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  More to the point, old Pete was not the sort to strongly feel the citizen's duty to report any nails he might happen to notice standing out to the attention of the Friendly Persuaders. He might, given proper inducement, share the code to the big and exceedingly modern electronic lock on his junkyard's gate with a gaijin. He might even introduce a foreign woman to his dog pack, so they wouldn't raise an unholy ruckus, not to mention not knock her down and chew on her, if she should come around. It only took the proper line of banter and an appropriately thick wad of C-Bills, which given ComStar's recent woes and the Combine's increasing economic health were still the hardest money in the Sphere. Cassie was sufficiently supplied with both.

  She let herself in and locked the gate behind her, so as not to abuse her host's hospitality by allowing unwanted visitors to slip in; she doubted she was the only person in Imperial City to reckon old Pete had more wealth than what he wore on his grubby old body. The compound was large, about two hundred meters by three. Off in the middle of it, a yellow light glowed from the window of Pete's hut, which Cassie guessed served mainly to conceal the entrance to a much more spacious and sumptuous, not to mention thoroughly bunkered, residence underground. She headed toward a small outbuilding much nearer the gate, made from a large cargo crate. She had a little motorbike—Drac-made, which would have scandalized her fellow 'lleros—hidden inside that crate and it had a powerful but well-silenced engine in it.

  And she was almost there when a sense of wrongness hit her like a runaway Arrow missile.

  It took no more than the Zen-flash of awareness to tell her what was wrong: no dogs. The beasts would not bark at her, but they should have been thronging around, jostling for a ritual smell and hoping she'd brought a bag of treats, which as it happened, she had. But the place was dead-still. Not even a breeze.

  She stopped. All at once all her alarms started jangling at once. Intruders! Many! Flanking me. ...

  A shadow sprouted from the roof of the crate-turned-shack, detached itself, and landed lightly on the ground before her. It walked forward, split-toed black boots making no sound on the packed dirt. It was a man, tall with greyhound build, big in chest and narrow in hips, clad entirely in black—except for his face, which was covered with a shiny visor showing red highlights to Luthien's constellations.

  DEST! Her heart turned to a lump of obsidian. She was doomed, and so were her comrades. The rot ran right through the heart of the all-powerful secret police....

  The operative reached over his shoulder, brought down a thin sliver of brightness to hold at ready before him. DEST teams loved their blades and would use them in preference to firearms whenever they could. Cassie became aware of a buzz, almost subliminal, that stirred the hairs at the nape of her neck.

  Vibrokatana, she knew. The latest toy from ISF's labs. She had never encountered one, had barely caught wind of their existence. It was said they could cut through Clan Elemental battle armor at a stroke.

  She was already acting. Her hand came out from under her jacket with a heavy Bulldog autopistol. She thrust the gun out before her and shot the DEST operative twice in the center of his chest, right over the heart.

  He dropped as if he were, well, shot. His DEST infiltration suit would stop the bullets. But the ISF's commandos refused to sacrifice mobility for anything—which Cassie could surely get behind—and so their armored bodysuits had to be flexible rather than rigid. Which meant pistol bullets could punch a ways into you even if you were wearing one. Sternum hits like that could interrupt the beating of a man's heart, or even stop it cold.

  She wasn't hanging around to see if he were dead, unconscious, or merely stunned. She darted toward her right and the nearest cover, a long, meter-and-a-half high metal housing for a defunct portable generator. A dark figure suddenly rose from the top of it. Cassie blasted four shots toward its knee. The operative pitched forward as Cassie rolled over the top to come down in a crouch, pistol ready.

  She looked around. Tsu Shima had already set; only Orientalis hung in the sky over the Kiyomori Range to the west, a pale verdant sliver. In the moon's death-colored light the junkyard was a weird geometric jumble, the playroom of a gigantic child whose parents had unaccountably provided it with a wealth of sharp-edged, rusting metal toys. Green-tinted shadows edged blackness.

  Cassie became aware of motion around her. Without hesitation she ran on, deeper into the yard. Her pursuers were likely deployed to cut off her quickest escape routes. But the scrap-metal jungle was her ally. It gave her cover, and a prayer of escape. Under the circumstances, it was all she asked.

  Her pursuers had the visual advantage: those red visors provided computer-enhanced passive-infrared vision, with small but powerful IR lamps mounted on the sides to provide active illumination in a wavelength Cassie's unaided eyes couldn't perceive. Worse, the visors provided a compressed "circle-vision" picture at the top of the operative's field of view, just like a BattleMech. But the sensory suites had their downside as well. Direct hearing was cut off, and while the suit provided computer-filtered audio input, Cassie had yet to encounter such that was better than unaided human hearing in snoop-and-poop situations; the computer tended to be a lot better at picking up and amplifying scraps of conversation than at picking up a stealthy footstep. In fact, if you moved just right, the computer was liable to perceive any sounds you made as background noise and filter them right out.

  After perhaps fifty meters of headlong flight, darting down side passages and leaping low obstacles, she slowed, stopped with her back to a crate made of weathered synthetic and filled with broken-toothed gear wheels. As Guru Johann had taught she concentrated on her breathing, in part to keep the sound from blanking her own hearing, in part to control the fightIflight reflex. As quietly as she could she slipped the half-depleted magazine out of its well in the butt of her Bulldog and replaced it with a full one.

  She was in pure action mode, whole being focused on survival and escape. She did not allow her conscious mind to touch upon the question of what the point was. Cassie could not make herself believe it was mere coincidence that DEST operatives had fallen on her like hunting hounds in the wake of her relayed request to meet with Ninyu Kerai. And if the treason within the ISF revealed by the dying metsuke ran high enough, if it ran to or near the top of the Combine's secret police, Cassie was surely doomed, no matter where she ran. More than likely the Caballeros were too.

  But she would run as far as she could, and fight if she must. Giving up was not an option for Cassie Suthorn. If it had been, she would have done it long ago.

  She became aware of a curious chemical odor, distinct from the smells of metals and old lubricants that crowded the air of the yard. It was the characteristic outgassing of plastic—a scent that might be emitted by one of those DEST visors, warmed by the wearer's breath....

  She threw herself into a forward roll. With a hum a vibrokatana cut down from above, and bit into the crate with a spray of yellow sparks as its rapidly vibrating edge met the metal within. She came up and spun, momentum carrying her back until she fetched up against the cab of a possibly derelict crane set on low tracks. The sword-wielder somersaulted forward off the crate, landed four meters from Cassie, sword ready. Cassie shot him twice in the center of the faceplate, knocking him to the ground.

  A hand snaked out of the cab and around Cassie's throat. She dropped her chin into the elbow in time to forestall the choke-hold, but this attacker was a man, his strength too much greater for her to break the hold. He began to pull her back along the rough metal, trying to draw her into the cab itself. The smell of the kevlar-based ballistic cloth of his suit was strong in her nostrils.

  She stuck the autopistol back over her right shoulder, shoved it until the muzzle stopped at the juncture of neck and jaw, fired twice. Temporarily deafened in one ear, her right eye filled with great green balloons of afterimage fire, she jackknifed forward and threw her attacker over her shoulder.

  Others were running toward her. Spattering shots at
them she threw herself into the cab. A black-clad figure appeared on the far side. She gathered her legs beneath her on the seat, grabbed the steering wheel, then fired out in a double-footed kick that caught the operative in the sternum, throwing him to the ground on his back. As she piled out that side of the cab he arched his spine and snapped himself upright and back onto his feet.

  She emptied the pistol into the front of him. He fell.

  All around her she heard other agents running for her, with no thought of stealth. She hit the release that spat the spent magazine out of the pistol-butt. Before she could slam a fresh box home an operative popped up right in front of her and knocked the weapon sparking and spinning from her grasp with the sweep of a vibrokatana.

  She whipped Blood-drinker from the sheath strapped to her thigh and brought the kris up to counter the return stroke. The wavy blade's meteoric metal would not survive an edge-on impact from a standard katana, much less a vibroblade that would slash through armor plate. Instead she slapped her weapon against the back edge of the enemy blade, guiding it past as she leaned lithely back out of its way.

  Beyond the crane sprawled a jumbled low pile of debris, a briar patch of cans and pipes and angle iron—a morass of sharp-edged treachery, waiting to trap an unwary foot. No sooner had Cassie parried the sword-stroke than she plunged into the tumble.

  Reality-based martial-arts training—such as Cassie was sure DEST commandos received—usually was sensibly enough constructed to get its students out of the controlled environments of the dojo and into the hard pavement and uneven ground of the real world. The pentjak-silat Cassie had studied went far beyond that. Guru Johann's style of pentjak valued balance above all attributes, even speed, and drove its disciples to seek out the very most treacherous and uncertain footing—from oil to loose marbles to unbalanced tabletops—to practice on. Cassie gave the metallic tangle beneath her scarcely a thought, trusting her feet to find the surest route, and her balance and reflexes to save her when, not if, the mess shifted to her weight.

  Her opponent followed. The female operative could have shot her easily enough, but then, if the DEST agents were carrying firearms, they could have blown Cassie away long since. Inheritors of the age-old Japanese edge-warrior tradition, the ISF's hyperelite killers loved their swords and preferred to use them when they could. Evidently they were confident enough in their body armor and rat-pack numbers to play with their food.

  A humming in the air behind her left shoulder warned her. She didn't dare drop and roll—not even her pentjak training would let her do that in this metal thicket without risking an injury as disabling as a sword-cut. Instead she threw her weight diagonally to the right, landed on a stiffened leg. A rounded section of pipe shifted beneath her. Despite that she pirouetted, correcting balance as she wheeled, to confront her opponent perched on one leg like a crane, kris extended, swaying slightly.

  The operative's blow had missed its target—barely—but had served its purpose of forcing Cassie to turn at bay. Seeing her quarry's apparently precarious position the operative lunged into a thrust, the faceless red visor somehow radiating triumph.

  Cassie pivoted her hips counterclockwise. Blood-drinker slapped the side of the thrusting vibrokatana, steered it harmlessly past her buttocks. Before the operator could recover, Cassie snapped her left foot around in a lightning roundhouse to the side of the agent's head. The "hood" of the DEST infiltration suit was actually ceramic-plastic armor, hard-shell, but the kick was still enough to rattle the operative's brain around a bit.

  The DEST agent rocked back, swayed as the surface shifted beneath her feet, then lashed out in a vicious backhand cut.

  Cassie folded herself. The vibrating blade hummed over her head. Blood-drinker was of little use as an offensive weapon against these foes. A kris was mainly a thrusting weapon, and even if its tip could punch through DEST body armor, getting the weapon out again before the other commandos—at least a dozen of whom were hovering like hunting falcons on the fringes of the rubble-mound—swarmed over her was another matter entirely.

  Instead she snapped to quick uppercuts into the operator's body, just below the short ribs. Again the armor would protect her opponent from serious damage—but it wouldn't hurt Cassie's hand either. And it would likely incite the operator.

  Sure enough, the agent got a two-handed grip on the long hilt, hands spaced wide, and came on behind it in a blade-storm. Cassie scrambled backward, jabbing with the kris to keep her opponent wary, not even trying to engage that lethally vibrating steel. The blade sent showers of sparks and metal shavings flying as it bit into the metal undergrowth.

  And then a chunk of rubble gave way beneath Cassie's rear foot. She collapsed into a crouch. With the cry of a predator making a kill, the commando charged her, vibrokatana raised overhead.

  And put a foot into a head-sized metal box. It turned, trapping her ankle. She pitched forward, throwing out both hands to check her fall, but not loosing her grip on the glowing blade.

  Cassie, who had set her up, met her with a left-hand palm-heel strike under the chin. Again, the armor kept the impact itself from doing hurt. But nothing would stop jagged light-daggers from shooting through the agent's brain as her skull snapped back against her neck vertebrae. Then Cassie leapt into the air, spun, and delivered a pure Johnny Tchang jumping spinning back-kick to the center of the operative's chest.

  The female commando flew over onto her back. Her foot stayed where it was, wrapped in its metal boot. Her ankle snapped with a noise like a rifle shot.

  She did not cry out. Subhash knows how to pick them tough. She was, however, stunned. Cassie sprang onto her chest, drove an elbow downward into her throat, crushing her trachea. Then she plucked the vibrokatana from black-gloved fingers and jumped to her feet, twitching the blade before her like a hunting beast's tail.

  "All right, you animals!" Cassie screamed in Japanese to the encircling hunters. "I've got a weapon that'll cut through that fancy armor now. Let's dance!"

  From the corner of her right eye she saw a stubby handweapon come up. She wheeled and launched herself toward the wielder in a leopard-leap, screaming fury, heedless of where she landed. It was the lowliest weapon of all, a Friendly Persuader-issue hand-stunner. She had no defense against it at all.

  The sonic blast caught Cassie in mid-flight. She never knew what hit her, even though it was all of Luthien.

  17

  Imperial City, Luthien

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  26 June 3058

  "Gentlemen," the Shadowed One said, synthesized voice emerging sexless and muffled from the depths of its black hood, "how go your preparations?"

  The dining room in the Paschal villa had floors and ceilings of pale polished natural wood and shoji covering the walls. Nonetheless it was dim, lit at baseboard and ceiling by dozens of small lamps concealed behind the white paper screens. A huge sea-mahogany table stained almost black and shaped like an oval truncated at both ends, dominated the long narrow room. A dozen men sat in high-backed chairs carven of the same wood and stained the same dark hue. Subtle differences in spacing between them betrayed that they were split among several factions.

  At the moment all heads were turned toward the tall swaddled figure standing at the table's head. Tension had wound their postures just a hair tight, and the determined blankness of their expressions—even in a culture that discouraged public display of emotion—betrayed their apprehension.

  One of them, though, a big, wide-shouldered man in a dark blue pinstriped suit, deep maroon shirt of Proserpina bloodworm silk, and blue tie sat back in his chair, and grinned all over his broad-jawed face. "The preparations go well, Kaga-san," the man declared.

  The san form of address, appropriate for a near-equal or inferior, was studied insouciance. The Shadowed One's disguise was comprehensive enough to conceal the signs, barely perceptible to even the most knowledgeable outsiders, that allowed one Drac to pinpoint another's status almost at a glance; b
ut there was no doubting the authority—or menace—that the shrouded figure projected.

  The Shadowed One's posture did not change. "Report!"

  The pinstriped man's dark brows furrowed for just an instant. Then his smile snapped back into place. "Our people have entirely supplanted the dog Yamaguchi's in-service positions at Eiga-toshi. When the Day comes, they will be positioned to provide the neccessary assistance."

  "That is good," the Shadowed One said. "Have they done so without arousing suspicion?"

  The pinstriped man laughed. "The Civilian Guidance Corps regards it as nothing but an old, unworthy oyabun being shoved aside by a more able one. Which of course is exactly what's happening."

  "And what of the truce declared by seimeiyoshi-rengo?"

  "Even among the yakuza, rules are made to be broken, Kaga-san. Our people are close to nature. We respect the natural progression of things. It is only just that the fit rise to the top, even as ware-ware Draco-jin, we Draconians, are destined to rise to the top of the entire human cosmos. What does it matter if a few rules get bent in the process?"

  The dark oval of the Shadowed One's face lingered on the pinstriped man for a long moment. "See that your personal ambition does not endanger our plan."

  The man in pinstripes bowed over clasped hands. "My life for the Dragon and Kokuryu-kai."

  "Precisely."

  "And your own preparations?" the pinstriped man asked, half challengingly.

  The Shadowed One refused to be drawn. "They proceed according to schedule," that flavorless voice said. "Our replacement part is being imported into the system, and will in due course arrive in orbit. The final stages in its polishing and fitting process are being carried out in transit. In the meantime, the other phases of our plan to fix blame, when the time comes, on the foreign money-troopers proceeds deliberately but efficiently."

  A smaller man sat with his retainers across from the man in pinstripes and his retinue. Although he had come to the secret meeting covered in a long slate-gray coat with fur collar and a Homburg hat, he had shed these in favor of a blood-red silk kimono embroidered on the right breast with the Kurita dragon, and on the left with the emblem of Kokuryu-kai. He seemed to have started slight and shrunk from there, like a dried-up twig. His face seemed assembled of knobs and hollows, tied together with taut lines of bitterness. It was wasted, stark, elemental, like the landscape of some dry, lifeless planet that had been scooped and scoured and ground by wind erosion until only the hardest essence, the underlying bone, remained. His eyes were like slits cut in the lid of a pot containing all the world's grief and pain and anger condensed.