by Ilsa J. Bick
Theodore missed the emphasis. “Even if that threatens the Combine.”
“I am the Combine. So… yes.” Vincent waited a beat. “Should I be concerned about you?”
Theodore blinked, and Vincent saw a wash of first astonishment then anger flood across his son’s face. “You know I stand with you, Father.”
“But someday you must be coordinator, and that may mean, for the good of the Combine, you might have to depose me.”
Theodore’s Adam’s apple bobbled in a hard swallow. “I will succeed you, Father—never depose or replace you.”
Chuckling, Vincent patted his son on the shoulder, then cupped Theodore’s neck with his palm. He’d done that often after eight-year-old Theodore declared he was a man, too old for hugs. So Vincent met the boy—and now the man—halfway with a gesture of love acceptable to both. “Very good. You’ll make a politician yet.”
He was relieved when Theodore laughed, snaked his right hand around, and squeezed Vincent’s hand. “I’ve had an excellent sensei,” Theodore said.
“Indeed. Now, I have something to show you.” Withdrawing his hand, Vincent reached inside his teal blue silk jacket, enjoying the feel of the rich material. My one weakness. Well, better than a woman. Women get you into trouble. Extracting an envelope made of rice paper, he handed it to his son. Theodore thumbed open the flap and Vincent saw his son’s keen eyes moving over the paper; saw shock and then delight.
Theodore’s head snapped up. “Arlington? And the Fifth Sword of Light!”
Vincent laughed. “High time you had something important to do, and I guarantee you, with the Federated Suns close at hand, you might see battle. But all in good time. First, settle into your new command, though I promise you: These are not the riffraff Vegans who so plagued your namesake. These are good men and will serve you well when the time comes. Now, tell me, where are you off to next?”
If Theodore was perplexed by his father’s sudden shift, he didn’t show it. But the happiness drained out of his eyes. “I thought to visit my sister and”—he hesitated—“and then my brother and… our mother.”
“Ahh,” was all Vincent said. But it was as if his son had slipped a knife between his ribs, found his heart and given the knife a good, solid twist. This time when he met his son’s gaze, he saw his sadness mirrored there. “Give your mother my love,” said Vincent, “if she will have it.”
Then, he picked up his cup and turned aside to watch the sunset. “Now drink your tea, my son, before it gets cold.”
Luthien Nadir Jump Point
Draconis Combine, Pesht Military District
24 December 3134
If Proserpina Prefecture Commander Tai-sho Carol Worridge knew anything, she knew this: Sakamoto was a decent warlord but a lousy drunk. A damn nuisance, too, because the man commanded his district with a mixture of bribery, threats and—at times—downright brilliance.
“Until the time is right.” Sakamoto threw back another goblet of plum wine, burped loudly, then waited, snorting like a horse through his nostrils, as his aide, Sho-sa Aki Mori, refilled his glass from a tall, cut-glass decanter. Satisfied, Sakamoto gave Mori a backhanded wave that sent the man scuttling. Sakamoto took another huge swallow. “When is the time ever right?”
Worridge judged this was rhetorical, and considering that Sakamoto still wore his swords, she didn’t reply. Give the wrong answer, and he’s as liable to bite my head off as give me a promotion. Anyway, Sakamoto was just talking. She was used to Sakamoto’s moods, which became particularly foul when he was cooped up in a DropShip the way he was now.
“I’ll tell you when it’s the right time,” Sakamoto said, florid from too much plum wine and festering rage. “Never! That’s when.”
“I’m sure the coordinator has his reasons,” she said diplomatically.
“Bah!” Sakamoto inhaled wine, sucked air through his teeth at the sting, swallowed. “The worst of it is that little girl from a dishonored family claiming lands for the Dragon while I twiddle my thumbs. Bah! I’m a samurai!” he said, thumping his broad chest with his bunched left fist. “I’m a warrior, not some old, toothless woman!”
“Absolutely not,” said Mori, looking grieved. Worridge thought the sho-sa did righteous indignation rather well for an obsequious little runt. “But until the coordinator…”
“Damn the coordinator!” Sakamoto bellowed. Wine sloshed over the rim, drizzling across his fingers like watery blood. “Damn them all!”
Mori glided forward, patting a napkin over Sakamoto’s fingers with something close to the tut-tut of a fussy mother hen. “If anyone has more right to act on the Dragon’s behalf than Tormark’s little girl, it’s you. After all, who is Akira Tormark?”
Sakamoto sucked plum wine from his thumb. “Dead, for one.”
“That’s right. And disgraced, for another. So, I ask you, who better? Besides”—Mori folded the now-stained napkin into neat, perfect squares four times over and tucked the offending linen in his hip pocket—“it may be that the coordinator requires someone to show him the correct path.”
At that, Worridge’s jaw dropped. The bridge became quite still and, for a moment, all Worridge heard was the bleep-blip-blap of various control circuits. Sakamoto’s glass had been halfway to his mouth, but now he lowered it and his eyes narrowed to dark, glittery slits. “What did you say, Mori?”
Worridge saw Mori’s throat working. Yeah, I’ll bet your neck’s wondering if it’s going to have a job in this next two, three seconds.
Mori squared his shoulders. “Perhaps you need to show the coordinator the error of his ways, my Tai-shu.”
Well, either the guy had guts, or he was insane. Whichever, he was spouting treason, and Worridge knew there were troops here who needed to be reminded of that. For that matter, she had to rein in Sakamoto before he got them all killed. Worridge said, cautiously, “Sho-sa Mori, you are indelicate.” There: simple, direct.
Sakamoto’s head swiveled, his eyes lingering long enough to make her sweat, and then back at Mori. “She means you’re talking treason. She’s right, you know.”
Mori squared his shoulders. “Never theless.”
“Nevertheless,” repeated Sakamoto, his tone thoughtful. “Never… the… less.” Then, his lips lifted from his teeth in a slow, sly smile. “And, in this case, less is not more, is it… Mori?” Sakamoto threw his head back in a loud cackle. “Lessi is not Mori!”
Oh, puh-leez. Worridge suppressed a groan.
Mori hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then let out a little giggle—a joke at his expense, ha-ha, very funny. “No, Tai-shu,” he said.
“All right then!” Sakamoto threw back wine and brought the goblet down on a workstation so hard Worridge was amazed the glass didn’t shatter. “Here is what we will do, my dear Lessi Mori! We shall amass strength at Algedi, Waddesdon”—he ticked them off on his thick, rough fingers—“and… Kurhah, hai? You’re getting this?”
Mori, that little suck-up, was scribbling madly in a tiny notebook he kept tucked in his breast pocket for just such an occasion. “Absolutely.”
“Then half-strength troops to Homam, Matar and Klathandu IV.” Sakamoto put his hands on his hips, nodded once. “Yes, Lessi Mori. That should do it.”
Half-strength troops? If The Republic struck back, Worridge would be sending perfectly good men to their deaths. Not gonna happen on my watch. She cleared her throat. “Pardon me, Tai-shu, but you must receive the coordinator’s…”
That was as far as she got. In the blink of an eye, Sakamoto’s face went from red, to pale, to the colored of clotted blood. “I will worry about where and how my troops are to be deployed, not the coordinator, and not you. I am the final authority; it rests with me because I tell you this: by his inaction, the coordinator has lost the right to tell me what to do and what to think! Are we clear on this?”
Worridge did a swift calculation. No, she didn’t like it. And, yes, if she persisted, Sakamoto would have her head, and then, well, really
, what was the point? “Hai, Tai-shu. It was not the coordinator I was thinking of so much as wondering where we’ll get the manpower for an operation of this magnitude.” Sounded really good, and it helped that it was the truth. “I am simply worried about materiel and troops. Informing the coordinator”—yes, she liked that word better than asking permission–“would likely be followed by the requisite troops.”
Sakamoto made an impatient gesture, shooing her away. “I have other resources.” And to Mori: “Get word to Kobayashi, Ame and Endo. They are to be on Benjamin within the next two months, understood?”
Who? Worridge frowned, and she was about to ask when Mori said, “I anticipated that, my Tai-shu, and took the liberty of dispatching messages a day ago.”
Okay, Worridge was impressed: Mori was a suck-up and clairvoyant. For his part, Sakamoto squinted at Mori, waited a beat, said, “Did you now?”
Then, before Worridge had time to blink, Sakamoto reared back. There was a blinding flash, a high-pitched whistle as air cleaved in two. Mori stood there for a brief instant, a bemused expression on his face. And then a bright red ribbon leaked through an invisible seam and dribbled down to soak the collar of his uniform. Mori’s head lolled as if his neck had turned to gelatin and then plopped to the deck, face-first. The sound was indescribable, really, but it reminded Worridge of when she was ten and dropped a watermelon on the porch, and the watermelon had burst.
Mori’s body didn’t follow right away. Instead, bright, apple-red blood arced to the deck, sounding like water against a ceramic basin. Mori’s body wasn’t exactly stiff, or limp, but his hands jerked up in a sort of surprise, like the hands of a marionette whose puppeteer’s twitched the wrong string. And then Mori, who was definitely lessi now, toppled like a felled tree.
In the complete and absolute silence that followed—save for computers chittering away—Sakamoto inspected his sword. The blade was clean; he’d struck that quickly. Then he resheathed his katana, the metal rasping into its scabbard, and casually uncorked his decanter. Wine glugged into Sakamoto’s goblet and Worridge caught the faint squeal of the decanter’s stopper as Sakamoto re-corked it.
Sakamoto lifted his glass to Worridge in a toast. “A person who anticipates you has already succeeded you in his mind, Worridge, and actions follow hard upon thought. Please remember, Tai-sho : There is only room for one tai- shu.”
Then he threw back his drink and exhaled with satisfaction. “And Worridge—get someone to clean up this mess.”
Imperial City, Luthien
24 December 3134
The gardens were cool; the sky a brilliant pink that faded to purple as the sun’s light refracted against the skin of the world, and at his feet was a sea of white stone. Bhatia’s eyes traveled over the carefully etched lines that curled and eddied around an island of rock, a hillock of moss. The center of the stone sea was an absolute masterstroke: a spiral twining to a single, absent point, like an endless pinwheel.
And that is the Combine, the unseen pivot about which the universe turns. Bhatia considered that it might also be an apt metaphor for what the best coordinators were: the null space at the center of a wheel. Only Vincent Kurita, that Peacock, was simply null.
And Sakamoto was wrong about one thing. The ISF hadn’t lost its teeth, but with the HPG outage it might as well have lost its eyes and ears. Couriered messages still trickled in, but often the information was outdated and useless. Bhatia grunted. That they’d found out about the Capellans was a stroke of luck, a piece of information that crossed his desk from a reliable source long embedded on Liao, though that source had gone silent—a disturbing turn that had Bhatia wondering if the Capellans had managed to penetrate far enough to conquer Liao.
And there was also Katana Tormark, that little witch! Bhatia felt a sudden headache thump to life behind his eyes. Oh, just thinking about her set his teeth on edge! A father, once the pride of O5P, turned Republican sympathizer, and then a planetary governor, no less! Thank heaven he’d the foresight to embed an agent into her command, no thanks to the Peacock. That idiot had blathered on about letting others fight and blah, blah, blah. Oh, it was galling : the offspring of a discredited, dishonored man laying bare the Combine’s weakness!
Find yourself a high pedestal, little girl, because it will hurt that much more when you fall.
Sakamoto was the key. Yes, Toranaga was cunning and might still be useful, and hadn’t there been something in Toranaga’s eyes as he’d turned to go? Bhatia thought. Yes, for a fraction of a second, he and Toranaga had exchanged significant glances, and it was as if the warlord had shot some invisible message, reminding Bhatia that… what? There was yet this other card that might be played?
Perhaps. Bhatia shook his mind free of Toranaga. For the moment, if any warlord stood a chance of reclaiming Combine worlds while eliminating the tiresome Tormark, it was Sakamoto. True, Sakamoto was a drunk and a bully, and Bhatia found the idea of Sakamoto’s wagging tongue minus its mouth supremely pleasing. But Sakamoto was still an asset, and if he could be played? Then the Peacock would have two choices; total disavowal, or an unconditional sanction. In the first case, Sakamoto would die, and Bhatia wouldn’t necessarily weep. In the second, though, the Peacock would take credit and that was good for the Combine.
But I will have to play this just right: let Sakamoto start his little invasion and then bide my time, choose the precisely correct moment to tell the Peacock.
And if Kurita wanted Sakamoto’s head? No matter: Sakamoto was merely the tool Bhatia needed to pick the lock of the treasure chest that was House Kurita, and Combine honor. And who knew? There might be an unexpected bonus or two; perhaps the bitch would stand against Sakamoto, and if she did… A shiver of unexpected delight rippled along Bhatia’s skin and made the hairs stand on end. Squashed underfoot like a bug. He laughed silently, like a dog, and ran his palms along his thighs.
His right trouser pocket crackled, and his good humor evaporated like mist on a hot morning. A report he’d already read, and didn’t like. Pulling out the paper, he reread the message, taking his time, letting the words brand themselves on his brain.
Kappa. The word leapt from the page. Every time he came to it, his mind tripped, as if he’d stubbed a mental toe against a rock. Kappa was—had been–a Son of the Dragon, a member of a cadre of elite agents: the legendary Subhash Indrahar’s eyes and ears and teeth. A powerful mystic and utterly ruthless, Indrahar had been the greatest ISF director in Combine history as well as a personal friend to Takashi Kurita and mentor to Takashi’s son, Theodore. Yet Indrahar’s power hadn’t been his Sons. The agents had died in the Jihad, and their records had disappeared. Bhatia had resurrected the Sons—the idea of such a useful inner circle was too brilliant to ignore—but development of the group was slow and expensive.
But now here was Kappa, and without his knowledge of the Sons, Bhatia still mightn’t have made the connection. A serial killer on an obscure little world, what of it? But there was that very odd victim—a man whose body hadn’t been mutilated—followed by a tape from the killer calling himself Kappa : a creature from ancient myth… and one of the most brilliantly eccentric and lethal deep-cover agents Indrahar ever created. As if he wanted to catch my attention. But he can’t be the same man. He’d be nearly a hundred. Kappa’s heir, perhaps? And why surface now?
He didn’t know. But ISF Director Ramadeep Bhatia shivered all the same, even though it wasn’t cold.
7
Makuhari Beach, Quant-tze, Biham
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
24 December 3134
The sea air was mercifully cool and crisp, with an aroma of salt and the faintest lacing of aluminum. A light gust of wind skimmed Sir Reginald Eriksson’s forehead, fingering the thinning remnants of what had once been a silky cap of hair the color of corn tassels but was now bleached white as a sun-dried bone. Eriksson patted his hair into place with his left hand, but that meant he moved his feet a little to compensate for the way the sand
shifted, and a needle of pain stabbed at his right hip. Annoyed, he leaned into his cane to redistribute his weight. Like him, the cane was a relic: wood-kilned amaranth with a bright violet grain and a brass L-shaped handle worn smooth by three generations of Erikssons. Sir Reginald’s only child, Rachel, had died in childbirth forty years ago, her baby stillborn. With them went the hopes of a noble line.
A wave crested, curled and then fell in upon itself, foaming along a tawny stretch of sand before withdrawing in lengthening fingers that pulled away with a soft hiss. Time’s like that sea, always moving, forever impatient. And if time was the remorseless sea, then he was the sand, he supposed, being slowly eaten away by time’s passage.
The sand whispered again, though this time from behind; boots trudging over pulverized earth. And then he heard her voice: “You’re a hard man to find, Sir Reginald.”
Eriksson gave a dry chuckle as she came alongside. “Perhaps, Katana, I want to discourage the fainthearted. I could have you arrested, you know. You’re quite the outlaw.” He eyed her, liking what he saw. By God, she looked good, fit. The sun made her skin glow. Her deep black hair was a bit longer now, edging her oval face with undulating waves. The style made her look less severe and highlighted the high bones of her cheeks, the slightly feline tilt of her black eyes. Besides her calf-high black leather boots, Katana wore olive green combat fatigues, a stylized, apple green katakana numeral five on her left collar set off against a cherry red background. Stitched over the right breast pocket was her faction’s symbol: a riff of the Kurita dragon edging a circle of fiery red on which three black diamonds and one white formed the four sides of a diamond standing on point. His eyes flicked to her waist, and his brows lifted. “No swords?”
