Defender Hyperswarm Read online

  Kyoto didn’t have to feign surprise at this question. “I haven’t heard anything about that.” And she hadn’t, though she did have her suspicions as to what that announcement was going to be.

  Aspen waited a moment longer, as if trying to gauge Kyoto’s sincerity. Finally, she said, “Well, I suppose we’ll all find out at eleven-thirty, won’t we? Now, why don’t you tell us where you stand on an issue that’s been burning up Syscom’s boards recently: Galactic Gossipmonger posted its annual Sexiest in the Solar Colonies list last week, and for the second year in a row, you’re on it. Any reactions?”

  “And we’re out to commercial.” A tiny red light on the hovercam flicked off.

  “Thank you, darling.” Aspen knew the camera’s rudimentary AI didn’t care whether she answered it or not, but she didn’t think that any reason to be rude. She turned to Kyoto and clasped both of the woman’s hands. Though after that little sob story Kyoto had told about her stupid bomber jacket, Aspen would rather have fastened them around the fighter pilot’s skinny chicken neck and choked the life out of her. “And thank you so much, Mei. It means a great deal to me that you chose to make your first media appearance of the day on my program.”

  “You’re welcome, Aspen.” Kyoto withdrew her hands and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I really have to be going now I… need to go talk with someone.”

  I’ll just bet you do, Aspen thought. Probably that hunky Wolf of yours, unless I miss my guess. Going to beg him one more time to take you back? If he has any brains at all, he’ll tell you to go take a walk through an open airlock.

  “Of course, darling. I’ll be covering the memorial activation later today, live from GSA headquarters. See you then?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Kyoto gave her an awkward, lopsided smile, then hurried out of the studio as fast as she could without looking as if she was hurrying.

  When Kyoto was gone, Aspen’s smile vanished. Absolutely pathetic. No matter how many times she spoke to Mei Kyoto, she still couldn’t believe that that… thing was the single most famous—or some would say infamous— personality in the Solar Colonies. Famous or infamous, they were both the same to Aspen DeFonesca. Mei Kyoto was known by everyone, and everyone wanted to know even more about her—who she was, where she came from, what she was thinking and feeling, whom she loved and whom she hated.

  Aspen had a personal AI dedicated to running hourly checks of all Syscom communications—public as well as private, and wouldn’t the Syscom bigwigs be surprised by that little tidbit of information?—in order to monitor the fluctuating popularity levels of thousands of Very Important People. Chief among these VIPs was Aspen herself, of course, but just as Snow White’s evil queen kept getting unpleasant responses from her magic mirror, so too did Aspen continually receive bad news from her AI.

  “AI, AI, in the Net: who’s the most beloved person yet?”

  “I am not programmed to tell a lie: Kyoto’s rating is most high.”

  Aspen absolutely despised Kyoto with every fiber of her genetically flawless being. Kyoto was a clumsy, cloddish, unattractive woman who didn’t deserve the fame that the universe in its blind idiocy had seen fit to thrust upon her. For pity’s sake, children were already studying about her on Syscom’s edunet! How insane was that?

  When she’d been approached to play Kyoto in Deathship (some sources claimed that she’d doggedly pursued the role, but of course there was no truth to that ugly rumor), Aspen had thought she would supplant Kyoto in the public’s mind once she showed them what a real hero was like. But despite the glowing reviews (again, some sources would claim that her performance was panned by vid critics throughout the Solar Colonies, but these sources were just mean and hateful and plain wrong, wrong, wrong!) that hadn’t happened. If anything, her star turn in Deathship had only served to add to Kyoto’s popularity.

  Not that Aspen was jealous or anything. She’d once gone to a therapist who diagnosed her as having a dependent-personality disorder known as entanglement. It was, he’d said, a common enough ailment among colonists, though she was the most extreme case he’d ever seen. Entanglement was the result of living in close proximity to others day in and day out from the moment a person was born. It resulted in the sufferer becoming so concerned about others’ opinions that the boundaries of the individual self became “blurred to an unhealthy and sometimes even dangerous degree,” as the therapist had put it.

  The man had been full of unrecycled bodily waste, of course. Aspen had used her connections within Cydonian Civilian Security to have the moron framed for financing a bug-dust smuggling operation. The drug—made from synthetic Manti enzymes—was highly illegal, and the therapist was sentenced to life at hard labor in Phobos prison. Funny, but now that she thought of it, she realized that she couldn’t recall the fool’s name. Ah well, she supposed it didn’t matter.

  “We’ll be coming out of commercial in sixty seconds,” the hovercam said. “Should I send in your next guest?”

  “Of course, and don’t wait so long to ask next time!” Aspen was angry with herself for getting so wrapped up in her thoughts that she’d almost forgotten about the show. Damn that Kyoto!

  Her next guest was one of the holo-artists who’d helped design the Earth Memorial. She greeted the man—who had no sense of fashion at all—and got him seated just in time for the hovercam’s little red light to wink on. She conducted the interview with the artist on autopilot while she continued to think (not obsess) about Kyoto. How could she possibly compete with a woman who had both saved humanity and destroyed the Earth? There had to be a way, if only she could find it….

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Kyoto sat in the backseat of a maglev transport bound for Galactic Stargate Authority headquarters. Two GSA security guards rode in front—a precaution that irritated Kyoto no end but which General Detroit Adams insisted on whenever she made public appearances on behalf of the GSA. The transport hummed above ferroceramic rails as it traveled along the causeway from the Syscom complex. Kyoto didn’t feel like activating the backseat holoscreen—not after having to endure Aspen DeFonesca this morning—and with nothing better to look at than the backs of the guards’ heads, she cast her gaze upward.

  The causeway’s plasteel roof was set on transparent today, and Kyoto saw that the sky above Cydonia was a light pink dotted with white clouds of carbon dioxide ice. It looked clear and calm, which suited Kyoto just fine. She hated Martian dust storms: they were noisy, hard to fly in, and tended to make the grav generators malfunction. Besides, a storm would just put a damper on the Remembrance Day ceremonies, and the occasion was already solemn enough.

  Kyoto also had a good view of Cydonia’s stargate. The circular portal hovered over the dropzone on the colony’s northern edge. The stargate was held aloft by its own antigrav gens, and the vortex of faint blue-green energy swirling within indicated it was active. Stargates were almost always left on because to shut down and restart them consumed far more energy—assuming they could be reactivated at all—than just letting them run constantly.

  The sight of the stargate made Kyoto smile. Though the Colonies’ gates were interconnected and you knew where you were going when you entered one, there was still a sense of danger when making a jump through a hyperspace portal, a feeling that you never truly knew hat might await you on the other side. This feeling, and the excitement that accompanied it, was one of the things she loved best about being a fighter pilot.

  Kyoto almost remarked upon this but thought better of it. She didn’t know either of the guard—one male, one female—and there was the difference in rank to consider. She was an elite commander, and they were both sergeants. Rank didn’t mean much to her, all she cared about was flying. But soon after her promotion, she’d discovered that even though rank didn’t matter to her, it did to others. Like Wolf, for instance.

  Thinking of Wolf depressed her, and she lowered her gaze. She wondered what he was doing now. Probably finishing the preflight check of his starfight
er, she guessed. Just then, she was insanely jealous of Wolf and wished their roles were reversed: that he was the so-called Savior of Humanity, while she was merely another anonymous jump jockey with a mission to fly.

  As she was getting set for a good wallow in her funk, the male security guard said, “Heads up, Commander. Looks like there’s some trouble ahead.”

  Kyoto leaned sideways so she could get a better look. A crowd had gathered around the entrance to GSA headquarters, a hundred people, maybe more. There were so many that they covered both lanes of the causeway, blocking passage into or out of the GSA installation. As the maglev transport drew near to the crowd, it automatically slowed and came to a stop behind several other blocked vehicles.

  “Looks like a protest,” the female guard said.

  Now that they were closer, Kyoto could see that what she had at first taken to be a single large crowd was in fact two separate groups facing each other. Many of the people carried protest signs, and a dozen hovercams circled around the protestors like bloodthirsty darting insects. Not that Kyoto had ever seen a real insect outside of a vid—unless you counted Manti, of course.

  Both groups looked mad as hell, and each was chanting a slogan as loud as it could, trying to drown out the other.

  “A new home for hu-man-it-ee!”

  “The gal-ax-y is ours!”

  “A new home for hu-man-i-TEE!”

  “The gal-a-x-y is OURS!”

  “Great,” muttered the male guard. “Claimers and Bounders. Just what we needed.”

  “What else did you expect?” Kyoto said. “Especially today.” Not only was it Remembrance Day, but because of the activation of the Earth Memorial, the entire Council of Seven had traveled to GSA headquarters to be present for the event. It was extremely rare for the council members to meet physically, so what better time for a protest?

  Without the Manti threat to worry about anymore, the people of the Solar Colonies had turned their attention from simple survival to what humanity’s next step should be. There were two main camps: the Reclaimers and the Outbounders. The Claimers believed with almost fanatical devotion that a new Earth should be created by terraforming another planet, the most popular choice being Mars. The Outbounders, on the other hand, were just as fervent in their belief that humanity’s future lay in expanding its colonies outside the solar system and into the galaxy, with the hope of one day perhaps discovering Earth-like worlds to settle.

  As far as Kyoto was concerned, both ideas had merit, though she tended to favor the Claimers’ position, which was another sore point between her and Wolf. As a fighter pilot, Wolf was totally gung ho for galactic exploration and the adventure that went along with it. Kyoto understood, for part of her longed for that adventure, too. But another part wanted to replace the world that she had helped destroy, wanted a home in the truest sense of the word for her species. The problem was that the Colonies didn’t have the resources to do both at the same time, not after generations of war with the Manti. So it came down to a choice, and from what Kyoto had seen on the newsnets—not to mention what she was seeing in front of her right now—it looked as though any sort of consensus among the Colonists was going to be impossible.

  Despite the crowd’s obviously high emotions, the two sides were behaving themselves thanks to a mixed contingent of civilian defense officers and GSA security standing between them. Of course, the fact that the officers were armed with stun lances and tranq shooters helped.

  “Do you want us to turn around, Commander?” the male officer asked.

  “No,” Kyoto said. It would take far too long to maneuver their maglev onto the opposite track, head back to Syscom, then take another causeway. They’d have to travel through a half dozen different installations before finally reaching the back entrance of GSA headquarters. “It looks like our people and the Civvies are keeping a lid on the situation. With any luck, I should be able to walk right on through.” She started to climb out of the vehicle.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Commander,” the woman officer said.

  Kyoto was tired of being babysat. “I’m going. You two can come with me or stay here. Your choice.” Without waiting for a response, she started walking toward the GSA entrance. She smiled as the two officers got out of the maglev and hurried to catch up to her.

  Sometimes rank really does have its privileges.

  As she approached the crowd, a number of heads on both sides turned her way. That was when she realized her mistake.

  “Look! It’s Mei Kyoto!”

  “No, it isn’t!”

  “I’m telling you it’s her!”

  “Savior!”

  “Planet killer!”

  The Claimers and Bounders stopped yelling at each other and focused all their attention on her. Kyoto swore inwardly. When would she ever get used to being famous? Or infamous, as the case may be.

  The hovercams quickly trained their lenses on her. For a moment there was complete silence, and the cameras had nothing of interest to broadcast, but then both groups of protesters began shouting and moving toward her. The Civvies and the GSA officers tried to hold the crowd back, but it was like trying to stop a Martian gale-force wind using only a pulse beam set on low. Kyoto’s two babysitters stepped in front of her and drew their stun lances.

  “Get back to the lev, Commander!” the woman shouted. “We’ll cover you!”

  Cover my retreat, you mean. After having faced Manti squadrons more times than she could count, Kyoto wasn’t intimidated by a crowd of her own kind, even if half of them would be more than happy to tear her limb from limb. Retreat simply wasn’t an option.

  Kyoto carried no weapon herself. The GSA brass thought it would send the wrong message to the public to have their most famous representative make media appearances while armed. Which, considering how she felt about media types—especially Aspen DeFonesca—was probably a good thing.

  The civilian security and GSA officers began laying into the crowd with their stun lances, and while a number of protestors went down, their nervous systems temporarily inoperative, there were simply too many people to stop. As Claimers and Bounders jostled one another, fistfights erupted and the combatants stopped to duke it out, but the majority of both groups continued surging toward Kyoto.

  She wondered how many in the crowd were wired on bug dust. Too many, she decided. One of the drug’s effects was a heightened sense of aggression—no surprise considering the original source of the chemical—coupled with a lowering of inhibitions. Not the best of combinations in any circumstance, but especially during an emotionally charged protest.

  Kyoto was seriously reconsidering her stance on retreat when a loud voice cut through all the noise like a precision laser burning a hole through a soggy protein square.

  “Claimers and Bounders! Stand down!”

  The voice was so loud that it made Kyoto’s ears hurt. Evidently, it affected everyone else the same way, for people winced and clapped their hands to their ears. Protesters and peacekeepers alike turned toward the source of the voice: a man standing on the hood of one of the stopped maglev transports, hands upraised to catch everyone’s attention. Kyoto recognized him from newsnet feeds as an Outbounder spokesman named Seth Ganymede.

  He was a tall, lean man in his sixties, cleanshaven, but with a full head of thick white hair. He wore a plain gray tunic and leggings, something of a uniform among the Bounders. The fabric was holographic, and a ghostly image of the Milky Way spiraled slowly in the air inches from his chest. That last touch was a bit over the top, Kyoto thought, and she hated to imagine what Aspen De Fonesca would say about it if she were here.

  Outbounders tended to change their names to reflect their galactic-expansionist ideals, in much the same way that generations of colonists had named their children after places on Earth—such as Detroit, Aspen, and of course, Kyoto – to remind them of their homeworld. Kyoto thought Seth could have used more imagination in selecting his Bounder surname, though. Since Ganymede w
as one of Jupiter’s moons, it was right in the Colonies’ backyard, so to speak. It was quite a provincial choice, really.

  When Ganymede next spoke, his voice was pitched at a more bearable volume, though still loud enough for everyone in the causeway to hear. “Today is an emotional occasion for all of us.” He glanced at Kyoto and locked gazes with her for an instant. “Perhaps more so for some than others.” He broke eye contact and continued to sweep his gaze across the mingled crowd of Bounders and Claimers. “Strong feelings are nothing to be ashamed of. They’re part of what makes us… human.”

  The hesitation was so slight as to be almost unnoticeable, but Kyoto picked up on it. That was weird, she thought. And what about his choice of words before? “Stand down.” That was a phrase a military man would use, not a political activist. She didn’t know a lot about the Bounder spokesman, but she wasn’t aware he’d ever served in a military capacity. Perhaps he’d once worked civilian security on some colony or other. But even so, his use of the phrase still struck her as odd. And how had he managed to speak so loudly? He held no voxcaster, and while it was possible he had some sort of miniature version attached to his collar or somewhere, she didn’t see how it could have produced so much powerful sound. She’d felt the vibrations of his voice rattle her teeth.

  She recalled a line from an ancient Earth text: “Curiouser and curiouser, Alice.”

  “But strong feelings require strong control unless we wish our emotions to overwhelm us and cause us to take actions that we shall all too soon regret.”

  Before Ganymede could say anything more, someone in the crowd who didn’t appreciate being lectured at hurled a gray rock—no doubt brought along in anticipation of the protest turning violent—straight at Ganymede’s head. The rock flew too fast for the Bounder spokesman to duck, and it struck him on the right temple. Blood spurted from Ganymede’s head and he staggered, but he didn’t fall off the maglev. He touched his fingers to his temple, and they came away coated with blood. He stared at the blood for a moment before holding his hand up for everyone to see.