by Victor Milán
Last of all, lean and mean, long and languid, a woman with wine-red hair unfolded her considerable self from the front passenger's seat and stilted forward on legs that went on forever in tight pants made of the hide of some appalling Hachimanite ocean carnivore. She gave Cassie a slow grin and a nod.
Cassie grinned back and actually let the woman hug her. Tai-sa Eleanor Shimazu, commander of the 9th Ghost Legion, a.k.a. Heruzu Enjeruzu—and, by the way, the Yakuza oyabun of oyabun for the planet Hachiman—was more of a close friend to Cassie's best buddy Kali MacDougall than to Cassie herself, but that still brought the much-taller woman closer than the scout allowed most people to get.
It was just as well that she didn't feel as close to Lainie as she sdll did to Kali, Cassie realized, looking up at her friend. Lainie had changed, too, in the months since the 17th left Hachiman, but Cassie couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was.
"I heard about you tearing Bishonen Kusunoki a new one in person," Shimazu said. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy-"
"He more tore himself one," Cassie said. "Good to see you, Lainie."
"You, too. I could even almost feel sorry for those Black Dragons knowing you and the rest of your bunch of misfits were on their case." She smiled grimly. "Almost."
A sudden roar and a shadow that blotted what light managed to make it down with the drizzle that still seeped down intermittently made even Cassie duck. A Wasp was rising above them on the thrust-columns of its three Rawlings 52 jump jets. As it passed overhead it tucked its little antenna-horned head and performed a flawless forward somersault. Then it landed about thirty meters into the compound, its right foot crushing a stand from which a vendor was selling teriyaki beef on a stick. The vendor bailed just in time.
"Oh, dear," Father Doctor Bob said.
"I'd give it about a nine-five," Buntaro Mayne said, "but that landing's gonna cost some points."
The former booth-operator was jumping from foot to foot, shaking his fists and screaming imprecations at the light BattleMech. Apologies cascaded from his Cowboy's own external speaker system.
"Lieutenant Junior Grade Payson's still a confirmed Sierra-for-brains, I see," Lainie said. "I'm glad certain things don't change. It fosters the comforting illusion of stability in this cherry-blossom world."
* * *
"This is Jinjiro Coleman, the concierge," Cassie told the clump of her comrades who were getting a guided tour of their new digs while Red and Garcia negotiated the pots-and-pans aspects of the 17th's stay on lovely Luthien. "Be nice to him. He's boss of these barracks."
Jinjiro bobbed his head, beamed. "Any trouble you have, you come to me," he said. "Any trouble at all. Soon, no trouble." And he grinned wider.
In his brown jumpsuit he stood 170 centimeters or so, a bit above average for the Combine—on Hachiman he would have towered—with brown hair, faintly red in tint, brushed over a bald spot on top. His face was round, his eyes almond-shaped and brown, and the fact that his smile never quite seemed to reach them appeared to rise more from weariness, or maybe sadness, than any kind of guile. His age was impossible to determine, other than that he wasn't young; like a lot of Dracs with a healthy slug of Asian genes—like Cassie herself, for that matter—he wore his cloak of years with relative grace. He was a strongly-built man, thick in the middle and in the wrists. When he shook bands, as he punctiliously insisted on doing with all and sundry, including Laurie, Buntaro, and a handful of other Ghosts who had tagged along, his grip was dry and strong.
They walked away along the top-floor corridor. The superintendent vanished down a stairwell. The barracks were strikingly well-designed and constructed by Draconis Combine standards, comparable to those Uncle Chandy provided his favored employees, such as the 17th Recon. The corridor was wide and well-ventilated, its illumination augmented by regular skylights overhead. Floors and wall framework were of blond local timber, its natural color preserved behind clear varnish, and the walls themselves were of a white synthetic designed to mimic the translucent brightness of shoji, rice paper, while being more durable and easier to clean. And Jinjiro kept all spotless and smelling subtly of a native conifer.
"These're pretty spiffy digs," remarked Buck Evans. "That con-see-airge keeps 'em up right. He seemed like a nice enough fella, too."
He should seem nice, Cassie thought. She had taken the precaution of bribing him with a bottle of fine brandy from the Ophir region of Towne's main continent, Hyboria. In fact the building superintendent had been pleasant enough before the brandy, but such gifts were not considered bribes in the Combine. They were the way business was done, one of the lubricants which kept society's wheels turning.
But then, it was for knowing things like that that Cassie was sent with the advance party, far more than to scout out any possible ambushes or booby-traps, which even Cassie, paranoid as an alley-cat, did not expect to find awaiting them on a movie lot.
"Yeah, maybe he seemed like a nice fella," Cowboy said darkly, stilting along with a musical jingle of the spurs he wore attached to his bulky insulated MechWarrior's boots, "but maybe looks can be deceivin'. Didn't anybody else see the back of his arm where it stuck out of its sleeve—all covered with them fish-scale tattoos? Now, I might know not know much—"
"You got a real talent for understatement, carnal," said Jesse James Leyva over his shoulder. Known as Outlaw, Leyva sported a black handlebar mustache that was the perfect complement to his dark complexion and historic name.
Cowboy ignored the gibe from his pal and rival. "—But I know me a Yak tattoo when I see it. What's that called now? Itsahootie?"
"Irezumi," Cassie corrected. "And if you say gesundheit, I'll kill you."
Cowboy produced a choking snort that made his eyes crossed. "And what's wrong with being a Yakuza?" demanded Buntaro Mayne holding up a fist to allow his sleeve to slide down and expose his own intricate and colorful skin art. Lainie just laughed.
"Well, yeah," Cowboy said, "but you guys are good Yaks." He looked back over his shoulder, as if expecting to see the concierge creeping along behind them in black holovid-ninja garb. "What if he's one of them Black Dragons?"
"What's a Yak doing holding down an honest job, anyway?" Buck demanded.
Buntaro gave him his own one-eyed glare, then laughed. "Well, OK. We're warriors, not Workers. I'll give you that."
"He's semi-retired after long and loyal service," Cassie said. "He got this job, which is pretty plush by local reckoning, as a reward for work well done. Notice he had all his fingers? He never screwed up in a big way."
"But why would the movie people hire somebody out of the local gang?" asked ash-blonde Raven O' Conner, who took her name from the reconnaissance 'Mech she drove. "They have to know what he is."
"A big part of what a Yak org does is labor contracting," Cassie said. "The headman of Luthien probably supplies most of the unskilled and semiskilled workers here in Eiga-toshi. You don't expect ISF to clean its own floors and cook its own food, do you?"
The other 'lleros stopped and stared at her. "What was that word you used there, Cass?" Raven asked.
"Eiga-toshil Cinema City?"
"No, not that," Jesse James said. "That other one. Those three little initials?"
"ISF?"
"Those're the ones," Raven affirmed. "What's Drac Internal Security got to do with this place?"
A snicker escaped from Lainie's long fine nose. Buntaro squeezed his good eye shut and shook his head.
"You guys knew the Voice of the Dragon owned and operated this place, right?" Cassie asked.
"Yeah," Cowboy said. "But we reckoned that meant, like 'Voice of the Dragon Productions,' or something."
"It means that, too," Cassie said, "but what it all runs down to is still the Drac information ministry. Which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Internal Security Force."
Cowboy pointed a trembling accusatory finger at her. "And here I thought we were just coming for this big party, and it was gonna be the plushest gig ever! I sure s
houlda known better. Nothin' with you involved is ever that durn simple!"
Lainie laughed out loud. "It's taken you how many years to figure that out?"
6
Imperial City, Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
21 June 3058
"So, my pretty," a voice from behind her said with a bit of a slur, "how do you find our Black Pearl of the Combine?"
Cassie forced her face to smooth away the reflex frown, lest the man in the DCMS dress uniform who stood behind her see it reflected in the smoked-glass window through which she regarded Imperial City's nighttime heart. She had heard him approach through conversation-buzz and music that throbbed like a wound in the multi-level party pit scooped out of the upper levels of some noble's high-rise. From the falls of his boots on padded drizzle-colored floor tiles she had known he was drunk before he spoke.
Careful, girl, she reminded herself. While she was ostensibly here, on this planet and at this party, as an honored guest, her status was provisional, could vanish like a moth in a Bessemer furnace. The very fact that the man behind her—tall, athletic but going to seed—was present at this party in honor of Luthien's barbarian visitors indicated he had plenty of pull. Whereas women in the Combine were still generally regarded as a type of domestic livestock, albeit prone to unruliness. And Cassie was by far the lowest-ranked person present except for the servants.
Then there was the helpful Drac tradition that drunks, like very young children, could do no wrong. This pendejo could get awful free and easy with her. Sweat from more than the overamped heat in the body-crowded room ran down inside the high stiff collar of her dress tunic. The dance beat pounded behind her eyes.
With a motion that would have required keen and sober eyes to detect she slumped her shoulders and let her spine curve. She let her mouth sag and her eye-corners droop. Then she turned, trying to project unprepossessingness: I smell bad. I have diseases. Also, I weep a lot.
What she saw standing there was a man with unruly straw-colored hair that had a tendency to get into his mud-green eyes. The way the flesh was loosened at the edges of his big oblong face, and his nose reddened, she guessed his current condition wasn't too far off his baseline. A samurai was supposed to be a ready drinker; Dracs didn't take the puritanical view of what the Townies, say, would've termed alcohol abuse. By the looks of him, though, he was getting near a point where his performance would start to degrade, and that the Dragon did frown on. Still, he wore the katakana numeral four on his collar, along with the aerospace insignia on his shoulder-boards. A Sho-sho, a brigadier general, was generally a staffer, so maybe his days of pushing plasma out of the ass end of a Sholagar were as far behind him as unbroken nose capillaries.
"My lord?" she said, putting a nasal whine to her voice.
Subtlety was lost on this one. He smiled and patted her cheek. "If Luthien is a pearl, then surely you are a, a—a lovely tropical flower."
Now, that's suave. The Caballero dress uniform she wore was modified from Free Worlds League issue; she didn't want people at this party to see her in civilian garb, or associate her with same. Unfortunately, the uniform—whose stiff-necked white tunic resembled that of the official DCMS issue—did nothing to conceal the slim perfection of her figure. The jackboots rolled up the legs of her white trousers to the tops of her thighs had the unfortunate effect of accentuating the round muscularity of her rump. Silently she cursed herself for letting Raven talk her into wearing a wig done into a confection of looped braids over her real hair, which was still pretty stubbly after being seared off in Kali's Atlas. Though it served the intended effect of making an impact on an observer's mind, helping create a gestalt markedly different from any silhouette she'd display in the field, it also gave the impression she was a woman minded to attract masculine attention.
"My lord is too kind," she said. "Now if you will only just excuse me, General, I was on my way to powder my nose."
She turned, slipped past him and down a brief flight of stairs, making toward the nearest exit. "Wait!" he called after her. "Don't rush off, little gaijin. We've hardly just begun—"
She sensed him closing, reaching for her. She set her jaw. If he grabs me—no. There was always a way, if one kept alert to one's surroundings...
In the midst of a conversation-clump was a meter-high pedestal of polished teak, with the miniature figure of a Kamakura-period samurai in full armor standing on it. It was a damnfool thing to leave lying around at a party, but that wasn't her lookout. As if to avoid a large quartermaster brigadier who was trying without success to impress Kali, she swerved, passing close to the pedestal. As she went by she gave it a quick sideways bump with her knee, causing it to tilt slightly and spill the figurine onto the floor behind her.
The sotted Sho-sho stepped on it and pitched forward onto his face. He bounced up with considerable alacrity and a bellow of anger. "That bitch! She tripped me!"
At the exit, defiant reflex made Cassie stop and turn. She did so in time to see two giant smiling retirees from the All-Combine Sumo League materialize on either side of her pursuer. At the same time a tall figure with a long black topknot, broad-shouldered and suave in a black happicoat printed with crabs and bamboo latticework in pale blue, sauntered up to him with a drink in his hand, which he proffered.
"Sho-sho Donaldson," the tall man said in a rich baritone. "Get yourself around some of this fine plum brandy. It'll smooth out the wrinkles in your wa."
The general's flushed face knotted, and he made as if to knock the drink from the other man's hand. The two big sumitori, still grinning like weasels in a henhouse, squeezed along either side of him, catching him in a big flesh vise. They air-marched him down a set of steps and through obliviously gyrating dancers and darting witch-ball lights to a side exit. Maybe this was the Draconis Combine, and maybe drunks and children could get away with anything, but this was a high-level high-visibility function with many important gaijin to hand. Face could not be lost to embarrassing incidents.
It was little inconsistencies like this that gave the Combine its unique charm.
The man in the happi-coat caught Cassie's eye and nodded. She recognized him. Aside from Subhash Indrahar himself, who was at pains to maintain his benevolent Smiling One persona in public, this man was the only other member of the ISF's leadership to court publicity. She gave him a quick smile.
I've put in my appearance here, she thought, done my duty. Not that I ever wanted to come. The idea of an operative whose job description comprised a great deal of undercover snooping and pooping appearing in her own persona at one of the parties of the social season made her head hurt. But she had been invited by name. Red Gallegos, in her official capacity as liaison officer, thought it would be rude for Cassie to pull a no-show. Don Carlos backed her.
And aside from making her face potentially all too familiar, it wasn't getting her job done. The air was curdled with the smell of conspiracy, but it wasn't that kind of conspiracy. The glittering attendees were busy plotting how to get this one in bed, or maneuver that one into committing some gaffe at one of the court functions which, like rumors and parties, were flying thick and fast as SRM salvos in the midst of a major 'Mech battle in the run-in to the Coordinator's Birthday. There was nothing for her here. If any of these gilded pheasants were Black Dragon fellow-travelers, they were keeping the fact to themselves. Had threat been here, she would have tasted it.
She felt a longing for the streets and the night, the way a desert-stranded frog yearns for cool water. She had work to do elsewhere.
Next time I'll glue a fake mole on my bloody cheek!
She was gone.
* * *
The man who had intercepted the drunk sauntered toward the balcony. His eye had caught a hint of something most interesting outside. As he slid through the crowd, effortless as an eel, he swirled the dark purple liquid in the snifter he had offered and smiled slightly to himself. Though he cultivated the manner of a tsu, a rakish man-of-
the-world—and the lifestyle as well, he'd be the first to admit—he deplored rudeness. Politeness was a Combine cultural tradition he was only too happy to help promulgate.
It was a very Zen door, a Gateless Gate for true, an air curtain that kept the overstuffed warmth in and the nocturnal spring chill out—gaijin tech, old news in Marik space and the Federated Commonwealth, but only just becoming available as something other than contraband in the Combine as the industrial sector, pumped by the huge trade expansion made possible by Theodore's reforms, began sending tentative tentacles groping out of the old milspec mass into the consumer-goods zone. Of course, they'd had these goodies on Hachiman for a decade, and, he noted with a wry smile as he stepped through the invisible barrier into the Imperial City night that hit him in the face like a splash of spring water, the ones making an appearance on Luthien were manufactured by Hachiman Taro Electronics, owned by one Chandrasekhar Kurita. He'd had one installed in his own loft apartment, located on the fringes of Imperial City's ukiyo, the pleasure district.
"You saved that bakayaro's life," said the tall woman with the strident red hair shaved away from her temples as he came up behind her. The shaved temples revealed her instantly as a MechWarrior. "Is he really worth more to the Dragon alive than dead?"
He laughed. The air curtain had the fortunate effect of deadening the music. Their host had execrable taste.
"That's not my decision to make, thank the bosatsu," he said. He moved to the rail alongside, rested his forearms on polished teak and gazed out over the heart of the city. The uniform blackness of the Palace District buildings made them eerie by night. Sometimes the rows and cluster of dim-lit windows seemed to float in emptiness, as if they were unusually orderly constellations in the sky itself. Other nights—such as this one—the tall teak and glass buildings were great blots of shadow against darkness, like mountains flecked with campfires, or orbital battle stations.