Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella

by Ian Douglas

  And Katya. He found it hard to take his eyes from her. For her part, she seemed . . . tired. A bit washed out, like she'd been working herself too hard. It seemed like a small eternity since he'd seen her last, that evening at Kodama's party on Earth.

  There were lots of strangers, too, a small army of men and women—kids, most of them—from Eridu and New America, members of the Network's combat arm.

  Dev's first question, of course, had been how they'd known he was being held in that jungle bunker outside of Babel.

  "Sinclair had spies in the armory at Winchester," Katya explained. "And Nagai didn't try to hide you when he transferred you from Winchester to Babel. You were seen boarding a monorail, with three of Nagai's bully-boys as escorts." She made a face. "You were wearing a kanrinin."

  "I remember a little of that." Dev said. "But they put me out for the trip."

  "Well, the monorail's an eighteen-hour trip from Winchester to Babel." Katya went on. "By the time they were frogmarching you off at this end, we had people watching the stations. You were seen, and followed . . . to one of Babel's outlying domes."

  "They call it Nimrod," Lorita said. "It's the barracks and headquarters for the main Hegemony garrison at Babel, and it's located about ten kilometers south of the Towerdown dome. We figured they'd be keeping you there for a while rather than take you up-tower to synchorbit, because the word was you were going to be used for some kind of propaganda here on the surface."

  "Affirmative," Dev said. He tried to smile, and failed. "They wanted me to admit that I was the one who ordered the attack on Tanis. They . . . they damn near made me think I did it."

  "We decided the time to try a rescue," Katya said, "was while you were still on the planet."

  "Yeah, but how? The place was a fortress!"

  A red-headed girl the others called Simone giggled. "That was me," she said. "I hacked into HEMILCOM's alert net and told it the Xenophobes were coming through again at Site Red One. They were falling all over themselves trying to scramble for their magflitters."

  "Which explains the tight timetable," Dev said. He glanced at Katya. "You waited until they off-loaded at Red One, then hit the place and were gone in the time it took for them to load up and fly back."

  "We had it timed real close," Lee Chung said, nodding. "Eight minutes, thirty seconds max. We did it in seven twenty-five."

  "There was still a fair-sized garrison manning the fort," Hagan said. "Only two light recon warstriders, thank God, but a fair number of leggers and some nasty remote laser defenses. There wasn't time to be fancy. We knocked out the Fastriders with a missile barrage, blasted through the dome wall, and sent people on foot running through the complex, looking for prisoners. Meanwhile, the rest of us loaded up on loot. We got away with some pretty good stuff."

  Dev's left eyebrow arced. "You've also started yourself a nice little war," he said. "Against the Terran Hegemony. You're going to need more than guns to fight it, I'm afraid."

  "Maybe," the big New American, Creighton, said. "What'd you have in mind?"

  "An army, for one thing. And allies. Oh, don't get me wrong. You people were magnificent out there today, and I'm certainly in no position to criticize your technique! But you're still outnumbered a hundred to one, and when the Empire gets into it—"

  "We'll handle the Empire," Torolf Bondevik said. He put his arm around the redheaded girl's shoulders and she snuggled closer. Evidently, members of his old unit were settling in quite happily to life on Eridu.

  "We all will," Katya said, looking pointedly at Dev. "You're in this thing too now, aren't you?"

  The question startled Dev. He'd not really thought about it before this. "I . . . I guess we are." He glanced at Bev Schneider, across the room. She was sitting in the circle of an older man's arms. She looked radiantly happy. "I was going to say it's a bit sudden to find ourselves on the other side. Some of us seem to be adapting quite well."

  Creighton followed his gaze. "That's Alin Schneider," he explained. "Her father."

  "God. No wonder they're glad to see each other."

  Across the room, Lorita Fischer was caressing a mentar, and the instrument's harmonies, haunting minors, shivered in the air. He listened a moment, trying to place the tune. "What is that?"

  "Hope Eyrie," Katya said. "It's become sort of an anthem for the Confederation."

  "Anthems are usually more martial than that."

  "This one fits. It reminds us that we're reclaiming a heritage, something we squandered a long time ago. 'Time won't drive us down to dust again.' "

  "It's . . . beautiful." He'd never heard the piece, but it still sounded familiar somehow. Captivating.

  "What happens to you now, Dev?"

  He looked at her, surprised. "I guess that's up to you, isn't it? I mean, damn it, you rescued me. I can't go back. I'd like to stay . . . with you."

  Her eyes were unreadable. "I can't promise it'll be the same between us. A lot's happened."

  He winced. "Me and the Empire. I was an idiot. They lied to me—"

  "That wasn't what I meant. Dev, we have the Yunagi comel."

  Dev's jaw dropped. "You do!"

  "There's more. I've already used it. I've talked to Self, to the Xenophobe. I'm not sure, but I think I've arranged an alliance." When Dev couldn't respond for several seconds, she added, "Well, you said we needed allies!"

  It took Dev a moment for the thought to work its way past several layers of preconceptions. Then it hit him like a thunderbolt. "The Xenos! You've . . . you've made an alliance with the Xenos? Gods, how?"

  "Nothing's certain yet." She closed her eyes, and Dev saw the stress there. "Oh Dev, they're so different!"

  "They are that."

  "No, I mean . . . I had no idea what you must have gone through, out there on the DalRiss homeworld. It . . . I think it all but took me apart and put me together again. It was . . . inside me, trying to understand me. And I'm not sure it succeeded."

  Dev felt a nagging worry. "Did it hurt you? Are you—"

  "I'm fine, Dev. The medicos checked me when I got back. They said it analyzed my breathing mixture and manufactured a fresh reserve of air for me, right on the spot. Probably treated me for carbon dioxide poisoning too. Those things would be grade-A medics if they could be integrated into our society."

  "I'm not sure society's ready for that," Dev said dryly.

  "But I did try to explain our need. And their danger. When I woke up back in Emden, I found out they'd left me a . . . a message."

  "What . . . in your RAM?"

  "No. I'm not sure they understood what that was. No, they . . . they changed my comel."

  Dev started at that. "What . . . a Xenozombie?" He was thinking of other DalRiss creatures, taken over by the Xenos and used as weapons.

  "No," she said. "Not like that. But there was a kind of impression in it. A memory. I felt it when I touched the comel back at the rebel base. They told me how to contact them again, if we need them."

  "What was it?"

  She told him.

  Dev threw back his head and laughed.

  Chapter 28

  The chief advantage of space elevators is that they can transport large cargos to and from synchorbit at extremely low cost. Their disadvantage is time. Typically, a sky-el shuttle requires twenty hours for the one-way trip between towertop and towerdown, and in some cases the trip takes considerably longer than that.

  When speed is required for ground-to-orbit transfers, air-space shuttles remain the travel mode of choice.

  —Elevator to the Stars

  Jiro Shimamura

  C.E. 2412

  Triumphantly, the red-haired girl on the couch broke contact with the terminal. "We're in!"

  Dev leaned partway into the opening of the gleaming gold tube, one of eight angled cylinders dominating the ViRcommunications center at the Babel spaceport, and stared at the monitor above her head. "What did you do?"

  "Bypassed the regular security through a trapdoor I happen to know.
" Simone Dagousset plucked the jacks from her T-sockets, then slid from the public ViRcom booth. Dev took her hand and helped her up. "I've got a tame subanalogue download persona that thinks it's General Nakamura of the Imperial Staff. You'd be surprised how the military types snap to with heel clicks and salutes when he barks an order!"

  "Don't you still need access codes?"

  She laughed. "Sometimes. I can usually get what I need from the comm system AI though. Their problem is they're too smart."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You can reason with an Artificial Intelligence," she said with a proud toss of her head. "Or fool it into thinking Shosho Nakamura wants his ship and he wants it now, no questions and no red tape foolishness or he'll know the reason!"

  "Great," he said, looking about the concourse. The urgent bustle of Babel's Towerdown spaceport surrounded them with an anonymous blanket of rumbling sound. "So, where do we go, and how long to lift-off?"

  "It's a private flight. Discretionary launch." She giggled. "I think it's Nakamura's personal launch. At least it's registered under his ID. Gate three, Bay Alpha."

  "A personal launch? Is that going to be big enough for all of us?"

  "It should be. One-hundred fifty tons. It'll be crowded, I imagine."

  "Yeah, well, it's a short flight, three hours max. We can sit in each others' laps for that long. Did you alert the others?"

  "Sure did." She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Operation Hope Eyrie has commenced!"

  Dev shook his head. Simone seemed to live for intrigue and risk taking, and he wondered if she didn't see the whole conflict as some sort of enormous, elaborate, and challenging electronic game. She was never happier than when she was tweaking the system, looking for new ways to outwit or get past the computer networks that permeated every aspect of modern life.

  As they walked, he let his gaze traverse the concourse, then shifted to the railed balconies overhead. There were hundreds of people in sight, most of them businessmen or trader types, travelers arriving at or departing from Eridu's groundside sky-el terminus. He also noticed an unusual number of Hegemony soldiers patrolling the gleaming floor, or standing at intervals along the balconies, and there were no local militia troopers in evidence at all. They wore heavy partial armor and lugged military rifles or lasers rather than the less conspicuous stunners or carbines security troops normally carried, and they stood or paced restlessly at their posts with the air of men warned to expect trouble.

  And trouble was definitely in the air, a tension that could very nearly be tasted like the acrid reek of fear. Things were quiet in the Babelport dome, but the larger, adjoining dome of Babel had been the scene of yet another demonstration. Dev had not been there, but he'd seen views of the Babel town square on repeater monitors around the spaceport concourse. Thousands of people had gathered there early that morning. He could hear them now, a faint, far-off, rhythmic chant: "Tanis! Tanis! Tanis!"

  God, no wonder the security guards were nervous.

  Most of them, Dev could tell from their shoulder patches and uniform emblems, were members of the Chiron Centurians. No Terran Rangers that he could see, and only a few New Americans. Maybe the Rangers weren't trusted any longer, after A Company's defection at Tanis. Network Intelligence had reported that downloaded accounts of what had happened at Tanis were circulating among both Ranger and New American units, and morale was reported to be low. There'd been a lot of desertions lately, with whole companies joining the rebels, bringing warstriders and weapons with them. The entire planet was charged, ready to explode; almost anything could touch it off. Sinclair's propagandists had tapped the anti-Imperial resentment and turned it into a monstrous, living thing.

  Dev wondered if Sinclair and his people would be able to control it.

  They stopped at a transplas window in a lounge overlooking Bay Alpha. Nakamura's shuttle was a large, delta-winged, twin-engine ascraft, an Ishikawajima A5M1 Moketuki with a hull that gleamed like burnished gold in the light of Marduk. The Nakamura mon, or family emblem, adorned both wings. It rested on its ventral landing skids, surrounded by the snaking coils of power conduits and feeder tubes and guarded by several armored men on foot. Its belly cargo hatch was open, and Dev could see a line of robot loaders already wheeling up the ramp, each carrying maglev sleds piled high with two-meter canisters of the kind used to transport fragile or perishable goods up to orbit. A human cargo officer checked tags on their sides and made entries on his compad. Good. As long as he didn't decide to spot-check those canisters . . .

  Forward, the chunky, organic shapes of a pair of DR-80 Tenrai warflyers were being eased into the Moketuki's external hull rider slots. A pressurized boarding arm connected the port facility to its starboard airlock, and the steam boiling from the craft's cryo-hydrogen slush tanks curled up around its flanks.

  It looked like the plan was proceeding smoothly, but Dev's heart was hammering inside his chest. So much could go wrong. . . .

  "Loading's almost complete," he said. "We'd better get aboard."

  A Hegemony guard stood by the terminal entrance to the Bay Alpha boarding arm. "Sorry, sir, ma'am. This is a restricted area."

  "We have orders for that ship." He kept his voice even, commanding.

  The man looked them up and down, his right hand resting in casual display on the butt of a holstered laser pistol. "I hardly think—"

  Dev extended his left hand, palm out. The man hesitated, shrugged, then picked up a compad resting on the shelf beside him and extended it. Dev placed his interface on the screen and felt the tingle of transferred data.

  The man looked at the screen readout, eyes widening with respect. "Sorry, sir! I didn't know . . ."

  "Now me," Simone said, grinning.

  The guard read her forged ID and nearly turned white. "Please, you can both go aboard immediately."

  As they stepped aboard the shuttle, Dev gave Simone a sidelong glance. "What did you tell the damned computer that we were doing here, anyway?"

  "Oh, I put you down as Nakamura's personal secretary, his human secretary, that is, on your way up to synchorbit for a conference with Omigato himself."

  "I see. And you?"

  She giggled. "I'm listed as Nakamura's mistress."

  Dev wondered if that guard had thought it odd that someone as high-ranking as Nakamura had a gaijin secretary . . . or a gaijin mistress, for that matter, then decided that it didn't matter. No enlisted man would dare question the fact, if the computer network claimed it was so.

  They made their way up to the flight deck, where other members of the Network combat team were assembling. Each silvery canister had held two cramped rebels, or a pair of combat suits and several weapons. Lara Anders, listed as the ascraft's pilot, arrived a few moments later.

  "Places, everybody." Anders said. "I want to light off before someone decides to double-check those orders."

  The shuttle was a true ascraft. an air-space interface vehicle that saved fuel mass in atmosphere by gulping down huge quantities of air and converting it to sun-hot plasma in twin fusion furnaces. In space, the tanked cryo-H served as reaction mass, though it could also use water or any other liquid. Smaller ground-to-orbit craft could use the magnetic repulsion effect of magflitters or similar vehicles, but large shuttles like this one still relied on old-fashioned nuclear engines, a design relatively unchanged for three centuries at least. Though the spacecraft could hover, land, and take off like a conventional tilt-jet aircraft, launch to orbit was usually assisted by a hotbox booster that would take the vehicle to scramjet speeds. It had pilot jacking slots for three, though a single person could fly it, and acceleration couches for twelve more on the flight deck. By utilizing every available seat, plus jury-rigging additional acceleration couches with foam pads laid out on the aft cargo bulkhead, Dev had managed to squeeze thirty rebel troops aboard the tiny craft, along with their combat armor and weapons.

  After donning a suit of combat armor, save for helmet and gloves, Dev took his pl
ace in the co-pilot's jacking slot forward. With his background, he could fly the ship if necessary, but mostly he wanted to be jacked into the ascraft's sensors for the final approach to their target. As soon as he came on-line, he sensed Lara at his side, completing the final elements of her prelaunch rundown. His visual field was a feed through optic scanners in the ascraft's prow, showing the encircling gray wall of Bay Alpha's blast pit, and the domes and hab structures of the spaceport.

  "Cryo-H tanks at pressure," he heard Anders saying. "Hotbox fuel feed at three-seven, nominal. Gantry clear and power on internal. Babel Towerdown, flight Ko-tori Five-niner is requesting immediate launch."

  A window opened in the upper left of his visual field. A bearded face, a traffic controller's ViRpersona, stared at Dev from the depths of the blue-green sky. "India Hotel Kilo Five-niner, please hold for authorization check."

  Dev felt something go cold inside. So much could go wrong with this plan, not the least of which was the danger that some human or AI would become suspicious at the urgency of this shuttle launch, or the large number of cargo containers that had been so hurriedly loaded aboard. If someone decided to hold the shuttle's launch, there wasn't a lot the rebels could do about it, and there was for damned sure no way they could hide the twenty-some commandos packed into the craft's flight and cargo decks. The alternative—initiating an emergency launch and boosting off from Babelport without authorization—would be worse than useless. Transit time from launch to synchorbital docking was pegged at three hours, fifteen minutes; no ascraft that had blasted out of Babelport against orders would be permitted anywhere near the synchorbit facility.

  Were the spaceport control people merely double-checking the shuttle's orders? Or were they sending someone out to inspect the craft personally? Dev found himself holding his mental breath.