“By recovering,” Reiko replied. “And spending some time with your niece until you’re healed up. We can talk more later.”
Reiko left the room, and his niece began to tell him all that had happened to her during the past week. He laughed and asked, “Have you been having good food lately?”
“Mom tried to cook mapo tofu and fried rice, but it wasn’t as good as yours.”
“You need to get the spices and pork balance right or it doesn’t work,” Bishop said.
“I love your cooking,” Lena said. “When can you leave?”
For a moment, Bishop looked out the door and wondered where Reiko was going, what she was doing next. But then his eyes turned back to his niece. “Hopefully soon,” he replied.
REIKO MORIKAWA
LOS ANGELES
I.
A few hours after leaving Bishop, Reiko attended an emergency meeting made up of the remaining members of the Sons of War. It had started to rain and the water was coming down hard, hammering the roof. Forty-seven of the senior members of the Sons of War were gathered. None of them were wearing masks. Reiko was not used to seeing all these high-ranking officials, generals, and politicians from the Empire present without a disguise.
Vice Minister Toyoda took the podium. Toyoda was previously second-in-command and had taken charge of the Sons. He was ex-military like Yamaoka, and they’d served together throughout the past two decades.
“Obviously, since Bloody Mary has publicly declared the USJ dead, the Empire has been mobilizing against us. But I’m more concerned about this new faction calling themselves the ‘New Americans’ who are quickly taking over. One of their leaders, Major Nori Onishi, arrested eight of our ministers with her mecha legion. The public has lionized her for her battle with General Watanabe. Marshal Lanser has used this opportunity to lead a revolution of his own in the German Americas. Because of that, the situation could change at any time and we could have the Nazis breathing down our necks.”
Reiko was amused to hear mention of the New Americans, the group she’d joined after the revolution ended. Although some in the press thought they were on the same side as Bloody Mary, they had no connection.
“We should put all the blame on Yamaoka,” one of the generals stated. “Tell Tokyo Command that it was his idea and we had no idea about his desire to set himself up as a shogun.”
“Yamaoka miscalculated! He’s made us all vulnerable.”
“How could he let Bloody Mary release all that private information?”
“If you surrender,” Reiko stated, “we’ll all be executed. Don’t think you can squirm your way out of this. No matter what excuse you make, Tokyo Command won’t let you off. The only chance we have is if we fight together.”
“She’s right,” someone said.
“Don’t be stupid and rely on their mercy. That isn’t going to happen.”
“But Yamaoka is gone. Who’s going to take his place?”
“What’ll happen to the Sons of War?”
Vice Minister Toyoda called everyone to attention and stated, “I’ve had personal assurances from the generals in Tokyo Command that if we blame it all on Yamaoka, they’ll accept it and let us return to our former positions with our authority intact.”
Assenting voices affirmed the hopelessness of resistance, as well as the hostility toward Yamaoka.
Reiko did not like it and shouted, “It’s true, the Sons of War are over. But we can get through this if every one of you stands strong and defends your position.”
“We can’t fight both the Nazis and the Empire.”
“Since when were we so afraid of Nazis?” Reiko demanded.
“A two-front war is suicide.”
“We can’t act rashly now.”
The debate intensified. Reiko became frustrated with the way the cowards spun their arguments for surrender as common sense and reason. Her eyes drifted to a series of paintings in the hall that weren’t very good. Each of them had business cards next to them with titles and suggested price range, which was a bit high considering their poor quality. The most interesting of them, Reiko noted, was closest to the vice minister. It depicted a woman eating a man who was in turn cannibalizing a woman who was also eating a man, all with sharp teeth in an infinite loop, struggling to break free.
She felt disgusted with the Sons of War for only caring about saving their own necks. They were vultures who’d been sycophantic around Yamaoka before his death, turning on him the moment he was gone. There weren’t many people in the world who were really loyal. Then again, she assumed people could say the same about her.
The New American faction had promised her the chance to try to convince the Sons of War to join them. Reiko still felt they would be useful in the battle to come. But not if they insisted on the old ways.
As the group voted to censure Governor Yamaoka and publicly reassert their loyalty to the Empire, she felt sad that this collection of talented officials and generals couldn’t understand that their ways were obsolete. They had to evolve.
Reiko had been wary of joining yet another political group after the Sons of War had failed. But Major Nori Onishi was one of the key members of the New Americans, and her word carried a lot of weight after the battle. What ultimately convinced her was that they hadn’t invited Reiko to join as a member but as one of their leaders. The fact that they’d given her the chance to persuade the Sons of War, something the Sons of War themselves had never bothered to do with Governor Tamura’s followers, encouraged her. They were also to be arrested, not executed.
Reiko looked again at the painting of the woman with the man inside her mouth. It was a surreal expression of suffering and interminable belligerence, drowning in the hunger of others. Hearing the Sons almost finishing their vote, she reluctantly gave the signal on her portical. When she heard the soldiers rush in, she closed her eyes and dreamed of a different kind of future in which she used mechas to explore the planet, not fight more wars.
It was a good dream.
Photo by Angela Xu
Peter Tieryas is the author of Mecha Samurai Empire and United States of Japan, both of which won Japan’s top science fiction award, the Seiun. He’s written for Kotaku, the Verge, Boing Boing, S-F Magazine, Tor.com, and ZYZZYVA. He’s also been a technical writer for LucasArts and a visual effects artist at Sony, and works in feature animation. He is currently warping between different alternate realities.
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Cyber Shogun Revolution Page 33
