by J. F. Holmes
“COLONEL!” she yelled at her logistics officer, who had come out to meet the VTOL. “I want both of those shuttles ready to go in half an hour. I don’t care how you do it, but I want some kind of reflective or heat absorbing material on the bottom. YOU! Sergeant Major Shimata, GET OUR SOLDIERS BODIES OFF THIS GROUND!” The senior Noncom bowed low, and then started barking his own orders.
She was the Empress again, all humanity pushed aside as mission drove her forward. Turning back to Ikeda, she said, “Get a team together, rehearsal in fifteen minutes. Anyone who can fit in a suit.”
He smiled, and bowed as low as the Sergeant Major had. She let a small grin slip, then turned away. The scout team commander already had his men ready to go; he had given orders as soon as the fighting here had stopped, telling his scouts to be prepped before he got back. They stood in the shade of the shuttle, some field stripping weapons and other sleeping, like soldiers from time immemorial.
Ikeda sat down and started working the knots out of his muscles. His second, Captain Bill Wallace, formerly of the Australian SAS, sat down next to him. Neither said anything for a minute, Wallace knowing that Ikeda would speak when necessary.
After the fight on the beach, the Japanese Scout Leader had put out a call for volunteers among the scout teams, and Wallace had shown up, along with three other Aussies and a New Zealander. All five had been caught in Japan, on an information exchange mission, when Southeast Asia command had gone silent from the 30 degree virus. They had been part of the infiltration of this base, losing several.
“Are the men ready?” asked Ikeda, eventually.
“Do dingos eat babies?” answered Wallace, with a straight face.
Ikeda grunted, and said, “That is not Australian, it is from an old American TV show. Seinfield.”
“SeinFELD, mate.”
It was a game the two played, trying to one up each other on American culture, and one Ikeda thoroughly enjoyed. “Whatever, dude,” he answered, trying to unsettle the Aussie. Wallace just looked at him.
“So, are you prepared to die,” said Ikeda, “in honorable service to your Empress?”
“Ain’t my Empress! What I’m prepared to do, Major, is kick some Invy ass, and then take that shuttle and git back to Oz, you savvy? I’m not doing it for your future wife.”
“My, my WHAT?” spluttered the Japanese, aghast.
Wallace laughed, “Well it’s bloody obvious. The two of you dance round each other like a couple of dogs eyeing the same bone. Eventually one comes out on top, if you get my meaning.”
The look Ikeda gave him made Wallace realize he had stepped over his bounds, but it was in his nature, once challenged, to push further. “We’ve got a bit of time before we lift, go tell her how you feel, mate. Last chance, maybe she’ll bone you in the back of the shuttle.”
“You disrespect me, and you disrespect my Empress,” muttered the Major.
Wallace stood, and grinned. “Takara, you Japs are hell on wheels in a fight, but I have no idea how you ever get laid.”
Ikeda looked over at where she was directing the installation of ablative covering over the bottom of the shuttle. Ichijou was tall for a Japanese woman; and her green eyes gave hint at some foreign ancestor long ago; her gaining the throne would have been impossible even twenty years ago. She was nothing like his dead wife, and the memory of her left him confused.
He got up and walked to a military storage container, calling for Sergeant Major Shimada. The NCO produced a key to match the one that Ikeda took from around his neck. Together, they opened the two locks, disarming the explosives inside. Shimada bowed, and walked away.
Ikeda took the long, canvas wrapped bundle from inside, and closed the lid again, automatically locking it. Then he walked over to Ichijou, and waited until she noticed him. When she did, he knelt on one knee. She was startled at his reaction, but her eyes opened even wider when she saw the wrapped object, and her breath hissed out from between her teeth.
“You may need this, Empress,” he said, and handed it to her. She unwrapped it, and drew the sword from its sheath. For a moment, she said nothing. The sword was not in the traditional Katana style; it was older, and the blade looked almost like a short western broadsword. The bronze hilt was tarnished, but new leather bound the grip, and the steel shone in the sun.
“Kusanagi!” she whispered. Even she, the Empress of Japan, had never seen the blade that the Shinto priests guarded, only the wooden box it was kept in when she had been given her title.
“You may need it, and if we don’t make it back, well, Japan will no longer be, well, Japan will no longer be. It is fitting.”
He unbuckled his belt and give it to her, since she had none on her coverall, and the pilot slid it through the scabbard. Then he helped her buckle it around her hips, conscious of her waist in his hands, if even for a moment. Stepping back, the Major bowed low.
Around them, the flight crews and soldiers broke into a cheer, even the Australians joining in. It was, as the Americans say, hokey, but it felt right as she lifted the blade in the air, the rising sun catching the ancient steel of the sword of the Divine Rulers of Japan.
Chapter 56
From the cockpit, Captain Ichijou called back into the troop compartment. “Station coming over the horizon, and we’re going to be exceeding the inertial compensator as I maneuver. Strap in.”
“Uh, what?” said one of the Aussies, looking at the seats designed for the smaller Wolverines.
Wallace grinned at him, lay flat on the floor, and wrapped a strap around his arm, first securing his weapons. “Just hang on tight, Johnnie!”
As he said it, the pilot shouted, “MISSILES INCOMING!’ and the craft pitched violently over to one side in a ten gravity turn, damped down to a punishing five, and the soldiers were thrown about, hanging on for dear life. Then they were weightless, then tossed towards the rear of the craft. Only the superb training and shape they were in allowed them to withstand the violent maneuvering. A pallet of gear broke loose and crashed into one of the Japanese soldiers, crushing his skull, and blood began to float about the compartment as they experienced zero G again.
“Secure that!” barked Ikeda, and one man grabbed the crate of explosives, quickly lashing a cargo strap around it. Another pulled the dead man’s body armor off and tied his uniform blouse over the crushed head, containing the flow of blood. Then normal gravity returned as they dropped into what the compensators could handle.
“We have particle weapons engaging the hull,” said Ichijou, “mask up in case of decompression!” The soldiers did so, but one immediately threw up in his helmet, and he cracked the seal again, struggling not to choke, even as they rolled furiously, to keep the weapons from burning through one spot.
Ichijou had no copilot, and sweat burned her eyes as she wrestled with the unfamiliar controls. She could have asked Ikeda to help her, but he needed to be with his team. Her heads up display traced the normally invisible particle beams, and she thanked the gods that they had expended most of their missiles on the first attack. The three they had sent out at her had caused the violent maneuvering, and this was a shuttle, not a combat vehicle. It handled like a slug, and it was all she could do to keep the belly oriented to the station and keep closing with it. She took a second to glance up at the readout, closing speed two thousand forty eight KPH, intercept thirty seconds.
There was a loud BANG and alarms started to blare, as the particle beams burned through and penetrated the hull. One intersected Sergeant Major Shimada and blew him into a pink mist, the explosion of his superheated body fluids hammering the other soldiers in their hard suits. With a shriek, air started to scream out through the two holes in the ship, as one thruster exploded and sent the ship into a roll. Wallace slapped a patch over one hole, and parts of the Sergeant Major jammed the rest, if only for a moment.
The Empress cut fuel to the damaged engine, yelled “HANG ON!” into the intercom, spun the ship, and lit the main engines. A jet of fire lanced o
utward from the three nozzles, and the men inside were thrown towards the back ramp. One landed with an audible CRACK as his neck broke.
“GO GO GO!” screamed Ichijou, and she hammered down on the emergency release controls for the back ramp. Explosive bolts blew it outward as they came to a dead stop thirty meters from the station, Earth hanging far below them. My God, thought Ikeda as he grabbed a demolition pack and pushed off towards the station, it’s beautiful.
One man missed his mark and flew up and over the orbital, gabbing frantically at the smooth station skin before heading out into space, his scream of despair echoing through their radios until Ikeda cut it off. The remaining five soldiers, Ikeda, Wallace, one Japanese and two Aussies, clustered around the docking hatch, each emplacing their demolition charge.
Holding on to their magnetic clamps, they set their timers, then leaned back away from the airlock. The original plan had been for the shuttle to mate with the docking collar and go in through atmosphere, but that had gone all to hell on their approach. Speed was of the essence, before the defenders could rally. Behind the second door of the air lock could be a whole platoon of Wolverines, though the Americans had met only token resistance when they had taken theirs. Then again the station had been blown wide open, killing most of the defenders. They HAD to get in before the Invy locked their computers.
As soon as the charges exploded and the debris had spun away, the men crowded into the airlock, and Ichijou spun the shuttle so it was nose on, gently setting the mating collar, even as they worked to set more charges on the inner door. There had to be air pressure in the lock, or they would have explosive decompression of the entire station, and no one knew enough about Invy tech to guarantee they could get the environmental systems running again.
The soldiers crowded back into the shuttle, and opened cases that had protected their rifles from the punishing cold of vacuum as the pilot repressurized the space. With a CRACK that was deafening in the confined space, the charges blew and the inner airlock door sagged backwards.
Wallace ran forward, jammed his P-90 into the open space between the doors, and emptied a full magazine into the area behind, waving it from side to side. They had only basic knowledge of the station from the Americans; their radio had been destroyed before they could send detailed info.
The remaining Japanese soldier grabbed a crowbar and forced the buckled doors apart, and Ikeda threw a stun grenade into the space. It went off with a BANG and a dazzling flash of light, and two men pulled the doors apart as Ikeda and Wallace charged through, rifles up and ready to fire.
Inside was a slaughter house. The bodies of five Wolverines lay on the floor, one still trying to bring his plasma rifle to bear. Wallace shot the creature in the head, and the soldiers moved out, towards the heart of the station. One stayed back to guard the entrance of the shuttle; unless they could capture another docked one, it was their only way back, damaged as it was.
The Japanese soldier, Senior Private Kato, was startled by a movement behind him, and almost shot the figure that emerged from the ship. Captain Ichijou had taken off her helmet and carried her own P-90, on a chest harness. Strapped to her back was her sword.
“Which way did they go, Private?” she asked him.
“Empress, to the left.” The station was in the form of a giant wheel, to provide spin if the anti-gravity failed.
“Then we go right,” she said, as gunfire echoed, men shouted, Wolverines barked and plasma weapons hiss-cracked.
Chapter 57
The corridor they walked down was eerily deserted, and smelled strongly of fur and scale. Each step that the pilot and the soldier took made the tension grow, until Ichijou’s heart was pounding in her chest. This type of combat was far removed from flying a fighter plane at the speed of sound. As if to emphasis the point, SP Kato held up his hand and waved her to fall back behind him. “No offense, Captain, Empress, but you are not trained for this.”
Fact was, she knew how to fire the short bullpup rifle, and that was about it. She held a sixth degree Dan in Kendo, and would have been far more comfortable wielding the sword that hung at her hip. Its weight felt oddly comforting, but she knew it wouldn’t do crap against a plasma rifle.
They came to a doorway that silently slid open as the pair approached, and Kato stepped through, directly into an ambush. The man’s reflexes were lightning quick, and he rolled backwards, coming up firing. Ichijou also fired, short bursts at dark figures illuminated by muzzle flash.
The Private yelled, “Fall back!” and she turned, ran backwards several steps, and then spun to provide covering fire for him. Kato emptied his magazine and ran past her, reloading as he ran. In this manner, they withdrew until the corridor turned, and they were no longer in danger of direct fire, but neither stopped running until they found another corridor that turned in towards the center of the station.
“I have tangled with Wolverines before;” he gasped, “and they are fierce, but they cannot shoot for shit!”
At that, they both started laughing hysterically.
***
Ikeda and his men were not having so much luck. One more Australian was dead, and Wallace was slightly wounded. Around a corner was a hasty barricade, with a Dragon hissing at three Wolverines.
“I’ll tell you what, mate, I don’t think they’re happy to see us,” said Wallace, through clenched teeth, biting back the pain. Then he leaned over to the corner and yelled, “HEY! DINGOS! SURRENDER AND I’LL GIVE YOU SOME DRAGON STRAIGHT OFF THE BARBIE! TASTES LIKE CHICKEN!”
The response was a hail of plasma that nearly took his head off, chewing away at the corner bulkhead. “I don’t think they like chicken,” he muttered. Although he appreciated the other mans’ humor, Ikeda felt despair inside. They were running out of time.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Peirce, the remaining Aussie Sergeant. With that, he checked his magazine, stood up, and ran out into the corridor, firing and running directly at the barricade. Ikeda was startled, but he also jumped up and followed the soldier, taking time to pick his shots.
Peirce fell as his leg was swept out from under him by a plasma bolt, but he landed with a grunt two thirds of the way down the corridor, and continued to fire. Ikeda jumped over him, screaming at the top of his lungs, and slid like a baseball player into the bottom of the barricade. Carbine empty, he drew his handgun, counted to three, and stood up, arms extended, taking an instant to assess the situation. One Wolverine was down on the ground, howling from a wound, but two were still trading shots with Wallace, who had moved into the corridor. Behind them stood a Dragon, but only carrying a sword.
He engaged the farther one first, lining up the red laser dot on the creature’s throat and firing. The Wolverines had very dense bones, and he wasn’t sure his 10mm would penetrate a skull. The round punched into the fur, and seemed to have no effect, but he didn’t have time to think about it. Two feet to his right, the closer Wolverine turned, ripping claw extended, and Ikeda shot him through the eye. He then turned and fired again at the first one, five shots.
An enormous blow hammered him aside, and the Dragon crashed through the barrier, knocking him down, charging down the corridor at Wallace. Ikeda was too stunned to react as the pistol went flying from his hand, and he watched in horror as the Invy crashed into his friend. Both went down in a tangle of limbs and motion that quickly grew still.
Ikeda ran back down the corridor, passing the still form of Peirce. The Dragon lay dead, and Wallace’s arm moved beneath it. With a curse, the Japanese heaved the Invy off the Captain, and knelt by him. The hilt of Wallace’s fighting knife stood out from a seam in the Dragon’s golden armor, foot long blade sunk deeply. Blood ran from the soldier’s mouth, and he coughed as his breath rasped in and out.
Wallace feebly shoved Ikeda’s hand away as he tried to see where he was hurt. “Rib’s crushed, mate,” muttered the Aussie. “No sheilas on the beach for me. Bury me in Oz, brother,” he whispered, and his grip fell slack as his breath sighed out
and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. The Major pulled the knife out of the Invy’s body, and placed it in his friends’ bloody hand, closing the fingers around it.
He reloaded his carbine and pistol, took extra ammo off Peirce’s body, and shot the wounded Wolverine a half dozen times in the head as the passed through the remains of the barricade.
Chapter 58
Senior Private Kato was fast, but not fast enough. He started to move forward into a large, glass floored room that showed Eastern Asia slowly drifting beneath them. Maybe he was distracted by the sight, or maybe, like Ichijou, he was exhausted. They had killed one more Wolverine in an extended, running gunfight through the halls, ending with Kato taking a deep burn to his neck above his armor. He had also lost his helmet, and both were drenched with sweat.
Maybe that’s why he was too slow to see the threat on the other side of the control room. Three Wolverines stood guard on a Dragon who was manipulating a hologram, assisted by two of the octopus creatures. Beyond a large window, a square pallet shape was being maneuvered into place, holding hundreds of tungsten rods. Enough to hammer Earth into submission. Kato did shoot, but only got off two rounds before a large caliber plasma beam hit him square in the torso.
All this the Empress saw over his shoulder as she raised her own weapon, but Kato’s body slammed her backwards into the corridor. She struggled to push him off, rolling the steaming corpse to the side and staggering to her feet. “Ikeda!” she called over the radio, but there was no answer. “Wallace! Anyone!” No answer. This was it, then, down to her.
She leaned over and blindly fired her remaining cartridges, only a dozen till the weapon clicked dry, and brought her hand back as plasma fired hammered into the corner. Looking down to see if Kato had any, she saw that the plasma bolt had punched a hole in his chest and mangled all his equipment, including his rifle.
Damn. Well, she had heard stories from Ikeda about single combat with Wolverines. There was a legend in the Scouts about a man named Zicavik, Zivcovic or something, who had killed more than one, and the Wolverines respected the results.
