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  "To buy us space to breathe," the big man said. "He may have murdered his father, if you believe the Shadowed One—and I do. But Theodore is soft at the center. He feels constrained by the fatuous compact he made with the Federation. That little ceremony will ensure he does not follow any impulses he may feel to avenge Yamaguchi."

  "But you abased yourself!"

  For a moment Inagawa's eyes fixed the smaller man with the glare of an angry boar. Then a smile spread itself across his broad mouth.

  "A finger, a promise," he said lightly. "Given to a traitor, they both signify nothing."

  * * *

  "That bastard beast!" raged Hohiro Kiguri. "I'll kill him!"

  "I thought that was the plan all along, Tai-sho-sama," said the man who shared the otherwise empty DEST command center deep beneath Unity Palace with Kiguri. He had buzz-cut black hair, Japanese eyes, smooth wheat-colored skin stretched taut over a wide-cheeked, big-jawed face. He wore a loose gray sweatshirt, faded black dungarees, and athletic shoes. Hohiro Kuguri was a noted stickler for spit-and-polish from the lower ranks of his commandos, but he also believed firmly in the Combine tradition of hierarchy, which stated that rank indeed had privilege. The man in the sweatshirt wasn't second-in-command of the Draconis Elite Strike Teams, nor particularly high in the chain of com-, mand. But he was the most trusted of Kiguri's inner circle— the General's right-hand man and chief enforcer.

  Kiguri was on a roll. "In his stupid blind greed that pig Inagawa overreaches himself like a drunk groping across a cluttered table for what he fancies is a last full bottle of sake," he exclaimed, pacing back and forth in the dimness between banks of blinking lights and untended consoles. "He'll smash everything to pieces."

  His chief operative took another bite from his bag of dried apple chips. "Inagawa knows nothing of who you really are. Even if the Smiling One gets his claws into him he can't finger us."

  "He knows about our replacement component, Captain Daw," Kiguri said. Even though both his experts and Daniel Ramaka's counterintelligence specialists assured him that the command center was clean, he had a nearly superstitious fear of explicidy mentioning what was now orbiting in a DropShip at Occidentalis' trailing Trojan point. No matter how much he railed to his inner circle about how soft Sub-hash Indrahar had grown, how he had lost his touch, how he was no longer fit to run the Internal Security Force, in his marrow he still dreaded the Smiling One, still harbored the conviction that somehow, for all his effort and cleverness, for all his allies, Subhash would find him out.

  "Mujo, Boss." In this case it meant it doesn't matter. "It may be blasphemous to say so, but there are always more Kuritas out there. Little Angus can be replaced, just the way Theodore can. And don't forget—"

  He shrugged and held up his hands. "We have an ace in the hole. Inagawa can blow the whole Black Dragon scam clear to the Truce Line and it won't make a damned bit of difference. You have this one wrapped tight. Boss. Nothing can go wrong."

  Kiguri had stopped and stood glaring at his subordinate from his good eye and breathing through flared nostrils. Gradually his expression eased, his shoulders relaxed, and he seemed to grow smaller as anger flowed from him.

  "You have a talent for playing the edge, Achilles," he said.

  Tai-i Daw grinned. "And you lead by example, Kiguri-sama."

  "You're right," the General said. "We don't absolutely need Inagawa or even Kokuryu-kai—and I'll take great pleasure when the time comes that we can extirpate those swollen toads altogether. But things will go much more smoothly if they continue to play their parts as they're supposed to."

  He flicked his eye toward the red numerals of a holochronometer floating by one wall. "And now don't you and Talon Sergeant Nishimura have someplace to be?"

  Daw snapped to attention. "Hai, General!" He snapped a bow and vanished.

  * * *

  With the approach of the Celebration of the Coordinator's Birth, Imperial City began to overflow with tourists and festivities. There were processions in the streets and pageants in the parks; concerts, orations, presentations, and, of course, fireworks. Many events were planned, and others "spontaneously organized" by Voice of the Dragon exhorters. Others were truly spontaneous outpourings of affection for Theodore, or at least the age-old human desire to raise a little hell. The Coordinator's Birthday was one of the few occasions on which the rigid Combine constraints on behavior were relaxed. Sedate they might have been by the standards of Hachiman, or even dull, but the Imperial Citizens weren't about to let a chance to party down slip past them.

  "How come everywhere you go there's these Chinese dragons?" Mirabelle Velasquez asked her friends as they breasted the happy crush on Devotion to Service Street southwest of the Palace. She was a brief and chubby person who managed to be both cheerful and businesslike, as did a lot of people who worked for Zuma Gallegos. Although she was a mere Sergeant of Aztechs and her three companions were Mech Warriors, no one thought it strange she hung out with them. Two of them were her relatives, one by birth and one by marriage, and anyway caste lines tended to blur among the Caballeros.

  She pointed off down the street over the heads of pedestrians, who were by and large even shorter than she was, to where a huge gaudy head, looking more like that of a stylized lion than the slinky Kurita dragon, bobbed at the head of a long undulant body with many black-slippered feet. "I mean, you'd expect to find them in Liao space, but not here."

  "Well, there's a lot of Chinese people everywhere," said Windy Gutierrez, a tall, pretty and rather shy norteña who like many 'lleros took her nickname from her 'Mech. Wind Indicator was an ancient, oft-patched Vindicator that had carried its name since long before its current pilot was born, and which owed its current fully functional status more to Zuma's wizardry than any miracles of recovered Star League lostech. "That's probably why you see the dragon-dance so many places, you know?"

  "I wonder if they do it on the Clan homeworld, wherever that is?"

  Windy shrugged. "Who knows?"

  Misty Saavedra was looking the other way, back the way they had come, toward where the street widened and became lined on the far side with mandamus trees like sycamores with black leaves. "I want to see that thing we saw earlier," she declared. "That big chorizo those monks were carrying along."

  "¡Hijo la!" Mirabelle exclaimed. "It was something, wasn't it? Had to be seven meters long." She elbowed Windy in the ribs. "How'd you like to take a bite out of that, chiquita?"

  Windy frowned, hesitated. She wasn't adept or comfortable with the usual naughty banter. "I don't like to bite off more than I can chew," she said at length.

  Misty giggled, and Mirabelle laughed out loud. The fourth member of the expedition, LUG Ruby "Spitfire" Sálazar stood close to the black granite facade of a building, allowing traffic to flow around her on the sidewalk. She was snapping her lighter on and off, peering into the little dance of flame as if to find an oracle.

  "Knock that off," Misty told her. "You make me nervous, always doing that."

  Spitfire shrugged and slipped the lighter into a pocket of her blouse. She was a tiny woman with a blaze of red hair with that metallic touch Southwesterners called "Tlaxcal-teca," after the ancient Indians of the Valley of Mexico who were renowned for possessing hair of that unusual shade. Her skin was shiny-smooth and yellow, almost the "wheat-color" considered the Combine ideal, her oval face dusted with freckles across a snubbed nose. Her eyes were startling green. Her body was trim, wide in the shoulders, narrow at waist, well-rounded at the hip. Like the others she wore casual civilian dress, a light blouse in many shades of blue over faded jeans. On the whole she was handsome rather than conventionally pretty, but most people found her striking.

  She drove the Seventeenth's lone Firestarter, a venerable FS9-H retrofitted with recovered-tech gimmicks to nearly the specs of the comparatively new 9-S model through Uncle Chandy's un-Kurita-like largesse. Like any Mech-Warrior who piloted the highly specialized and risky-to-op-erate 'Mech by choice, Ruby was a
confirmed pyromaniac of long standing. Once upon a time she would've joined in slinging double-entendres with the best of her comrades. But she'd been captured when Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird betrayed Camp Marisol in the Eiglophian Mountains of Towne, and held prisoner by Howard Blaylock. Since that time she had become much more subdued, and had acquired that lighter-flicking habit that so annoyed Misty.

  They walked on a few meters, to the entrance of a store marked in romaji—and presumably kanji and katakana, though none of the four could read the odd characters next to the Roman letters—as the "Boutique Sexy Lady Yes."

  "I want to go in here," Misty declared. "They got some nice dresses in the window."

  Windy looked worried. The others paid no mind; that was her usual expression. Unlike the others, she carried a purse, which despite its sturdy leather strap she clutched in a drowner's grip against the Black Pearl's astonishingly proficient street thieves. "Won't it be crowded?"

  "No more crowded than out here, hija," said Mirabelle.

  The boutique was cool and dim and, for a wonder, not crowded at all. The four circulated, rummaging through the racks while immaculately dressed shop ladies stood by trying demurely not to stare at these brash and extravagant gaijin.

  Misty held up a red dress with pronounced flounces at the hem and the short off-the-shoulder sleeves. "I like this one. I think I'll go back and try it on."

  "You're kidding," Mirabelle said. "It'll make you look like a traffic barrel."

  Misty made a face. "It will not. You're just jealous 'cause you're built like a cinderblock."

  Mirabelle just laughed. She was built like a cinderblock. It didn't bother her. Misty went into one of the changing rooms in the back.

  The other three were back at the racks when the front door burst open. Four kids with the padded-shoulder jackets and the roached white or gold scalplocks of dekigoro-zoku rushed in. They shouted something in Japanese and lunged for the gaijin women.

  The dekigoro-zoku were tall for Drac kids, with muscles wound like wire. Pursuant to Don Carlos' agreement with Takura Migaki, the three women carried no firearms. But they were Caballeras, and each of them had grown up hassling with an assortment of brothers and male cousins even before joining the Marik military and obtaining formal instruction in butt-kicking. Of course, most men are stronger than most women, and there were no exceptions in the Sexy Lady Yes boutique this warm, sunny morning. But the norteñas fought dirty.

  Two rough boys lunged for Mirabelle, who happened to be closest the door. Instead of recoiling she threw the dress she was eyeing, a frothy white number with lots of chiffon, over the head of the nearer and sank a fist into his belly. The other grabbed her arm, spun her, tried to pin both arms behind her while his buddy staggered into a rack of dresses and fell over.

  A third seized the frail-looking Windy Gutierrez's left wrist and tried to spin her to face him. Instead of fighting she turned with the motion, using it to add momentum as she clouted him across the face with her purse. She was not particularly strong, despite being of above-average height. But she was a traditionally minded young Cerillos lady, and according to immemorial tradition she was carrying a half-kilo can of sliced peaches in syrup in her purse. The gaudy youth uttered a strangled squawk and fell with his right cheek caved in and his noise knocked askew.

  The fourth gang kid grabbed little Ruby Sálazar from the front by both biceps, picked her bodily up off the floor and pushed her backward against the counter while shop ladies scattered like frightened birds. Ruby brought her right hand up between them as her attacker began to bend her backward. Ruby being what she was and all, her lighter was not a normal lighter. Among other things it could serve as a grenade, not that that was applicable here. More to the point, it worked by spraying a variable jet of atomized fuel. Ruby dialed the nozzle wide, gave the front of the kid's white and silver jacket a quick misting, and clicked the electrical initiator.

  As flames raced up the front of his jacket like small avid animals the kid danced back, as if that would do any good. Ruby rolled backward over the counter. The kid dropped to the floor and began rolling frantically around, igniting dresses left and right, as the jacket's synthetic fabric caught. Two down.

  Mirabelle had kicked her second assailant in the crotch and broken his nose with an overhand right when her first victim came off the floor with the dress hung around his neck and took her down in a flying tackle. He straddled her, pummeling her face with her fists. And Windy loomed up behind him to coldcock him with a swing of her purse at the full extent of the strap.

  By this point a shop lady was on one side of the flaming gang kid, hosing him with white foam from an extinguisher, while Ruby stood on the other side kicking him lustily in the ribs with her steel-toed athletic shoes. Thoroughly extinguished in several senses, the youth rolled moaning onto knees and elbows, then scrambled away from his tormentor. He and the boy whose nose Mirabelle had broken gathered up their two comrades whom Windy had felled, neither of whom was currently functional, and dragged them back out the front door.

  Mirabelle had puffy cheeks and a mouse under her left eye that would certainly blossom into a profound shiner. The front of Ruby's blouse was scorched. But these were minor casualties, no more than badges of honor to the norteñas. They exchanged hugs and triumphant laughter.

  The shop ladies stood around glumly surveying the damage, like wet pigeons.

  "Hey," Mirabelle said, looking around. "Where's Misty?"

  "Isn't she still back in the changing room?" Windy asked.

  "That's just like her, to duck for cover during a fight," Mirabelle said loudly, figuring that canard would cause her cousin to come boiling out of the dressing room to finish the job the dekigoro-zoku had so ineptly started. Misty was a cheerful soul, but she was still a Mech Warrior, and took no crap from relatives.

  But there was only silence. The three women looked to the back of the shop.

  The curtains meant to seal the minute changing-cubicles from view all hung open. There was no sign of Misty Saavedra.

  20

  Imperial City, Luthien

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  27 June 3058

  Bleeding smoke from the stump of its right shoulder, shattered by the blasts of twin extended-range particle projection cannons mounted in a Masakari's arm, and from the rearward-facing CASE vent of the right-hand missile storage that had gone up with the Shigunga LRM launcher, the Mauler staggered thigh-deep into the sluggish mud-colored waters of the Kadoguchi. The Mauler was a flamboyant heat-hog: a Mech Warrior who let off its whole awesome arsenal at once risked reactor shutdown then and there. Shorn of one of its big Victory Nickel Alloy extended-range lasers, the Mauler's heat-loading could not exceed its nominal ability to bleed excess heat unless it ran as it fired ... except that several double-capacity heat sinks had been shattered in the fight with the Smoke Jaguar Star.

  And the Mauler was running in the red. It had fired off both large lasers and both fifteen-missile racks at once at the climax of its duel with the Masakari. Even as its right shoulder and arm and the attendant weapons had been blown away, the final fire-spasm had smashed the Clan 'Mech's head, destroying its cockpit and killing its pilot. Now the Kurita BattleMech sought the river's cooling embrace for its final stand.

  It did not have long to wait. Crushing a stand of capylar saplings on the northern bank, a 100-ton Behemoth appeared out of the woods. Black leaves and green wood exploded in puffs of steam as the Mauler's left-hand laser frantically sought its new foe. The squat Smoke Jag 'Mech turned, seemed to hunker down on its heavy canted legs, and let loose with its full battery of two torso-mounted Gauss cannon, two big pulse lasers in its arms, and the small-aperture pulse laser with its overlong optical-shroud barrel mounted abaft the cockpit.

  The Clan jock was overloading his own heat sinks—but slowly. He had a few seconds' grace before the monster machine started to go weird beneath him. With a true Mech-Warrior's instinct for the kill, he poure
d it on.

  Heat soared in the Mauler's cockpit. Red lights blazed, alarms squalled. The Mauler pilot saw missile-hits flash on the Behemoth's heavily sloped front glacis, saw sparks fly as the surviving large laser scored housing off one Gauss rifle. But the Gauss' heavy nickel-ferrous slugs were jolting the Mauler's 95 tons of steel and titanium skeleton, myomer musculature, and ferro-fibrous armor as if it were a balsa-wood toy, the flickering laser-lances stabbing deep into the already-violated body of the big Kurita 'Mech.

  The Mauler rocked back, raising a greasy slog of water behind. Then a volcano of noise rose up around the cockpit, and in its dying microsecond the onboard computer opted for emergency ejection. The popping of the hail-Mary charges that blew off the top of the big 'Mech's head and the rush of the rocket-motor underneath the seat blended with the thunder of the Mauler being blasted to pieces. The Mech Warrior had one final lingering look from above at the devastated machine, like someone having a near-death experience gazing down on her apparently lifeless body. And then it was over.

  * * *

  Face set in a frown, Lainie Shimazu lifted the neurohelmet off her shoulders. When she looked around, it was to see the face of her gaijin friend Kali MacDougall looking into the simulator wearing a funny little half-smile.

  "Mighty impressive, hon," the Southwestern woman said. As was her custom these days she was dressed all in black, with her right arm strapped to her chest to prevent her trying to use the shoulder before it recovered from reconstructive surgery. She had let her hair grow into tight blonde ringlets, but it was still shorter than Lainie was accustomed to seeing it. "But you sure play like you got a death wish."

  For a moment Lainie stared at the blonde woman, trying to decide whether to resent the intrusion or not. Her eyes were almost the red of an albino animal's.

  "Not exactly a death wish," she said. Her voice rasped as if she had actually been breathing the smoke of her BattleMech's funeral pyre.