Chapter 21: Niitakayama Nobore

On 2 December 1941 the following message was received aboard Admiral Nagumo's flagship: Niitakayama Nobore. That was the signal for Admiral Nagumo to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor with his carrier planes: "Climb Mount Niitaka." To my knowledge the message was sent several times but Nagumo wasn't supposed to reply—radio silence was one of the methods used to achieve surprise. Nagumo's attack was coordinated with an all-out offensive throughout the Pacific.

When I received the Niitakayama Nobore signal I immediately deployed all Marines, both DECO and Central Command, to conduct a decapitation direct action campaign directed against Earth politicians who were actively fighting Earth's preparations to receive the Sa'arm invasion. It wasn't mere political action—and Earth First was only one of the front organizations for a conspiracy of Earth's low-CAP elites who were desperate to hold onto their personal power. Our part was taking down about two dozen people—mostly to interrogate and release back into the fold. The plan was good: sow distrust among the enemies.

Many of Earth's elites thought that the Sa'arm invasion was a good thing. Too damned many damned humans—if the Sa'arm could cull Earth's surplus humans, all the better. Yeah—the elite didn't have a clue.

Working in the Baboon Laboratory aboard the station has warped my perspective. The alpha baboon, TJ, occupied the upper branches of the largest tree. We humans tend to do the same. My target was resident of a penthouse suite. He had the entire floor to himself, plus an enclosed rooftop swimming pool. He did have a security staff controlling access, and a cleaning crew did housekeeping a couple of times per week. I'll call him Justin—it isn't his name but he lived in Texas, in Dallas. Other than a collection of reptiles, Justin lived alone in his secure 'treetop' home, controlling his empire from his lair. For a moment he was out—so I flew in from a nearby building and entered his 'secure' home without setting off the alarms. It helped that Confederacy AI highjacked his home security system for me.

My mission was to snag Justin, bring him in for questioning, bring him back to his apartment. The first thing I did was to set up a transporter pad in his bathroom—the shower stall, to be precise. The rest had been taken care of. The security station was being fed a loop, with appropriate time hacks on screen. It's something an AI can do very well, and it meant that I didn't have to kill anybody. That's a win/win situation. As for the information—the contents of the electronic files were already compromised. What I needed to to was access anything in the safe room—a built-in vault that also functioned as an office and a bunker. Justin didn't put an escape system in his penthouse—something I would have done. I'd also have let my pets wander.

The pets included several snakes. One was an albino speckled cobra—a valuable animal. The cobra reared up behind the glass wall of its terrarium. It was 'talking' to me but I didn't understand most of it.

"I'd like to take you with me," I said. "Just a moment."

Using my comm implants I raised Lilith.

"I want to bring along Justin's pets," I said. "I don't want to hurt any of them. Can you help me?"

"Here I am, dear," Lilith said from the bathroom. Modern Confederacy transportation is virtually instant—we humans get to use the stuff limited to speed of light. "Oh, they're precious! That's why you are chosen—you think of others. Go ahead and open Starbright's terrarium, dear, she won't hurt you."