Warstrider: Jackers (Warstrider Series, Book Three) Read Free Page B

warflyers and military ascraft to seize landing sites for your transports. You will need to go by way of our base at Daikoku to pick up some of your assigned vessels. Detailed plans are included in your orders."
    "Your orders will be carried out precisely as written, Gensuisama ."
    "I know, Chujosan . I have complete confidence in you. Now, if you would honor me by joining me for tea? . . ."
    The room reserved for the tea ceremony was traditional, nine feet square and with a real door rather than a dissolving, nanotech panel, one so low that the celebrants had to go in on hands and knees, a holdover from centuries long past when such a posture spoke of mutual trust and of the leaving of pretense and pomp outside. It was impossible to enter while wearing the traditional two swords, katana and wakazashi , of the samurai.
    Inside, a single scroll hung in its alcove above a simple arrangement of flowers. Through an open panel could be glimpsed the fir trees and moss-covered ground,the garden and stone water basin, of a scene on Earth. So perfect was the illusion that Kawashima imagined he could smell the scent of pine needles behind the subtle haze of incense . . . and perhaps, he realized, that was programmed into the scene as well. The ceremony's hostess, a provocatively lovely ningyo , was on her knees in the garden, simmering water in an iron kettle over a charcoal fire, each motion one of delicate grace and economy of movement. Save for the lessened gravity, it was difficult to remember that this was aboard the synchorbital Tenno Kyuden, and not in some woods-shrouded teahouse in Kyoto Prefecture.
    The conversation turned now to the formality of the ritual, outwardly reserved, inwardly relaxed as they commented on the kettles, pots, and bowls, on the scroll and flower arrangement, on the play of the hostess's hands as she carried out the ancient motions of preparing tea.
    Kawashima felt ashamed, however, and unworthy. Munimori was extending to him a signal and conspicuous honor, but he found himself unable to leave worldly concerns and troubles at the teahouse door as custom required. His thoughts kept turning back to those intensely blue, pain-filled eyes he'd seen in the outer room.
    He had no doubt whatsoever that the effect was a calculated one, deliberately staged for his benefit; Munimori was telling him in a manner much more direct and meaningful than mere words, that he, Munimori, was a man of singular power, one who could deliver honor and great reward with one hand, pain and disgrace with the other. The hostess knelt before him, beating his cha to near-froth with a whisk before bowing and offering him the porcelain cup. Bowing, he received it, but when he lifted the bitter green liquid to his lips he could scarcely taste it.
    As a good officer, Kawashima had been aware of the talk spreading through the fleet, talk that had forecast the first order he'd received, that soon only those native to Dai Nihon could serve as fleet officers. There wererumors of worse to come already circulating, rumors to the effect that before long only native-born Nihonjin would be allowed to serve in high military or government posts. Those rumors had already caused minor riots and popular demonstrations in Madras, Indonesia, and Anchorage. After all, to be accorded the privilege of Imperial citizenship without the attendant rights and status made the whole concept of Japanese citizenship rather pointless.
    For centuries, Nihon had led softly, exercising her control over Earth and her offworld colonies through the instrumentality of the Hegemony, granting her subjects at least the illusion of sovereignty. Now, it seemed, the cloak was being thrown back, and naked force would be the order of the day. Could Nihon rule all of the human diaspora alone? And what of the nonhumans discovered so far, the Xenophobes and DalRiss? If the ways and thoughts of human gaijin were strange sometimes, what of those beings, far stranger still?
    Kawashima