Rebellion (11 page)

There was a swirl of color and motion to Dev’s right. Turning, he saw a new threat, an arm of the mob spilling around the Guard unit’s right flank, running, turning inward, colliding with the kneeling line of legger troops in a wild hand-to-hand melee.

Then they were everywhere, bearing down the Guard troops. “Company C, fall back!” Dev ordered. Those who could retreated. Others continued to fight, surrounded now by the tide of rioters. Sheer weight of numbers had knocked several troopers to the ground, where they were helplessly pinned and stripped of their weapons. “Warstriders on the right!” Dev called. “Forward!”

Each Scoutstrider and Fastrider was twice as tall as a man. They advanced slowly, sweeping forward with relentless power. Few rioters were able to stand unmoving before the approach of a twenty-ton monster, however determined they might be. Dev glimpsed Bev Schneider’s Fastrider alongside Koenig’s Scoutstrider, wading into that human sea. The mob’s charge was broken, the demonstrators beginning to turn and flee back toward the Guild Hall.

But ten meters away, the crowd had engulfed Duarte’s Ghostrider; several men had clambered up on the torso, clinging to the hull fittings, groping past Duarte’s corpse for the bloodstained green banner still hanging from its mast. Muirden was trying to pivot the Ghostrider to throw his attackers off, but there were too many of them. Even a warstrider could be overwhelmed by enough sheer mass and determination. Dev saw the LaG-42 shudder, then visibly tip as a hundred rioters hurled themselves against Muirden’s legs.

Turning, Dev moved forward, plowing into the mob, parting it before him like a steel-and-duralloy Moses. The noise was deafening, a thunderous roar of chanting voices filling the entire volume of the huge city dome. Targeting the Ghostrider, he fired another smoke grenade. It detonated against the LaG-42’s hull, the burst of choking white smoke panicking the climbers, sending them tumbling back to the ground or on top of their fellows. Others crowded back as Dev’s machine approached, a towering blue shadow in the thick mist that was beginning to envelop everything at ground level.

One determined young man clung to the top of the Ghostrider, still tugging at the green banner. He wore a gas mask, which let him ignore the smoke, and Dev guessed he might be one of the leaders of this insurrection. Swiftly, delicately, Dev reached out his left hand, opening duralloy fingers. The man, half blinded by the smoke, had not noticed Dev’s approach, but he heard something now and spun, eyes wide behind the transparency of his mask. Gently, but irresistibly, Dev closed his fingers around the man’s waist, plucking him off the Ghostrider’s hull like a grape from the stem. The man shrieked and struggled, arms flailing, legs kicking wildly, but Dev swung him effortlessly above his head, holding him well above the crowd below.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Muirden’s voice said over a private channel. The Ghostrider’s upper torso spun, free now, and he took a careful step forward. “I’m clear now.”

“Pull back,” Dev said. He shifted to the primary tac channel. “All units, pull back slowly! Give them room!”

The noise was dwindling, and so too were the movements of the crowd. It seemed as though the entire mob had somehow had a change of heart. At the perimeters, people were beginning to break away and wander off, straggling clear of the riot.

The tranq gas was beginning to work.

“HEMILCOM,” Dev called, switching to the command frequency. “HEMILCOM, this is Blue Lancer Leader.”

“Go ahead, Lancer,” a voice replied in Dev’s mind. “We’ve been monitoring your situation.”

He’d known they would be. “Roger that. The DY-30C is starting to take effect. We’re going to need medics in here, and fast.”

“Affirmative, Blue Lancer. Medical personnel are on the way.”

The effects of tranq gas varied widely, depending on the age, physical condition, and size of the victim. The instant “knock-out gas” popular in adventure sims simply didn’t exist; what would render a twenty-year-old male in good condition unconscious would probably kill a man of ninety… or an infant. Tranq gas didn’t knock people out. Instead, it inhibited dopamine receptors in the brain and central nervous system, blocking emotions, slowing thought and memory, sometimes interfering with the victim’s motor response.

As a result, most of the rioters forgot they were angry and began wandering about, dazed, confused, even lost. Some would suffer amnesia. Others lost consciousness and slumped to the pavement, or responded in unexpected ways, panic or hysteria. A few lay on the ground, twitching helplessly or jerking uncontrollably as they were wracked by convulsions.

Dev felt a dark and bitter anguish rising within. There were certain to be casualties; damn it, when hordes of screaming, unarmed civilians charged ranks of armed troops and warstriders, there were going to be casualties! He’d tried to minimize them, but…

“Company C,” he ordered. He scanned the dissolving crowd, looking for the infants he’d spotted earlier. They might need help, too. There was an antidote for tranq gas, but it had to be given quickly.
Where
were the medics? “I want one man in three to holster weapons and go try to help those people.” The ones going into convulsions might swallow their tongues or injure their heads; some of the unconscious rioters at the bottom of that human wall felled by the leggers’ stunners might be suffocating. Glancing up, Dev saw that he was still holding the body of the rioter he’d plucked from the LaG-42, now as limp as a rag doll. The guy had fainted.

Gently, Dev lowered him to the ground. “Sergeant Brunner,” he called.

A squad
gunso
trotted up in front of Dev, saluting. “Yes, sir!”

“Take charge of this man. I think he was one of the mob leaders. Intelligence will want to question him.”

“Yes,
sir!
”

Dev was tired, the inevitable aftermath of combat.

Of all the battles Dev had fought in his life, this was one of the hardest, facing men and women, civilians, most of them unarmed, all of them determined to get him and his people, with him not wanting to hurt them in return. Warstriders were marvelously flexible war machines, but they simply were not designed for this type of action.

Suddenly, Dev wanted to unplug, to immobilize his strider and climb out, to join the leggers moving now among the hundreds of victims lying on the pavement of the plaza. He could not, however. By assuming command of the unit, he’d assumed the responsibility to stay where he could monitor communications, tune in on orders from HEMILCOM, or assess developing threats.

Where
were the medics?

Three days later, Dev stood again in Governor Prem’s office, describing the events of the clash in the Assyrian Concourse. Prem had conducted the interview, but a third figure, Omigato, stood silent in crimson robes in a far corner of the room.

“The final count was twelve dead,” Dev was saying, “and perhaps fifty who required hospitalization.” He glanced once at Omigato, then fixed his eyes steadily on Prem. “The medical assistance never did arrive from HEMILCOM, Your Excellency. I patched a call through to a hospital in Winchester, however. They dispatched trauma techs and ambulance flyers to the Concourse.”

“Hmm.A mix-up in communications. I expect. And casualties among your troops?”

“One.Excellency. Colonel Duarte.”

“Yes, of course. A good man.” Prem sighed. “He will be difficult to replace.”

“Major Barton is an experienced officer, Excellency.” Barton, currently the CO of the Rangers’ 1st Battalion, had been stationed with B Company at Eridu’s towerdown. “He should prove to be an excellent regimental commander.”

“Mmm, I daresay. To tell the truth, it was a replacement for CO of A Company I was thinking of.
Taisa
Duarte has been doing double duty and covering that post since
Tai-i
Koch has been stationed up here.”

“But… surely Captain Koch will be coming back—”

Prem exchanged glances with Omigato.
“Tai-i
Koch has important duties here. Actually,
Chu-i,
I was thinking of you.”

The Governor’s words caught Dev completely by surprise. “M-me!” He shook his head. “Excellency, I’m flattered, but—”

“Flattery has nothing to do with it. You acted with skill and precision in Winchester, taking command of two companies at a moment of great danger, when Duarte’s assassination could have shattered both units’ cohesion. You held the line against that mob when a single mistake would have led to your being overwhelmed. You also showed keen judgment in assessing precisely the right level of force to use…”

“I killed twelve people. Excellency.” Would it have been better if he’d tried panicking that mob with tear gas? He still didn’t know.

“Most of them were suffocated after being hit by stunners and then being covered over by other bodies, or they were trampled.
Chu-i,
HEMILCOM Intelligence estimates that there were three thousand people in that plaza. Almost anything you tried would have resulted in some deaths. If you’d used panic gas or tear gas…” He shrugged. “Hundreds could have died in the stampede. More important, your skill at handling both the warstriders and the foot soldiers in the battle may well have saved both companies.”

“Your action also won us a prisoner,” Omigato said suddenly in Nihongo. It was the first time he’d spoken at all since Dev had entered that room nearly an hour before. “He has been broken. His confederates are being rounded up as we speak.”

Something about the way Omigato said the word
broken
sent a chill down Dev’s spine. He did not want to hear more about what had happened to the young man he’d captured.

“Cameronsan,”
Prem continued, “the
Daihyo
has recommended, and I concur, that you be given brevet promotion to
tai-i
and put in command of both A and C companies of the 1st Battalion.”

Dev was stunned. There were other
tai-i
in the battalion, other
chu-i
with more experience and time in service than he. Bumping him over their heads could cause some bad feeling among the other officers.

Besides, did this mean he was back in the Hegemony Guard for good?

“It has been decided,” Omigato said, again in Nihongo. “The experience will do you good.”

“Hai, Omigatosama,”
Dev said, bowing.
“Domo arigato gozaimashte.”
There was nothing else to be said.

Chapter 8

The Emperor shall be the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power.

—The Constitution of Japan,

Article I

C.E.
1946

Yoshi Omigato sat cross-legged on emptiness, unsupported, unprotected against the vacuum of space. Beneath him, filling the AI-generated universe of this, his private ViRsim, the splendor of the Galaxy stretched across one hundred thousand light-years, the nucleus a red-gold furnace, the spiral arms an entwining mist of blue-white gossamer streaked and smeared by vast rivers of dust and gas. Omigato’s physical body floated weightless within his quarters aboard the
Tokitukaze,
but here his spirit moved unfettered across the galactic sea. It was sobering to realize that at this scale, from this simulated distance, the entire one-hundred-light-year reach of the Shichiju was invisible, a microscopic clumping of dust motes lost among so much glory.

“My Lord…”

The voice was that of his analogue and was identical to his own. “Speak.”

“The marine has returned from Eridu. He wishes to make his report.”

Briefly, Omigato considered having his analogue handle the debriefing. That, after all, was a primary function of such computer-generated alter egos, to serve as buffers against the outside universe.

Not everyone could afford full-range analogues, computer programs that could flawlessly duplicate the thinking of their human counterparts, but those who could often used them as personal secretaries and chiefs-of-staff. They could double for their owners over a ViRcom link, where it was impossible to tell whether you were talking to a software construct or the person behind it.

He rarely used it that way, however. Yoshi Omigato was a traditionalist who believed that personal contact—and personal supervision—were necessities for anyone who wished to exercise true leadership.

“I will see him here.”

Gunso
Isamu Kimaya’s persona materialized before Omigato. The black of his uniform so perfectly matched the velvet black of space that his head and hands and the white and blood-scarlet flash of the 3rd Imperial Marines on his shoulder appeared disembodied, pale shapes against the night. In this, Omigato’s virtual reality, Kimaya was a tiny figure, a toy before the looming, planetary bulk of the brooding Imperial
daihyo.

“Ohayo gozaimashte, Omigatosama,”
the figure said, bowing. “So sorry, I am unworthy. Thank you so much.”

“Not at all. I rejoice that you survived your mission.”

Kimaya made a dismissive gesture. “My survival was unimportant, my Lord. However, the disciplines of
kokorodo
served me well. By the time the warstriders returned fire, I was out of the room, shielded from the blast by a sturdy interior fire wall. I would have remained, of course, had that been your will.”

“Of course. But it was important that your body not be found in the wreckage.” He did not add that others in his employ had been within the building at the same time, waiting to remove or destroy Kimaya’s corpse if his escape had not gone as planned. “Your report.”

“Of course, my Lord. As you predicted, the demonstration became a riot when the Hegemony officer died. The Guard forces were nearly overwhelmed. Also, as you predicted, the warstriders managed to restore order and disperse the mob. I’m sure my Lord has already seen the casualty figures and damage reports.” At Omigato’s nod, the marine pressed ahead. “The atmosphere within the city is now one of intense frustration and deep-seated anger. The casualty reports are being deliberately inflated to feed that anger. In the three days since the Winchester demonstration, dozens of minor incidents have occurred. Yesterday, an off-duty Guardsman was assaulted and killed by a local patriot with a knife. There is open talk in the streets of revolt against the Hegemony.”