Jackers

by William H. Keith

  This one, obviously, was in pain. Kawashima stared into those pleading eyes—their irises were pale blue—and shuddered. It seemed as though he was looking into twin wells of bottomless, endless horror.

  “I am very proud of that one,” Munimori said at his back. Kawashima started. He’d not heard the admiral’s return.

  “It is… most interesting.…”

  “One of Tsuru’s finest masterpieces.”

  “Ah.” Dr. Masanori Tsuru had been one of the greatest of all Nihon’s geneshapers, artists who used DNA as canvas and paint to craft living art forms of flesh, blood, and brain. “If this is one of his, my lord, it must be very old.”

  “Almost ninety years. Still, I’m told it might live for centuries more. I hope so. I find it a most personal statement about Man’s eternal suffering beneath the Great Wheel.” Paternally, he laid a hand on the thing’s hunched and headless shoulders. Kawashima saw the flesh crawl and tremble beneath his touch. “Over ninety percent of this one’s genotype is pure human. Its nervous system has been tuned to transmit constant pain, something roughly on a level, I understand, with being burned alive except that the pain never overloads the organism’s brain and senses and never dulls. Its brain is fully functional, and according to its papers it was link-educated so that it could, ah, fully appreciate its predicament. That adds so much to the work’s meaning, you know. It is not simply a live sculpture, something pretty to look at, but a thinking, knowing soul trapped in a living hell.”

  Kawashima felt dizzy, and the pale walls of the sparsely furnished room seemed to be closing in around him. Why? he wanted to ask, but to demand an explanation for this twisted horror would be to insult his host.

  “Can… it speak?”

  “Oh, no. No lungs, no voice box. The mouth is purely art. I have to provide it with a special nutrient each day, watering it like a plant, or it would lapse into a coma and die. The ears are functional, however. It can hear us and understand what we say. Beautiful, is it not?”

  “Remarkable, my lord.”

  “Actually, I suspect that after ninety years, it must be quite mad. But just look at those eyes. Mad or not, it still feels, after all this time! Occasionally I speak to it, promising release for it, one day. I don’t know if it believes me or not, but I permit myself the small conceit that it must continue to hope, through year after year of unendurable agony. Tell me, Chujosan. Do you believe in the transmigration of souls?”

  The sudden change of topic left Kawashima off-balance. “I… I have never thought about it, Munimorisama. I have never considered myself a religious man. I am not sure that I believe in souls.”

  “So.A practical, pragmatic man, neh? Well, I believe. I have seen too much not to believe. I sometimes wonder if, by providing the gene-tailored shells of the inochi-zo, we are not providing homes for the spirits of truly wicked men, men being punished for unimaginable sins in past lives.” He slapped the bare flesh with a meaty smack, and it writhed soundlessly as his hand lifted. “Perhaps after a small eternity of suffering here, of providing us with spiritual instruction, the way will be clear for this one’s final translation to Nirvana. Perhaps some pain here and now will be accepted later with joy, once the Great Wheel’s cycle is broken.”

  Kawashima tried to formulate a polite response and failed. He felt trapped by those shifting, pain-filled eyes that begged him, soundlessly, for what he could not give, for what Munimori refused to grant. What kind of mind, he wondered, found fulfillment and contemplation in such a sight?

  “I have two orders for you, Chujosan.” Munimori’s tone was brusque now, all business. “One for general circulation, the second for you alone.”

  Stiff-armed, Munimori held out two message disks. Bowing, Kawashima accepted them. Pressing the first against the link circuitry embedded in his left palm, he felt the trickle of data feeding from the disk to his cephlink RAM. As he downloaded a keyword, the message decoded itself, expanding within his mind’s eye for his inspection.

  The message was short, an Imperial edict under Munimori’s seal… and from its content, Kawashima was certain that Munimori had been the original author. It was blunt and to the point, calling for the resignation of all naval line officers who were not birth-citizens of Dai Nihon, the “Greater Japan” that included territorial enclaves such as the Philippines, Singapore, and the old Pacific Northwest, as well as the original home islands.

  Kawashima had been expecting such an order ever since hearing of the Fushi Emperor’s death. Many of his gaijin officers had already offered their resignations, knowing the mind of the new power behind the Chrysanthemum Throne.

  “Will the first order present difficulties, Chujosan?”

  “There will be no problem, Munimorisama. It will be welcome to many of my people.”

  “Good. Please take the second order, and examine the introduction.”

  Pressing the second disk to the flesh and circuit wiring of his palm, Kawashima felt the flow of a much longer document downloading into his cephlink RAM. This, he realized, must include fleet orders, complete with individual ship deployments and logistical directives. As he decoded the document’s first level and scanned its preamble, he knew his guess was correct. Ohka Squadron was being sent to war.

  “How accurate is this information?” Kawashima asked, his eyes closed as he read the words hanging before his inner eye.

  “Completely,” the Fleet Admiral replied. “We have long known of the rebel activities on New America and have agents in place there, monitoring the political situation.”

  Filing the document, Kawashima opened his eyes. “This is most unexpected, Munimorisama. I was expecting orders for Chi Draconis.”

  Chi Draconis V—Eridu—had recently joined the growing list of Frontier worlds attempting to cut free from the Terran Hegemony.

  Munimori was frowning. “The situation at Eridu is stable for the moment. The planet’s surface and orbital facilities are still in the hands of rebels, but an Imperial squadron from Hariti has arrived and taken up orbit. A truce is in effect, at least for the moment.

  “If we content ourselves with simply reacting to rebel provocations, however,” Munimori went on, “then we place ourselves in a box. It has become clear that 26 Draconis is the political heart of the rebellion. Take that system, take New America, and the rebel resistance will crumble.”

  “Just how substantive is this rebel government we’ve been hearing about, my lord? The, um, official line is that the rebels possess little in the way of internal organization.”

  “Though we dislike conferring any hint of legitimacy on the rebels by calling them a ‘government,’ ” Munimori said slowly, “we must be honest with ourselves and accept that a government is precisely what they hope to form. A number of representatives from various disaffected colony worlds of the Shichiju have been gathering on New America for months now, meeting openly in the planet’s capital.”

  “Meeting, my lord?For what purpose?”

  Munimori gave a humorless smile. “Our intelligence suggests that they themselves are not clear on that point. Some of the representatives evidently hope to refashion the Hegemony, possibly remove it from Imperial control, if such a thing is even conceivable. Others wish a complete separation, to create this Confederation of theirs as a separate state.” He shook his head. “Obviously, both factions will be in for a shock.”

  “Yes, Gensuisama.”

  “You will deploy at once with the entire Ohka Squadron, Chujosan. The carrier Donryu. Five heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, and twelve destroyers. Eight troop transports with a total complement of over four hundred warstriders. New America has no sky-el, so you will have to use reentry-capable warflyers and military ascraft to seize landing sites for your transports. You will need to go by way of our base at Daikoku to pick up some of your assigned vessels. Detailed plans are included in your orders.”

  “Your orders will be carried out precisely as written, Gensuisama.”

  “I know, Chujosan.
I have complete confidence in you. Now, if you would honor me by joining me for tea?…”

  The room reserved for the tea ceremony was traditional, nine feet square and with a real door rather than a dissolving, nanotech panel, one so low that the celebrants had to go in on hands and knees, a holdover from centuries long past when such a posture spoke of mutual trust and of the leaving of pretense and pomp outside. It was impossible to enter while wearing the traditional two swords, katana and wakazashi, of the samurai.

  Inside, a single scroll hung in its alcove above a simple arrangement of flowers. Through an open panel could be glimpsed the fir trees and moss-covered ground, the garden and stone water basin, of a scene on Earth. So perfect was the illusion that Kawashima imagined he could smell the scent of pine needles behind the subtle haze of incense… and perhaps, he realized, that was programmed into the scene as well. The ceremony’s hostess, a provocatively lovely ningyo, was on her knees in the garden, simmering water in an iron kettle over a charcoal fire, each motion one of delicate grace and economy of movement. Save for the lessened gravity, it was difficult to remember that this was aboard the synchorbital Tenno Kyuden, and not in some woods-shrouded teahouse in Kyoto Prefecture.

  The conversation turned now to the formality of the ritual, outwardly reserved, inwardly relaxed as they commented on the kettles, pots, and bowls, on the scroll and flower arrangement, on the play of the hostess’s hands as she carried out the ancient motions of preparing tea.

  Kawashima felt ashamed, however, and unworthy. Munimori was extending to him a signal and conspicuous honor, but he found himself unable to leave worldly concerns and troubles at the teahouse door as custom required. His thoughts kept turning back to those intensely blue, pain-filled eyes he’d seen in the outer room.

  He had no doubt whatsoever that the effect was a calculated one, deliberately staged for his benefit; Munimori was telling him in a manner much more direct and meaningful than mere words, that he, Munimori, was a man of singular power, one who could deliver honor and great reward with one hand, pain and disgrace with the other. The hostess knelt before him, beating his cha to near-froth with a whisk before bowing and offering him the porcelain cup. Bowing, he received it, but when he lifted the bitter green liquid to his lips he could scarcely taste it.

  As a good officer, Kawashima had been aware of the talk spreading through the fleet, talk that had forecast the first order he’d received, that soon only those native to Dai Nihon could serve as fleet officers. There were rumors of worse to come already circulating, rumors to the effect that before long only native-born Nihonjin would be allowed to serve in high military or government posts. Those rumors had already caused minor riots and popular demonstrations in Madras, Indonesia, and Anchorage. After all, to be accorded the privilege of Imperial citizenship without the attendant rights and status made the whole concept of Japanese citizenship rather pointless.

  For centuries, Nihon had led softly, exercising her control over Earth and her offworld colonies through the instrumentality of the Hegemony, granting her subjects at least the illusion of sovereignty. Now, it seemed, the cloak was being thrown back, and naked force would be the order of the day. Could Nihon rule all of the human diaspora alone? And what of the nonhumans discovered so far, the Xenophobes and DalRiss? If the ways and thoughts of human gaijin were strange sometimes, what of those beings, far stranger still?

  Kawashima was not confident of the answers to those questions and feared that Munimori and those in his clique were moving too far, too fast, in purging the Empire of gaijin influence.

  He wondered about the civil war that seemed inevitable now, as Empire and Hegemony squared off against Confederation. The rebels had little in the way of naval power, but they were men and women drawn from the Frontier, the sixty-some worlds beyond the long-settled Sekaino Shin, the Core Worlds that included Earth. That meant that they were resourceful and that they were united by a burning anger at the clumsy and wasteful policies of a distant and unsympathetic government. Hannichi, they were called, disparagingly, anti-Japanese, as though the word were a synonym for “crazy.” But Kawashima had witnessed hannichi sentiments firsthand only seven years earlier, during the Metrochicagan Riots. If the Frontier worlds fought as fiercely for their independence as had the people of Metrochicago, Empire and Hegemony were facing a long and bitter war, one that would kill millions and devastate worlds. There would be little honor in victory over what, after all, was little more than rabble; in defeat—unthinkable!—would be complete humiliation.

  Perhaps, Kawashima thought, that was why Munimori had presented him with the warning of the living sculpture. No art form, no expression of a master’s will, is without pain. Munimori was telling him that he had the will and the determination to see this filthy conflict through to its inevitable end.

  The significance of the tea ceremony was inescapable. Munimori was a steel fist, gloved within the civilized velvet of this ancient ceremony, of Zen simplicity, artistic appreciation, intellectual stimulation, and proper observance of ritual.

  And Tetsu Kawashima was an empty vessel, nothing more, one that could do nothing but accept graciously the honor Munimori and the Emperor were handing him. He and his men would be the Empire’s spear point against the Frontier rebels.

  Politely, he held up his empty cup, commenting, as proper etiquette required, upon its age and delicate beauty.…

  Chapter 2

  Basic to all combat is the concept of using an opponent’s strength against him. Victory in any engagement, whether in a personal test one-on-one in the martial arts, or in the clash of the mightiest armies, absolutely depends on this.

  —Kokorodo: Discipline of Warriors

  Ieyasu Sutsumi

  C.E. 2529

  The fleet emerged from the blue glory of the godsea, flashing into normal fourspace in a cascade of neutrinos. The rebel ships were deep within the target system, so deep that the enemy almost certainly picked up the quantum flux as space rippled from the K-T translation.

  No matter. They would be through the target’s outer defenses scant minutes behind the light-speed wave front announcing their arrival.

  Nano-grown electronic traceries threaded through his brain linked Captain Devis Cameron with the Eagle’s AI, giving him a clear view of the planet ahead, as though he were dropping through empty space instead of sealed away within a high-tech coffin on the destroyer’s command deck. Twin red dwarf suns glowed with ember-sullen light, a double sunrise above an airless, burnt-cinder world of rock and ice.

  That star was DM+45° 2505 A and B, an unremarkable M3 double 29.14 light-years from New America, and 21 lights from Sol. Settlers from Rainbow had come here once, several centuries before, and named the place Athena. Too cold and small to be worth the expense of terraforming, it had riches enough—in platinum, iridium, and rare earths—to attract a Frontier mining consortium, the same consortium that had founded Rainbow. Most of the settlers hadn’t even been full-human; genegineered workers adapted to cramped quarters and cold, close working conditions were happier, cheaper, and easier to control.

  Forty years ago, Athena had been bought out by Imperial Nihon, who’d promptly constructed a major shipbuilding facility in close orbit about the planet. The world’s name was changed to Daikoku, god of wealth and happiness—also known as the Great Black One. The orbital station was Daikokukichi, Daikoku Base.

  Through his cephlink, Dev felt the swift-flowing currents of data from Eagle’s passive sensors, the tell-tale surge of energy indicating that Daikoku’s defenses were powering up. Numbers scrolled down the right-hand side of his awareness, listing speeds and angles of approach. Dev absorbed the data, feeling it more than reading it, allowing the ship’s AI to interact directly with his cephlink, calculating vectors, intercepts, and probabilities. He sensed the tingling wash of low-energy laser light. They were being scanned.

  “That’s it,” Dev announced over the squadron’s tactical communications link. “They’ve got us spotted.”


  “We’re past the abort point now anyway,” Captain Lara Anders, Eagle’s senior shipjacker, replied. “We’re committed.”

  Pinpoints of light scattered across Dev’s awareness, concentrated like a swarm of luminous gnats about the larger glow of the orbital station, and more were winking to life with every passing second. Each marked the lifepulse of a power plant. Daikoku was waking up.

  The Confederation raiders were badly outnumbered.

  They usually were. The civil war that was tearing apart the Japanese Empire’s puppet Hegemony had been going on for well over a standard year now. More and more worlds of the Frontier had broken away, signing Travis Sinclair’s Declaration of Reason in conscious, symbolic mimicry of the signing of a similar Declaration over seven centuries before.

  With worlds to draw on, there were plenty of recruits, plenty of the raw materials, plenty of the nanomanufactories needed to transform those raw materials into warstriders and the other weapons of war. What the Frontier Confederation needed more than anything else in the unequal struggle for independence was ships.

  For centuries, Imperial Nihon had maintained the virtual monopoly on space-based industrial facilities that it had enjoyed since the early twenty-first century. Like most high-tech artifacts, the individual pieces of ships—especially of the starships that allowed travel from world to world within the Shichiju in something less than centuries—were grown in zero-G manufactories and assembled in orbit. Most Confederation worlds maintained their own, homegrown fleets of intrasystem ships and ascraft, and a few like New America could even construct the power taps and K-T drive units necessary for faster-than-light travel.

  But Dai Nihon still dominated the godsea passages between each of the gulf-isolated specks that was an inhabited world. The Imperial Navy, and in particular the nine Ryu-class dragonships and their battlefleets, were simply unbeatable in any stand-up, one-to-one confrontation. The Frontier Confederation needed more and better starships. To get them, they needed to gamble the handful of FTL-capable ships they already had.