Heretic's Faith

by Randall N Bills

  “A vision,” Kanaye intoned.

  Right. Sure, old man. A vision. “The Dragon will name her warlord,” was Kisho’s only response.

  The old man nodded slowly, as though a prize pet had just performed a unique trick.

  Kisho’s anger burned hot at the perceived condescension, but not hot enough to flame away the truth. It was but a trick, not a vision. Never a vision.

  And yet Kisho also felt the old satisfaction at having emerged victorious for another round.

  “And?” the old man continued.

  “To replace the fallen Sakamoto.”

  “Neg.”

  Satisfaction flamed away as though a ship lost to an out-of-control reentry to atmosphere and Kisho cast about, but found nothing else within. As ever. The growing silence became an invisible partner, sitting at the campfire as though to scold them both for their strained relationship.

  This time it was the old man who finally spoke. “Dieron.”

  Kisho reared back as though struck. He wasn’t able to sense the thread. Seems I only ever fail around the old man. Someday, old man. Someday.

  “And?” Kanaye pushed.

  Kisho swallowed, hating the incessantness of the old man and knowing he had no choice but to continue in his role. He forged on with this new tidbit. “The Dragon will offer her warlordship of Dieron. She will accept, and be wedded to House Kurita. But we of all people know the harsh mistress that is the Dragon.” He prided himself on the fact that no bitterness crept into his voice.

  “Aff.”

  Kisho continued, his confidence building again. “No additional aid will be forthcoming. Either she expands her conquest and fully becomes the warlord of the paper Dieron Military District, or she dies unborn, unable to break out of her egg. A stillborn not worthy of the Dragon’s succor.”

  “Aff.”

  Kisho nodded, still troubled by the encounter, but intrigued, despite himself, by this new turn of events. He raised his eyes once more to the ancient face. To the face he’d seen from his earliest memories.

  To the face of the old man . . . his mentor.

  1

  Bivouac near New Anaheim

  Copenwald, Halstead Station

  Dieron Military District, Draconis Combine

  1 February 3136

  Duchess Katana Tormark held the hard-edged, enameled metal in the cusp of twin palms. The small, cherry-red rectangle, overlaid with an apple-green katakana “five” numeral, seemed surreal and out of place in her small, calloused hands, the fingertips and palm pads hardened under years of handling a katana, or the joysticks of a BattleMech.

  Not handling this. Never this.

  For an irrational minute, she desperately needed to scratch a nail across the surface, confident the hardened enamel would turn out to be acrylic paint, tearing and flaking away. Proving a forgery.

  Proving me a forgery.

  Katana licked her lips, tasting her own nervousness. She shifted slightly, her usually bound hair cascading around her shoulders, whispering across a linen shirt, open at the throat to show chocolate-brown skin and whipcord strong muscles. The squeak of hard rubber on tile brought her awareness to the chair she occupied, the table, the room. Eyes so dark they appeared jet-black slowly rose to take in the other occupants of her private command quarters. Unashamed of her obvious trepidations over the rank insignia, she laid it down at the edge of the holographic table gingerly, as though afraid the weight of it would shatter the metal.

  From one breath to the next, it sat coiled like a red-and-green snake, poised to strike, kill, and swallow any who dared think their arrogance strong enough to wear it. Ready to decimate any who believed their power was large enough to bear the burden of being a warlord of the Draconis Combine, sworn to their liege lord, Coordinator Vincent Kurita.

  You are who you will be. The words of the Old Master percolated and slowly swept away nagging self-doubts. A small smile played across her lips, as she truly focused on the here and now. The past, after all, stayed for no one, regardless of her aspirations, or the towering heights to which she suddenly found herself clinging.

  “What do you have?” Katana finally spoke, a soft contralto that filled the room easily.

  Just to her left, Chu-sa Andre Crawford’s emerald-green eyes held hers for a moment. He nodded, leaned forward to tap lightly at one of the holographic table’s interfaces, drawing up information he’d obviously prepared beforehand. The room’s lights automatically dimmed as a laser-generated, three-dimensional display sprouted.

  Human-occupied space (discounting the home Clans, which Katana did regularly) spread out from Terra in a roughly thousand-light-year radius, encompassing more than two thousand inhabited worlds and many hundreds more of colonies lost to the harshness of their environs or the endless wars over centuries. Her eyes danced around the color-coded display, recognition as instantaneous as the contours of her own body reflected in a mirror: House Davion’s giant yellow, the green sliver of House Liao, the shattered realms of House Marik’s purple, House Steiner’s blue, the hodgepodge of the Clans and, of course, the ochre of The Republic of the Sphere and the red of House Kurita.

  Now focused, her eyes centered on The Republic of the Sphere and its two hundred and fifty worlds in the vicinity of Terra. Where she’d grown up. Where she’d owed fealty and served in the military for years. She took a small breath . . . where she’d broken those oaths and followed a new master.

  Switching to the coreward, spinward region of The Republic, in its Prefecture III, a blood flower bloomed, its deadly petals reaching and soaking up worlds for House Kurita, red smearing down from the Dragon to cover The Republic in blood.

  I have done this. She contemplated this thought, but could find no pride, malice, or despair. It also didn’t matter that similar incursions of Liao dark green and bright Jade Falcon green occupied two other sections of The Republic. It simply was.

  Andre hit a final keystroke and leaned back, as though the display could substitute for any amount of words. And it did.

  Highlighted were those worlds previously a part of The Republic but now encompassed within the blood flower of House Kurita. Sakamoto might have included even more, but she was a realist and sporadic fighting on a world meant it was not yet secured. Silence enveloped the room as though they all stood in the presence of some deity of light, worshiping at an altar and hoping they might understand what the hell they were looking at.

  Twenty worlds.

  The tension in the room rose as Katana fell into the image, absorbing every detail. No matter how many times she’d studied the map and the events leading to this place, it still seemed as though the pieces did not fit together. As though some of the pieces were missing.

  Or had some pieces been substituted—they look right, but are really fake? Yeah, that feels right. She surreptitiously stole a quick glance at the rank insignia of tai-shu and tore her eyes away as it seemed to wink at her in the lowered light.

  She sniffed at her flight of fancies and caught the heavy whiff of the ubiquitous diesel fumes that seemed to clog the nasal passages in barbed needles and block out the sun. This was the price of placing her temporary headquarters so close to DeValt Industries and their IndustrialMech manufacturing.

  “Behold, the mighty Dieron Military District.” As though a bomb detonated within a shoji house, the voice sliced through tension like shrapnel through rice paper walls, causing most at the table to jerk visibly. Dark, suspicious eyes swept towards the opposite end of the table.

  The young, Oriental-looking man almost seemed a boy, with clear, smooth features, bright eyes, and short, well-manicured hair. But the full lips were not turned up in the half smirk of a joke, but turned down with a cynicism well beyond his years. His eyes were not bright with vigor and hope, but with delight at the potential to cause pain. And while the others in the room wore a uniform, the young man wore a simple jumpsuit, at total odds with the military surroundings.

  Katana slowly shook her head. Of
all the strange paths I have taken, you are the strangest. Her eyes danced down the cuffs of the jumpsuit, taking in the young man’s yakuza tattoos peeking out like runes of power and authority, demanding they put up with him, regardless of his uncharacteristic attitude. Despite herself, she appreciated the stab of the man’s wit, regardless of his lack of decorum. Before she could help herself, she chuckled, sarcasm rich in her timbre.

  “Leave it to you to state the obvious.”

  “I live to serve,” Lance Shimazu responded, then boomed a laugh that echoed through the room.

  She stared daggers at the man, knowing he dismissed all those present, eyes only for her; after all, only the oyabun matters in the end. I’ll be damned if I tell you to shut up. She wouldn’t ask and even if she had, he wouldn’t respond. Such was the relationship.

  Several dark chuckles finally joined hers around the room.

  “You live to be a pain in the ass, you mean,” Viki Drexel said from Katana’s immediate right. Katana glanced in her direction to see her cute features squeezed into a grimace of obvious distaste. After Drexel’s forays into the Combine to secure aid from the House Kurita’s criminal underground yakuza—leading to the very presence of this boy-man in their midst—she’d become one of Katana’s most trusted agents, despite her obvious first calling as a Mech Warrior. A woman to go to when you needed something done on the black side.

  But it was one thing to accomplish your mission. And another for the yakuza to demand that a sarcastic pain in the ass sit as a liaison at your command table.

  “Isn’t that the same thing, Driki?” he rejoined, without even turning his head.

  An obvious smile on Parks’ face to Drexel’s right—Katana even caught a smile on Crawford’s before he concealed it—puffed up Drexel as though she were a blowfish trying to scare away predators. Though Katana managed to keep her own face impassive, she couldn’t help the inner smile. Shimazu found out about Drexel’s playful use of an anagram when she went under cover—Dixie Lever—and had goaded her with it ever since, considered it beyond naive and a mistake a first year SAFE agent wouldn’t make.

  “Should we not stay on the subject we are here to discuss?” Wahab Fusilli said from Drexel’s right.

  “I thought we were discussing it,” Shimazu responded. “After all, we’re here to protect the mighty Dieron Military District. Great and mighty shall Katana reign over innumerable worlds—”

  “Shut up,” Katana interrupted, laser-sharp and cracking, forgetting her previous decision. For once, he actually acquiesced, leaning back as though he could care less one way or another. Why do you care? Why does your gumi consider this deal so important they would assign a liaison? And why someone like you? She shuffled those questions around for a moment and then filed them away, content to deal with that struggle on a future field of combat. Right now, an urgent battle was unfolding.

  “As our illustrious liaison has so succinctly put it, behold the mighty Dieron Military District. Twenty worlds. And if I don’t want the other warlords to hand me my own head, or laugh me right out of court, I better not only keep these worlds, but expand. And, by the way, perhaps even take the military district’s namesake.”

  “Um, boss,” Parks dropped in. “That ain’t gonna happen with what we have. Unless our new commander and chief handed over a pocket regiment or two you didn’t tell us about.”

  Katana noticed the frown of disapproval from Wahab Fusilli over such familiarity concerning their new liege lord, but dismissed it. The man could be such a stiff at times, honor or no.

  “No, no regiments here.”

  “Then, um, I’m assuming you’ve got a plan.”

  “Well, one or two, but I want to see what you’ve all got for me. You are my command staff, after all.” Lighter tones of real laughter chimed together, washing away (at least momentarily) the tension and weariness so prevalent since her return from Black Luthien and the sudden thrusting of her and her military command into a limelight they had never imagined.

  “So, what do we have?” Katana said. She looked pointedly at Shimazu.

  He shrugged casually, then leaned forward slightly, as though he intended to stay in the conversation for but a moment. “You will not be getting any more reinforcements from my quarter. Not in the near future.”

  “Well, isn’t that just peachy,” Drexel pounced.

  “Driki, unlike some, we have bigger responsibilities. And other concerns to deal with.”

  She blushed at the name she so despised, but forged a rapid response. “You mean you’re dealing with the fallout of supporting us in the first place. Some of the other gumi oyabuns don’t agree with Matsuro Kamikuro’s ideas of how best to serve the Dragon?”

  The man casually shrugged, as though discussing the difficulty of trying to decide between a white or red tie for a meeting. Katana winced at the idea of what that might mean, of how many family members and innocents would die in such an underworld war.

  “None of the other warlords will support you,” Wahab Fusilli spoke next, his controlled tones a mellow counterpoint to Drexel’s.

  Katana cranked a pencil-thin eyebrow way up, until Fusilli conceded, with a soft dip of his head.

  “At least, that is what my contacts say.”

  “And when will they support me?”

  “Realistically?”

  “Of course.”

  “Likely never, though you might win a temporary alliance with whomever they find to replace Sakamoto.”

  “I’d think the man, or woman,” Parks interjected and conceded with a nod towards Katana, “would want Katana’s head on a platter. She’s effectively stolen twenty worlds from him.”

  “And taken on the almost impossible task of securing them and expanding to a large enough defensive perimeter of worlds that a hard strike by The Republic out of Prefecture X, or a hard push by House Davion through the almost collapsed Prefecture III into our rear echelon, won’t cut off our own supply lines and leave us speaking French, walking around in silly spurs, and waving a sunburst before you can turn around,” Fusilli spouted in an uncharacteristic rush. “I’m thinking whoever the new warlord will be, he’s oh so glad Katana has stepped up onto that particular chopping block. As for the rest, well,”—he shrugged—“they’re confident you’ll fail, so they’ve no need to spend too much time contemplating your soon-to-come death.”

  Stunned silence met Fusilli’s comments, as much for their stark, brutal truthfulness as for the light, uncharacteristic wit nudged between words. Was the man getting a sense of humor? She stared hard at Fusilli, as he switched impassive features away from the stung Parks to her. No, couldn’t be.

  “And what are the chances of The Republic striking at us before we’re ready to strike at them?” she asked, ignoring Fusilli’s comments about the other warlords. One fight at a time.

  “Next to nonexistent, which is the only good news,” Crawford jumped into the conversation, his red hair jouncing as he suddenly leaned forward. “After the havoc of internal groups, the Liao invasion, the strikes of the Jade Falcons and the hammer Sakamato delivered, The Republic appears to have collapsed.” He quickly tapped on the keyboard, highlighting the worlds of Northwind and New Canton. “In late October, the last coherent regiments of The Republic in both these regions pulled back to both those worlds. Now, we all thought they’d push forward. I mean, the Northwind world allows them to come at us from any direction and New Canton might as well have Liao as a moon. But the latest report dropped off by a merchant junket coming from New Canton says there’s not hide nor hair to be found of Republic forces and, as we all know, Northwind has simply gone off the radar—no one’s come in or gone out, that we can tell.”

  “For that matter,” Fusilli responded, “seems nothing is going in and out of what was Prefecture X.”

  “Are you saying that The Republic has given up on everything but Prefecture X?” Katana said. She looked at Fusilli and then Crawford, but their blank looks likely mirrored her own. What is t
he new exarch up to? What is The Republic doing? She flexed her hands, as though preparing to heft her namesake. “So, we can hit Dieron now?”

  “Ah, I didn’t say that,” Crawford said, lifting his palms to warn her off. “They are likely not in any position to strike us, but we can’t really strike them either. Let’s not forget what happened to the Sword of Light unit that decided to capture all the glory while you were off on Luthien.”

  She grimaced at such a waste, while the others contemplated the apparent massacre of almost an entire battalion of troops.

  “And there is the pesky issue of such worlds as Athenry, Styx, and Saffel that still need to be secured.”

  “And if you strike The Republic—I mean truly strike into Prefecture X with force, not the ridiculous raid by the Steel Wolves on Terra—you might just unleash something powerful,” Fusilli interjected.

  All eyes turned his direction. “A Republic reprisal? Something more than what happened to the Sworders?” Katana asked.

  The man shrugged slim shoulders, easily deflecting their intensity. “Perhaps. Or, seeing The Republic so close to a true collapse, other still-sleeping powers might surge forward to grab the prize of Terra.”

  “Fedrats?”

  “Perhaps. But neither the Bear nor the Wolf sleep lightly. In grasping for the prize of Dieron, you don’t want to unleash the beasts that’ll run us down before we’re prepared to deal with them.”

  All eyes shifted back to the holographic map, and the factions that, to their limited knowledge with such slow interstellar communications, were not yet joined in the general war sweeping through the Inner Sphere.