The Last Knight of Europe Takes Weapons From the Wall

Duelist shall here refer to the entire combatant unit participating in a Duel, consisting of a single individual and all arms, armor, etc. carried or worn thereby. This unit shall be self-contained at the beginning of the Duel, containing or holding all parts, weapons, ammunition, etc. to be used. It shall have a silhouette in the likeness of the human body, and its locomotion shall be controlled by equivalent motions of the human combatant’s body, although it may be powered by any chemical, electrical, and/or mechanical means internal to the unit. While standing fully erect without appendages or ancillaries extended, the unit must be able to fit within a rectangular space twenty-five meters tall, eight point five meters wide, and six meters deep. See also Section V, “Duelist Parameters”.

–Treaty of Budapest, Section II, “Definitions”

Chris had hastily changed out of his fencing gear and into his dress uniform. When he reported to the address Colonel Sinzendorf had given him, he wished he had also showered, trimmed his hair, and ironed the uniform twice.

The address was to some sort of fab or laboratory on the far side of Oakland. He had been made to wait awhile at the front gate, and when he was let in and directed to a lobby, the Security Director was waiting for him.

General Robert Earp, Daimyo of Tucson, was every inch the stereotype his clan had cultivated over the last century and a half: he stretched the regulations of the Army officer’s uniform as far as they would go, with his pointed riding boots, revolver on a Sam Browne belt, and wide-brimmed cavalry Stetson. His graying sandy-blond facial hair was worn in a handlebar mustache and sweeping mutton chops. Like all samurai officers, his clan’s crest was worn as a badge above his right breast pocket, and the Earp mon was a head-on outline of the six-chamber cylinder of the Colt Single Action Army wheelgun.

“Lieutenant Hernandez? You’re a bit more Irish-lookin’ than I expected.”

Chris was unusually pale and freckled for a Sonoran. This, his thin strawberry-blond hair, and his full Celtic cheeks were often taken for signs of Irish-American lineage, though his family had, in fact, mostly come to Mexico from Galicia in Spain and Brittany in France.

“Nevermind that,” the cowboy-samurai went on, “the Shogun’s waitin’.”

Chris nearly choked. What business could he possibly have with the Shogun?

Lord Earp waved him impatiently through the lobby. Chris followed the daimyo out onto the floor of some massive warehouse or factory, easily two hundred meters long and one hundred wide. Its center was cluttered with machine tools and carts full of parts, though Chris couldn’t form a guess as to their purpose.

The general led him up to a catwalk. Two men waited for them, one watching them ascend while the other leaned over the rail, watching the work pensively. The man with eyes on them, tall and mediterranean-complected, wore armor half-ceremonial and half-functional: black-lacquered tameshi gusoku straight out of Sengoku period Japan, save for being made of ballistic ceramics and backed with a thick layer of kevlar. He carried the new Steyr-Howa Type 27 rifle slung across his cuirass, a joint project between the three Shogunates that made up the major power blocs within the Empire of Japan– California, Australia, and Japan itself– and their Austro-Hungarian allies. Though others had been quicker to implement it, California had only thus far rolled out the caseless-ammunition rifle of the future to its Army, and to select units of its Gendarmerie: hostage rescue teams, counter-terrorist squads… and the Shogun’s bodyguard.

Chris went to his knees and prostrated himself.

“Rise.” a gravelly voice commanded.

Chris came to his feet, dusting fine gray metal shavings from his black Air Force dress slacks.

Date Jujimune had the hard Jomon features of northern Japan, sharpened by admixture with Iberian and Germanic aristocracy and completed by the hard eyes of a man who had been posed many questions with no right answers.

The Shogun wore a uniform not unlike Chris’ own– the same black cloth, but with blue trim instead of white, and the broad-leaved bamboo crest of the Date clan embroidered on the breast in gold thread. Without taking his eyes off the work below, he waved for Chris to approach.

Back straight, Chris approached the master of California. The bodyguard’s gaze followed him even as he stepped aside to let Chris press passed on the narrow catwalk. When he stood at arm’s length from his head of state, the Shogun nodded to the work below.

A silhouette of tools and workstations traced a man-shaped outline, like chalk at a crime scene. In the center was a blocky construction of steel plating in the shape of a broad, barrel-chested giant, like something out of a dwarven forge in a Norse myth. Most pieces had a matte coat of green or yellow, primers applied by the parts contractors pending a final paint job. In the center-chest and neck area was a man-sized armored shell shaped not unlike the cockpit of the Mitsubishi Ki-16C Peregrine strike fighter Chris had made ace in over Cuba, with a slit-viewport like that on a tank. Its hands were large even in proportion, and he glimpsed a wide hole in one palm where a technician was prodding with a multimeter. On top of the cockpit-bulge, the thing had a head with a cast aluminum face that wouldn’t have looked out of place as a mask below an old samurai helmet, though it had a mustache and goatee more like what a knight of the European renaissance might have sported. In the eye and mouth holes and all along the sides were camera lenses of all shapes and sizes. To either side, the chest and inner shoulder area was pockmarked with holes somehow evocative of torpedo tubes, and the abdomen was some large, monolithic rectangular module printed all over with high voltage and… radiation hazard warnings?

A fusion reactor, scaled down smaller than Chris would have imagined possible. At this rate, by the time he was a colonel, they would be putting them on fighters, and his grandkids would be driving cars with these things.

“Don Juan de Austria,” the Shogun said, “California’s Duelist. It only needs its back-mounted railgun, a coat of paint… and its pilot.”

Chris froze from his fingertips to his heart at the implication. “Oyakata-sama…” He wished dearly he remembered the Japanese formalities better. That would be a more than appropriate address for a daimyo, but was it beneath the Shogun’s station? “Surely you cannot mean me.”

“Why not?”

“I'm hardly the most accomplished pilot in your service, my lord.”

“I do not need the greatest of fighter pilots, I need somebody who can become the greatest of Duelist pilots. General Earp was watching the last few rounds of Branch Weapons, deciding between you and a tank commander.”

“Flyin’ jets is a good start,” the general said, “but you ain’t gonna be fiddlin’ on a joystick. This'un takes inputs straight from pressure pads on your arms ‘n legs. Part a’ what I was lookin’ at was your close combat skills. Part. You were better than the other fella, clearly, but I also took a shine to how you got around havin’ to bring a knife to a swordfight. Pulled all sorts a’ tomfoolery no-one else was willin’ to try. More’n what you know, lieutenant, is what I reckon you can learn.”

“Don Hernandez,” the Shogun finally turned to look at Chris, cold eyes boring into him, “we are stepping into a new, more civilized age of near-peer warfare– one, if it is not too much to hope, finally free of the specter of nuclear annihilation. I do not think any man is truly ready, at present, to be our pioneer. We do need a pioneer, and I would ask you to trust Lord Earp’s judgment.” The master of California hesitated. “While you were fencing, and the general watching you, I was responding to a diplomatic incident. The Treaty of Budapest has already been invoked, and not by somebody we expected. Gran Colombia has issued a challenge.”

“My lord, what are the terms?”

The Shogun sighed like a man in mourning. “If we win, they stop propping up the regime in Cuba. We can finally end that forever-war. The indemnity in gold bullion might alleviate the trade deficit, as well– with their sheer volume of electronics exports, gold is as much a raw material as a currency to them. If we lose, however… they want Mexico City. Twenty million souls, lost behind the Curtain.”

Chris gathered himself, then genuflected. “I may well be unready, my lord, but if there is no one you would rather have, I am yours for the task.”

“Good. Heed well, general: by order of the Shogun, effective immediately, Christopher, scion of the clan Hernandez de Puerto Peñasco, is promoted to the rank of Captain, and transferred to Project Lepanto under your direct command. He is now the human component of the Duelist Don Juan de Austria.”