to do with the proceedings in the Hall of Congress, but most especially with General Sinclair.
He’d told Katya what he wanted her to do—she’d had troubles of her own getting past the media’s sensorecorders—then slipped out with a small retinue through the building’s sublevel flitter parking garage. His destination was the command center in the mountains to the northwest; Katya would complete her assignment here for him, then join her unit at Port Jefferson.
Overhead, an incoming ascraft scratched a white contrail across the sky. They were already starting to abandon New America’s orbital station—the military personnel assigned there, at any rate. There were far too many civilians aboard to evacuate them all before the Japanese fleet arrived. The only hope was to abandon the station to them without a fight and hope the Imperial authorities simply occupied it rather than choosing to make some sort of example of its several thousand inhabitants.
No, Highport’s population should be safe enough. If the Imperials wanted to create an object lesson, they would find the educational material for that lesson here, on the ground.
The giant was still silently gesturing at her, but she escaped his scrutiny when she descended an escalator into a fabricrete cavern, an entrance to Jefferson’s subsurface maglev network. She didn’t follow the holographic arrows or the nervous crowds of people toward the train boarding tubes, however, but turned instead down a side passageway. After threading her way through a tangle of bare runnels dripping with condensation, she palmed an ID access interface that took her past two New American militia guards in combat armor and through a massive door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”
The underground complex was one of several Confederation strong points in the city. “Good afternoon, Colonel.” A final checkpoint blocked her way, three men in armor, one with a bulky squad support plasma gun.
“Hello, Captain Adyebo,” Katya said, offering her hand for another interface. As a security AI probed her personal RAM through her palm circuitry, a life-size holo of her own head and shoulders materialized in the air, slowly turning.
“So, what’s the word?” Katya asked. “Am I me?”
Adyebo’s teeth flashed white against his dark face as he accessed her ID. “Looks like, Colonel. What can we do for you?”
“I just need to check on Fred,” she said. “Then I’ll be making arrangements to move him.”
“Very good. I’d hate to think of the Impies getting hold of him.” The nano of the door blurred to transparency, then dispersed. “Go on through.”
Inside an otherwise empty storeroom, an egg-shaped travel pod rested in a cradle, illuminated by overhead fluorescents. Approaching the pod, Katya reached out with her left hand, palming a small touchplate in the slick, nangineered metal. With a thought, relayed through her cephlink and the circuitry in her hand, she transmitted a code to the simpleminded electronics of the egg. Part of that golden surface rippled like water, then dilated open.
Black motion glistened within, catching the overhead lights with shimmering, prismatic glistenings, like rainbows on a puddle of oil. With a mingling of awe and fear, Katya stared into the writhing substance of what had been, until very recently, Mankind’s deadly and implacable enemy.
Xenophobes.
“Not Xenophobes,” Katya reminded herself aloud. Xenophobe, of course, was a human name for an entity that had no label for itself other than a concept that seemed to translate as “Self.” Now that peaceful communications had finally been established with at least two of the strange, corporate beings, a new name had been coined for them to avoid the biases of fear and bloodstained mistrust that still clung to the old.
“Naga,” the name of a race of wise, benevolent, and nonviolent serpent deities in Hindu mythology, seemed apt. Xenophobe war machines were huge, serpentine
He’d told Katya what he wanted her to do—she’d had troubles of her own getting past the media’s sensorecorders—then slipped out with a small retinue through the building’s sublevel flitter parking garage. His destination was the command center in the mountains to the northwest; Katya would complete her assignment here for him, then join her unit at Port Jefferson.
Overhead, an incoming ascraft scratched a white contrail across the sky. They were already starting to abandon New America’s orbital station—the military personnel assigned there, at any rate. There were far too many civilians aboard to evacuate them all before the Japanese fleet arrived. The only hope was to abandon the station to them without a fight and hope the Imperial authorities simply occupied it rather than choosing to make some sort of example of its several thousand inhabitants.
No, Highport’s population should be safe enough. If the Imperials wanted to create an object lesson, they would find the educational material for that lesson here, on the ground.
The giant was still silently gesturing at her, but she escaped his scrutiny when she descended an escalator into a fabricrete cavern, an entrance to Jefferson’s subsurface maglev network. She didn’t follow the holographic arrows or the nervous crowds of people toward the train boarding tubes, however, but turned instead down a side passageway. After threading her way through a tangle of bare runnels dripping with condensation, she palmed an ID access interface that took her past two New American militia guards in combat armor and through a massive door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”
The underground complex was one of several Confederation strong points in the city. “Good afternoon, Colonel.” A final checkpoint blocked her way, three men in armor, one with a bulky squad support plasma gun.
“Hello, Captain Adyebo,” Katya said, offering her hand for another interface. As a security AI probed her personal RAM through her palm circuitry, a life-size holo of her own head and shoulders materialized in the air, slowly turning.
“So, what’s the word?” Katya asked. “Am I me?”
Adyebo’s teeth flashed white against his dark face as he accessed her ID. “Looks like, Colonel. What can we do for you?”
“I just need to check on Fred,” she said. “Then I’ll be making arrangements to move him.”
“Very good. I’d hate to think of the Impies getting hold of him.” The nano of the door blurred to transparency, then dispersed. “Go on through.”
Inside an otherwise empty storeroom, an egg-shaped travel pod rested in a cradle, illuminated by overhead fluorescents. Approaching the pod, Katya reached out with her left hand, palming a small touchplate in the slick, nangineered metal. With a thought, relayed through her cephlink and the circuitry in her hand, she transmitted a code to the simpleminded electronics of the egg. Part of that golden surface rippled like water, then dilated open.
Black motion glistened within, catching the overhead lights with shimmering, prismatic glistenings, like rainbows on a puddle of oil. With a mingling of awe and fear, Katya stared into the writhing substance of what had been, until very recently, Mankind’s deadly and implacable enemy.
Xenophobes.
“Not Xenophobes,” Katya reminded herself aloud. Xenophobe, of course, was a human name for an entity that had no label for itself other than a concept that seemed to translate as “Self.” Now that peaceful communications had finally been established with at least two of the strange, corporate beings, a new name had been coined for them to avoid the biases of fear and bloodstained mistrust that still clung to the old.
“Naga,” the name of a race of wise, benevolent, and nonviolent serpent deities in Hindu mythology, seemed apt. Xenophobe war machines were huge, serpentine
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