Warrior: En Garde (The Warrior Trilogy, Book One): BattleTech Legends, #57

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Immobile as a statue, Hanse Davion stood within the silence that settled heavily over the room. Finally, he nodded slightly, the motion growing as he gathered his thoughts. “Very well, Justin Allard. I will give you what you most desire.”

  The Prince turned on his heel and stared up at Courtney. “Sentence him as you will. It makes no difference. I will strip him of his rank and commute any sentence to a lifetime in exile.”

  The Prince turned again, this time picking out Quintus Allard among the crowd. “You, Quintus Allard, no longer have a son named Justin. He no longer exists, and no one will ever speak his name to me again.”

  Finally, Hanse Davion set his malachite gaze on Justin Allard himself. “I give you back your Capellan name, traitor. Justin Xiang, there is no place for you in the Federated Suns. You will be taken to any world willing to accept you, as long as it is beyond the borders of the Federated Suns.”

  Hanse’s head dropped for a moment, then came back up. “And if you wish to learn the true depth of justice in the Federated Suns, return here and we will drown you in it!”

  Ardan Sortek and Andrew Redburn stood in the control tower, watching while the DropShip Sigmund Rosenblum accepted its final passenger. As Justin Xiang passed up the ramp and into the ship’s dark interior, Redburn turned from the window. “I’m sure, Colonel Sortek, that Justin—I mean Major Allard—did not mean what he said in court.”

  Ardan Sortek smiled knowingly and rested a hand on Redburn’s shoulder. “No need for you to apologize, Leftenant. There was a time when I, too, believed I was wasting away here on New Avalon. I went back into the field, but after a harrowing adventure or two, I realized that a man at peace with himself can be useful anywhere.” He looked out as the DropShip’s engines ignited and the egg-shaped ship slowly shuddered skyward. “Your friend has a lot of pain in him, and he’ll not be satisfied until he can deal with that. I take no offense at anything he said while so sorely troubled.”

  Redburn nodded. “It’s a waste of a damn good MechWarrior.”

  Sortek shrugged. “On Solaris VII, he’ll be with plenty of his own kind.” Sortek’s next words caused Redburn to smile. “And while he’s trying to sate that anger, I imagine he’ll be hell on wheels there on the Game World.”

  “But I know he’s innocent, Colonel Sortek, and when I return to Kittery, I’ll get the evidence to prove it. His Val was empty of LRMs after the battle. No UrbanMech could have survived that barrage. It had to have been a Rifleman.”

  The smile drained from Sortek’s face. “I suppose they’ve not told you about your new assignment, have they?”

  Redburn froze. “I was told that I’d ship back to Kittery and resume command of the training battalion.”

  Sortek shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and shook his head. “Eventually you’ll get there, Leftenant. But first, you and I will be shipping out to the Lyran Commonwealth. I’ve got inspections and official functions to attend. Now that you’re a hero, we’ll give a lot of influential people a chance to have their holographs taken with you.”

  Redburn frowned with puzzlement. “Isn’t there someone else, say, from Redfield or Galtor, who could go?”

  Sortek shrugged and led the other man to the elevator. “Nothing more stale than yesterday’s heroes. Besides, some people want to know how this training battalion idea is working out. Lots of resistance in House Steiner to MechWarriors trained in anything other than the academies. Your men, and their performance against the Liao ambush, are hot right now.”

  Redburn nodded, but barely heard the words. Good luck, Justin. I know that deep in your heart you’re one of us. Somehow, I’ll find a way to prove it.

  Chapter 15

  ECHO V

  PESHT MILITARY DISTRICT

  DRACONIS COMBINE

  1 JANUARY 3027

  Jiro Ishiyama bowed deeply out of respect for the wrinkled old monk who had led him through the twisting tunnels of the Zen monastery. Above them, on Echo V’s barren, wind-scarred tundra, icy cyclones shrieked as they scourged the planet. Ishiyama fought the shiver provoked by the planet’s chill, and respected the old monk even more because of his indifference to the cold.

  Indeed, Ishiyama was swathed in the warm folds of a heavy coat, while the monk wore a simple black robe. Though the air was cold enough to show both men’s breath, the monk wore only sandals, and had neither gloves to protect his hands nor a hood to protect his shaved pate. In the monk’s eyes, however, Ishiyama saw no superiority or disdain for this visitor from far Luthien. Instead, he read pity for the man who does not know himself well enough to exist as one with the cold.

  The monk looked beyond Jiro Ishiyama, and wordlessly directed the two initiates bearing the visitor’s lacquered trunks to pass around them. The initiates, bowing only their heads because of the burdens on their backs, passed through the garden to the small hut reserved for the cha-no-yu, the tea ceremony. The two initiates vanished into the hut for a moment, then returned to bow deeply to the monk and his visitor before disappearing into the dark tunnels of the monastery complex.

  The monk inclined his head and half-smiled. “Sumimasen, Ishiyama Jiro-sama,” he began slowly. “Excuse me if I speak slowly, because we use words sparingly here.”

  Ishiyama bowed. “I am honored by the words you grant me.” He looked out over the rock and bonsai garden that filled the underground cavern. The pale white gravel had been raked in long, undulating waves that truly made one feel that he were viewing a frozen ocean. Larger rocks, from the gray of granite to the glassy black-purple of obsidian, thrust up through the stone surf like defiant islands. Nestled in naturally carved niches, bonsai trees pushed up as though part of the rock, while carefully nurtured mosses clung to the rock, adding the proper verdant touches.

  The teahouse stood in the center of the garden, and though of obvious human construction, it seemed to be an organic part of the garden. Styled after a pagoda, complete with wood-latticed, rice-paper screened walls, and a red-tiled roof, the well-worn granite used to construct the teahouse made it look as though the structure were even older than the garden itself. From beneath the tip of the teahouse’s peaked roof, gray smoke drifted almost imperceptibly.

  Ishiyama breathed in and smiled at the familiar, pleasing aroma of burning cedar. Again, he bowed to the monk. “All is perfect. Your faithfulness honors the Dragon.”

  The monk, obviously pleased, bowed his head. Both men knew that, as perfect as the garden might seem, Ishiyama would alter it in some subtle way to make it yet more perfect, and to bind it into the cha-no-yu that he had traveled more than two hundred light years to perform.

  “Do itashimash’te, Ishiyama Jiro-sama,” the monk replied softly. “It is we who are honored that the Dragon sends you to grace us with your skill. Be assured that your preparations will not be disturbed. In four hours, I will send Kurita Yorinaga-ji to you.”

  “Domo arigato.” Ishiyama bowed deeply, and did not straighten up until the monk had silently departed the chamber. Ishiyama studied the garden. As his eyes followed the path of flat stones leading from the entrance to the teahouse, he allowed himself to become absorbed in the beauty the monks had created. The garden, by its artistry and resonance, touched him deeply, peeling away layers of emotion and inner conflicts. The scene restored him to the centered feeling of peace that his trip across seven jump points had stripped away.

  Ishiyama forced his mind to focus on the cavern and the garden and his mission. He removed his thick, quilted mittens, stuffed them into his coat pockets, pulled off his boots, and then crossed to where a bamboo rake lay hidden in a shadowed niche. Brandishing it with the care and reverence a warrior might give to his ’Mech, Ishiyama slowly stepped out onto the stone path. Three stones out, he used the rake to gently tease four small pieces of gravel onto that third stone. He did nothing to change or repair how the gravel had fallen, and it might have been only that the last person to rake the gravel had been careless.

  Ishiyama allowed himself a
brief smile. Deliberately careless. Ishiyama knew Kurita Yorinaga-ji would immediately spot the small white pebbles on the broad gray stepping-stone. He knew, too, that Yorinaga-ji would take them as the first sign that the perfect universe, the universe that had trapped him, was changing.

  Ishiyama looked up and concentrated. If the teahouse is Luthien, then… He turned to the left and squinted. Reaching out with the butt of the rake, he gently pressed it into the gravel. Mallory’s World, the site of Yorinaga-ji’s disgrace, would be here.

  Ishiyama reversed the rake and used the broad, toothed end to subtly alter the flowing wave lines around the mark he’d made for Mallory’s World. Slowly, and with a patience bordering on the superhuman, he reworked the gravel until one could see, if one knew how to look, minute ripples spreading from that point. Advancing ahead three more path-stones, Ishiyama completed the eleventh concentric ripple-ring—one for each year since Yorinaga-ji had disgraced himself. It was now just over an hour since he had first laid eyes on the garden.

  Ishiyama backtracked to the garden’s edge and removed his coat and hat. The chill air sliced through the midnight-blue silken kimono he wore, and Ishiyama unconsciously retied the silver obi a bit tighter. Though difficult to see in the soothing half-light, a dragon figure coiled around the kimono, woven into the garment with slightly darker blue thread.

  Ishiyama again studied the teahouse and compared it to Luthien’s location on the star chart he’d memorized. Farther to the left than the mark he’d made for Mallory’s World, and just a bit closer to the teahouse, he touched an edge of the rake into the sea of pebbles to mark the location of Chara. With benign and skillful care, he flipped the rake over and used its flat edge to smooth away any trace of his original mark on the stones. Only the briefly broken lines of the stone-sea currents suggested that any movement had occurred.

  Ishiyama allowed himself another smile. Most would miss it. He shook his head. But not Yorinaga-ji.

  Finally, Ishiyama walked the path to the teahouse, but he did not enter. Instead, he carefully walked around the teahouse’s narrow ledge out onto the ocean of gravel behind it. He sighted a perfect spot to represent the planet Echo, and boldly touched the rake butt into the gravel to mark it. Backtracking, he raked the stones back into their previous pattern. By the time he had returned to the teahouse, only the invisible depression representing Echo gave any clue to his passage.

  Though Ishiyama knew Yorinaga-ji would never look out behind the teahouse to see his work, he also knew it had to be done. It makes the garden mine, and makes the cha-no-yu complete. Yorinaga-ji would expect no less of me, and because of that, he has no need to confirm the presence of the mark.

  Ishiyama worked his way back down the stone path, carefully avoiding the four pebbles, and returned the rake to its niche. Gathering up his coat and boots, he carried them to the teahouse, where he knelt at the doorway, bowed once, and slid open the door.

  He should have expected it, but the teahouse’s simplicity and beauty took his breath away. The waiting area, built slightly below the interior chamber where the cha-no-yu would actually take place, had been constructed of hand-fitted woodwork. The pieces had been chosen for their color and grain, and polished to a softly glowing sheen. Though one could make out the seams between the different pieces of wood, the natural patterns in each piece flowed together and provided the illusion that the whole floor and lower walls had been laid in with one huge piece of wood.

  The paper used to make the walls seemed, at first glance, to be unadorned. No landscapes or calligraphed snippets of wisdom spoiled the panels’ translucent beauty. As Ishiyama slowly slid the door shut behind him, he saw that the paper did bear a decoration. It had been worked, with great subtlety and delicacy, as a watermark into the paper itself. Thus did Ishiyama see images of trees and tigers, of waves and fish, of hawks and hares and, of course, of the Dragon.

  Silently, out of respect for the setting and because no noise was required, Ishiyama crossed through the waiting area and slid open the door to the raised room where he would perform the cha-no-yu. The two black lacquered cases lay just to the right of the tall brass urn rising through a square opening in the floor. Ishiyama did not need to see the thin gray ribbons of smoke twisting through the hot air to know that a fire burned within the urn. He could feel the waves of heat washing off the urn itself, and the scent of burning cedar filled the air.

  In the center of the room, Ishiyama saw a low, rectangular table. It had been oriented perfectly with the shape of the room, and Ishiyama now changed that. Instead of leaving the table’s narrow end to coincide with the narrow parts of the room, he gently slid it around on the polished oaken floor so that it sat almost perpendicular to its earlier position. Still, he did not fully straighten it, but left it canted at a slight angle and pushed off-center. Perfect symmetry traps the mind within the bounds of reality.

  Ishiyama knelt to open the first case. Inside, swathed in thick folds of foam padding, lay the Coordinator’s own tea service set. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Ishiyama fought the panic and weight of responsibility that threatened to crush him from both inside and out. The Coordinator has entrusted me with these items so that I might perform a delicate mission. I will not fail him.

  The first things he withdrew from the case were three tatami, the mats on which the participants would kneel during the ceremony. The first, a brilliant red, Ishiyama placed at the wide side of the table that lay deepest in the room. He withdrew a small ruler from inside his kimono and made sure that the red mat lay exactly twenty centimeters from the edge of the table.

  On the other side of the table, Ishiyama unfurled the second tatami. This one was a rosy-pink, and he made sure it lay thirty-five centimeters from the table’s edge. Finally, at the narrow end of the table closest to the brass charcoal urn, Ishiyama unrolled his own plain mat for the ceremony and placed it forty-five centimeters from the table’s black edge. His end of the table, because of the diagonal alignment, placed him below either of the other mats.

  Ishiyama did not hurry as he unpacked the other necessary items, nor did he glance at his watch. He had an innate sense of time and its passage, as did anyone trained as a tea master. He knew his preparations would extend beyond the time the monk had estimated for sending Kurita Yorinaga-ji to him, but he also knew Yorinaga-ji would not enter the teahouse’s central chamber until invited.

  Ishiyama unwrapped the bamboo ladle that had been in the Kurita family for the last four hundred years. It was rumored that Coordinator Urizen Kurita II had stopped his aircar when he had seen a remarkable stand of bamboo on Luthien, thinking it would make a fine tea ceremony ladle. Just after he had descended from the car to cut off a piece of the bamboo, Urizen’s car was blown up by a bomb secretly planted by a rival. The Coordinator was, fortunately, already well away from it. Tradition had it that because something utterly Japanese had saved the Coordinator’s life, Urizen instituted the reforms that raised medieval Japanese culture to become the heart and soul of the Draconis Combine.

  Ishiyama smiled as he reverently set the ladle down on the floor. Urizen remained Coordinator until he resigned at the age of 101, and retired here to Echo. He formed this monastery and served as its head, under the title of Colonial Governor—nothing less would do for him—until his death. How appropriate to use this ladle here, today.

  Ishiyama carefully unwrapped the cerulean blue tea bowl and set it on the table. Beside it, he placed the bamboo spoon and whisk. Reaching into the first case again, Ishiyama produced the black-lacquered, wooden tea chest, which be set down reverently near his end of the table. It was a gorgeous piece, with a red and gold dragon circling both body and lid. Ishiyama knew that it was the same chest used at the meal where the Coordinator, Takashi Kurita, had first seen his future wife, the beautiful young Jasmine. The chest’s placement, while utilitarian, would allow his intended guest an opportunity to study it.

  Finally, Ishiyama lifted the Coordinator’s own water urn from the c
hest. The simple bowl was not at all as grand as the other objects in the room, yet its slightly crude manufacture invited all manner of speculation about its origin. Ishiyama reveled in one of the more popular tales claiming that the Coordinator had formed it from the armor of his first ’Mech kill, or that it was all he had left of his first ’Mech. Just touching it sent a thrill through him. He allowed himself a flight of fantasy in which a young Takashi Kurita sat hammering the pot into shape so that he could heat water and have tea while war thundered around him.

  Ishiyama shivered when it dawned on him that Yorinaga-ji might actually have been present when the Coordinator first shaped the pot. Until the time of his disgrace, Yorinaga-ji had been a battalion commander in the Coordinator’s own Second Sword of Light. Some even credit him with Prince Ian Davion’s death! Ishiyama shook his head. How could one so brave have so dishonored himself?

  Ishiyama picked up the ladle in his right hand and held the pot in his left. He moved toward the urn-pit, where the ceramic jar full of water had remained hidden from view. Setting the tea urn between his knees, and canted with one edge on the floor, Ishiyama uncovered the jar and sank the ladle into the water. He let the ladle drink briefly, then drew out one full measure of water. Carefully turning the urn so that the water could wash the insides, he dripped liquid into the urn. Though no sediment or dirt showed in the water that had pooled in the urn, Ishiyama poured it out into the pit and then filled the tea urn with three more ladles of water.

  Ishiyama recovered the water jar and set the ladle back down on his own plain tatami. Then, as though lifting an offering to unseen gods, he placed the tea urn onto the brass fire urn. Pleased with his preparations so far, Ishiyama knelt back on his heels and again drank in the peace of the teahouse.