Life-Suspension

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.