by Victor Milán
"Why were you attacking the Otomo?"
"Colonel Hideyoshi is a traitor, Tai-sho. He and his men were trying to assassinate the Coordinator."
"So ka ? That is hard to believe."
"Please make your own investigation, General, and learn the truth for yourself."
"Very well, Tai-sa. I'll do just that. All MechWarriors who were engaged in combat, Ghost Legion or Otomo— dismount from your machines at once and prepare to be taken into custody."
"General Sakade." The voice from the fallen Sunders loudspeakers sounded strained and ancient. "Please permit me to return my 'Mech to its feet, rather than leave it lying here in disgrace. By the years I have served your husband, I ask this favor, although I know I am unworthy."
Tai-sho Tomoe Sakade paused.
"Very well, Oda-san. You may rise."
Like an old man, the badly damaged Sunder clambered to its blocky feet. Not disobeying the Tai-sho but rather—to her own mind, anyway—deferring obedience, Lainie sat in her cockpit and seethed. After all I went through to put that bastard down....
The Sunder stood facing Sakade's BattleMech, which had halted barely twenty paces away. Its once-pristine white paint had mostly been boiled away; what remained was streaked with black. Its right arm was twisted metal and loose cables, and its armor was pocked and cratered as if pieces had been ripped out of it by some monstrous claw. Then, "Death to the traitor!" Hideyoshi exclaimed, wheeled the OmniMech and sent it striding toward the grandstand.
A jagged blue bolt from Sakade's extended-range PPC hit the Sunder full in the back, joined at once by a ruby— beam from Lainie's surviving large laser. A fractional second later beams and projectiles converged on the traitor's 'Mech from all over the Square. The Sunder exploded like an erupting volcano.
* * *
Cassie saw that each of the black-clad newcomers bore a circular emblem on his or her chest: yellow cat's eyes peering from blackness through a screen of reeds—the mon that the Smiling One, born of the Middle Class, had adopted for the Indrahar family on being appointed Director of ISF. In the midst of them strode a tall man whose garments were merely black clothing, not an armored sneaksuit, and whose red-haired head was bare. At his side fought a swordsman, equally tall, who was dressed in a spacer's scuffed brown leather jacket. Though Cassie had never to her knowledge seen him before, the tanned face beneath that mane of wild black hair looked somehow familiar.
For the next few moments she and her two companions were occupied finishing off the last of the attackers who had won to the top of the grandstand. When that was done all the renegade commandos at ground level seemed to be down. Only Hohiro Kiguri still stood, erect and defiant, in the center of a circle of Sons of the Dragon.
"Theodore Kurita!" he called in ringing tones to the Coordinator, who stood with bloody sword in hand at the top of the stairs. "You have fought well. Cross blades with me, and we'll see who wins an honorable death."
The tall man in the leather jacket moved swiftly to the base of the stairs. He held his katana before him. "If you wish to fight my father," he said in a quiet voice, "you must first go through me."
Kiguri stared in astonishment. "Sakamoto?"
"You will fight neither of them." Ninyu Kerai stepped slowly forward to stand facing Kiguri. He had returned his own sword to its scabbard, which was strapped across his back. "Traitors have no standing to demand duels with Kurita, even those who have renounced the name. Besides, your quarrel is with me, is it not, Kiguri? You staged this whole conspiracy because you had been passed over to succeed my father."
For a long moment the single eye glared at Ninyu Kerai. Then Hohiro Kiguri laughed. "I carry the wrong family name to accede to the Dragon Throne. Yet my ambition accepts no such limitation. Why pretend otherwise?
"I would rule the Draconis Combine. With the proper Coordinator in place, the Director of the Internal Security Force can readily do so. Three men stood in my path: yourself, your adoptive father, and Theodore Kurita. One has eliminated himself. I still propose to remove the final two barriers."
"You are not fit to rule," Ninyu Kerai said. "You are overconfident and careless: witness the way you hid Franklin Sakamoto in a DEST safe house—even one of whose existence my father was initially unaware. Witness the way all your schemes—to frame the foreign mercenaries and Franklin Sakamoto for the Coordinator's murder; to use Oda's festering resentment as a backup plan; even your attempt to assassinate the Tono with your own hand—have been brought to nothing by a crippled old man and a gaijin woman."
"But a hell of a gaijin woman," Johnny Tchang murmured out the side of his mouth to Cassie.
"Agreed," said Migaki, who stood with arms folded, ap-parendy at total indolent ease, on the other side of her.
Kiguri glowered and pointed his vibrokatana at Ninyu. "Draw your weapon, then, fatherless whelp. You can never match me. I'll put the he to all your words, and show you what a fool your father was to prefer you over me into the bargain!"
Moving deliberately Ninyu Kerai unslung his sheathed sword, thrust the scabbard through his belt in such a way that the curve of the blade was upward.
"No. Sheathe your weapon. We will settle this quickly. An iai duel—quick-draw sword."
Kiguri paused, nodded. "Very well." He arranged his own scabbard in the same manner and sheathed his sword. "But you are at a disadvantage: you lack armor, and I have a vibroblade."
"I need no armor," Ninyu Kerai said. "I need no vibroblade."
The two men stood staring intently at each other, separated by little more than arm's reach. In the heavy silence, tension wound like an elastic band being twisted to the breaking point.
"Historically," Migaki said under his breath, "both participants in quick-draw sword duels generally killed each other. Unless—"
Hohiro Kiguri moved, so fast even the leopard-quick Ninyu couldn't match him, snatching his vibrokatana from the scabbard and raising it high for a blow that would split the red-haired skull in half.
But Ninyu pulled his sword from the scabbard with the left hand, put his right hand to the spline and shoved the wicked-sharp blade through Kiguri's chest before Kiguri could strike.
Kiguri's eyes bulged. His scarred face set, blood gey-sered from his chest, and he fell lifeless to the pavement.
Migaki pumped his hand in the air. "Kurosawa. The climax of Sanjuro. I knew there was a reason I made Ninyu watch those old movies."
Ninyu Kerai looked up at him, and one corner of his mouth twitched upward. "In their own time all things may be found useful," he said, "even an obsession with ancient cinema."
He cleared the traitor's blood from his blade with a flick of the wrist and sheathed his sword with a snick.
* * *
Over the worried protests of his aides—who were greatly chagrined by how little they had contributed to the struggle for the Coordinator's life—Theodore ordered the transpex shield lowered.
"My people must know that I am alive and unharmed," he declared, ignoring the swordcuts that emergency medical techs were dabbing at with antiseptics and healing-accelerants even as he spoke. "And that I won't cower forever behind a meter of armored synthetic."
"No one would dream of accusing you of cowering, my boy," said Uncle Chandy, whose attendants, their lasers holstered, once again shaded him with a parasol and plied him with iced drinks. He wasn't the least bit ashamed of not helping fight. "Especially not once they see the documentary our young friend Takura-fcwn makes out of today's events. By the way his eyes gleam and he keeps rubbing his hands together as if he'd just unearthed an intact Star League base in the backyard of his villa, I perceive his crews caught it all."
"Oh, yes," said Migaki, rubbing his hands together and making his eyes to gleam. "My people have won themselves great honor today." Two of his holocam crews had been wiped out by overkill from the 'Mech battle, but the Voice of the Dragon techs had all stayed at their posts, recording it all for posterity—or rather for their lord Migaki, who would make damn
sure that what posterity actually got a gander at was even purer and more heroic than what really happened.
Cassie stood to one side with Johnny Tchang. Somehow they came to be holding hands. Neither said anything. There really didn't seem much to say at this particular point With a great deal of groaning, the warped and scarred shield was withdrawn into the ground. Out on the great Square the crowds had began to come back under the aegis of the BattleMechs of Tai-sho Sakade's scratch force and Heruzu Enjeruzu, the question of who were the assassins and who were the defenders of the Coordinator having been definitively settled by Oda Hideyoshi's last, brief ride. Ambulance crews moved among the re-coalescing throng, gathering up those spectators wounded or killed by the 'Mech battle.
The grandstands, too, began to be repopulated. Those who had occupied them before had mostly fled beneath them. Those who survived were filtering back out, blinking in the sunshine like animals emerging from their burrows.
* * *
Among those furtive animals was Benjamin Inagawa; oyabun of Benjamin Military District and now become the mover and shaker of Kokuryu-kai, the Black Dragon Society. Like Migaki's camera crews he had seen the whole thing.
Rage and frustration seethed within him. In one blinding Buddha flash he had perceived the truth: Hohiro Kiguri had been Kaga, the Shadowed One. He had contemptuously manipulated the Kokuryu-kai for his own ends. And that same Kiguri had failed miserably.
At that thought, Inagawa felt a change. He stood on the steps of the grandstand, down and to the left of where the Coordinator prepared to step forward and reassure his people of his survival. Benjamin Inagawa's mood began to shift to a buoyant exultation because that arrogant pig Kiguri had died—and he, Benjamin Inagawa, much-despised yakuza, was about to succeed where the high and mighty commander of the Draconis Elite Strike Teams had failed.
Because no one was paying attention to him. A large man and a flashy dresser, Inagawa was used to commanding center stage. Yet for once no one seemed to notice him—not the traitor Theodore, nor the hooded and face-masked Sons of the Dragon who flanked him, not the devil-pup Ninyu Kerai, nor the proud Mech Warriors high up in their cockpits, who only deigned to notice nothing less than a fresh BattleMech attack. And for once Inagawa was glad to be ignored by the Combine's high and mighty.
He reached under his suit coat—torn and soiled by his undignified scramble beneath the bleachers—and drew his own compact holdout pistol. Theodore Kurita strode forward to the front of the podium and held up his hands. The crowd roared approval.
The fools. Benjamin Inagawa raised his arm, centered his sights on the Coordinator's chest. Incredibly, no one noticed him. It was as if he were invisible. Surely this was destiny; surely he was fated to save the Combine from decadence and dissolution. His finger tightened on the trigger.
And he was swept into the air, held like a roach in a pair of chopsticks by the large lasers that made up the arms of a Mauler. They held him squirming high in the air while the throng gasped and pointed.
"I am Melisandra DuBonnet," an amplified voice said. "You betrayed my father and murdered him. Now your blood will repay his."
"Put me down!" Inagawa screamed. He fired the pistol uselessly against the gouged metal hide of the monster.
"Happily," said the woman who now called herself Eleanor Shimazu. Carefully—gently, even—she set the oyabun down on the pavement right in front of the podium where an astounded Theodore and his retinue stood watching. He began to run.
He had gone perhaps five paces when the Mauler's broad right foot descended on him, blocking him from view. A final scream, a crunch of metal on cement. Then silence.
* * *
Takura Migaki hugged Lainie against him as the crowd cheered hoarsely. They had been at it for minutes, and seemed ready to keep it up until the sun burned out.
"If you had just said, 'Hello, my name is Melisandra DuBonnet. You killed my father. Prepare to die,' " he told her, "it would have been perfect. But it was great cinema all the same."
She dabbed moisture from the corners of her maroon eyes and looked at him. "Tak," she said, "what the hell are you talking about?"
"Never mind," he said. "Just kiss me."
"That I can do," she said, and did.
* * *
"Teddy-kun," a soft voice said from behind him.
Theodore half-turned from the multitude and smiled. "When you use that name, you always want something."
Uncle Chandy beamed at him like Hotei on a bender. "Perceptive as always, Tono."
He waved a pudgy hand at Franklin Sakamoto, who stood off to one side of the podium, looking as if he felt conspicuous and out of place. "The boy laid his life on the line for you today, Theodore," the fat man said, "not that he hasn't done so before. Nothing will challenge Hohiro's succession from this day on. Meanwhile this young man has renounced the throne, and proven that he means it."
"What do you want of me,-€handy?"
"Let go the past, Theodore. Forgive yourself and accept yourself. Let your father rest in peace—and embrace your son."
Father and son stared at each other as across a gulf of light-years. "The Dragon needs you whole, Theodore," Uncle Chandy said. "The Inner Sphere needs you whole."
Theodore threw his arms around his son, this man known as Franklin Sakamoto, and held him tight. Around them, a million voices raised a cheer, but the roar could not have been greater than the one that lifted the heart of Theodore himself at that moment. Father of his people, their protector, their refuge, he would always be. Never would he forsake them, never would he betray them. But now he had them all, for his own son, a Kurita through and through, brave and selfless, with a heart as true as any samurai's arrow, was home again. At last.
About the Author
Victor Milan has published over seventy novels, including The Runespear, co-authored with Melinda Snodgrass, and the award-winning The Cybernetic Samurai and its sequel, The Cybernetic Shogun. Recent books include a technothriller, Red Sands and a Star Trek® novel entitled From the Depths. His dark military SF novel CLD was recently published by Avon Books.
Milan's previous BattleTech novels are Close Quarters and Hearts of Chaos, which also featured the popular Camacho's Caballeros of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment. Black Dragon is his third BattleTech® novel to feature the irrepressible Caballeros.
The Washington Post has called Milan a "contender for major stardom" in science fiction. He is a charter member of the New Mexico-based Wild Cards Mafia, creators of the highly acclaimed SF shared-world anthologies.
Milan's house is infested with dogs, cats and ferrets. He enjoys birding, playing games of various sorts, walking by the Rio Grande, and exploring the ancient network of irrigation ditches by mountain bike in Albuquerque's North Valley. He also practices taekwon-do.
He finds himself living in the science fiction world he read about as a kid and generally, he's pleased.