Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3)

by Matthew S. Cox

  A haughty laugh, distinct and British, belted out of her. “Oh, Mamoru, you do not even know what you are.”

  Mamoru raised his hand, index and middle finger raised, thumb hooked. He sat up, and clapped his hands together. Kami, I beseech you to banish this oni from my domicile. He clapped again.

  Nami folded her arms. “Are you trying to pray me gone?” She rolled her eyes. “We are the new gods, Mamoru. Your ancient traditions cannot―”

  “Go!” He pointed at the wall. “I shall speak no more with the voice of the damned.”

  “Bloody simpleton,” mumbled Nami. Her eyes rolled back in her skull. She swooned to the side and collapsed under the water.

  Ayame screamed. Mamoru held out a hand to her in a reassuring gesture, earning a pensive stare. Nami sat bolt upright, shaking. As realization dawned of what she had done, she curled up and blushed at the tiles.

  “Forgive me, Saitō-sama. I could watch and feel, but could not move.” She shivered with disgust. “It was as though someone had taken my body away from me.”

  He growled in his throat and moved to a sitting position, elbow on his knee and rubbing his mouth with two fingers. At the look on her face, he grunted and waved at her. Nami slid backwards to the edge of the bath and got out. Ayame followed. They took clean, white towels from a shelf and held them for him, standing naked and dripping. Mamoru sat still for some minutes, trying to understand what he had seen.

  Neither woman moved. Sensing they would wait there until they tended to their required duties, he stood and exited the bath. The paradigm shifted: Nami could not look at him while Ayame risked eye contact. The young woman seemed finally at ease around him.

  They dressed him in his nightclothes, donned their kimonos, and left the room.

  “Ladies,” he said, causing them to freeze three paces down the hall. “Visit the shrine before you sleep. Something not of our world stalks us.”

  “Yes, Saitō-sama,” they said in unison.

  The Warlord Beckons

  amoru Saitō stood silent in his dojo. At the sense he was alone, he lifted the deck from the table with reverence often reserved for a katana and carried it to a shelf between two suits of ancient armor at the center of the long wall. After pushing the wheeled table below it, he removed his white haori jacket and let it fall to the floor. His hair tickled at the small of his back as he walked bare-chested to the center of the dojo.

  “Begin.”

  Holographic adversaries appeared. Fist-sized black orb bots emerged from portals in the ceiling and hovered about, ready to deliver a crippling shock should one of his phantasmal opponents strike him. The first ten figures appeared alone, followed by pairs, later three, four, and five at once.

  He drew on his inner power, focusing mental energy through his body. For this, strength would be a waste of effort, so he concentrated on speed and dexterity. Wisps of white light peeled from his shoulders, flickering on the walls of his private sanctum. His movements increased in speed, taking down wave after wave of illusory opponents as though they stood still.

  At first, the apparitions moved at the pace of normal humans. After fifty kills, the computer simulated cybernetic augmentation. Rather than veritable statues, these opponents moved as if in slow motion. Two dozen kills later, his body glistened with a fine layer of sweat. The orbs had yet to go off even once, causing the computer to cheat.

  It sped up time, sending ever-faster waves of adversaries. Slow motion became normal time. Eventually, enemies too fast for him to keep up with grew overwhelming, and one punched him. While the hologram did no damage, the blue flash of a spark struck him in the chest, knocking him to one knee. This allowed the other seven to hit him. The look on his face from eight simultaneous shocks drew a woman’s laughter from the door.

  “End,” he wheezed, through smoky breath.

  Mamoru sat up, about to bark at the person invading his dojo. When he realized it was Reiko Ishikawa, Majordomo to the CEO, he leapt to his feet and rendered a deep bow. He swallowed his alarm at being snuck up on; too focused on the cheating computer, he had not felt her presence.

  Though he should have.

  “Ishikawa-sama, welcome to my home. My apologies, I did not hear the Vidphone.”

  She acknowledged his bow with a mild one of her own. “It did not ring, Saitō-san. I let myself in.”

  “Of course.” He retrieved his haori and wore it open down the front. “To what do I owe the honor of your call?”

  “Minamoto-sama wishes to speak with you in person as soon as you are able to.”

  “I will leave immediately.”

  Reiko started to fade away, but snapped back to full solidity. “Clean up. I will meet you on the roof in thirty minutes.”

  Violet eyes gleamed, a perfect match to her high heels.

  Her hologram vanished.

  Black coat fluttering behind him, Mamoru stood at the edge of his building’s roof, squinting at the glimmering expanse of plastisteel towers growing out of ground clutter. The early morning sun rising to his rear reflected back in blinding smears of orange. Poor areas appeared as stains through the silver city, darkened by the lack of signage and ad-bots. A peculiar mix of seawater and industry scented the air, drawing his gaze to the east and the ocean. Sparkling lights defined the silhouette of Shōrishima, the artificial island a shade larger than Hokkaido. Its bulk was a mere shadow, drowned by the glare from overhead.

  He closed his eyes and braced as a hovercar crested the roof to his left. A blast of wind whipped his clothing as the limo rotated into place on the landing pad. Mamoru pivoted on his heel, striding up to the car as an eager man in a dark uniform scurried around to open the door for him. He removed the katana from his belt, holding it across his lap as he sat.

  Inside, none of the sounds of Japan broke the tranquility. Gone was the rush of the wind and the distant whirring of thousands of flying bots. Even the occasional scream of someone being attacked in the alleys could not pierce this shell of opulence.

  His seat put his back to the driver and left him facing Reiko. She was tall by conventional standards, a trait that had started rumors of her having a western ancestor somewhere in her past. No one had proved it yet―not for lack of dozens of rivals trying―which was why she retained her high position with Matsushita. The tinted windows turned her deep-plum jacket closer to black, like the rest of her suit. Only a silver Matsushita emblem on her lapel broke her wraith-like outline.

  “You honor me, Ishikawa-sama.” Mamoru bowed.

  “I needed to get out of the office for a few minutes.” Reiko’s slender fingers curled around a triangular glass. Sake by smell, martini by appearance. “Minamoto values your service, Saitō-san.”

  He raised an eyebrow. She would never address me such in front of him. A gesture of respect, perhaps? “It is a privilege to be in his service.”

  Reiko sipped, staring through the clear vessel at him the whole time. Feminine, yet dangerous with the political power she wielded. Few women could kill with a flick of their eyes, and she was one of them. “Tell me, Saitō, for what price would you seek a new master?”

  Mamoru did not flinch. “It is by Minamoto-heika’s grace that Kutaragi-sensei took me under his wing. What is a man without honor?” He glanced out the window at passing black glass towers and food vending pagoda-bots. “My blade is not for sale.”

  She smiled. “Minamoto-sama will be relieved to hear that.”

  He pondered her meaning for a moment, but dismissed it. The way she looked at him made him uncomfortable, as if he were a bit of sashimi she debated consuming. No one else in the service of Matsushita could equal him, inside or outside the GlobeNet. A serious frown curled his lip. This woman would have him as a personal guard, wiling away each day inside an office attending to her every need. He thought of Nami and Ayame, of the blinking red light, and adjusted the collar of his haori jacket.

  Matsushita Corporate Center sat in the heart of Tokyo, an enormous obsidian leaf-shaped building ri
sing from a nest of smaller structures. Viewed from the air, the complex resembled either a high-tech flower or an angry alien hive―depending on one’s mood. Reiko had said little for the last fifteen minutes of their flight, content to wear a smile he did not trust while sipping her sake. He could not take his gaze off her eyes. Her irises shifted in an endless cycle from violet through blue to teal and back again.

  She drinks it cold… like her blood.

  The hovercar set down amid a cloud of fog that smelled as frigid as it felt to walk through. He emerged from the vehicle and followed her. Reiko’s high heels clicked across rain-soaked plastisteel turned amber by the daylight. Mamoru studied her legs, perfect calves shrouded in a haze of grey-black nylon. The woman had to be close to forty, but thanks to nanotech surgery, she looked to be in her mid-twenties. Pleasure dolls would be jealous of her. Reiko glanced over her shoulder as if aware he appraised her beauty. She narrowed her eyes, but her lips curled to a perilous smile.

  I wonder how much she spends on body work?

  A thin walkway led from the landing pad down to an automatic door. Two men in dark suits flanked a gleaming glass façade bearing the Matsushita logo: black on black, matte on gloss. Neither man felt right. Two voids where the normal sense of being in the presence of a human did not exist. AI dolls, Minamoto’s outer ring of security―immune to telepaths.

  He passed them without acknowledgment, entering a polished wood walkway leading past holographic gardens full of flowers, trees, and birds. At the end of the hall, he followed Reiko around a corner and down a short flight of stairs to a rice paper wall. Another pair of men in gleaming black Dragon Chitin powered armor stiffened at their approach. The nine-foot tall samurai pulled Nano-bladed naginata to their shoulders with a loud clack as Reiko approached. Lime green light from their visors glimmered through the transparent blades. Mamoru followed Reiko, but the driver and Reiko’s bodyguard did not attempt to enter.

  Akio Minamoto sat at the far end of a sixty-meter long office beneath a twenty-foot square tapestry bearing the Matsushita logo. He perched like a warlord on cushions by a low desk, surrounded by ten holographic display panels. The screens made his fancy dark grey and white kimono glow. His silvering hair was in a tight bun, and cold eyes observed his approaching underlings with an unblinking stare. Behind and to his left, a woman in a midnight blue kimono knelt. Mamoru looked away from the blinking red light at her neck, below a white-painted face of unreadable age.

  The intangible screens collapsed to thin lines and winked out at a dismissive wave of Minamoto’s arm.

  Mamoru stopped ten feet from the dais and rendered a deep bow. “Minamoto-heika, you give me great honor by your summons.” He knelt and sat back on his heels before bowing a second time, forehead almost to the floor.

  Akio gestured for him to sit up. “Saitō-san. You have handled the matter of your recent assignment with utmost efficiency. It is with that same efficiency I expect you to fulfill another need.”

  A doll dressed up like a geisha brought tea for Akio and his guests. Mamoru looked over the thin lines at the corners of its mouth and the gold kanji glittering around its irises. Sub-sentient, no awareness of its existence. He studied his lap as the remembered sound of Ayame sobbing herself to sleep echoed through his mind. There is no need for indentured servants. He nodded out of reflex at the doll as it handed him tea. We have machines. The electronic girl did not speak, nor did anyone else until it disappeared back through the curtain from which it entered. Resignation came over him.

  He blinked hard. They were not given to me to be maids. He swallowed the tea, hot enough to hurt. It is the way of things.

  Mamoru bowed again. “To function as an extension of your will shall bring me great contentment, Minamoto-heika.”

  Akio Minamoto extended his arm to the side where a holo-panel opened in midair. Tiny lights blinked beneath the skin at his left temple from a wireless implant. A dull crimson field crossed by black gridlines appeared. A sleek combat aircraft rendered in wireframe before it filled in to three dimensions. Long and narrow, it had forward swept wings close to the rear of the craft and backward-slanted canards on either side of the cockpit. Two large tailfins angled upward on either side of narrow vectored thrust ports. Small spots of clear glass along the leading edges of the wings gave away the position of laser weapons, and the lines of modular ordinance bays traced along the belly.

  “Noro-Shimura is developing an attack aircraft under the project designation Fūjin,” said Reiko before taking a sip of tea. “As a further message of our disapproval for their electronic infiltration, we intend to possess the Fūjin.”

  Mamoru addressed Minamoto. “You shall have it.”

  Reiko smirked. “You will obtain the appropriate design documentation, performance evaluation data, and return their completed prototype to us.”

  “They are conducting flights from their facility on the northern coast of Shōrishima,” said Akio as the screen switched to a map. “I do not expect you to fail.”

  “Noro-Shimura may as well have given you their prize as a gift. The island is not of Earth. It is one great machine that shall bend to my desires, Minamoto-heika.”

  Reiko flared her eyes, a scolding glare for grinning in front of the CEO. Akio responded with a curt nod and brought his cup to his lips. The three sipped their tea in silence. Mamoru found himself glancing out of the corner of his eye at the live girl in the blue kimono. His heart skipped a beat at an instant of momentary familiarity peering out from beneath the white face paint. She sensed his glare, but suppressed the reflex to make eye contact. No, cannot be. She looks too young.

  “I am grateful for your hospitality, Minamoto-heika.” Mamoru bowed.

  “Go, and do as you are tasked.” Akio Minamoto put his hands on his knees, gazing imperiously at the doors in the distance.

  Mamoru stood, bowed one last time, and strode to the exit.

  Sleeping Crane

  ands of holographic red light pulsed over the clear capsule as it slid upward along its magnetic track. Mamoru faced the city, head down, ignoring a handful of advert-bots that clustered about for seconds at a time. As soon as one relented, another swooped in as he glided up from the shadows of Tokyo. Harsh late-morning light glared from silver towers, destroying most of the projected advertisements and casting deep shadows beneath the great buildings. Distant clouds held his attention and he lost himself in the sensation of flying until the elevator stopped at his floor. Ninety-three stories above ground, he gazed out over the shimmering plastisteel, fluttering awnings, and clouds of fog―his master’s domain.

  He was proud to serve Akio Minamoto.

  The elevator doors parted with a chime and a hiss. Mamoru kept his imperious stance for a moment longer, before striding with purpose past a shallow garden ringed in rose-hued bricks until he reached the central chamber. A right turn brought him home, one of only three apartments on that floor.

  Ayame and Nami waited a short distance inside the entrance. Hands folded before them and eyes downcast, blinking lights at their necks synchronized. Red ringed Nami’s eyes. Unusual. He paused in front of them and she diminished under the weight of his gaze. He shifted towards Ayame.

  “Prepare my things for a two day journey. Set out my light armor as well.”

  Ayame bowed. “Yes, Saitō-sama.”

  Once she had gone deeper into the residence, he spoke in a soft near-whisper. “Nami-chan, I do not doubt that some manner of oni was responsible. Do not fear my displeasure. I do not think less of you for what your father has done.” He lifted the front part of the explosive restraint on one fingertip. “Or because you must wear this.”

  Nami shuddered, shying away from him at the reminder of her station. Mamoru let the metal slip from his finger and drop against her throat. She looked up, making eye contact, frozen with a new wave of fear. Mamoru did not glower. Even after a year of this new life, refusal to accept slavery remained in her eyes. Every stare, every action, carried as much defian
ce as she could get away with. Of course, she metered her rebellion. Too much, and he might cast her out. Any other master would be worse.

  Mamoru thought of the way Reiko smiled at him. This woman before him was in no different a place than he, except his collar was invisible.

  “Nami-chan,” he whispered. “Please prepare me a light meal.”

  With a gasp, she leaned back and cast her gaze down. Mamoru shied away from the look on her face and went to the bedroom, where Ayame had set out a black bodysuit covered with thin armor panels. As he entered, she bowed her head. Ayame assisted him out of his jacket and hakama pants and held the armor up while he put a leg in. It lacked the ornamentation or protective ability of Dragon Chitin. Its primary purpose was to remain unnoticed while offering modest protection. Normal clothing fit over it, and it did not hinder mobility. She fussed with him, like a mother dressing her son for the first day of school. She pressed a hand to his shoulder to hold the armor closed over his chest and squeezed the control button at his neck. The MolWeave fastener sealed, drawing the material tight around his body from hip to shoulder, as though it never had a seam at all.

  He wondered if the ancient ones would consider this current task beneath his station. Stealth, theft, infiltration―those were not the way of a samurai. They were the way of a corporation, and he was its instrument. Ayame helped him dress in a dark, button-down shirt, pants, and long coat that made him look less a relic from the 1400s and more like a westerner. When she circled around in front to secure the buttons of his shirt, Mamoru clasped her trembling hands.

  “Your fear is unwarranted. I shall not fail.”

  She stared at her toes. Mamoru swallowed an upwelling of contempt at the timidity that he assumed had been beaten into her before she was presented to him. Some of the ancient ways were better off left behind. He found himself timing his breaths to the red dot at her throat.

  “Ayame-chan. You are afraid of the kind of master you will be given to should I fall.”