Invasion!: The Orion War

by Kali Altsoba

For Takeshi, stripped of the mysticism he has no time for and no faith in, this is a first order belief. He revels in the moral smoothness of its logic, in its freedom and its inevitability of murder for power. Killing has always come easily to him, without remorse. ‘And if murder feels so keen, how much better must be command in war? I must rule an army before this ends. I must feel in my hands the power that Pyotr wields over life and fate. It’s not my destiny only to serve.’

  Takeshi is slick, secretive, cunning and duplicitous. He kills more easily than any true believer in SAC’s authority or in Purity ideology, which he despises. Every ruthless, calculated murder he makes must achieve his own interest first and last. Or at least his pleasure. Not some abstract cause. He doesn’t care about dull theologies. He won’t kill for ideas. He’s a natural born killer nonetheless. He has a scientist’s focus, a politician’s base insight, and an assassin’s soul.

  These are rare and highly useful vices. His superiors, and Pyotr, are glad of them. Even if no one in SAC’s General Curia or any ‘Admitted’ in the Tennō’s inner circle trusts his ascending talent. Trust is less important than silent, ruthless competence. And he has that in buckets. That’s why Pyotr chose this special taisa, this trim and capable and ruthless SAC colonel, to lead the most critical covert op in over 300 years. The mission to Bad Camberg that launched the war.

  ‘Yet my reward is this, leading a few hundred thugs on filthy Genève?’ He hates standing here in the three brothers’ village, surrounded by stupid peasant things, with dull peasant thugs like Gomez under his command, always awaiting the next order. ‘What was I thinking, asking to leave Kestino? Just to end up in a fetid village stinking of piss and hay? I’ll accept it for another week. I have to accept it. But I don’t have to like it.’

  He’s standing just in front of his black command hover, barely deigning to descend into the muck and malignity of the sad little hamlet he’s come to burn. The whole affair is too small for his ambition. Already, simple murder like this no longer satisfies him. It lacks scale sufficient to his talent and ambition. He wants, he needs, to murder on a far grander scale. He’s confident that he’ll command an army, or more. He wants to appear before all Orion as if he’s Death itself, riding a pale horse to make murder and war on a scale never seen before.

  ‘It’s my destiny. It’s my purpose. There is and can be no other.’ His smoldering anger at the mediocrity of murder smells like nitric acid poured on copper. It turns air around him red, bitter and suffocating hot. His men sense it, and even smell it. One man shifts uneasily. The fat major just stares and waits. And waits.

  Takeshi looks disgustedly down to his boot a second time, to ensure it’s finally clean of the horseshit he stepped in when he hopped the last few centimeters from the lip of his command hover. It isn’t. He wipes the soiled toe on a loose turf of grass disturbed from the ground by his black command hover’s air-blasting descent brakes.

  The hover is a sleek, six-man flyer with full field command-and-control coms. It’s coated in all-black carbyne-sheeting, except for transparent armor scuttles on which reverse images of navigation and piloting symbology glow in subdued blues and greens. Special Action Commando is etched in angular, gothic silver letters along each side of its telemetric needle-nose. It’s one of the forbidding-looking, new and top line types favored by SAC officers. It’s meant to intimidate.

  On the flat right fuselage a gray rectangle breaks the blackness, framing a large bear who rears up on powerful legs, rot tongue lolling from its snarling mouth. The claws are bloody, too, as is its painted penis. It’s the ‘Erect Bear’ emblem of the Special Action Commando, famed and feared on all the Imperium worlds for decades before it ever scowled down at huddling farfolk in stinking villages on foreign Genève. Engraved in gold lettering across the bridge of the nose of this special craft is Takeshi’s motto. “Enemy of Mercy. Enemy of Pity. Enemy of Peace.”

  His thoughts darken as he recalls that his exquisite Ikebana flowers are broken and gone, snapped and burned by his own hand when he left to set up the Bad Camberg lie. He broke stems and crushed fine petals so that no one but him could ever know them, ever gaze on the unique shape and fragile beauty that took him over 20 years to cultivate. Only he knows their fineness.

  He laid them down with more care than he’ll leave the discarded vessels of the brothers and their school friend. Four lives waiting on his word, as have so many murders past, present and to come. They mean no more to him than a puff of dead leaves surfing on an autumn wind. He looks over to the firing line. “You may shoot when ready, shōsa.” He says it with just the slightest mocking hint of formal manners.

  Shōsa Alfonso Gomez is oblivious to the scorn in his colonel’s voice. For there’s both less and more to the order than unquerying obedience, than a functionary’s casual careerism and a moral shrug of à la guerre comme à la guerre. There’s a rising belief in all those around him in the Power State as new secular deity. All that is, save Takeshi Watanabe. He believes in nothing.

  The others think that even these dirty little killings are moral because necessary to their higher cause. It’s the secret key to Pyotr’s power and war and to his cynical embrace of Purity, a quack biopolitical theory he doesn’t believe in or care about one whit. Men like Pyotr and Takeshi Watanabe who believe in the permanent imperfectability of Humanity don’t make holocausts. Genocide is always the work of idealists. And dull gray helpers in civil service suits who pass along the necessary papers and resources as long as the order comes from higher up with triple signatures. And other dull gray men in dull gray uniforms who carry it out without question or pause or regret. So the shōsa gives the command.

  “Present arms!”

  Out here in the middle of a war Takeshi knows what true freedom is, as old moral codes and laws and rules dissolve under his acid will and the sway of Pyotr’s passport. He hears the Wolf of War call him, howl its red lust. He knows that there are billions upon billions of sheep waiting to be slaughtered, all across Orion. And no wolf is ever troubled how or why sheep die.

  He wants so much more. He longs to release his own inner wolf straight for his enemy’s throat. Which enemy to rip up first? Ferocity is a cardinal virtue in war and Takeshi knows now what he previously only suspected. He can be the Wolf of War incarnate. ‘But will they let me?’

  “Shoot!”

  Eight click-clack loads and maser shots sound almost as one, so practiced and skilled are these routine killers, so close their range to the boys. All four crumple and fall, chests seared and still smoking, exploded outward from maser burns and instantly cooked and boiling organs. Three die before slumping heads hit the ground, two brothers and their school friend. The 14-year old lies in half-conscious agony a minute from reaching that undiscovered country from which no traveler ever returns, if any even reaches it. His head rolls to the right, once-bright eyes semi-glazed but open and still alive, filled with surprise and pain and interrupted boyish hopes.

  The shōsa draws a stubby pistol, walks eight paces to the moaning boy and fires a single maser bolt into his temple, exploding brains and bone across the grass. It’s no coup de grace. No act of fatherly mercy to a dying and suffering boy about the same age as his son. It’s a standing operations rule, nothing more. “Field Order #43: All bandit cleansing to be final and certain.”

  So the major fires into the other three small, unmoving bodies as well. All head shots. The eight men of the SAC kill squad stand watching in a relaxed line, awaiting their next order. “Secure weps and gear. Police the corpses. Get them into the shed and burn it.” Gomez isn’t upset at all at what’s he done. He’s hungry and bored and wants to get back to base camp. He’ll do it all again tomorrow and the day after that, and sleep soundly each and every night.

  Raw ambition brought Takeshi Watanabe to Genève, to this filthy field to lead a SAC death brigade ‘purifying’ rear areas of stragglers, of soldiers who molted their KRA uniforms to hide among fleeing civis. To kill any other undesirable persons a
mong the occupied population.

  He’s utterly confident in his ruthless cunning, certain that he can return to SAC HQ on Kestino to dart and maneuver inside the shark tank, thriving even among the many sleek killers in waters filled with always-swimming treachery at the General Curia and Jade Court. What he doesn’t know is how many eyes intensely watch him, already keenly interested in his every act.

  Pyotr, the Sakura-kai secret society, the ever-plotting and wizened fanatics of the exiled Broderbund, all see in Takeshi Watanabe a powerful tool of their political advantage. All plan to shape and control him. All alike misjudge him. He’s always and only his own man. More so now that the moral solvent of war is washing over him and opportunity for mass murder is all around.

  ‘It’s not enough. It’s never enough.’ He thinks it as he watches Shōsa Gomez’s kill squad dispose of the small bodies. Vanity courses in him, throbbing on the lip of his hover before a burning cottage and a shit and blood-smeared hamlet on dull, unimportant Genève. His vital egoism, his whole being is enthralled by war. He’s circling a white-hot flame of absolute power, alive to its terrible danger yet helpless to turn away from its brilliance. War is the ultimate theater of power and politics. In war, he senses the nova heat of unlimited possibility. He must fly straight to the flame. He must.

  He watches the kill squad dump the limp body of the youngest boy into the gaping tool shed. Already inside are the other three, and the mother and grandfather shot five minutes before the trembling boys were killed. He watches the fat major set the hutch on fire. He sniffs warily at the rising wisps of wood smoke, searching for hints of fat melt and burning bone. Otherwise, he has no interest in the dead hamlet or dispatched prisoners anymore. “Leaves on the wind.”

  “Prepare to move out,” he orders, more than ready to lift up from the stinking, burning-horseflesh reek and the crackling of melting fat sound from the tool shed that’s growing louder. “Shōsa Gomez, I’ll be at 10th Armored HQ for the next three Standard Hours. I’ll rejoin your Special Action Squad in the next village, at ... ” He pauses to check coordinates: “Y7 lateral, B15 vertical at seven-hundred hours. Wrap up here before then. I want a complete report on the day’s business by ten-hundred.”

  “Yes sir, a full report by midnight. You’ll have it on time, sir.” All militaries operate on a 10-hour standard day, 100 minutes of 100 seconds in each of ten standard hours. It clashes with local time but keeps things orderly among fleets, distant HQs, and far-flung imperial systems. For the same reasons, it’s used in all bohr system travel and trade.

  Black odor and rolls of smoke from the burning tool shed are heavier now. Acrid, harsh, rancid. Full of scorched hair, dank clothes, and melting boys. Takeshi steps into his hover. It’s humming with tense expectancy of flight, holding acoustic white-noise nozzles steady at 15cm off the ground. With a small flick of the silver tip of his swagger baton he motions to the pilot.

  For all his bored and calm exterior, as the sleek flyer ascends and whirtles away Takeshi quivers with excitement. He secretly relishes these daily opportunities for murder that his SAC grays provide. The chance to indulge a callous sadism he first noticed in himself when at age 12 he killed the monks’ old guard dog on Fates. Just to feel what it was like. Just because he could.

  He felt the same pleasure today when he shot the boys’ mother and grandfather. He was especially amused that the old man’s creased hat stayed atop his head even as his already lifeless body slumped hard to the ground, making an unkempt pile of oozing gray and red helplessness.

  He feels the white flame drawing him ever closer, immensely dangerous and seductive in its flickering allure. As the hover turns to accelerate back to Main HQ he shudders with almost orgasmic pleasure. He thinks it. Not for the last time: ‘War has come to Orion. And war is good.’

  Temple

  “Move it, you cretins! Double time! Gunsō, get these nitōhei moving!” The taisa who barks out the order is something of a martinet. More interested in parades than Purity.

  “Yes sir. You heard the colonel. Move your asses, privates! Hut, hut, hut! Double time, march! 3rd Squad is out-of-step! Five circuits around the battalion, full kit. Do it now!”

  Tramp, tramp, tramp.

  Tramp, tramp, tramp.

  The rhythms of war have a natural beat all their own. A steady and reliable meter. The cadence of uniformed men and uniform thinking, all acting toward one ascendant and collective purpose. Or so the training manual says. So memex vids tell all the homeworlds. So dull politruk officers report up the chain-of-command. So all Grün civilians believe. It’s a grand illusion.

  Not even the Rikugun is fully ready for this war. Most of its troops are just kids, as green as their brand-new issue combat weaves. They only think they’re soldiers. Even the Old Breed, the lifetimers who were in the service for years before Bad Camberg, have never been to war.

  Yet such is the Grün sense of superiority all RIK armtrak crews think they’re invincible, having faced only a few hundred pathetic KRA Rhinos. Sky pilots fly too low, unimpeded by a destroyed enemy sky force, doing loop-the-loops to impress ground forces glide marching below. The generals fancy that they’re masters of maneuver warfare, of perfect doctrine and orders. All around the burning fields of the Imperium’s aggressive war is a soaring song of higher vanity. It may yet prove to be foolhardy hubris of an overreaching, arrogant nation rising on thermal wind.

  Most RIK officers openly despise their men. None of the troops come from the same elite castes as officers, or wear honor as a shield to keep out conscience and doubt. Status is framed by clear-diamond dirks carried in transparent holsters, hooked to tan belts that offset dark olive uniforms with plenty of gold and silver trimming. Ordinary RIK rankers wear much paler green weaves. They carry only simple black-diamond daggers, strapped against a black combat boot.

  Many officers sport dueling scars, snicked by a quick blade back in a military fraternity on Kestino or one of the Ordensstaat worlds. Or truth be told more often, acquired in an ugly bar fight over some lower class whore or slave girl. Or like General Oetkert, bought from a surgeon. Variations on a scene play out over many worlds and down the generations.

  “You cut me, you damned fool! Thanks.”

  “Cut me, too. Do it now, do it quick. Owwooo!”

  After the fight both cadets agree to lie, claiming they engaged in a trial of honor. Just like their fathers lied. However made, thin scars are left jagged, unrepaired and proudly worn. To be twenty and without one is to be a lesser man, a loser and outlier. If you’re from a good, first or second caste family in the Grün Imperium. Below that social rank, a scar would be pretentious.

  The three-tiered Grün elite uses the Imperium Akademy on Kestino as a finishing school for military gentlemen of the very highest castes, born to the highest commands. Though even the third caste does not usually qualify for such positions. In field operations Akademy officers hold back and stay back, only giving orders to lower caste officers and wannabe citizens. Only a fool leads rankers from the front. The higher castes of elite education and character and bloodline must not be exposed to hostile fire. The enemy might ignore their natural superiority.

  Rankers come from the vast lower orders, from sprawling barrios across the Imperium. From urban cesspools where the scars a man wears are most likely acquired from the flashing steel knife of some whore’s unpaid pimp. Men like that are fit to fool and send by the tens of millions into combat, with its squalid and brutal and classless ways of death. Fit only for that.

  This broad contempt against the ranks of the Rikugun isn’t wholly unjustified. Orion’s armies reflect the core societies that raise them, equip and license them, then ship them out to war. The Rikugun thus takes internal caste contempt and class conflict with it into battle. It’s mostly a source of strength, giving RIK profound discipline and unblinking obedience. It’s also a source of early weakness, from inherited rather than earned officer commissions and commands. That’s why it uses all the old tricks of
the military trades to keep morale up and men marching.

  “Corporal, march music. Get ‘em singing.”

  “Battalion band, strike a tune. Let’s make it Rikugun Forever!” Three snare drums start to rat-at-tat. A base drum sounds the deeper beat. A dozen flutes and fifes test the air. Then it all comes together as the battalion’s superb alto tenor leads off with the first verse of a Rikugun march song dating back 300 years, to the last or Third Orion War.

  “Armtraks moving out in time,

  leading our swift advancing line.

  The wild boar runs where our eagle flies,

  he’ll make a grand feast once he dies.

  Rikugun, oh Rikugun! To serve is all we ask.”

  The men need little prompting. They’re feeling good today. Flat bellies are full of hot breakfast, victory is in their sights, morning lust and being eighteen swells hardening groins.

  “Far, far from our home at war,

  we watch the bold black eagle soar.

  And when tomorrow’s battle comes

  We’ll trounce our foes to the sound of drums.

  Rikugun, oh Rikugun! To serve is all we need.”

  Well, everybody is feeling good but 3rd Squad, 1st Company, 2nd Battalion of 4rd Imperial Artillery Division. That squad is from Malmö. It’s heaving and throwing up, just finishing the third of five times around their home battalion in full kit, masers held double-handed overhead.