by Victor Milán
"Hijo de la chingada! What's Theodore going to do?"
"Nothing. His agreement with seimeiyoshi-rengo precludes interference in the gangs' internal affairs, unless some treason against the Combine is involved. While murdering Yamaguchi during the Coordinator's Birthday truce constitutes a breach of yakuza etiquette—what they call jingi, 'righteousness'—it still falls within the scope of business as usual. Tradition binds even the Coordinator's hands."
"But this proves—"
"This proves that, in all likelihood, the activities of Inagawa and his associates have been geared toward seizing the lucrative and powerful position of oyabun of Luthien, and perhaps all of Pesht Military District. Indeed, he may aspire to become oyabun of all oyabun in the Draconis Combine."
"You'd let him do that?"
Subhash spread age-spotted hands. "I suspect he lacks the necessary character to be allowed to assume such an important role. Nonetheless, unless he aspired to more than that— unless he somehow harbored notions of seizing the Coordinatorship, it would not be my place to initiate action. In such a case the Coordinator might well see fit to order ISF to take action, but I cannot presume to predict."
Cassie knew perfectly well that Subhash Indrahar would presume whatever he damned well pleased. She also understood it was his way of saying he wasn't going to cop to anything more.
"What about what the metsuke told me?" she asked. "What about 'sadat?' "
Subhash typed a query into his noteputer. "A search of our secured databases as well as publicly available information produces some 2031 matches, including what appear to be over three hundred persons of that name, mostly Arkab, serving in the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery. I agree that it must be significant, possibly vital. Yet without further information I'm frankly uncertain where it may lead us."
"It has something to do with the Black Dragons. They have a plot. I know it."
"You know no such thing. You surmise. I am not without respect for your hunches, based on your past performance, but I'm not about to override my own judgements on no firmer basis."
"But it can't just be coincidental—"
"Young woman, I know that in the popular entertainment media, a spymaster such as myself is not supposed to believe in coincidence. I'm afraid I must admit that I do, although I try never to assume coincidence—and I'm not in this instance. But consider: this is Luthien. Moreover, the Coordinator's Birthday is three days hence. ISF has identified agents of all four Great Houses—regarding Steiner and Davion as having once again become separate entities—not to mention the Free Rasalhague Republic, the Taurian Concordat, the Magistracy of Canopus, the Outworlds Alliance, at least three self-proclaimed statelets from within the Chaos March, and both ComStar and Word of Blake. We have identified representatives from the Liao Triads and half a dozen other interstellar criminal organizations centered outside of Combine space. Then there are members of fringe groups far more obscure, and in many cases more openly subversive, than Kokuryu-kai. Finally, there are at least three hundred persons of unknown affiliation but suspicious demeanor, some of whom, I might as well admit, are being detained in this very facility at this moment, under far less congenial circumstances than the ones in which you find yourself.
"These are merely the potential spies and conspirators of whom we know. And I have only mentioned those who have arrived within the past month. The Coordinator's Birthday draws intrigue the way honey draws flies. Even laying aside yakuza activities, which might be entirely explained by sheer ambitious greed, we find on Luthien at the moment an environment in which coincidence is not only possible but inevitable, and inevitably abundant. To be candid, I'm surprised a great many more people haven't been turning up dead in half-constructed apartment blocs."
"Are you willing to bet the Coordinator's life on that?"
Subhash stared at her for a long moment. "If you were not so perceptive, Lieutenant Suthorn, it would be easy to become very angry with you indeed. No, I am not willing to bet the Coordinator's life on your being mistaken. You have bested us, and you have also tendered us invaluable assistance. But I need more than what you've given me."
"Indrahar-sama, I don't like secret cops. I don't like ISF.
I don't particularly like you, since you had your Ninja Boys and Girls chase me through a junkyard, swing swords at me, and zap me with a stun gun and drug me so that my head's still ringing like a temple bell. But I don't have anything more to tell you. I won't hold back from you on this. As far as I'm concerned, we're on the same side."
"Very well. I, in turn, believe you. But tell me this: you are an expatriate. You've fought the Dragon with your mercenary friends. Why are you so concerned for the welfare of Theodore Kurita?"
"I don't have much use for Chancellors, or Captain-Generals, or Princes or Archons or Coordinators, nothing like that. But Teddy—'scuse it, Theodore—seems a pretty decent type for a dictator. More than that, it seems like he's the only person in the Inner Sphere who hasn't forgotten all about the Clans. And if he goes down, I don't think there's anything to keep the Mudheads—that's what we call the Clanners, what the Caballeros call them—from rolling right over us. And I hate the Clans worse than anything, even BattleMechs.
"Plus the Black Dragons have it in for us, for Uncle Chandy and the Caballeros. We laid a lot of hurt on them. They're looking to pay us back. I think whatever's going on now ties up with that. They've made it personal. They mean to take us down. And whatever threatens mi familia—I destroy."
"I understand." Subhash's gaze remained steady. "Just see that you don't take this so personally that you start seeing threats where none exist."
"I don't make that kind of mistake."
"I, too, have thought that way, at various stages of my career," Subhash Indrahar said. "I was always mistaken."
Cassie shrugged.
"Will you work with me?" Subhash asked.
Cassie hesitated. She already felt strange about agreeing to cooperate with McCartney, the homicide cop, and here was the most notorious secret policeman in the galaxy asking for her help. But she was telling the truth when she said that—in this—they were on the same side. And she would do anything to protect her familia.
It also seemed to her, on some level, that the man before her—so weak of body, so manifestly strong of mind and spirit—was very vulnerable, in a way she could not define. She rejected that in a wave of self-contempt: I'm just trying to rationalize a decision I've already made.
"Yes," she said. "On this."
"That's acceptable. You will communicate directly with me, and no one else in ISF. Needless to say, you are to tell nobody, inside ISF or out, of this meeting, nor that you are working with me." He gave her a code sequence to use to get in touch with him.
"Now you may go. Once outside this room you will be blindfolded and taken to a location of your choosing. There your weapons will be returned to you and you will be released. Do you agree?"
"I don't like being blindfolded," she said. "But I guess if I don't agree, I won't leave here at all? Except maybe through a chimney."
Subhash Indrahar smiled. "As I noted before, you are very perceptive."
"All right," she said. "But I want something."
Subhash looked surprised. It might have been a sham. It might not. "What?"
"One of your DEST monkey suits. Your organization's compromised, somehow, by somebody. Whether you're ready to admit it or not. And I'm tired of only the bad guys having fancy flexible body armor and eyes in the back of their heads. If I'm going to run the risk of hassling with DEST commandos who aren 't in your hand-picked bodyguard, I want a more level playing field."
"I shall take it under advisement. Sayonara."
She bowed and started out. "Senior Lieutenant Suthorn," he said.
At the door she stopped. "Yes?"
"Please do not mention anything about this to my adoptive son, should you have communication with him." She felt cold all over. "You don't think-—"
"No. I do
not. But I don't want you telling him." She shrugged. "Then I won't." She left.
* * *
Subhash Indrahar sat for a time in the gloom gazing past the screen of his noteputer. He was meditating, something he had learned to do in any environment or posture, long before he was confined to this hated wheelchair.
After a time he returned to his surroundings. Both his spirit and his intellect, freed from the bonds of his interfering self, had come to several conclusions.
He left the room, rolling through the corridors of ISF headquarters, buried deep beneath Unity Palace. He returned to his own modest office.
There he initiated several security procedures, unknown to anyone else in ISF including his adoptive son, which would ensure he was not under covert surveillance. Satisfied, he activated his own computer terminal and performed a similar, secret routine. Even with the most powerful intelligence and counterintelligence system in the Inner Sphere at his command, he still made sure to maintain his own very private resources.
Finally, he prepared a message to an agent on Dieron— another of his secret personal assets. It would be broken down into a number of discrete packets that would be sent out as undetectable riders to other messages during the hourly feed from the special hyperpulse generator Com-Star maintained for the ISF. The packets would be retransmitted to a world far removed from either Dieron or the Black Pearl, reassembled, and fqrwarded to its intended recipient, concealed in an apparently innocuous message from a friend, and encrypted by a scheme that even Star League computers would take an estimated five trillion years to break. The message instructed the operative to send a particular report back to Luthien through standard ISF intelligence channels. The report should turn up on the headquarters computer system within twenty-four hours.
Then he settled back to plot his next move. Because that very peculiar young woman was right: something was very wrong inside the Internal Security Force. And no matter how readily he had brushed aside Cassie's contention that coincidence could not be involved, he knew deep down that, if there was treason within ISF, the Coordinator's life was in grave danger.
He—and his unpredictable young ally—had three days to find out exactly what that danger was.
19
Imperial City, Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
27 June 3058
"What did you say?" Takura Migaki asked the face on the tiny vidscreen of the phone in the cockpit of the converted Warrior H-7 attack helicopter he piloted above the mock 'Mech battlefield outside Eiga-toshi. Normally there was nothing he liked better than orchestrating—commanding— a battle scene from his aircraft—a luxury no real commander could share, since no VTOL could afford to loiter over a modern battlefield at an altitude low enough to see what was going on. But the day's whole savor had just gone flat.
"I said I don't want to see you any more," Lainie Shimazu told him. Her face was unusually pale, causing her freckles to stand out in stark contrast to her skin, and there were dark hollows beneath her eyes, which at the moment were a dull amber shade he had never seen them before.
The chopper bucked, causing muffled outcries from the camera crews in the passenger compartment behind. The Warrior had a tail-rotor mounted parallel to the longitudinal axis, which meant that instead of turning the beast sideways, its torque made the helicopter want to roll, a tendency normally counteracted by the contrarotating main blades without too much attention from the pilot. But, distracted, he hadn't been paying sufficient attention to the stick, allowing the craft to drift broadside to the stiff east morning wind anyway. Silently he cursed himself as he turned the ducted tail back to the breeze. He was a proficient VTOL pilot, having served his DCMS time in attack helos; and even in the thirty-first century, helicopters were unforgiving bitches that tended to repay carelessness with flaming death. He had no excuse for sloppy flying. "But why?" he demanded.
The red-haired Mech Warrior shrugged. "Let's just say ... there's not much future in it. Let it go at that, okay?"
Migaki shook his head. Below him he saw a Star of AgroMechs in their elaborate plastic superstructures, led by a false Hankyu, wandering near a stream, well away from where they were supposed to be. Unless they got back on course in short order they would strike the flank of a force of Caballero 'Mechs—doing duty as DCMS machines— who were supposed to be flanking them.
He switched circuits, barked quick orders at the stunt drivers in the AgroMechs, then returned to Lainie.
"I can't," he said. "You—"
He stopped. He was a man who relished a good irony, and here was a big steaming bowl of them. He was charged with promulgating traditional Combine virtues, including female passivity and deference to males, yet in private he longed to meet a woman who had the strength of character and will to match any man—and in Lainie had found one. He was usually glib with women, but with Lainie he could speak for hours without having to be glib, could say things that mattered to him, and listen to her in turn. And yet now he could not find the words to say what he truly meant.
"You've come to mean a lot to me," he said, and it could not possibly have sdunded more lame in her ears than in his. "I-if there's something wrong, tell me about it. I can help, I'm certain of it."
"You're a man who doesn't like to make mistakes," she told him. "Caring about me is one. Take a last bit of friendly advice, Tak: get over it."
"Wait—" he burst out. But the screen was black.
* * *
"Excuse me, Tono," the aide said, dropping to his knees and bowing his head to the tatami-covered floor of the room in which Theodore Kurita sat, brush in hand, trying to compose a haiku to be recited to honor his troops on his birthday. "You have a visitor."
Theodore frowned. He had been inspired, about to attack the blank sheet of rice-paper before him with great makoto—"sincerity," the quality most avidly sought after by poets and calligraphers, both of which he was being at the moment. Intrusion had burst the moment like a soap-bubble.
Yet he would not permit himself to be the sort of despot who would abuse an underling for doing his duty. "Who is it?"
"The industrialist Benjamin Inagawa, Tono. He says you will understand what it concerns."
Theodore became a statue of ice. "Bring him," he said. "Provide him an armed Otomo escort."
In a few moments here came Inagawa—an "industrialist," as Palace euphemism had it—dressed in his usual subdued-gangster style, with a dark blue suit over a maroon shirt and a blue silk tie with a knot as big as a kitten's head. He had removed his shoes; his socks were dark blue with dark green lozenges outlined in yellow on them. He carried a boxwood case under one arm, its blond natural color protected by clear lacquer. Two Otomo troopers in ceremonial-guard armor followed, trying not to trot to keep pace with his brisk stride.
At the chamber door the yakuza chieftain dropped to his knees, bent his forehead to the mat. "My lord, I was the author of an unfortunate but unavoidable disturbance last night," he said. "I have come to apologize for disturbing your repose, and to make amends."
"Indeed," Theodore said. He hoped he did not look as tired as he felt. He had slept poorly again last night, once he'd indeed managed to get to sleep. That dream of his father again....
"Just so, Lord," Inagawa replied. "I wish to prove myself your humble servant. Please grant me this favor."
"Proceed."
Inagawa entered the chamber, knelt before Theodore, who had not moved since the yakuza was announced, and who indeed felt as if he might never move again. Opening the case, Inagawa removed a white towel, which he spread on the that between the two. Then he wrapped his left hand in a bandage with great care, making sure to draw it as tight as possible. Finally he drew fourth a tanto from the case and unsheathed it.
The Otomo guards stiffened. It was permitted for a visitor of Inagawa's status to bear a dagger into the Coordinator's presence. Drawing it was another matter, and forbidden at formal audiences, which this decidedly was not. Seeing the
ir lord show no reaction, the guards did not move, but maintained alert stances.
Inagawa looked up at Theodore and smiled. Then he pressed his big blunt-fingered left hand hard on the towel and severed his little finger with a stroke of the tanto.
Theodore felt his cheeks burn. Yubitsume. As a gesture of contrition and submission it was difficult to ignore or discount. Nonetheless Inagawa was treating him, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, as if he were a common criminal, a gang lord. Under the odd modus vivendi Theodore observed with seimeiyoshi-rengo, the finger-cutting was permissible; but seldom in his life, and almost never since his father died, had Theodore Kurita so longed to strike another man dead on the spot.
Benjamin Inagawa touched his forehead to the tatami once more. When he straightened Theodore saw his brow was sheened with a light coat of sweat. Other than that, the amputation of his finger might as well have been something happening on the holovid.
The burly oyabun finished bandaging his wounded hand, which had scarcely bled. "I thank the Tono" he said, and withdrew. The Otomo guards followed.
Theodore looked down. He had held his brush in precisely the same position the entire time since Inagawa's arrival was announced. Ink had dripped from it, forming a giant blot on the once-pristine paper.
With savage emphasis Theodore threw down the brush. He called for an attendant.
* * *
Hiraoke Toyama wore an even more sour expression than usual on his corpse-like face when Inagawa slid into the passenger seat of the limousine beside him. "Whatever possessed you to do such a foolish thing?" he demanded querulously, gesturing at the bandage, now blood-soaked, which covered his fellow oyabun's hand.
Inagawa signaled for the driver to proceed from the parking lot provided for important visitors to the Palace, on whose grounds no vehicles were permitted. He held out his injured hand for an aide who sat on the seats facing him and Toyama to bandage further.
