by Ilsa J. Bick
Daughter of The Dragon
( Mechwarrior Dark Age - 16 )
Ilsa J Bick
To regain her clan's honor, Katana Tormark challenges House Kurita's right to rule the Combine. Undermining their authority, Katana is pushing them into a conflict with the Republic they don't want. But Warlord Mitsura Sakomodo has his own desire to rule, and won't let Katana get in his way.
To all you fans out there, the men and women for whom we spin these tales. Your dreams make these books real.
Acknowledgments
Writing this book was a team effort, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the dedication and enthusiasm people brought to the table. My warmest thanks to:
Sharon Turner Mulvihill, for taking a chance on an MWDA wannabe;
Loren Coleman, for introducing me to the CBT and MWDA universes and putting me out there in the first place;
Randall Bills, for patiently answering each and every panicked e-mail query about all matters, arcane and otherwise:
Øystein Tvedten, for making sure that if Randall didn’t have an answer, he did;
Herbert Beas, for scanning in all those attachments for all that battle armor and not once getting peevish.
My thanks also go to Dean Wesley Smith for his continued support, advice and friendship—and the occasional well-placed boot in the butt.
Finally, my gratitude and love to my husband, David, for making my writing life more than just a dream. Buckle your seat belt, babe; you’re in for one wild ride.
Prologue
Devil’s Rock
Prefecture VII, Republic of the Sphere
14 February 3134
Seven at night and still raining like hell in Faust City: a frigid rain, the near side of sleet, the kind that spiked a man’s skin like an ice pick and burned like a brand. The kind of rain that made a man hope to hell he found a cheap dive and fast: a place with foggy windows and bored women with sagging breasts and pallid skin who bumped and ground through clouds of blue cigarette smoke swirling around their legs like gauzy fabric; a place where a guy could toss back a couple belts of cheap whiskey raw enough to knife his throat and explode in the pit of his stomach like napalm. A place like Lucifer’s Pit.
C sat at a small, round table tucked into the far left corner, behind a pillar and in inky shadow. Anyone looking saw only a silhouette, but no one looked because everyone was too busy getting drunk, or stoned, or laid, or all three. C wasn’t. He had a good view of the bar and the john was down a short hall to his right. He’d discovered a fundamental truth: You never drank beer; you only rented it. Other than boozy men weaving by to take a leak, no one frequented this little corner of the universe. That was fine because C had a man to kill and tonight was as good a night as any. In fact, tonight was more than good. It was rainy, dark and colder than a witch’s tit. Hell, it was perfect.
C hefted his mug, sucked in what passed for coffee, forced it down. The coffee tasted like it’d simmered since the early Pleistocene; a dank brew scummed with an amoeboid slick that shimmered suspiciously like engine oil and was sour enough to leave his mouth tasting like burned tar. He’d have preferred whiskey, but a good ISF agent didn’t drink on the job—not and keep a clear head. Besides, there’d be plenty of time to celebrate when the Bounty Hunter was dead. Payback for all the Combine troops the Bounty Hunter had killed a year ago, and a long time coming.
C looked over the rim of his mug at his target, a man who sat eight meters to the right on a diagonal, and ringside to the runway where the dancers did their routines. The Bounty Hunter’s disguise was pretty good: jowls, liver spots, a bottlebrush of thinning, white hair. The getup screamed civil servant slouching toward retirement: the kind of guy who got a watch and a handshake and was forgotten the moment he walked out the door. He wore rumpled khaki pants, a frumpish blue V-necked sweater and a pair of owlish steel-rimmed specs with thick lenses that gleamed white as coins in the light from the runway. But the thing that really sold the package? The limp. The Bounty Hunter lurched like an old man favoring a bad hip he should’ve replaced ten years ago.
Only the Bounty Hunter had buried himself in the part, inhabiting his role so well he’d developed habits, little routines more predictable than the sunrise. Like coming to the Pit every afternoon at five and staying until eight. What the Bounty Hunter saw in the bar was a mystery. There were enough people puffing away to fill a cancer ward. The Bounty Hunter didn’t seem to be there for the girls, either, and his tip wasn’t anything designed to endear him to the management (a half stone—big spender, but the coffee was pretty lousy). No, the Bounty Hunter just drank his two cups of coffee and read the paper. Then, every night at eight, he tucked the paper under his arm and limped out for home sweet home—a dingy apartment in a decrepit complex of narrow warrens and dead-end alleys a klick southeast of the sulfur refinery. Along the way he’d shell out a five-stone coin here and there and chat up one of the regulars, a down-on-his-luck drunk who squatted at the corner of the Bounty Hunter’s apartment complex. And bingo : The idea came for just how, exactly, C might make the universe a better, brighter place.
Still, C was uneasy. He wasn’t the first ISF agent to go after the Bounty Hunter. C was the third, and he had no illusions about being any better than his immediate predecessor, who’d been delivered, sliced and diced into a jigsaw, in a refrigerated box to ISF headquarters on Luthien three months ago. No one knew exactly what had gone wrong, and the dead guy sure wasn’t talking. So C had to act on instinct, and instinct screamed that if he was going to make a move, he’d better do it tonight.
C’s eyes dropped to his finger watch: a quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes was enough; he’d timed it that morning. Scraping back his chair, C stood, shrugged into his raincoat, backhanded a stone as a tip, and then wove his way toward the door and around tables, moving not too fast and not too slow and being careful not to avoid the Bounty Hunter’s table, which lay on a direct line to the door. He passed so close, a quick glance over the man’s shoulder let C catch a glimpse of the breathless headline: a follow-up story about that string of murders on Kordava in the suburb of Little Luthien nine months ago. So close C felt his pulse ramp in his temples and his stomach cramp with excitement—one shot right behind his ear and, with the silencer, I’d get away before anyone noticed–and then the moment was gone, and C was moving past the Bounty Hunter and pushing his way into the night.
The door clapped shut, cutting the sounds from the bar in two like a ribbon snipped by sharp scissors. C moved quickly now, grateful that it was still winter on this godforsaken planet. Night had slammed down hard; the rain had slacked but not ceased. The streets would be deserted, the traffic light. No witnesses. No one likely to interrupt C’s little tête-à-tête with one very-soon-to-be-ex–Bounty Hunter.
Fifteen minutes later he was dripping wet, the rain trickling in shivery fingers down his neck and giving him the shakes as he turned onto the Bounty Hunter’s street. The Bounty Hunter’s apartment was in a red brick tenement, second building down on the right. The wind was blowing in from the west, flinging sheets of rain. The feeble glow from a solitary streetlamp threw out rain-fractured light, a wavering halo edged with a shimmering, rainbow-colored corona. The streetlamp stood at the near corner on the opposite side of the street: perfect, because that meant that anyone coming that way would lead with his shadow.
C armed wet out of his eyes and blinked. No one around, the rain washing the drunks away. Fantastic. C ducked into a narrow alley that was more pothole than asphalt. The alley was squalid with mushy garbage that squelched beneath C’s boots and reeked enough to make him gag. But the alley was good because it was blind and windowless and, at the end, a bonus: an assortment of dented
trash cans and one industrial-size rubbish bin.
All the better to dispose of unwanted Bounty Hunters, my dear.
If the Bounty Hunter was on schedule—and he would be on schedule—C had ten minutes. Quickly, he stooped, ran his fingers along the slimy bricks, then smeared muck through his hair and over his face. Then he stuck his pistol in his waistband and peeled out of his trench coat. He let the coat fall into a water-filled pothole, stomped on it a few times, then inched his arms into the now-soggy, filthy garment. He slipped the pistol back into the right pocket of his trench coat, cupping the stippled grip in his palm, his right index finger in the trigger guard. Lolled back against the wall.
Ask for a handout and, while he’s digging for change, that’s when I shoot him—kill him and dump him in one of the bins.
The sounds were so indistinct and irregular, so textured by the hiss of rain on brick, he nearly missed them. Then his ears pricked to the hesitant tap of shoes against stone, one clap heavier than the other because the Bounty Hunter limped. C had to admire the man. He hadn’t dropped the limp even to get in out of the rain. Nerves tingling, C waited, mouth dry, pulse tripping in his veins. Ten steps more, then five, and now he saw the bobbing black finger of a shadow through the fringe of his lashes.
Five steps more, then four, three… and as the Bounty Hunter came alongside, C hauled up his head, just another drunk dragging himself out of a stupor. “Say, buddy,” he slurred and tottered forward a step to close the distance. “Say, buddy, can you…?”
There was the unmistakable snick of metal against metal, and the last thing C saw was something very bright, a steely arc. And then it didn’t matter because, by the time his brain translated—knife–something cut across his neck, going right to left. There was a weird, pulsing, splashing sound, like water from a fountain hitting tile. C was too surprised to feel pain and he was just reaching for his throat when there was another flash, this time left to right, that sheared off the tips of his left fingers in the bargain. And then pain didn’t matter because, suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.
Choking, C clawed at his neck as his knees buckled and his vision grayed. His lungs burned, and the hiss of the rain got whispery-thin and delicate as fine mist. As C sagged, his last conscious thought was how the smell of his blood was like this wagon he’d had as a kid: a wagon left out in the rain one too many times, until it was pocked with rust blisters that smelled of wet copper. The smell of his blood was like that.
The click.
The click happened when he saw the ISF agent pretending to be a drunk pretending to hold up the wall of his apartment building. Then—click. A switch was thrown in some deep, dark crevice of his brain, and suddenly it was like his head had filled with helium. His mind drifted, his consciousness tethered to his body like a kid’s balloon and he watched things unfold like a choreographed dance: the way he’d pivoted, snapping his right wrist. The way the knife darted like the razor-sharp tongue of a chameleon, uncoiling from its sheath beneath the cashmere sweater. The instant he’d felt that unmistakable transition as the knife sliced first air and then flesh. The agent’s shock, then confusion and, finally, dull-eyed terror as the second cut sliced his windpipe. And blood, lots of blood, spurting in thick ropes that splattered to the asphalt and mingled with mud, a pulpy wad of discarded newsprint and the general garbage that sluiced down the gutters in a good, hard rain.
Then he clicked again, his mind collapsing like a pirate’s spyglass. This was a good moment because he needn’t hurry, and he could revel in sensation. His tongue sneaked over his lips. Something warm, brackish. Blood. He looked down at the cashmere sweater, purple now with blood and rain. Too bad; he’d liked the sweater. He particularly liked the way it smelled of its previous owner: pipe tobacco and spicy aftershave. Then he flicked his wrists; the agent’s blood spun from the blades in teardrops. Another flick and each blade whirred into its hidden sheath, secured to his forearms beneath the old man’s sweater.
What lovely toys. Pity that he and the Bounty Hunter couldn’t have a little assassin-to-fellow-assassin chitchat. But the last he’d seen was the man’s naked backside floating serenely downstream after he’d shucked the Hunter out of his armor—and, lordy, lordy, if the man hadn’t been wearing a stitch except a pair of tatty boxers. Squatting, he studied the wisps of steam curling from cooling meat, the black blood a puddle drooling over concrete. Humming tunelessly, he withdrew a twelve-centimeter hunting knife from a sheath strapped to the small of his back and got to work. When he was done, he held the agent’s dripping, bug-eyed head in his left hand. The agent’s jaw was unhinged; his tongue lolled like a dead worm. On an impulse, he pressed his mouth to the agent’s cold lips, his tongue playing over the hard, uneven edges of the agent’s teeth, and discovered: The agent had an overbite.
“Alas, poor Yorick,” he said, with a sigh and a wink. “I hardly knew ya.”
1
Katana Tormark’s Journal
Early morning, 1 October 3134
When I was eight, my father killed his best friend. When I turned fifteen, my mother died, and when I was seventeen, I told my father I never wanted to see him again. Ever. So he went away, and that was that. Sort of. For one thing, I lied; I kind of wish he’d stuck around. My mother was a musicologist, and after my parents separated—this was right after my father killed Uncle—we often went to the Combine. I met one of the most important people in my life there. And I learned a lot about the Combine. A lot a lot and I had questions for my father he could never answer.
At the same time I was, like, this poster child for The Republic: counseling little kids, getting my citizenship ahead of schedule, saving Sir Reginald, going to Northwind, becoming duchess and then prefect while, at the same time, I’m studying bushido ; I’m pretty damn good at kendo kata ; I’m a better frigging samurai than my father and… you get the picture. The only thing missing is the holovid: She fights! She conquers! She even cooks! Like I’m some kind of new appliance.
Someone once said that, deep down in my gut, I must’ve known or figured out somehow that The Republic wasn’t really my home, or I was never at home in The Republic in the first place; take your pick. Probably right on both counts. I mean, think about it: You got this Republic, and we’re all supposed to love each other and not resort to violence and stuff. But here I am, kicking some serious butt—and getting rewarded for it. Schizophrenic, you ask me.
And here’s another thing. As soon as that network went down, I finally saw how fragile the whole thing was. Factions and planets connected by a network of threads as insubstantial as a spider’s web. One big blow and the web disintegrated, and all of a sudden, it’s every woman for herself.
So why am I doing this? Beats me… no, that’s a lie. I know why. I dream about it a lot, and sometimes memory and dream blur: a holovid caught in a continuous loop projected onto the blackness in my brain, and no off button.
Early summer’s what I remember: the buzz of cicadas and the crunch of their husks under my feet. I’m eight; we’re on Ancha, where I was born. I remember, or maybe I dream it—it’s all the same—my mother and I had eaten dinner alone that night. My father, Akira, was gone on some business or other, and I knew that something was wrong. My mother played with her food, moving clumps of rice here and there with the points of her chopsticks the way I did when she made something I really hated. (Broiled squid was the worst; there was just something about those tentacles.) Afterward, she played her shakuhachi. Even though she wasn’t a Combine citizen, my mother was crazy for all things Japanese. She was partial to the instrument because of honkyoku, Zen meditation music. My mother’s been dead for almost twenty years, but I can still conjure up her hands, the milk-chocolate cast of her skin and long, slender fingers caressing the ancient bamboo flute. Her shakuhachi was lacquered red with urushi and cashew, with a lion done in black brushstroke, and a kanji inscribed in delicate calligraphy that translated to lion’s heart. When my mother played, you lost track of who played whom; whethe
r the instrument coaxed sadness from my mother’s heart, or she simply breathed sorrow. The Zen masters say that shakuhachi is music from the soul, and that’s what I hear in my mind’s ear: the sighing, mournful cry of a wounded heart.
Now the next part gets tricky because now the dream takes over, and I just don’t know what’s what.
First, I’m in bed. Dream or reality: I can’t tell. My room is very dark, and I’m in the middle of that deep and dreamless sleep of childhood when something tugs me awake, reeling me to consciousness. I hear sounds. Quick. Angry.
Then a skip, like a faulty holovid. Now I’m moving toward a bar of yellow light cutting a diagonal into the darkness; now I’m peering into the kitchen where my parents aren’t speaking. It’s as if they’re frozen in time but tiny and very far away, the way things look when you use the wrong end of a telescope. My father, tall and proud, in a coal black skinsuit, his swords nestled in a ruby red obi, and his black eyes glittering with determination, the strong line of his jaw firm and utterly implacable; and my mother, still as a statue, her brown eyes smoldering, the muscles of her neck as taut as the strings of a tightly strung koto.
And then I’m outside, as silent as a shadow. I can barely make out my father; he’s like a creature scissored out of the fabric of night, as insubstantial as air. The air is just this side of chilly, and I’m shivering, gooseflesh stippling my arms. Gravel pricks the soles of my bare feet, and they hurt, and I wish I’d remembered my sandals, or even a pair of socks.
Another skip: cool, dewy grass that shushes under my feet, like slippers on carpet, and the tall, straighter forms of trees. I’m crouching behind …a rock? A wall? My fingers skid over something cold and hard; my knees are damp with dew.
