by Victor Milán
So here she was confronted with something new: a cop who cared. A cop who was actually interested in catching bad guys. And his bosses wouldn't let him.
For the first time in her life she pitied a policeman.
She pressed palms together before her breastbone, bowed shallowly. "McCartney-san, forgive me. I phrased my question incorrectly. What I meant to ask was, don't the circumstances of this particular homicide bother you?"
And then he did look like the kind of cop she knew: he gave her that hard eye cops give civilians who presume to tell them their business. But she had status enough that he had to listen.
"How so?" he asked hoarsely.
"We can both see he's yakuza, McCartney-san. Why was he killed?"
Shrug. "He fouled up. Disappointed the oyabun once too often."
"You saw his hands. He had all his fingers."
"So he bugged up big."
"McCartney-san, I knew this man. He worked as a building superintendent in visitor housing at Eiga-toshi."
This time it was the widening of his pupils that gave him away, as it had Johnny Tchang the day before. "So ka. That's a good job. Plush."
"Just so. He wasn't a soldier anymore. He was retired. What could he have done to make his oyabun have him killed like this?"
The detective took out another cigarette and lit it. "Old Yamaguchi—he's top oyabun on Luthien; we call him the Cat—the old man is a beast like the rest of them, but he's got an ironbound sense of what passes for honor among the yaks. Ninkyo they call it."
Cassie knew that, but her game face didn't. She said nothing.
"Your man here obviously did good service. The Cat takes his obligations seriously. And this is an ugly way to check out, even if it's comparatively painless. If the deader had done something he had to die for, Yamaguchi would either have given him a more honorable exit, or a much nastier one."
He scanned her reappraisingly. "You make a good point.
You're one of these New Women, as much gaijin as Kurita. I don't know if I like that. But you're not stupid."
"Thank you," she said, trying to keep anger out of her voice. "Who do you think murdered him, then? Some rival?"
"Yamaguchi has no rivals."
"Not usually. But oyabun are coming from all over the Combine to honor our Coordinator on his birthday."
"There's a truce on for the occasion. And it wouldn't be an easy job to knock Old Cat Yamaguchi off his perch. He's one shrewd alley-fighter, a tough one. He has the Coordinator's favor, too. Criminal or not, he's always been a strong supporter of Theodore's, and our Coordinator isn't the type to let scum show him up in the matter of returning loyalty. Even a very large creature would think twice about poaching on Yamaguchi's turf."
"Then who did kill Jinjiro-san?"
All the air went out of him, like a paper bag that's been blown up and then punched. Cassie had never heard the myth of Sisyphus, and would have been rude to Father Doctor Bob if he'd tried to tell her about it. But if she had heard the story, she would just have gotten a better feel for it.
"What difference does it make?" he said. "There's nothing for me here. 'Natural causes.' "
"Would you like to catch the murderer, though? Even if it's just in this one case."
A gleam flared in his eyes, then died. "I'll go water-skiing on Orientalis long before that happens."
"Maybe not. Maybe I can help make justice happen. If you're willing to help."
"You? What could you do?"
Afterward she was never sure what impulse made her say, "I'm a scout for the Seventeenth Recon Regiment. We were invited here to attend the Coordinator's Birthday ceremonies. I have more freedom of action than you do—and you might be able to help me hang onto that." He goggled. "What's this? You're gaijin!"
"I was born in the Combine, McCartney-san. My parents took me away when I was small. The Colonel of my regiment saved me from a bad place, and I swore loyalty to him.
But I'm what you were told I was, a retainer to Chandrasekhar Kurita. We're contracted to him. You were not lied to."
He looked at her with flat disbelief. She choked back a wild laugh. For the first time in her life she was telling a policeman the pure, unvarnished truth, and he didn't believe her.
He waved a hand. "Even if all this is true—why should you help me catch a killer?"
"Because of the children—the dead man's grandkids," she said. "And because I believe the killing may have something to do with us, my regiment. With something that threatens us." By nature as well as occupation, Cassie was as paranoid as any alley-cat herself. An unexplained violent death in such close proximity to la familia was cause for concern. Besides, she couldn't afford to overlook any clues to the threat Uncle Chandy had warned her to expect.
McCartney turned the cigarette around in his hand and rubbed his face. "You talk like a lunatic now, but you talked sense before. I don't know what to believe."
"Believe what you want. If I'm not what I say I am, if I can't help you—you're no worse off than before."
"That's true. But if you waste my time, I don't care who you are, or who's protecting you. I'll break you."
"Fair enough, McCartney-san. Domo arigato" She bowed and started to walk away.
"But if you can catch the killer," he said as she reached the door, softly but distinctly in the echoing sterility, "if you can help solve even this single crime, unfold this origami, then I will bless you.
"For what a policeman's blessing is worth."
PART TWO
Haragei
A gentleman is not an implement.
—Confucius, Analects, 2:12
9
JumpShip Mishima
Recharge Station, Shimonoseki System
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
23 June 3058
Blasts of water roared at the naked boy from nozzles set in the compartment's six bulkheads, icy as a Lyran moneylender's heart. Tethered to a bulkhead by a bungee cord, bobbing at the convergence of high-velocity streams, the youth sat in full lotus and struggled to breathe.
Near him, just clear of the streams, floated a man garbed in the scarlet robes of the Order of Five Pillars—the 05P. His belt was tied in the complex five-fold knot signifying his rank as an Illuminatus of the Order. His shaven head was bare, and he did not wear the characteristic flared Pillarine collar. His eyes were crescents in hard fat. He held a 150-centimeter staff of blond hardwood, a jo, in pudgy hands.
"What is the world?" he barked at the boy.
The young man was round-faced, well-muscled, and would likely have been handsome if icy water weren't blasting him every which way. "Illusion!" he shouted without hesitation.
"What is the Self?"
"Nothing!"
"And what are you?"
"Nothing!"
Whack! The staff cracked against the side of his head. The boy tumbled wildly for a moment before the converging streams forced him back into place. He managed to stay in lotus.
"You are a Kurita! You must never forget that! Now say it."
"I am a Kurita!"
The staff cracked against the young man's head again. "And that's to help you remember!"
* * *
In another part of the ship two floating men watched the scene on monitors.
"Our young charge's Zen instruction proceeds," said one whose drab and slightly shabby robes revealed him to be an academic of no great rank. His face was long and seamed, his head a high narrow skin dome with a fringe of long, lank, neutral-colored hair surrounding it. He had, until recently, been a Professor of History and Moral Philosophy at the Sun Zhang MechWarrior Academy on New Samarkand. He smirked. "He'll find achieving the state of 'no-mind' easy enough, at any rate."
The other man wore Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery undress uniform with the apple-green katakana numeral 3 of a Tai-sa on the collar. He was an instructor in tactics at Sun Zhang. He was also a moustached, bullet-headed thug of the sort who had been such a prominent stereo
type in a millennium worth of propagandistic anti-Japanese, and subsequently anti-Combine, movies. His personality was the sort that had kept that stereotype alive for all those years. He thought humor frivolous. Mostly he just didn't get it. In the amber pilot-light glow that provided most of the small compartment's illumination, he resembled a bronze statue of a balding war god in contemporary garb.
"I still don't see why this charade is necessary," he barked. He gave the impression that, unlike the priest on the monitor, who barked for effect, he did so all the time. Which he did. "The boy is no fine intellectual. But that's good; he's a true samurai. He'll do what he's told."
"Ah, Tai-sa Ohta, but there exactly is the rub. He does think of himself as a samurai, and thus will follow his duty with exemplary single-mindedness. But alas, thanks to that same single-mindedness, in spite of all our efforts during the two years we've had to work with him he still conceives his duty is to his cousin the usurper." He gestured with long fingers—what the Lyrans would call Spinnenbeine, spider's legs. "That's why the estimable Banzuin is so invaluable to us."
"Because he squirts him with ice water and bats him in the head?"
"Classic bushi toughening exercises, of which I'd think you would heartily approve."
"Toughening's one thing, Professor Tomita. These confounded riddles are another. They make my head hurt."
The Professor briefly compressed his wide, mobile mouth, as if to hold in a sarcastic comment. The Tai-sa wasn't big on sarcasm, either. Especially from civilians.
"Think of it as shock treatment, Ohta-sama. That's the purpose of all this Zen gymkhana, after all—to knock loose preconceptions, not to mention inconveniences such as individual will."
The Tai-sa made a growling sound deep in his well-developed hara. "We'll have our work cut out for us, thanks to all the soft and decadent nonsense about individualism the Usurper has allowed in."
Professor Tomita blanched, and a line of sweat-beads de-marked the retreat of his hairline as on a tac display. Nevertheless he managed a shaky smile. "Of course the Tai-sa remembers that the ISF undoubtedly has this chamber bugged."
Ohta blinked. Then he glared at the academic as if suspecting him of trying to pull a fast one. "Of course they do. It's their ship. Why shouldn't they have it bugged?"
"Indeed, Tai-sa Ohta. These limbs of the Dragon are on our side, fortunately. On Luthien it will be otherwise. Once there, it will be wise to remember that the silent dog attracts few kicks."
"Nonsense. We won't land until the traitor Theodore Kurita is dead."
The Professor winced. "An officer of your vast combat experience is surely aware," he said, "that few things go as planned. And may this unworthy one humbly request you not so blithely juxtapose words such as 'traitor' and 'kill' with the name of our young charge's cousin? While the Smiling One remains Director, it may be unwise to assume that all ears overhearing us are friendly to our cause."
"Bah. A senescent cripple. He's being dealt with."
"I only wish I had the strength of your conviction in Subhash Indrahar's inadequacy."
* * *
"It's intolerable!" exclaimed Tai-sho Shigeru Yoshida to those assembled in this most private room of Unity Palace in Luthien. "The barbarian's presumption is not to be borne."
The Coordinator's informal council sat on their knees around a low table cut from a native tree whose grain was a startling purple against ivory wood. Theirs was no fixed roster; who sat with the Coordinator was determined by need, knowledge, and availability. These were the "bad advisers" Black Dragon rhetoric inveighed against. This indeed was the group's function, as much as tendering advice: to shield the Coordinator's sacrosanct person from blame. According to ISF reports, even the Kokuryu-kai fanatics still held back from criticizing Theodore himself, although the catastrophe on Towne had provoked them to unprecedented fury.
At the table's head sat Theodore Kurita, clad like the rest in formal kimono. He was trying not to fidget. He had vital questions of policy to answer, such as how the Draconis Combine should respond to the recent Word of Blake conquest of Terra and what the leaders of the Inner Sphere would do in the wake of the Jade Falcon attack on the Lyran Alliance world of Coventry. He had to make conscious acts of will almost from moment to moment to keep from obsessing on the Clan threat, even though Subhash Indrahar assured him the Clan setbacks in Lyran space had knocked the invaders onto their collective heels. And here he was wasting time discussing protocol for this confounded birthday party!
He looked to Marquis Fellini, who was overseeing the Coordinator's Birthday festivities. The Marquis's broad face was placid as always.
"The commander of the Seventeenth, Colonel Carlos Camacho, refuses to swear fealty to our First Lord, although he hastens to reassure us as to his profoundest respect."
"What seems to be the problem?" Theodore asked.
"Tono, it would appear he has already sworn his personal loyalty to Victor Davion, during the Clan War. He fears that precludes offering a similar oath to the Coordinator."
Theodore didn't actually give a burned-out Locust bearing whether the gaijin swore an oath to him or not. He had allowed Uncle Chandy to talk him into inviting his pet mercenary regiment, and to be sure, the Seventeenth had done the Dragon valuable service, however uncomfortable it might have been.
"Tradition requires that the commanders of all units granted the supreme honor of presentation to the Coordinator join in swearing an oath of eternal loyalty to the Dragon and to the Coordinator," Yoshida said.
"Might I remind the Tai-sho that it is rather taken for granted that such commanders are serving members of the DCMS?" the Marquis said.
Yoshida scowled darkly. He was not terribly fond of extending recognition to mercenaries. He had been a Takashi man, had risen to command of the First Sword of Light Regiment—considered by many the lead unit of the whole Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery—under Theodore's father.
The Tai-sho had never been overly fond of Theodore. Before the Smoke Jaguar/Nova Cat invasion of Luthien in 3052, he had called the their Kanrei a fool for pulling DCMS forces away from the Federated Commonwealth frontier to meet the anticipated threat. Theodore was not the man his father was, he'd said.
Theodore had agreed he was not his father. His father would have killed Yoshida on the spot, rather than waiting for the Otomo to arrest him. Yoshida had backed down and apologized. Theodore refused to acknowledge that any apology was due from a man whose sole interest was the Combine's welfare.
After Theodore acceded to the Dragon Throne, he had promoted Yoshida to full general and appointed him his Chief Military Aide—functionally the same role Theodore himself had performed as Gunji no Kanrei, Chief Deputy for Military Affairs, although Yoshida had a different title, since Kanrei was inextricably associated with Theodore throughout the Inner Sphere. The move surprised many of those closest to Theodore, not least Subhash Indrahar, not to mention the military commander of Kagoshima Prefecture, who also happened to be Theodore's wife, Tai-sho Tomoe Sakade. Like Japanese history before it, Combine history was full of stories of overreaching subordinates who had been set back in place by a perfect gesture from their superiors and gone on to serve with fanatical devotion. The problem was, there were almost as many occasions in which the subordinate had smiled and backed down and then gone off to plot lurid revenge.
Theodore knew it was a risk. But Yoshida had earned the position, through ability as well as long service. And Theodore, who was conscious that one of his father's main weaknesses was that he refused to hear anything he didn't like, wanted to ensure that he was not surrounded by yes-men. So far, the gamble had paid off. Yoshida had served well, and while he was not afraid to speak his mind, he had never shown the least sign of disloyalty.
"Such arrogance is an affront to the Dragon, as well as the Coordinator," Yoshida continued.
"We should not be hasty, Yoshida-san," said Tai-sa Oda Hideyoshi, commander of the Coordinator's bodyguard, the Otomo. He was stockier and gruf
fer than Yoshida, with thick black eyebrows. "The Dragon prizes loyalty. If this gaijin Colonel Camacho lightly casts aside his oath, even to an enemy, how can we trust him to honor a promise made to our Tono?"
Theodore nodded, not permitting himself to smile. It was what he was thinking himself. Even though he made the real decisions in the Combine, and everyone in human space knew it, he had to play the role of Coordinator as father figure, an essentially passive entity who was served, rather than who commanded. While he had a deft hand at dropping leading haiku, he was happy to be spared the effort. He had enough on his mind as it was.
"Thank you, Tai-sa. You raise a very telling point." He looked at the fat Marquis. "Could you come up with an oath that Colonel Camacho might find acceptable, without compromising the honor of the Dragon?"
The Marquis bowed. "I am confident the Dragon will see to it that my poor efforts will be crowned with success." Which was how he said yes.
Theodore looked at the Otomo commander. He was another who had served his father; in fact he had commanded the Coordinator's bodyguard the night Takashi went to join his ancestors. Because the old Coordinator's death came officially from natural causes, Hideyoshi had been allowed to keep his position, not to mention his life.
Theodore squeezed his eyes shut on a vision of blood spurting from his father's severed neck. That dream. The Order of Five Pillars, then headed by Theodore's aunt and ally Constance, had seen to disposing Takashi's body. But Hideyoshi had to know that Takashi Kurita had died by his own hand. And he almost certainly had guessed, from the chaotic events of that night, that a failed attempt had been made on the old Coordinator's life.
Does he think I was behind that? Theodore wondered, not for the first time. Does he think my leaving him in place is a bribe to buy his silence? He rubbed his eyes. He had not studied the ki disciplines of 05P in depth enough to read another man's thoughts, or even to know if it was true that the highest Illuminati possessed that ability. Then, he didn't even know whether those tales were just incense-smoke the 05P blew in order to maintain its mystique. Hideyoshi, too, had served well, and survived continued scrutiny by the Smiling One. And that, Theodore thought ruefully, is as close as I'll ever come to telepathy.