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Authors: William H Keith
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more massive. Its rotation provided varying levels of spin gravity for the habitats within, the precise acceleration of a given level depending on how far it was from the hub, where it was essentially zero.
The Wheel’s hub was attached to a tangle of zero-gravity structures that zigzagged out along the orbital. The entire complex was positioned at the synchorbit slot above Earth’s Singapore Sky-el, the slender elevator tower that connected the island of Palau Linggae on the equator, located just south of Singapore, with that spot in orbit some 36,000 kilometers directly overhead where orbital period precisely matched Earth’s twenty-four-hour rotation.
Moments before, the pod had left the main sky-el receiving bay and was drifting now across open space toward the Wheel’s hub.
“Pod Swan’s Flight, this is Palace of Heaven Approach Control,” a voice said softly inside his head, speaking through his cephlink. “Passenger One. Verify, please, your identity.”
Hideshi gave a single sharp, precisely military nod. “Hai. Rear Admiral Isoru Hideshi, of the Imperial carrier Soraryu. I open myself to your inspection.”
He could feel the cold fingers of a security observer aboard the Palace probing his cephlink, then pushing through the nanotechnically grown circuitry to his personal RAM, opening files, extracting data, examining, comparing.…
Such stringent security safeguards were necessary, of course, and Isoru accepted them without reservation. His career, no, his entire life had been dedicated to the Empire and to the ideal of the god-Emperor, and the Emperor’s safety was of paramount importance. The shuttle was one of a small fleet of service and orbital transport vehicles kept at Singapore Synchorbital for the sole purpose of carrying visitors to and from the Imperial Palace. Passengers aboard those shuttles, as well as on the handful of tube shuttles that connected the hub of the Great Wheel with the rest of the Synchorbital, could be meticulously scrutinized during their approach. Any deviation from the expected, any suspicious shadow picked up within his body by the X-ray and infrasound scanners, any change in the arrays of data stacked within his personal RAM, and he would be immediately apprehended by the army of security personnel waiting within the Palace. If the threat were deemed serious enough, he would be cut down before docking by one of the remote lasers mounted in the bulkheads… or if the threat were more serious still, the pod could be detonated long before it was close enough to be a threat to the Palace or the person of the god-Emperor.
Hideshi cast a wary eye on his naked companions. One of the men was Captain Shigeru Ushiba, his chief aide, but the other four were strangers to him. He hoped he wasn’t about to be vaporized because one of them was detected carrying a bomb in his or her abdominal cavity.
Evidently, he was not. “Thank you, Admiral,” the voice said in his mind. “You and your companions are clear to approach the Palace of Heaven.”
The pod slowed as the Great Wheel expanded to fill the viewall, then grew larger still, until he could make out individual windows and lights gleaming in the vast structure’s shadowed recesses. Riding a magnetic beam, the pod was drawn smoothly toward a brightly lit docking collar mounted on a non-rotating portion of the hub. Pod melded with collar in a barely felt surge of deceleration that dwindled almost immediately to the endless fall of weightlessness, and in the soundless flurry of nanotechnics welding the two seamlessly together. In another moment, a pinpoint hole appeared in one of the pod’s bulkheads, widening swiftly as the hull material dissolved.
As the last of the bulkhead evaporated, a line of armored Imperial Marines on the far side snapped to attention—a difficult parade-ground maneuver for men lightly anchored by magnetic boots in the hub’s microgravity environment—and a brightly robed Shinto priest gestured
The Wheel’s hub was attached to a tangle of zero-gravity structures that zigzagged out along the orbital. The entire complex was positioned at the synchorbit slot above Earth’s Singapore Sky-el, the slender elevator tower that connected the island of Palau Linggae on the equator, located just south of Singapore, with that spot in orbit some 36,000 kilometers directly overhead where orbital period precisely matched Earth’s twenty-four-hour rotation.
Moments before, the pod had left the main sky-el receiving bay and was drifting now across open space toward the Wheel’s hub.
“Pod Swan’s Flight, this is Palace of Heaven Approach Control,” a voice said softly inside his head, speaking through his cephlink. “Passenger One. Verify, please, your identity.”
Hideshi gave a single sharp, precisely military nod. “Hai. Rear Admiral Isoru Hideshi, of the Imperial carrier Soraryu. I open myself to your inspection.”
He could feel the cold fingers of a security observer aboard the Palace probing his cephlink, then pushing through the nanotechnically grown circuitry to his personal RAM, opening files, extracting data, examining, comparing.…
Such stringent security safeguards were necessary, of course, and Isoru accepted them without reservation. His career, no, his entire life had been dedicated to the Empire and to the ideal of the god-Emperor, and the Emperor’s safety was of paramount importance. The shuttle was one of a small fleet of service and orbital transport vehicles kept at Singapore Synchorbital for the sole purpose of carrying visitors to and from the Imperial Palace. Passengers aboard those shuttles, as well as on the handful of tube shuttles that connected the hub of the Great Wheel with the rest of the Synchorbital, could be meticulously scrutinized during their approach. Any deviation from the expected, any suspicious shadow picked up within his body by the X-ray and infrasound scanners, any change in the arrays of data stacked within his personal RAM, and he would be immediately apprehended by the army of security personnel waiting within the Palace. If the threat were deemed serious enough, he would be cut down before docking by one of the remote lasers mounted in the bulkheads… or if the threat were more serious still, the pod could be detonated long before it was close enough to be a threat to the Palace or the person of the god-Emperor.
Hideshi cast a wary eye on his naked companions. One of the men was Captain Shigeru Ushiba, his chief aide, but the other four were strangers to him. He hoped he wasn’t about to be vaporized because one of them was detected carrying a bomb in his or her abdominal cavity.
Evidently, he was not. “Thank you, Admiral,” the voice said in his mind. “You and your companions are clear to approach the Palace of Heaven.”
The pod slowed as the Great Wheel expanded to fill the viewall, then grew larger still, until he could make out individual windows and lights gleaming in the vast structure’s shadowed recesses. Riding a magnetic beam, the pod was drawn smoothly toward a brightly lit docking collar mounted on a non-rotating portion of the hub. Pod melded with collar in a barely felt surge of deceleration that dwindled almost immediately to the endless fall of weightlessness, and in the soundless flurry of nanotechnics welding the two seamlessly together. In another moment, a pinpoint hole appeared in one of the pod’s bulkheads, widening swiftly as the hull material dissolved.
As the last of the bulkhead evaporated, a line of armored Imperial Marines on the far side snapped to attention—a difficult parade-ground maneuver for men lightly anchored by magnetic boots in the hub’s microgravity environment—and a brightly robed Shinto priest gestured
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