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  Just how wrong he was, not even Cassie realized.

  As the final chord of the dance hung trembling in the air, the double doors flew open. Men burst in, bulky in padded body armor. For a moment they stood, surveying the glittering throng from behind the faceless anonymity of their visored helmets. Gauntleted hands gripped submachine guns.

  Percival Fillington strode forward. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

  Turning at those words, the nearest of the helmeted, armored men pivoted slightly and fired a burst full-auto from the hip.

  3

  Masamori Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  24 December 3056

  The Earl of Hachiman flew back into the arms of his startled bodyguards. They in turn were the next to die as the intruders began to spray the crowd at random.

  "¡Hijo de la chingada!" Cassie shouted. She reached past her escort's back, deftly unsnapped the flap of his holster and yanked free his service arm. Bringing it around in front of her, she racked the slide. Then she thrust the handgun forward until her arms locked with the weapon pointed at the groin of an intruder not four meters away. Staring down the barrel without bothering to acquire a sight picture, she pulled the trigger.

  Click. Cassie's date for the evening was carrying his piece unloaded.

  As one, Cassie and the visored man raised their eyes from the large chromed service semiauto. Cassie saw bloodless lips split in a grin beneath the visor's lower edge. The moment stretched out in silence, like a glass rod whose center has been heated molten in a torch, and whose ends are then drawn away while the hot middle attenuates to a thread, ever thinner.

  The thread broke. Gauntleted forefinger tightened on trigger. Cassie tossed her useless gun in his face and threw herself backward in a somersault over the buffet table, scattering silver and crystal.

  Her escort screamed and did a herky-jerky dance as crimson splotches lit up the front of his white dress tunic. Trigger held down, the gunman hunted Cassie with his bullet-stream.

  * * *

  Fool though he was, Percival Fillington knew how to die. And so, at the last, he earned the respect of Ninyu Kerai Indrahar.

  In life Ninyu Kerai had little use for the Earl of Hachiman, but he took grim satisfaction in avenging his death. Even as Percy was bravely—if none too brightly—striding forward to confront the intruders, the red-haired man in black was turning his body clockwise to cover drawing his sidearm with his left hand. As Percy fell, Ninyu drew the weapon, dropped into two-hand shooting stance, and fired two shots.

  He was a man who favored penetration over stopping power. His weapon was a sturdy Sony-Nambu pistol in an exotic caliber, firing sharp-pointed high-velocity bullets with tungsten cores. Such rounds were extremely hard to come by, since they were designed to defeat even the full-body armor worn by the ISF's DEST commandos.

  Their anti-armor capability did not come immediately into play. The hard-shell polymer helmets and transpex visors worn by the intruders left their throats almost entirely unprotected. Ninyu Kerai put two rounds through the side of one raider's neck.

  As the man fell spurting, Ninyu pivoted micrometrically and put two bullets into the chest of the raider next to him. It was a woman, Ninyu noted dispassionately. The bullets performed as advertised—and good thing, since otherwise Ninyu Kerai would have had their manufacturer's quality-control engineers boiled in a black cast-iron kettle. She dropped like a wet rag.

  Systematically the man in black moved his sight-picture from target to target, giving each the double-tap benediction of a trained commando who isn't concerned about body armor. Several bodyguards had managed to get their weapons out and into play before being cut down, and others were arriving through doors concealed behind the Pillars ringing the pentagonal ballroom. Against the shattering noise of many guns going off, noise that seemed to ricochet like bullets, it was difficult to tell where any given shots were coming from, especially since the calm method of Ninyu's motions were not such as to attract the eye.

  He had fired half his rounds, dropping five intruders, before one noticed, shouted, and turned the fury of his machine pistol on him.

  * * *

  Hearing the bullets punch through the table behind her, imagining she could feel their breath of passage hot on her bare legs, Cassie kicked off her heels and speed-crawled the length of the table. She passed the feet of livery-clad servers who screamed and fell as bullets caught them.

  Unable to see her through the linen tablecloth that hung almost to the floor, the gunman was pursuing her blindly with his bullets. Serving dishes and exotic foodstuffs were knocked flying off the table in sprays of pink and white and powdered-glass snow. The immaculately carved swan exploded.

  And then the bolt of the terrorist's submachine gun slammed home on an empty chamber.

  Cassie was up in instant response. Whether as a nod to the Combine's status as a poor power, or in some inverse snobbery here in gadget-mad Masamori, the serving trays for the hot food were chafing dishes warmed by canned-heat flames. Cassie snatched a burning canister from beneath a silver dish of curry and hurled it at the gunman as he fumbled for a fresh magazine.

  The can struck the center of his chest, spilling blue fire down belly, groin, and thighs. The alcohol canned-heat mixture didn't burn hot enough to do serious damage, at least not right away, but Cassie knew it wasn't the way of those on fire to make fine calculations.

  The gunman had presence of mind enough to drop and roll. As he went down on hisbelly, squelching most of the flames, Cassie scrambled up over the table. Three flashing steps and she threw herself onto his back.

  His momentum carried them over with her underneath. She grunted as his weight crushed her, but Cassie was still able to make a grab at his holstered sidearm as they went down. She seized it, thumbed off the safety, stuck the muzzle up under the bend of his jaw, pulled the trigger twice.

  He was carrying his weapon loaded, not to mention cocked-and-locked. Cassie winced as back-blast blood sprayed her face. His body convulsed twice wildly, and became dead weight.

  Then the corpse twitched as bullets slammed, into it. Another raider was approaching, blasting away at Cassie. She extended her gun hand, fired shots through the man's unarmored knees and shins. He screamed and fell.

  Another. Cassie shot him through thigh and groin. Blood sprayed in a wide red fan from his severed femoral artery; he was dead, though it would take the body a few seconds to quiet down. No other targets presented themselves. As the man whose lower legs Cassie had shattered lay there moaning, she shot him through the throat, then eeled out from under the dead raider.

  * * *

  Alerted by an awareness as keen as any katana, Ninyu Kerai Indrahar stepped back behind the Pillar of Ivory a fraction of a heartbeat before bullets began to smash chunks from its polished pale surface. Out of the line of fire, he dropped the half-empty magazine, drew another from a pouch at his belt, slid it into the well, and seated it with a palm-heel' blow.

  As he did, a visored figure danced sideways around the Pillar. Ninyu reached up with his right hand, drew his wakizashi, and slashed diagonally down in one blinding swift motion. The incomparably sharp blade, forged in intricately folded layers of mild and brittle steel, millennia ago, sliced through the synthetic of the helmet and the terrorist's skull as if they were warm paté from the late Planetary Chairman's buffet.

  * * *

  A machine-pistol began to yammer as Cassie darted for the man she'd just finished off. Muzzle-flash danced yellow at the edges of her peripheral vision. Bullets gouged hand-rubbed hardwood near her bare feet. Stooping, she dropped the empty pistol, grabbed the dead man's submachine gun, and did a half-somersault on her belly. She landed sliding, facing the raider who was firing at her across the corpse. She triggered a burst. The gunman's legs flew out from under him.

  She rolled to her left, cut the legs from beneath three more raiders. She wasn't wearing earplugs, and all the muzzle-blasts had hal
fway deafened her, but she felt the vibration of footfalls coming up behind her. She rolled right, holding the trigger down.

  Her burst cut downward across the visor of a man running at her, knocking him backward. She slashed the bullets down the front of his chest, throwing him onto his back, and then pumped the rest of the magazine into his crotch.

  She came up on one knee, trying to tug up the hem of her skirt, which had bunched about her thighs, binding them. Motion tweaked the fringe of her peripheral vision. She looked up to see Ninyu Kerai Indrahar coming around the Pillar of Ivory, aiming his handgun at her one-handed.

  Snarling, she raised her captured SMG in a gesture as empty as its magazine. The Nambu-Nissan's muzzle blossomed yellow.

  A crack, a slap of air on the cheek, solid as fingers, a whiff of burned hair. The end of a jet-black lock of Cassie's hair drifted downward toward the floor in little swoops.

  Slowly Cassie turned. An armor-clad woman stood three meters behind her with a Sternsnacht heavy pistol aimed at the back of her skull. The woman had lost her visored helmet somewhere. Her hair was dark blonde and cropped close, her cheekbones Slavic-broad, her eyes blue as the sky. And also as wide.

  In the exact sternum-center of her quilted armor jacket, a neat black hole wept a single red tear. She dropped to her knees, and over onto her face.

  Cassie turned, wide-eyed herself, to stare at Ninyu Kerai. He tipped up the barrel of his pistol in salute, nodded slightly.

  Letting the submachine gun fall with a clatter, Cassie dove for the Sternsnacht, came up holding it in both hands. There were no more targets. Between her and Ninyu and the late-arriving Palace security staff, all the intruders were down.

  An impact, muffled and heavy as the fall of a distant mortar round. Another. Cassie heard the silverware laid out on the table with the ice-statue Dragon begin to jingle. Overhead, the great light-fountain chandelier began to sway.

  The hairs rose at the back of her neck. Those slow-rhythmic temblor sounds could mean only one thing: BattleMech.

  The double doors to the garden opened. The guests who'd been lucky enough to escape into the snowy outdoors came streaming back in. '"Mechs!" screamed a portly man in a government administrator's robes.

  An explosion flowered in the garden behind him. The administrator and a hapless half-dozen others were launched into the now-deserted bandstand on the debris-laden forefront of the blast wave. Cassie went flat and buried her face in her arms.

  Something fell beside her with a slap. She raised her head. A smoking sandal had landed on the floor nearby.

  A crunching rumble from the garden. Cassie looked around. Through the blown-in doors she could see a broad metal foot like a tapered cube. BattleMaster.

  Armed security guards were running back and forth in frenzy, acutely aware that they'd already blown the Big One, but none too eager to run outside and expiate their failure to protect the Planetary Chairman by getting turned into pink mist by the medium lasers that bristled from the 85-ton 'Mech. She saw Ninyu Kerai Indrahar spear some with his eyes, setting them to Securing the fallen terrorists. He relieved a corpse of its submachine gun and spare magazines as the machine gun in the BattleMaster's giant left arm began to flay the snow-clad garden outside.

  He started toward the door, working the SMG's action. Pausing to swap the Sternsnacht for a submachine gun of her own, Cassie ran after him.

  He spun round, weapon ready, before her reaching hand could touch his arm. "Don't," she said. "Not even you can take down a BattleMaster with a squirt gun."

  He scowled. "I must fight."

  "Didn't your adoptive father teach you better than that?"

  Anger flared in those dark eyes. "That 'Mech pilot thinks his comrades are still alive in here," she said hastily. An impact jarred the building, brought fine white dust sifting down from the dazzle overhead. "Otherwise he'd have blown the front half off the place already. He's being careful to avoid hurting his own. If you're good—and lucky—you can keep him busy for a while, and he won't dare turn his full firepower loose on you."

  "And what will you be doing while I keep him busy?" the tall man asked. "Attacking him with your own squirt gun?"

  She showed him a wild grin. "I'm a professional. This is what I do."

  "You are impertinent," he said matter-of-factly. "But you are not a fool. I shall do as you say."

  * * *

  The corridor was dim, the yellow glow of light-strips running along the tops and bottoms of the walls all but swallowed up by the dark stain with which the immaculately hand-rubbed hardwood paneling was finished. The light-show out the fifth-floor window of the Palace was highly impressive as Cassie again hiked her gown up strong, slim thighs. Apparently the Battle-Master had brought some of its little—and not so little—pals along. These were busy rampaging around the heart of Masamori like a twenty-story dinosaur in an ancient Japanese movie, creating diversions.

  A. kilometer away she saw another BattleMech rise into the air, illuminated by the flames of its jump jets and the blaze of a building burning behind it. It was the most humanoid-looking 'Mech she'd ever seen.

  Until now she'd only ever laid eyes on one in holos from archive files: the Wyvern, an ancient Star League design, not seen in the Inner Sphere for centuries—not until ComStar had rolled out an uprated version to meet the Clans in their giant death-duel on Tukayyid.

  But she didn't for an instant think that ComStar was for some reason falling upon the Draconis Combine. No, obviously it was the Word of Blake, the renegade ComStar sect the Caballeros had butted heads with two months ago, returned to Hachiman. Whether they still believed Uncle Chandy was a threat to ComStar's control of interstellar communications because Hachiman Taro Enterprises had perfected its own hyperpulse communications system, or whether they were looking for revenge on Chandy for defeating their earlier initiative—or on Ninyu Kerai Indrahar and poor Percy for playing them for fools with the tale of the phony breakthrough—she didn't know.

  The blinding blue of PPC fire stabbed out from somewhere west of the jumping 'Mech. It struck the armor housing that shielded the right-shoulder actuator and burned through it in a shower of coruscance. The arm fell away, drooling blue sparks. Overcompensating for his machine's abrupt imbalance, the pilot tumbled his gyros. The Wyvern began to spin, toppled off the thrust-columns of its jets, and fell out of sight.

  Somewhere in the snow-streaked night, friendly 'Mechs, Ghost Legion or 'llero, were responding. The yammer of the machine gun, interspersed with crashing, floor-rattling thuds as the BattleMaster periodically slammed its fist into the Palace, made it painfully clear any relief would be way too slow. In a matter of moments the fearsome 'Mech was going to punch enough of a hole in the building that its pilot would see clearly that all his comrades were down. And then there would be nothing on all Hachiman to prevent him standing back and flattening the place with his PPC and short-range missiles. Cassie could see the great, round, transpex-fronted head gleaming not four meters below the window.

  She fought her gown up far enough to grab the vibrodagger and rip the tape free of her thigh, not even reacting to the pain. She cleared the tape from the weapon and switched it on.

  With deft strokes of the thrumming device she cut off the hem of the gown at mid-thigh. What she had in mind was crazy enough without the frivolous garment binding her legs. She shut off the dagger, hesitated a heartbeat, then stuck the deactivated blade between her teeth. Next, she unslung the submachine gun from her back and fired a burst at the window.

  She presumed the window was bulletproof, and if it held, the ricochets would put her in a world of hurt. But she was also gambling on two things: that the window would have been mounted with an eye toward keeping bullets out and on ever-suspect Combine workmanship.

  Her gamble paid off. The impacts popped the pane out of its frame whole. It fell away, admitting an icy wind laden with fat snowflakes, noise, and a stink of burning.

  Slinging the submachine gun, Cassie clambered over
the empty sill.

  4

  Masamori Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  24 December 3056

  Snowflakes slapped Cassie's cheeks like wet moth's wings. The breeze shot cold up her abbreviated skirt Unlike much of Masamori, whose trademark towers of bronze and glass were built in the rakish, unsymmetrical Yamato style, the Earl's Palace was classic Kurita kitsch: a huge pagoda-style structure, with a skirt of roof crowning each story. Bare feet slipping on icy shingles, she ran along the sloped four-story roof, sliding perilously close to the edge before she hurled herself down astraddle the curved beam that marked the corner. Even that didn't stop her inevitable downward skid. Clinging with hands and knees, she was able to brake herself only slightly before shooting out into space.

  She caught herself one-handed on the beam-end, which was carved in one of those Asian lion-heads that looked for all the world like a militant Pekinese. The submachine gun slipped off her shoulder and fell with a clatter onto the armored housing that protected the BattleMaster's left shoulder with a sound as loud in her ears as a short-range missile barrage. Cassie looked around wildly. Through the transpex canopy that formed the front of the great 'Mech's head she could clearly see the pilot, bulky in neurohelmet and cooling vest. It seemed impossible for the Mech Warrior not to hear her, but the figure seemed intent on operating the machine. Which was making more than enough racket to cover the noise the dropped weapon had produced.

  Cassie's fingers began to slip from the wet wood. Drawing a deep breath, she let go and fell several meters onto the boxy housing of the Shannon missile launcher perched like a holocam on the 'Mech's left shoulder. Instantly she flung arms and legs spread-eagle to stop herself from rolling off into nothingness.