by IIsa J. Bick
Cuppa Joe’s red-brick exterior was the last of a string of storefronts on that particular block, and packed, natch. But then he spied an empty table set back along the wall and at the corner: dark green lacquer with spindle legs and two black wrought-iron chairs. Sauntering over, his eyes flicked to a soft pack propped against the bricks: Lucky. When he looked, he saw eight smokes left, filter-tipped.
Luck be a lady. As McCain slipped the pack into the front pocket of his leather jacket, he felt eyes on his back and, turning, he met the frankly curious inspection of a young couple the next table over. McCain gave a sheepish smile, shrugged. “Trying to quit, but you know . . .” Trailing off, he shrugged again to put a period on it.
“Mmmm.” The woman, a nondescript brunette with hair down to her waist and hoop earrings trimmed with beads, eyed him, then turned her attention back to her date.
The coffee was black and tall, and just as good as he remembered; strong and laced with chicory. He sipped, scalded his mouth, put the cup—one of those heavy white ceramic jobs—aside to cool.
It had been touch and go for a while, but Akata, the kid he’d been commandeered to treat, pulled through. Somewhere along the way, Muscle, aka Tony Ito, decided McCain was on the up and up because he’d made a proposal: work for them. That the “them” was the yakuza clan Ryuu-gumi, Family of the Dragon, was precisely the break McCain and Drexel had been hoping for. But McCain played his part, feigning reluctance until Ito pointed out that the hospital would be unlikely to rehire a recovering drunk who’d disappeared for almost five months.
“Okay, you got me there,” McCain had said. It had been evening, and Ito had invited him to share a pot of green tea—an offer McCain wanted to but could not refuse. During the preceding months he’d had enough green tea to float a battleship. The sacrifices one made for duty . . . “But I’m not exactly sure that working for a drug cartel is a step up.”
Ito, indignant. “Sure, yeah, I’m Waka-gashira, but no way I’m gonna be Number Two running drugs. Man, you been reading too many novels, you know. Not every yakuza’s Kabuki-mono.”
“I didn’t say you were crazy.” McCain had held up his hands, palm out. “But I’m crawling out from under here. I need to stay squeaky clean.”
“Yeah?” Screwing a cigarette into the corner of his mouth, Ito’d scratched a match to life, sucked in. “How fast you think you gonna get hired back when you don’t show for work for four, five months, huh?” said Ito, his voice strangled around a lungful of smoke. “Man, they gonna think you were off on some bender.” Twin gray streamers flowed from his nose. “You never gonna work there again.”
“But there are other hospitals, other planets.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ito let out a horsey snort. His eyes slitted against smoke, and when he spoke, his cigarette marked time. “When they ask you for references, what you gonna say? Look, this is a good gig. Good money, good life, no malpractice.”
Then it had been McCain’s turn to smirk. “Except I say no, next thing I know I’m sleeping with fishes.”
McCain remembered the brief flare of violence in Ito’s dark eyes, there and gone quick as a flash of lightning, and for an instant McCain thought he’d gone too far. But then Ito relaxed, laughed, settled back into his shell of smoke. “Man, don’t say no until I take you to meet someone.”
Only it hadn’t been just someone, but Matsuro Kamikuro. In. The. Flesh.
Just what the doctor ordered. Cupping his coffee mug in his hands, McCain allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction. Yes, now he had an in with the Ryuu-gumi’s elderly oyabun, but he couldn’t make the next move without Viki Drexel, and what the devil was keeping her? McCain let his gaze wander aimlessly right, and then left, his eyes flitting from one anonymous face to the next. The pack’s here; that’s the signal, eight cigs for eight o’clock and it’s quarter past now, so where . . . ?
Then he saw something very familiar: a wheeled cart rounding the far corner. McCain’s chest spiked with hope. The tamago lady’s cart, heading his way; had to be, so maybe Viki was sending word through their cutout. Christ, this espionage stuff was for the birds, all the hoops . . . Impatient now, McCain watched the cart’s slow progress up the block. Twilight had given way to true night, and so he couldn’t quite make out the color of the awning or the woman’s face, but he thought the cart was right, except he wouldn’t know for sure until the cart got closer.
The cart drew almost but not quite even with Cuppa Joe, opting for a bank of inky shadow just beyond a cone of yellow light from a streetlamp. Too far away for McCain to pin down the awning or make out the woman, damn it. He’d have to go see.
Scraping back his chair, McCain stood. A moment later, the young couple also rose. The couple turned left; McCain headed right, and as he passed their table, his gaze skidded over and registered the curl of a paper sack beneath the chair where the brunette with the hoop earrings had been—and then flitted away as the tamago lady’s back came into view. He continued on, forgot the sack.
Bad mistake.
Two meters from the cart, McCain was just able to pick out the awning’s colors. Red and yellow. Hot damn. But then there was movement, and the tamago woman turned, came out of shadow. McCain froze in midstride, the smile melting off his face. Because she was a he.
McCain had time for one startled half thought: Holy sh . . .
Then, a shout to his right and just behind: “McCain, down, down!”
The man at the cart flinched, but McCain was already diving left at the same moment that there was a loud crack. Something hummed in the air, cutting a seam just above McCain’s scalp. McCain hit the brick hard, absorbed the force of the blow in a shoulder roll and righted onto the balls of his feet just in time to see the man at the cart jerk, backpedal two steps, then fall.
There was a moment of absolute, stunned silence . . . and then the café erupted in a stampede of screaming patrons. Crockery crashed to the brick patio as tables and chairs were butted out of the way. Someone kicked over the paper sack just off to McCain’s right, and he half saw something round tumble out—an egg, is that an egg, what the hell’s an egg . . .—and then he was pivoting, still crouched, looking right.
Viki Drexel was tearing down the street, right arm cocked at the elbow, straight-arming a path through fleeing patrons with her left. “McCain, stay down, take cover! Stay down, stay . . !”
Jesus. McCain looked at the egg, the sack, the cart, and it all clicked into place like tumblers in a lock: Bomb, Jesus Mother Mary Joseph, the bag, it’s a . . . !
And then he was up, launching his body in a running dive for the nearest table—one that was lying on its side, round surface propped like a bulwark—hitting the deck so hard the breath whooshed from his lungs . . . just as the bomb went off.
A whump, a sound the same as throwing a match into paper soaked with gasoline, followed by a smell of something burning and a whirring noise, more sensation than sound. Crouched behind the table, head tucked into his chest and arms over his neck, McCain heard the crackle of glass breaking, the papery rustle of leaves being shredded, and wet splats like grapes being squashed as flechettes tore into flesh, and more screaming. Then, at his ear, a series of dull pock-pock-pocks, as the flechettes struck metal. Then—they stopped.
McCain waited a second, then two and slowly lifted his head and peered around the table. Flechettes quivered in the wrought iron like porcupine’s quills. Further on, he saw the still, sprawled figure of the man, and to the right, in the cone of the streetlamp, an oozing tongue of something black and thick as oil.
Panting, Drexel dropped beside McCain. “You okay?” she asked, pushing hair from her face with the back of one hand.
“Yeah.” McCain armed sweat from his forehead. He heard the faint wail of sirens mingling with the cries of the wounded. “Jesus, how did you know?”
Wordlessly, Drexel pulled a peeled hardboiled egg from a pocket of her jacket and turned it over so McCain could read the message.
A single wo
rd, in black: Bad.
20
Lake Marshall, Junction
10 May 3135
I to stopped talking, and the study, a room filled with books and comfortable red-brown leather chairs, was so quiet that when McCain swallowed he heard the click in his throat. Matsuro Kamikuro, head of the Ryuu-gumi clan, didn’t say a word. Instead, he stared at McCain. “I see,” said Kamikuro, finally, though his tone was cold as iced steel. “But you will tell me, please, why you and your friend”—a nod toward Drexel—“are important enough to kill?”
A damn good question. Well, see, we’re sorta spies, and oh, yeah, by the way, man, I’m really sorry we had to contract some guy to shoot up your people some, but war is hell and . . . McCain hesitated then said, “Because, Kamikuro-san, our enemies want the coordinator to fall.”
“Indeed.” Kamikuro had small, almond-shaped eyes that had once been bright blue, but that age had faded to the same sharkskin gray as his suit and hair. He looked every millimeter the highly successful businessman, not the oyabun of a powerful yakuza family. “And you are . . . ?”
“My name is still Matthew McCain, and I am still a doctor, but I am also a chu-sa. I serve Tai-sho Katana Tormark.”
Kamikuro’s eyes shifted to Drexel. “And you?”
“Viki Drexel.”
Kamikuro looked impressed. “You, I know. You pilot a Shockwave, am I correct?”
“Hai, Kamikuro-san,” said Drexel, and she executed a quick bow so well that McCain wished he’d thought of that, too.
“Most impressive.” He returned his attention to McCain. “What makes you believe that we have the resources or desire to serve your cause?”
“I admit that I can’t be certain of your resources, Kamikuro-san, but you have the desire. Your father served with Wing Commander Sho-sa Thaddeus Shotoko of the Seventh Ghost Regiment, those who were Cleansed by Dragon’s Dark Passing; and you said it yourself: Ryuu-gumi is not Kabuki-mono, but Machi-yakko. Your men keep order.”
“Just because we serve the people, it does not follow that we serve the coordinator.”
“But you are bound by honor, and you honor your past. Your family’s irezumi binds you.” McCain nodded at the gold chain-link tattoo on Ito’s right wrist and the hint of the same that was just visible beyond the gray cuff at Kamikuro’s wrist. “It’s the same as the emblem the Seventh painted on its ’Mechs.”
“Phantoms of the past. The Ghost Regiments were disbanded, the men scattered throughout the Combine. Whatever factions remain, they serve at the pleasure of their respective tai-shus, not the coordinator. You have come on a fool’s errand.”
“If you truly believed that, we’d be dead already.”
“Do not overestimate your importance.” Kamikuro’s voice was no harder than before, but there was no mistaking the lick of menace just beneath. “Tell me, McCain, just what does your esteemed tai-sho offer us?”
“Your honor.”
Kamikuro laughed outright. “That and a stone will buy a cup of coffee.”
McCain pushed on. “Tai-sho Tormark hasn’t forgotten the service the Ghost Regiments rendered to the coordinator in times past. Besides, your support for Tai-shu Sakamoto is conspicuous by its lack.”
Kamikuro dismissed the comment with a negligent wave of his hand. “A circumstance easily explained if we have nothing to give.”
“But not believable.” Then, at the sudden flood of color in Kamikuro’s face, McCain said, “Forgive me, Kamikuro-san, but I think you have many resources you choose not to share because your allegiance is, ultimately, to the coordinator, not Sakamoto. Katana Tormark acts out of honor and duty to Vincent Kurita.”
“Really? I’ve heard nothing from him.” Dark blossoms of color stained the old man’s cheeks, and emotion thinned his voice. “Why should I fly to the aid of a woman who sanctions murder? Did your tai-sho order you to target members of my family and the families of my people?”
“I ordered nothing, Kamikuro-san,” said McCain, grateful that, technically, this was true. Drexel had arranged for all that. He just hoped Kamikuro wouldn’t ask her.
The old man’s hard gray eyes clicked from McCain to Drexel and then back again. Then, after a long moment, he turned to Ito, who stood behind and to the oyabun’s right. Something wordless passed between the two, and then Ito rapped an order in Japanese at the bodyguards, who bowed and left. Kamikuro waited until the door had clicked shut. Then he folded his arms upon his desk and gave McCain a frankly appraising look. “As it happens, I’ve been pondering a request for many days and still cannot decide what to do except . . . here you are, and here is Ms. Drexel, and so perhaps fate and circumstance have pointed the way. Last week, I was contacted by a kurumako, a go-between. His message was simple: that I should go to the aid of my brother oyabun on Kitalpha in circumventing an act that can only bring dishonor.”
McCain and Drexel spared one another a brief, mystified glance. “I don’t understand,” said McCain. “You have a brother?”
“Not in the flesh,” said Kamikuro, then tapped a finger against his chain-link tattoo. “In spirit. His name is Kobayashi, and it seems that Tai-shu Sakamoto has not forgotten we yakuza either. But Kobayashi believes that Katana Tormark acts with honor and that Sakamoto does not.” Kamikuro made a sour face. “I will be frank. We have enough headaches on Junction to keep us occupied for quite some time. But there is this”—again the finger tapping that tattoo—“our brand, you might say, and now here you are, and the decision is thrust upon me. Serve you, or Sakamoto? Eh? What do you think, McCain?”
“I’m a doctor, Kamikuro-sama, not a politician. But I’m sworn to the side of a woman of honor just as Ryuu-gumi stands for the people. You have to do what your honor demands.”
“Even if you must die?”
“I enjoy living,” McCain said, without irony, “so I’d really rather not.”
Kamikuro regarded them both without expression for several long moments during which Ito stared, Drexel fidgeted, and McCain thought that if they were going to die after all, he’d ask for a last cigarette because, what the hell. Then Kamikuro said, “Well, as it happens, I might bring a bit more than just men.”
That seemed to be a signal because Ito came to life, bowed and left the room. Kamikuro still said nothing; the minutes passed; and McCain could hear the muted whistle of Drexel’s breathing. Then the door to the study opened again. First, one of the bodyguards, bearing what looked like a heavy metal chest, and then Ito reappeared, a teak tray in hand. A stone sake jug stood on the tray, along with three tiny ceramic cups, and at the sight, McCain’s heart rebounded with sudden hope.
Kamikuro rose, beckoning McCain and Drexel to a round wooden side table upon which Ito had set the teak tray. Taking up the stone jug, Kamikuro poured chilled sake into each of the three ceramic cups. He did this with his right hand, and he was very careful to make sure that each cup held the same as its fellows, no more and no less. Then, Kamikuro offered a cup each to McCain and Drexel before taking the final one himself. “Drink with me,” he said.
The sake was of good vintage, and McCain’s nose tingled with the heady, sharp aroma of strong liquor. He dearly wanted to pound down a couple of belts but forced himself to take first one sip, then two, and then three, draining the cup. Eyeing him over the rim of his own cup, Kamikuro nodded as if in satisfaction. He replaced his cup on the tray, and then he began flipping a series of metal catches studded along one side of the chest. “We will save our second drink for a bit later,” he said, as he worked the catches one by one. “This is very old, but it works. We have others, but very few, for some have been lost to time. While we might have made use of them ourselves or manufactured more, our charge has been to guard them, with the instruction that they are only to be used by the right person at the right time.” Folding back the lid, Kamikuro reached in and withdrew a heavy black box and placed it almost reverently upon the table as Ito removed the chest. “I believe Katana Tormark is the right person, McCain, and the tim
e is now.”
McCain stared at the object, which he saw now was not a simple box, but a device: all black metal stippled with dials and switches. “What is it?”
“A communications device that allows for contact between planets without an HPG. Theodore Kurita called them black boxes.”
Drexel gave a muffled gasp. Kamikuro spared her a glance, and when his gaze returned to McCain, he saw a mischievous twinkle in the old man’s eyes. “Chu-sa McCain, do you think that Katana Tormark might put them to good use?”
But before McCain could recover himself enough to answer, Kamikuro had already refilled their cups and raised his in a toast. Then Kamikuro said, very seriously, “Regrettably, I do think it would be best for all concerned if you were quite, quite dead.”
21
Pirate Jump Point, Proserpina Space
Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere
10 May 3135
Marcus had flayed the muscles of his upper body, stopping only after two hours left his arms screaming. Then Marcus had ordered lights off in his gym, and now, weightless, he stared into space, literally. He palmed sweat from his cheek, gathering the salty water into a shimmering globule that undulated like something living. He turned his hand this way and that, fascinated as always that the globule simply hung there.
Marcus had big hands, larger now with exercise, though they’d always been powerful; so strong, in fact, that he remembered the first time he’d killed a man by snapping his neck. That quick twist and jerk, the small bones crackling as if he’d popped his knuckles. They were hands that had never known the intimate hollows and valleys of a woman but were, nonetheless, useful hands. Killing hands.
A stray thought levered into consciousness, unbidden: If necessary, could they kill Jonathan?
He was surprised that he wasn’t upset, and he gave more thought to that than the idea itself. The question wasn’t whether he should kill Jonathan. They were brothers; Marcus needed him to carry out their plans, no question about it. Despite Jonathan’s flair for the dramatic, things were going precisely as they’d hoped. Only Ramadeep Bhatia knew, or suspected, that Kappa, the Little Luthien Killer, and Subhash Indrahar’s Son of the Dragon were one and the same. Doubtless, Bhatia believed he had a cunning weapon in his own ISF double agent who operated under the cloak of the Keeper’s O5P while masquerading as one of Dragon Fury’s O5P contingent.
