He snorted and buttoned up his shirt. "The Chairman don't need no marks on him. He just goes right up to the Power and takes whatever he wants. Us mortals need the kanji just to keep up." He knew it was true. The Chairman was the greatest of all. He wasn't just strong, he was smart too. He even painted, and wrote poetry that Madi didn't really get, but all the other Iron Guard always kissed the Chairman's ass and told him how great it was. If the Chairman wrote a haiku, you could damn well better believe it was the best haiku ever.
Toshiko dropped the sheet. "I bear five." Her kanji were much smaller, more discreet, almost graceful. The Shinobi Academy magi were artists compared to the Unit 731 butchers with their glowing red-hot branding irons. She fingered each one reverently. "Hearing. Stealth. Strength. Sight. Vitality."
"Yep. I see 'em," not that he was looking at her scars as he shrugged into his shoulder holster. "Get dressed. Our ride will be here soon. I'll grab the prisoner."
"You really believe that soft thing will be of use?"
Madi shrugged. "We'll take her to Nippon, break her and rebuild her. If she sees the light, then sure…" An old Iron Guard had been patient and shown him the true way once and he owed Rokusaburo his life for it. Too bad his blood brother had killed his spirit brother, but he'd already balanced those scales. "I figure I'm doing her a favor."
Toshiko sneered. "And if she does not see it that way?"
There were schools all over the Empire for training Actives, and not just for volunteers either. The Chairman's instructors had ways of making people catch the vision. Those deemed unfit were used in the experiments. "Then she goes to Unit 731."
"Throw her overboard and let the sharks take her," she suggested. "It would be more merciful."
Madi slid down the ladder into the hold of the ship. His boots hit the steel grate and he started down the corridor. He had to duck to keep from hitting his head on the pipes. The crew averted their eyes and got out of his way. They were loyal Imperium subjects, and they knew not to keep an Iron Guard from his business.
They'd boarded the cargo ship and made it out of the harbor before the authorities had locked down the coast. Officially they flew the flag of the Free City of Shanghai, but this was the same vessel that had brought in his reinforcements. Shanghai was only free as long as it was convenient for the Chairman for it to stay that way.
The emergency radio broadcasts that morning had been priceless. His ruse had worked. Word had already leaked to the press about the anarchist propaganda scattered at the Peace Ray. All the known commie-backed agitators were getting rousted as the real culprits sailed away. They were going to be picked up by an Imperial airship and rushed home, and by the time he'd be soaking his feet in Edo, the American Actives would be feeling the heat. If he was really lucky, there would be a crackdown. Anything that caused dissension in the enemy's ranks would only swell the Imperium's own.
The corridor stunk of diesel and body odor. The paint was peeling and the tub rusting, which normally would be unacceptable in an Imperium vessel, but this one had to keep up appearances as being a low-class merchanter. Madi found the door and spun the wheel. It creaked violently as he pulled it open
The Healer was on the floor. She closed her eyes as blinding light spilled into the tiny cell. She was pathetic. Filthy, her clothes ripped, her wrists bound behind her back with cord. I wonder if this was how Rokusaburo saw me? Probably not, because he had at least been tough. This Grimnoir girl was soft, and the only reason he'd thought to bring her along was the sheer rarity of Healers.
"Get up," he ordered. She whimpered, so he kicked her in the leg. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to let her know he was serious. "Get your ass up or you'll really feel the boot." He reached down, grabbed her by the arm, and jerked her off the floor. "We got a flight to catch."
"Where are you taking me?" she asked, grimacing against the pain.
He thought about backhanding her, but it was a fair question. "Nippon. From there, you'll go wherever the Chairman thinks is best." She limped along as he pulled her into the corridor. "If you're lucky, you'll stay at an Edo school to serve. If you piss us off, you're going to Manchukuo. Trust me, sister, you don't want that. You're too pretty and those mutants are awful lonely." There still was defiance in her eyes. He could see her thinking about how she would never serve the Imperium, but she was smart enough not to say it out loud. "Fine, we'll see how tough you are when the branding iron comes out," he said as he dragged her along.
Toshiko, Hiroyasu, and the others were waiting for them on the deck. The sea air felt cool on his skin. In the distance to the east, a black shape was growing. It was the Chairman's new flagship, fresh off the UBF assembly line, heading home for the first time, the most-advanced hybriddirigible ever developed, and the Chairman had it diverted to pick up his star Iron Guard so that he could return home in honor.
"It's beautiful," Toshiko muttered.
It really was. Madi was no expert on airships, but he'd ridden on one of the new Kagas, which were more like battleships suspended under three armored hulls, all business. This was nowhere near as big, but it was much sleeker. The flagship was like something off the cover of those science fiction pulps. It also had three separate hulls, like long grey cigars, but the outer two were angled inward at the front, and the whole thing was covered in a housing of rooms, balconies, and glass enclosures, giving it an overall triangular shape. It was driven by twenty roaring engines, both lifted and fueled by hydrogen, and it would be crewed entirely by Actives.
The Imperium had not developed its airship technology as rapidly as the Americans, and when Madi had heard that their new flagship would be built by UBF, he'd been offended, but those thoughts were forgotten as he saw the gleaming beast coming toward them. Their Cogs would catch up. They'd even improved on UBF's original Kaga design by adding hydrogen-powered Peace Rays. It was only a matter of time until the Imperium was able to produce marvels like this at home but, in the meantime, the Chairman would ride in style.
"Da-nippon teikoku kaigun Tokugawa. It is called the Tokugawa, in honor of the Chairman's family name," Hiroyasu said reverently.
"I thought you didn't name a ship after somebody until after they died?" the Grimnoir Healer said. "Maybe we'll get lucky?" Toshiko slapped her to the deck for her insolence.
"He's immortal," Madi said. "We didn't feel like waiting around."
The four-engine amphibious PBY Silverado biplane had flown west until the Presidio, then San Francisco, then finally the blackened coast had been lost. Sullivan watched out the rear window of the cargo plane until the final line of land disappeared, then moved forward to take his seat amongst the cargo headed for Pearl Harbor.
The Silverado would normally have an eight man crew, but none of the guns were mounted, so there were only four-the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and engineer-and all of them had been specifically instructed by Major Arnold not to talk to the large man in civilian clothes. There were a few other passengers, soldiers being transferred to Hawaii, and they hadn't gotten the message.
"Where you headed?" the private sitting across from him asked, having to shout over the thunder of the props.
There were two soldiers. They had to be fresh out of training. Had he been that young once? He had lied about his age and volunteered for the First when he was seventeen years old, so it was sad to say that he probably had. "Nowhere you need to know about," Sullivan answered in a tone that suggested he just wanted to be left alone. He went back to looking out the port window and the soldiers returned to their conversation.
Pershing's memory had directed him to a man at the Presidio. The base had been on alert, and soldiers had been scrambling. The men at the gate had regarded Sullivan-dirty, coated in dried blood, clothing in shreds-with suspicion, glaring at him over the muzzle of a Colt Potato-Digger machine gun that had been thrown down behind a bunch of sandbags. He was glad that he'd detached the barrel from the '29 BAR and stashed it in his bag or they probably would have shot him. When he said that he had a message for a Major Arnold, they had sent a runner.