Rebellion (35 page)

Forward, the chunky, organic shapes of a pair of DR-80 Tenrai warflyers were being eased into the Moketuki’s external hull rider slots. A pressurized boarding arm connected the port facility to its starboard airlock, and the steam boiling from the craft’s cryo-hydrogen slush tanks curled up around its flanks.

It looked like the plan was proceeding smoothly, but Dev’s heart was hammering inside his chest. So much could go wrong.…

“Loading’s almost complete,” he said. “We’d better get aboard.”

A Hegemony guard stood by the terminal entrance to the Bay Alpha boarding arm.“Sorry, sir, ma’am. This is a restricted area.”

“We have orders for that ship.” He kept his voice even, commanding.

The man looked them up and down, his right hand resting in casual display on the butt of a holstered laser pistol. “I hardly think—”

Dev extended his left hand, palm out. The man hesitated, shrugged, then picked up a compad resting on the shelf beside him and extended it. Dev placed his interface on the screen and felt the tingle of transferred data.

The man looked at the screen readout, eyes widening with respect. “Sorry, sir! I didn’t know…”

“Now me,” Simone said, grinning.

The guard read her forged ID and nearly turned white. “Please, you can both go aboard immediately.”

As they stepped aboard the shuttle, Dev gave Simone a sidelong glance. “What did you tell the damned computer that we were doing here, anyway?”

“Oh, I put you down as Nakamura’s personal secretary, his
human
secretary, that is, on your way up to synchorbit for a conference with Omigato himself.”

“I see. And you?”

She giggled. “I’m listed as Nakamura’s mistress.”

Dev wondered if that guard had thought it odd that someone as high-ranking as Nakamura had a
gaijin
secretary… or a
gaijin
mistress, for that matter, then decided that it didn’t matter. No enlisted man would dare question the fact, if the computer network claimed it was so.

They made their way up to the flight deck, where other members of the Network combat team were assembling. Each silvery canister had held two cramped rebels, or a pair of combat suits and several weapons. Lara Anders, listed as the ascraft’s pilot, arrived a few moments later.

“Places, everybody,” Anders said. “I want to light off before someone decides to double-check those orders.”

The shuttle was a true ascraft, an air-space interface vehicle that saved fuel mass in atmosphere by gulping down huge quantities of air and converting it to sun-hot plasma in twin fusion furnaces. In space, the tanked cryo-H served as reaction mass, though it could also use water or any other liquid. Smaller ground-to-orbit craft could use the magnetic repulsion effect of magflitters or similar vehicles, but large shuttles like this one still relied on old-fashioned nuclear engines, a design relatively unchanged for three centuries at least. Though the spacecraft could hover, land, and take off like a conventional tilt-jet aircraft, launch to orbit was usually assisted by a hotbox booster that would take the vehicle to scramjet speeds. It had pilot jacking slots for three, though a single person could fly it, and acceleration couches for twelve more on the flight deck. By utilizing every available seat, plus jury-rigging additional acceleration couches with foam pads laid out on the aft cargo bulkhead, Dev had managed to squeeze thirty rebel troops aboard the tiny craft, along with their combat armor and weapons.

After donning a suit of combat armor, save for helmet and gloves, Dev took his place in the co-pilot’s jacking slot forward. With his background, he could fly the ship if necessary, but mostly he wanted to be jacked into the ascraft’s sensors for the final approach to their target. As soon as he came on-line, he sensed Lara at his side, completing the final elements of her prelaunch rundown. His visual field was a feed through optic scanners in the ascraft’s prow, showing the encircling gray wall of Bay Alpha’s blast pit, and the domes and hab structures of the spaceport.

“Cryo-H tanks at pressure,” he heard Anders saying. “Hotbox fuel feed at three-seven, nominal. Gantry clear and power on internal. Babel Towerdown, flight
Ko-tori
Five-niner is requesting immediate launch.”

A window opened in the upper left of his visual field. A bearded face, a traffic controller’s ViRpersona, stared at Dev from the depths of the blue-green sky. “India Hotel Kilo Five-niner, please hold for authorization check.”

Dev felt something go cold inside. So much could go wrong with this plan, not the least of which was the danger that some human or AI would become suspicious at the urgency of this shuttle launch, or the large number of cargo containers that had been so hurriedly loaded aboard. If someone decided to hold the shuttle’s launch, there wasn’t a lot the rebels could do about it, and there was for damned sure no way they could hide the twenty-some commandos packed into the craft’s flight and cargo decks. The alternative—initiating an emergency launch and boosting off from Babelport without authorization—would be worse than useless. Transit time from launch to synchorbital docking was pegged at three hours, fifteen minutes; no ascraft that had blasted out of Babelport against orders would be permitted anywhere near the synchorbit facility.

Were the spaceport control people merely double-checking the shuttle’s orders? Or were they sending someone out to inspect the craft personally? Dev found himself holding his mental breath.

“You want me to try to head them off?” That was Simone’s voice. The young hacker, jacked into the third shuttle control slot, was offering to intercede electronically, through the computer network linking the waiting shuttle and Babelport’s space traffic control.

“Negative,” Dev replied, a little sharply. “If they felt you in their system they’d know something was wrong. As it is, they might—”

“India Hotel Kilo Five-niner, this is Babelport Control. You are clear for immediate launch.”

It
had
been a routine cross-check of their orders, nothing more. And Simone had already taken care of that aspect of things. “See?” he said simply.

“Babelport, India Hotel Kilo Five-niner,” Anders said. “Acknowledged. See you again soon.”

The melodrama of a prelaunch countdown had long ago been superseded by the silent and ultrafast musings of a ship’s AI. Lara Anders gave the mental command, and the ducted jets whined to full throttle, lifting the ascraft out of the blast pit. The Moketuki’s flat, squared-off nose came up, and a second later the hotbox ignited.

They rose skyward, balanced on a thundering tower of white flame.

In an observation lounge in the Babelport terminal, Katya watched the delta-winged ascraft climbing on its waterfall of fire and smoke and felt a small, inward shudder of relief. Casually, she reached up and touched the compatch behind her ear. “Sword, this is Watcher. The Eagle is aloft. Initiate Hope Eyrie.”

“Copy that,” Hagan’s voice said, speaking in her mind. “Hope Eyrie is go.”

It was time.

Aboard the
Tokitukaze,
Yoshi Omigato was indeed in a conference with senior Hegemony officers, but it was an electronic meeting rather than face-to-face, and those attending were linked from places as far apart as Babel, Winchester, and Boreal, in Eridu’s north polar zone. Twelve uniformed men floated in a dimensionless space, observing a five-meter holographic projection of the Eriduan globe. The colors were accurately portrayed as seen from space—clotted masses of reds, oranges, and golds separated by violet seas—but the planet’s cloud cover had been stripped away, and important installations, cities, and outposts were represented by color-coded symbols. The space elevator was a thin silver streak extending from Eridu’s equator far out into the surrounding night.

Also displayed were numerous flashing points of light—green, blue, and white—each accompanied by a hovering data tag identifying it. Green marked Hegemony forces and blue Imperial; white lights represented probable concentrations of rebel troops.

To one side, beyond the globe, a three-D image presented a realtime view of the Babel town square, where nearly five thousand people were crowded together in a living sea, and more were joining them every minute. It was as though the dome had become a kind of magnet for every malcontent and troublemaker on the planet. Their chanting was muted to a rhythmic, lingering echo: “
Ta
nis!
Ta
nis!
Ta
nis!”

Obviously, Omigato thought, the campaign to blame Tanis on a few traitorous
gaijin
had failed. That still didn’t matter, fortunately, so long as his version of events here was all that reached Earth.

What was worrisome was the rebels’ selection of Babel as the site of their demonstration. A pitched battle there might damage the sky-el. Any serious interruption in space elevator traffic would sharply cut into the planet’s productivity. It would also end any possibility for terraforming Eridu, at least until the elevator could be repaired. If the damage was serious enough, the delay might be measured in decades.

Omigato was patient, but not
that
patient. His campaign, the campaign of the Men of Completion, had been so finely timed, so precisely forged and balanced… like the blade of a venerable Masamune katana. He’d expected that the rebel rising, when it came, would be in Winchester or one of the other cities in the south, not at Babel.

Much hung on the events of the next few hours.

“Since Tanis,”
Chusa
Barton, CO of the 4th Terran Rangers, was saying, “we’ve had a dramatic increase in the number of desertions.” His words were hard and curt, bordering on insolence. Omigato doubted that the man could be trusted and already planned to replace him. “Whole companies have simply walked off base, taking weapons, even warstriders, with them. There have been several skirmishes already when security personnel tried to stop them.…”

“Yes, but where do they
go?”
Omigato demanded. “These rebel battalions you tell me of, they cannot simply vanish into jungle! They need shelter! Food! Power! Air they can breathe!
Where are they hiding?”

“We believe they are using outposts near the major population centers,” a HEMILCOM staff officer said. One of the outpost symbols, a few kilometers south of Babel on the holographic display, grew brighter. “This is Emden, my Lord, constructed forty years ago for fungus prospectors in the Equatorial foothills. By triangulation and through computer simulations, we believe this facility was the staging area both for the attack on the monorail a few weeks ago and for the raid on Nimrod.”

“And what has been done about it?”

“We have it under close observation from synchorbit, my Lord,” a HEMILCOM security officer said. “We have identified several people living there as probable rebels. When we—”

“Then
take
them!” Omigato exploded. “Or do I have to call in the Empire and show you how the thing is to be done? Take prisoners! Make them talk! They will know other rebels, leaders, hiding places! But
take them!”

“It’s not that easy, my Lord,” a black-haired
gaijin
named Boudoin said. He was the commanding officer of the newly arrived Guard unit, the Centurians, and his image floated in space above the varicolored world with arms crossed, a dark expression on his face. “The civilian population is rapidly polarizing over the Tanis incident. Some support the Hegemony still, but AI projections estimate that sixty-five percent are siding openly with the rebels. They provide warnings of troop movements, shelter for deserters, supplies, recruits. Civilian workers on the military bases are leaking classified data faster than we can keep track of it. My staff believes that—”

“It is
quite
easy,
Taisa.”
Omigato interrupted sharply. “Simplicity itself. You permit no civilian workers on your bases. You take hostages. You evacuate town domes and sequester their populations in holding centers. You shoot deserters. And if you can’t maintain control, I remind you that the
Tokitukaze
alone has the firepower to destroy every habitat dome on the surface of this accursed planet! Is that understood?”

In the shocked silence, a staff assistant’s voice sounded almost shockingly loud. “My Lord…”

“What is it?” Omigato was in no mood for interruptions.

“My Lord, please look at the realtime images from Babel. They… something is happening.”

Omigato pivoted his point of view, staring at the mob scene illuminated in the empty space beyond the Eriduan globe like a theater stage. The crowd had grown still… almost expectant. A holographic public address screen had been erected, and Prem’s image was towering over the mob, imploring them to disperse. Omigato’s teeth ground with frustration.
He
would disperse them… and so thoroughly there would not be enough left to bury. But what…

At the mob’s back, a warehouse door was opening.

Chapter 29

Article 10.Right of Revolution. Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole community and not for the interests or emoluments of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to, reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

—Article X

New Hampshire Bill of Rights

C.E.
1784

Katya consulted her internal time, then opened her tactical frequency. “Right. Let’s go.”

“Copy,” Hagan’s voice said in her head. “We’re ready to move. Good luck. Katya.”

“And you. Vic.”

It was almost like being in the Thorhammers again. Katya was jacking her Ghostrider, and the striders flanking her included Vic Hagan and Lee Chung in a pair of RLN-90 Scoutstriders and Erica Jacobsen in a Swiftstrider. The fifth machine was Roger Darcy’s Fastrider, and for some reason that reminded her of Rudi Carlsson. She missed the impetuous Lokan and wished he were here.