The officer’s quarters were next, and Toru intercepted the young men as they woke up and went toward the sound of the guns. No Actives would be wasted on a post such as this, but all Imperial officers were branded with at least one kanji, so they could prove dangerous enough to thwart his mission. Toru fired his Power and lifted the steel tetsubo.
Toru killed them all.
Blood dripped from the spikes on his club. Toru turned in a slow circle. The walls were painted red. Broken bodies lay in piles.
It is for the best.
The commander’s chambers were locked, so Toru kicked the heavy door from its hinges. An unshaven, bleary-eyed Imperial captain was still trying to get his shirt on. Toru looked in disgust at the garbage strewn about the room and the empty sake jugs, and then broke every bone in the captain’s hand when he reached for his pistol. Toru grabbed him by the neck, lifted him off the ground, and slammed him hard into the wall.
The captain was red-faced and struggling to breathe. He blinked rapidly and begged for mercy like a peasant. “Please don’t kill me! I surrender,” the captain squealed in a manner that offended Toru’s philosophy about what it meant to be a warrior. It was easy to see what caliber of officer would be sent to a dead-end post such as this.
“I am Toru Tokugawa,” he stated. The captain’s tear-filled eyes widened. “My name is known. Good. You will activate your emergency communication spell to the Edo court now.” Toru squeezed just a bit harder, letting the captain know the price for noncompliance, then he dropped the man to the floor. “I need to have a word with them.”
Every Imperium base in the world was equipped with prepared kanji so that a quick message could be sent back to the high command. They bypassed all levels of the military bureaucracy and went straight to the top, to the Chairman’s inner circle. They were to be used only in the gravest emergency, and using one for anything short of an apocalyptic crisis unnecessarily would mean a death sentence for the officer activating it.
Trained as an Iron Guard, Toru knew how to prepare such a spell himself, but when he’d tried it months ago, it had simply not worked. He had hoped to send a message home, warning them about the false Chairman, but his particular spell had been purposefully blocked somehow. The imposter was obviously trying to limit the contagion of the rogue Iron Guard.
Toru understood now that even if he could get a message to high command, it would be pointless. No one would believe him. Who among them would doubt the word of the Chairman? It was for an entirely different reason that Toru had decided to send this message.
The captain hesitated, so Toru used the blankets from the man’s bed to wipe the blood from the tetsubo. That was all it took for the captain to wet himself in fear. The worm crawled away, wincing as his broken hand touched the floor. A screen was moved from the far wall, revealing a large mirror, and the captain went to work activating it. His spellbinding was sloppy, as would be expected just from looking at him, but these mirrors were created by Unit 731 Cogs, masters of the individual kanji. Even an imbecile could make one of their spells work.
Toru waited, watching himself in the mirror. His reflection stared back, splattered with the blood of good Imperium men who should not have had to die. It was a waste of precious resources. That was on the imposter’s head, not Toru’s. The captain was jabbering on the whole time, begging, pleading, groveling… If Toru had been in a merciful mood before, the pathetic display of cowardice would have removed any lingering doubts. The mirror flashed and a new, familiar scene appeared on the other side. He had seen this view of the Imperial Court many times before.
A functionary appeared in the mirror, obviously confused as to why the most isolated base in the world would be calling for the high command, but then he saw Toru standing there with the captain cowering at his feet, and his mouth fell open in surprise. Sick of the captain’s piteous mewling, Toru raised one boot and stomped on his neck, silencing him forever.
“I demand to see Okubo Tokugawa. Bring me the Chairman.”
The shocked functionary stared on in silence. His mouth moved, but no words came out.
“Tell him that Toru Tokugawa wishes to speak with him.”
The metal globe was six feet across and floating six feet off the ground. Sullivan couldn’t tell what it was made of, but he had to admire the remarkable craftsmanship as it slowly rotated under its own power. The continents didn’t look quite right; they were sort of stylized. He didn’t know if that had been necessary for the kanji spells carved all over it, or if it had been because the Chairman had liked for his gizmos to have a certain artistic flair, but either way, Sullivan had to admit it was kind of pretty.
“This floor is locked up tight. Only a few of us wounded,” Diamond reported. At some point in the fight he’d gotten blood on his glasses, so the Mover took them off and cleaned them on his coat sleeve. “We’ve got a few pockets of resistance left, but they’re pinned down.”
“Keep ’em that way. Don’t waste any of our boys trying to dig them out. We got what we came for. How about our path out?”
“We control it. Some of the guys got hit, nothing too severe. I sent them all back to the main floor to that funny air lock room. Dianatkhah is seeing to them.”
Sullivan nodded. Healers were so rare that they only had a single, precious one on this expedition. That was probably the safest place in the whole place to put their wounded. At least they had an exit if something went wrong. “Good. Spread the word to watch out for one of them suicide charges.” The Grimnoir knights had done well. For not having worked together much beforehand, they’d performed better than he’d expected. “I hope this won’t take long…”
“It’ll be done five seconds after you quit asking me how long it will be,” Schirmer said. Their Fixer was their most talented spellbinder, and he’d been preparing the communication spell. Since they’d been unsure how much glass would be available at the site—and unbroken after they took the place over—they had hauled a bag of salt along on the hike. Schirmer had poured the salt out on the floor and was drawing designs in it. Sullivan had turned out to be pretty darn good at that sort of thing, but he had to admit that the Fixer from Texas was better.
Sullivan checked his watch. Ten minutes from entry to taking over the place. Not a single fatality, just a couple of minor wounds… Not too shabby. He turned to Heinrich, who was supervising the looting of the Imperium command center. The knights were grabbing every scrap of paper there, just in case there was some piece of valuable intelligence. That was a lot of paper, and they only had a couple of folks who could actually read Japanese, but it was worth a shot. “Alert the Traveler. Southunder can kill his storm. Have Barns pick us up right outside.”
“You do not wish to walk back?”
“I’d prefer to keep all my toes… Schirmer?”
The Fixer cracked his knuckles. “Done.”
This next part, which Sullivan was the best at, involved connecting someone’s personal Power to the designs in the salt. And Sullivan had the most Power of any of them. Just lucky that way I guess. The symbols represented the various geometric designs that made up the living thing they called the Power. Sullivan knew more about it than most people, but even he couldn’t wrap his brain around all the abstract concepts of a critter that weird.