Free Battlemind by William H Keith

benediction. Six acrobatic annaigakari, passenger handlers trained in maneuvering themselves and others in microgravity, swam into the pod’s cabin and began unlocking the safety restraints—yet another security measure. The red-coveralled handlers carried the passengers one by one into the receiving bay’s interior, where they were scanned once again by low-intensity, broad-fanned lasers that measured and patterned every square centimeter of their skin.
    Most of the new security precautions, Hideshi mused as the blue beam hummed and drew its glowing line slowly across his body, had been introduced within the last two years. There’d been a time, before that damnable Confederation raid on Kasei in 2569, when Tenno Kyuden had been just another orbital facility, and security precautions had been limited to palming your ident and downloading your business into an AI-monitored computer at a manned checkpoint.
    Kasei—the terraformed world once known as Mars—was the site of an important research facility. Confederation raiders had penetrated the security of the Pavonis Mons Synch-orbital and compromised the entire planetary tracking and defense network long enough for Confederation warstriders to land near the research station at Noctis Labyrinthus Bay and hijack its most important secret, a prototype of the new interstellar communications system. The TJK, Imperial Security, discovered that the saboteurs who’d penetrated the Planetary Defense Network had done so through the agency of Naga isoro, parasites. The Naga fragments used so extensively in the Confederation could actually rework skin, muscle, and bone to completely change a person’s looks. Both by centuries-old tradition and by Imperial law, gaijin —foreigners—weren’t even permitted to set foot on Kasei or its synchorbital, yet the enemy agents had disguised themselves so effectively as Nihonjin that they’d slipped through the place’s security barriers completely undetected. As a result, the Empire’s new and highly secret faster-than-light communications system had been stolen from under the Fleet’s nose, along with the best chance the Empire had possessed to crush once and for all the rebellious outer provinces and return them to their proper place within the circle of Empire and Hegemony.
    No wonder Imperial Security had become just a trifle paranoid about the Tenno Kyuden in the two years since the Kasei outrage. The elaborate scanning and screening procedures were designed to sniff out gaijin wearing Nihonjin men; if the enemy were able to slip, say, a small fission device aboard Tenno Kyuden, hidden in the belly of what seemed to be an honest Nihonjin businessman, the blow to the Empire would be incalculable. Worse even than the loss of the Imperial Military Command Staff, which maintained its offices here, would be the loss of face to the entire Empire, especially if the Emperor himself were killed or wounded.
    Yes, a little nudity and discomfort could be tolerated in the face of such stakes as these.
    The scanning laser snapped off, and a door dematerialized. A Palace attendant floated through, managing to bow almost double from the waist as she extended a transparent package containing a folded, pale gray garment. “Dozo,” she said. “Please accept this small token, O-Shoshosan.”
    “Hai,” he replied curtly. “Domo arigato.”
    The garment began as a bulky, one-piece jumper with the consistency of paper, but by the time he pulled the trim tabs snug at either hip, me nanotechnics within the weave had tailored it into a snug-fitting Imperial Navy uniform, full dress, space-black in color, complete with boots and the appropriate ribbons and awards on his breast. Ushiba entered, carrying two small personal computers, one of which he handed to his commanding officer.
    “Thank you, Shigeru,” Hideshi said. “I’m glad the prohibition against personal weapons does not extend to these, ne?”
    “Hai, Shoshosan,” his aide replied with