by Victor Milán
"No irezumi," Cassie said. "I thought so. These aren't any yaks."
"Then who are they?"
She was going through his pockets now. "Come on. You grew up speaking the same language I did. Don't tell me you didn't hear that skinny puke with all the knives yell at me in Chinese."
She looked up at the actor, who looked barely disheveled for all his own exertion. "These're Maskirovka. Looks like Sun-Tzu Liao wants your skinny butt back, Johnny Tchang."
He went pale. "These jokers aren't long-term on the Pearl, either. If they were, they'd have gone ahead and got the tattoos to pass for yakuza, if I know anything at all about the Mask—and unfortunately I do."
And then Johnny startled Cassie by grabbing her by the back of the jacket and throwing her bodily away from the corpse.
13
Central District, Imperial City
Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
24 June 3058
Johnny landed on top of Cassie. She uttered a catamount-squall of outrage and rolled him off. She was just climbing onto his back with her kris out when the fat man's corpse exploded.
Cassie froze with Blood-drinker's point jammed in under the hinge of Johnny's jaw. "Kidney bomb," he said.
Then she became aware of something warm and wet stuck in the hair above her forehead. Inner Sphere operatives often had one kidney replaced by a bomb that would be activated when certain vital signs zeroed. Some could even be triggered at will by the operative, lending a certain spice to interrogation. Agents of the Maskirovka's Capellan Operations Branch almost always had them implanted. She tasted copper and salt, spat.
"I forgot all about that," she admitted, withdrawing the kris and climbing off. "Good thing you knew about it."
He rubbed under his jaw and laughed. "It's all those spies and secret agents I play," he said. "Something wore off."
He started to get up, but Cassie suddenly pushed him down and fell on top of him. Tiki Face exploded.
"Forgot about him," Johnny said. Cassie made the knife go away and extended a hand to help him up.
"I hate to cut the evening short," he said, "but we'd better get back to Eiga-toshi and get cleaned up."
"Don't you think we should buzz the ISF to the fact you've got the Maskirovka bird-dogging you?"
"No."
She recovered her snubby hideout revolver, ejected the spent casings into her palm and swapped them for fresh cartridges from her pocket. "How you doing, Johnny?" she asked, looking at him hard. "Did those bad guys blowing up fumble your gyros? You're a Capellan defector. You've got the Mask on your case. It won't be long before they're all over you like Elementals on an Enforcer."
He cocked his head to the side. "You seem like too much of a free spirit to feel comfortable about running to the secret police."
She opened her mouth, used it to draw in a deep breath of much needed cool spring air. It was palatable as long as she kept her sense of smell and taste suppressed by blocking her nose.
He was right. The fact that she'd fought alongside the Internal Security Force as well as against it wasn't anything she lived cornfortably with. And even though at last notice ISF regarded the 'lleros as being on the side of the angels, no one with all her chips pushed down tight in their sockets wanted the Dragon's Breath looking at her if she could conceivably help it. As far as Cassie was concerned, the ISF was smarter and meaner than the Maskirovka, and while it didn't have quite the Liao service's reputation for gratuitous nastiness, this game was being played not in their home field but in their locker room.
She shrugged and snapped her cylinder shut with a side-wise flip, even though she knew it was bad practice. "As my cuates say, it's your funeral."
He shuddered. "You have a real way with words."
"Tact isn't my department."
"Hey—you're bleeding!"
"How can you tell?"
He pulled out a handkerchief, came to her, tipped her face up. "Hmm," he said, dabbing at her with deft strokes that cleared blood away without stinging the wound too much. "Your chin's bleeding pretty well, but facial cuts are like that. Looks like a clean slice; your friend kept his knife good and sharp. If we can find some way to slow the bleeding down before you bleed out, it should heal up without leaving much of a mark. Which is-good, 'cause I'd hate to think of a mark on this pretty face."
"You sound like you know what you're talking about." She pulled something out of her pocket.
"I told you, I do all my own stunts. That includes things like swordfights with real swords. I've taken my share of nicks and scratches. What's that?"
"Pressure bandage," she said, stripping off the backing. "Dosed with coagulant and antiseptics. I'm not exactly new to this either."
"Let me do that."
She hesitated, then let him pluck the bandage from her fingers and press it to her chin.
"How are you doing?" she asked, studying him closely as he worked on her.
"Fine. Just fine. Why?" His eyes were unnaturally bright, and he spoke faster than normal, but he didn't look too far out there.
"Well, for starters, now you know what a serious fight feels like," she said, "and you saw two men die."
He laughed, a bit too brassily. "I shouldn't have given you the impression I'm a total hothouse flower. I've been in a few scrapes."
"Streetfights like this?"
He shook his head. "No. Nothing quite this serious. It's ... it's kind of exhilarating, actually."
"Maybe you shouldn't get to liking it too much. It's not like the big leagues when you've been playing street ball. It's real, and you're not playing for points. Ask those two who got strewn all over the street—not to mention your face."
His eyes got wide, and he quickly turned away. "Don't take too long with that," she advised as he heaved in the gutter. "The Friendly Persuaders will linger over their rice balls and sushi until they're dead-certain the shooting's over, but sooner or later they'll come poking around."
"Who are you?" he demanded, straightening and wiping his mouth with his bloody handkerchief. "The reality fairy?"
She smiled sweetly as sirens began their distant boop-bop song.
* * *
Next day the sky of Luthien was clear blue as a Vulture strode past the feet and lower torso of a wrecked and smoking Grand Dragon on the Tairakana Plains near Imperial City. The leaping feline insignia of Clan Smoke Jaguar was painted on the side of the Vulture's truncated-beak head. Red and blue-green lances of light flashed from the large and medium lasers mounted at the end of either arm.
As it stomped toward a Hatamoto-chi, the boxy twin racks mounted to either side of its head released a ripple-fired volley of long-range missiles. Explosions threw up turf and dust to either side. The Clan monster strode on, unstoppable.
"Wait for it," muttered Pyrotechnics Director Eddie Kim, watching the mock battle for Luthien from half a kilometer away, into his headset mike. "Ready ... now."
An explosion blew sparks and smoking chunks from the Vulture's snout, mimicking a hit from the Otomo Hata-moto-chi's Tiegart particle projection cannon. The 'Mech staggered, then plunged on, firing its lasers.
"Amazing," breathed Buntaro Mayne, who was watching the shoot from beside the FIX trailer where Kim and his crew had their command center set up. "It looks real."
"It is real, hoss," said Cowboy Payson. "Sorta." He had on a set of plastic two-thirds scale Elemental armor painted with the Nova Cats' heavily stylized panther-head-on-sunbursts insignia. He wasn't wearing either of the gauntlets that would mimic the small laser right arm or the machine gun and manipulator arm of the left.
Command-detonated charges blew more pieces from the Vulture in response to the touch of incoming lasers— low-powered like the ones mounted in the apparent Clan 'Mech's mockup arms, which wouldn't boil a pot of water for tea in a week. "You'd never imagine that's Pipiribau and his dinky little Locust in that thing, would you? Can't tell for diddly that big old head's nothin' but papier-m
ache and baling wire."
One of the nearer FIX techs winced at the Cowboy's description. While the false Vulture head mounted on the head of El Pipiribau's Locust—from which Zuma had carefully dismounted the small-laser arms and medium-laser chin turret—was made out of many materials, neither baling wire nor papier-mache were among them. It was a highly sophisticated model, crammed full of small smoke and explosive charges, painstakingly placed.
"O.K., everybody," Eddie Kim was saying, "here comes the money shot."
A Hatamoto-chi strode to meet the Clan machine. Ostensibly it was piloted by Johnny Tchang's character, but in fact was under the control of its normal jock, Lieutenant Senior Grade Elvis "Stretch" Santillanes, commander of the Caballeros' Eskiminzin Company. It fired twin salvos of short-range missiles at the Vulture.
Like the missiles the mock Vulture fired, they were nothing but big skyrockets. They carried black-powder warheads big enough to produce a flash, bang, and satisfying cloud of smoke, but not enough to scratch the paint on a real 'Mech, or even, barring bad luck, do much damage to the plastic Vulture appliances stuck all over the Locust.
The FIX wizards' luck was in. The volley struck on and around the built-up 'Mech. One of Kim's men triggered a charge that mimicked an explosion of the LRMs in the Vulture's left rack. The whole left side of the "head" flew apart. Vomiting smoke from concealed pots, the Battle-Mech toppled over sideways.
Though it was small by BattleMech standards, a Locust's twenty tons was a respectable chunk of metal. The onlookers felt the impact from some five hundred meters off. Buntaro Mayne shook his head.
"The pilot must be crazy to willingly make his machine fall over like that," he said, as the F/X crew cheered and exchanged high fives. "Unless he likes having his teeth rattled loose in their sockets."
"Nope," Cowboy said admiringly, "the Peep's just crazy."
* * *
"What I'm trying to achieve," Takura Migaki said, pouring a cup of steaming tea for his new friend during a break in shooting, "is something not only faithful to the look and feel of the period, but to the real story."
Father Doctor Bob Garcia accepted the tea with a smile and thanks. They were sitting in a tent pitched near the old battlefield on which the new holovid was being recorded. They weren't discussing Dragon Phoenix, though, but the Voice of the Dragon chief's other project.
Migaki settled himself onto a camp stool. The ground trembled as a column of Caballero 'Mechs rumbled past outside. "According to legend, Lord Kira was an evil conniver who manipulated the young Lord Asano into drawing his sword in the Shogun's presence. That was a capital offense, and the only way for Asano to redeem his family's honor was to commit suicide. Asano's forty-seven retainers became ronin. For a time they lived as common laborers, utterly disgraced. But when they felt the time was right, they assaulted Kira's castle and avenged their lord by killing him. They were ordered to commit suicide in turn."
He sipped. "That's all true enough, as far as the bare events go. It glosses over certain details such as that the bakufu, the military government, did not in fact want to punish the forty-seven ronin for their act, but that the ronin forced the government's hand. What intrigues me is that accounts from that time suggest Lord Kira was a man of compassion and wisdom who did nothing wrong, while Asano was a hot-headed young idiot. That's almost never been brought out in any dramatic presentation of Chushingura. But it's how I'm presenting mine."
Migaki's cheeks got flushed when he spoke of his projects, and his eyes gleamed. Father Doctor Bob sipped tea and nodded.
"That sounds fascinating from a dramatic standpoint," he said, "but I hope you won't be upset if I admit to a certain confusion. Isn't the role of Voice of the Dragon Productions to produce films that reinforce Combine values?"
"Of course." Migaki set his teacup on the ground and leaned forward, making emphatic gestures with his hands.
"But that's just what I'm doing. We're conveying the message that giri—duty—is absolute. The fact that its objects may be unworthy does not obviate its force."
"Ah." The Jesuit smiled. "That's very neat. Worthy of my Company, if I might say so. So your own desire and the interests of the Dragon coincide in this matter."
Migaki grinned like a twelve-year-old. "I love it when that happens."
Garcia held up a finger, "Ah, but how do you tell the one from the other? How do you know you're not letting your own desires color your view of what's good for the Dragon?"
Migaki sighed. "You know, I used to think that was the simplest thing in the world to do. I knew what was right, and that was that." He shrugged. "And maybe that's how I know I'm no longer young. It's not so easy anymore to assume automatically that what I want is the right thing."
An aide stuck his head in the flap of the tent. "Deputy Director Migaki, you have a call from the Marquis Maturro."
Migaki made a face. "Bring me a handset. If I have to talk to him, at least I don't have to look at his ugly face."
"Hai."
"Apologies, Bob-sensei," Migaki told his guest. "The Minister of Finance." He shrugged.
"I understand. Have no worries."
The aide brought a hand communicator and left. Migaki spoke some, listened a lot, then broke the connection.
"Mattaku!" he exclaimed as he set the hand phone on a table. "Damn. Those wild men and women of yours have gone and stepped in it this time. The Minister just left a new set of rat-shaped tooth marks on my posterior thanks to them."
"What happened?"
"They assaulted his son in an open-air market downtown. Broke the lad's nose. The Minister is flying around in the air about it." He shook his head. "We're going to have to do something to rein them in."
The Jesuit carefully set his tea cup down. "May I say something about this matter?" Migaki made a go-ahead gesture. "In my capacity as Regimental Intelligence Officer, not to mention Chief Psychologist, I try to keep abreast of incidents our people are involved in. I have some information about this one. Apparently, the young man in question is a member of what I can only call a street gang. He and his fellows were harassing a vendor—a Combine citizen. Driven by what as a native Southwesterner I have to admit is a rather quaint concept of chivalry, several of our people intervened to protect the woman. The Minister's son, I gather, assaulted a Caballero. He was injured as a result."
Father Doctor Bob picked up his cup. "I hope I'm not injuring our cause when I mention that the younger Maturro is lucky to be alive. Our people are warriors."
Migaki made a disgusted sound.
"I'll be happy to put all the information I have obtained at the Deputy Director's disposal."
Migaki waved him off. "Dekigoro-zoku," he said. "I should have known. It rings too damn true. The Minister's son is known to be running with those packs of young animals, relying on their status to protect them from any consequences."
He paced left several paces, then right. With his back to Garcia he chopped air by his head. "Even for me it's not exactly easy to put a good face on this kind of thing. All I can do is appeal to your understanding. This is a strong society, a fundamentally healthy one—I really believe it." He turned. "But it isn't perfect."
Garcia smiled. "I wouldn't be so rash as to suggest our own society's perfect. I'm in no hurry to judge yours. In truth, our people might as easily have been responsible for this incident. But I honestly believe that not to be the case."
A smile stole over Migaki's face. Negative emotions didn't seem to hang around him long, the Jesuit noted.
"Actually, I think your barbarians have done me a favor," Migaki said. "It'll be a pleasure to rake that shaven-headed buffoon Maturro over the coals for letting his son act like a beast. I do believe I'll take you up on that offer to show me your evidence on this thing, Father. I'll need to be sure of my footing for this job."
Garcia rose. "It will be my pleasure, Deputy Director."
Migaki took several steps toward the exit. Then he checked himself and swung around.
&n
bsp; "One thing," he said. "It might be best to restrict your non-essential personnel to the compound until after the celebration. Just to prevent further incidents."
Garcia laughed. "You really think that's wise?"
Migaki rubbed his face. "Maybe I'm thinking with my mouth again. They'd tear the place apart. Very well; forget about that.
"Just make sure your people know that they've made themselves a powerful enemy. Likely more than one."
14
Tumbledown District, Imperial City
Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
25 June 3058
When she heard the distinctive crack of lasers Cassie knew she was onto something.
She was cruising in the southeastern sector of town, out toward the spaceport. It was not the most elegant sector of Imperial City. The buildings ran to slablike apartment blocks for the lowest class of Workers, big people-boxes with raw edges and flaking cement. Between them rose warehouses, and also the makeshift shanties of the Unproductives and those who were slipping close to that status. The Friendly Persuaders tore down the shanties regularly, Cassie's informants told her, but the squatters put them back up just as regularly.
The streets were stiff with vehicles, farty alcohol-burning trucks and buses whose formaldehyde-laced exhaust fumes brought tears to the eyes and a profusion of pedal-powered carts and cabs. The interstices between vehicles were filled with people, who somehow managed not to get squashed. Apparently the trucks' horns, and the bells and fervent curses of the pedicab pushers exerted some magic repellor-field effect on pedestrians.
There was a lot of construction going on down here, and just as much destruction, much of it by the usual ravages of time—and that didn't take long, given the shabby building materials that went into low-Worker housing. But most of the deconstruction could be attributed to the standard damage caused by the wrecking-ball and bulldozer in the name of some definition of progress. Cassie wondered if it was meaningful or just government make-work. For all Theodore's reforms, the Combine was still saddled with a military economy big-time. With the Clans hanging like a guillotine blade above the Tukayyid truce line and about a hundred years' economic progress separating the Combine from its erstwhile main rivals—now doing business as the Lyran Alliance and the ramp Federated Commonwealth— that meant millions of Draconians were unemployed, and millions more hard at work in the one-gang-digs-holes-another-fills-them-in type of job.