by Ilsa J. Bick
Sleights of hand and feats of magic: Jonathan was talented enough to play any role. Oh, Marcus was important ; money and what it bought—discreet pilots, tight-lipped couriers, a cadre of JumpShips—were essential. But, without Jonathan, Marcus was nothing more than a very wealthy, very bitter man.
Because here was Jonathan’s masterstroke: murdering the Bounty Hunter and assuming his identity, then using that identity to muddy the waters. Infiltrating Katana Tormark’s camp, warning her of turncoats in her organization, while turning around and tipping off the ISF agent Bhatia had inserted into her O5P himself. Yes, it was brilliant because little Katana would work herself into knots, wondering who the traitor was.
Marcus’ mouth tugged into a reluctant grimace—part smile, part frown. Yamata might’ve been a better code-name than Kappa. Yamata was a vengeful god, a serpent with eight heads and as many faces. As was Jonathan: Son of the Dragon, ISF, O5P, or Bounty Hunter, but always a step ahead, weaving his serpentine path, playing faction against faction and leaving each to wonder.
So Marcus should be happy, ecstatic. They had money, and Jonathan had the means, and their goal was in sight. Bringing down the proud Kuritas would be their revenge against the House that had taken away their honor; against their father, by using the training he’d given them to destroy his heritage. And the killing blow for Katana Tormark, the symbol of everything they’d lost.
My legs. Our father. And our poor mother. Oh, I want Katana to suffer, so much she’ll beg for death, and be grateful when it comes. That data crystal I shall listen to and savor for the rest of my life. But if I have to do something about Jonathan…
And there Marcus’ mind stuttered, tripping the way a faulty holovid recycled an image in an endless loop. Finally, a stab of pain that was not in his heart brought him back, and Marcus saw his hand clenched in a tight fist, his nails digging into his palms.
I can’t think of this now. Marcus relaxed, his strong fingers unfurling like the petals of an exotic flower. The shimmering globe of his sweat had shattered into spheres no bigger than a pinprick. Tiny balloons of bright red blood clung to his torn flesh.
Tomorrow, I’ll think about this tomorrow; or maybe in a month, or maybe two. But not now, I don’t have to think about it now.
He flicked his hand, and now his blood was free, rising to mingle with his sweat and drift in a lazy synchrony: the shattered heart of a fractured star.
Conqueror’s Pride, Proserpina
Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere
10 May 3135
“Something’s got to be done about that Kat, you mark what I’m saying.” Sully clattered pans together with far more noise than necessary. Three assistants stood in a far corner and quailed. “Her going off half-cocked, no one knows where, and me sitting here, thumb up me arse, and not even so much as a by-your-leave.”
“Cut that infernal racket!” Jake squinted at Sully, his wrinkled visage framed in a scented cloud that smelled of buttery leeks and savory barley. “Land’s sake, yer as twitchy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers. Man can’t hear himself think, much less work; all this commotion and you like to pee your britches.”
Sully began to splutter, but the old man cut him dead with a glare. “None of your lip, you hear?” Jake took aim with a long, wooden spoon. “I ain’t your pappy and don’t cotton none to the job, but you ain’t too old a good tanning wouldn’t set you right as rain. Now, go on.” He punctuated this last by giving the air a vicious jab with his spoon. “Git outta here, take a walk, git yerself laid if you gotta, but you cool down, and don’t come back less’n you aim to behave.”
Astonishment choked Sully’s face red as a beet, and the big man’s hands bunched. For a split second, the only sound was the bubble of soup. Then Sully sagged, almost visibly deflated. “All right.” Sully jerked his apron from his neck. “I s’pect you’re right. But I’ll be back to start…”
But Jake was already shaking his head. “You got the rest of the afternoon and night off. They’s three of them.” A jab with the spoon at the assistants. “And that’s already three too many. I don’t want to see yer mug agin till tomorrow breakfast.”
Sully didn’t like it, but he did as he was told. Later on, the scene would pass into apocrypha, a story that proved there really had been no one quite like Jake at bringing Sully to heel—and that fact alone should’ve given them pause.
Lunch passed without a hitch. Crockery cleaned and stowed, pots washed and drying on a rack, the kitchen eased into an afternoon lull that habitually went from two to five when dinner preparations began. The assistants napped.
But Jake did not. Instead, wicker basket hooked over an arm, he ambled to town. The last anyone saw of Jake was his back.
After half a klick of climbing a steady rise toward town, Jake stopped, turned, glanced back the way he’d come. The university campus that housed Katana’s headquarters was out of sight; any sentries couldn’t see him either.
It had taken Jake more than forty minutes to make his way out but less than twenty to backtrack because, for one thing, he ran. He circled into the compound via a twisting, boggy route knitted through a swamp. Access through the swamp was poorly defended because the planet provided its own sentries: blood limpets, shells gaping and patiently waiting in the black ooze for the unwary. The limpets’ preferred food was Proserpina’s dragon iguana; however, more than a few of Proserpina’s early settlers had ended up as between-meal snacks. Jake was not, however, one of them.
In twenty-five minutes, Jake was padding on cat’s feet down a hall in Katana’s private wing. With Katana off-planet, the vaunted Amaterasu security was a little lax. Jake found the conference room with no problem. After all, he’d been there before, delivering food for the Fury’s field commanders—and once even before then. Slipping into the room, Jake cut a beeline for the dragon tapestry. He tweezed a minute transceiver from the center of the dragon’s glittering eye. The tiny listening device had performed very, very well.
Once back in the kitchen, he glanced at a wall-mounted chronometer. It was half past three, more than enough time. The kitchens were arranged in a series of interlocking squares, each connected by a short hallway. The last room housed the headquarters’ stores: seven rows of metal shelves running ten meters long and crammed with flour, rice, sugar and dry goods; two walk-in refrigerated lockers (one for vegetables and the other for meat and fish); a walk-in freezer. Jake headed for the last row of shelves. At the very back, in a corner, stood a wide-mouthed oak barrel filled to the brim with brine and dill pickles. Jake squatted, patted behind the barrel, and brought out a knapsack.
Then, tugging the bag open, he reached one hand behind his neck, pulled… and peeled off his face. The mask gave grudgingly, with the same kind of sucking sound a boot makes in thick mud. Once free of his face and hair, he reached up with an index finger and popped out his right eye.
Then, something rustled. Something very big moved, then banged into something else and cursed.
Jake froze instantly, blue contact in one hand, his face and scalp in the other, muscles coiled tight as a spring—as Sully James, red-eyed and reeking of juniper, stumbled into view.
Sully hadn’t gone to town. He hadn’t gone to his room. Instead, he’d taken refuge in his favorite thinking spot; a sack of potatoes, behind which he kept a private stash of fine gin, guaranteed to put hair on one’s teeth. Sully had one paw wrapped around the neck of his bottle, the other up in greeting, and a hearty grin on his face that dribbled away as he gawked at Jake, whose face hung in one hand.
“Here now… now, wush… wush?” The words came out mushy, not only because Sully’s tongue wouldn’t cooperate but because Jake was staring: one eye blue, the other a naked, steely gray. “Wush… wush the hell…?”
Tucking his face into a back pocket, Jake sighed. “Oh, Sully,” he said, shaking his head and ambling up to the bigger man, who still stood wreathed in gin fumes. “You know, I really wish you’d gone to town.”
> Quick as lightning, Jake’s right hand flashed out, his fingers rigid as spikes. They speared Sully at the hump of the big man’s Adam’s apple, and there was an audible crackle as the cartilage of Sully’s larynx fractured.
Sully’s hands flew for his throat; the gin bottle exploded against the floor, the fumes so strong they made Jake’s eyes water. Choking, Sully staggered back, banged against a shelf and then collapsed in a hail of tin cans. He writhed, big feet running a path to nowhere, mouth open and gaping the way a fish does when it suffocates on a dock.
Jake stood over Sully for an instant, then dropped to his haunches. “Go to sleep, Sully,” he said, then palmed the back of the big man’s head in his left hand and grabbed the angle of Sully’s jaw with his right. He gave Sully’s head and neck a quick twist. There was a crackle like egg shells crushed underfoot, and Sully went limp.
It was over and done in less than fifteen seconds, but Jake lingered a few seconds more. He’d made Sully’s end as painless as possible, yet there was a little piece of him—so tiny that its voice was reed-thin—that felt a queer pang of remorse. “I am sorry,” he said, and thought that maybe, wherever Sully was, Sully knew.
A tinny buzz from his finger watch, and Jake saw he had an hour left before the first of the assistants arrived to prepare the evening meal. Working quickly, he keyed in the combination to the meat locker, palmed it open. The locker sighed open; a ball of chilled air that smelled vaguely of blood and fresh fat rolled out. There were two long rows of meat—sides of beef and pork—hanging in opaque plastic bags. Hooking his hands in the big man’s armpits, Jake heaved back on his heels. Sully’s body hesitated, then hissed over the storeroom floor, trailing a slick of gin. Sully’s eyes were still open but turning glassy, and his tongue lolled at the corner of his mouth. His neck was folded nearly in two, Sully’s ear touching his right shoulder.
It took Jake ten minutes to truss Sully’s arms and legs to his beefy torso; another five to jockey him into position, lay him on an empty plastic bag and skewer his flesh at the hollow of Sully’s clavicle with a meat hook. The hook was thick as Sully’s wrist and solid steel; Jake was sweating by the time he’d forced the hook through skin, bone and meat. A rivulet of blood dribbled slowly from the puncture wounds, but Jake knew that without a heart to pump, the oozing would let up soon and cork the holes with purple-jellied clots.
Then Jake zipped up the bag, attached the hook to a vacant eye on a rail of sides of beef and hoisted Sully’s body until the bag was even with its fellows. He surveyed his work with a critical eye, then nodded. It would take them time to miss Sully, even longer to find him because… Jake pried open the magnetic combination pad and eased out its memory chip. Then he swung the heavy door to and grinned as the lock clicked. There. Now they’d have to use a laser torch, and even then they might not find the body for days because refrigeration would cut down on the stink, and by the time Sully’s body bloated with rot, Jake would be long gone.
And in fact—Jonathan popped out his other eye—Jake was gone already.
A few hours later, safely ensconced in his brother’s private DropShip and hurtling toward the pirate jump point, Jonathan had time to think.
First off, his relationship with Fusilli had netted unimaginable rewards. Bhatia had been correct in bringing Fusilli under his wing; the young man was quite reliable and a font of knowledge. After all, what was a little invasion plan between fellow double agents, especially when Jonathan knew all the right passwords and Fusilli’d never laid eyes on him? If Fusilli was right—and he usually was—Sakamoto’s first wave would have overwhelmed the border worlds. By now, Shimonita, the most distant, ought to be sewn up; Albalii, Piedmont, Chichibu all gone days before, Republic forces trampled and their resources scavenged. The force from Kurhah would have deployed in two fronts, one to Shinonoi and the other, more massive front, hurtling for Halstead Station, where The Republic’s forces, squaring off with Sadachbia right across the border, would be most heavily fortified. And then the second wave would begin, but that’s where things got, in Jake-speak, about as reliable as a one-eyed dog in a meat locker.
And where was Sakamoto? Thinking, Jonathan sucked on his lower teeth. Yes, the good warlord might just want to be in on the fight for Biham, but the same could be said of Ancha. Ancha was a good place to start, anyway, with or without Sakamoto. Because Crawford’s there, yes, and the disconsolate little Chinn, too.
Sighing, Jonathan allowed his body to sag into a plush custom-made acceleration couch—another luxury Marcus’ money bought—and nearly groaned with pleasure as the automatic sensors set to work kneading his sore muscles. Ancha, it is.
As he drifted into sleep, Jonathan’s last thought was that Andre Crawford would be very happy to see him—would, indeed, be waking up to an unpleasant fact any day now. And if Crawford wasn’t quite awake just yet? Well—Jonathan’s lips curled in a dreamy smile—that would happen, and very soon.
22
Red Sands, Devil’s Lot, Klathandu IV
Benjamin Military District, Draconis Combine
29 May 3135
Another gust of wind sandblasted his stinging cheeks, and Tai-i Sagi figured another couple of days of these godforsaken sandstorms and he’d never have to worry about shaving again. He screwed a pair of digital binoculars to his goggles. Not that there was anything to see. He’d said so to the radar tech. Said the tech must have sand for brains. Oh, yeah, sure, they’d seen what looked like a JumpShip flicker in at the nadir jump point—but that was six days ago. Count ’em, days. Six.
Sagi let the binoculars fall to his chest, the neck strap trying to tug free, jouncing and bouncing in the wind. Here he was, virtually marooned in the armpit of the Inner Sphere, him and his trusty band of Unproductives. Okay, correction, his infantry and some equally miserable flyboys… not that he gave a shit one way or the other. When the HPGs went on the fritz, the first thought through Sagi’s mind was, Yeah, baby, bring it on, I wanna kill me a mess of Blues. But noooo. He was bait. Bait! What a laugh. By the time those eggheads in strategic command decide this Katana character’s not gonna bite, the fraccing war will be over, and all I’ll get is a skin peel.
The sand was only one problem. The company, another. Sagi threw a narrow look at the shujin standing to his right. The master sergeant was a head shorter and compact, with a well-muscled torso; a sliver of tattoo was just visible below the soldier’s right cuff.
“This… is… pointless!” Sagi had to scream even to hear himself.
The wind snatched away the shujin’s reply. “What?” Sagi cupped a hand to his ear. “What?”
“I said, anyone brave enough to come, unannounced, is likely to regard this storm as a golden opportunity. It hides their approach, and we cannot launch an intercept.”
Sagi was about to point out that, yeah, maybe yakuza did numb-nuts things like fly blind in a sandstorm, but he was damned tired waiting around for something to happen… and then something did.
At first, he wasn’t sure if what he’d heard was just the cry of a fresh gale, a high, grating whine that reminded Sagi of those pneumatic drills dentists used. Then, out of the coppery murk, the ghostly outlines of a fighter coalesced; a Lucifer, its thrusters spurting controlled bursts that bathed the sand clouds orange. Blown to a near standstill, the Lucifer seemed to hang above the sand a brief second and then the craft touched down with a decrescendo engine-whine. Sagi glimpsed a hazy emblem just below the cockpit: a near-copy of the Kurita dragon, but with four diamonds—three black, and one white.
Holy crap. Sagi was stunned. The Lucifer’s canopy levered up like the top half of a clamshell, and through his binoculars Sagi picked out two figures clambering onto the smaller wing to port. Must be redesigned to hold two, or one of them made like an accordion; Lucifers only hold one guy. Wind tugged their clothing. The lead figure—the pilot, Sagi assumed—resolved into the contours of a woman. Tall and willowy, she had a determined set to her stride, and now Sagi saw that she also sported the
twin swords of the samurai: not in the manner of a low-ranking bushi, but behind and to the side. The second figure, following two steps behind, moved with the great deliberateness of age. Both wore a hooded, ceremonial kariginus, though the woman’s had been modified to a more traditional cloak, clasped at the throat and open to allow her access to her weapons.
The two came to a halt a meter shy of Sagi and the shujin. Neither party said anything. Then, twitching her hood back, the woman reached behind and withdrew her katana with her right hand, using her index finger to secure the guard—a sign of trust. She held the sheathed weapon out in both hands, edge pointing toward her as custom dictated: a signal that she meant no harm.
“Good day, Tai-i,” she said, and even with a storm raging all around, Sagi heard each and every strong, steady word. “I am Katana Tormark, and this is my esteemed companion. Either we are your guests, or your prisoners. The next move is yours.”
23
On the outskirts of Siang, Hoshina, Biham
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
30 May 3135
They would attack from the west and take advantage of the setting sun; a small advantage to be sure but, considering the circumstances, Sir Reginald Eriksson would take whatever he could get and Fortune allowed. But as he guided his Orion into battle, he saw that the air ahead was already fading from azure blue to pewter gray as a late spring storm blew in from the east and ate up the sky.
Eriksson’s booted feet nudged his Orion’s bulk into a steady march upon a rock-strewn slope. The incline was forty-five degrees; his Orion, a centuries’ old relic that’d survived the Jihad, canted forward at its pelvis, lumbering over rock and scree with the dogged determination of a very weary man carrying a very heavy pack. Eriksson was hot and uncomfortable despite the fact that he’d stripped down to a simple cooling vest and skivvies. His old man’s bones felt each and every step of the old ’Mech as seventy-five tons of titanium steel ground rock and earth and sent up gray-white puffs of dust, like smoke. The Orion’s external mikes picked up the squealing groans and pops of small boulders exploding under the ’Mech’s weight. And it had been a long time, decades perhaps, since he’d donned a neurohelmet; the helmet chafed the tender skin of his neck and shoulders.
