Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella Read online

  "Thank you, Dev," she said. "You should have left me, though." He could hear both anger and gratitude in her voice.

  "Hey, it could happen to anybody," he said. His own voice surprised him, thin, weak, and shaking. "I moved the Blade before I knew you were outside."

  "Dev, I panicked." Bitterness edged her voice. He thought he could tell what the admission had cost her.

  Her helmet-framed face blurred in his vision, leaving only startlingly green eyes in focus. Was the medical nano taking effect? He couldn't tell. "Hey, 's'okay," he said, his words slurring. Her eyes were starting to grow fuzzy now. "Couldn't leave a buddy out there . . . "

  He didn't know if she'd heard him or not. Her hand was on the interface, and her eyes were closed. Her body twitched once beneath his, then went limp as her brain patched into the strider's AI.

  Was the Xenophobe nano still eating his legs? He couldn't tell and was afraid to relax the pain block to find out. He concentrated instead on controlling heart and breathing, and on subduing the panic that had so very nearly destroyed him. After a moment, he was dimly aware of a heavy, rolling motion, like a boat caught in a storm at sea. They were moving. Once he heard what sounded like an explosion, dim and distant, and he wondered if Katya had made contact with the Stormwinds, wondered if the Warlord would make it clear to a dust-off site, wondered . . . wondered . . .

  In the swaying darkness, exhaustion and the ministrations of the medical nano in his system finally gained the upper hand. Dev fell fast asleep.

  Chapter 18

  Healing, like so much else of Man's endeavors, has been transformed by nanotechnics. Injuries once fatal can be erased in days, the body itself reshaped into new and more efficient vehicles of the spirit. It is when the spirit is wounded that even the god of nanotechnology may fail.

  —Introspections

  Ieyasu Sutsumi

  C.E. 2538

  The Hegemony Military Medical Center occupied most of a dome adjacent to the Tristankuppel. It was a doughnutshaped RoPro building, the hole roofed over with transplas to create a pressurized central courtyard with a circular patio and garden.

  Katya stopped at the HMMC's main entrance long enough to check with the patient information 'face, then followed a glowing holographic guide to the courtyard. Dev was in the garden, she learned, practicing with his new walker brace.

  It was amazing that Dev was alive. It had been touch and go getting him back from Norway Ridge.

  She'd attached her suit's PLSS to his helmet in the Warlord after shooting him full of emergency medical nano. After that, she'd had no time to spare for him as she submerged herself in the Blade's linkage. There'd been a moment's terror there, when she realized Dev had recalibrated the pilot module's linkage to his own brain; her own calibrations were still stored in the AI's main access RAM, though, and a palm 'face command had set up the transfer and completed the linkage. She still remembered the dismay she'd felt as the data had flooded in, detailing the inventory of damage and systems failures the Warlord had already suffered. With energy weapons all but useless, with only fifty rounds remaining in the hivel cannon, all she'd been able to do was turn and run, Xeno Gammas writhing up the slope behind her like a living carpet.

  Eight seconds later, she'd broken out from beneath the blanketing umbrella of ash and dust that had kept the Warlord from establishing a lasercom link with the Stormwinds and Lightnings circling the battle area. Dev had left the appropriate commands; as soon as a clear L-LOS appeared, the Warlord's AI established contact, transmitting all recorded data in a decisecond burst. Lara Anders's VK-141 had led the air-ground strike that shattered the pursuing column of Xenos, as a Stormwind with vacant striderslots had touched down and slotted her in. They'd unloaded Dev's mangled body at HMMC less than twelve minutes later.

  They'd kept him unconscious while they worked on what was left of his legs. She'd glimpsed them as they pulled his body off of her; everything below his knees had been gone, and the rest was raw, bleeding tissue and white bone halfway up his thighs.

  Katya had not seen him since then and wasn't sure what to expect.

  She found Dev in the garden practicing with his personal walker, a lightweight frame of nanolayered alloys that did his walking for him. He was standing with his back to her, staring at the atrium's small Japanese garden.

  "How are the new legs shaping up?" she asked.

  Dev turned. A jack in his C-spine socket connected with the walker's tiny brain, mounted at the small of his back, translating his nervous system's commands and anticipating his movements. His legs, revealed by the hospital-issue briefs he was wearing, were full-grown, but still smooth-pink and hairless, like a child's. Try as she might, Katya could not detect a seam where new tissue had been woven into old.

  "Hello, Captain!" he said. "I wasn't expecting you."

  "Just making my rounds, Cadet," she said, watching his face closely. She caught the slight widening of his eyes, the tic of a muscle beneath his cheek. As she'd expected, he hadn't come to grips yet with what had happened to him in the last few days. "They told me you were trying out your new legs, so I thought I'd come down here and have a look. How are they?"

  "A bit weak." One hand slapped the silver ribbon of his brace running down his thigh. "I can't stand up without this thing on." He looked down at her legs. "You seem to be getting around okay."

  "Kuso," she said. "I didn't even need a brace. They had medical nano in me knitting the bone before they'd even finished cutting your legs off. I was walking on it again in twenty-four hours. But gods, you were a mess!" The words were calculated to shock, to probe for raw, hidden wounds.

  "Yeah, that's what they told me." He looked away, shaking his head. "Did you hear about Suresh?"

  She nodded. Suresh Gupta had lived, his spinal cord spliced together by HMMC's nanosomatic engineers. Unfortunately, large parts of his brain had been damaged during the twenty minutes or so when it had been deprived of a blood flow by his dead heart. It had been possible to repair the actual damage . . . but the neuronic pathways that defined memories, personality, even self-awareness, were gone. Traumatic amentia could not be corrected by nanotechnic surgery. Even with RAM feeds to reeducate him, it would be years before Suresh regained what he'd lost.

  He would recover. Every newborn child went through the same process. But the new Suresh—or whatever name he eventually chose for himself—would never remember the old, identical to him genetically but with nothing in common with his original personality. It was as though he'd been reborn, with a twenty-four-year-old's body and a blank slate for a mind.

  "I heard," she said. Was that what was gnawing at him? Gupta and Cameron had been friends in Basic. She decided to change the subject. "Did you hear the Xenos were beaten off? It took two days, but the Sweden Line held. Special team hit that tunnel you found. The word is, they picked up some damned useful stuff before they sealed it off. After that, it was just a mop-up."

  He nodded. "I'm glad."

  "So . . . how long you gonna be in that thing? Are the legs still growing?"

  "They tell me they're full-grown. The nanosomes say I'll be in this thing for another week, until the muscles are strong enough to hold me up."

  "You'll never know the difference." She held up her left hand and flexed it. "They grew this back on me two years ago."

  "Really?" His eyes had a haunted look.

  "They'll feel just like the old ones. They just won't have the same scars and blemishes."

  "That's what they told me." He looked away. "I've been awfully hungry these last couple of days."

  The medical nano Katya had injected into Dev in the strider had done little but keep him unconscious, stop the bleeding, and scour his body for any trace of invading Xeno nano. At HMMC the surgeons had amputated both legs, replacing them with force-grown, neutral tissue buds grafted in place by HMMC's best nanosomatic engineers. Full-grown in four days, the new legs were identical to the old, but they were still painfully weak, so weak, in fact, that h
e could not even stand or walk without the skeletal framework of the walker brace. Dev's system had been loaded with meteffectors busily converting raw materials to fresh muscle, which was why he always felt hungry. Soon he'd be on an exercise program that would leave him too tired to think about much else.

  If his mind hadn't been damaged by what he'd gone through on that ridge. That was what Katya was trying to learn now.

  "Glad to hear it." Katya smiled. "If you're hungry, it means you're on the mend. You know, when they pulled you out of the Blade, I thought they were going to have to take you out with a scraper and cutting torch."

  Katya watched one corner of his mouth tug upward at that deliberately brutal probe. How would he respond? If his psychtechs knew what I was doing, she thought, amused, they'd toss me out of this dome without a suit.

  But she had to know how he would react.

  "I don't think I would have gone very well with her pilot's mod decor," Dev replied. "Late Army Spartan. Not my style at all."

  "And what is your style, Lieutenant? Early Navy Romantic?"

  "Definitely Romantic. Centuries out-of-date."

  She laughed. "By God, Dev, I think you're going to be all right!"

  He gave her a wry grin. "What, you thought I was going to null out?"

  "It's been known to happen. Your mind can screw you over better than your body any day. And you got hit pretty bad."

  Medical engineers could rebuild the body. In war, however, the most serious wounds often were those inflicted on the mind: shock at being wounded, shock at seeing friends die, the raw, destructive savagery of fear. Direct link counseling, psychiatric simulations, and sub-C therapy could all begin the healing, but the patient himself had to complete it.

  Dev rubbed one leg thoughtfully. "Yeah. Maybe they got me patched up so fast, I never realized I'd lost anything. I'm okay, Captain. Really okay."

  Katya agreed. She'd seen his preliminary psych studies but hadn't known how to pull the numbers together into a meaningful picture. His TM rating, for instance, was lower—down to point two—which might mean he'd lost some of his cockiness. There was some depression, of course. Claustrophobia was a bit higher, his suspicion of authority about the same. All in all, his attitude appeared to have improved.

  "So how do you feel about coming back to work, Cadet?"

  She caught the subtle twitch of facial muscles again. "I'd . . . like that, Captain. If you guys'll have me back."

  "Like I said, you've got the makings of a great striderjack. I just have to know that what happened out there didn't permanently scramble your brains."

  "They're no more scrambled than usual, Captain. I'm just . . . well, I don't know if I'll be able to handle it. It might be a better idea to bounce me back to the infantry."

  She shook her head. "I played back the recorder, going through your fight with the Cobra after I got knocked off-line. You're good, a natural linker. You'd be wasted with the leggers."

  "Infantry," he said, correcting her. "The trouble is that everybody's making out like I was some kind of hero. I wasn't. I was scared. When we were outside the Blade, trying to get up the ladder, I think I was more scared than I've ever been in my life."

  So that was it. Burned once, he didn't know if he could face it again. He'd be reliving the nightmare for quite a while to come, despite everything the psychtechs could feed him.

  "Kuso, Dev. The only people on a battlefield who aren't scared are dead or unconscious. You think you're something special?"

  He gave her a lopsided grin. "Not me."

  "You weren't the only one scared on that ridge."

  "You, Captain?"

  "Tell another living soul and I'll hang your brain out to dry. But the only reason I fell was the fact that I panicked. Blind, sick, run-away-and-hide panic. If I hadn't broken my leg, I'd still be running."

  "That's a bit hard to believe. Sir."

  "Don't jerk my strings, Cadet. I'm no different than you." She watched him for a moment, aware of the succession of emotions mingling with her thoughts. She, too, was lucky to be alive, and she had this unusual young striderjack to thank for that. She still couldn't remember her fall, worse, the fear, without a sharp inward wince.

  There was guilt, too. During her debriefing, she'd realized that the lone trooper she'd encountered had been Dev. She'd passed him by, leaving him for the Gammas; he'd left the Blade and braved those Gammas to come after her.

  She was realist enough to know that the two cases weren't parallel. There was nothing she could have done, nothing she could have been expected to do, to save him, but the realization could not diminish her gratitude.

  Alive . . .

  Aware of the flush rising in her face, she changed the subject again. "I, ah, noticed you weren't having trouble accessing codes up on that ridge."

  "You noticed, huh?"

  "Looks to me like you were trying too hard before. Or maybe you were letting your fear tangle your wires. Either way, you've got it licked now. You know it."

  But just the same, I think I'll still put you in a one-slotter, she told herself. Just in case. There's stuff going on inside your head that'll never come out on a psych screening, and it might be better to let you find out about it on your own instead of teaming you with someone else. You certainly performed well on your own at Norway Ridge. "So you'll come back to the Assassins?"

  "I guess so. Thanks." He seemed embarrassed. "I'll try not to let you down again."

  "You ever do any horseback riding, Cadet?"

  He shook his head. "I've heard about horses," he said. "On Earth. Never seen one, though."

  "Some colonies still use them for transportation in the outback. They do on New America, where I come from. Big brutes. You can get hurt if you fall off."

  The embarrassment was gone, replaced by a subtle, humorous twinkle. "Like falling off a strider?"

  "Like falling off a strider. The number one rule, though, is to get back on as soon as you fall off. Before you have a chance to think about it."

  "Makes sense. I think I'd like to, ah, get back on."

  "It's still not the navy," she said, sticking out her hand. "But welcome aboard. Again."

  Grinning, he shook her hand, and she felt the inner surge of something she'd promised herself she would not feel again. I don't want to get close to anybody, she thought. Not again!

  She dismissed the thought almost at once. Staticjack! You just get back on again!

  Chapter 19

  Therefore I say: Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

  When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.

  If ignorant of both the enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

  —The Art of War

  Sun Tsu

  fourth century B.C.

  They floated in golden light, three men, with Loki a cloud-wreathed sphere swelling against the night above them. The office of Rear Admiral Kazuo Aiko was located on the Asgard Ring, one hundred kilometers east of the Bifrost Sky-el, but the AI that enhanced and projected the image had purged it of the clutter of the orbital ring, leaving only clean stars and space and the storm-wracked globe of Loki. The room had taken on the rose-warm hues of 36 Ophiuchi C, but the atmosphere seemed chilly.

  None of the men in that room was happy.

  General John Howard, immaculate in army grays, clung to a handline and regarded the two Nihonjin who had invited him to this conference with some apprehension. Technically Howard outranked Aiko, but the admiral was the shosho in command of all Imperial forces currently in Loki's system. Custom—and a healthy sense of career survival—dictated that even HEMILCOM lieutenant generals defer with respect and diplomatic courtesy to Imperial officers, whatever their rank.

  And as for the third man, he held no military rank at all, but that would not help Howard's career if Shotaro Takahashi decided that a scapegoat was needed in the Loki affair. He was Daihyo
, the Emperor's personal representative, and his word was the Emperor's command.

  Appearances, Howard reflected, could be deceiving, for Takahashi did not look like an Imperial representative. He was obese, a sumo wrestler without the beef in legs and arms that hinted at strength beneath layers of fat. His clothing, little more than a white cloth wrapped around hips and loins, furthered the similarity to sumo, but his body adornment, nano-tailored feathers, baroque metallic inlays, and patchworks of jewel-like color winding across half of his exposed body, was like nothing Howard had ever seen.

  The total effect was decadent . . . and threatening. Somehow the fabled human art of the Imperial Palace had crossed sixteen light-years to confront Howard here, in Aiko's office. The Daihyo floated cross-legged in the center of the room, ignoring the conventions of up and down imposed by the room's floor and meager furnishings. He seemed so at home in microgravity, and looked as if he would be so helpless on any world's surface, that Howard wondered if his body tailoring extended beyond the superficialities of feathering, skin color, and texture. Takahashi might well be more Freefaller than Earth-norm human, incapable of setting foot on Loki or Earth.

  By contrast, Rear Admiral Aiko was completely human, as dour as ever in his severe Imperial Navy blacks, his bare feet slipped into footholds on the floor behind the silver-white console that served as comlink access and interface. Howard appreciated the gesture. He wasn't used to zero-g, and his vertigo was made worse by the room's rather unnerving background projection. Only floor, furniture, and Aiko's pretense at an upright posture existed to combat the disquieting illusion that the three of them were adrift in space. Howard, who left Loki's surface only when he had to, wondered if the projection was some kind of deliberate psychological ploy, a gimmick to keep groundpounder visitors like himself off balance.

  "Your request is most irregular," Takahashi was saying, his voice a gentle and menacing rumble from beneath that massive chest. He spoke Nihongo, though Howard knew he always carried an excellent Inglic RAM feed. "And possibly illegal as well. You know the Imperial guidelines on this."