earthen structure on a dry lakebed,” reported Arnov, Naryal’s second most senior guard.
“Confirmed,” said Raskin. “I’m picking up concrete and metal construction under that lakebed.”
Naryal studied Raskin’s cloned screen. Sensors couldn’t identify what lay under the humble earthen hut, but she didn’t want Sieg to reach it. “Shoot the target down,” she said. “Aim for his thrusters.”
Automatic fire from all four Grentos’ machine guns converged on Sieg’s fleeing CF. The stolen combat frame swung upside down and sailed backward with its domed head pointed at the ground. The storm of shells passed over its inverted feet. Sieg returned fire, raking two of his pursuers with 115mm bullets before righting his CF and falling backwards toward the dry lake.
“I’m hit,” Raskin said with preternatural calm. “It’s—” His combat frame vanished in a sooty orange fireball. The leftmost Grento entered freefall, smoke streaming from its punctured cockpit.
Naryal ground her teeth. He shot down half of my men!
“Captain!” Arnov cried. He and Rashid, his sole remaining teammate, dived after Sieg’s Grento.
“You have no shame,” Naryal spat over the main CSC channel, trusting that Sieg would hear. “I will teach you.”
Naryal opened the throttle. Jagannath barreled past her wingmen with a clap of thunder. The golden CF touched down amid an artificial sandstorm as Sieg’s Grento cushioned its landing with a last-second thruster burst. He fired a full-auto volley the second his CF hit the ground, but Naryal blocked the bullets with her shield and disintegrated the Grento’s gun and right arm with one shot from her plasma rifle.
Sieg stood his ground. “Get off my back, Naryal!”
“I can’t just let you roam free,” she said. “You’re quite a violent man.”
“Your people fired on me first.”
“Only to disable,” said Naryal, “not to kill. I’d have shot your cockpit if I wanted you dead. Surrender, and we’ll talk.”
“I don’t have time for you,” said Sieg.
“If not me, what about Sekaino Megami? You’ve been on the run for a while, so you may have missed that she had Sanzen killed and assumed the post of Coalition Defense Secretary.”
“She put that mad dog down before I did,” said Sieg. “You trying to make me jealous?”
“Those files you accessed made for edifying reading,” said Naryal. “I think you know who Megami really is. If you cooperate, I may be able to stop her.”
Sieg drew his CF’s heat axe. “To hell with you!”
Naryal sighed. “You need another lesson.” She racked her rifle and drew the metal tube attached to her generator by a thick braid of cables. “Very well. I can’t promise you’ll survive.”
Toggling a switch on her control stick sent current rushing to the metal cylinder. Emerald plasma flared from the hilt’s tip, and powerful magnetic fields shaped the raw energy into a crackling blade nearly as long as the Grento was tall.
Naryal pounced. The one-armed Grento raised its axe to meet Jagannath’s rocket-assisted charge. The gesture proved futile as Naryal brought her plasma sword down in a two-handed slash. Her green energy blade disintegrated the Grento’s axe, arm, and torso with no more resistance than a steel rod stirring sand.
The Grento’s charred wreckage crashed to the dusty ground. “A pity,” Naryal thought aloud. “Finding another loose thread to pull will be difficult.” She quenched her plasma sword, only to see a blond figure in a dirty CSC combat uniform flee into the earthen hut the Grento had hidden from sight.
Naryal checked her screen. Arnov and Rashid’s Grentos were circling overhead. She had the hut’s only door covered. Unless the subterranean structure was an underground railway, Sieg had no escape.
“Some people can’t see reason,” said Narya
l. She switched her plasma sword for her rifle and aimed at the hut. The shabby structure exploded before she pressed the trigger, and the green bolt streaked through a cloud of shattered brick.
“Something blasted out of the ground,” Arnov warned. A large object rocketed skyward in a plume of dust that dissipated to reveal gleaming silver beneath. “It’s a combat frame!”
Naryal stared at her monitor, which showed a bulky machine facing down her wingmen a kilometer overhead. It resembled a Grenzmark, but heavier and with a squared, stubby head. Its shiny armor was unpainted, and two huge drum-shaped generators protruded from the backs of its blocky shoulders. “It’s a prototype Grenzmark?” she chuckled.
“This is no Grenzmark,” Sieg said over the comm. “The Type One is the testbed for all combat frames.”
Naryal fought to stifle her laughter. “You’re threatening me with a unit that predates internal fusion reactors? Falling from my window must have given you a concussion.”
The Type One aimed a long-barreled gun attached to its right arm at Jagannath. The outdated weapon seemed to have the same bore as a Grenzmark machine gun but clearly wasn’t designed for automatic fire. “This is your last warning,” said Sieg. “Stand down, call off your men, and let me deal with Megami.”
Sieg turned his antiquated CF’s back on Naryal and her hovering guards. A long metal slab sharpened on one side clung to the Type One’s back. The crude sword’s hilt extended from the blade’s base below the CF’s shoulders to the top of its angular head. A double row of four thruster nozzles glowed blue-white under the reactor drums.
“Don’t ignore me!” Naryal ignited Jagannath’s rockets and hurtled toward the Type One. Sieg’s antique wheeled about faster than she’d thought possible. Fire belched from a round aperture in the upper left corner of its chest, and Jagannath’s cameras saw only blinding white light before Naryal’s screens went black. EMP grenade!
Naryal’s heart seemed to stop as she struggled to keep Jagannath’s flight stable without instruments. At last her systems rebooted, and she heaved a sigh of relief. Cold sweat stung her eyes, but only clear skies stretched before her.
“Arnov,” she spoke into her restored comm, “Rashid. What’s your status?”
No answer came. The last static cleared from her rear view monitor, showing both Grentos lying in the sand: one with most of its torso blown away and the other seemingly torn in two at chest height.
Naryal turned Jagannath toward the Type One, which was speeding away to the southwest. Rage engulfed her brain in red mist, and she blasted off on an intercept course. Sieg’s primitive combat frame rotated at the waist as Naryal fired. Her plasma bolt impacted the comically large sword in the Type One’s hands, leaving a rainbow smudge on the silver blade.
It repelled a plasma bolt? What’s that sword made of!?
Sieg charged, firing his arm-mounted cannon twice. Naryal pivoted Jagannath sideways and threaded the needle between both shells’ paths. The maneuver brought her within range of the Type One’s sword. She drew and ignited her plasma blade as Sieg swung. Reinforced alloy met coherent energy in a shower of green and orange sparks. The gold combat frame and its silver opponent hung high above the desert, their blades locked in ruthless struggle.
A deep red glow spread along the Type One’s blade. Steam poured from rectangular openings along the weapon’s spine. Whatever his sword is made of, exulted Naryal, it won’t stand up to mine much longer!
“You shouldn’t have missed,” she gloated.
Sieg suddenly jetted backward. “I didn’t.”
Jagannath’s proximity alarms warned Naryal too late. The same two rounds she’d dodged a moment before had somehow turned in mid-flight and homed in on their original target. Both shells exploded into her CF’s back, hurling her forward in her seat. Emergency airbags kept her forehead from cracking her screen. The last sight she saw before Jagannath lost power for good was the Type One’s back receding into the distance.
20
Ritter redlined the Mab’s hydrojets in his frantic flight down the muddy river. He didn’t know if Max, Zane, or Zimmer had survived the chaos in Kisangani, and he didn’t dare send any comm transmissions to find out. He spent every moment clutching his control sticks like a climber clinging to a high ledge. He could feel the Socs’ net tightening around him.
But the river stretched on, and so did the day. Night fell, and Ritter navigated the pitch black waters by sonar alone. The burning in his torn shoulder had worsened until the heat gave way to chills that racked his whole body and drenched the inside of his wetsuit with cold sweat.
I have to get to sea. Ritter repeated that mantra to focus his increasingly weary mind. When had he last slept? Not since sometime before his day-long trip up the Congo to the spaceport. Now he was retracing the same journey after fighting a grueling battle and taking an infected wound. If he wasn’t careful, he’d run into a barge or another submerged dam. Then the Socs would find him.
I hope the other guys made it out, Ritter thought for the hundredth time as the night wore on. He didn’t think he could live with himself if they’d died for his sake, especially since he’d failed to capture one of the new Coalition combat frames.
Those Dolphs are monsters. Ritter counted himself lucky he’d been facing security personnel with only basic CF training. In the hands of experienced pilots, a Dolph squad could probably engage an EGE carrier group and win. He hoped Li, Larson, and McCaskey had a plan to stop Operation N.
Ritter’s head was swimming by the time sunrise melted the dark away. He fought to keep his eyes open as the silty water began to clear. Only his shivering kept him awake.
A wave of relief washed over Ritter when his sonar pings passed into the open sea. The Mab’s sensors picked up two large vessels, and he risked surfacing for a better look. The Yamamoto’s majestic gray profile against the blue horizon made his heart leap. A smaller ship lay anchored alongside the carrier, its white hull looking like a cross between a tanker and a yacht.
Not until he’d come within spitting distance of the Yamamoto did Ritter realize his Mab was still slicing through the waves at top speed. Better slow down and radio the carrier, he thought an instant before he blacked out.
Megami generally disliked dealing with engineers. Most of them regarded their specialized training as a license to opine on every subject from military science to ethics. They also tended to exhibit a strain of intellectual myopia that focused on particulars to the exclusion of the big picture. Though she often made good use of the latter trait, she tried to avoid involving herself personally.
Tesla Browning was a rare exception to the rule. Perhaps being self-taught or hailing from the less collectivist L3 colonies had spared him the vices of his craft. In any event, Doctor Tesla Browning—or should she say Mister Leo Brown—had earned inclusion in the small group chosen to execute the next phase of Project S.
The study in Sanzen’s house at his L1 compound, which was now her house in her compound, still exuded the stuffy air of academia. Megami stood before a screen framed by overflowing bookshelves and placed a call to Browning’s Chicago office. Seed Corporation’s lead designer answered within three seconds.
“Madame Secretary,” Browning greeted Megami. He looked like a young actor made up in a lab coat and glasses to parody the archetypal egghead scientist. Yellow sticky notes adorned the cluttered room behind him. “What problem can I solve for you today?”
“Doctor.” Megami wouldn’t begrudge him the courtesy. Browning genuinely relished exploring ideas to surmount new challenges, despite his somewhat limited talents. “Have you reviewed the specifications I sent?”
“Of course,” Browning said after a pause due solely to the one-second delay between L1 and Earth. “But be advised, a combat frame built to these specs will be far too expensive for mass-production.”
“That’s fine. It’s not a mass-production prototype.”
“If you want a custom unit for personal use, I can modify anoth
er Zwei Dolph for you.”
“Frontline combat isn’t what I have in mind,” said Megami. “That custom Zwei Dolph was good enough to deal with Sanzen, but let’s face it; Masz could’ve done the job with a golf cart. I need a CF engineered for a specific mission role. Can you do the job?”
Browning adjusted his wire rim glasses. “To be honest, some of your requirements are a bit out of my league—especially the integrated A.I. Unassisted reentry capability is also a decade or two beyond current combat frame technology.”
“I’ll round up a team of specialists to handle the finer points,” Megami said with a smile.
“That would certainly help,” said Browning, “but can you recruit and vet the necessary talent within the target time frame?”
“My people have sent out feelers,” Megami said.
“There are a few qualified candidates I keep in touch with,” said Browning. “If you’d like, I can send you a list.”
I bet it includes Max Darving, Megami mused. Did Browning know she’d falsified the Operation N data he’d shared with his wayward protégé? Her spine tingled at encountering a player whose intellect approached hers. The only other source of that rare joy was Irenae Zend, a girl of fine breeding and fascinating genetics.
“I’ll handle staffing,” Megami said. “In the meantime, get ready to relocate. I’ll be in touch when it’s time to move.”
Browning raised an eyebrow. “You’re canceling your contracts with Seed Corporation?”
“Those were CSC contracts. Since Coalition security is now in my purview, I’m making this an internal Defense Ministry project and moving operations to space. Any objections?”
“None,” said Browning. “I’d planned on returning to space anyway.”
“We’ll roll out the red carpet,” Megami said before ending the call. Again she amused herself by trying to puzzle out how much Browning knew. Not that it mattered. Two hundred shuttles carrying 200,000 relief workers, one percent of whom were her fanatically loyal Kazoku troops, would enter Earth’s atmosphere in twenty-four hours. Admiral Omaka would ensure the EGE’s military response and signal the beginning of the end for Earth.
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