Blood Siren

by Michael Formichelli

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matre’s Glory System

  41:1:20 CST (J2400:3083)

  Ichiro opened his eyes to the vision of the shuttle fuselage, just as he’d left it. He flinched, a reflex, as the micro-needles retracted into the chair harness leaving him to shake of the dregs of the hibernation chemicals in his system.

  “Mitsugawa-uesama,” Mamiya said, drawing his attention in time to see the CEL bow.

  She didn’t come. It’s been at least two standard weeks. Why hasn’t she come? He thought. Something’s happened.

  “We are on final approach to the Musashi-maru. I had the computer wake you.”

  “Thank you, Mamiya-san.” He looked to the side, sending a command to the shuttle computer to render the starboard wall of the fuselage transparent. A moment later he was looking out at his family’s FTL ship set against a backdrop of stars.

  The Musashi-maru was thoroughly Taiumikai in its design. Nine-hundred meters of self-repairing, carbon-reinforced poly-alloy forged into a form resembling a serpent that had swallowed a globe and only managed to pass it half-way down its digestive tract. The head of the hull bore long antennae at an angle to the long axis of the ship meant not only to be functional, but to bare a passing resemblance to the dragons once worshipped in the land of his ancestors. Lights glittered in clusters in its black surface, but most of the FTL vessel was dark. Although it was illegal for civilian craft to carry military weapons, nothing stopped them from being well armored against the stray micro-asteroid and bursts of solar radiation. His grandfather, who had built the ship, had taken that concept to the extreme. The Musashi could survive several direct hits from x-ray lasers, and even cosmic radiation was no match for its meters-thick armor.

  A flare of blue-white light caught his attention over the central sphere housing the neutronium-antimatter reactor. Another shimmered, flared, and died off in the distance behind the first. They were bursts of Cherenkov radiation emitted from other vessels in the exit zone punching holes in the fabric of space-time. The flares never stopped, their dance of electric-light was so common it was hardly noticed by the frequent space-traveler, though Ichiro watched it for a time.

  The shuttle pulled up along-side the Musashi and spun so its belly was oriented towards the hull of the ship before it fired retro-thrusters and allowed the ship’s gravity to pull it gently down into an open hanger bay. The flash of plasma as they passed through the ship’s aegis depolarized the shuttle’s hull and Ichiro lost his view for a few minutes while the ship re-adjusted. By the time the wall became transparent once more, the stars beyond had been replaced by the arched metal walls of the Musashi’s interior. Barely big enough to fit the shuttle, the bay became a box with a closing lid above them by the time the shuttle’s landing gear touched down.

  He took a deep breath, already feeling heavier in the full gravity generated by the ship’s reactor. Through the wall he could see troops, both artificial and natural, jogging up to form a double line between the ship and a large door leading into the Musashi’s gut. It was hard to tell them apart in the crisp, black uniforms of the Taiumikai Star Defense Force. Each bore the cherry blossom enclosed red-sun above a five-pointed star insignia of their occupation on their hats and arm-bands. Only the required white-skin phenotype of the artificials distinguished them from the rest.

  “They’ll stand like that until they die of dehydration,” Mamiya-san said after Ichiro had stared through the one-way transparent wall for a time.

  “What? Oh, of course.” He undid the harness with a signal from his implant and stood up, taking a moment to regain his gravity-legs.

  Mamiya rose with him, and checked, adjusted, and brushed his kamishimo off with swift hands until every line on his person was perfect. “There, now you look the part. Adjust Hoshinagi-sama.”

  Ichiro looked down, grasping the white scabbard with both hands and moving it in his obi until it was at the proper angle.

  “Good,” Mamiya-san nodded. “When you are ready, Mitsugawa-uesama.”

  He gave the CEL a look, but knew he was right. Now was the time for formality, and the faster he could get it over with the better. He was eager to order the ship on to Elmorus and retire to his chambers for the duration of the trip.

  With a deep breath and a quick, mental calming exercise, he moved to the back of the fuselage and signaled the cargo bay doors to open. Beyond the frost-covered robotic samurai snapped their legs together and bowed as one in salute on either side of his father’s coffin. Ichiro stiffened when his eyes fell upon it, but forced himself to relax as the ramp lowered itself to the deck with the thumping hiss of hydraulics. Almost as soon as the seal broke on the shuttle’s hatch, a flood of oil-and-ozone-scented air rushed into the bay, forcing him to stifle a powerful sneeze. Fighting it caused his eyes to water, so there was a longer pause than etiquette demanded in his giving the command to move his father’s body out.

  “Onward,” he said, wiping his eyes with his sleeves. He followed the floating coffin and its honor guard out into the bay.

  The double doors at the end of the troop lines slid open. A man in uniform, middle-aged with graying temples, bowed down to waist-level over the threshold. Behind him, a woman in the same style of dress, bowed just as deeply. They held the gesture until the procession reached them and came to a halt.

  “Permission to come aboard, Taisa-san,” Mamiya said from Ichiro’s side.

  The man bowed again. “We are honored to have both lords on our vessel, though this ship is unfit to have them.”

  “It will do,” Mamiya gave the traditional answer of a lord boarding a Taiumikai vessel.

  Tradition was another form of obligation, and it had to be followed to the letter to maintain the harmony of a vessel and its voyage. There were tales of ships being lost in space because their crews failed to follow the scripted ritual. Ichiro doubted they were true, but their existence made people nervous about it enough that they dared not stray from the script.

  The officers moved to the side, allowing the funerary procession to pass. The robots knew where to take the body, they were already in communication with the ship’s computer from the moment the shuttle was in range. The passing of the coffin through the doorway was the end of Ichiro’s obligation to follow it until they reached Taiumikai.

  “It is good to see you and Hamasaki-Chūsa again, Mizushima-Taisa,” he said with a shallow bow to the ship’s commander and executive officer.

  “We are relieved you are in good health,” the man, Mizushima-Taisa, said. His voice had the creaking undertones common to men in middle-age. His dark eyes, set in a gaunt face, glowed with the intensity of his sincerity. “It was terrible to hear of Mitsugawa-sama’s passing.”

  “Our hopes have been with you since,” Hamasaki-Chūsa added. She was between Ichiro and the ship’s commander in age, her visage was the round-cheeked, timeless mask of a mature woman. Looking at her reminded him of days spent getting into trouble in the corridors of Mitsugawa Castle back home. It was an uncomfortably familiar sensation that had kept him off the bridge during her shifts in the past, which he realized was unfair to her but could not be helped. Now that he was The Mitsugawa encounters with her would likely be inevitable.

  “Thank you, Hamasaki-Chūsa,” he responded. One thing he did appreciate about his own culture, it would be impolite to pry further on matters of emotion such as this, so he would be left alone to his own grief hereafter. It was a welcome contrast to his mother’s household where every detail of suffering would be drawn out by painful centimeters.

  “We have prepared the daimyo’s suite for you, of course, Mitsugawa-uesama,” Mizushima said.

  He nodded in acknowledgement and allowed the man to lead him into the two-meter-wide corridor beyond the threshold. Shaped as a functional tube with bulkheads evenly spaced, it looked like they walked within the spine of a mythical beast. Perhaps, in a sense they did. The Musashi was one of the larger FTL craft in the service of a private individual. Its desi
gn specifications, those that were known to the general public, were already legend around shipyards. His grandfather had spared no expense in making it as close to the Mitsugawa ideal of the artistic warrior as it was possible to have in a ship. Though the spaces on board were largely utilitarian, fittings and bulkheads bore the family crest alongside a host of images portraying the sea life of the home world and characters representing the three virtues of valor, honor, and fidelity.

  “Your aunt asked that we notify her by the q-comm when you were aboard,” Mizushima said when they reached the lift in the central section of the long corridor.

  “She probably wants a direct update on events,” Mamiya-san said from behind him.

  “I see no reason not to inform her.”

  “I understand.” Mizushima bowed his head.

  The lift doors slid open with a pleasant chime and a recorded, high-pitched, female voice said, “the lift has arrived. Please watch your step when boarding,” in Taiumigo.

  Once they were all aboard and the lift was moving, Mizushima-Taisa made a hissing sound with his teeth.

  “Yes, Taisa-san?” Mamiya asked.

  “I am very sorry, Mitsugawa-uesama, but your aunt wishes immediate contact.” He bowed deeply, the blood drained from his face.

  Ichiro pressed his lips together. There must be something urgent happening for her to be so insistent. Aunt Aki was the type to demand things when she wanted them in a way that sounded respectful and threatening at the same time. The thought of her displeasure sent a bolt of weakness through his gut.

  “Take me to the q-comm,” he said in a half-whisper.

  “Right away,” Mizushima said. A glassy-eyed look overcame him.

  Ichiro felt the lift slow, then accelerate in a different direction. Those around him stared blankly at the white walls of the lift chamber as though they were alone. Their expressions were passive, but alert. He did his best to imitate them. It was hard to stand still in the quiet hum of the lift’s machinery. It occurred to him that it was probably due to his having spent so much time in his mother’s culture. Those around him had much more practice at it, and he was used to, well, the noise of the constant activity that the Cronus house had.

  The lift doors opened into another long, narrow tube with a floor at its base. Mizushima-Taisa led the way to a door labeled “Ultra-Secure Communications Room.” The barrier parted before him and he stood to the side, bowing deeply along with the rest. Ichiro acknowledged the show of respect with a nod as he’d seen his father do so often, then stepped over the raised threshold into a black spherical chamber with a domed holographic projector about as wide across as one of his arms on a short, thick pedestal. Behind him the doors closed.

  “Welcome, Baron Mitsugawa Ichiro-uesama,” the pleasant, female voice of the computer said through his implant. “You have one incoming connection awaiting your attention.”

  Accept, he thought back. A moment later the ghostly image of his aunt appeared hovering over the dome. Quantum communications were low-bandwidth on account of the astronomical cost of sustaining a micro-Einstein-Rosen bridge through space-time. As a consequence, this image was faded, translucent almost to the point of being transparent, and moved in jarring skips. It was the price of having instant, communication. The audio, fortunately was much smoother.

  “Ah, Ichi-chan, you look as regal as your father.” Aunt Aki’s eyes bouncing up and down as she took his low-bandwidth image in on her end.

  He bowed deep. “I am sorry for your loss, Aunt.”

  She waved her hand, but a sadness appeared in her eyes. “This is the price of war, nephew, though my brother will be missed.”

  He nodded, feeling his chest grow tight.

  “Now that we can finally talk in private, I beg your forgiveness for my words, but as an old woman I have certain privileges that I mean to exercise, and the need to be direct is pressing.”

  He suppressed the urge to frown. Aki wasn’t that old, younger by a handful of years than his father had been. She was simply taking liberties with how others perceived her stern, traditional ways.

  “You must come home immediately.”

  “You said as much in your message,” he said.

  “But I did not say why. I could not risk it in a message that would pass through the hands of another. The need for secrecy is as urgent as the need for your presence on the home world.”

  He scowled. “What is going on?”

  “Yulong Gongsi has sent a spy to our shipyards at Seika Zōsensho. We caught him barely a week ago.”

  Ichiro scoured his memory for the name Yulong Gongsi. It was a barony belonging to House Zhào of Shēnkōngjīng system, home of another revivalist sovereignty like his own. He knew his House had dealings with them, but had never been privy to exactly what those things entailed.

  “Do you not know?” His aunt looked displeased. “Yulong Gongsi is the largest producer of raw neutronium in the Confederation. They supply all of the FTL ships with the material that keeps us in the stars, and they have noticed that we are not ordering as much as we used to.”

  “We aren’t?”

  “I received a formal complaint from Baron Zhào and—did you not find the athenaeum crystal? I told that old cyborg to put it where you could find it.” She scowled.

  “I found it, aunt. Mamiya-san read my father’s message to me.” And now I know why it was put where it was, he thought.

  “He didn’t tell you about the attachments?”

  “He did.” He felt a cold sensation in his gut. There would be plenty of time for that on the way to Elmorus—but he now wondered if he had made some kind of great mistake. There hadn’t been instructions about reading the documents right away, nor had he been able to without the athenaeum reader on the Musashi.

  “You did not read them.” It was not a question. “Ichi-chan, I thought your days of misbehaving were through.”

  “I will have time to—”

  “Your father leaves you vital information and you thought you would read it later? Perhaps when you felt like it?”

  He withered under her gaze, hanging his head in frustration. Choose your battles wisely, his father had once said.

  “I am sorry, Aunt Aki.”

  “And you should be. How are you going to govern our world if you do not pay attention?”

  “I regret my error deeply.”

  “And you should. I was hoping to keep this conversation to a small, efficient time interval but now I have to explain every little detail to you.”

  “I am sorry, Aunt Aki,” he repeated.

  He heard her snort, but dared not meet her eye. In his mind he was twelve again, getting yelled at for breaking an ancient Earth vase while he was practicing his swordsmanship in the dining hall. Aunt Aki had been angrier about his disruption of her flower arrangement than she had of the loss of the white vase.

  “You have forced me to this, remember that. Yulong Gongsi provides the Shiragawa Zaibatsu with a certain amount of neutronium for the production and servicing of FTL drives every year. Yoji was decreasing that amount by a small percentage annually since starting the Fukuro Project—which I realize you don’t know what it is since you have not reviewed the athenaeum in its entirety, but just follow along.

  “It was hoped that the drop in purchases would not be noticed for decades, but it seems the managers at Yulong Gongsi are paying more attention than we thought. A formal inquiry was made, since we have an exclusive contract with them for neutronium. If it were to be discovered that we are mining our own, or that we are purchasing from a competitor, it would put is in breach of contract and we would be subject to litigation.”

  “Are we mining our own?” Ichiro asked. This was the type of stuff he wasn’t entirely involved in before. His father had brought him to sit in on meetings for years, but they were all a blur now. Most of the time his father had insisted, to his great pleasure, on martial skills and tactical lessons. He vaguely recalled something about what Aki was saying, but he really
didn’t know much. He supposed that would change now that knowing these things was an absolute necessity. Such were the demands of the head of a major, interstellar corporation nor the pressures of governance of an entire people. The more he thought of it while Aki spoke, the heavier he felt. This was it, childhood was over.

  “We are not, nor are we purchasing from another corporate entity. We are slowing down production of the Shiragawa WH-7 drives.”

  “That’s our main source of revenue. What are we replacing them with?” He rubbed his head with one hand, trying to focus through the urge to get away from his aunt and head for Elmorus.

  “We are, per your father’s direction, no longer going to be involved in the neutronium-powered drive production business. The Fukuro Project has two working prototypes, and with them we will change the way the galaxy travels.”

  He frowned. “What? How?”

  “That I will tell you when you arrive. It is too secret even for this means of communication. However, I must caution you that our main concern—your main concern—is that Yulong Gongsi not discover the Fukuro Project.”

  “What, are they going to sue us if they do?”

  “No, but it significantly threatens the company’s economic viability, along with that of our other enemies like Cosmos Corporation. House Mitsugawa could not stand against the tide of both rising against us without significant help. Unfortunately, with my brother’s death, we have lost the support he had garnered in case such an event comes to fruition. You see, it is critical that you return home so that I can fully brief you on our plans. You will need to regain that support, recover our momentum, before Baron Revenant uses our temporary weakness to crush us for good. Our survival, and that of our planet depend on it.”

  He pressed his lips together while a creeping chill seeped down through his body. If it were truly that important for him to go home then obligation demanded he do so immediately. Elmorus was important to their survival as well, his father had said it was critical for bringing down Zalor, but they already had a competent—no—a masterful agent there. He trusted her completely, absolutely, and was sure she could handle things on her own—then why haven’t I heard from her? the question intruded on his thoughts. If something happened to her, or had already, then duty demanded that be taken care of.