The woman did her best to get up. The man underneath could not stand without dropping to his knees. His feet and hands had been shattered. “Get him on top of the Cerberus,” Reiko ordered. “C’mon, hurry!”
Reiko activated the stretcher mode from the Cerberus’s back, which caused a panel to open, the compressed stretcher expanding above its torso. The Cerberus could only safely carry one human, which was the male. They began making their way out. The Sento was collapsing. Reiko navigated out of the kitchen, made her way down a hall. Fires were blazing, and she triggered the sonic extinguishers. But it was hard to aim freely with the man on the Cerberus’s back. She did her best to hit the bigger concentrations of fire and plowed through. They got to the stairs, where several workers were evacuating, which was fortunate. The emergency workers grabbed the stretcher (which she detached) and helped the woman out.
Reiko did one last scan for Daniela. No match. But there was a faint life sign coming from two floors away. She raced there. On the way, she saw over a dozen people who’d been killed in the blast. Reiko wondered if they even knew what hit them or if, for those within the blast radius, it was a mercifully quick death. Halfway to reaching her target, the heartbeat ended. Whoever it was she had been hoping to find had died. No one else was showing up in her vicinity. She continued to search for Daniela, but the instability of the Sento caused a major part of it to implode, crushing her Cerberus.
She took off her gear and rushed outside. Maybe Daniela had escaped earlier? Reiko saw three teenagers being carried out on a stretcher, badly hurt. Two officers were sitting in pain, nails that had blasted out from the building stuck in their faces. Reiko’s eyes turned wet as she saw more corpses being carried out. She blinked repeatedly to suppress the tears. The chaos and frenzied odors reminded her of the Kansas Massacre. Years and hundreds of kilometers away, destruction still smelled the same.
BISHOP WAKANA
DALLAS TOKAI
I.
Bishop drove to meet his boss at the Shirer Augmentation Clinic. There were over a dozen patients in the lobby. There wasn’t anyone as good as Dr. Shirer with artificial body parts in the city. According to Bishop’s portical, the two sisters across from him had both lost legs fighting Nazis. A man whose neck had been replaced had broken circuitry that kept his head shaking. A family had brought their electric sheep to address defects in their artificial legs.
A nurse came out and led Bishop to the doctor’s office, where Akiko’s arms were being tuned. Her left arm was exposed, and there were three separate panels open. Dr. Shirer checked all the connections and had her spin her wrist in a full circle, rotating up, then down. Part of her arm had been replaced, and Bishop saw burn marks on the old pieces. The doctor injected fluids that helped circulation, which he tested by bending the fingers until they touched her palm. Once he finished, Akiko closed everything back up. Bishop had heard rumors that her right arm had a special weapon inside it. From the outer surface, it looked like a normal hand, complete with skin grafts and finger articulation that made it indistinguishable from a real one.
“All good?” Akiko asked.
“All good for now,” Dr. Shirer replied. “Be better next time if you can avoid a gunfight.”
Akiko exited the office and gestured for Bishop to follow.
“Gunfight?” Bishop asked.
“A dispute that went awry,” Akiko replied, but did not elaborate.
They went to a closet filled with bottles. She moved aside eighteen in a specific pattern, and a door in the back opened up. They went through and entered the elevator for Tokko Outpost 6102, which began to descend.
“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you alive again,” she said.
“We had lots of help,” Bishop said.
“I didn’t think you two beat both biomechs by yourselves. Did you also assassinate eight political targets in the process?”
“That wasn’t us.”
“Why don’t you tell me your version of what transpired?”
Bishop tried to summarize everything that happened on his and Reiko’s trip to Texarkana, from the assassination of Cossack to the fight with the biomechs.
“Do you know the identity of the assassin?”
“No. But if you saw my report, General Pris Watanabe was supposed to be the recipient of the cargo Dr. Metzger was shipping.”
“How do you know that’s accurate?” Akiko asked.
“Ma’am?”
“What if Cossack was lying and trying to get us to arrest an innocent soldier?”
Bishop knew Akiko was testing him. “I considered that, which is why I’ve been attempting to track General Watanabe’s whereabouts and listen in on her communications. There was nothing on her main accounts, but she had three burner accounts she used to contact the Nazis. They were encrypted with a cipher, so I’ve asked cryptanalysis to look into cracking it.”
“Have you read Yasu’s report about Dr. Metzger’s portical?”
“No, ma’am. But it was next on my to-do list once I reported in with you.”
The elevator stopped, and they emerged into a massive underground hangar. An enormous mecha leg was being taken apart by dozens of Tokko scientists.
“What’s this?” Bishop asked.
“This leg was going to be shipped from Ida Train Station to the south of Los Angeles in Long Beach. Fortunately, one of our informants tipped us off. Interrogation of the crew has revealed multiple parts have already been shipped to Long Beach.”
“What for?”
“That’s what we need to figure out. We’ve collected information from Kempei agents near the Quiet Border who’ve reported three mecha graveyards have been ransacked.”
“Is that where older mechas and their radioactive BPGs are discarded?”
“It is. They tend to be less guarded than the Arizona Junkyards and the ruins of San Diego, and less documented too. We don’t know what parts they retrieved, other than by determining what is missing from the graveyards.”
“So someone is assembling mechas.”
Akiko nodded. “That’s a safe assumption. Initial reports concluded it was excavators selling parts within the Quiet Border to Americans wanting to improve their Chimeras. With our new intelligence, we believe otherwise. Our interrogators will get us more information as soon as they can.”
“That leg looks familiar,” Bishop said.
“Our agents have concluded it’s a stolen backup part for a mecha driven by a pilot you may be familiar with. Lina Niijima.”
Bishop bristled at the mention. “How’s she involved?”
“Her personal mecha, Syren, has gone missing. So has she. She was last spotted in the Quiet Border in one of the mecha graveyards.”
“I never heard anything about this.”
“The corps is doing their best to hide this fact. Two other pilots are also missing.”
“Pris Watanabe is one of them?” Bishop asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s hard for me to believe Niijima would be working with Bloody Mary. I don’t like her, but I know she’s one of the most dedicated pilots in the corps.”
“I’m aware of your history with her,” Akiko replied. “But my prognosis about her sense of loyalty would be different from yours.”
“You think she could join the terrorists?”
“I assume your conclusion is that she couldn’t,” Akiko said.
“You have facts I don’t?”
“If traitors were easy to spot, we’d be without a job.”
“I never thought smart traitors equaled job security.”
“Her husband and their entire family were executed by Governor Yamaoka.”
“What was the reason?”
“They were accused of treason since they worked with Governor Tamura,” Akiko replied.
“Were they guilty?”
; “They wouldn’t be dead otherwise, would they?”
“My father’s dead, and he was innocent.”
“You are correct,” Akiko acknowledged. “Your father tried to bring about change to the Empire in what he felt was the honorable path, but he was punished for his integrity. There are many who have sacrificed themselves to right wrongs that were unfixable to begin with.”
Bishop recalled how after their very first meeting, Akiko had taken him to see the Kempeitai agent who had falsely accused his father. The two had flown south to the Mexican Confederation of Japan, heading for a ranch just outside of Monterrey.
“Her name is Tiffany Kaneko,” Akiko said as she showed him the portical files with the official charges Kaneko had filed against his father.
“Is she still part of the Kempeitai?” Bishop asked once he’d read it over.
“She left eighteen years ago.”
“If something were to happen to her, would there be repercussions?”
“Do you really care about the repercussions?”
Bishop thought again about his father, trying to make his voice strong despite knowing it was to be his last time talking with his family. “No.”
They approached the main building. It was a resting place for senior citizens and those unable to take care of themselves. Many were in wheelchairs or had to rely on mechanical parts to move. Nurses were helping a majority of the patients. There was no sign indicating what type of facility it was, but Bishop guessed it was for veterans and military personnel based on all the paraphernalia on the walls. An administrator approached them. Akiko showed her badge and ordered, “Take us to Tiffany Kaneko.”
The administrator nodded, then glanced at their guns. “Should we prepare a medical team?”
Akiko looked at Bishop and said, “We’ll see.”
Bishop suspected that something would be wrong with the Kempeitai agent. The closer he got, the angrier he became as he recalled the life his family had to live after their father’s death. He could endure the scorn and mockery from the other students. But knowing his father died because of false charges made him furious.
When they met Tiffany, she was a comely woman with long blond hair in her forties. She was working on her garden and got up to greet them. “You have guests,” the administrator told her.
“It’s good to have guests!” Tiffany exclaimed. “You look familiar. Do I know you?” she asked Akiko.
“We were friends once.”
“Ah. My apologies. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“What’s that mean?” Bishop demanded.
“I don’t remember much about my past. The doctors have told me I suffered a degenerative brain disease after a terrorist attack.”
“So you’re saying you don’t remember how you killed my father?”
“Killed your father?” Tiffany asked in genuine shock. “What are you talking about?”
“You had my father killed!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Bishop turned to Akiko and asked, “Is she telling the truth?”
“I’m afraid so. A terrorist group called the NARA launched a biological attack that inflicted serious brain damage to most of their targets. Those who weren’t killed suffered heavy brain damage and memory loss.”
Bishop glowered at Tiffany. “It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t remember. She’s still guilty.”
He took the gun out of his holster and aimed it straight at Tiffany Kaneko. Tiffany looked horrified, fell to the ground, and began weeping.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear, I didn’t do anything,” she sobbed.
Bishop looked at Akiko. “You’re sure it’s her?”
“I’m sure.”
Bishop’s anger focused on Kaneko. He wanted to shoot despite her tears and the snot dripping from her nose. He’d never killed anyone this close up and definitely never someone who was unarmed. But this was for his family. He kept on thinking about his mother, who could never come to terms with the way her husband had died.
Bishop just wanted to be certain about her identity. He looked at his portical file of Tiffany, then back at her. The photo was of a younger woman, but there was no doubt they were the same person.
Should he shoot? She clearly had no memory of it. But did that make her less culpable? His hand began to shake. Don’t be weak! he yelled internally. Seeing her so helpless made him waver.
But he thought about his brother and his mother, and his rage came back to him.
He fired twice into Tiffany’s forehead.
Strangely, no bullets came out.
Bishop thought something was wrong with his gun. But Tiffany got up and took off the latex face mask she’d worn. The administrator helped “Tiffany” remove the rest of her makeup. Akiko put her hand on Bishop’s shoulder. “I had the bullets removed.”
“This was a test?” Bishop asked, stunned.
“It was. I’ll be honest. Many of my superiors did not think you’d make a good agent based on the demerits you received on the police force. But I told them those are trivial, since you have a stronger will than any other prospect I’ve seen. Now we’ve confirmed it.”
“I don’t understand. Who is that lady?” Bishop asked.
“One of our agents.”
“You were toying with me?”
“I was testing your will,” Akiko replied. “I wanted to see if you’d carry out your vengeance despite a morally conflicted situation. Most people waver in their purpose and then relent, which is not something that members of Tokko can do. You fired despite knowing she did not know what happened in the past.”
“Doesn’t that make me a bad guy?” Bishop asked, conflicted by the notion when presented in these ethical terms.
“What do you think Tokko are?” Akiko asked.
“What about the real Tiffany Kaneko?”
“I killed her twenty years ago to avenge your father under these same circumstances.”
Bishop looked at Akiko, shocked. “She’d lost her memory?”
Akiko nodded.
“Did you have second thoughts?” Bishop asked.
“Maybe,” Akiko said in a way that hinted at more conflict.
“Thank you, Akiko-san.”
“For?”
“For avenging my father,” Bishop said.
“I did what I had to, and I can see you’d do the same. Welcome to the Tokko.”
“So what are people supposed to do?” Bishop asked Akiko in the present.
“That’s a question for the politicians, not us.”
“Leaving our fates in their hands seems like a recipe for suffering.”
Akiko put her metallic hand on Bishop’s shoulder and gently said, “Careful. The line between using empathy to capture our targets and actually harboring treasonous thoughts is a blurry one.”
“Understood, ma’am . . . Who’s the third missing pilot?”
“Her name is Daniela Takemi,” Akiko replied.
The mention of the name surprised Bishop, which Akiko noticed.
“You know her?” she inquired.
Bishop explained how Reiko was looking for her and she’d been seen earlier in Los Angeles. “This can’t all be a coincidence.”
“You think Captain Morikawa is involved with the disappearance of the pilots?”
“No,” Bishop stated.
“You’re sure she wasn’t misleading you?”
“I’m positive,” Bishop stated.
“You trust her that much?” Akiko asked.
“Not her. My instincts. She’s the one who brought up Daniela’s disappearance. And I’ve had her communications monitored for suspicious activity.”
“Anything?”
“No.”
Akiko appeared to accept h
is conclusion. “I’ve had agents looking for all three pilots. We haven’t had much luck,” Akiko conceded.
Somehow, this was all connected to the Sons of War, but he was missing the link.
A Tokko agent approached Akiko and reported to her in Spanish. Bishop didn’t understand, but Akiko replied back with complete fluency. Bishop did know a few phrases and thought he heard something about calling someone, but he couldn’t make sense of the rest.
The agent saluted and left.
“Go see Yasu first,” Akiko ordered. “He has an update about Metzger’s research. Then I want you to follow up with the Yamamori family and figure out who handled the shipping of the parts and how they were contacted.”
“What about Long Beach?”
“I’ll follow up on that personally.”
He bowed and left.
* * *
—
Bishop found Yasu in the western wing of the outpost. The section resembled a hospital. There were multiple stasis tubes with people inside, and many had strange protrusions growing all over them.
“What is this?”
“The Mota Biolab, my private research facility,” Yasu said.
“Who are these people?”
“These are subjects exposed to Nazi biological weapons along the Quiet Border. I was able to get to them before they’d been killed and arrest the state of the viral decay so I could study them here.”
“There’s so many.”
“Not as many as I’d like. But that’s not what I want to show you.”
Yasu took Bishop to a table where there was a detached arm. He clicked a part of the flesh, and it opened up. Inside were chemicals and wires.
“What is that?”
Cyber Shogun Revolution Page 15
