by J. F. Holmes
Maybe. Maybe she could kill all three, and then the Dragon. Then she realized that she didn’t need to kill all of them, only get past them and the Dragon. Seizing the station would be great, but blowing it in place would work too. She reached down into a small pouch on Kato’s body, and removed the cool grey cylinder. The antimatter directional mine, if placed against the computer control unit, would be enough to destroy it, according to R&D. Of course, it might depressurize the station too. She estimated her chances to be one in a hundred, and she would die soon after, either from an Invy claw or the explosion itself.
If she was to die, then she was to die. She breathed deeply, oxygenating her body, and unsnapped the rifle from her harness. She threw it outward into the space, and a plasma bolt bisected it. Then, drawing Kusanagi from its scabbard, she carefully tested the balance, learning the weight of it, and sending a few practice swings through the air. It felt different from a Kendo pole, and different from the traditional Katana shape, but it also felt like an extension of her arm.
“This is absurd,” she whispered. “I’m holding a two thousand year old sword, in a space station, about to fight aliens that look like wolves, and try to kill a six armed Dragon, to plant an antimatter charge, and destroy a semi-intelligent computer. You just can’t make this shit up. What next, Cowboy Be-bop comes to my fucking rescue on the space battleship Yamoto?”
Ichijou stopped when she realized she was talking to herself. She could, actually, blow the station from right where she stood, but maybe, just maybe, she could kill all three and gain control. Her fatigue made it hard to make a decision. She looked at the sword to try and feel some mystical connection, but really, it was just an ancient piece of steel and bronze. It would have to do, though, and she could think of no better way for such an heirloom to be used. If a Divine Wind was to save Japan, it would have to be her.
She extended the blade around the corner, waiting for a plasma bolt to knock it from her hand. When it didn’t, she extended her arm, and heard excited barks from the Wolverines. Tentatively, she withdrew the sword and then stepped forward, holding it low.
Beneath her feet, the clear glass still showed the edge of the continent, and overlaying that was a targeting matrix. Yellow spots hovered over each of the villages in Japan, with a smattering in Northern China. Central China and Korea, she knew, were radioactive wastelands with no Invy presence.
In front of her stood two of the Wolverines, one wearing the gold bars of a Kuff, or Commander. The other was a Subcommander, and at their feet lay the body of a dead Senior Hashut, or Sergeant. Thank you, Kato, she whispered. The odds were no longer so impossible, just bad. The Dragon ignored her, continuing to remotely maneuver the ammunition pod into place.
She stepped forward, and raised the sword to her face, then assumed a Kusami no Kamae position, sword raised high over her shoulder. The Subcommander stepped forward, but his superior growled and shoved him aside, extending his ripping claws.
Careful, she thought to herself, he will not move as a traditional opponent. She advanced slowly, until they both stood almost within striking range of each other. She could smell its sweat matted fur and rotten meat breath, but ignored it and sought the calm place, the place that told her when to strike, watching the creature’s eyes for the tell.
They both moved at the same time, a whirlwind of blurring motion, and she felt a claw draw softly along her throat, just breaking her skin. The sword crashed downward, slicing completely though the tough fur of the creatures’ own neck, cutting through the jugular.
Never pausing, she spun in place, just as the other Wolverine moved at her. She caught that one with both arms fully extended, blade moving like a whirlwind. The Subcommander’s head flew from its shoulders, and she continued, pivoting on the ball of her foot and striking forward at the Dragon.
The Sword of Japan shattered on the alloy armor with a ringing crack and her arms went numb. Ichijou fell to her knees in shock, and the Dragon turned, picked her up, and slammed her to the floor. She felt something crack in her arm, and bones ground together as it picked her up again, hissing with laughter. Again she was slammed to the floor, and her head hit the glass matrix, sending pain rocketing through her and making stars appear.
The six limbed Invy picked her up again, and Ichijou looked downward, to see Japan laid out below her in all its glory, shattered pieces of the sword gleaming in the strange Invy light, mixed with Wolverine blood. She closed her eyes as the creature raised her even higher, and prepared to die. She had done her best, and hoped her ancestors would let her join them. Regret washed over her as she realized she would have no descendants to honor her, though. With her last strength, she struggled to arm the antimatter charge, and smiled one last time as her finger found the cap over the switch, jammed her thumb under it, and pried it off. Then she shoved it forward, and dropped it. Ten minutes till they would be dust in space; she hoped it was in time to stop the strikes.
Major Ikeda fired from thirty meters away, his shaky, blood covered hands steadying for just a second. The 10mm round entered the Dragon’s mouth and exited out of the back of its skull, and the creature fell, dropping the Empress to the floor.
Chapter 59
Ikeda said nothing, merely glanced at the flashing light on the antimatter charge, bent down, and picked the stunned pilot off the floor. She screamed as he handled her broken arm and went limp, passing out from the pain. He slung her over his shoulder and started to run, but stopped when he saw the shattered pieces of the sword on the floor. Grunting with effort, for he also was exhausted, the Major reached down, picked up the hilt, which contained about half the length of the sword, and slipped it through a loop on his battle armor.
The scout didn’t know how much time they had before the charge blew, or if there were any other Invy on the station, or even how to get back to the shuttle. He just charged blindly forward, trusting to luck and instinct. He was, after all, a Scout, and finding his way was what they were supposed to do.
A turn to the left took him into a blind corridor after a hundred meters, and he cursed, back tracking. Although Ichijou was a woman, she was still fairly heavy in her armor, and unconscious bodies were dead weight. He was sweating profusely in the hotter, humid Invy atmosphere, and there was some element in the air that irritated his lungs.
This wasn’t going to work. Ikeda set the pilot down gently on the corridor and propped her up against the wall. He slowly removed her armor, being careful to gently slide it over her arm, wincing. Next, he laid the arm across her chest, and wrapped duct tape around her body, securing it. In the back of his mind, time was screaming at him to MOVE, but he worked as carefully as he could.
Next he unbuttoned his small medical kit. Inside were things that any Special Operations Soldier might need in the field, and he spilled them out on to the floor. Tampons for gunshot wounds, a small precious packet of nanos for blood clotting and antibiotic, tourniquet, rubber bands, three syringes of morphine with auto injectors, and damn, no smelling salts. He sometimes carried them, when he could get them. They were often just the thing to wake you the hell up, which is what he needed his companion to do right now. Then he remembered, and fumbled at another pouch. There, yes, there it was. A small bottle of dried wagiri togarashi powder, Japanese red pepper, which he used to flavor his bland MRE’s. Good for throwing Wolverines off the track, too.
Ikeda opened the bottle and poured a bit into the palm of his hand, spit on it, mixing it into a paste. Then he took a small amount and wiped it just under her nose, conscious of time passing. “Forgive me, Kiyomi,” he said, then placed his hand over her mouth and gently blew on her nose. Reflexively, her nostrils flared, and the scent of the wagari wafted into her sinuses. Her eyes flew open, and she sneezed powerfully, then tried to stand up. Ikeda grabbed her by her good arm, and lifted her to her feet. “RUN!” he yelled in her ear, and they did, fleeing down the corridor.
They had gone only twenty meters when the Empress grabbed his arm and dragged
him back to a doorway that led to another corridor, one he wouldn’t have taken. The pair made a turn, and Ikeda recognized the corridor his team had first advanced down, only minutes ago; it seemed like a lifetime. The shuttle airlock was ahead on their right, and he almost shoved Ichijou forward, feeling time running out.
They were ten meters from the hatch when the gravity went out, probably in response to the antimatter charge detonating, and alarms began to blare. Ikeda stumbled forward, flew head over heels, and continued to spin, instantly disoriented. Ichijou, though, was in her element, reaching her good arm out to grab a handle set in the airlock door, and hooking her legs out towards the Major as he flew past. She screamed with agony as her bad arm banged against the door, and almost passed out again. With a supreme force of will, she managed to hold on as Ikeda grabbed at her leg; he may have been weightless, but he still had mass and momentum.
Breathing heavily, she fought the pain as he pulled himself up her body and then grabbed the handle himself. Together, they swung into the airlock and he helped her transition to the shuttle’s artificial gravity, gently setting her down on the floor. Thankfully the cabin that lead to the nose mounted airlock was pressurized, but there was a short ladder to climb. He helped her up again, and slowly, they got up into the cabin.
Outside the front viewport, the station was slowly breaking up. “Kiyomi,” he said, forgetting in his urgency who he was talking to and using her first name, “I can pilot this thing, but I need you to tell me what to do.”
She motioned weakly to a large red handle, and he pulled it, just as something exploded silently in the central area of the station. Fragments pinged off the hull as the docking clamps were released. The shuttle sat there for a moment until Ikeda realized that he needed to back away. The engine controls were similar to the ones on the transport he had commandeered, enough so that he could slowly send them backwards. Then he tried to turn, and went into a wild spin as the damaged thruster started firing erratically.
An exhausted Ichijou dragged herself into the copilots’ seat, which was uncomfortable to her, made for a Dragon. She slapped some controls, and took the stick in her good hand, fighting the centrifugal force that was trying to throw her around the cockpit, too quickly for the inertial dampeners to respond.
Eventually, the spinning stopped, and they sped away from the slowly disintegrating space platform. Ichijou aimed them into a low earth orbit, and opened a radio channel to the Americans in the other station. She knew that they were proceeding in the opposite orbit, and would come around the horizon soon.
“That was stupid,” Ikeda said as he helped her down to the cockpit floor.
She bristled at that, and said, “Excuse me?”
“Fighting as a soldier, going into the station. I had it under control.”
“You forget yourself, MAJOR!” she said, anger rising in her voice. “I am the EMPRESS OF JAPAN!”
“Yes,” he answered, “and you put yourself needlessly at risk.”
She was truly mad now, and spat back, “What I do or don’t do is none of your concern, MAJOR Ikeda!”
“As Major Ikeda, no, it is not my concern, and I honor your bravery. As a man who has loved, and lost, it concerns me greatly. I do not want to lose again.” And he leaned forward, kissing her gently on the lips. Then he sat back, closed his eyes, and fell fast asleep.
Captain Kiyomi Ichijou looked at him in amazement, and started to laugh. A deep, long laugh that, despite her arm, felt amazingly good. In the last eight hours, she had seen a nuclear weapon go off, shot down four enemy interceptors, ejected from a disintegrating aircraft, spent an hour floating on a raft, been rescued, fought a space battle, engaged in gunfights, had a sword battle with aliens, and played Ultimate Fighting Champion with a six armed lizard.
Maybe falling in love wasn’t a bad way to end the day.
“The Blood of Tyrants”
Outside the ruins of Olympia, Washington
"For Christ's sake men—come on! Do you want to live forever?"
~ Sergeant Major Daniel Joseph "Dan" Daly, France, 1917
Chapter 60
Though there were electric street lights in the Invy towns, and some businesses were linked to the fusion reactor, the houses were forbidden power. Instead, oil lamps burned dully; and few were lit at this hour. Not even the pre-dawn glow lit the eastern sky, still in the dead of night, and Mount Rainier blocked out the stars.
In the basement of a house, close to the edge of the small town, a man grunted as he heaved at a paving stone. He wasn’t as young as he had been when the Invy came and his unit dispersed from Fort Lewis, eleven years ago. In the intervening time, until he had come to live in this damned place, he and his family had often starved, and he still wore the scars of heavy fighting against refugees. Some were on his skin, and others were in his soul.
The stone came up, and he moved it aside. Underneath, a set of wooden steps descended into the darkness, and a damp smell wafted up at him. The lamp guttered as he carried it downward and hung it on a peg, the yellow glow illuminating dark green cases with stenciled markings.
Half an hour later, he had carried all the boxes up into the basement, and set about opening them. First, the rifle case, hissing as he equalized the air pressure, to reveal an M-6 carbine, a dozen empty magazines, and a cleaning kit. He set about breaking down the weapons, inspecting each piece, and gently oiling them, then snapped everything back in place.
Another case yielded an optical sight, powered by the movement of the weapon in his hands. Shaking it up and down several times, the red dot appeared, and he snapped it onto the rail mount. The same for a PVS-48 night vision headset, the screen slaved to the aiming sight on his rifle, the true color display bright in the lamplight, readings for the 25mm grenade launcher flashing red, closer than the minimum arming distance.
He fed 6mm sabot rounds into the magazines, forty each, designed to penetrate Wolverine armor. They had been smuggled in five years ago from Cascades base, and he said a silent prayer that they worked. His own body armor still fit; not much chance of putting on weight with the meager Invy rations. Heavy layers designed to dissipate plasma energy overlapped each other in an articulated, insect like covering.
Before he put on the armor, though, one last detail. He shrugged out of the heavy, rough trader’s clothes he wore, and pulled on the grey, green, brown and black mottled uniform that had lain folded in another container. Before shrugging into the blouse, he looked at the subdued CEF patch on the shoulder, and beneath that the tan and black American flag. He ripped them off the Velcro and swapped, so that the Stars and Stripes rode above the Sunburst and Globe. Last, he rubbed the three stripes and two rockers of his sewn on rank, his nametape, BLAKE, and his Combat Infantry Badge, for luck.
“Dad? What are you doing?” Blake jumped, startled at the sound of his teenaged son’s voice. The boy stood at the head of the stairs, looking down at the collection of opened cases.
“Alex, go back upstairs,” his father told him, but his son descended the steps. He was fifteen, and had spent the last eight years living and learning at the Invy School in town. His father had tried to counteract their propaganda, but as the boy had grown older and entered his teens, their arguments had grown with him.
“Dad, what is all this?” Time to come clean, his father knew, and he sighed inwardly.
The man stood up and motioned his son down into the basement, sitting down on a chair as he cradled his rifle. “Alex, do you remember what I did, before the war?”
The boy shook his head, staring in mute wonder at the gear. “You were a truck driver. I remember you being gone on long trips.”
“No. I was a soldier, Alex. Special Operations, Confederated Earth Forces. Before that, 75th Ranger Regiment, US Army.”
“Did you … did you fight in the war?” asked his son, bewilderment on his face. He had been only four when the orbital strikes had thundered down, and remembered none of it.
“I did, as much as anyon
e did. Tried to maintain law and order after the strikes, then we fought when the Invy came, until we broke.”
“But Dad, they’re our friends! They came to save the Earth from environmental damage. We were destroying our planet!”
Eric Blake sighed and said, “That’s what they tell you in school. We’ve had this argument a thousand times, Alex. They’re here to make us their slaves.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” said the teen passionately. “And what is all this?” He gestured to the weapons and equipment.
“It’s time, is what it is. Time to do something. I want you to stay here; things are going to be pretty hot over the next day. If we lose, take some of this gear into the mountains, where we have our camp. There’s plenty of supplies there. Eventually, I suppose, the Invy will let you come back, or I’ll come for you.”
His son took a step back up the stairs, a look of horror on his face. “What do you mean, we?”
“The CEF, son. Last roll of the dice, I suppose,” answered his father in a weary tone.
“I … I can’t let you do that!” said his son, and he turned and fled up the stairs.
“ALEX! WAIT!” shouted his father, running after him, up the stairs and into the darkness. The sergeant was supposed to meet up with his team in a few minutes; there was no time for this.
He had just caught up with him, rounding a corner, when both almost crashed into a Wolverine patrol that was passing down their street, two of the creatures walking side by side. They caught sight of Blake with his rifle, strictly forbidden, just as Alex yelled to them. Both instantly lowered their plasma rifles off their shoulders and flicked off the safeties.
Erik Blake, veteran of Afghanistan, the Spratly War, and the disastrous invasion, took the chanciest shot in his life. The rifle rose, aim and trigger pull were as one, and the bullet scored his son’s shoulder, then caught the closest Wolverine, just as the Invy soldier raised its own weapon. Blood, black in the street light, splattered, and Alex Blake screamed in pain, dropping to his knees.
