by IIsa J. Bick
Ship’s night, 29 January 3135
“You did what?”
A faint sizzle, like grease on a hot griddle, and Marcus waited, lips compressed and eyes narrowed to slits. Damn the time lag in transmissions to and from the surface, anyway! A waste of valuable time . . . As he counted off the seconds, Marcus thought that, yes, things were slipping away from him now. Things were getting out of control.
He didn’t kill her. He had the opportunity and the means and still . . .
Finally, there was a tiny pop and crackle, and then Marcus’ face burned as he heard Jonathan’s laughter. Even distorted because of distance and interference, Marcus knew at once that the laughter had no humor, nor was it simply indulgent. No, Jonathan’s laugh was . . . malevolent. “I let her live,” Jonathan said.
“I understand that. What I don’t understand is why?” More waiting again as the message traveled to Proserpina. Something odd about Jonathan: he was beginning to act as if . . . Marcus struggled to pin his feelings down. As if I’m a bother he tolerates.
“Because it’s so much more entertaining this way,” said Jonathan. “Where’s the fun in just killing her?”
“Damn fun.” Marcus gripped the edges of his communications console with both hands. Metal bit into his palms. “That’s not how we planned it.”
Things weren’t going well; no, they were not going according to plan. What was wrong with Jonathan? They were supposed to be a team, the way they’d been when they were younger.
Yes, a team, but Father always favored Jonathan. What, did Father think I was blind, that I wouldn’t notice? I noticed all right. I wasn’t born yesterday, just first. Well, I’ve done my sharing of killing. Through various channels, Marcus had managed to recapture some of their family’s lost wealth. Without him, they’d never have come this far.
“You’ve had a lot of chances to get rid of Katana,” he said now. “Get it over with so we can move on. There’s more to life than chasing after Katana Tormark.”
After a lag: “I’m not disagreeing,” said Jonathan. “But part of the project has been to make her suffer. Well, we know that there are many ways to suffer, don’t we, Brother? There’s the physical, of course, but there’s also confusion, misdirection, loss, shame . . . so many different and interesting ways to suffer.”
“Don’t talk to me about suffering,” said Marcus. “Our mother suffered for years after Father turned his back on us. And then there was the accident . . . me . . . Why should Katana’s life be any better?”
The time delay was only ten seconds but felt like ten centuries. Then there was a click, a hiss and finally, Jonathan: “Don’t worry, Marcus. It won’t be.”
Conqueror’s Pride, Proserpina
Night, 29 January 3135
Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .
Something was wrong. Jonathan slouched over the kitchen table, listening to the slow drip-drip-drip. Like a leaky faucet. And a fly must have piggybacked in because he saw it: fat, black, doing loop-de-loops over a bowl of gray, greasy soba.
Jonathan threw his head back and sucked down another mouthful of bourbon, grimaced at the burn. His head felt hollow. He knew when things started going wrong. “In Katana’s bedroom,” he said out loud. “When I had her, when she . . .” He broke off, not wanting to say it because then it would be real. But he remembered; the dark gloss of her skin, her long legs . . .
He drank again, the glass clicking against his teeth. After talking to Marcus, he’d been restless. Ready to prowl. Finding a woman had been easy. Leaning against bricks at the mouth of a dark, moldy-smelling alley, he’d watched the parade: leggy women with high breasts; bored women with breasts that sagged like deflated balloons; scrawny ones so sick from drugs or drink they were walking skeletons. There were men, too, advertising in black leather cups, thigh-high boots and a smile.
He found the one he wanted. Not young; around thirty. Tawny, chocolate-colored skin and long, muscled legs. Not as tall as Katana, but her face was unblemished, her teeth very white, and when he went up to her, he caught a scent of cinnamon and vanilla. She brought him to her apartment, and then things had started. Things had happened. Things had gone wrong.
“I mean, there’s no other way to put it,” he said, swinging his head left. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
The woman didn’t answer. Her head was thrown back; her glassy eyes bulged; the red-black crater that had been her throat oozed blood that drip-drip-dripped, but more slowly now because she’d been dead awhile and the blood was starting to coagulate. But his voice’d startled the fly. It abandoned the soup, landed on the woman’s glazed right eye. Didn’t like that much and flitted to the left and then darted into the cave of her gaping mouth, open in a silent scream.
And things had gone so well in the beginning. He’d felt the click. Things were under his control. But then things went out of control and when it was done, when the woman was finally dead, it still wasn’t enough. It was like someone had pulled out his guts, reeled out loops of pink intestine and yellow fat. Because he was still hungry, still crazy-nuts for more, and he knew why.
For him, only Katana would be good enough.
15
Deber City, Benjamin
Benjamin Military District, Draconis Combine
2 February 3135
I want, I want, I want. Stone-faced, Atsutane Kobayashi waited while Sakamoto rambled on. They’d arrived on Benjamin two days ago: Kobayashi and his Saki-mono from Kitalpha, Hideki Ame’s party from Minukachi, and last but certainly not least, no, never least, Jazeburo Enda from Shibuka, a retinue of pretty geishas and sweet plum wine in tow.
Sakamoto, the great warlord, with his I wants: the man could bleat like a goat. I want this, and I want that, and I want the other. It would never occur to Sakamoto to ask politely. A lowly oyabun would, of course, not worry about honor. Of course Kobayashi had known that, eventually, something like this would come; if not during Sakamoto’s time then from the next warlord craving more power and higher glory.
Yes, but there is a way to ask, and a way to demand. He lets us know that we yakuza operate at his pleasure, under his protection. So, he will have what he wants, and he will have it when he wants—as if he’s never profited from our ventures.
He felt heat crawl up his neck. No, that would never do. Kobayashi took refuge in zanshin, watchful alertness. An ancient skill practiced by samurai and it served Kobayashi now, calming his heart and cooling his skin, and just in the nick of time because Sakamoto swung his bull’s head and regarded him with suspicion.
“You’re a close one, Kobayashi,” said Sakamoto, not bothering with an honorific.
Another opportunity to rub my nose in it. Kobayashi kept his face still, though his blood boiled. Who was Sakamoto anyway; who was he to order Kobayashi to do this or that? He knew the answer, of course: the man who suffers my Wakashu to continue in their activities unmolested. Kobayashi watched as if from a great distance: saw Sakamoto come round in a swirl of red-and-black-and-gold brocade kimono, belted with a stiff kaku obi that echoed the coil of dragons spilling over the kimono; felt Sakamoto’s breath in his face, and noted, with an almost wry detachment, that Sakamoto might not smell like plum wine but the liquor had left its imprint in a clot of burst capillaries threading through Sakamoto’s nose.
Sakamoto leaned close enough that his spittle wet Kobayashi’s cheek with a fine spray. “What say you, eh?”
Kobayashi inclined his head—just enough to show respect yet not enough to injure his own honor. “I say nothing, Sakamoto-san. I have nothing to offer, save to observe that the Ghost Regiments were disbanded decades ago, their men and women scattered as surely as a strong wind carries away the individual petals of the most perfect cherry blossom. For an operation of the magnitude you propose, however, we will have to call upon people who have never fought a battle, have barely mastered the skills necessary to survive a simulation.”
“Bah!” Sakamoto waved Kobayashi’s words away. He turned his back on Kobayas
hi—another insult—and faced the other oyabuns. “You yakuza have operated with impunity for years. I’ve not lifted a finger to stop you, never asked for your services.”
Untrue, Kobayashi knew. Sakamoto took his pick of the finest they each had to offer, and it was not for the first time that he was thankful for the fact that Sakamoto disliked pachinko and baccarat, his clan’s particular stock-in-trade.
“Well, now it’s time for a little payback,” bawled Sakamoto. He pinned Ame with a sharp look. Ame, a corpulent little man with gold rings squeezed onto pinkies that looked more like sausages, visibly quailed.
“And there’s no use your pleading that you can’t get the men or materiel either,” said Sakamoto, drilling Enda with the same glare. But Enda merely blinked. He was as thin as Ame was corpulent—a man with a lean, perpetually hungry expression capped with hair as black and oily as sealskin. “I know you’ve got them. If you don’t deliver, I’ll shut you all down, kick the lot of you down the street, and promote the hungriest pup in line to your post.”
“Sakamoto-san,” said Enda, bowing that sleek head of his. When he spoke, his tone was so honeyed and unctuous that Kobayashi was amazed the man could talk through all that sweet goo. “You have been magnanimous in overlooking our . . . activities. Simply tell us what you require, and we shall deliver.”
Speak for yourself. Kobayashi listened with growing dismay as Sakamoto rattled off troop complements and weapons needs. An operation of this magnitude would gut Kobayashi’s effective workforce by two-thirds.
“And BattleMechs, I want them primed, their pilots ready for action. And no use pretending you don’t have them; I know you do. You yakuza never throw anything out. You’re like pack rats. And I want them all,” said Sakamoto, planting his fists on his hips, “in four months’ time.”
Ame’s gasp was audible, and Enda’s jaw went slack. Kobayashi was stunned. Four months? To marshal all those men and materiel? Kobayashi almost shook his head but checked himself before he made what would be a supreme error. Sakamoto had had men’s heads for less, and Kobayashi was very attached to his, thank you.
Yet if this is what the coordinator wishes . . . Kobayashi bowed his head in rei as far as he was able with the accursed table in the way. (Insult to injury, not seating them on tatami but chairs. Maddening.) “Of course, we serve the coordinator at his pleasure as we have always done.”
He would have said more but Sakamoto cut him off. “No,” he said, his tone sharp as the snap of a whip. “This time, Kobayashi, you serve at mine.”
The pronouncement was so stunning that Kobayashi simply gawked. There was a slight scuffle behind them as each oyabun’s Saki-mono, stationed along the wall, reacted in kind. Evidently Sakamoto read their expressions because when he continued, his tone was more conciliatory. “The coordinator suggested that no one act until the time was right. We met with him, the other warlords and me, and that’s what he said. Well, now is precisely the right time.”
When he didn’t elaborate, the oyabuns exchanged looks with one another in a pantomime of surprise, as if to ask All right, who wants to go first? Finally, it was Kobayashi who cleared his throat. “Of course, Sakamoto-san, it will be as you wish. And you may rest assured that we shall be discreet.”
But Sakamoto had one more surprise in store. “On the contrary: I want some noise, and I will tell you precisely when the time is right.”
When the time is right, eh? Sakamoto’s words niggled at the back of Kobayashi’s brain like a cloud of gnats. He stood behind his DropShip pilot and watched the viewscreen as they broke orbit. Benjamin fell away, a brown ball of a world with its twenty semi-suns strung around in orbit like gaudy beads. And good-bye, Sakamoto. Not good riddance: whatever else Sakamoto was, he was still tai-shu. But the way he’d reacted at mention of the coordinator . . .
Kobayashi replayed the rest in his head: how they’d been dismissed—summarily, it seemed to Kobayashi, as if Sakamoto worried he might let something else slip; and how Enda had hung back, of course. Kobayashi’s lip curled in distaste. The oily young oyabun had practically purred, assuring Sakamoto that, of course, the Cholobara wine was wonderfully full of body, and his crop of lovely young geishas were a vintage lot. Sakamoto had practically drooled. Cholobara was prohibitively expensive, spoiled quickly and had to be drunk within a month’s time. (And how would Enda fare if he turned over as many of his freighters as he’d promised?) The wine was a potent aphrodisiac besides. Yes, Sakamoto had sampled both wine and women.
But what time? And by whose right? Kobayashi would have to be as foolish as Ame—who wasn’t a fool, really, just fat—to believe that Sakamoto hadn’t twisted the coordinator’s words to suit his purpose. Which brought up a very interesting question: How much had Sakamoto lied? Not that deception bothered Kobayashi on principle; every businessman mastered the finer points of deception. Kobayashi was nothing if not astute and a practitioner of the art.
But business is business, and war is about honor. Kobayashi would have to be deaf and dumb not to have caught the mutterings flying around the Combine. No love lost between Sakamoto and Katana Tormark, that was to be sure, and now, perhaps, no love at all for the coordinator—and that was a different matter.
His eyes fell to his right wrist. He pushed back the folds of his kimono to reveal the chain-link tattoo, done in gold with a Kurita dragon. The Dragon perfects the circle.
He debated, then turned to his ship’s communications officer. “We will send a message to our brethren. We will inform them of the situation and tell them—we may have need.”
16
Command Center, Phoenix, Al Na’ir
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
25 February 3135
There were days when Legate Zachary O’Mallory hated his job. Today was one of them. Pulling a face, he rubbed a hand across his substantial middle—he hadn’t seen the toes of his boots in over twenty years—and wished there was something he could take that would make this bellyache go away. He knew there wasn’t, though.
So Legate Fuchida in Prefecture I was right after all.
“You’re sure,” he said. “You’re confident of your sources?”
His visitor shrugged. “As much as you can be in this business, yeah. The Dracs are fortifying positions on Buckminster, Gram and Shimosuwa along the border with Prefecture I and Homam, Matar and Klathandu IV along Prefecture III.”
“Damn.” O’Mallory heaved to his feet and turned to stare out at the city. His office was nearly all windows, and the building a thirty-story pillar, the bull’s-eye in a sea of endosteel-and-glass buildings arranged in concentric circles to conform to the shape of the dome just beyond. The weather outside the dome was miserable, of course. The weather on Al Na’ir was always miserable: a combination of dust storms and ion-rich tornadoes swirling in a thin atmosphere of sulfurous poison.
Sighing, O’Mallory ran a hand through his thatch of sand-colored hair. It embarrassed him that he was relieved Al Na’ir wasn’t a target. No one in his right mind would want the accursed place anyway. Al Na’ir was rich in mineral wealth, yes, but hardly a vacation spot. The Jihad had been ruinous, devastating the domed cities, allowing the planet’s poisonous atmosphere to do its work. The irony was that the miners, certainly the most wretched of the planet’s population, had survived the longest, holing up in settlements deep underground. A simple matter, though, to wait them out. The settlements were not self-sustaining, and the miners who hadn’t emerged to be slaughtered by the Blakists were crushed when skillfully placed charges brought their tunnels crashing around their ears.
Pity the poor souls in Prefecture I, though. O’Mallory tucked his hands in his pockets. His fingers stirred loose change. “And their plan?” he asked, without turning around.
“Best intelligence suggests a two-pronged attack. One arm will drive toward Vega. The forces along the Prefecture III border are skeleton troops, with one aim: to lure in Katana Tormark. Once they’ve got her, her troops will surrender
quickly enough.”
Well, it was a decent plan at that. If O’Mallory had been leading the campaign, that’s how he’d have done it, too; keep everyone guessing. It all added up: the Dracs mobilizing for a strike at Vega, and gunning for Katana Tormark, and that was good. With her out of the way, things on Al Na’ir would be a little less dicey. The Tormark situation was a sticky one; Governor Reinaldo Tormark, based in Homai-Zaki Dome, had denounced his second cousin in no uncertain terms, but that didn’t mean he was immune to the rumors making the rounds that Tormark was in league with his swashbuckling cousin. Perhaps this Drac invasion was a blessing in disguise, so far as Al Na’ir was concerned.
A little problem, though. O’Mallory chewed on the inside of his left cheek. Their forces didn’t need more action, what with the exarch’s attentions turning toward the Jade Falcon assaults in Prefecture IX, and the continued Capellan problems in V. He and Fuchida might be able to beg, borrow and steal men from the planetary militias of Rukbat and Shitara to beef up support on Tsukude, Altas and Alnasi. Still, they wouldn’t be enough if the Dracs came on, full-bore. “What about troop strength? What do the Dracs intend to throw at Vega?”
“Sakamoto’s forces will attack within the next two or three months, you can count on that,” said his visitor with an air of authority. “As for fighting a war on two fronts, even if one is limited . . . well, I think this will stretch even the Combine’s capabilities. The Dracs’ trade in black-market ’Mechs really took a beating after that business two years back when Katana Tormark broke up that ring in Prefecture III.”
“Yes. Some of those supposedly decommissioned BattleMechs would’ve come in handy right about now,” said O’Mallory. He turned and slid back into his seat, easing his paunch into the gap between chair and desk. “On the other hand, Sakamoto won’t have them either.”
“Sneaking ’Mechs across the border to Combine space was a pretty lucrative business,” his visitor mused. “Makes you wonder if Katana wishes she’d hoarded some of those ’Mechs herself because, let me tell you, her resources are stretched to the limit, if they’ve not downright run out. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Her troops are so low on supplies they’re resorting to paint-ball battles, for God’s sake. Take my word for it. Sakamoto so much as sneezes at the Fury, the whole thing will topple like a house of cards.”
