Black dragon

by Victor Milán

  "Talk to me?"

  Cheeks tight, Lainie unfolded her long frame from the simulator. Standing full upright she looked the 183-centimeter-tall Kali right in the eye. The two had the simulations room of the Tai-sa Sean Robison Memorial Barracks to themselves this morning. Everyone else was busy drilling, polishing brass—or BattleMech armor—or otherwise preparing for the big event just three days away.

  "I'm fine," Lainie said.

  "I doubt that," Kali said. "You haven't been acting fine." Lainie frowned. "Look—"

  Kali held up a hand. "Now, hold your onto horses, Lane. I've been concerned about you for a while, but you know I reckon you've got a right to go to hell in your own sweet time. But I let some people sweet-talk me, so here I am to see if you'll open up to me about what the hell's been eating you."

  Lainie turned away. "It's nothing."

  "That's one thing it for-sure isn't. Your people are worrying themselves into premature hair-loss over the way you've been taking on. Now there's a rumor going around that you dumped Takura, and basically everybody thinks you're crazy, and you wouldn't say diddly to Cassie, so here I am."

  "There's no point in talking about it," Lainie said in a dead voice. "There's nothing anyone can do, least of all me."

  "That may be, and then again it may not; you got some mighty resourceful friends, not to mention unscrupulous at need. But whether any of us can help or not, don't you think you could see your way clear to openin' up? Hon, it seems like since practically the moment we got here, you've been doin' a wonderful impression of a woman about to explode. Can't you at least bleed a little excess pressure?"

  Lainie's broad shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. "Why not?" She looked meaningfully around. "But let's walk. Outside."

  * * *

  One thing Imperial City didn't lack was barracks. The Tai-sa Robison Barracks, named for an obscure hero from some centuries-old Combine war, lay south of the city, between the industrial outskirts and the spaceport: ranks of long, low blocky structures stuccoed the same tan as DCMS field uniforms huddled next to a 'Mech park and a dusty practice field. A light company of Panthers, Javelins, and Spiders was thumping through a series of evolutions that owed more to eighteenth-century close-order drill than thirty-first-century BattleMech combat, to be performed on vast Unity Square for the delectation of the Coordinator and various dignitaries in the reviewing stands being erected before the Palace. Somebody had a bad hip bearing, which was producing a thin annoying whine that rose and fell as the 'Mechs advanced and receded.

  It was windy and more than a bit cool beneath a high thin overcast. Lainie and Kali walked along the edge of the field farthest from the drilling BattleMechs, which fortuitously was not downwind of the big dust clouds they were kicking up. Lainie had her arms crossed under her breasts and a grim expression set into her slightly lupine features.

  "I know your friend Migaki is in charge of making up lies on behalf of an agency that spends a lot of its time assassinating people and attaching electrodes to their genitals and whatnot," Kali said, "but to separate his personal life from his professional life, he seems like a pretty nice fella. Represents a kind of marked step up from your usual double helping of muscle, hold the brains."

  "I know," said Lainie, who respected rather than resented her friend's straightforwardness. "That's why I dumped him."

  Kali gave her a raised eyebrow. "Now you're really going to have to tell me what's going on, so my curiosity doesn't kill me."

  Lainie paced a dozen steps in silence. "All right. But you can't tell anybody. Wakarimasu-ka?"

  "Well ... okay. But it's gonna be a little hard to give people an explanation."

  "You can give them all the explanation they want, after everything's over."

  "All right. You're locked on. Fire away."

  Lainie nodded her striking crest of hair. "You've heard the story of how I came to Masamori."

  "Once or twice. You were a yak princess for true, until your Daddy's right-hand man decided to grab for the gusto. A loyal retainer managed to get you off the surface before the hatchetmen found you. Eventually you washed up on Hachiman."

  "Where Kazuo Sumiyama, the oyabun, took me in, on condition I become his personal sex toy. Where I stayed until the Gunji no Kanrei offered me a way out of servitude."

  "I'm with you so far."'

  "My real name is Melisandra DuBonnet. My parents got caught up in the same fad for real and imaginary Classical names Cassie's parents did. My father's name was Seizo DuBonnet. He was chief oyabun of Benjamin."

  Kali stopped. "I think I see the direction this is starting to take—"

  "Yes," Lainie said. "The man who murdered my father and drove me to Hachiman was Benjamin Inagawa. Him I shall kill, at our Coordinator's birthday celebration. And then I shall commit seppuku, since Inagawa is an honored servant of Theodore-sama, and killing him will bring disgrace upon the Coordinator."

  Kali pursed her lips and blew out a long breath. "That's pretty comprehensive."

  "You can see why I couldn't tell my people anything of this. Nor Cassie."

  "Yeah. If you told one of your boys or girls, they'd pop Inagawa themselves and take the heat."

  "Right. And while Cassie's sense of duty is absolute, she has no concept of honor. She'd no doubt arrange some kind of accident for Inagawa. And ninkyo—our yakuza code of honor, which binds us as sternly as bushido binds the samurai—requires that Inagawa die by my hand and none other. 'A man may not rest under the same sky that shelters his father's murderer,' as Confucius says."

  For an indeterminate time Kali stood, her own arms folded now, just looking at her friend, while the wind whistled and the drilling 'Mechs thumped and clanked and whined across the field.

  "I tell you this," Lainie said, "because you do have a code of honor. You won't interfere."

  "Yeah," Kali said. "You got me pinned down pretty well, here, Lane. So Migaki—"

  "Treats me better than any man ever has. And that's why I—I can't—" She turned quickly away.

  "Maybe we can think of something," Kali said.

  Lainie lifted her head to the wind. "It isn't like you to kid yourself, Kali-chan."

  "I reckon not."

  More silence passed. Kali reached out to squeeze her friend's shoulder from behind. Then she walked away across the field, a tall solitary figure, dressed in black.

  * * *

  "Cassie!" cried a voice that had been familiar to her long before she met its owner, as she strode across the windswept Eiga-toshi grounds.

  Her first reaction was a scowl. She was in an eerie mood, with undertones of sheer viciousness. She was by no means happy to be put in the position of having to cooperate with the likes of Subhash Indrahar, although the rapid approach of whatever zero hour was associated with Teddy's birthday left her no choice. Worse was the experience of having been waylaid by the Sons of the Dragon, stunned and captured like an exotic animal. On one level she could understand why Subhash found it necessary to put her to the test: a desire to learn for himself just how capable she was before deciding what use he might best put her to, not to mention plain primate curiosity.

  It didn't lessen her sense of being violated.

  Still, recalling Kali's patient tutoring in the arts of being human, she forced herself to focus on the fact that it wasn't Johnny's fault. He had been nice to her. People like that weren't in long supply.

  She forced something like a smile and an abstracted wave. "Johnny."

  He was wearing Chinese slippers and black silk pants. His lean and magnificent torso was sheened with sweat, his hair tousled; he held a towel in one hand. Apparently he had just come from either shooting a fight scene or rehearsing for one.

  He trotted toward her. "I need to talk to you."

  "Not now," she said. "Business."

  "But—"

  "The other night was really lovely," she said, "But I have to go. Bye."

  She left him standing there, looking after her like an abandoned puppy.
He was already forgotten. Instead, she was thinking that the Sons of the Dragon charged with smuggling her out of the top-secret ISF headquarters— which everybody in the Inner Sphere knew lay beneath Unity Palace—had taken their own sweet time about it.

  She was also feeling relief that they'd been content to blindfold her, and take her word that she wouldn't try to sneak a peek. If they'd restrained her ... she didn't think she could have taken that.

  She found Don Carlos and Father Doctor Bob together in a commissary of the main dorm the 'lleros had been assigned. Normally Don Carlos would have been conferring with Dolores Gallegos about the state of the regiment at this hour of the morning, but Red was at Luthien Armor Works in Jirushi City southeast of town again today, debriefing them on her experiences fighting in their new O-Bakemono 'Mech on Towne.

  "I'm glad you're both here," Cassie said without ceremony as she blew in the door. "There's a lot to talk about."

  "There certainly is," the Jesuit said, looking worried.

  That stopped her in her tracks. She couldn't be the reason the regimental commander and his intelligence chief were looking like a pair of mice who thought they might smell a ferret. Being gone overnight without prior notice was about as unusual for her as it was for an alley cat. "What?" she demanded.

  "Mercedes Saavedra has been kidnapped," Garcia said. "By one of the youth gangs, the deg, deki-something—I'm sorry, but I don't have your facility with the language."

  "Dekigoro-zoku," Cassie said.

  "That's it. Several of them attacked the women she was with in a shop downtown. While they were occupied fighting the young men off, someone else dragged her out of a changing booth in the back."

  "Many of our people have gone into Imperial City to try to find her," Don Carlos said gravely. "We have just heard from the authorities that there has been trouble."

  "Apparently some Caballeros found some of the, ah, the gangs," Garcia explained. "There have been clashes. We've had several people hurt. And, I regret to say, one killed."

  "Lonnie Padilla," Don Carlos said, in a tone a grieving father might use. He took the loss of any member of the regiment personally. "One of Richard Gallegos' people."

  Cassie turned, squeezed her eyes shut, pounded a fist against her thigh. Damn! Everything seemed to be slipping hopelessly out of control.

  "Call them back," she said.

  "I beg your pardon?" Father Garcia asked, a quizzical expression on his face.

  "You've got to call everybody back! Get them here inside the compound, make them stay put."

  "Now, Lieutenant," the Colonel said, "you must understand how bad they want to get Misty back—"

  "They're not going to get her back. This is Luthien, for Mary's sake! And there are maybe five people in the regiment who understand more Japanese than 'yes,' 'no,' and 'where's the whorehouse?' "

  "Surely you overstate the case, Cassiopeia," Garcia said in his most pedantic voice. "The Combine culture is still fairly alien to most of us, but after all, the Seventeenth spent over a year on Hachiman—"

  "And I've been with the Caballeros eleven years, and you're right this minute acting as if I don't know how you damned South westerners behave! I know Tak Migaki and everybody has been making very nice with us since we're the special guests of the Coordinator and all, but no matter how polite and smiley-faced Dracs may act, they're even more insular and paranoid than you are. And compared to Luthien, Hachiman is Solaris. This is not an open society we're dealing with on this planet."

  She made herself pause to take a deep breath and try to control her surge of emotions. "Our people are not going to get Misty back by swarming over Impy City punching everybody with bad hair. They're only going to get in more trouble than they maybe have already. This is not a real good time for gaijin to be kicking up a big fuss in public, even if they are Teddy's guests."

  The two men looked at each other. Neither was used to seeing their top scout so agitated.

  "Tienes razon," Don Carlos said. "You're right. I'll call them back at once."

  Cassie took a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh, and sat down at a table.

  "You looked as if you had important news, too," Garcia said gently.

  She nodded. "It's been a busy night. You heard about the dust-up last night, down by the riverfront?"

  "We heard distant rumbling sounds, and saw flashes in the sky above the city," Don Carlos said. "It almost seemed as if a 'Mech battle was taking place."

  "One was. Benjamin Inagawa was taking down the Old Cat, Yamaguchi. Apparently both sides brought Battle-Mechs to the fandango. And I wound up sleeping through the whole thing." Succinctly she told them of what had gone on the night before.

  "And this Smiling One," Don Carlos said, "does he now believe that the Black Dragons plan some deviltry?"

  "I think he's getting there. Seems like somebody's been quietly losing any reports the ISF might turn up to indicate, that Kokuryu-fcai is still big, bad, and on the prowl. Which in itself is kind of worrying."

  "It's certainly not encouraging," Garcia said, "considered alongside the evidence you encountered of possible treachery within the Internal Security Force. The question is, how quickly can Indrahar adjust his pattern of thinking to this new information? That's not easy for most people to do, especially at an advanced age."

  "Subhash is old and crippled," Cassie said, "but only in the body. If he gets proof of a Black Dragon plot—or somebody dirty inside ISF—he'll come around like that. But he's not going to take my word for it."

  "Do you think there's any connection between the abduction of Misty Saavedra and the Black Dragon Society?"

  "No. There's some pretty strange bedfellows in Kokuryu-kai: the old-line yaks, industrialists, reactionaries in the DCMS, groups that normally would not mix in any combination you could cook up. But them and the dekigoro-zoku—"

  She held up her hands vertically before her, passed the left in front of the right, then right in front of left. "—They don't join up at all. It's like they're on whole different planets."

  "But these young men—they're gangsters too, street criminals," Don Carlos said. "Aren't they the same thing as the yakuza?"

  "Not at all, Don Carlos. The yaks are what you said, street criminals, down and dirty, no matter what kinds of airs they give themselves. The 'sudden-impulse tribe,' the dekigoro-zoku, they're rich kids out for a thrill. The yaks are beneath their contempt. And to the yakuza, at best they're spoiled dilettantes, at worst they're the sort of noisy nuisances and rivals the yakuza usually take good community-conscious pride in removing from the gene pool, only in this case the yaks can't touch them unless they step way over the line. For the dekigoro-zoku and the tattoo boys to be working together would be like, oh, us working with the Clans."

  She felt a stab in her consciousness, to the effect that, in the course of working for Uncle Chandy, the Caballeros had worked with the Clans, or at least with Clanners, both on Hachiman and Towne. She dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

  "I believe what you say," Don Carlos said. "You seldom lead us astray. But now there is something you must do."

  "Which is?"

  "I want you to lay aside your concern about the Black Dragons and concentrate on finding Lieutenant Saavedra."

  "But, Colonel! If the Dragons are up to something, we're targeted for sure. And the celebration's only three days away. I don't have time to hunt for Misty!"

  "Might it not simply be the case that these Black Dragons have decided to quit pretending and strike directly at the source of their grievances? Maybe they've given over their talk of 'bad advisors,' and are preparing to move against the Coordinator himself."

  "But we've drawn too much of their blood for them to leave us out of anything nasty they have up their sleeves. And don't forget Theodore is Uncle Chandy's cousin, not to mention maybe the one hope the Inner Sphere has of standing off the Clans when they finally decide to come crashing over the truce line."

  "Indeed, Theodore Kurita is our employe
r's blood relation, and perhaps the Inner Sphere needs him badly. Yet when all is said he's a culebra. Misty is one of us. Help us find her, Cassie."

  Like a good officer, Don Carlos seldom ordered, but he did command. Cassie screwed up her cheeks as if that might somehow dam her tear-ducts.

  I'Yes, Don Carlos," she said. "I'll do my best."

  21

  Unity Palace, Imperial City

  Luthien

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  27 June 3058

  "You look tired, Theodore," Chandrasekhar Kurita said. "What's troubling your sleep? Surely not a trifle like your upcoming celebration?"

  Theodore Kurita allowed himself a wry half-smile. Uncle Chandy was indulging in his own form of haragei, implying that even the stringent demands of preparing for the Coordinator's Birthday paled beside his cousin's past accomplishments. How very much like Chandy, he thought, to contrive to build me up without resorting to flattery. With emphasis on contrive, he added to himself.

  His long and still-athletic frame was sprawled on a contoured recliner, half chair and half sofa, set in a small recreational chamber in the upper floors of the immense Palace. A large holostage pedestal stood dark by one shoji-screened wall. By another was a billiard table, which also served as the platform for a special holographic projection unit that enabled one to fight 'Mech-unit actions at various scales across three-dimensional terrain: half toy, half serious simulator. The single wall of exposed teak was hung with paintings by masters from ancient Japan: an ink painting of a bird by eccentric sword-saint Musashi; a triptych representing the Chinese deity Shoki the Demon-Queller by Tokugawa court artist Kano Tsunenobu; two originals from Hokusai's Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji; an ink painting likewise by Hokusai—the most eccentric of artists, devotee of the Floating World, and originator of the manga style—depicting an octopus ravaging a human fisher-girl. The last was a gift to Theodore from his wife, Kagoshima Prefecture commander Tomoe Sakade, reflecting an aspect of their relationship well-hidden from most of the Combine. There were also traditional hand-bound books and scrolls, as well as a more conventional flatscreen computer with attendant holodisplay.