Dragon Rising

by Ilsa J. Bick

  A thin pencil of light sketched the gloom, bobbing in time with the intruder’s footsteps. They were heavy steps, a man’s. Ahead and to Yori’s left, a stone bench edged the path, demarcated by a light-wand on either side. The intruder’s light slid over the bench, and then he sat with a small sigh.

  From her hiding place, Yori watched. She recognized him, and the jolt in the pit of her stomach wasn’t alarm, but it wasn’t relief either.

  What is he doing here?

  “Is someone there?” The man leaned forward, peering Yori’s way. She felt as if his eyes were lasers, illuminating her where she stood. “Hello?”

  Yori felt stupid, and she was angry she’d been caught out. “Hello.” She carried herself with frosty gravity as she willed her feet across the gravel path. “You are out late, Shouriki-san.”

  Makoto Shouriki stood, and now his face was blurry. She heard the grin, though. “The pot calling the kettle black. What brings you out here? Can’t sleep?”

  Affable enough, yet this no accident. So watch your step, Yori. Watch, wait, listen. Learn. “I often walk at night.”

  “Ah.” He was more than a head and a half taller, and sounded tolerantly amused, as if she were a small moppet he could pat on the head. This angered her. “Well,” he said finally, “I know what insomnia’s like. To tell you the truth, I’m always expecting a pager to go off, you know?”

  “No,” she said, “I do not know.”

  A pause. “Okay,” he said, and now he sounded a little nonplussed. “Well, I just never need much sleep. Mind’s always going.”

  “What is it you think about?” Why am I asking? Why should I care?

  “Oh, all kinds of things. Experiments, mainly, genetics. One of the things I wish we’d get over in the Combine is this notion that because genetics is always associated with the Clans, it’s something bad. Why, do you know that the number of inherited diseases we could treat with gene-targeted therapies . . .”

  He rambled on. She listened, parsing his words, measuring his sincerity, the threat he might or might not represent. Because this can’t be an accident. Someone had to notice I was gone and send him to meet up with me. But why?

  She wasn’t aware he’d asked a question until he said her name. “Sorry?” Angry at herself for being caught out.

  “I asked whether you’re happy about your new assignment.”

  Hmmm. A spy for Theodore? To feel me out? “I am not unhappy.”

  “That’s a funny way to put it.”

  Yori shrugged. “It’s my way.”

  “Okay.” Silence. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

  I never talk much. “I don’t know you.”

  “Ah.” Makoto hesitated. “Well, you don’t have to worry about me.”

  The person who reassures you that there is nothing to worry about is precisely the person you should worry about. How many times had she been gulled with that argument? Several, and once not long ago that had nearly been the death of her. She said, “I am not worried.”

  “I don’t believe you, but it doesn’t matter. You must get lonely.”

  Stop being so damned nice. I don’t want to like you. “Loneliness and the ability to be alone are two different things.”

  “That’s true. But I understand your position better than you think.”

  “Why? Because you’re a Kurita, too? Isn’t it amazing that we never seem to lack for people willing to be our friends? Well, I’m not looking for a friend. Friendship is overrated, anyway.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the man you call your friend may be the enemy you are forced to confront and destroy in the next battle.”

  “I’m not a warrior.”

  “Not all battles are fought with ’Mechs.”

  “True. But your attitude is pretty damned cynical.”

  “No, not at all,” Yori said. “That is my life.”

  * * *

  Later, on the way back to his room, Makoto Shouriki thought: Porcupines.

  PART TWO

  Tenuki: Elsewhere

  9

  Two Forks, Junction

  Benjamin Military District, Draconis Combine

  17 June 3136

  Canned martial band music blared from loudspeakers. The pachinko regulars were already lined up two deep in a queue that snaked down the street and around the block. There were a few pachi-puro, pachinko professionals dressed in flashy designer suits. But most were elderly, slouch-shouldered men in baggy trousers, each convinced that he’d earn a special prize. The regular prizes—cigarettes, candy, food—they were nice. Legal. The special prizes were nice, too. They just weren’t legal.

  At ten, the doors opened and the regulars streamed in, conversations cut off in mid-sentence, expressions suddenly grim. In thirty minutes, the air was thick with blue smoke and noisy with rave music, sirens, the clatter of pins and the rattle of ball bearings cascading along plastic chutes.

  Today was Katsuo Kirino’s lucky day. He’d known from the moment he purchased his starter bin of one hundred and twenty-five pachinko balls and found that his favorite machine, fire-engine red edged with black, was free. Free! An omen because red was very, very lucky.

  When he began five years ago, Kirino was an amateur, as likely to lose five thousand balls as win a hundred. His father would cuff Kirino’s head and shout that he was the son of a Shatei-gashira! He was supposed to make money off of these idiots, not become one! That was why he had ventured out of his oyabun’s territory to play here amongst the more loosely allied factions, safe from his father’s prying eyes.

  With a flick of his wrist, Kirino cranked the handle at the machine’s bottom right. His first ball shot into the guts of the machine, a Deji-Pachi while Kirino controlled the ball’s speed with careful adjustments of his thumb. Not too fast, not too slow, look out, look out! Then he grinned fiercely, as that first ball fell into a center hole and set the LCD’s digital slot windows spinning. His gaze fixed on the blur of numbers. . . .

  First number: 7. Then another 7. Then . . . a third. 7-7- 7. A fever! The first pull of the day, and he was already churning out the balls! The machine’s siren wailed, and a silver stream of balls spat out one after the other, a glorious stream that sounded like money.

  His luck held. Every machine he touched went berserk. By noon, he’d filled five bins, easily forty to fifty thousand balls there. When he hauled them to the redemption counter and watched as the balls were emptied into an automatic counter, he knew he’d won a special prize.

  Ears still ringing from the noise, eyes itchy with cigarette smoke, he clutched his precious chit and pushed out of the parlor. He stood a moment, blinking, a little sun-dazzled. Then he veered right and down a blind alley. Near the end and on the right was a rectangle of peach-colored brick. Kirino tapped on the center brick. The brick scraped to one side, and a pair of dark eyes peered through a slit. “Sate, hajimeyou.”

  Not wasting any time, Kirino pushed his chit through the slit. “A minute,” the voice said, and the slit closed.

  While he waited, Kirino thought of the women he would buy that evening. Indeed, he was so busy thinking about what he would do with all that lucky money that he didn’t register the barrel of a laser pistol in his right ear until much too late. And then his luck?

  It kinda ran out.

  Siang, Biham

  18 June 3136

  Another balmy day on Biham: hazy, humid. The air smelled like chemicals, courtesy of Yoshimatsu Chemical’s corporate headquarters that lay west of the city. There was rain in the forecast, something people put about as much faith in as they did the second coming of Devlin Stone.

  By midday, the open air market in a dusty town square was packed with shoppers browsing tables heaped with produce, sandals, pots and pans. Business was picking up, life was finally getting better. The terrorists had called a truce, and that had held for the last two months. Sir Reginald Eriksson could still draw crowds of disgruntled natives, and he spoke often. People kept wai
ting for the DCMS to shut him down, but they didn’t.

  Still, the DCMS occupying forces kept a relatively low profile, and lately people had started to relax. No conversations suddenly choked off in mid-syllable whenever the troops happened by. Occupation was becoming a way of life. Just about.

  There was a popular open-air café about thirty meters from the edge of the market where a lanky musician coaxed something bluesy and lonesome from an alto sax. About twenty people stopped to listen, some tapping their feet, keeping time, others watching the musician’s slow sway as intently as cobras mesmerized by a snake charmer.

  The café specialized in Indian food and was the ideal spot to enjoy lunch and listen to the music. A trio of off-duty soldiers—two men, one woman—had just snagged one of the best seats in the house: ringside, in the shade, at a round table with wrought-iron chairs painted forest green. The rest of the café was busy, too, and so Nori Goto, a gawky young man of perhaps twenty, was run off his feet, carting large salvers piled with fragrant curries that smelled of coriander and cumin.

  Goto was an orphan. His mother had been killed during the first DCMS attack wave. His father was MIA and presumed dead. Goto had dropped out of college about seven months ago when Sakamoto’s people stormed the campus during a student protest and strafed the crowd. No real reason. Just because they could. Seventy students died, as did fourteen professors, the dean, and a golden retriever with a starred, Republic-blue bandana knotted round his neck. After that, Goto decided there just wasn’t a lot of call for philosophy majors in a DCMS world.

  The off-duty soldiers ordered baigan bharta, puffy rounds of wheat pouri, creamy dal makhani, and a spicy aloo mutter gobi, the buttery tomato glaze glistening on the potatoes and cauliflower. The tray was very heavy, and Goto was careful. He wore a roomy, long-sleeved cotton kurta with bold purple and red stripes that draped to his knees over a pair of loose ivory cotton pants that tapered at his ankles. The clothes gave him the freedom of movement he needed for his work, especially today.

  The soldiers were listening to the wail of the sax, the woman keeping time, the guys sipping icy cold Indian beer imported from Terra. When Goto arrived, the soldiers barely spared a glance as he served, kissing the plates to the table without so much as a click.

  Only when Goto lingered did the woman look up. She jetted smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “You forget something?” she said.

  “Yes,” Goto said. He bowed, like a virtuoso after a fine performance. “Burn in hell,” he said . . .

  . . . As he thumbed the detonator strapped over his heart.

  * * *

  “How many of our people?” Plugging his left ear with his pinky, Sho-sa Daniel Spear strained to hear the medic’s report through engine roar. His ride, a clunker of a Ranger scavenged from Biham’s Republic stores, ground along with a sound somewhere between a ferrocrete mixer and a dishwasher. “And civilians? . . . Uh-huh. Hell. Okay, I’m heading back to base now. Keep me posted. Out.”

  To his right, Spear’s aide shouted over the din, “How bad, sir?”

  “Twenty of our people dead. About fifteen more shredded by flechettes. Medic estimated at least that many civilian casualties.” He tucked his microcomm into his breast pocket. “Well, I’d say that Eriksson’s boys have broken the truce. Just when we start letting off-duty personnel back into town, something like this happens. I don’t get it. Don’t these people understand we’re here to help?”

  “Maybe Eriksson had nothing to do with it, sir. Tai-shu Tormark wouldn’t’ve let him come back if she thought he’d pull crap like this.”

  Spear bit back an observation about their illustrious tai-shu he’d likely regret. (He was a Sakamoto holdover, and no Tormark groupie.) Instead, he concentrated on the view. The Ranger was climbing, straining through a series of switchbacks. Spear held his breath, waited for the clunker to finally up and die. It didn’t, thank Christ, and they crested a plateau stippled with scrub pine. Directly ahead, the calm sea looked like light blue glass. To the north and atop a series of berms were three massive, wide-mouthed stacks shaped like pedestal eggcups about sixty klicks distant from the city, fifteen klicks from the base. White clouds of steam billowed from two stacks. To the right, a freight landtrain coiled for the complex.

  A nuclear fission plant: Who’da thunk? Long ago, Biham was a miner’s wet dream: coal, oil, natural gas. The rolling steppes west of the city were once blanketed with oil refineries, and the mountains west were a honeycomb of ancient mine shafts. All the fossil fuels had been exhausted a long time ago, though. Not much choice except fire up the old fission plant.

  His Ranger swung left toward Biham Command, a complex of Quonsets and tents sprawled in a small valley south of the plant, and Spear returned to the problem at hand. Countering resistance was part of his job description. Yet Spear had a sneaking suspicion there was more to this than met the eye: Same problems on Galatea III, Ancha, and Sadachbia, all border planets. I wonder . . .

  As if he’d read Spear’s mind, his aide said, “Sir, all the resistance cells occur along the border with this so-called Republic March. What if Sandoval-Groell’s sending fighters, money and materiel across the border?”

  “Damn good thought. What we need is some decent intel.” A tiny, white puff blossomed very far away to his left, something he saw but didn’t process. “Then we could . . .” His voice trailed away as his brain caught up.

  Wrong place for a steam cloud. Spear’s eyes widened, and his gut clenched. Oh, shit . . .

  “INCOMING!” he screamed at the same moment that the Ranger’s onboard diagnostic system also chewed through the information and shrilled a warning. “We’ve got . . . !”

  10

  Siang, Biham

  18 June 3136

  Ella’s Della was one of Tony Yamada’s places, about a block away from police headquarters and the courthouse. The evening-shift rush was just ending, and the clink of cutlery and murmur of voices drifting to the storage room came on air fragrant with the scents of dill pickles, slaw, melted Swiss cheese, greasy fries and coffee. The table at which Yamada and Eriksson sat was slotted between molded aluminum racks, five meters long and two deep. The shelves were lined with restaurant-sized plastic containers of Russian dressing, mustard and ketchup, tins of hash and tuna.

  Lighting his new smoke with the dying end of his last, Tony Yamada inhaled deeply, held it, and then let go, squinting against smoke curls. He’d picked up smoking right around when he dropped out of high school and joined the Red Dragons. He’d picked up other things from the Dragons: tats, how to use a gun, how to gut some asshole with a knife. Useful stuff. Twenty years later, he wasn’t with the Dragons, but he still smoked and put his skill set to good use.

  “Look, Eriksson, I know gambling,” Yamada said. He’d had fries and now killed the butt in a glop of ketchup. “The house always wins in the end because the house makes the rules. I know how to win, and I know how to hurt people so they don’t like it so much.”

  Eriksson’s bald pate was ruddy with indignation. “I don’t see how killing innocent civilians helps. Under other circumstances, Spear’s death wouldn’t have mattered, but I’d brokered a truce with the man. I can’t work with the Dracs if you diminish my credibility.”

  Yamada’s words floated on puffs of smoke. “They tolerate you. If Tormark wasn’t watching your ass, they’d’ve squashed you, old man.”

  Eriksson drew himself up. “This is not open for debate. I organized this resistance. If we are to expel the Combine, then we must act together. We must think as one. We must remain united.”

  “United.” Yamada made a rude noise, then leaned forward, his eyes slitting. “That’s just a fancy way of saying you wanna call the shots.”

  “Even a resistance has rules of engagement. As long as I’m in charge, you will do as I say. If you won’t, then I can’t use a man like you.”

  Yamada’s face felt stretched tight, like someone had hooked needles into his skin and pulled. “You think bec
ause you’re a knight, you’re better’n me? You take a crap, it stinks, right? You rattle around in your big fancy ’Mech, and anything you hit, it’s got a metal skin. I bet you never looked someone you were gonna kill right in the eye and see how he knows,” Yamada tapped a finger to his temple, “up here, he’s about five seconds away from dying. But I do know. I’m exactly the kind of man you need.”

  Eriksson said nothing. Yamada smoked. Finally, Eriksson’s knotty fingers flexed, unclenched, then flexed again around his cane’s worn gold handle. “Perhaps,” the old knight said, “but our relationship ends now. If you persist, I will be forced to stop you.”

  “How? Whatcha gonna do, old man, go to the police? The Dracs? Naw, you listen to me.” Yamada leaned in until they were a hand’s breadth apart. Close enough for Yamada to make out the milky-white stain of age clouding Eriksson’s light blue eyes. “You try to stop me, and I’ll stop you.”

  “Threats, Yamada?” Leaning into his cane, Eriksson hauled himself erect. Yamada saw how much effort the old man put into not betraying a hint of weakness—and he almost admired the man for it. Almost.

  Eriksson said, “I may be old, but I am no one’s fool, least of all yours. I survived Sakamoto, and I shall survive you. You do not want to see what will happen if I meet with some accident or other.”

  “Naw, Eriksson, naw. You don’t get it.” And now Yamada smiled, and his lips peeled back to reveal a pair of polished pointed incisors, filed to look exactly like a wolf’s. “When it happens, it ain’t gonna be no accident.”

  * * *

  Yamada left Ella’s around eleven. The night was humid, the air drifting in on a westerly breeze that reeked of acetone and cat piss: the chemical plant. He passed into a section where the buildings were a bit shabbier. Garbage in the streets. People in knots on a corner or sprawled on steps, guarding territory. The majority of windows on the tenement buildings didn’t have glass, and even more were boarded up. Girls on the game strutted in thigh-high boots and glittery lace-up corsets. A slow parade of curb crawlers in sleek Avanti hovers slid by as unseen johnnies, hidden behind their polarized canopies, eyed the merchandise.