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  From the back of the compartment, near what was perforce the ceiling since the anchor points arrayed along the terraces constituted a de facto floor, the new commander of Scout Platoon took a pull from his bulb of beer and remarked, "Anybody ever see marble spark like that?"

  "Where's your suspension of disbelief, Rooster?" asked Cowboy's inseparable pal Buck Evans, an older man with straw-blond hair cut fairly short except for a long skinny braid hanging down his back, and a face he described as being like forty klicks of bad road. "It's only a holovid."

  Rooster, or Lieutenant Senior Grade Daniel Patrick Morgan, a vest-pocket hell-raiser with untamable red hair who was even wirier and uglier than Buck, just laughed. As she made her way toward the exit, Cassie tossed him a glance. He caught her eye, hoisted his bulb, and grinned. She smiled back.

  She was still grateful to the little man, and not for the way he had come out of nowhere in the Towne Popular Militia movement to prove himself a skilled and deadly jack-of-all-military-trades, and master of more than a few. Without his quiet competence and skill at managing his often temperamental compatriots in the local resistance movement, the Seventeenth Recon Regiment would have had an even harder time spoiling the Black Dragons' plans to make Towne a possession of the Draconis Combine whether the Dragon wanted it or not. And she did appreciate the fact.

  But what she really felt she owed him for was taking over command of Scout Platoon, whose old boss, Captain James "Badlands" Powell, had found a warrior's death in the final assault on Towne's capital city, Port Howard. Had the Rooster not turned up, with a gift for leadership as great as his gift for unconventional warfare, and an unpretentious follow-me style that made the cantankerous Caballeros take to him like flies to honey, there would have been no graceful way for Colonel Carlos Camacho, the regiment's commander, to avoid making Cassie Boss Scout. And Cassie knew she was nowhere near fit for command.

  She slipped out into the corridor. She was still rolling her shoulders, trying to work out kinks; she disliked inactivity. Time to go practice some pentjak-silat, she thought. The idea warmed her. Her friend Kali MacDougall claimed Cassie used her martial arts and other lethal exercises as a drug, and over the months she had come to see that was true.

  As she began to pull herself along the passageway by handholds set into the bulkhead, she felt a touch on her ankle. She looked back into the face of Kali MacDougall.

  "You've been frettin' yourself about me again, haven't you?" Kali asked.

  Cassie stopped and let her friend draw up alongside her. Kali was moving gingerly, favoring her right shoulder, which was still immobilized by a sort of lightweight synthetic housing. The explosion of a stray SRM had broken it during the assault on the Black Dragons' headquarters in Port Howard.

  Cassie could not meet her friend's eyes. "It's just that, since you got out of the hospital, you've just been so ... so different."

  "Hon, I don't recall ever promising you I'd never ever change," Kali said softly.

  "But—;" Cassie raised a hand, moistened her lips, and then looked away in an agony of doubt and frustration. Now that she had committed herself—at what point she could never quite say—to the path of becoming a human being and not just a killing machine, Kali MacDougall was her lode star, her guiding light. For her to change seemed akin to betrayal. But Cassie—who had destroyed more Battle-Mechs afoot than anybody the Caballeros had ever heard of, who had almost been burned to death in Kali MacDougall's Atlas trying to keep Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki from escaping from Towne—did not dare open herself enough to articulate "that fact. Though a high-ranking member of the Combine military, Kusunoki had been an even more loyal member of the Black Dragon Society, and over time had filled his command with those who shared his renegade views.

  And Kali had changed so much since Towne. To start with, she was no longer Lady K. Instead, she'd taken to calling herself Dark Lady, the name she had given to her Atlas, now lost forever. And she lived up to the name. Her face was still beautifully sculpted, but where it had once held a kind of prettiness, her beauty was now stark-haunted and haunting. When she looked at you, her green eyes seemed to blaze like emerald lasers. Kali had never carried much excess body fat, but now she was spare to the edge of gauntness. The radiant golden-blonde hair that had once spilled to her shoulders was cut short.

  And now she made a point of always dressing entirely in black, and wore her laser pistol in a fast-draw thigh-holster at all times.

  "Look, Cass," she said, "I know it's hard to get a handle on. But I've told you before, and I meant it, something happened to me and now you've got to let me get through it. I can't promise I'll go all the way back to where I was before—mainly 'cause you never can go back, much as you always think you can. But at least I'll be headed in a good direction."

  Cassie turned her face sharply away so her friend couldn't see her gray-blue eyes fill with tears. After all this time, there was still a part of her which said, See, stupid? This is what you get for trusting, for letting someone get inside you. She's going to change and leave you. Just like everybody does.

  Cassie felt a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not going to forsake you," Kali said quietly. "There's not much life lets us promise, but I can give you that. No matter how I may change, I'm in with you for the long haul. Satisfied?"

  Cassie dabbed tears from her eyes with a thumb. "Yes," she said.

  It wasn't wholly a lie.

  2

  Unity Palace, Imperial City

  Luthien

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  18 June 3058

  Kneeling in the moonlit garden, his blood-splashed kimono pooled about his waist, Takashi Kurita thrust the wakizashi into his abdomen. Very deliberately, he made the three ritual cuts of seppuku.

  Waiting behind him, katana upraised in his hands, Theodore struck. The head of the aging Coordinator of the Draconis Combine flew free of its thick neck on a column of blood, black in the light of Luthien's moon. It rolled against a weathered basalt rock carefully picked out of the wastelands by some long-dead gardener, and came to a stop. The blood-tide ebbed with the heart's last beats. The decapitated body slumped to the side.

  But then the head opened its eyes. They were bright blue, Kurita blue. And they fixed on Theodore like the lightning bolts of a PPC.

  "Look upon me well, my son," it said. Its gums were hideously scarlet with blood, and blood ran from its lips. "As I was, so you are. As I am, so shall you be."

  Theodore tried to back away, but it was as if his feet had sunk into the soft raked sand, which had then set like cement about his ankles.

  "Give me a son's last kiss," the severed head said. The blood from its mouth was now a torrent, staining the sand in a vast pool around it. Theodore saw that the blood was running up his legs through some capillary action, staining his belly, his chest, the sleeves of his tunic, and at last his hands. "It is your filial duty. A Kurita must always do his duty..."

  Theodore Kurita's eyes came open. For a long time he lay feeling his kimono glued against his skin by cold sweat. He almost feared to move, as if this was dream, and if he disturbed the dream he'd be precipitated back into the reality of horror.

  First of all, a warrior must not shrink from confronting that which is before him. It was almost as if Tetsuhara-sensei were repeating his earliest lessons from long ago. Theodore made himself stir, rolled off the tatami mat, went to the sliding panel, rice paper translucent with moonglow in a teak frame, and slid it back. Outside was a railed balcony. He knelt, letting the subtly green-hued light of Orientalis, the outermost moon of Luthien, fall on him past the tops of the mighty sequoias that screened Unity Palace against the urban sprawl of Imperial City. It was the same moonlight as in his dream, the same moon that had witnessed his father's suicide ...

  No. Not yet. Wait until your spirit is calm once more. He let the fragrant air wafting from the garden below wash his brow and cleanse his lungs and mind.

  If only Shin were here, he thought,
at least I'd have someone to talk to. But Shin Yodama, his closest friend, was on special duty on Tanh Linh, near the frontier with Smoke JaguarINova Cat-occupied Combine space. He was commanding a special rapid-response force, keeping watch lest either Clan should decide to test Luthien's defenses a second time in the wake of the confusion created by the recent Jade Falcon incursion into Lyrian space. Not to mention the anti-Clan mission the Combine had recently sealed with the Northwind Highlanders. Though Shin Yodama was commander of the Izanagi Warriors, which had been permanently attached to the Otomo ever since the battle for Luthien, there were some things that Theodore could only trust to Shin.

  No. Self-pity's no better than brooding. For a span he tried to make himself think about anything but his dream: of the ring of orbital-defense satellites nearing construction around Luthien to help safeguard the planet known as the Black Pearl of the Combine against Clan raiders; of the upcoming celebration of the Coordinator's Birthday, which was no festive occasion for him but an opportunity to conduct crucial state business. But the memory of the dream was stronger. As I was, so you are ...

  His father had been nearly maddened by his fears, and it was that which eventually led to his death. Takashi Kurita's hatred of mercenaries, Colonel Jaime Wolf of Wolfs Dragoons in particular, had obsessed him for much of Theodore's life. Indeed, it had turned into a vendetta that diverted valuable military and intelligence resources enough to threaten the security of the Draconis Combine itself. And the Coordinator had no greater duty than to preserve the Dragon, the heart, soul, and spirit of the realm.

  Takashi's father Hohiro had been mad too. His megalomania had provoked unprecedented general strikes, near-mutiny in the armed forces, and had even driven the ISF to remonstrate. His iron-handed harshness would probably have broken the Combine's back, had not one of his Otomo bodyguards assassinated him first.

  Theodore had heard the rumors that Takashi himself had a hand in Hohiro's death, and he firmly believed that his father had at least had guilty knowledge of the assassination plot. For his part, Theodore honored his father's memory for that. Giri, duty, must overcome ninjo, or human feelings. The Combine's welfare came before even the strong ties of Kurita blood.

  Sometimes it seemed that madness plagued every leader of the Inner Sphere. Sun-Tzu Liao, current ruler of the Capellan Confederation, had begun to display the sort of capriciousness that had marked the reigns of his mother Romano and his grandfather Maximilian. Sun-Tzu and Thomas Marik, his future father in law, had mounted a joint invasion of Davion space, both men winning back worlds they'd lost to the Davions years before. But to Theodore this was just more wild posturing. Did no one remember that the clock was running on the Truce of Tukayyid—assuming that the Clans would even continue to honor it?

  And Thomas Marik, who most considered to be the shrewdest leader ever to take the helm of the Free Worlds League, had permitted the Word of Blake fanatics to make him into a messianic figure. Was that truly sane? And the way Victor Steiner-Davion—a man Theodore was proud to call his comrade-in-arms, and whom he could almost call a friend—and his sister, Katherine or Katrina or whatever she was calling herself these days—were tearing apart the mighty Federated Commonwealth, the greatest power the Inner Sphere had seen since the fall of the Star league, like a wishbone at a feast: was that sane?

  Am I the only sane ruler left among the Great Houses? Or am I just like the rest?

  Does the fate of humankind rest in the hands of mad children?

  * * *

  "We have received confirmation, Director," the tall redheaded man clad all in black said even before he had completed his bow. "Clan Jade Falcon has honored its acceptance of hegira on Coventry. All Clan forces have been withdrawn."

  An uguisu sang from the branch of a plum tree. Subhash Indrahar looked upward at the stars, dimly visible through Imperial City's light-scatter. He sighed, worked the controls of his powered wheelchair to turn him to face his adopted son and second in command, Ninyu Kerai. Ninya stood to the side of a sliding shoji panel open to a well-lit corridor of that wing of the sprawling Unity Palace that served as the aboveground component of the ISF's headquarters on Luthien. It was as much a part of him as his red hair not to stand silhouetted against a light-source.

  The other four individuals gathered in the garden remained silent, which was not altogether characteristic of them. The report might as easily have been delivered by Omi Dashani, whose Metsuke division had almost surely provided the information, as by Ninyu Kerai Indrahar. But Omi, head of the Internal Security Force's intelligence-gathering division, was not a forward person; she was small and plain, and preferred to remain as inconspicuous as her spies. Subhash appreciated her reticence, although certain of her peers within the ISF leadership took it as a sign of weakness.

  The long domed head, bald but for a snow-white scalplock on top, nodded deliberately. "It would appear the Crusader faction still accepts some constraints upon its conquest-lust," Subhash said, laying aside the ancient scroll he had been perusing. "For the present."

  "The Clanners are warriors," said Tai-sho Hohira Kugiri, commander of the Draconis Elite Strike Teams, or DEST. The one-eyed commando was a shadow monolith looming against the overhanging plum-tree limbs and the stars. "They abide by their code of honor."

  "And we of all people should know how far warriors are willing to stretch their honor, when it suits their interests— or their egos," Constance Jojira said, and drew on a cigarette in a long ebony holder with an ivory mouthpiece. The Covert Operations head was as languildy elegant as Dashani was dumpy and unassuming. She seemed to take up the slack of the ambition the smaller woman lacked.

  "Is there new intelligence from our Clan-occupied worlds?" the Director asked.

  "No changes of consequence have been noted," Dashani said quietly, almost apologetically. "And of course the Jaguars aren't going to appreciate the surprise visit from the Highlanders out in the Periphery. Just the same, we must be on our guard. The Coordinator's Birthday celebration will provide a tempting target."

  "I must concur," said Daniel Ramaka, who led the Internal Security division of the ISF with rather more relish than the Director was comfortable with. He affected a sinister hiss through the prominent incisors that had done so much to earn him his departmental soubriquet of "the Rat."

  "The Clans recognize our Coordinator as their most determined foe. To neutralize him would provide any Clan great honor."

  Subhash suppressed a sigh. For a moment he let his head hang forward, and tasted again the bitterness of being a warrior trapped in an increasingly useless husk of a body. He felt fatigue all the time now. Yet he slept little, for it seemed to do him little good.

  He knew the kind of rest he needed. Yet he could not surrender himself to death until the no-longer-young Ninyu Kerai, who stood apart from and slightly before the others, acknowledged that he was ready to become his successor.

  "There is further news that might conceivably be of interest," Ramaka said. "The JumpShip carrying Franklin Sakamoto has just entered the system. He will set foot on the soil of Luthien eight days from now."

  "It's a mistake to permit him to come," said Kuguri.

  Jojiri blew out smoke. "We could always let Ninyu wrap up the business he left unfinished so many years ago."

  The Smiling One's eyes were old, but they still saw more than others' did. Few would have noted the way his adoptive son stiffened at the words. In 3033 Ninyu Kerai had assassinated a boy he believed to be Theodore Kurita's bastard son, in an attempt to clear up a potential cloud over the succession—without the their Heir's knowledge. But Kathleen Palmer, herself an ISF operative, had smuggled her real son by Theodore off-planet; the murdered boy was a ringer. The real son grew up under the name Franklin Sakamoto.

  Normally it was Daniel Ramaka who reveled in reminding others of failures past, but Ramaka feared Ninyu Kerai. Constance Jojira had a knack for putting the needle in, and she feared no one. She hated Ninyu for putting paid to her dreams of becomi
ng the first woman Director of the ISF.

  You dance along the edge, Constance-san, Subhash thought. She was bringing more than just Ninyu Kerai's failure back to mind. A rebel faction had gotten to Sakamoto in 3050 while he was fighting the Jade Falcons on Somerset alongside FedCom forces, revealed the truth of his ancestry to him, and attempted to enlist him in a plot to usurp the Dragon Throne from his grandfather Takashi. That rebel faction was Kokuryu-fozi, the Black Dragon Society.

  I underestimated the Black Dragons then, as I did before Towne. If I do so again, it shall be time to join my ancestors, regardless of what my adoptive son believes.

  "I failed," Ninyu Kerai said bluntly. "I make no excuse. But it was a failure that did the Combine no harm.

  Sakamoto served bravely against the Clans. And perhaps it has slipped your mind that he renounced all claim to the throne."

  "The Coordinator has seen fit to invite his son to attend his birthday celebration," Subhash said. "He wishes, it would appear, to come to terms with the past. It is not the part of ISF to make policy." Which was thin, and he well knew it. When the Smiling One found Takashi Kurita's policies—in this case, his obsessive feud with Jaime Wolf— insupportable, he had tried to assassinate the Coordinator. But the point remained that it was ISF's function to dispose, not propose, except under the most extreme circumstances.

  "I still don't like it," Kiguri said. "The Black Dragons tried to use him once. Who's to say they won't again? And Sakamoto worked for years as a smuggler for one of the shipping companies owned by Chandrasekhar Kurita, a man much too clever to be trusted. He's about to make planetfall himself—along with his pet regiment of gaijin mercenaries that Migaki insists on making heroes out of—"

  "And speak of the devil," Ramaka said, as Takura Migaki himself strolled into the garden with his hands thrust into the pockets of his garish happi-coat. Zaki—gangster kitsch— was the rage among Luthien's smart set this season. The head of the Voice of the Dragon was always fashionable, if not always punctual.