by Victor Milán
His long blond hair hanging unbound about his massive shoulders, Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki eased himself back against the hardwood rim of the hot tub that was serving in lieu of a proper bath. He looked through steam rising off the near-scalding water at the face on the visiphone hung on the wall.
"So, Mr. Chairman," he said, "your people remain fractious. All across the Hyborian continent the rulers of cities and even whole districts refuse to acknowledge our sovereignty. In the southern hemisphere the leaders are with us, but the people largely ignore them. I am most disappointed, Blaylock-san. You promised to deliver your world to us."
Scattered among the rest of the half-dozen hardwood tubs that Kusunoki had ordered installed in a former dressing room off the Port Howard administrative complex's gym, his score of young retainers, all naked and scarcely less splendidly muscled than the Tai-sho himself, nodded and murmured about Howard Blaylock's shortcomings in contemptuous Japanese. Standing by the side of the General's tub in his inevitable top hat, kimono, striped pants and spats, gloved hands folded neatly across the head of his cane, Mr. Kimura kept his own counsel.
He'd had a lot of practice at that since arriving on Towne.
Visible from the necktie up, Howard Blaylock performed a facial shrug, a quick grimace suggesting an evil smell had passed beneath his nose. "Townians are an undisciplined brunch," he said. "That's a major reason I thought it was a good idea to invite you people in here in the first place. You—we—are faced with the job of counteracting generations of Davionist propaganda that has sowed mistrust of the Dragon as well as a lot of nonsensical notions about civil liberties that even the Free Worlds League doesn't pretend to believe in anymore."
"So ka?" Kusunoki scowled. His shoulders bunched ominously.
"Perhaps Mr. Blaylock would care to offer his humble recommendation as to how that job might best be accomplished," Kimura said with a smoothness that had acquired a special gloss over his weeks of association with Kusunoki.
Kusunoki relaxed back into his steam and gestured for Blaylock to proceed. "Incentives, General," Blaylock said. "The carrott and the stick. We give the local bosses more power and a bigger take of the cut in return for their wholehearted support. If they still want to play patriot we make it clear to their ambitious underlings that we're willing to play ball with anybody who'll play ball with us. And there're always ambitious underlings looking to topple the guys above them from their perches—I'm sure you're all too aware of that little phenomenon, General."
"It's so," rumbled Kusunoki, nodding. Mr. Kimura rolled his eyes toward the pierced off-white tiles of the ceiling. Despite Kusunoki's mammoth popularity with his troops, he harbored the paranoid conviction that subordinates plotted constantly to supplant him. Which, to Mr. Kimura's considerable puzzlement, did not seem to be the case, despite the fact that gekoku-jo—"those below rising against those above"—was at least as integral to the history of Japan and the Combine as the warrior's code of bushido or even ninkyo, which the yakuza fondly believed was their own equivalent to the Way of the Warrior.
"For the "people, offer increases in government benefits, land reform, that kind of thing. Promise to tax the big landowners, the ranchers and miners and timber companies, and spread the wealth around: the people'll fall into line quick enough. Start recruiting police aggressively. Most of the clowns in this so-called resistance are just a gang of bullies; give them a chance to bust some heads, and they'll flock to you too. And if the leadership doesn't come across quick enough—"
A shrug of those clothes-pole shoulders. "You pick out a few mayors or provincial governors, and you make examples out of them." He smiled. "You Draconians understand that principle pretty well, I believe?"
"That is true, too." Kusunoki was smiling now himself.
"Oh—one more little matter before I ring off, General," Blaylock said as if in afterthought. "You'll go a long way toward consolidating your support if you start off with a gesture toward those who have already helped you. Releasing those BattleMechs you captured from the mercenaries to the Towne Guard will buy you an awful lot of goodwill."
"No," said Kusunoki as he rose and stepped out of the tub, water streaming down his chiseled body and legs. Several attendants hopped out of their own tubs to swaddle him quickly with white fluffy towels piled on a table by the wall. Kimura saw Blaylock belatedly hide his surprise. Draconians had considerably less body-modesty than most Davions did.
From a minuscule arch of one eyebrow Mr. Kimura deduced that Blaylock was reaffirming incorrect conclusions about Jeffrey Kusunoki and his followers. Male homosexuality was not stigmatized by the Dragon or the Dictum Honorium, though it was not actively encouraged among warriors, a sit had been during most of the Tokugawa Shogunate on which the Kuritas had based so much of their own rule. But Kusunoki was not homosexual. Neither did he care for women; in fact he had a marked aversion to them, especially ones in positions of military power. Nor, insofar as Toyama-kai had been able to discover, did he have any interest in children, animals, or artificial aids. He seemed entirely sexless—and the kai was very good indeed at ferreting out such details. They liked to have handles on those with whom they did business.
Blaylock got his reactions in order. "General, won't you even consider it? They're not doing anybody much good, standing parked in the TTC yard."
"I said no, Mr. Blaylock." Kusunoki was permitting his retainers to help him into a purple silk kimono with white cranes and rushes on it. He looked up at the screen.
"Tomorrow morning your ultimatum to the foreign mercenaries expires. Will you have the courage to follow through?"
Blaylock grinned. "Should your Excellency doubt me, I invite him to the little ceremony I have planned for dawn in the Palace gardens if the money-troopers don't surrender."
"I shall be there." Kusunoki nodded. The screen went blank.
"How soon can I kill him?" he asked Kimura.
"Let us first see how his plans to expedite the pacification of Towne prosper," Mr. Kimura said. "If they work, you might find you don't want to kill him at all."
Kusunoki grunted.
Howard Blaylock turned from the darkened visi-phone. "You still here? Take the rest of the night off and go into town. I want to spend a little last quality time with my guest."
Wolf Girl stood in the gloom by the wall. Washes of color from Blaylock's holotapestry chased each other enigmatically across her features. She said nothing, but her arms were folded across her chest.
"What's the matter?" Blaylock shot her a grin. "You jealous? Or just disapproving?"
"Captain MacDougall is a warrior," Wolf Girl said. "It's not right to treat her this way."
"A warrior?" Blaylock laughed. "She sure gave up quick enough when the Dracs got the drop on her. You should be grateful to me; I'm really doing them all a favor, keeping them here in the Palace. Kusunoki wanted to display them in front of the Admin Center in iron cages. The Dracs despise anybody who surrenders."
Wolf Girl said nothing more. Her handsome features were set.
"Jesus, you're spoiling my mood. I don't know why you've got such a soft spot for these freaking foreigners anyway, after the way they bumped your nose a couple days ago. You haven't failed me like that very often, WG."
"If you find my service unsatisfactory—"
"Oh, get the hell out of here."
* * *
Blinking sleep from his eyes, the guard watched the vehicle crawl up Isildur Way toward the black wrought-iron fence that surrounded the former Marquis' Palace. It was a conventional six-wheeler delivery truck; hovercraft were not popular on Towne, for no known reason other than taste. Behind it, the lights of Port Howard were a dimmer display than they used to be. Civilian traffic without special permit was forbidden at this time of night.
Of course, it was too much to hope that this was unauthorized traffic. Nothing that exciting ever happened on the guard's shift. Nobody would be dim enough to drive straight up to the gates of the Planetary Chairman's residence a
fter curfew without all the proper paperwork and a damned compelling reason to boot. Howard Blaylock had a taste for throwing his weight around.
The truck stopped. Grumbling to himself, the guard got off his stool, opened the door of the guard-booth to the icy night wind, stepped out with his Federated assault rifle slung over one shoulder and a torch in his right hand. He splashed the beam along the box. It was lettered Aquilonia Audiovisual, Your Entertainment Electronics Superstore.
The driver rolled the window down. He had on a dark stocking cap and a long face whose sharpness had not been weathered away by his years. "Howdy," he said. "Got a load of heavy-duty holovid equipment in back. Blaylock's orders."
The guard frowned. "I thought the stuff for the big show tomorrow wasn't due in until after midnight."
"Ain't that the way it always works, my friend?" the driver asked with a commiserant grin. "Nobody tells you nothin'."
"I'm still gonna have to see papers."
"Paperwork takes so much time," the driver said, smiling. "How 'bout I do this?"
He raised up an autopistol with a fat black suppressor screwed on the end. The last thing the guard saw was a bright small flash.
* * *
"You're asking a lot of us, Colonel Camacho," Goose Harter of the Gunderland Ranchers' Protective Association said across the scarred Gunderland-pine table. From outside came the crunch of BattleMech footsteps in fresh-fallen snow outside the hunting lodge. Don Carlos wasn't taking any chances of this meeting being interrupted as rudely as the one two days previously had been.
A fire burned in a gray fieldstone fireplace much more modest than the one at the original meeting-place had been. The common-room, whose dark-stained rafter beams were so low that even Don Carlos felt self-conscious when he stood to his full 173-centimeter height, was also smaller. This gathering was more exclusive, and a hundred klicks distant from the Bear Creek resort, although still nestled in the mountains far from anyplace the Dracs and their lackeys had dared penetrate. Except of course for Wolf Girl, who had not been invited this time.
"So far a body might get the impression you mercs have done a lot more running than fighting," the stocky ex-'Mech jock went on.
"We have," Maccabee Bar-Kochba said in his gravel bass. His Dayan Company was spread out by lances in an arc north and east of Port Howard. They had been ambushing probes by Kurita armor and BattleMech units and then pulling back. They had destroyed two 'Mechs, seven tanks, and twenty other vehicles without taking a loss themselves. This was the sort of war the Caballeros excelled at. "But we're hitting and they're hurting."
"They are much more numerous, though," said Pik Vosloo, another Mech Warrior-turned-rancher. A dark, narrow man somewhere in his thirties, he had deep-set black eyes and close-cropped black hair that grew down to a widow's peak. "You can't help but lose any war of attrition."
"That's why we're running," said Peter White-Nose Pony. Right now he had Third Battalion's Geronimo Company south of Port Howard, blockading the superhighway to the port city of Saraath in Nemedia Province. Like Maccabee, he had dispersed his other two companies to Uncle Chandy's holdings around western Hyboria before the invasion.
"A planet is a very large place, my friends, if you will allow me to restate the obvious," Colonel Camacho said from his seat at the head of the table. He smiled. "As we have learned all too well in the few short weeks between our arrival and that of our uninvited guests. These renegade Kuritas must proceed judiciously, since they have no hope of conquering Towne by main force."
"But they'll find no shortage of collaborators willing to sell their birthright for a dollop of power," Vosloo said. "Blaylock, may he find himself in a burning building with his spine snapped, will see to that."
"He already has," added Esther Durning, a tiny wizened redhead who ran a heavy-equipment repair service and doubled as a long-time Popular Militia organizer. Her right upper arm was sheathed in a rigid bioplast net. A bullet fired by Wolf Girl had shattered her humerus. "If I ever get my hands—well, my good hand, anyway—on that traitorous bitch ..."
"But Towne has substantial resources for resistance," Don Carlos said. "Primarily the ingenuity, courage, and will to resist of its people. Our mission has always been to mobilize those resources to defeat the invaders—though when the time comes to strike the decisive blow, you'll find the Seventeenth Recon Regiment in the forefront."
"Why should you hang around here?" demanded stout, balding sawmill owner Eddie Newcombe. "The Dracs've offered you safe passage off-planet. And they've got some of your people hostage."
Don Carlos glanced at his old friend Gordo Baird, who stood glowering from the shadows along one wall. The intelligence officer had been strident in his urgings that the regiment cut its losses and accept the offer of honorable surrender.
"It is not our way to deal with hostage-takers," the Colonel said, "or to abandon our commissions. It is not just a matter of maintaining our credibility in the very competitive Inner Sphere mercenary market. It is a matter of honor."
The resistance leaders glanced at one another. They knew by now that the Southwesterners were as prickly about honor as any Drac. The question remained as to how long the offworlders would stay that way.
"As to what we have to offer," Don Carlos continued, "in the main it is expertise. For example, my son Gavilan graduated from the New Avalon Military Academy." He nodded to Gabby, who sat at his right. The young man was uncharacteristically quiet tonight. He had fled south with his Shadow Hawk to join White-Nose Pony's command after the debacle at Port Howard. Since his father had pulled his own battalion off the line for the time, he had stayed to fight with Third. He had not seen his father again until this evening.
"We're not exactly lacking for conventional training," Harter said. "I graduated from the Nagelring, myself."
"The key word is 'conventional,' Mr. Harter," said Father Doctor Bob García. "We Southwesterners have a long history of warfare which is anything but. We are raiders, guerrillas, at heart. And we have among us a scout who has probably accounted for more BattleMechs destroyed without benefit of any kind of fighting vehicle than any other person in the Inner Sphere, Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassiopeia Suthorn." He smiled. "I think we might have some knowledge to impart to your people."
"We are also fortunate enough to have among us a man whose extensive study of history, as well as his training in the ways of intrigue, qualifies him uniquely as a strategist of unconventional warfare. I refer, of course, to Lieutenant Senior Grade Father Roberto García, SJ."
The Jesuit's smile slipped off and he looked at Don Carlos in amazement. Because of his training as both Jesuit and MechWarrior—and the Colonel's predisposition toward men of the cloth—he was used to attending meetings such as this as part of Camacho's brain trust. He had not known there was a deeper reason for his presence tonight.
Ah, well, Don Carlos thought, concealing his own smile. If the young man could not cope with this small surprise, he could scarcely hope to deal with the renegade sons of the Dragon, could he?
Father Bob blinked and took command of himself. "We all know the importance of knowing when and where to strike, gentlemen, Ms. Durning," he said smoothly, turning to face the militia representatives. "But in a situation such as this, it is perhaps more important to know when not to strike. . . ."
* * *
The backhanded blow snapped Lady K's head around on her neck and sent her reeling into the unwelcome grasp of Taras. As always his touch felt slightly greasy on her bare arms. He pivoted and flung her onto the bed of the small room where she was confined on the second floor of the Palace.
Buster, blond hair hanging in vacant blue eyes, stood over her massaging the knuckles of his right hand.
"What did you do that for?" she demanded. "Blaylock ordered you not to damage the merchandise!"
The sense of betrayal, the unfairness of changing the rules on her, made her eyes sting with tears. That was one of the effects of sustained abuse, as she knew well, that vi
ctim-fragility. It was not a place she liked being back in.
Buster looked at Taras. Buster wore a brown suit like a feed sack and a tie that was never properly knotted. The other man was darker, shorter, and slightly less bulky. He wore a natty black suit, a black mustache, and a gold ring in one ear. His dark hair was shaved at the temples, and gathered into a thin tail at the nape.
"The Chairman's gonna come and pay his, y'know, final respects to you in a few minutes," Buster said, "since that greaseball colonel of yours has decided to play tough-guy. We just don't want you getting any ideas about spoiling such a beautiful occasion."
"Also," Taras added, "His Excellency has promised that when he's done with you for the evening, we can have you. We want to ensure you're in a receptive mood."
She wanted to spit in his face. Somehow she could not muster the energy.
Buster ran his eyes over her body like clammy hands. She was dressed in a simple white shift. It hung; she had lost weight in captivity.
"Now you're gonna put on something nice for the Chairman," he said. "He wants you looking good for your going-away party."
"You go straight to hell," she said. And thought, Thanks for helping me find my spirit again. You pig.
Buster scowled and raised a heavy hand.
Behind him the door blew off its hinges with a double crack of finger charges. He and Taras spun around as it was kicked in. Taras's hand dove for the laser pistol in the shoulder holster beneath his coat.
There came a staccato popping, loud in the room's confines. The back of Taras's suit coat blew out in tatters and dark spray. His body jerked in neuromuscular response to multiple impacts, and then he simply collapsed like a suit of clothes that had slipped from a hangar.
Two figures had come in through the door. They carried suppressed machine pistols and wore black sneak suits with goggles—conventional vision-enhancers, not the sinister red circle-vision wraparounds like those of DEST commandos—and gas masks. The one that had sidestepped right and blasted Taras said "Clear" in Cowboy Payson's drawl.