10 years later, we join Amanda at the opening ceremony for one of her mother's dreams that have become reality. Her search for the Kuroi Kitsune brings her to a strong potential ally.
Defiant Horizon is a Near Future, Alternate History Cyberpunk Adventure set in a world teetering on the edge of world war. As some discover that they have supernatural abilities, will they choose to use them for good, or their own selfish ends?
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Circlets of golden destiny
Cast upon endless horizons
Stolen away, cast asunder.
Shall I rise,
An ill-fitting shadow,
To reclaim?
Can what is lost
Ever truly be found
Again?
Marshall Space Elevator Station, Link Island, Hashishima,
Thursday, August 9th, 2035
“My mother believed wholeheartedly in the promise of tomorrow. It was her belief that our greatest days, our greatest triumphs, were always just ahead. Diana Marshall came from nothing. She grew up on the streets of New York before the Revival. Her parents had nothing. She had nothing.
“But, she worked everyday to rise above where she came from. Diana cleaned houses, washed clothes and dishes, and did whatever else she could to make money to pay for school tuition up until she earned a full scholarship to Oxford. Once she graduated, she started working on technology that would change our world. Hitobito named her ‘the most powerful, intelligent, and inventive person of the modern world.’ The New British Times called her ‘The Da Vinci of our Age.’ Along with her business partner, Shigure Saito, she built Marshall-Saito Technologies, and got to work to make her dreams a reality.
“She made it her mission in life to bring a piece of tomorrow to today. Her work in city planning, advanced construction, and management made our beautiful city what it is today, a model gradually copied around the world. She personally designed the second generation Solon-Kaku Reactor, which revolutionized our energy future, making the experimental technology commercially viable at scale. Her interest in display technology gave us the holo computers we use today. Her collaboration with Gatesoft brought the promise of true artificial intelligence closer to reality than ever before.
“Later in her life, her interest began to turn to the stars. She told me that they were the only thing that kept her going when she felt like giving up when she was a kid. She wanted to bring us to those stars. While she didn’t personally work on the Lux Excedo drive, she funded Dr. Cromwell’s research into the engine that enables a ship to travel faster than the speed of light. Diana then lead development of mass production methods for the drive. She then helped design and develop the NBUS Horizon, the first starship that will carry mankind to another star system starting in just a few weeks.
“But she knew that our spacefaring future would be accelerated by a cheap, efficient, and reliable means of transporting goods and people to and from space. She believed that the backbone to that dream was a space elevator. This marvel of engineering can take someone to the cusp of the stars for a quarter of the cost as a ship, making space travel and commerce cheaper and more accessible for everyone.
“Today my mother’s dream becomes a reality. I am incredibly proud to announce the official opening of the Marshall Space Elevator. From this moment on, the stars are closer than ever before. Let us reach up towards the stars together.” said Amanda Marshall. She stood at the massive east entrance to the Elevator. A wall of frosted glass doors sat behind her, nestled under a large marble archway. A massive crowd of people, and a box of press from all over the world cheered.
At last line of her speech, a chime rang, followed by a smooth masculine voice announcing, “The Marshall Space Elevator is now open. Welcome.” And the glass doors swung open.
“Now go forth into new horizons,” Amanda said before dismissing the holo microphone over her mouth. She stepped away from the doors, and through a narrow corridor her security detail had made through the crowd of spectators and people eager to be among the first to take the Space Elevator up. A joyous uproar surged as people flooded into the entrance behind her.
Batou walked in stride with her, sharp black eyes surveying the crowd as they walked away from the main elevator terminal. As usual, he had put himself between her and any perceived threat, in this case the large gathering of people. Her bodyguard, and personal assistant, spoke in a tense voice just loud enough for her to hear, “you did well, ma’am. Your mother would be proud.”
“I’m sure she would be,” Amanda said in reply. They made it to the VTOL pad, where her sleek silver Phoenix 7s craft sat, gravity trauns sparking in an idle spool.
She turned to look back at the Elevator Terminal one last time. The vast majority of the crowd had barely even made it to the doors into the titanic building, and they would be far from the last. Her mother’s dream, this one at least, had come true. Amanda’s eyes followed the black composite shaft from the top of the Terminal, and up as it reached even further than she could see into the clearing early morning sky. She said to herself, “One more down, Mom, right on schedule. The Horizon next.”
Then she stepped into her VTOL craft. She settled into the pilot seat, the crash gel forming to her thin body as she pulled on her seat belts. An orange holo heads up display flared into life on the windshield. Just as she had completed preflight checks, Batou came to sit in the copilot seat. “All clear, ma’am.”
“All Clear, Tower, Ready for launch,” Amanda said.
“Copy, Marshall One, go for take off,” the air traffic control AI responded after a moment.
Amanda grabbed the controls, and lifted the gravitation orb. She could feel the craft set off from the pad as the gravity trauns thrummed. Once she got the ship to a safe altitude, and locked it in, she turned the vector and attitude controls towards the city. She spared a glance for the massive hexagonal Elevator Terminal building as it passed from view. She could already see a fleet of freight VTOL ships come in for a landing at the commercial end of the building. Ten years… it felt like only yesterday she had seen the foundation poured.
“What do we know about the sighting last night?” Amanda asked, trying to pull her mind from the past.
Batou brought up a holo display. “Looks like a mercenary crew hit on Byakko. Unknown what they were after. An HPF officer intervened, and got in a firefight. Then the Kitsune dropped in, and finished the crew. The officer insists the Kitsune came to save her.”
“Did this officer see it happen? Do we have a name?” Amanda looked over to Batou beside her.
“I took the liberty of talking with Chief of Police Collins this morning as you were preparing for your speech,” he said with what passed for a smirk on his stern face. “The officer involved was Lieutenant Monica Ichinose. Special Crimes. She investigates incidents with the Kitsune, and other strange cases that don’t fit in other task forces.”
“I thought I recognized her name. We’ve bought her reports before, right?” Amanda said. They were just about to come over Port Island as they spoke. To think that it used to be half the size it was today back on this same day ten years ago, when she was just a silly girl fussing over some stupid poem.
“Yes ma’am. Very… detailed.” Batou said. He was reviewing something on his holo console.
“What is it?”
There was that shadow of a smirk again. “In consideration of your recent, very generous donation to the Hashishima Police Force Pension Fund, Chief Collins is willing to set up a meeting with Lieutenant Ichinose.”
“Well, I always have tried to be generous to the people who keep us safe, haven’t I? Well done.” Amanda said, shaking her head with a laugh.
A short flight later, Amanda set the craft down on one of the Hashishima Police Force Headquarters landing pads. Chief of Police Eugene Collins was there himself to greet them in the blue and gold military-style uniform of the Hashishima Police Force. As she took off her helmet, and set the craft to idle, she asked, “Batou, just how much did I send?”
“500 million pounds, ma’am. Really quite generous of you.” He replied.
“Generous, right.” Amanda said, shaking her head in disbelief. If there was one thing Batou was particularly proficient at, it was getting people’s attention, and not just with his striking physique.
They stepped out of the cockpit, and onto the rooftop landing pad. The headquarters was stouter than most of the neighboring skyscrapers, but was much wider to accommodate for a large landing pad for dozens of VTOL craft at once, and an internal hangar bay for even more vessels. This gave this gave Amanda the impression that the building was surrounded by impossibly tall walls of glass, steel, and neon lights. She had personally supervised the team that had designed the new Headquarters for the Bastion Defense Solutions when they took over the Hashishima Policing and Security contract from Defenstech six years ago, so she was quite familiar with the building. This was, however her first time visiting since it’s construction.
“Ms. Marshall, it is a honor to see you!” Chief Collins said. He was a portly man with wiry brown hair, and a face that always reminded Amanda of a bulldog. If she was honest, his grumbling voice that sounded as though his cheeks were stuffed with cottonballs only reinforced the impression.
She smiled and held out her hand as she stepped up to the man. He shook it eagerly. “Please, just Amanda is fine. My mother was Ms. Marshall.”
“And what a remarkable woman she was. I regret not having known her personally. I was just a Sergeant back then.” The Chief sighed. “My, how times change.” He took her hand so that her arm hooked around his as he moved to escort her. The height difference between the two was almost comical as she had to lean over for her arm to be low enough for the gesture. She had, after all, inherited her mother’s height in the end.
“My assistant says one of your officers saw the Kitsune last night?” Amanda asked.
Chief Collins seemed to hesitate for a moment. He kept a jovial expression, but she could tell the topic made him uneasy. “Ah, yes, Mr. Batou mentioned your interest in the case.” They stepped onto an elevator with the black, white, blue, and gold logo of Bastion Defense Solutions, a black shield with three crossed swords, one white, one gold, and one blue.
“I hope there is no issue in meeting with the Lieutenant?”
“No issue, no. I just…” the Chief cleared his throat as he activated the elevator, and they started to descend. “I wonder why a young woman like yourself would be interested in such things. To be frank, I don’t put much stock in the stories myself.”
“Chief Collins, one of your officers says she had an encounter with the Kitsune herself, and you don’t believe her?” Amanda asked.
“Lieutenant Ichinose is brilliant, too brilliant for her own good. Her supervisor just found out she had secretly been working for over a month without taking a day off, and he suspects that she’s been working much, much longer than that. She is dedicated, if a bit… eccentric-- to say it politely.” The Chief said.
Amanda’s brown eyes narrowed. “You think she hallucinated the encounter? Made it up?”
“That’s perhaps too strong a word. You see, she’s been tasked with finding the Kitsune, and investigating cases that are possibly linked to her. She’s been dedicated to that for quite some time, with little but conjecture to show for it.” The lift came to a stop, and they walked down an austere polycrete hallway. “What are the chances that the day she is put on leave that she intervenes in an active shooter incident, and just so happens to have a direct encounter with the object of her work after all this time?”
“Or she was just in the right place at the right time. The Kitsune attacks criminals supposedly, so would her chances of encountering the Kitsune improve dramatically being at the site of an active crime?” Amanda offered. She had reclaimed her arm, and was relieved to stand up straight again as they stopped just before a large metal door.
Chief Collins nodded. “Possible, yes. But, in my experience, ‘Right place at the right time’ is quite often much too good to be true.” He placed a hand on the door handle, and then hesitated. “A word of caution, if you will, Amanda.”
“Go on.”
“Lieutenant Ichinose has been working for God knows how long, continuously, and has just been through a firefight where she was very much so outnumbered, and very likely should be dead right now. This kind of stress can do things to memory, and the mind.” He cleared his throat again. “Keep this in mind before jumping to conclusions about what she says.”
“Believe me, I know a thing or two about stress.” Amanda said, stepping closer to the door.
The Chief bowed his head. “Of course, Amanda.” He turned the handle, and opened the heavy metal door for her. “Again, thank you so much for your incredible generosity!”
Amanda entered what appeared to be an interrogation room, not exactly what she had expected. It was a spartan, bare metal chamber with a table and four chairs in the middle. Seated in one of the chairs, with her back to the door, was a feminine figure with long, coarse, obsidian hair, who was typing away at a holo console. A black trench coat was draped across the back of the chair.
The woman had perhaps 10 or so holo screens up, displaying various information. One had what Amanda supposed was body camera footage of the Kitsune. Another showed a map of the intersection of 3rd Street and Kozuki Boulevard. Several color-coded markings had been made over it. Three had some kind of code interface, but she didn’t recognize the language. One had pictures of maybe 5 men cycling. The rest of the screens she couldn’t quite make out.
“Ayaka, any luck with the spectral analysis?” the woman said quietly. She seemed to be lost in thought, not even noticing Amanda and Batou had entered the room.
A soft feminine voice responded, “Inconclusive. Unable to determine the composition of the subject’s armor”
“Why am I not surprised…” the woman said, running a hand through her luxuriously long hair. “Remind me to try a tungsten weave with the flash forge. Maybe that’ll keep the armor from crumbling next time after the first hit.”
“Noted, I’ll have the fabrication algorithms run tests for you to review later.” The disembodied voice responded.
“Such a life-saver.” She tilted her head, scratching her scalp. “And nothing on the suspects in the HPF database. No matches on facial recognition, blood, or fingerprints. Either from out of town, or someone is really good at modifying records. Ayaka, see if we have any luck with the skimmer on matches with their faces on Current. Maybe we can ID them that way.”
“Understood.” The voice responded.
“Oh, and let’s revisit the idea for some kind of pocket drone. Maybe even holo. If I could have had eyes in the sky, we could have made much better decisions. I don’t want to be caught off guard again.” The woman leaned back in her chair, supposedly taking in the data from the various displays.
“I hope I am not interrupting?” Amanda said. She smirked, pleased with the timing of her interjection.
The woman jumped in her seat, before whipping her head around to where Amanda was standing with Batou near the entrance. “Dear God. I’m sorry, I was miles away. Did you ask me something?”
Amanda came to sit across from the woman at the table, looking at her through several holo screens. She looked to be about Amanda’s age. The shorter woman wore a blue blouse, and black, high waisted slacks with a black leather belt. Her dark, almond-shaped, slightly upturned, eyes looked Amanda over. “I trust you are Lieutenant Ichinose.” Judging from how uncomfortable the hard metal chair was, this certainly was an interrogation room.
The woman visibly cringed as she cleared the screens away from between them. “Just call me Monica, if you don’t mind.”
“Not one for titles either, are you?”
“Can’t say that I am, Ms. Amanda Marshall” Monica said, leaning back in her chair.
Amanda winced, which made the other woman smirk. “You know me?”
“Who doesn’t know the princess of the city? Besides, I see the ‘contributions’ that get made whenever I submit a new report. You’ve made Chief Collins quite the wealthy man over the last couple years.” She leaned forward and raised a hand to shield her mouth, as if telling a secret. “You know he’s been looking at personal VTOLs so he can whizz around in style like the big wigs.”
It was Amanda’s turn to smirk. “Won’t that be quite the sight?”
“My question is why? Why buy my reports?” Monica said, leaning back and crossing her legs. “Most trillionaires spend that kind of money on a yacht, some political candidate they want in office, or some kind of special steak from an endangered species.”
“Interesting, and here I thought I was coming to ask you questions.” Amanda said with chuckle.
The lieutenant sighed, and then shrugged. “Old habits, and such.”
“Let’s just say that I… have an interest in the Kitsune.” Amanda said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“An interest deep enough to spend thousands of pounds to violate Records Law to get inconclusive, at best, case reports? I think there’s better ways to waste your money, and break the law, to be frank.” Monica said. “So, what are you then? Not a thrillseeker or you’d be out there trying to encounter her yourself. Not one of the thugs trying to take her out, or capture her as a bargaining chip, because you’d just work with one of the gangs or syndicates. Involving law enforcement would come with too many strings. So, why?” Something in the woman’s tone told Amanda that she wasn’t so much being interrogated, as she was genuinely curious. In another context, those same words might have come off as a threat, but not so from Monica.
“I just need to find her, that’s all I’ll say. I don’t care what it takes, I just want her found, to be honest. Which brings me to why I am here.” She leaned forward, her crossed arms resting on the cold metal table to support her weight. “You saw her, right?”
A smile crept up Monica’s lips. “That I did. Just as far away from me as you are now.” She leaned forward as well. “You know they were about to send me to the staff psychologist before you called the Chief. He thinks I’ve lost it, same thing with my Captain. His exact words were ‘Obviously this firefight has you seeing things.’ A bucket of evidence is sitting there corroborating that the Kuroi Kitsune was there, and they are refusing to even consider it.”
“Why wouldn’t they believe you? You are in Special Crimes, this is literally what you do.” Amanda asked.
Monica snorted. “As far as the brass is concerned, Special Crimes is a publicity stunt. A whole task force just for ‘strange’ and ‘inexplicable’ cases, most of which center around the Kitsune, and copycats. Do you know how many people are in the Special Crimes Task Force?”
“Can’t say that I do,” Amanda replied.
“One. Me. That’s it. They even gave me the title of ‘Head of Special Crimes’ to make it sound more official. It’s a joke to leadership.” Monica said, laughing.
Amanda looked to Batou, and he nodded. He knew more about the internal office politics at the police force given that he worked with them directly to ensure her security, and to get ‘priorities’ taken care of.
“You going to introduce me to Chatty Kathy over there?” Monica asked.
Amanda smiled. “Of course, my apologies. This is my personal assistant, Ryuji Batou.”
Batou bowed. Monica’s eyes lingered on him for a moment before she said. “A pleasure.” She considered a moment. “Former Pacific Alliance 15th Special Forces, aren’t you?”
At this Batou grunted. “What gave me away?”
“Your tattoo on your right thumb” she said, gesturing with a tap to her own thumb, which did not have a tattoo. “Crossed axes behind a stylized cherry blossom. You must be a hell of a bodyguard.”
Batou grunted again, but didn’t add anything further.
“And you, am I undressed for this little chat, or something?” Monica gestured towards Amanda’s clothing. She had worn a new black Avalonia open-backed dress adorned with clusters of crystal for the dedication and opening ceremony for the Space Elevator. It was a ridiculous thing to wear in her current setting.
Amanda smiled weakly. “I came straight from the opening of the Space Elevator.”
“Oh, that’s right, that was today, wasn’t it?” Monica said, chuckling. “Easy to lose track of time in here.”
“About that… why exactly are we in an interrogation room?” Amanda ask, looking around again at the austere chamber.
Monica smirked. “Oh, that. See, they didn’t want to chance me giving them the slip in my office, or somehow getting myself plugged into the investigation into the attack. So, they’ve been grilling me all morning here.”
“I must admit, I’m rather taken aback that they would set up your department just to say they have people working on these cases. Why waste anyone on something like this to begin with?” Amanda said, trying to steer the conversation back on course.
“I had to convince them to do it, to be honest. I told them it would be good PR to at least look like they were taking these cases seriously. Public opinion of the HPF was plummeting because people, rightly, I might add, thought that the police didn’t care about the Kitsune, or these other strange cases, like with the Crimson Tengu, or the new one that’s been popping up recently, the Golden Terror. So I argued that if they just made a department to investigate, they could get some pressure off of their backs.” She chuckled, leaning back in her chair again. “It was an idea too good to pass up. They get to reap the PR, and throw the weirdo in a box.”
“Weirdo?” Amanda asked, tilting her head to the side.
“Well, yeah. I’m the one who actually believes in this stuff,” Monica said, “and I’m the one with wild ideas, like making robotic partners to act as force multipliers, or even replace boots on the ground entirely.” He sighed, dismissing that idea with a wave of her hand. “Of course, the Proxy Accords make that hairy since autonomous systems are prohibited from violence unless a supervisor is present. But, on the more… legal side, how about making a companion AI to help officers analyze crime scenes. Or make holo flash forged body armor so officers would never be exposed without protection.”
“Those sound like some pretty interesting ideas, if you ask me.”
“See? But no, they just say it sounds too expensive, impractical, so on.” Monica waved a hand in the air. Then made an impression in what Amanda guessed was meant to be Chief Collins voice and mannerisms “Oh, Ichinose. Something like that wouldn’t be feasible on our budget. Please, Ichinose, that kind of thing just doesn’t make sense.”
Amanda thought for a moment, looking at the holo screens that were still up. Batou came behind her and pointed to a display that showed a diagram of body armor over the silhouette of a person. Formulae that Amanda immediately recognized, with arrows pointing to two red marks on the armor, described impact force that the armor had sustained. Then he pointed to another, one with programming code scrolling, and she realized that it was Gatesoft Mirror Deepscript. That was and artificial intelligence training script. Something clicked. “You made them anyway, didn’t you? That Ayaka you were talking to is some kind of companion AI, isn’t it?”
Monica jumped, then grinned mischievously. “Just as sharp as your mom, aren’t you?”
“I try to be, at least. If they were so opposed to those ideas, how did you get them to fund development?”
At this Monica snorted, then chuckled. “I didn’t. I’ve just been self-funding. Pretty much whatever I can scrounge together.”
Amanda stared at Monica for a long while, considering. If there was one thing that she had inherited from the great Diana Marshall, it was the ability to sense a good opportunity. “Monica, what if I funded your ideas, maybe even got you some help for your investigations?”
Monica’s dark eyes narrowed. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch, not really. You get whatever financial backing you need to help with development, even help with patents and so on. I just want in on your tech, and your investigation reports on these Special Crimes cases.” Amanda said.
“Chief Collins would never allow something like that.” Monica said plainly. “Much less Bastion.”
Amanda smirked. “Oh, I think you’ll find him quite accommodating given the right… motivation. After all, those VTOL craft are so expensive to maintain. Also, I have a good relationship with Anton Bastion. He owes me a favor, one he is quite anxious for me to stop holding over his head.”
Monica stood from her chair, looking at Amanda, then Batou, and then back to Amanda. She seemed to be looking for something. Perhaps a reason to not trust what was being offered.
“You won’t interfere with my investigations?” she asked.
“I can’t imagine why I would. I want answers, just like you.” Amanda said, meeting Monica’s eyes.
She stared back, and neither spoke for a long moment. Eventually Monica sat back down. “You are taking a pretty big risk on me. I could just be a quack with wacky ideas just like the Chief thinks.”
“You could be, but I don’t think you are.” Amanda leaned back in her chair. “And if you ask me, Chief Collins’s judgement only goes as far as who is filling his pocketbook. With the kind of ideas you’ve already told me, Bastion could have been making a killing. The holo body armor idea alone could revolutionize the defense industry, if it works out.”
Monica burst into laughter, even smacking the table. “Oh, I knew I liked you.”
She then stood, and held out her hand across the table. “You have a deal.”
Amanda smiled as she stood, and shook Monica’s hand. “We have a deal. We’ll work out the details later.” She then sat back down, and leaned forward. “Now, tell me everything”
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