Federations

suspension in transit to the combat zone, even if he had no idea where it was or exactly what the mission would be.

He dreamed, and the dream was like all the others. He was awake and trapped in his cocoon, and, just as the shakes and shivers began to subside, the temperature began to plunge once more. He could not move, and at that moment, the face of a woman with flowing white hair and skin as white as porcelain, and lips like cherries appeared above him, and bestowed a loving kiss upon him—and the ice encased him with whiteness.

He woke, not sweating, but chill. The face in his dream had been that of Rokujo. The chill in his soul intensified as he realized that it had been her face all along. Every dream about life-suspension he’d ever had was exactly the same—and it had always been her face. He just hadn’t known it.

Surely, he was just back-projecting. He had to have been. He’d never met Rokujo Yukionna before embarking on the Amaterasu.

III

Ghenji didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when the cocoon opened and a thin techie glanced down at him. “Signs are green, Flight Captain. You know the drill, ser.”

“Thank you.”

Ghenji eased his way out of the cocoon and sat on the stool, sipping the special post-suspension “tea,” waiting until the monitors showed that he was clear to resume duty.

After the evening spent with Rokujo, he hadn’t seen her again before he’d entered suspension, not because he hadn’t looked, but because their work and watch schedules had simply not coincided in any practical fashion.

He checked the ship-link—three point four standard years since they’d pushed off from Kunitsu orbit station two, and who knew how many more before they returned? If they returned.

Four stans later, he was in the squadron ready room with the other flight captains, listening to Operations Commander Togata.

“ . . . In less than forty hours, we’ll begin the attack on the first Mogul station. Flight Captain Nokamura will lead Kama-one . . . . Flight Captain Yamato will lead Kama-four . . . . Full briefings are on all consoles.” Togata gave a brisk nod to the flight captains, releasing them to study the attack profiles.

The briefing consoles were enclosed booths set against the bulkhead on the starboard side of the flight operations center. Ghenji sat down in the not-totally-comfortable padded seat and lowered the hood, waiting while the ops system verified his identity and then began the briefing.

The mission itself was simple. The Mogulate had already begun to change the planetary dynamics of the uninhabited system into whose outer reaches the Amaterasu had recently emerged. If the Parthindians completed the re-engineering, they would disrupt the clear-link-comm line used by the Republic that connected the upper galactic “west” section to the “east” section of the inhabited Republic solar systems.

The Amaterasu’s needles were “just” to take out the two central engineering installations in the system. At the very least, that would cost the Mogulate another ten years of investment and resources. At best, the Parthindians would abandon the project and attempt some other form of havoc. The mission required two separate attacks, roughly one to two days apart.

In the centuries since the Diaspora, warfare, like everything else, had changed, and with information and knowledge as the basis for technological societies, inter-system communications had become more and more paramount, for a system that lacked that connection could falter technologically and become vulnerable. So warfare involved attacks on the link-lines as much as attacks on systems and planets—and had also become rooted more and more in convictions of “rightness.” Not that righteousness and “truth” hadn’t been prime motivations behind battle from the first knapped flint spear.

Afterward, Ghenji went to the wardroom and had a large mug of green tea. He’d always felt cold, inside and out, after a console briefing.

Then he went back to the ops center and began to study the possible attack vectors from the drop spot, and particularly the last-instant options. Before he finished it was time to eat, but he was late and didn’t see Rokujo until she was already seated between several others members of the ship’s crew.

As soon as he could, he hurried to meet her before she escaped to the med-center . . . or wherever.

She stood waiting, smiling.

“I’d almost hoped to see you when I came out of suspension,” he confessed.

“You don’t want that,” she replied with a laugh. “I’m only there when there’s trouble, the snow-maiden-woman, if you will.” Her voice dropped. “Except I’m no maiden . . . as you well know.”

Ghenji blushed.

She took his hand.

Everything would have been perfect, except after she left his cubicle, he dreamed the suspension dream again—and the face was indeed that of Rokujo, and she was trying to tell him something . . . something urgent.

IV

Ghenji had run through the checklist, and waited in his needle, monitoring the operations net, with his armor tight and restrainers locked, as the Amaterasu began to spew forth the attack needles.

Kay-one, stand by for release.

Standing by, Sunbase control.

Launch one!

Kay-one is clear. Flight kay-two to position . . . 

Before long, the four needles of Kama-four were in position in the mass-drivers.

Launch four!

The brutal jolt of acceleration pinned Ghenji and his armor into the needle’s couch as the Amaterasu’s mass drivers hurled the four needles of his flight “downward” toward the solar engineering facility orbiting the F2 star that the Mogulate was working to turn into a facsimile of a nova.

Kay-four, release on schedule.

Affirm, kay-four on line and alpha victor, Ghenji beamed back, concentrating on the mental display fed to him by the needle AI, showing his four needles on courseline aimed directly at the Mogulate installation. They were traveling energy-blanked, hurled out by the sun-like power of the Amaterasu. Without energy emissions the Mogulate EDIs would detect nothing until the needles were within enhanced visual range, and by then, effective reaction would be difficult. Not impossible, because nothing could conceal that a ship had entered the system and that it had released a single blast of energy. But the defenders could only estimate what sort of attack might be coming, on what vectors, and when. There was always the possibility that the launch blast had been a decoy, designed to lure defenders into position, wasting time and energy, and even putting them in the wrong location.

Even so, Ghenji kept checking the EDI and detectors for any signs of defender vessels.

Fourteen and a half minutes later, he had visual on the Mogulate installation—as well as EDI on more than a dozen hot-scouts—the high-powered and heavily-shielded Mogulate defenders. The Kama-four needles had certain advantages—far higher down-system absolute velocity than the defenders could ever match, greater numbers, and, until they began to use their drives to maneuver, virtual invisibility. The disadvantages were that the defenders knew where the Kama needles had to go in order to plant their torps and that the defenders individually had greater fire-power.

Seconds later, his sensors could pick out a gap between two of the hot-scouts not linked by defense screens. Too obvious. He tweaked the drives and angled for a narrower space “above” and to the right of the central hexagonal energy net maintained by the Parthindian defenders.