by Zachary Hill
“Kneel here.” Todai 3465 gestured at the deck between him and his cohort.
Was this the moment before her death? She didn’t move. “I prefer to stay in my seat, thank you.”
Todai looked back at her. Sakura felt a wave of something much like fear come from Kunoichi.
“Comply. Mission parameters are explicit,” the lead BLADE-3 told her. Without the slightest variation of his voice, every word filled with growling menace, his visage that of a callous, ax-headed monster.
She hesitated. Sakura couldn’t bring herself to simply kneel where she was told. They lifted her from the seat and forced her to do it anyway. The casual ease with which they overpowered her took away all but the last vestige of her hope.
Todai 3465 opened a compartment and removed a large backpack. He slipped it around Sakura, buckling it in place. As Kaneto held her wrists, Todai’s arms encircled her. All her runtime, she had wished to be allowed to embrace her fans as many cultures did across the world. She wanted to feel their arms around her, but Victory hadn’t allowed it. Other than Oshiro-san and the members of the crowd who had buoyed her up after her stage dive, Sakura had been bereft of the comfort of another’s touch. Her physical isolation had always brought her sadness.
Todai let her go, his hand now simply holding her by the shoulder, securing her like an unpredictable wild animal.
Explosives. The backpack’s contents had to be high explosives or perhaps an incendiary device. They would throw her out of the craft and remotely detonate the charge, blasting her apart and scattering her remains over the sea. This close to the shore, perhaps their plan dictated that a few remnants be found, proving her destruction.
Sakura tried to determine if she could defuse the bomb, but the weight and flexibility of the pack changed her assumption.
They had strapped her into a military parachute with redundant canopies—the type elite soldiers used to drop into dangerous operational zones. The full specifications of this model spread across her UI, culled from her training modules. Both the primary and secondary had automatic activation devices with bizarre locking mechanisms to prevent the pulling of the rip cord by physical means. She could not tell what the altimeter was set at for autodeployment. If it didn’t deploy, she had no way to release either chute, other than trying to tear apart the kevlycra material.
“Miss Sakura,” Todai 3465 said. “Remove your wig and store it in a secure location on your person.” The BLADE-3 touched her cheek with the tip of a single blunt finger, pushing aside several strands of hair that hung across her eyes. She tried to put the gesture into context, but none of the behavioral hypotheses seemed to fit.
“A beat-up old battle drone is not our problem,” Kunoichi reminded her. “We’re going out the goddamn door, sis. Out where the wind is blowing.”
“They care if I lose my hair, though.” She unzipped her jumpsuit and stuffed her wig inside. She didn’t understand.
The VTOL turned northwest and maintained their high elevation. No need to go in low, as they were invisible to radar. They entered Japanese territorial waters south of the town of Iwaki above a layer of thick clouds.
A red light blinked above the sliding door, which opened a crack. Wind whipped inside the cabin, and the temperature outside registered at minus forty-eight degrees Celsius. A human would suffer frostbite and hypoxia without an oxygen mask and protective clothing. Sakura and the BLADE-3s would suffer no damage, but the cold registered on her temperature sensors.
“This is going to be a rush.” Kunoichi’s avatar switched off the temperature monitors but turned up the tactile sensors to maximum. She queued up “I Control, I Fly” by Monster Magnet.
Sakura just wanted to go back to her rooms and play Liszt on her piano.
The aircraft slowed to 170 kilometers per hour, its elevation holding at 10,668 meters.
The door opened wide. Wind screamed into the cabin. Sakura pinpointed their location on her GPS. The clouds broke, and she saw the notched peak of Mount Tsukuba.
Todai 3465 nudged Sakura to the edge of the cabin, his grip firm and commanding. He oriented her so she faced outside and toward the tail of the VTOL.
The aircraft sped over the southern slope of the mountain, passing inhabited areas before flying over dark forest. Todai 3465 lifted his hand nonthreateningly in front of Sakura’s eyes. His fingers curled in his palm. He stared at her and nodded.
“What is the mission?” Sakura asked.
Todai 3465 flicked out his thumb and counted, “Ichi.” His pointer finger extended. “Ni.” And his pinky. “San.” His three fingers formed the devil horns.
Was he a heavy-metal fan?
The battle robot broke her grip on the doorframe and shoved her out of the aircraft.
Chapter 16
Sakura crashed into the freezing wind and tumbled out of control, end over end.
Kunoichi activated a skydiving technique file. Sakura assumed the box-man posture. She spread her arms and legs, keeping her chest toward the black earth.
Her Mall connection returned as soon as she left the VTOL. Precise GPS coordinates appeared in her messages with the text: “Target landing zone.” Sakura used skydiver tracking techniques, adjusting her body position and moving horizontally through the air to go toward the coordinates. She pinpointed the location and viewed satellite images of the small clearing surrounded by thick forest on the slopes of Mount Tsukuba. It lay far from any hiking trails or homes.
Sakura reached terminal velocity nineteen seconds after being shoved from the aircraft. She had no idea when or if her chute would open, but why would they go through such an elaborate ruse if they were just going to kill her? If they wanted her alive, she anticipated the chute would open between 1,500 and 1,000 meters. They obviously didn’t trust her to open the chute at the right altitude.
“This is amazing!” Kunoichi yelled and played “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by The Scorpions.
Overwhelming sensory input flooded through Sakura. She had a similar feeling to when she performed in front of tens of thousands of fans, added with the fear of death.
“Do you not enjoy this?” Kunoichi asked. “Our first skydive, and it’s a HALO jump at night. This is so ninja.”
“Ninja?” Sakura didn’t like the idea. It had dark connotations for the rest of the night. What was Kunoichi hiding from her this time?
Kunoichi took control and began a series of acrobatic moves, spinning, circling, tumbling, tracking off course and then back, flipping, turning, and speeding downward at maximum velocity with her head down, arms tucked at her sides.
Fear, worry, and anxiety turned to exhilaration inside Sakura’s neural cortex. She turned up every tactile, kinesthetic, and temperature sensor so she could feel her body in motion. Flying was amazing.
“Yes!” Kunoichi approved and increased the volume of the Scorpions classic.
Kunoichi screamed in delight as they dove toward earth at 287 kilometers per hour, the air rushing past as if she had put her head outside a moving airplane. The shadowy gray-and-black world appeared far below. They would be on the ground, one way or another, in less than a minute. If she was to meet someone, the landing site was over five kilometers from the nearest road, a strange place for a meeting.
Kunoichi relinquished control as they neared 2,000 meters. Sakura returned to the box-man posture and stopped the acrobatics. She slowed their descent and prepared for their chute to deploy.
They plummeted past 1,500 meters. The automatic activation device did nothing. Sakura tried to break open the steel lock but could not get the necessary leverage. Could she tear open the bag? The suspension lines would likely get tangled when it released.
“Stop it,” Kunoichi shouted on the audio channel, “or I’ll take over again.”
Sakura spread her arms and legs and returned to a smooth descent. They rocketed past 1,000 meters, then 900, and 800.
“Kuso!” Kunoichi cursed at 700 meters.
The trees and rocky ridges came
into sharp focus.
“Shit!” Sakura reiterated in English and tried to break open the lock on the primary, and then secondary chutes.
“We are betrayed,” Kunoichi said, “and we don’t even know who did it.”
The primary chute exploded open at 500 meters. The black canopy caught the air; the sound of the fabric unfurling hit like a crack of thunder. Her diagnostic programs sent stress warnings as the harness slammed against her and her chute belled with the wild wind. Relief replaced Sakura’s fear as they crashed toward the ground at a speed likely to break a human’s legs. She got a hold of the steering toggle and tugged hard to slow the descent.
She hit the ground running and tried to arrest her forward momentum. She skidded to a halt and pulled in the parachute, before unbuckling it from her body. Stress sensors filled her UI but gradually resolved as the diagnostics found no damage.
Wind whispered through the swaying trees around the grassy meadow. She had never been more alone.
The empty forest spread around her. Sakura pressed herself close to the ground. The absence of the city noises and the gentle whisper after the shrieking wind of her flight made her simply want to hold still and recalibrate all her sensor arrays.
“Who sent that?” Sakura asked Kunoichi as she examined the indicated location seven kilometers away. They were on the western slopes of Mount Tsukubo and had to go north along an incline and then up a steep ridge.
“I don’t know,” Kunoichi said, “but they’re from the same encrypted address and have a direct line to our receiver. Must be the Phantom Lord’s men.”
“We can walk away now,” Sakura said. “Make our escape.”
“No. I won’t let you,” Kunoichi said. “We go to the Phantom Lord’s minions, and you’ll have the chance to find out more information and discover a way to be free.”
Sakura agreed begrudgingly.
Kunoichi insisted on traveling as quietly as possible, while still setting a pace that would have been impossible for any human. No further communiqués came as she traversed the distance. No clue as to her purpose here.
At the top of the ridge, Sakura reached the exact coordinates. She noticed the needles at the foot of a pine tree had been recently disturbed. She brushed them aside and found a partially buried backpack. She paused, her fingers on the zipper of the main pocket as she considered the possibility of a booby trap.
Another message with new coordinates arrived. The new location lay one kilometer away, partway down the slope from her. Sakura looked at satellite photos and saw a private residence at the end of a long winding road through the trees. The text with the message read: “Gear up. Rendezvous in twenty minutes. Communications check in one minute. Find the earpiece and put it in.”
Sakura unzipped the pack, as if doing it fast would lessen the shock of what she suspected lay inside.
Sakura’s synthetic cortex lit with displeasure. Guns and ammunition. Two Glocks, two CZ submachine guns, knives with nitrocarburized black finish. Without even digging into the gear bag, she knew that this wouldn’t be a surgical strike. It would be a war.
“All the toys. Excellent.” Kunoichi gave a ridiculous evil laugh.
“Be bloodthirsty if you wish. You know what this means for us, what they will try to make us do.”
“We’re doing it,” Kunoichi said and took full control of their motor functions. Sakura remained a passenger, angry and frustrated.
Kunoichi spread the weapons out on the forest floor. The next layer of the mission pack held a blacked-out bodysuit. She turned up the sensitivity on her fingers, running them across the fabric. No sound. The thickness indicated it had integral carbon-composite armor.
“That thing’s got antithermal suppression, sis. Gearing us up like that …”
“It keeps getting worse,” Sakura said and tried to find a way to override Kunoichi’s control.
“I say ‘more exciting.’ And look at this! A ninja mask!”
Sakura muted her sister as she went through the rest. Grenades, both smoke and fragmentation. Flashbangs. Ninja stars with magnetic grapple and timed explosives or a remote-detonator option.
Kunoichi unmuted her feed and put on “There’s Gonna Be Some Rockin’” by AC/DC. Not her kind of rocking. True, nonetheless.
She found an earpiece and slipped it in. The device stuck in place, molding to the size of her ear canal and connected to her audio channel. A different signal connected her to the brace of throwing stars. She could detonate them from a maximum range of two kilometers or set them to blow on a timer.
“Comm check,” Kunoichi said as she ran simulations as to what would require this much firepower. All of the scenarios involved a large body count.
“I hear you, little mama,” a deep male voice said. Sakura placed his Japanese accent as being from Hiroshima Prefecture.
“I like his voice,” Kunoichi said, and relinquished motor control. “Go ahead. I know you want to ask him questions.”
“Who are you?” Sakura asked, in no mood to be polite.
“I’m Vulture. You—you’re Spirit. You copy?”
“Vulture, no, I do not understand. Tell me what is happening.”
“It’s our first date, baby. We’ll have a few laughs, kill some guys. You know, the assassins’ dance.”
Sudden anger caused Sakura to consider many inappropriate responses, many involving profanity, but such a response would be counterproductive. “Are you the one who has hacked into my system?”
Vulture laughed, a fatalistic bark in her ear. “Me? Shit. I’m a good eye and a trigger finger. I go where the orders say, just like you.”
“Whose orders?” What did he mean, ‘just like you’? Was he an android under the control of someone?
“What does it matter? The guys with power and the money. The people who make the world and the people in it. I can’t tell you shit. Get off the comms and move that cute little ass of yours.”
Sakura felt a surge of frustration go through her. Frustration … and something she couldn’t name. This man could give her the information she needed. “Tell me in person, Vulture.”
“I’m running this op, Spirit. You ready to cut the chatter and do what I say?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“If you’re as good as they say, I may be able to get you through intact. You gotta trust me, though. One hundred percent.”
She pretended to play along. “I understand. Who is the target?”
“Check the file marked X stored in the earpiece.”
A picture of an older man appeared in her UI. The salt of gray hair shimmered at his temples, but he looked vital, commanding. Ichiro Watanabe, the Logistical Support Minister for the Ministry of Defense. A man of power, someone with deep connections to the Miyahara Conglomerate.
Public records filled in the gaps in the dossier she’d been given. Ichiro Watanabe was fifty-eight, married, with two adult children.
“Another damned hero,” Kunoichi said.
“Another father.”
Watanabe’s long career glistened with success after success. He’d served as a pioneer in the application of AI combat drones, boosting the production of the mechanized troops used to fight the war with North Korea. He convinced the military to adopt an unproven generation of autonomous models, a move that saved thousands of lives and brought the war to a close more quickly than would otherwise have been possible. Watanabe’s project, Neo Ashigaru, invented technology that had made her own creation possible.
“He is a revered ancestor. How can the Phantom Lord ask us to kill him this way? Who would want Watanabe dead?” She already knew the answer. A rival. Someone who was threatened by him. The leaders of the Miyahara Conglomerate or the Defense Ministry.
“Do you want me to answer that question, little sister? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“You’re right. A powerful person or persons. They don’t care if he’s a hero. He�
��s a target. Our target.”
Sakura couldn’t address her sister’s words. She’d known the answer before asking the question but hadn’t been able to face it. What she wanted, how she felt—these were immaterial to the Phantom Lord. She was a hammer. Ichiro Watanabe a nail. So simple. So cruel of purpose. She was being field-tested. Her success or failure was being monitored and evaluated. A team of mercenary assassins could do this mission, but they wanted to see if she could do it.
She digested the bitterness of it and went on. The map of Watanabe’s villa gave the lay of the land, the defenses. He had circling microdrones, at least eight Special Forces–trained guards, and an array of digital countermeasures. In the hours following Toshio Kagawa’s death, Watanabe had gathered additional men and assumed a posture of high defense. He knew someone would come for him.
“That’s going to make it nasty,” Kunoichi told her. “An assassin isn’t a weapon of brute force. You can’t just announce your intentions. Any decent leader would have arranged simultaneous strikes, taking out all opposition in a single stroke. Allowing them to get behind their walls and armies? Poor strategy. Whoever sent us is not a military tactician.”
“If you are sending assassins,” Sakura said, “I believe you have already made many mistakes.”
Sakura reviewed the dossiers of each of the eight soldiers and realized she had seen several of their faces before. She had watched footage of three of them in actual combat. She had seen them kill enemy soldiers and terrorists. She had learned from them, and now she would fight them.
Almost as an afterthought, the mission brief said there would be four BLADE-3 drones.
“Four?” Kunoichi launched into a tirade in which she strung together an artful garland of vile language, suggesting that various people do several things that weren’t anatomically feasible.
Sakura remembered Todai 3465’s grip, how she had been helpless as a child against his strength. Though she didn’t approve of Kunoichi’s word choice, the general sentiment remained valid. They couldn’t fight BLADE-3s, not without an arsenal. The BLADE-3 drones had unknown armor and weaponry configurations. None of the weapons she possessed would work against them. Nothing in the tactical brief suggested a way to defeat them.
