Binding Force

by Loren L. Coleman

  Li drew in a deep breath, inhaling dust and the scent of road grime while trying to steady the sudden contractions in his chest. Smashing the Dragon Boat Festival? He stifled a cough as the dust tickled the back of his throat. That couldn’t mean what he thought it did.

  “The ’Mechs are painted up and ready,” the man assured her. “I’ll deliver the incident, you just handle your part.”

  Or maybe it did mean what he’d thought. Li’s head swam with the implications. Members of the Kaifeng SMM were going to attack their city, and then blame it on the Warrior House? What would that accomplish, other than make the citizens of the Sarna Supremacy even more anti-Liao? It didn’t make sense, but then Li was far out of his element here. He needed Aris to talk to. Perhaps the Hiritsu warrior could help.

  Li Wynn didn’t really give a damn about politics or nationality—he usually lived independent of such matters. In fact, the Capellan assault on Kaifeng had opened up possibilities he’d never had before. But tomorrow he’d have lots of friends out there along Lake Ch’u Yuan—some at work, others actually a part of the festivities—and they might get hurt. Honor among thieves? No, not really. But friendship was a treasured value, even more so among those who normally lived their lives alone.

  So the decision was actually made for him; he had to rescue Aris Sung. Li Wynn crawled back out from under the car, on the street side, his mind racing desperately.

  * * *

  Kevin Yang throttled down as he drove Major Bartlett’s hovercar up to the front of the club. The Tempest slowed and then jolted slightly as the skirting that protected the large fans underneath bumped up against the curb. He checked that the car’s gyro, a very limited piece of equipment when compared to the massive gyro at the heart of a BattleMech, was holding the car steady, and then he popped the side doors, which swung upward in gull-wing fashion. Kevin slid out, leaving the car running. Smooth, he thought, silently complimenting the car on its appearance as well as its ride.

  “Yang, give Harris a hand,” Major Bartlett ordered. “Throw our friend into the back seat.” Then he resumed his private conference with the Hiritsu traitor.

  Nodding, Kevin Yang walked over to help Paul Harris haul the unconscious Hiritsu warrior to his feet. He didn’t like any of this. Not when Major Bartlett had first recruited the two of them for their “mission” tomorrow, and not the major’s casual use of the Hiritsu traitor, Terry Chan. It seemed to him that Bartlett was ignoring his own advice of several days ago about placing too much emphasis on the requests of the traitor. Was what she was promising really worth the cost? Yang knew he was placing a lot of trust in Karl Bartlett to know what the hell he was doing. He helped Paul manhandle Aris’ body into the back of the Tempest. Quite frankly, he was tiring of the intrigue and wished it would just go away.

  When the Tempest immediately pulled away from the curb and entered traffic, Kevin’s first thought was a hearty good riddance. His second was realizing that Karl Bartlett still stood off to his left, near the parked car and Terry Chan.

  “What the hell?” Bartlett yelled, and rushed into the street to stand next to Harris and Yang.

  There was no chance to catch the car, which careened off another as it raced at breakneck speed down the street. Kevin Yang’s pistol was out only a fraction of a second ahead of the others. The thunderous sounds of firing echoed in the narrow street as all three men hoped to arrest its flight with a few chunks of well-placed lead. That kind of luck was not with them, however, and the Tempest was quickly lost among the cars it left behind.

  The echo of the last shot died with a hollow sound that gave way to the street noises again. All three Kaifeng MechWarriors stood in the street, dumbly, until Terry Chan joined them. Her voice was a quiet whisper, directed to no one in particular. “It would seem, gentlemen, that we have a problem.”

  Kevin Yang looked to Karl Bartlett, who nodded, a hard mask settling over his face as he stared after the retreating taillights of his car.

  23

  Lake Ch’u Yuan, Tarrahause

  Tarrahause District, Kaifeng

  Sarna Supremacy, Chaos March

  25 July 3058

  The late morning sun sparkled across the waters of Lake Ch’u Yuan, scattering brilliant points of light among the deep blue of the reflected sky. Twelve dragon boats floated serenely on the calm water, each one twenty to thirty meters long, holding as many as sixty rowers. Each sat within thirty meters of shore, bow facing out toward the middle of the lake. The boats were slender, hand-carved of a light wood, and brightly decorated with the five elemental colors—red, azure, yellow, white, and black. An intricately detailed dragon’s head rose from the prow of each vessel—some open-mouthed and spewing tongues of flame, others with clenched teeth and lips skinned back in a snarl—while a scaly tail came up off the stern to wave in the air behind.

  The richer boats used carved and painted wood for the dragon, while others, for reasons of money or weight, turned to plastic or even a glazed papier-mâché. One boat, to the embarrassment of its rowers, had not glazed its dragon properly and the waters of the lake had worked their way through at the base of the tail to wet the plaster beneath. There was a half-hearted effort to save the drooping stern decoration as rowers from other boats and some spectators on the shore took to jeering, calling them rwan wei—the soft, or limp, tail rowers.

  Aris twisted around in his seat on one of the dragon boats, shading his eyes with his right hand against his brow as he scanned the crowded beach. Banners and streamers hung everywhere. People wore ribbons of the five elemental colors around throats and wrists, the ends trailing behind them and snapping in the light breeze. Musicians played sprightly tunes while people wearing large dragon masks more appropriate to the New Year celebration danced about. There were some fireworks being lit off in scattered areas—mostly colored smoke and small firecrackers, again probably left-overs from the New Year. Other areas had been roped off, creating small islands within the crowds from which food servers could sell various forms of zongzi, a traditional rice dumpling stuffed with any of several sweet fillings. The one Aris had breakfasted on had been filled with honey-roasted duck and walnuts.

  House Hiritsu did not embrace the Confederation’s Chinese heritage. A Warrior House was a world, a nation, a family all unto itself and steeped in its own history and traditions. But every warrior was well-versed in history, so Aris knew something of what was going on. The Dragon Boat Festival was bright and colorful and usually full of energy. That energy was lacking in Aris just now, though, as he fearfully scanned the lakeshore for the arrival of Kaifeng BattleMechs painted the colors of House Hiritsu.

  Waking up to Li Wynn’s tale of what the young thief had overheard in front of the Gold Pavilion had left Aris cold inside. There seemed to be no end to the horrors Terry Chan was willing to commit. He’d had Li recount what he’d heard in several different ways, including talking it out and putting it in writing to be sure of pulling out every last scrap of information.

  Chan’s arrangement with Bartlett made sense to Aris, in a perverted way. At least he could see what each side gained. The Kaifeng SMM would be able to claim that House Hiritsu had violated the cease-fire, which could create a political nightmare for the Warrior House once Sun-Tzu Liao learned of it. Especially as it was a flagrant violation of the Ares Conventions. The attack would also turn the common people heavily against the Capellan Confederation, which would not make House Hiritsu’s job here any easier. And there seemed to be some plan to turn Ty Wu Non over to the SMM, a loss that would strike deeply into the fighting spirit of House Hiritsu, which had already suffered from the loss of Virginia York.

  Terry Chan’s reward was a little less obvious. From the conversation last night, it seemed as if she wanted to weed out the rolls of House Hiritsu through attrition in combat. Also there was that last reminder, that the will of the House Master is the will of the House. As Aris saw it, this was all an effort to remove Ty Wu Non from his promotion to House Master. If the
Kaifeng SMM took Ty down in combat, so be it. And if not, the accusation that he’d broken a cease-fire, negotiated in the spirit of honoring the Liao Chinese heritage, could just as surely damn him.

  Of course, this line of reasoning assumed that Ty Wu Non was not a party to Terry Chan’s betrayal and that this was an internal matter, not a part of Kali Liao’s recent power plays. It was the best he could do on the limited information. When Aris was finally confident that he’d extracted all useful facts, he’d promised a worried Li Wynn his help in preventing an attack on Kaifeng civilians and then sent the young man off to find them a boat.

  Aris looked down to where his strong hands were wrapped about one of the dragon boat oars. This wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind, joining the boat crew from out of the Zone. But all other lake traffic had been cleared away in preparation for the boat races, and as near as Aris could figure—trying to triangulate the position using landmarks he’d picked while in the water several days before—his Wraith was submerged somewhere out in the middle of the race course.

  “Aris,” Li said, nudging him from the seat behind. “I think it’s about to start.”

  For a moment Aris thought Li was referring to the ’Mech attack, and quickly scanned the shoreline and into the city for as far as he could see. Then he noticed the preparations among the other boats, and realized that Li Wynn was referring to the race. All the boats had already made one pass around the buoy placed a kilometer out into the lake. Their honor pass. Now came the race itself. The captain of their boat, a surly-looking man with a shaved, sun-burned head, took up his position at the bow. A drum was fastened to him at waist level by a strap that ran up around his thick neck, and his over-sized hands held two padded mallets for beating out a cadence for the rowers.

  “Duanwu!” someone from the beach cried out over a megaphone. Dragon boats! It was the call to prepare. There would be three heats, held over the course of the entire day. The three winners, and one boat picked by the crowd’s acclamation, would compete in the final race sometime in the early evening. Aris doubted the race would ever be finished, not if the SMM-Chan cabal had their way.

  “Saipau!” The same amplified voice from the beach. Race!

  Aris dug in with his oar. At the boat’s prow, the captain hammered out a stiff cadence that was completely ignored during those first few seconds. The boat swung hard to port and starboard before the rowers finally were able to synchronize themselves with the beat. Then the dragon leapt gracefully forward, its slender hull cutting through the placid lake waters.

  Aris soon realized that the crew of his boat was very good. They kept their cadence and pulled hard at the water. Soon they were one of the three lead boats, flying along gracefully while the others remained in a rather tight formation behind them. Aris took a moment to enjoy the competition, wondering why he had never participated in such an event back on Randar. Given the chance, that was a mistake he would correct.

  Being city-born and raised, Aris knew little of the fertility rites that had originally spawned the festival. From study he knew it was something about the change-over from the positive yang to the negative yin, the midpoint of the growing season. In ancient China, the festival was intended to persuade the gods to provide heavy rain for the rice crops. On this water-rich world that did not seem a problem. But the festival persisted, changing very little over the thousands of years of practice. The boats, the race, the food. All in service of preserving a rich heritage. Aris could understand and appreciate that.

  A sudden jolt shocked Aris from his reverie. As the boat lurched to the port, its back end swinging around in roughly the same direction, Aris’ first thought was that they had somehow struck his submerged Wraith. Then he heard the insults and jeers, and looking around, he noticed that one of the other lead boats had edged closer until finally it had turned sharply to ram them in the stern.

  The boat captain barked orders to fall back into cadence, and slowed his beat to allow his rowers to reorganize. Once more the dragon boat slid ahead, now pursued closely by the second. “Quechuan!” rowers in the other boat were calling out, trying to goad the first into slowing. Coward boat.

  The captain’s face turned as red as his burned scalp, and he went to a one-armed cadence beat while he brought a small bundle out from under his seat with the other hand. This he threw down the length of the boat to the men sitting at the stern. Positioned roughly toward the boat’s middle, Aris could not see what it was.

  The rear boat was making another press, trying to angle in from the right and shake up the lead dragon boat again. “Ship oars,” the captain called. Obeying, the rowers pulled the oars in to prevent their being smashed by the other boat’s prow. But it also slowed them, allowing the attacking boat to hit more broadside than it should have. “Cast,” the captain yelled, confusing Aris at the command until he saw what happened next.

  At the stern, one man stood up with a casting net held loosely in his hands. With a practiced twirl and cast, he sent it spreading through the air to fall over the other boat’s captain and the first several seats of rowers. Then the boats collided, the prow of the attacking boat crushing the rail between Aris and Li Wynn. Several of Aris’ fellow rowers were thrown over. Aris managed to hold on, throwing his weight back to the starboard side in an effort to keep the boat upright. Both boats stalled, neither capsizing. Then a second man stood in the rear and let cast another net. This one fell more toward the middle of the other dragon boat, fouling oars and tangling up another five or six rowers.

  “Shove us off. Damn rowdies, someone shove us away.” The captain of Aris’ boat was pounding his drum for attention as insults and curses were swapped.

  More than a little bewildered at the attack, Aris finally moved to respond. He and Li Wynn grabbed the other prow and heaved against it. “This happen a lot?” Aris asked.

  “Just good healthy competition,” Li said. Between the two of them, they managed to shove the other boat back just a bit. Enough for their boat to get its oars back in the water and pull away. The other boat, still fighting against the two nets, fell far behind.

  “Last year we sawed halfway through some of their oars the night before,” Li said between pulls, laughing. “Most of them snapped during the first heat and they had a heck of a time replacing them before the second.”

  With one boat fouled, only two now remained out in front of the pack. The boat rowed by residents of the Zone ran second, their encounter having slowed them. The cadence grew faster, though, as each man pulled hard to narrow the gap between them and the lead vessel. Several minutes of hard work paid off, and soon the cadence relaxed long enough for the men to get their strength back. Aris looked over at the other boat, saw them smiling with easy confidence. They didn’t look nearly as fatigued, and the race wasn’t half over.

  Apparently Aris’ boat captain thought along the same lines, and decided to even the playing field. He took out another package, what Aris assumed was another two nets, and threw them to the stern. “Hard port,” he called. The port-side rowers dipped their oars and back-paddled for an instant, then picked up their stroke on the next beat. Now they were angling for the other craft, and Aris had a good view straight off the stern toward the lake’s northern shore.

  Two black-and-green painted BattleMechs walked along the northern shore, heading east toward the festival.

  “Ship oars!” Aris yelled in his best command voice.

  Only those nearest the boat captain failed to respond and the boat quickly bogged down as it shed speed. An instant furor of voices rose, challenging Aris’ command, which he quieted by pointing back toward the city and the two bogus Hiritsu ’Mechs. In the sudden silence, they could hear the first salvos of weapons fire as the war machines ripped into lakeside buildings. Sitting in the middle of Lake Ch’u Yuan, nearly three-quarters of a kilometer from shore, there wasn’t much they could do but watch.

  Wasn’t much they could do.

  Aris checked the landmarks he’d picked out from
the water right after leaving his ’Mech. As near as he could tell, they were fairly close to the correct distance from the eastern shore, but a little too far north. Maybe two, three hundred meters. “Captain, a cadence please,” Aris called out. “Oars out, hard left, then pull.”

  The captain blinked dumbly, until Li Wynn called him by name and vouched for Aris. “He can help,” he promised, “but he has to get over there.” He stabbed a finger in roughly the direction Aris wanted to go.

  With a nod, the captain repeated Aris’ orders and pounded out a fast cadence. Aris tried to keep track of the BattleMechs’ progress as well as constantly checking the three distant landmarks. When he thought they were close, he ordered ship oars and had everyone look for his bottle markers. Forty pairs of eyes scanned the surface.

  For a moment Aris thought he’d misremembered, or that his markers had gone down. The thought dried his mouth and throat, and he swallowed painfully against the dryness. If that were the case, then he’d have to start diving and hope the gods of fortune were in a friendly mood. Then someone pointed off the port side and shouted, “There!”

  It was one of the sports drink bottles, bobbing lightly in the light chop raised by an easterly breeze. The wrapper had washed off, leaving only the heavy clear plastic, which was nearly invisible against the water. The rowers pulled the boat near. Aris found the nylon rope swollen and algae-covered but still attached.

  Aris checked on the progress of the BattleMechs. They were near the point where the northern shore slid around almost ninety degrees to head south. People along the eastern beach were beginning to scatter, but too slowly. There was no sign of any Kaifeng SMM BattleMechs.

  Aris paused for a quick handshake with Li Wynn. “Get to shore and get out of the city.” The fear behind the other’s eyes told Aris that Li understood how much trouble he could be in when Major Bartlett finally put everything together. Then Aris was over the side of the boat, diving past the bottle. He grabbed hold of the rope as it brushed his shoulder, and then, hand over hand, he made his way down into the darker depths of Lake Ch’u Yuan.