Dragon Rising

by Ilsa J. Bick

  After all these months of planning and what her people had endured, Dieron was hollow and meaningless, a planet that fell with scarcely a shot. The Republic had given it to them, discarding the planet the way you threw out an apple core. And then The Republic had crushed Theodore and his men and their ship.

  There was only one bit of irony. If Theodore had been as ill as she suspected, maybe a warrior’s death was a merciful swift end.

  Her eyes drifted over the assembled crowd, divided into their many camps: Bhatia, of course, to the coordinator’s right and just a shade closer to the dais than anyone else. Saito and Toranaga were next, each with his command staff. Toranaga stood ramrod straight, his attention unwavering . . . but she’d wager his mind was running circles, too, wondering how to turn this to his advantage. After all, Yori Kurita was his protégée, and he her patron. Toranaga must be ecstatic, even though the Kitten was absent, very pointedly left behind, and to hell with Yori’s pedigree. After that disaster, Katana would never trust her again. Oh, Yori had resisted, but Katana had been firm. “I am tai-shu, and it is my place to be there.” She’d spiked Yori with a look that flung daggers. “You might have right by blood, but Theodore was my friend. My grief is personal, and it trumps you and whatever you want to call yourself every damn time.” Yori hadn’t spoken or argued. Her battered and bruised face had been stony, but Katana had seen that creeping flush staining her neck.

  One thing is sure: She is a cat, always landing on her feet. But watch your back, little Kitten. These dragons, including your patron, have teeth.

  And what about her people? Surely, they felt the loss most keenly. Some, like Andre Crawford, her anchor and good right hand, had fought alongside Theodore, not only out of duty but for honor. She knew that Parks would’ve wished to be here along with all her commanders, but there was still much to do in her fledgling district, and so only Crawford and a contingent of O5P—including Fusilli and that new agent, Jonathan—had preceded her the day before, as had all the security personnel attached to the different warlords, to check out the various venues to their satisfaction.

  Of the rest, Fusilli worried her. She now studied him, noted his posture, the way his shoulders sagged a bit and how the corners of his mouth were grimmer. Fusilli was . . . sad, as if he’d passed through some trial by fire of the soul, and she felt a new prickle of sympathy for him. Maybe that was good.

  Then she frowned. Leaning toward Crawford, she murmured, “Where is Jonathan?”

  “Jonathan?” A wrinkle creased the space above Crawford’s nose. “He ought to be . . .” Crawford broke off, turning to look behind them. Katana now heard it, too: some sort of scuffle and commotion to their rear. Crawford stared, mouth agape. “What the hell?”

  * * *

  Vincent saw that something was wrong before he heard anything. From the dais, he had an excellent view of a pair of massive burnished walnut doors with brass hinges. These now swung open, and a palace guard began bullying his way through the crowd. In his grief, Vincent wasn’t astonished so much as outraged. How dare anyone interrupt? Anger, something he rarely acknowledged, fired his gut. If he’d a katana in hand, he’d have gladly lopped off the guard’s head with a single stroke.

  Furious, his blood boiling, Vincent did the unthinkable. He left the dais. He strode forward, ignoring Bhatia who scrambled after, and he shouted, “What is the meaning of this outrage? How dare you . . . ?”

  “Tono!” The guard flung himself to the floor in a bow. “Forgive me, but your son, Tono, your son!”

  The words hammered his brain. He reeled, his rage evaporating to be replaced by stunned amazement. Theodore, alive? How can this be, how can . . . ? His thoughts staggered to a halt as he spied a tangled knot of guards advancing through the crowd. The guards hustled some people forward, and that brief flicker of hope guttered, for Vincent now saw them clearly: a trio of monks in glossy black robes—and one he recognized instantly.

  Ryuhiko, here . . .

  “Father! Tono!” Ryuhiko cried. He was sobbing, and his face gleamed with tears. Breaking free of the escort, he half-shuffled, half-stumbled toward his father. “Father, I’ve brought you something, I’ve . . .” He broke off as the guard who’d prostrated himself leapt to his feet, his hand moving to the butt of a laser pistol.

  “STOP!” Vincent roared. “Who dares draw a weapon against my son?” He swept forward through a crowd now stunned to silence. “My son,” Vincent said, catching Ryuhiko by the elbows. His son towered over him, and how much he had changed! How strong he was, and how bronzed his skin, like a god! “My son, I am so glad you have come.”

  “I brought you a gift,” Ryuhiko said, his voice hitching between sobs. He proffered the box. “I worked on it very hard. I made it especially for Theodore, for his birthday.”

  His son’s face blurred in his vision, broke apart. “My son,” he said, “how I have mistreated you, how I’ve let you down, and yet I pledge this from my heart. Anata-wa kuso desu.”

  Something he’d never have imagined he would own: his love for his son. Clasping the man who was his child to his breast, Vincent bowed his head and wept.

  * * *

  Watching the spectacle unfold, Wahab Fusilli was stunned. Ever since his return, he’d felt unreal and strangely adrift. Not in the sense of being in between camps so much as wondering where he fit in at all. Katana’s gratitude had been genuine, and he thought he saw that she understood exactly what he’d lost. Absurd, of course; Katana was not a mind reader. Coming here, he also knew that Bhatia might task him. Yet, for the very first time, Fusilli thought he might not obey.

  Now, looking at the embrace of a father and son—hearing the coordinator’s avowal of love—pain’s claw ripped Fusilli’s heart, and his throat convulsed in a sob he struggled to suppress. Only one person had loved him that much, and he had killed her: not because anyone made him or even because he thought that death was what Dasha really had wanted all along, but because he knew that it was the right thing to do.

  This could be home. His eyes burned, and he blinked back tears. This could be what it feels like to belong.

  Without realizing it, he moved a little closer to Crawford and Katana.

  * * *

  As if jerking awake from a long sleep, the crowd came alive. The hall filled with the buzz of voices and muffled exclamations. Bhatia had followed the coordinator from his dais and stood now barely a meter away from father and son. Yet Katana saw that, for once, Bhatia looked absolutely stunned, his mouth gaping like that of a beached fish.

  So, clearly, Bhatia hadn’t known Ryuhiko was coming. Someone else arranged for him to appear here, now, taking everyone—including Bhatia—by surprise. But who?

  For whatever reason, or perhaps because her subconscious knew before her conscious mind, her eyes drifted . . . and came to rest on Toranaga. And she saw him do a most peculiar thing. As Ryuhiko and Vincent fell into each other’s arms, Toranaga edged back. Not just a respectful step or two as they all had done, but several paces, fading back into the crowd—and then she saw his head turn toward the entrance. She followed his gaze and saw that the monks had allowed themselves to be pushed back by the guards. Indeed, they were backing for the door.

  Oh, God, no . . . Ryuhiko, that box!

  “Tono!” Katana surged forward. “Tono, look out!”

  * * *

  Bhatia was not a man easily startled. Indeed, he could count the number of times on the fingers of one hand and not run out of fingers. But this was like a punch to the solar plexus, and he was winded, rooted to the spot and gasping, as his mind spun: I didn’t send for him, no one knows where he’s been kept. Emi’s DropShip exploded . . .

  This was not what he’d planned, this was not going according to plan at all. Kappa should have finished Chomie by now. What was one paltry pregnant woman and two inexperienced guards? So why wasn’t that alarm being raised? Where were the other guards, where—

  Maybe it was intuition, or maybe he’d known all along. Whateve
r the reason, Bhatia’s eyes jerked away from the coordinator and Ryuhiko. He spun on his heel, searching . . . and saw Toranaga edging away.

  In a flash, he heard his own words, tolling his death knell: No witnesses.

  * * *

  Lungs screaming for air, Jonathan dashed headlong through the halls trailing blood. He knew something was wrong, yet he couldn’t see it clearly. What could it be? Then, at a cross corridor just ahead, he saw guards. Relief washed over him and for an instant, he imagined that things were going as planned after all. But then he realized that this knot of guards was hurrying the other way. He spied that trio of black robes but recognized only one.

  He skidded to a halt. What is he doing here? Emi’s dead, but Ryuhiko is here, and that means he was gone before she got there. And now he’s here, and those monks—how could they know ahead of time, how could the news . . . ?

  And then it hit him, all the facts clicking into place with swift and deadly precision because he was, whatever else, first and always a killer and a professional, and the answer was absurdly simple: No witnesses.

  Toranaga. No!

  Heart thundering in his chest, Jonathan pounded down the hall, eating up distance, knowing that if he went around to the main entrance he would be too late. They’re in there, they’re all in there, and Katana . . . ! Veering left, he darted through a separate entrance, the one usually reserved for the warlords, and in a second, he was through, blurring past a clutch of astonished guards, breaking through—

  He saw Ryuhiko hulking over Vincent, who held a carved teak box. He saw Bhatia backing up, and then his frantic eyes found Toranaga already well away and moving ever farther . . .

  And then there was his Katana, struggling forward, squeezing from the crowd, with Crawford right behind and Wahab Fusilli jolted into action and trying to beat her a path.

  Katana was shouting, fighting her way to the coordinator’s side: “Tono! Tono, look out, don’t open the box, don’t open the box!”

  “KATANA!” Jonathan screamed. He surged forward, knowing he was out of time, he was too late, no time, no time! With a wild cry, he launched himself with everything he had left. “Katana, Katana, no!”

  And then the bomb went off.

  EPILOGUE

  Yose: Endgame

  68

  Somewhere on Itabaiana

  30 April 3137

  The cottage perched along a mountain pass in a remote wilderness surrounded by thick evergreens that smelled sharply of resin. It was night, and there was no moon. Outside, the wind moaned. Through an open window, Emi caught the faraway cry of some animal, then the closer, soft creak of a floorboard as her guard and protector, Joji Ashido, shifted his weight.

  She tried very hard to pray as she knelt upon a plain tatami mat, her eyes squeezed tight. Instead, the bamboo bit her knees. Her incense—jasmine, and her favorite—smelled cloying and too sweet. She’d also discovered that the space before her eyes was not black but red as blood.

  So much blood: her father’s, Chomie’s. Her mother, lying in that pool of congealed blood, her mouth open and eyes bulging . . . At the final instant, when the assassin’s blade sliced her throat, had her mother come to herself, finally?

  And Theodore, brother of my heart, what did you see? Were you frightened? In those last moments, did you even know you were dying?

  She would never know. In a perverse way, Fate’s hand may have dealt kindly with Theodore. He couldn’t have saved Chomie or his unborn heir. He’d have gone mad then, and welcomed death. So, perhaps, in the end, it was the same thing.

  Joji had made her flee after they discovered her mother’s murder, and Khan Jacali Nostra had granted her sanctuary for as long as she wished or needed, the special bond between the Mystic Caste and the O5P never more in evidence than now. The fiction of her death was necessary, for the moment. But what kind of future could she have? And what to do now?

  Don’t be a fool. She let out her breath very slowly and opened her eyes. Her candles still flickered; the wind still moaned. You know exactly what must be done.

  Her way was clear. She was fated to live.

  She pushed to her feet. Her knees crackled, and the folds of her white mourning robe rustled in the stillness. The room was thick with shadows that danced and shifted.

  Now, I’m the only one left. The only one left who can.

  Her fingers found the loop of cloth binding her robe about her slim body, and as she turned toward Joji Ashido, she worked the knot. Her robe fell open, and she made no effort to hide her nakedness.

  Joji was very still. His dark eyes never left her face. She read much meaning there and knew that he understood at once what she wished and what he must do. Even when she stood before him and felt how the air quickened over her breasts, her thighs, her belly, Joji did not move.

  He said, “I am pledged to you, my lady. I am yours to command. But are you sure, my lady? Are you very sure?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. Her eyes filled, and her lips trembled. She closed her eyes as his fingers cupped her cheeks. He smelled of strength and that slight tang that reminded her of the sea. “I’m the only one who can,” she said, her voice breaking, “the only one left.”

  “Sshh, my lady, ssshh,” Joji said, as he gathered her in his arms—but slowly and with such exquisite care that it seemed he was afraid she might break. “I am here, my lady, and I will never leave you. So don’t cry, my lady,” he said, as he kissed her wet cheeks and then the hollow of her throat. “Don’t cry.”

  69

  Borealis Glacier, Misery

  15 May 3137

  Icy snow blasted the Kat’s windscreen, sluicing across the ferroglass with a hiss like sand scouring rock. The wind snatched at the lightweight steel cab, and the Kat bobbed, like a cork on a turbulent ocean.

  In so many ways, the landscape had not changed, and would not for centuries to come as the glacier proceeded in its deliberate, suicidal run for the sea. Thereon barely glanced at the dancing green blip of his SatNav as the computer guidance system patiently drew him on to a past that was etched in his heart and soul, preserved in the amber of memory.

  Seven years ago, this glacier was a ruin: pocked with craters from autocannons and missiles, and the larger concavities left by the passage of a Legionnaire. There had been bodies, too. And there’d been blood: startling, staining the snow a deep, nearly obscene crimson.

  Still, Death was white. Fitting, then, that white was the color of mourning because here, in this blasted wilderness, Death had final dominion.

  Clearly, his investigations had triggered something because, several months ago, he’d received an encrypted data crystal. When he finally broke the code, he’d listened with a sort of horrified fascination to a voice that, even electronically altered, he recognized as bubbling up from a nightmare.

  “If you’re listening to this, Richard, then we will assume that you’ve finally caught on to my little joke. You will forgive me this indulgence, but you, being a trained investigator in—dare I say it—another life . . . well, I thought your mind might be up to a bit of challenge. So congratulations are in order.

  “But if you want to truly understand, remember: The mind is the great poem of winter, just as one man’s misery is another’s triumph. You can be sure I’m enjoying mine. Sketching my way through the Inner Sphere. Well, our paths might cross since we all proceed from whence we began. If so, then your misery may keep company with mine.”

  On the glacier now, the thickening snow whipping round in gauzy veils. He was encased in cold-weather gear, his furred parka hood drawn tight around his face, a protective mask over his chin, mouth and nose, and goggles so he could see. He bent to his task, sonic drill in hand.

  It’s got to be here. His shoulders and hands hummed from the drill’s vibrations as sound waves pummeled through compressed ice and snow. The work went fast, and that surprised him. When his depth gauge told him that he was no more than four centimeters from his prize, he knelt upon the ice and switched
to a sharp-edged ice trowel. Because this is where I began, in earnest.

  The trowel struck something harder than ice with a perceptible clank. A metallic wedge protruded from the ice. When he’d unearthed the steel container and scraped away ice from the lock, he hesitated.

  Not entirely unlike Pandora, except Evil was let out long before I happened along, and where is Hope now?

  He hit the lock with a burst of laser fire set at minimum intensity then fitted in a key that was still warm from his body heat. The lock popped open, and he lifted the lid. His breath plumed as he released a sigh.

  The silver tsuke was still pristine, untouched by time or the elements. The care and precision the silversmith had lavished upon the silver was reflected in an intricately rendered dragon’s head, complete with horns and toothy snarl. The silver was worn smooth in places from long use and the oils of a man’s hand—the same hand that had cut down Thereon’s father so long ago.

  An icy lump of old grief lodged in Thereon’s heart. He’d sworn over his father’s grave to avenge his death, and he’d done that: blasting men into ruins of pulped flesh and splintered bone. On this very spot and in this desolate waste. High in a stolen Legionnaire, he’d massacred an entire lance and savored their dying screams. He didn’t regret one moment because that was only the beginning of vengeance.