Cyber Shogun Revolution

by Peter Tieryas

  “It’s an unfortunate coincidence,” Reiko replied, flustered because she knew how bad the optics appeared.

  “Unfortunate coincidence that someone from the army and Tokko entered Nazi territory and eight important figures were subsequently assassinated under suspicious circumstances? Then said officers attacked two of their biomechs when they requested clarification?”

  “I know it looks bad, but we didn’t kill those people.”

  “Then who was it?” Kubo demanded.

  “We don’t know.”

  Kubo did not look happy with Reiko’s answer. “Do you know how hard we’ve worked at a compromise with the Nazis?”

  “I can guess, sir.”

  “No, you can’t. I have to deal with their racist crap every day. If the military wishes to carry out operations against the Nazis, they have to include us in their plans. The intricacies of politics in the Quiet Border go beyond mechas and biomechs. The boring stuff you don’t want to deal with, like trade, tariffs, resource management, and road construction, are the kinds of things that ultimately win wars. When mavericks like you and this Tokko agent go off on an operation without informing us, it puts us in a precarious situation.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” Reiko said, even though she wasn’t. “But like I said, we weren’t involved.”

  “Your official brief said you were going to meet with the army operative Rudo, conduct a meeting with a Nazi baroness named Cossack, then return.”

  “Look, we weren’t expecting Cossack to get assassinated,” Bishop angrily stated. “We nearly got our asses handed to us, goddamn bullet storms over my head. Stop treating us like we’re the criminals here.”

  “You might as well be! If a war starts over your actions—”

  “We’ll beat the crap out of them,” Bishop snarled. “But we didn’t do anything. If I killed some Nazis, I wouldn’t be pussyfooting around it. Don’t take no Nazi’s word over mine.”

  Assistant Mayor Kubo sighed. “Even if what you say is true, the trick is convincing the Nazis.”

  “I’m sure the Gestapo was monitoring our movements. They’ll know where we went and how long we were there,” Reiko said.

  “Let’s hope, captain. The governor wants to see you right away. You’re to take the first plane back to Los Angeles.”

  Reiko was taken aback by the order. “I’ll leave right now.”

  “Please ask the governor to keep us informed next time he plans something like this.”

  “What about the situation here?”

  “Hopefully, the Nazis won’t do anything rash.”

  “If they do?”

  The assistant mayor looked toward the border. “We’ll have a world war with the Nazis on our hands.”

  * * *

  —

  World War Nazi was appealing to Reiko, and she would have loved to have wiped the Nazis off the face of the planet. She arranged to take a military transport back to Los Angeles and met Bishop outside the terminal.

  “I’m sorry I lost my cool in there. Too much crap happened today, and I couldn’t take his attitude,” Bishop said.

  “Don’t apologize. I was pretty pissed too.”

  “You did a good job restraining yourself.”

  “I mostly tuned out everything he said,” Reiko confessed.

  “I need to learn that trick,” Bishop said.

  “It gets tricky in important meetings ’cause sometimes they say something useful that you need to hear.”

  “How can you tell what you need to tune out?”

  “Depends on how much I want to punch the speaker.”

  Bishop grinned. “You going to be okay with the governor?”

  It was the worst of all possible combinations, a political, military, and social defeat. “I don’t know. What are you going to do next?”

  “I hope I can go to Los Angeles, find Pris Watanabe, and take her in for questioning,” Bishop answered. “But I have to check with my boss. Did your tracker tell you where the assassin went?”

  “I lost the trace after they entered Dallas. I have the GLS piped into my portical, so if I get within a hundred kilometers of them, it’ll alert me.”

  Bishop went to a private room to make a few calls. The gates opened, and the transport was ready for passengers. Bishop returned.

  “You get permission to come on this plane?” Reiko asked Bishop.

  “I gotta stop by base first and give a full report,” Bishop replied. “But I’ll be there tonight.”

  She gave him a playful thumbs-up and said, “Call me as soon as you get to Los Angeles.”

  Bishop shuffled awkwardly.

  “Something wrong?” Reiko asked.

  “I looked up your friend Daniela Takemi,” Bishop replied. “She was imprisoned a few months ago.”

  Reiko was stunned. “Why?”

  “She was charged with treason,” Bishop replied.

  “Treason? Where is she now?”

  “She went missing three months ago.”

  Reiko looked down at the ground, trying to understand how this could be possible. Was it Daniela that had betrayed them to Bloody Mary?

  She looked back up at Bishop and said, “Thank you for telling me.”

  Bishop avoided her eyes. “Usually when they go missing like this, it’s not a good sign,” he said. “But she just came back up on a Tokko report earlier today.”

  “What’d the report say?”

  “She was spotted in Los Angeles earlier in the day, but she vanished before our agents could get to her.”

  “Where in L.A. was she?”

  “Downtown. I’ll send you the information.”

  Aboard the plane, there was a show playing in front of her seat about the great exploits and feats of General Yamaoka. She closed her eyes as the plane took off, but the blackness that confronted her reminded her of the past and that summer when she’d returned home from Berkeley.

  Her parents liked to sculpt in their free time, and they’d done some human studies based on photographs. Unfortunately, one of their images bore an uncanny resemblance to a notorious German officer who had killed many of the empire’s citizens. Her parents weren’t even aware of it, but they posted images of their respective sculptures on SOCIAL. It was a portical orbit that people used to post personal thoughts, photos, and silly links from the kikkai. They didn’t have many followers. But a friend “socialized” by sharing the image, and that’s when one of their friends with a much bigger following noticed the resemblance. They shared it, but included an additional note mocking the image and accusing her parents of glorifying the Nazis. Within minutes, it had begun to spread across SOCIAL. Condemnation came pouring down on them. By the time her parents realized what had happened, it was too late, even though they tried to delete the images. Death threats, angry accusations, and calls for them to get fired from their jobs were bombarding them. “Nazi lover!” was the most common note. Strangers tracked down their private information and broadcast it to the public. Even their friends began to ignore them.

  Her parents argued that whole night. She remembered the way her dad had become so pale. Her mother had put up a tougher front, saying, “Forget them. It’ll blow over.”

  “It was your idea to post these! We should never have shared them.”

  “It’s just a sculpture. We didn’t do anything wrong!”

  They tried to defend themselves by posting the original image they had based the sculpture on, but that only aroused more ire. Why didn’t they just fess up to it and apologize? In this precarious time, they should have known better than to sculpt such a sensitive subject.

  They got death threats, hate mail, and the most vulgar language possible describing the violent things they wished upon their family. Reiko couldn’t help herself from going onto SOCIAL and seeing the witch hunt happen live on her
feed. Only it wasn’t some random person the kikkai had turned against. It was her own parents. In the afternoon, matters took on a more sinister turn when there was a knock at their door. Two agents from the Tokko had come to investigate.

  She rapidly blinked, the memory of it infuriating her.

  Her father was the most devastated. He lost his job, his friends, and his dream of becoming a sculptor. No one gave him any more opportunities, even after he was cleared of all wrongdoing. One wrong share on SOCIAL had destroyed him. Her mother had been more resilient, or tried to be. But it was hard to get hired when the very first thing that came up on kikkai searches was the false accusations against them of secretly harboring Nazi sympathies. Even when her parents showed documentation that they’d been cleared of all wrongdoing, the accusation alone became a blemish they couldn’t overcome.

  Reiko was angry at the arts, but she was even more angry at the kind of world where kikkai mobs were standing by, ready to destroy anyone just for kicks. Art had never been free, but now, it had become a noose that anyone could hang themselves with. The idea that a work of art could be weaponized against the creator, the same way those artists held captive by Relm Bailey had been destroyed, scared her.

  The only person that stood by her the whole time had been Daniela. While many of Reiko’s friends became distant after what happened to her parents, Daniela didn’t care and was angry on her behalf. One time when some cadets made verbal jabs at Reiko, Daniela got in their face and told them, “Don’t talk trash when you’re not even a quarter of the pilot she is.”

  As she read over the report Bishop had forwarded, Reiko couldn’t help but wonder what Daniela was doing in Los Angeles and what her presence portended.

  II.

  Normally when Reiko visited the capital, she was in awe of its grand architecture. L.A. was the biggest city in the country since their victory in the Pacific War. The metropolis was the epitome of modernity with its field of skyscrapers. The freeway was rife with cars speeding home like electric ants after a day’s work. A large gate surrounded the cluster of skyscrapers and buildings that represented the central hub for Los Angeles. Inside, there were parks that were integrated at the ground level into the high-rises, bridges and small lakes forming a natural contrast to the imperial monuments that towered above. The whole area was bustling with activity; people rushing to their jobs, parents strolling with their children, the occasional police officer lending a hand.

  But as Reiko looked out of her taxi window, she felt less awe and more dread. Each of the skyscrapers had massive displays on the side, projecting important government officials. It was Governor Yamaoka’s turn, and as he spoke, captions in Japanese indicated he was being honored for all his years of service. He had been invited to Tokyo for a special session with the Emperor. Footage of his feats were interspersed with ads for the latest portical games. The governor, dressed in a fancy kimono, exuded confidence and sagacity. Blimps with commercials for the trendy “simulation personalities” were showing off portical experiences that could re-create any personage in virtual form. A popular band of three women called the Phantasy Nocturne was going to perform an anti-Nazi concert the following week at the Bishamonten Amphitheater. There were drones shaped like electric crows that soared through the skies with miniaturized Vulcan guns, the eyes and ears of the internal security force that was also fed to the Tokko. The new Pangolin-class mechas that were replacing the Sentry ones were in position, equipped with the shotgun ice and electric shields that made them defensive bulwarks.

  Reiko arrived in the reception area of the governor’s office. There was a line of several hundred people waiting outside.

  “Who are they?” she asked a security guard.

  “People who want something from the governor.”

  Governor Yamaoka had twelve assistants, each from a different jurisdiction in the city. The inner sanctum had piles and piles of gifts people had sent him just this week. Yamaoka’s military assistant said, “The governor is still in a meeting. He’ll be with you when it ends.”

  Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. Still, the governor had not come to see her. She thought about all that had transpired so far and read the portical report about General Pris Watanabe. Watanabe was a decorated war hero who was also one of the Empire’s best pilots. But Reiko also recalled that her father had been arrested earlier in the year. Is that why she had betrayed him? And who was the assassin who had killed Cossack after she’d revealed that Watanabe was the one who’d ordered the mecha parts? What was the intent behind all those Nazi deaths?

  An alert popped up on her portical. She opened it up and saw that the tracking signal indicated the assassin’s aircraft was not far away—only about forty kilometers. She was surprised and checked her portical records for information about its destination. It was an abandoned government lot that hadn’t been in use for over a decade. She was going to dig further when one of Governor Yamaoka’s assistants informed her, “He’ll be available shortly.”

  The assistant was a man in his twenties who had a carefully constructed coiffure of many curls, like a sea of fractals.

  “Thank you,” Reiko replied.

  “What you did out there was a disgrace,” the assistant stated.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What do you think I should have done?”

  “Capture the assassin, not start a war. You’re lucky the governor was so generous. I can’t believe you even had the gall to show up.”

  His insolence was too much for her. “I risked my life out there. What the hell have you done behind this desk?”

  “The generals were furious with you and insisted the governor sack you for your incompetence, especially as you got their operative killed! He defended you even though you didn’t deserve it! You put him in a compromising position!”

  So officers in the army blamed her for what happened, even though it wasn’t her fault. Reiko felt crushed.

  The assistant’s phone rang. He picked up, then informed Reiko, “The governor will see you now.”

  Reiko entered the office, fully expecting her career to be over. She bowed. “I’m sorry, sir,” she apologized.

  “For what?” Governor Yamaoka inquired, which caught her off guard.

  “For messing up the situation. You sent me out to work together with the Tokko to investigate Bloody Mary, but I haven’t had much luck tracking her down.”

  Yamaoka waved her off, which was another unexpected reaction. “Nothing ever goes as planned. Otherwise, desk clerks would win wars with their paper strategies.”

  “Your assistant told me the generals asked you to fire me,” Reiko bluntly told him.

  “He told you that?” Yamaoka asked, clearly displeased. “I apologize for his bad manners.”

  “I’ll accept any punishment and resign if you’d like.”

  “Do you want to quit?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The generals are on edge. Every little thing, understandably, concerns them. I’ve calmed them down. We know your past service and what you sacrificed. If you can, please forget my assistant’s words.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Did you kill the army operative Rudo?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you assassinate those eight German targets?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Those were circumstances out of your hands. We’ll work to figure out what happened and move on accordingly.”

  Reiko was genuinely grateful. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Let’s get to what you’ve learned so far. Are you closer to determining Bloody Mary’s whereabouts?” the governor asked.

  “No, sir,” she replied. “But there’s a chance one of our own is working with her.”

  “A traitor?”

  “Yes, sir. General Pris Watanabe.”

 
Governor Yamaoka’s brows raised. “That’s a shame if it’s true.”

  “Our contact with the Nazis, Cossack, indicated Watanabe has been illegally shipping mecha parts from the Nazis.”

  “What for?”

  “We believe Bloody Mary and General Watanabe are preparing an attack of some kind using mechas.”

  Yamaoka looked disappointed. “As you may have heard, her father was executed for treason.”

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll recall, I was trying to bring up his treatment to you before,” Reiko said, recollecting the first time they’d met.

  “It was a deeply troubling case. Though there was overwhelming evidence of his crimes, I wanted to spare him because of his past service. I considered him a mentor. But we took an oath to put country over anything else, so I approved his execution. I spoke with Pris at length, and I was grateful for her understanding. I had believed she’d put loyalty to country over family. Where is she now?”

  “The Tokko agent I was with is going to try to find her and question her,” Reiko replied.

  “I see. I will speak to the Tokko and make sure they don’t employ their usual methods.”

  Reiko was nervous about her next question, knowing it could get her into trouble. But she had to ask. “Speaking of prisoners, sir. Do you remember Daniela Takemi, a member of the Sons of War?”

  “Of course. You two were the only survivors of Bloody Mary’s attack,” the governor replied, no hint of hostility in his voice, which she took as a good sign.

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “As far as I knew, she was questioned about the incident and released,” Governor Yamaoka said. “Why?”

  “I was informed she was put into prison and went missing. Earlier today, the Tokko spotted her in downtown Los Angeles, but she went missing again before they could get to her.”

  Yamaoka gave no visible reaction and said, “That’s news to me. I’ll have someone look into it. Now what about those eight Nazis that were killed?” he asked, changing the topic. “Was that Bloody Mary’s handiwork?”

  “I don’t believe it was her, sir,” Reiko replied, surprised he was trying to avoid getting into details about Daniela. Was there something he was trying to hide?