by Victor Milán
That wasn't her problem. Her problem was finding somebody hidden in this teeming ratbox jungle whose name, description, and even gender she didn't know.
Going by way of Lainie and her people had borne fruit, although as yet Cassie had enjoyed little free time to devote to the problem of why the Tai-sa herself was acting so odd. Through her long-time bodyguard Moon, Lainie kept lines of communication open to Tosei-kai, the Voice of the East Syndicate, made up predominantly of ethnic Koreans. Tied to no territory, they tended to have contacts everywhere—in every city of every world of the Combine.
Cassie had them out looking for anything unusual. It was too broad an order to expect much to come of it, she knew, what with thousands of people flocking to Luthien for the Coordinator's Birthday, not to mention a gang war in progress. But she was trying roughly everything at once, feeling time's press. She had tried kicking the bushes to see what kind of animals she could stir up, and had roused some exotic ones indeed—and she probably owed Johnny Tchang an apology for using him as bait. But the Maskirovka leaping at her, or at Johnny anyway, was just too weird—it had I to be happenstance, not connected with the still-hypothetical Black Dragon menace.
So she discounted that, and kept pumping energy into the-system in a variety of ways. She had faith in chaos, especially in a society as order-obsessed as the Combine. A little turbulence could carry a great distance. Plotters would bei especially susceptible to feeling their comfort-zones encroached upon by spreading waves of chaos.
She didn't know if the tip from the Koreans that there was somebody interesting hiding out in the Tumbledown District was signal or noise. The tip was no more specific than that: there's somebody down there who doesn't belong. That meant somebody who was willing to balance the risks of being an outsider who didn't know the moves, and therefore was a designated target, against the fact that down there in the Tumbles no one who wasn't a paid informer said anything to the Man.
So she went diddy-bopping down the lane, with the sun peeking through the clouds after a brief sprinkle, and the moisture freshening the various organic stinks. She was dressed as a low-Worker girl, a menial laborer who was pushed hard to hang onto that much status, with baggy clothes and a cap pulled low over a face artfully smeared with grime, so that nobody would get to wondering why a near-Unproductive girl that pretty didn't just bag it and make a life for herself in the ukiyo pleasure houses.
Cassie stopped when she heard the noise, coming as if from a street or two over, but unmistakable. It wasn't the firecrackers beginning to be heard singly or in strings, let off in spasms of premature celebration. Nor was it conventional gunfire. It was lasers, not the full-throated thunderclap of the big 'Mech variety, but the snap of hand-weapons. More than one, by the sound.
Somebody was hunting somebody.
She started running for the sound. It made her very definitely a standout nail: everybody else on the street was heading purposefully in the exact opposite direction, no matter where they'd been headed a moment before.
Cassie had small faith in coincidences. She was hunting a standout nail. If someone else was doing this much pounding in the Tumbles, how big were the chances they were looking to drive in a different target?
She turned a corner. The street fell away in a long rutted slope. It was empty as a politician's promise.
That flash confirmed a strong suspicion: the people doing the hammering were official. If this were an escalation of the turf war between the Old Cat Yamaguchi and the interloper Inagawa, people would be shifting out of the line of fire, but at no pains to be making themselves this scarce. The almost miraculous evaporation of traffic in the area meant people very urgently wanted no part of what was going down here.
Besides, lasers were not common in civilian hands in the Draconis Combine. When the yaks wanted to shoot each other they favored pistols, SMGs, and the odd shotgun. Lasers generated too much heat, and not of the kind Mech-Warriors worried about.
It wasn't just any official Snakes shooting their way closer, either. The Friendly Persuaders were not permitted to use laser weapons. The Combine military sometimes got issued hand lasers, but unless the Clans had invaded again and Cassie just hadn't noticed, the DCMS had no reason to be rampaging through the slums of Imperial City.
She crossed the street. Instinct made her hunker down to peer back around the corner of a building. Two streets down a pair came into view, paralleling her course, male and female. The woman covered around the corner, the man crossed to the corner opposite, then covered from that side while the woman darted a few meters to the shelter of a light standard. They wore nondescript worker-class mufti, but their true nature was given away by the clear wraparound transpex face-shields they wore and the laser pistols they carried—and by their actions.
ISF. Cassie felt her blood temperature plunge. Whether these were DEST or the Internal Security Division, she couldn't tell. But the way they were equipped, what they were doing, and the way they did it indicated they could be no one else.
From somewhere off and to her right lasers were still blazing away. A fight was still in progress. A delaying action? No way to tell. The hunters were being cautious as well as methodical.
Cassie dashed on the way she'd been going, looked around the next corner. Another deserted street—deserted except for a single feminine figure in torn spacer's coveralls limping up the far side of the street. She paused, glanced back fearfully the way she had come and ducked into a three-quarters-finished apartment bloc.
Cassie raced for the entryway. The wounded woman had to be the one she sought. And she must be important somehow. While it was not unheard-of for the ISF to shoot up sections of Drac cities, even the capital of their whole empire, in broad daylight, they weren't going to do it the week before Coordinator's Birthday in pursuit of somebody who'd spray-painted a scurrilous haiku on a men's room wall in the Yoshiwara pleasure district.
She hit the side of the doorway with her snubby in both hands, then rolled around, extending the piece before her like a probe. The entryway was dark and cool and full of the smell of cement. That was one way Luthien differed from the Capellan world of Larsha: not even the corridors of the cheapest public housing stunk of piss and vomit.
Her quarry had left a trail of blood-droplets on the floor. Lasers sometimes partially cauterized wounds, but it wasn't a reliable effect. Because they flash-boiled the fluid in tissue, causing bursting damage, they tended to be messy. She followed the blood-trail quickly. Right now it was a help.
When the hounds caught up, it would be a lot less so.
To the left and right, empty doorways yawned like eyeholes in a skull. By the light that trailed down through catwalks overhead Cassie could see tiny cubicles as she passed. The trail led into one on the right. She tucked her pistol into her waistband in back, beneath her rude wind-breaker, and walked in.
A semiauto hideout pistol appeared centimeters from her nose. The firing-pin clicked on an empty chamber. Cassie froze.
"Oh! You're not one of them!" The wounded woman staggered backward into a supply-laden board propped between two sawhorses, upsetting it with a clatter that almost made Cassie's heart—already in her throat—explode.
"I'm ... sorry," the woman said, and let the little handgun fall from her hands.
Through swirling white dust Cassie saw that the woman was about her own age, mid to late twenties, probably plain, but her face was too transfigured with grime and blood and fear to tell. The right side of her jumpsuit was dyed maroon with blood, and smoldered.
Cassie couldn't judge the exact extent of the woman's injuries, but doubted the trickle of blood down her chin was from having bitten her tongue.
"I want to help you," Cassie said. Her own voice sounded distant and alien through the pulse-yammer in her ears.
"Is this a trick?" the woman asked. She came up against the far wall, slid down, leaving a broad trail of red.
"There's no time. If you don't trust me there's no hope."
"A
re you a loyal daughter of the Dragon?"
"Yes."
"I—" The woman coughed violently. Blood poured from her mouth. Cassie moved to help her, but the woman waved her off. "I am metsuke. Do you know what that means?"
"Yes."
"My verification code is 25 Chrysanthemum 6. Can you remember that?"
"25 Chrysanthemum 6."
"Good ... good." Her voice was weakening. "The Director must learn: there is treason—"
The room filled with ruby brilliance. A crack, a stench of ozone, and burned meat as the woman was slammed back against the wall by the jet effect of her own body fluids boiling away from a laser beam.
Cassie spun, her hand already behind her back. A blonde woman wearing a clear wraparound face-shield and a hands-free comm set stepped into the room, holding her laser pistol before her. She glanced at the fallen woman, whose chest was blown open. Then she turned toward Cassie.
What Cassie saw in her brown eyes was ... nothing. Not even regret: sorry, citizen, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the Dragon demands his sacrifices now and then.... Not the satisfaction of a job well done. Not anything. She was going to wipe Cassie off the face of Luthien, and she wasn't even in any hurry about it.
Cassie crossed her ankles and sat down. Her vision filled to overflowing with glare. A patch of cement exploded right over her head with a thunderclap sound, right where her sternum had been an eyeblink before, blasting fragments against the back of her head and neck.
She pulled her snubby out from behind her and thrust it to her arms' full extension, then shot the blonde woman in the stomach. Not even DEST body armor would let a person to take a hit at that range and not react; the other woman bent forward, laser slipping off line, left hand falling away from the grip. Cassie waited for her to straighten up, walked two more shots up her torso, then put the last two rounds through the woman's upper lip, just beneath the bulletproof visor. The bullets trashed the medulla and snipped the spinal cord, switching off her central nervous system. The blond operative went down like a length of rope allowed to hang from the hand and then dropped.
"You bitch!" Cassie hissed. "You God-damned bitch, you were going to kill me like a roach." Running on autopilot, she thumbed the catch on her hideout piece as she spoke, swung open the cylinder, pocketed the empties and reloaded her piece. The rage was like an explosion within her, white-hot and roiling.
She moved quickly to the body of the woman she'd followed here, and found her still breathing. Her eyes looked up at Cassie with more sorrow than pain. "Sadat," she whispered, and her head lolled to the side.
Cassie did not spend any time feeling for a pulse. The blonde operative's partner would be here within heartbeats. She looked around, saw the metsuke's fortuitously empty hideout pistol lying on the floor, pressed it into the dead woman's hand, then headed out the door.
In passing she kicked Blondie in the ribs. "Bitch."
The corridor was empty. From the front of the building Cassie could hear minute rat-sounds of stealthy movement. The blonde agent had outrun her backup. There was a back way. Cassie found it and was gone.
15
DropShip Garryowen, Takashi Kurita Memorial Spaceport
Imperial City, Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
25 June 3058
"Chu-sa Sakamoto?"
The tall man paused in the act of shouldering his kit bag. His black hair was cut in an unruly shock. Despite the scars that seamed his tan face, he looked younger than his age, which was late thirties. His eyes were blue and watchful.
"Hai," he said.
Like himself, the three men who had come into the Drop-Ship's debarkation area wore the simple Mech Warrior uniform. The two flanking were young men with very erect carriage and holstered sidearms. The central of the trio was a chow dog of a man with thick black eyebrows. He was the one who had spoken.
"I am Sho-sho Oda Hideyoshi," the chow dog said. "I command the Otomo. Your father has directed me to greet you in his name."
Franklin Sakamoto bowed. "I am honored to make your acquaintance, Sho-sho. Your reputation is formidable."
"As is yours. Your exploits against the Clans are not widely known to the Draconis Combine, but I have enjoyed the privilege of following the reports, from your days with the Somerset Strikers onward."
"I serve the Dragon as best I can, Hideyoshi-sama."
"Your father sends regrets that he could not meet you in person. However, he is sure you will understand that the press of imperial business does not permit."
"Indeed."
"Please permit my man to take your bag."
Sakamoto hesitated, then nodded. One of the armed Otomo stepped forward and shouldered the bag.
"Is it permitted to ask where we're going?" Sakamoto said.
"Of course. I've been instructed to escort you to a villa just outside the city, overlooking the Katsura River. A lovely location, quite secluded."
He gestured with a square hand covered with small white scars that attested to his long-time fondness for kenjutsu training with live steel. "If you please."
They started down the ramp. The sun was falling toward the hills west of the city. The light had that curious vibrancy that precedes dusk, which makes everything it touches seem to glow. A hovercar waited at the foot of the ramp.
"You will be comfortable at the villa, but you will be kept in seclusion for the next few days. Security."
Sakamoto frowned. "My father doesn't think I can take care of myself?"
Hideyoshi grinned. "There is no dishonor in being guarded, young man; otherwise my regiment would not exist. Few in the Combine would raise their hands against the Coordinator, and he is still a formidable warrior. But it has never occurred to him to disband the Otonio."
He stopped at the foot of the ramp. "You have renounced all claims of inheritance. Still you cannot change the fact of your parentage. You do not bear the name of Kurita, but you bear many of the responsibilities that attend the name. There are always malcontents, men who might seek to use you as a weapon against the Coordinator, and they are powerful. It would not be wise to expose yourself to them."
Franklin Sakamoto produced a lopsided smile. "Wisdom is among the Virtues of the Dragon. I am in your hands."
Oda Hideyoshi grinned again. "Good boy." He slapped Sakamoto on the shoulder. "Come on then. You won't regret it. We'll see you're properly entertained at the villa."
* * *
"The moons are very beautiful tonight, Theodore-sama," the old man said. He was short, big-bellied, bandy-legged, with a scruffy beard and a balding head. But his chest and shoulders were big and solid; there was vigor in his gravelly voice and a youthful glitter in his eyes.
"It's so, old friend," Theodore Kurita said. They stood by a boulder carved by the wind into a hunched shape that suggested a bird about to take flight. A Coordinator from long ago had personally selected it from the Kiyomori Mountains and had it transported here, to the Unity Palace garden. In the light of green Orientalis and blue Tsu Shima, it cast pink and orange shadows on the raked white sand.
The two men crossed the basalt flagstones set at calculated but irregular intervals designed to force strollers to walk deliberately and to encourage unhurried appreciation of the garden's subtle beauties.
For a time they shared the silence of friends who are comfortable with each other. An imported nightingale sang from a native trilander bush, whose thick leaves filled the air with an exotic aroma. At night, powered vehicles were banned from the vicinity of the Palace, and so the night was quiet save for wafts of music drifting up from the yellow-lighted apartments surrounding the tiered and flanged black mass of the Palace. The faraway noises blown from the streets outside were one of the few things able to penetrate the Palace's high walls, studded with both motion sensors and broken glass. From the distance came the pop of firecrackers lit off in early celebration.
Or of small-arms fire. Theodore glanced at his companion.
Hiroo Yamaguchi was the much-feared oyabun of Luthien's yakuza, and just as familiar with the sound of weapons fire in the streets.
As if sensing the trend of the Coordinator's thoughts and wishing to shift their course, the stocky man said, "I have a present for you, Tono."
"My birthday's not for another week, Yamaguchi-san."
Yamaguchi grunted. He was a man who always got great mileage from guttural sounds and rolls of his wrestler's shoulders. It wasn't that he was inarticulate, merely that he was eloquent with grunts and shrugs.
He held forth a black plastic box, small and flat. He pressed a button with a crack-nailed thumb. Minute yellow and green lights chased each other across the object. The soft sound of a clarinet flowed from it like smoke.
"Nan da yo!" Theodore exclaimed. "What the hell! It can't be."
The old man smiled and handed the player over. "What do you think it is?"
The Coordinator was turning the gift wonderingly over in his hands. "I think that's Les Hoffman and his Tragic Band, and I think they're playing 'April Morn.' "
"What's so impossible about that?"
"I didn't think any recordings existed any more. I've been looking for almost twenty years."
It was twenty-fifth century natural jazz, which had originated in the Lyran Commonwealth, although Hoffman hailed from Atreus in the Free Worlds League. Theodore had acquired the taste when a collection of the recordings fell his prize after he forced the Third Lyran Guards to retreat off Vega in December of 3028. Though he'd carried them with him—and added to the collection—for years, such treasures were not likely to survive the life of a soldier. This one was lost in a hasty withdrawal on Exeter when the Fox Hanse Davion took Theodore's bait and committed his Fourth Davion Guards to the world, thereby setting up the counterstroke called Operation Orochi during the War of 3039.
