The Saotome Gambit

by Shinji Ikari7

Not writen by me but thought it would be good to have the story on FF.N

2. Chapter 2

For centuries the Inner Sphere has been aflame with war.

Struggling from the ashes of the Star League are five Great Houses: House Kuno of the Furinkan Combine, House Gosunkugi of the League of Five Nails, House Joketsuzoku of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth, House Shiratori of the Federated Shiratori, and House Tendo of the Nerima Confederation. Each House has a claim to the Star League throne, and each has an army of mighty Battlemechs with which to conquer - but only one House can rule the Inner Sphere, and none will allow that rule to come without price.

Planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System.

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

12 January 3025

"Step on it, Pop!" Ranma Saotome screamed to her father as crackling balls of charged particles blazed around them with violent thunderclaps. The communications antenna on their stolen Swiftwind scout ATV wouldn't retract, which left a big hole in the top of the ATV's armor, and Ranma was trying without success to fix it.

The giant panda, growling in abject terror the entire time, already had his furry foot on the floor.

The six-wheeled ATV swerved past a pile of boulders as another volley of lightning death lashed into the muddy ground. Clods of dirt and geysers of steam erupted at the impact point, bathing the open top hatch of the vehicle's antenna mount in scalding water droplets.

Ranma, suddenly male, turned back to face their pursuer as the now human Genma Saotome fumbled with the map function display. A Panther battlemech lumbered behind them, slowly dropping back as the ATV outran it. The particle projection cannon on its arm smoldered at its glowing hot muzzle tip from constant use.

"Doesn't she ever give up?" Ranma groaned. The Panther's PPC shivered with another thunderbolt, and a blindingly bright blue ball of lightning screamed overhead to explode a dozen meters in front of the ATV.

Genma swerved again to avoid the sudden five meter wide crater in front of him, nearly rolling over as the ATV tipped up on three wheels. Ranma was pitched out of the vehicle to land hard in a muddy puddle of water. She bounced out of the puddle with the force of the impact and crumpled into a dazed ball. The ATV continued on, with Genma either ignorant of his son's fate or unwilling to turn around and face the Panther to retrieve him.

Ranma, covered in mud and dripping wet, tried to pull herself upright as the Panther's footfalls shook the ground. Doing her best to ignore the pain and the pounding in her head, she managed to crawl out of the way of the battlemech as it continued on in pursuit of the ATV.

Shampoo grit her teeth as her 'mech's computer informed her in a saccharine voice that her PPC was overheating. Whichever of the two interlopers was driving that infernal ATV was either a panicked fool or else the galaxy's greatest stunt driver. She had never had such trouble eliminating a wheeled vehicle before. She was so intent on keeping her particle cannon online that she did not notice Ranma's accidental ejection from the ATV.

As the overheat warning became more urgent, she bit down on her lip and thumbed her weapon selector over to her missile launcher. One good volley would do the job, even if it wasn't as satisfying as frying them with a lightning bolt from her particle cannon. The gratifying tone of target acquisition sounded in her ears, and she sent her missiles flying with a curse for the damned girl who had destroyed her life.

Ranma watched as four Short Range Missiles streaked from the Panther's launch tubes and corkscrewed into the air. The stubby ballistically-guided weapons arced over the fleeing ATV, then dropped suddenly to the ground. Tremendous explosions threw clods of mud and bits of shrapnel high into the air. From the midst of the fireballs flew the ragged and burning hulk of the ATV.

"Pop!" she screamed in horror.

The ATV rolled end over end a dozen times before coming to a stop upside down a good forty meters from the blast zone. The Panther turned its sensor head to survey the destruction for a few moments, judged it good, then turned for home as if nothing had happened.

"Pop!" Ranma cried again hoarsely.

Dragging herself to her feet, she staggered across the muddy plain to the smoldering ruin of the ATV. Ragged bits of armor plate continued to rain down from the still air. Sharp pieces of scorched metal lay scattered about the wreck. Deep within the hulk came the tell-tale hiss of emergency venting from the scout's fusion reactor.

A tear spilled down her mud streaked face.

"Pop..."

A sob wracked her body as she sunk to her knees and wept.

"That's very touching, boy," a weak voice grunted from within the wreck.

Ranma's head bobbed up in disbelief.

"Pop?"

Genma Saotome's head appeared from the smoking ruin of the wreck. His face was smeared with mud, blood, and charcoal. The pungent tang of cyclo-trimethilene trinitramine, better known as the military high explosive RDX, filled Ranma's nostrils.

"Pop, how are you even alive?" Ranma asked, tears still in her eyes. "I saw what happened."

Genma gave him a grave look.

"Thank the gods for seatbelts, airbags, and armor plating," he replied slowly, and released his straps to fall in the mud at her feet.

Ranma helped her father up. "That Shampoo's gonna pay for this," she growled.

"We can still make the spaceport," Genma declared wearily. He had no intention of going back to face any Joketsuzoku. "If they think we're dead, they won't be watching for us."

"We might as well be dead," Ranma grunted, her elation at finding her father alive fading fast before the reality of their situation. "Look at what's happened to us! We've gotta go back and get a cure!"

Genma waved a hand in dismissal. "Are you out of your mind, boy?! We don't even know exactly how this happened to us! You think we can just sneak back in there and find a cure? That's assuming there even is one!

Ranma's face fell. She knew the reality of their situation as well as her father, but to just run away without a fight...! "Well I'm fresh outta ideas, Pop."

Genma lowered his bloodied head in thought.

"I have a plan," he said at length.

Ranma gave him a dubious look.

"Where have I heard THAT before?" she groused. Genma offered her a weak smile, which made her cringe with dread. Finally she could bear the suspense no longer. "So what is it, Old Man?"

"We're going to the Nerima Confederation," he announced.

"What?" Ranma cried. "You gotta be kidding me. The Confederation is about to get crushed by both the League and the Combine. They're broke, their 'mech forces are holding on by their fingernails, and they're halfway across the Inner Sphere from here. What could possibly be there that could help us?"

Genma eyed his son, now a buxom scarlet haired girl. "I have an old friend there. If anyone could help, it's him."

"Whatever," Ranma replied, nonplussed. She gathered up what little they had that was salvageable from the wreck of their Swiftwind and started walking. "It's a long march back to the starport, Pop. We better get going and hope you're right about them not looking for us."

BATTLETECH: THE SAOTOME GAMBIT

by J. Austin Wilde

As Shampoo powered down her Panther and popped the hatch to debark her 'mech, she noticed the sour and taciturn commander of the planet's garrison waiting for her on the gantry. His red reptilian eyes fairly burned under the light of the hangar's mercury vapor arc lamps. She made a point of ignoring him as she disconnected her cooling vest and neurohelm from the 'mech, then pulled herself gracefully through the hatch to alight soundlessly upon the steel non-skid diamond deck of the gantry catwalk. Still ignoring him, she slipped her helmet off and set it gently in a shielded and padded caddy near the mech's hatch.

"Did you finally eliminate them?" Herb asked archly, his patience with her at low ebb. The Commonwealth battlemech hangar was a cavernous and noisy place, and his presence on the Panther's boarding gantry was a clear sign of his concern in the matter.

Shampoo responded with a toss of her long purple mane of hair, a gesture that both inflamed and irritated the hybrid mechwarrior general. Herb had been put out by her insistence on dealing with the two outsiders herself. Lightoller was his domain, and to have a strumpet from Jusenkyo, even the great-grandaughter of the Matriarch, personally handling the internal affairs of the planet's security was intolerable to him.

Shampoo knew this, and with a look she made certain that he knew it as well.

"I left their vehicle a smoking wreck three kilometers north by east of Checkpoint November," she told him curtly. "Cleanup is your problem, not mine."

"Excellent," he managed. "I was beginning to worry that they had escaped for good."

"Have you determined their method of infiltrating the labs?" she countered, driving home her contempt for him. "It would be in your best interest as Governor if the Matriarch knew that the labs' integrity remained intact despite this breach of security."

Herb glared at her.

"That is being determined this very moment," he replied icily. "So long as the intruders were eliminated, the secrets of the Jusenkyo Labs will remain secure."

Shampoo doubted that. Rumors of the Commonwealth's Star League era biotechnics lab had been leaking out to the Inner Sphere for decades now, almost since her great-grandmother's breeding program began, and while the location of the labs and the exact nature of the experiments performed remained secret, she doubted that could last forever. The Combine's spies were always scuttling about in the shadows, and the Commonwealth's confederates in the League of Five Nails weren't always the type to keep their mouths shut. One day the labs' location would be known, and the truth about what they were doing would be revealed. It didn't take a genius to realize that shortly thereafter it would become the number one priority bombing target for every single aerospace fighter outside the Commonwealth.

"So you say," she replied, and stepped gracefully past him to the mechwarrior locker rooms to shower and change.

Herb watched her go, desire and contempt welling up within him to wage war on each other. He was a general in the Commonwealth battlemech forces, and when he was not on campaign in the periphery against the numerous pirates and bandit kings, he was the planetary governor for the most important world in the Commonwealth other than the capitol. All that power and glory should have been enough for any man, even an ambitious one like Herb.

But it wasn't. He wanted the supreme command of the Commonwealth military, something Cologne had kept from him despite his obvious qualifications. The reasons were clear: the Matriarch wanted that honor to go to her great-grandaughter Shampoo, whom she considered to be the crowning glory of her century-long Breeding Program, first above all of her other progeny. The second reason was even more bitter for Herb to swallow. He was a man, and a man would never command the Commonwealth's armed forces.

As his lustful eyes followed the graceful sway of Shampoo's hips he clenched his fists tight with determination. No matter what, he would have all that he desired, whether it was given to him or had to be taken. Taking Shampoo and making her his slave would be the sweetest prize of all.

Shampoo stepped back under the hot pulsating stream of the shower to rinse herself off. The steam was thick and warm around her, and she was grateful for it. General Herb made her feel cold inside whenever he was around, a cold that was hard to dispel even after he was gone, and cold was a feeling she now had a very good reason to fear.

Since she had joined the battlemech forces upon her first mense, she had encountered him time and time again, and each encounter left her with the same icy feeling. It wasn't that he was a man, for despite the clan's indoctrination promoting homosexuality over promiscuous and potentially damaging genetic harm to the Breeding Program, Shampoo had little desire for relations with other women. It was something else about Herb, perhaps the dragon blood bequeathed him through his parents and their exposure to the Jusenkyo Effect. Perhaps his cold-bloodedness was more than just a front for him, but was ingrained into his very being by the Program.

She had never questioned her great-grandmother's wisdom before, but the use of the Jusenkyo Effect to augment the superior genetic stock of the Commonwealth's mechwarriors was beginning to make her uneasy. If it created cold-blooded monsters like Herb and his two henchmen, Lime and Mint, what would it do to her? Hers was no longer a pure strain of the Matriarch's line, and now she wondered with some fear of what would become of her - and her future children?

Shampoo closed her eyes and let the water wash over her body in a rush of delicious warmth. She was tainted now, an undocumented, accidental, and unauthorized experiment in the Jusenkyo Effect, all because of that meddling red-haired girl! Her only hope lay in Doctor Gaido, and the slim chance that the Effect could be cured.

With some trepidation she shut off the shower. The steam lingered, and the air in the open shower bay did not have its usual chill. She had jimmied open the thermostat for the climate control unit and turned the heating to maximum, and it appeared to be doing its job. It would be a disaster for a sudden draft on her wet body to force her transformation - possibly in front of someone else.

She reached for a towel and dried herself off quickly. Only when she had donned a thick terry robe and slippers and stepped into the locker room to change into her uniform did she feel safe. Though not for long, as the door opened and a man in long flowing robes and equally flowing long black hair blundered inside.

"Get out, Mousse!" she cried indignantly at the young man.

Realizing his error, Mousse adjusted his thick eyeglasses to confirm that he had in fact walked into the wrong locker room. His weak eyes went wide at the sight of Shampoo in a state of half-dress, and his face burned with a fierce blush.

"Sh-Sha-Shampoo?" he stammered in shock.

"I said out!" she screamed. Still clutching her uniform cheongsam minidress ineffectually to her body, she searched for something heavy and hard to throw at him.

"I'm sorry!" Mousse managed, and ducked back through the door in time to avoid a steel laundry hamper.

She waited until she was certain that he was gone before swiftly changing into her uniform.

"Stupid Mousse," she huffed. He was always following her around like a puppy, and making foolish and embarrassingly public declarations of love for her. All this despite the fact that though he was an excellent and experienced mechwarrior, he was also hopelessly nearsighted, and therefore disqualified from the Breeding Program. The possibility that he had in fact not intended to walk in on her slowly crept into her thoughts, but that didn't mean she couldn't be angry with him anyway.

She knew that she didn't hate him. They had grown up together, after all, and though he had always been annoyingly infatuated with her, she tolerated him well enough. He was handsome despite his extremely thick glasses, and he had a terrific body from extensive training in several obscure forms of kung fu, but he was so irritating in his obsession with her that she never took him very seriously as a romantic prospect.

She gathered her things up into her kit bag with a sigh. She needed to get off this cursed planet and away from Herb, Mousse, and above all, the House Jusenkyo Labs. After her talk with Gaido, the first JumpShip headed for the Jusenkyo System would find her on it.

Furinkan Combine JumpShip Imperator,

in orbit above the planet New Hawaii,

Alpha Centauri System, Furinkan Combine

13 January 3025

Prince Tatewaki Kuno of the Furinkan Combine stood in uneasy silence on the Executive Bridge. His sister was conducting operations against the Confederation, which always worried him. It wasn't for any concern over his sister. Though it would sadden him to learn that his own flesh and blood had fallen in battle, the truth of the matter was that he considered her a hindrance to his plans of conquest, and a hindrance he would be well rid of.

What did concern him were the rumors that Akane Tendo had taken command of the 1st Nerima Guards, the Confederation force that currently reinforced the threatened planet of Abydos. His lovely battle maiden was a formidable foe in honorable combat, but at the hands of his cowardly and blackhearted sister, she could come to harm.

Indeed, his twisted sister had hinted at that very possibility when she announced her intention to raid the parts depot at Port Said. Though he had sternly rebuked her for such evil intentions, there was no way he could guarantee her conduct of the raid short of participating, and that he was reluctant to do. His reputation would suffer to be associated with the foul deeds of his sister's Black Rose regiment, whereas by remaining elsewhere, he could distance himself and make a public condemnation of her. He could do little else, for Kodachi enjoyed the favor of their father, and until the fool was dead or he abdicated his throne, he was powerless to prevent his sister's excesses in any meaningful way.

He stared out the main viewport to the blue bauble of the planet beneath his mighty starship. His hated father was somewhere down there inspecting the terraforming efforts and trying out the surf. His gorge rose at the thought of it. His own father, Shogun of the mightiest of the five Successor States, wasting his time and his nation's treasury trying to turn a planet into an imitation of the Hawaiian Islands of Earth. If he had half a mind towards conquest, he could become First Lord of the Star League, reestablish the throne on nearby Earth, and then have the real Hawaiian Islands for himself.

Tatewaki frowned in distaste. When he was finally the First Lord of the Star League, he would order the Hawaiian Islands destroyed - by continuous nuclear bombardment if necessary - as an act of final contempt for his father. Until then, he needed to conquer the Nerima Confederation while keeping an eye on the Jusenkyo Commonwealth and its Comstar puppet. The League of Five Nails was at best an annoyance, and the Federated Shiratori and its vapid Goddess-Empress was not even deserving of mention.

Only with the Inner Sphere his, Hawaii a glowing radioactive cinder slipping beneath the waves, and most importantly his new bride Akane Tendo by his side, could he find fulfillment. Until then there was only room for battle and conquest in his heart. How terrible was the burden of the Gods' divine instrument of destiny!

He raised a fist in anguish to his brow and grimaced in silent despair and with tears streaming down his face at the thought. His crew went about their tasks on the Bridge, studiously ignoring their lord until it was clear that the moment had passed and he was approachable once again.

The City of Port Said,

Planet Abydos, Algol System

Nerima Confederation

13 January 3025

"Charlie Company of the 2nd Battalion reports contact with enemy 'mechs in company strength moving east along Khafre Boulevard towards the north/south freeway interchange."

The report came over the crackling command net for the 1st Nerima Guards Regiment. It was grim news if not unexpected. Alpha of the 2nd was supposed to have guarded the approaches to Khafre Boulevard and the freeway from their vantage point in the heavily wooded Osirien Park. No one at any level of the regiment had heard from Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion for over an hour, and the regiment's scout assets were too busy evaluating the enemy's other positions to investigate.

A slender gloved hand thumbed the 'talk' button on her HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) controls. Akane Tendo, commander of the 1st Nerima and Heir to the Nerima Confederation, took a deep breath and addressed her commanders.

"Order Charlie Company to engage enemy forces in a holding action," she said, knowing that Charlie was a rump company of only two lances, one of which was understrength at that. It was going to be hard on them, but if the Furinkan Combine raiding parties reached the freeway, they would have a straight shot into the heart of the city and the parts depot they had come to loot.

"Yes sir," her adjutant in the mobile command center acknowledged.

Akane took another deep breath. She was only nineteen years old, and although she was an excellent mechwarrior, she was still not used to having so many lives on her hands. Not only those of her regiment, but those of the tens of thousands of civilians living in the heart of Port Said. The infamous Black Rose Terror Regiment was known for its atrocities, and Akane had no doubt that they would raze the city to the ground if they could.

These were her people. Her people, as the daughter of their liege, Grand Duke Soun Tendo. She knew that she had to protect them, and she was too young and naive to realize that her life was more important than all of theirs.

Her tac-net display opened up to reveal her beleaguered Charlie of the 2nd Commander. His young face was pale with fear, despite the sweltering heat of a battlemech cockpit. The roar of particle beam fire mingled with fierce explosions in the background noise.

"Two-Charlie Actual reporting enemy battlemechs in company strength, all heavy units, approaching our positions from the west. We are taking them under fire, but do not have the numbers or the ammunition to hold them for long. Requesting immediate reinforcements!"

The display blurred into an angry buzz of static a moment later. When the image returned, Akane could see the cloudy blue sky through the battlemech's cockpit windows heaving crazily above the terrified mechwarrior, and she knew that he had been hit hard, perhaps had even lost his main gyroscope.

"Headquarters Company!" she called over the tac-net, so that every member of her regiment could hear her voice. "Move out! Proceed by lance to map reference One-Charlie-Three by Six-Oscar-Niner! Reinforce positions held by Two-Charlie!"

Akane's bright red Warhammer surged with energy as its fusion reactor came up to battle-power. Her regimental headquarters company, in reality her personal bodyguards, quickly acknowledged her order and followed suit. The company of battlemechs thundered down Alzred Parkway towards the freeway business loop. If they could reach the interchange before the Furinkan Combine forces, they would have the advantage of the high ground as the Combine 'mechs tried to scale the on-ramps to engage them.

She thumbed her battlecomp display over to the Civil Defense Order of Battle. A lance of Civil Defense Urbanmechs and Riflemen was in position in an elevated parking garage within three hundred meters of the interchange, ostensibly to act as air defense against the Combine's aerospace fighter assets. Their long-range autocannons could come in handy against any battlemechs that tried to jump jet directly up to the interchange. She called to her adjutant to order them up for fire support, the civil defense forces being in a separate but inferior chain of command from her own.

"Lady Akane," her adjutant addressed her with more than a little concern. He was a former mechwarrior in his mid-forties whose crippling injuries in battle had shunted him to a staff position, and he had a most fatherly protective attitude towards her. "This is a dangerous position you are taking."

Akane grit her teeth. Instead of keeping her reply strictly on the command channel, she again patched through the tactical net where the entire regiment could listen in. "Two-Charlie has a dangerous position, Colonel Mukaida. I'm trying to do something about that."

She was playing dirty pool with a man she deeply respected, but as a nineteen year old girl who commanded the 1st Nerima Guards by virtue of her birth as the daughter of the Grand Duke, she had to win the loyalty of her troops if she was ever going to truly lead them. Now they would know that their commander wasn't afraid of getting a little muddy and bloody to protect her own.

She was rewarded with a cheer over the tac-net from those very men and women she wished to lead. Her heart swelled with pride, and for a moment wasn't sure if the flush of heat she felt was from herself or the mighty reactor beneath her. The Warhammer pounded the reinforced roadway, shaking the buildings that surrounded her, and bringing forth to the windows curious civilians who began to wave and shout as they saw the Ducal pennant that flew from her 'mech. Suddenly she felt invincible.

And why shouldn't she? Her crimson red Warhammer was seventy tons of white hot death shaking the pavement with its cloven hooves. The long armored tubes of the twin Donal particle projection cannons that made up the battlemech's arms were capable of annihilating a light 'mech with one salvo.

The approaches to the business loop were guarded by a company of mechanized infantry and supported by a pair of Rommel tanks; not nearly enough to defeat a company of heavy 'mechs, but enough force to hold them until other units could reinforce their position. The tiny figures in their urban camouflage battle dress made way for her column of battlemechs as they stomped past. A tank commander waved from his hatch and signalled that the way ahead was clear to the interchange.

Colonel Princess Kodachi Kuno of the Furinkan Combine licked her lips in anticipation of the coming orgy of violence she and her Black Rose Terror Regiment were about to commence. The pitiful Confederation battlemech forces had so far put up valiant if futile resistance, and even the vaunted 1st Nerima Guards so feared by her brother's regular forces were hardly a significant threat. Her spearhead company was practically in position at the freeway interchange, having stopped briefly to engage a couple of lances of Confederation 'mechs. Once the freeway interchange was secured, her convoys of armored vehicles would move up and stand by to haul off the tons of battlemech parts and other critical technologies her forces looted from the depot. And then, once the depot was cleaned out, she could amuse herself by burning Port Said to the ground.

There were rumors from her Intelligence Section concerning the recent change of command within the 1st Nerima Guards. It would be amusing to face Akane Tendo in battle, and having crushed the girl under the heel of her black painted Marauder, to throw it in her dear brother's face. The only question in her mind would be whether or not killing the Tendo girl or holding her for ransom would be more entertaining.

The image of her staff major appeared on her battlemech's head-up display.

"Spearhead company reports only mop up operations against enemy lances near the interchange, your Highness. They will have the area secured within the next fifteen minutes."

Kodachi chuckled with glee. Despite the delays for skirmish actions, her troops were ahead of schedule! She clicked her mic open to respond.

"Inform them that we shall be joining them shortly. Order the caravans to move out to their final positions, and alert the DropShip commanders to prepare to receive captured supplies within the hour."

The major nodded briskly on the display.

"At once, Highness!"

That taken care of, Kodachi opened the throttle on her Marauder and let the seventy-five ton battlemech run at full tilt down Khafre Boulevard. Her plan was coming off without a hitch. She could see lines of smoke from the recent skirmish between her spearhead company and the hastily deployed forces of the 1st Nerima Guards.

It was a plan worthy of her reputation as the Black Rose of the Furinkan Combine. In a daring attack on the outskirts of Port Said's vital starport, two of her three 'mech battalions were keeping the enemy distracted and engaged over twelve kilometers from the real objective. Meanwhile her remaining 'mech battalion plus her Special Forces and her Transportation Battalions had landed outside the suburbs and near the two main traffic arteries of the city to carry out the raid.

Thus far the 1st Nerima Guards had shown no sign of getting wise to her plan, and even if they did, they would have to fight a withdrawal from the starport and race back across an elevated freeway while being taken under fire from her aerospace fighters every last kilometer of the way.

It was enough to make her laugh, and once she got started, there was little to stop her. She flicked her mic over to the external P.A. speakers and began cackling with glee. Swinging her 'mech's twin PPCs to bear on the suburban homes, she began blasting away. The particle bolts blew the timber and drywall structures to flaming bits, and her machinegun and light laser equipped lance mates began hosing anti-personnel fire into the panicked survivors.

Kodachi found another reason to laugh, and began picking targets for her particle cannons that would likely produce the most potential targets for her men. It was amusing to watch the pathetic Confederation citizens scrambling like ants at the feet of her 'mechs as shopping centers and homes blazed and streams of brilliant light incinerated them in little strobe-like flashes of flame.

Her revelry was short lived however, as an autocannon shell careened off her Marauder's precious Lamellar armor with a loud spang! Too late, her threat indicator warned of a hostile Garret D2j radar search and tracking array in the area. The Garret array could only mean the presense of air defense 'mechs such as the Rifleman or the Jagermech in the area.

"Combat spread!" she ordered her troops. The massacre stopped abruptly as her battlemechs fanned out into a dispersion pattern that would minimize potentially fatal artillery and airstrikes while keeping the 'mechs close enough to give support to each other. Her eyes flicked between her viewport and her tactical instruments, searching for the enemy battlemech.

Did her spearhead company miss one of the enemy in the confusion, or was just it a stray shell?

She had her answer a moment later when one of her spearhead 'mechs exploded in a shower of silver plasma near the freeway on-ramp a scant kilometer distant. Streams of autocannon tracer fire rippled through the ranks of the spearhead company from an elevated parking garage on the other side of the freeway. Before they realized what was happening, another spearhead 'mech went down in flames, its legs blasted off at the knees as it rushed the on-ramp and ran straight into the enemy defilade.

Even as they started taking up defensive positions around the solid masonry of the interchange, they were hit again from a different quarter; from the on-ramp itself came pulses of heavy laser fire and bolts of charged particles. There were more than just air defense 'mechs in position at the interchange, and they had gone completely unnoticed by her staff!

Kodachi managed a strangled cry of rage as a third spearhead 'mech, a Catapult making a desperate jump jet leap out of harm's way, was ripped apart by an internal ammunition explosion as two Riflemen in the parking garage came to bear with their swiftly trainable anti-aircraft weapons and opened up with all four barrels. Missiles cooked off and spiralled crazily out of the ruptured ammo bins of the Catapult, some striking other spearhead 'mechs and adding to the confusion. The view of the interchange became obscured from visual and thermal imaging as smoke and flames from the wreckage came streaming down from above.

"Full advance!" she shouted to her men. She ordered a full missile bombardment on the parking garage as soon as the fire lance came into range. Next she called in one of her Air Lances covering the freeway for an airstrike. The Confederation was going to pay in kind for this!

A flight of Slayers answered her call, hosing the parking garage with laser and autocannon fire and screaming out of the way as her fire lance's missile barrage struck. The building shuddered with the blasts, becoming engulfed in flame and thick black smoke. The streams of autocannon shells and laser fire abruptly ceased, though whether this was because the 'mechswere destroyed or merely unable to track through the smoke was unknown. The respite given her spearhead company was good enough for the moment.

Her own Marauder was well ahead of the rest of her company, and she reached the freeway interchange before her spearhead company could shake off the shock of the ambush and start to fight its way out of the killing zone. Kodachi's sudden appearance on the scene made it clear that the only acceptable direction to move was forward. She pushed aside a Crusader that wobbled drunkenly from a double blast of particle beam fire and started up the ramp.

A Phoenix Hawk, hidden from sight by the solid masonry and steel curve of the ascending on-ramp, jumped out in a clumsy attempt at death from above. Kodachi swatted it down with the derringer-like forearms of her 'mech, and leaving it behind, swiveled her PPCs back to blast it while it was down. The Confederation 'mech blazed with blue light from the hits, and was immolated a moment later as the rest of her company joined her on the ramp.

Next up was a Griffin that left its protected position to help its lancemate. Kodachi gave it both barrels of her PPCs, plus her lasers. A bloom of heat burst from her 'mech's radiators, more than the cooling system could bear, but Kodachi was a past mistress of pushing her Marauder's plant to the limit and living to tell of it. With remarkable grace she shouldered the clumsy Griffin aside, knocking the hand-held PPC from its grip in a shower of sparks and twin sprays of ruptured liquid nitrogen coolant lines. The Griffin was finished an instant later by a volley of short range missiles that blew the bubble like cockpit into a cloud of flame and transparent durallex canopy shrapnel.

She was at the top of the ramp now, laughing in triumph as the Confederation 'mechs now felt the sting of the Black Rose's thorns. Her laughter reached a crescendo as she spied the crimson Warhammer of Akane Tendo closing in on her 'mech.

"Akane Tendo!" she cried over the enemy tac-net frequency. "I challenge you to single combat! May we fight in all fairness!"

"I accept!" Akane returned. No sooner had she said this than every single Combine 'mech in the fight trained their weapons upon her Warhammer and began firing everything they had.

Only an act of pure desperation saved her as the blistering fusillade of Combine weapons bore down on her 'mech. Searing bolts of laser and particle beam fire splashed into the Warhammer as she dove for the relative cover of one of the elevated freeway's support towers. Alarms wailed in the cockpit and the whoosh of automated fire extinguishing systems told her of impending disaster.

The brief respite offered by her covered position gave her a moment to evaluate the condition of her 'mech. One glance at the displays was all it took to let her know that it wasn't good. She had never been mauled this badly in combat before.

The left side of her mech's torso was breached and gutted, including the left side gun cluster and several heat sinks. Only by her desperate torso twist and leap to cover had she been spared a potentially fatal ammunition explosion from her short range missile launcher or an equally fatal crash out from her fusion reactor. Her left PPC was damaged but functional, and her left leg was reporting an unextinguished fire near the knee actuator that threatened to immobilize the limb.

"Hey!" she cried indignantly into the tac-net. "What happened to single combat and fighting fair!?"

Autocannon fire and machine gun rounds slammed into the reinforced concrete of the pillar in reply, chewing into the masonry to expose the rebar in showers of green and gold sparks.

"Okay!" Akane shouted over the din. She was practically shaking in her ejector seat with fear, but she refused to die without a fight. "If that's your idea of a fair fight, then come and get me!"

She poked her left PPC arm out from behind cover and began firing point blank into a Combine Warhammer that charged her position with the intent of gunning her down. The mighty battlemech caught a bolt through the head as it practically ran down the muzzle of her PPC, and stopped dead in its tracks before her. She was rewarded with the sight of Kodachi's black Marauder, carefully positioned behind two Thunderbolts, practically shivering with rage as another of her mechwarriors was slain. Her fear melted away upon seeing her nemesis balk, and she charged with a fierce war cry.

The Combine 'mechs again opened up, but their own dead Warhammer absorbed most of the shots and flew apart in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel. Through that cloud came the battered crimson form of Akane's Warhammer.

A few 'mechs triggered their medium and light lasers wildly at her, which she ignored in favor of clubbing them with the now dysfunctional left PPC arm. The heavy armored tube of the particle cannon made a lethal bludgeon, and she smashed through the torso of a Quickdraw in a single blow. The ferocity of the attack took the Combine mechwarriors by surprise, and Akane waded into them, now swinging both PPC arms furiously.

Kodachi bit down on her lip as she watched the insane Tendo girl clobber yet another of her 'mechs. She watched with not a little horror as the red Warhammer stood over the fallen Archer and beat it savagely with its PPCs over and over until the dying battlemech's arms were broken and its torso and cockpit smashed in. A Catapult lashed Tendo with point blank laser fire, blasting the ruined searchlight to smithereens and starting a fire within the gutted torso - and received a vicious double blow across its own torso in return. The Catapult fell over, crashing into the pavement and leaving a crater.

Kodachi threw her Marauder into reverse and began backing down the on-ramp, ostensibly to get beyond the minimum range of her primary weapons so she could finish off Akane's Warhammer with one salvo. It turned into a full fighting retreat as the remainder of Akane's bodyguards began a fierce counterattack. Only the strong discipline of her troops kept it from becoming a total rout on the spot.

"We shall meet again!" Kodachi Kuno vowed angrily as her battered Black Rose 'mechs withdrew under the cover of a flamer-induced smoke screen. Her blood boiled with hate and anguish at the terrible defeat she had suffered. Never before had she known such a disaster!

She consoled herself with burning as much as she could on the way out of the city, but by now the civilians were in shelters and there was little sport or amusement in it. The raid was a failure, her crack battalion was in shambles with heavy casualties, and she now faced the humiliation of explaining to her brother the losses she had suffered. She could already see the smug look on his face and hear the angry tone of reproach in his voice. The only reason he wouldn't strip her of her command was because Daddy liked her the best and wouldn't permit it.

Akane stood up through the hatch of her Warhammer and surveyed the damage. The left torso was truly gutted, and the PPC arm hung battered and limp at its side. The searchlight was obliterated. Her 'mech now limped when it walked due to the knee actuator damage. The bright red paint was burned off in most places from the waist up, leaving only scorched and dull heat-discolored metal wherever it wasn't slashed open outright with laser fire. Her Warhammer was going to face an extended period in the tech shed before it would be ready to go out again.

Grim mechanized carnage lay all about her, most of it by her own hand. The Combine forces had lost four 'mechs outright on the freeway, and three more leading up to the on-ramp. The rest had fled with varying degrees of damage. She had lost four 'mechs, not including the Civil Defense lance which had lost two precious Riflemen and their pilots when part of the parking garage roof collapsed on them.

Sketchy reports from her recon lances indicated that the enemy 'mechs threatening the starport had broken off their attacks and were falling back in an orderly fashion to their drop zones. If she had sufficient aerospace fighter assets available, she would have made sure that the Combine forces received a billion joules per liter send off, but she barely had enough to cover her own forces, and the Black Rose Regiment would escape with no further losses.

Civilians in Kodachi's path had fared worst of all. She had begged her staff not to give her any more reports about it in the field, as she was close to tears already. The smoke from the fires raged in the distance with nothing available to combat them.

The only victory today lay in keeping Kodachi out of the heart of the city, and the only spoils of that victory lay in the salvageable remains she had left behind. For that victory they had paid a heavy price.

As she watched the Ghouls in the 'mech salvage and recovery squads pore over the wrecked battlemechs, the voice of her adjutant sounded from below. Akane looked down to see him strapped to his wheelchair in the back of a staff jeep waving up at her. His scarred face seemed relieved to see that she was all right.

"I'll be down in a second," she cried, and clambered out of the hatch to climb down her 'mech to the scorched pavement. Like most mechwarriors, she was wearing little more than a tank top and shorts underneath her cooling vest, and the driver of the jeep hopped out to provide her with his uniform cloak.

Her adjutant, Colonel Mukaida, saluted as she approached.

"I have the preliminary casualty reports," he said evenly.

Akane tensed for the blow.

"How bad?"

Mukaida handed her the hastily drafted preliminary report.

"Bad enough to pull the regiment back from the line," he replied. "We weren't full strength when we arrived on planet, and now we're barely at fifty percent effectiveness."

Akane took the news like a punch to the gut.

"Can the frontier hold on without us? There was a good reason why the 1st Nerima was needed here, and that was because of the buildup of Combine forces on the border."

"I don't know," Mukaida replied. "What I do know is that another battle like today - which was apparently nothing more than a large scale raid - could put the 1st Nerima out for good. We need to fall back to our second line to repair and replace our 'mechs."

He lowered his face for a moment before regarding her.

"I can't order you to withdraw," he began. "The regiment is yours to command. You've proved yourself beyond any doubts of that. But I have to recommend that we withdraw."

Akane looked up to the sky. What would her father do? It had been so long since he had been a mechwarrior, but Akane could still remember the solemn look on his face from behind his neurohelmet. What would Dad do?

She took one last look at the devastation and sighed.

"Order the withdrawal to our secondary positions as soon as practical," she said tonelessly. The secondary position for the 1st Nerima Guards was the Nerima System itself. She was going home already, and she had barely left it.

Primary Continent,

Planet Capra, Capra System

League of Five Nails

31 January 3025

The deformed monstrosity of a Hunchback battlemech cleared the low rise of rocky hills at a run. Reaching the high ground, the thirty foot tall war machine came to a halt. Its sensors began to probe the surrounding territory.

"Where is he?" Mechwarrior Pansuto Tarou demanded of his instruments. His radar suite showed only the steadily advancing blip of his companion, Ryouga Hibiki. The yellow and black trimmed BattleMaster seemed to be in no particular hurry, which was just as well, as Ryouga had a tendency to get lost when he was in a rush.

"Any luck?" Ryouga called to him over the tac-net.

Tarou grit his teeth and squinted at the display. His radar wasn't in the best shape after fifty years of service to his family battlemech, and the mechanical shock it suffered every time he triggered his primary weapon - a huge Tomodzuru Type 20 autocannon that gave the mech its distinctive deformity - wasn't helping the unit.

"I don't understand," Tarou replied. "How could that bastard simply disappear?"

The BattleMaster came to a halt several meters from the Hunchback.

"Beats me," Ryouga shrugged. "If you really did see him, which I doubt, just remember that Locusts are pretty fast. Maybe he just outran us."

"He can't outrun my radar," Tarou grunted, more than a little perturbed with Ryouga's skepticism. He keyed the telescopic bifocal unit mounted in the head of his mech, and zoomed in on a rock formation almost a kilometer distant. "That's the only place he could be hiding."

The Hunchback's right arm extended in the direction of the red-brown pile of sandstone in the distance.

"Could be," Ryouga agreed, concealing his distaste for their hunt. The poor excuse for a sun on Capra was going to be setting soon, and the early evening sandstorms that rose with the sunset winds were murder on sensitive battlemech parts. He wanted to return to Capra City and park his mech in a covered hangar before that happened. "But we're already way out of our patrol sector."

"What's another klick at this point?" Tarou scowled.

"Another klick could cost us our jobs," Ryouga returned, baring a fang for Tarou's benefit. "I don't know about you, but I want to make enough money to get off this stupid planet. Forfeiting our contract because you think you saw him is no way to do that."

Tarou cast another look at his noisy radar display.

"All right," he conceded, scorn dripping from his voice. "But I know that he's out there somewhere, and my vow to atomize the little freak will finally be fulfilled. After that, Cologne and House Joketsuzoku."

Ryouga had his doubts about Tarou's sanity some times, and this was one of them. What was worse, this planet was getting to him. Ryouga hated Capra, and he hated the Joketsuzoku for what they had done to both of them, but how could they realize their vengeance if they lost their jobs? Worst of all, their deal with the mercenary company they now served included stiff penalties for breach of contract.

If they weren't careful, they could both lose their battlemechs. Until they passed their probationary period with the company, they would have to suffer liens on their 'mechs for spare parts and adaptation to the harsh sandy climate. There wouldn't be much sympathy for them from the Governor of Capra, either, as the mercs represented the only significant protection he had from the predations of bandits or the Combine. No, it would all be nice and legal, and in the end they would join the hated ranks of the Dispossessed. Suicide would be the only honorable way out after that.

He cast his eyes out across the desolate expanse of waste and sighed. Home was many parsecs away.

How did we end up on this forsaken dustball?

He knew well the chain of events which led to their practical exile on the frontier League world, but the reasons why Fate had decreed that this should happen to Ryouga Hibiki and Pansuto Tarou escaped him. What had they done to deserve this?

Their last assignment as part of the mercenary garrison on the Commonwealth world of Lightoller had been dull - as the planet was heavily fortified against attack - but extremely lucrative. Perhaps too lucrative, Tarou now asserted. Ryouga still reserved judgement on that score, but was beginning to see his point.

Happousai, posing as an agent for independent mechwarriors, had steered them into the job as they looked for work within the Federated Shiratori. They agreed to a sweet deal, booked a trip to Lightoller - travel expenses paid for by the Commonwealth, Tarou liked to point out - and began months of tedious but well paid patrols around the primary starport. It wasn't bad, but for reasons that became clear one fateful night in the not-so-distant past, their Commonwealth employers were extremely interested in their physical and mental condition. They both received extensive physicals and psychological exams, gave blood regularly (ostensibly for their own protection should they become badly wounded in battle and need a reliable source for transfusions), and periodic follow ups.

Then came the night of the 11th of January, 3025, and their lives as they knew them ended.

Ryouga remembered almost all of it painful detail. They had been on patrol in a light hovercraft, battlemechs being reserved for higher stages of alert, when they were directed towards a position outside the landing fields by the starport security chief to investigate a possible smuggling operation. They turned out instead to be scouts or spies, probably for the Combine, as he later reasoned, but Tarou had mocked his conclusion ever since. At that point their otherwise reliable commo system had failed, and they were unable to report their findings.

Unwilling to let the spies get away in order to report back to base, Tarou suggested they follow the spies and wait for a chance to take care of them. Ryouga reluctantly agreed, and they followed them to an off-limits area almost a hundred kilometers from the starport. The area was restricted to Household forces only, but with no way to sound the alarm, the two of them decided to take matters into their own hands.

What followed was an utter nightmare that still made his skin crawl. The Joketsuzoku had some kind of Star League era biological science lab running in secret for a purpose he and his companion could not even guess until it was too late. His memory was still vague on what happened inside, though whether this was from the effects of the weird machinery that he and Tarou fell victim to, or his own subconscious trying to protect him, he did not know. The last thing he remembered before the change was the sight of a red-haired girl flying at him from above, being chased by a large and furry black and white beast.

When consciousness returned, he was no longer human. What was worse was the sight of the thing that had become Tarou towering before him and wailing in terror and anguish. He fled the facility in panic, with the thing that Tarou had become chasing after him.

It was only much later that they came to their senses enough to stop running and take stock of their situation, and dumb luck in the form of Tarou's clumsy fumblings with a hot flask of coffee left behind in their hovercraft to reverse their hideous mutations. They had left their uniforms and ID cards back at the demonic laboratory, making it clear that the Commonwealth forces would consider them among the spies that had broken in. Fear and utter loathing of the Commonwealth for the black arts they had chosen to dabble in had made them decide to make a run for it, and so just before daybreak they marched their battlemechs to the starport and hired a tramp freight hauler bound for the League to take them out of the system.

Their money was only good enough to get them as far as Capra. Since then they had been on the run from the Commonwealth, who were now rumored to have put a price on their heads. As for their transformations whenever they were splashed with cold liquids, neither he nor Tarou would speak of it to the other, much less to anyone else. The closest either came to the subject was talk of revenge on the Commonwealth, which had forged a bond between them that no amount of previous combat had been able to create.

But Tarou had another axe to grind; the reason they were now out in the middle of the wastes looking for a Locust battlemech. He considered it to be no accident that they had ended up at the lab that night, and that they fell victim to such a horrendous fate. Ryouga had listened to him night after night since their arrival on Capra about how the Commonwealth doctors had done such extensive testing on them before that night. He was convinced that they had been used as unwitting guinea pigs for some kind of freakish Commonwealth experiment, and he was convinced that Happousai was ultimately responsible for their present miserable conditions.

Now Tarou was convinced that he had seen Happousai, of all places, on the very shithole planet they had been exiled to by blind chance. Ryouga wasn't sure what to make of Tarou, whom he knew wasn't entirely all there upstairs before their trip to Lightoller. He decided not to press the issue. The two battlemechs turned with the grace of rhinos and began marching back the way they came.

A kilometer away, a cunningly painted Locust stood against the rock face with its reactor down. A battlemech could have marched right past the well camouflaged war machine and never noticed it - which was just the way the Locust's pilot preferred things.

Happousai watched as the two battlemechs receded over the line of ruddy hills, and puffed on his pipe. It was a very near thing as far as he was concerned. He hadn't lived as long as he had by taking foolish risks, but to be fair to himself he reflected that there was no mention of Pansuto Tarou and Ryouga Hibiki in the rosters of the mercenary battlemech company he was observing.

Those two were going to be trouble, he decided. The rest of the mercs were a bunch of third rate cupcakes who had deserted from the Federated Shiratori - easy pickings. Hereditary mechwarriors like Hibiki and Tarou could eat them for lunch, and they'd certainly be a handful for the company of Combine mechs scheduled for a surprise raid on this dustball.

He took another thoughtful puff on his pipe.

The direct approach wasn't going to work. He may have been one of the best mechwarriors in the Inner Sphere, but his Locust wasn't going to make it toe-to-toe with a BattleMaster and a Hunchback. Neutralizing the two was going to require personal action on his part.

Happousai nodded to himself as a plan formed.

Kawaii City, the Capitol of the

Federated Shiratori

Planet Genevieve, Martina System

2 February 3025

Brigadier Ukyo Kuonji of the Federated Shiratori battlemech forces waited outside the throne room of her Goddess-Empress, Azusa the First, with her adjutant. She wore her dress blue uniform with all her medals and braid for the audience with the Empress, and strapped to her back in place of a sword was her family weapon, an implement that looked suspiciously like a humongous spatula. Despite her rank and her dedication to her career as a mechwarrior, Ukyo looked distinctly uncomfortable in her dress blues. She disliked having to speak to the Empress and dealing with her fawning sycophants, but for what she wanted it would be necessary.

Major Konatsu, Ukyo's devoted adjutant, looked prim and military proper at first glance, but upon closer inspection the skillfully applied makeup, fastidious grooming, and hand tailored uniform brought out a distinctly feminine side that drew second looks from male passers-by. It was only upon learning who the attractive young officer was that the men shied quickly away, for Konatsu was in fact male.

Konatsu checked his watch, a little golden heart-shaped pendant with brilliantly executed scrollwork and decorative enameling.

"Pardon me, sir," he said gently to Ukyo. "But it's past three-thirty."

Ukyo blew her chestnut bangs out of her eyes.

"Tell me about it, sugar," she groused. "We've only been standing here waiting for the last hour."

She brushed at a piece of lint on her jacket. Wool attracted lint like a magnet.

"I suppose we only have another hour or so to go."

Konatsu nodded absently. One of the things that endeared him to Ukyo was his unflappable patience, something she herself did not possess in any great abundance.

"Yes sir," he demurred, then smiled coyly at a young General Staff lieutenant who dared a second glance. The lieutenant blushed furiously and continued on.

Ukyo had noted the brief exchange and sighed. Here she was in the flower of her youth, fairly pretty if she was any judge of appearances, and quite desperately single. Meanwhile, her adjutant, who was in fact a man even if he was a little confused on the whole gender issue, was getting all of the attention from the guys.

Konatsu stiffened beside her, bringing her attention to the swaggering figure of General Mikado Sanzenin, the Chief of Staff for the Federated Shiratori Armed Forces. Mikado was making a beeline straight for her, and he was not alone. She bit down briefly on her lip when she noticed the attractive red-haired captain by his side.

As he neared within three paces she reluctantly snapped to.

"Brigadier Kuonji," he said absently, returning her less than enthusiastic salute with one equally sloppy. He then took Konatsu's white gloved hand and with a warmly said "Major Konatsu," kissed it gently, causing the adjutant to blush. Ukyo for her part thought she was going to be sick. Mikado knew full well about Konatsu, and while there was absolutely no evidence to support the notion that he swung both ways, he was most assuredly sincere in his efforts to flatter Konatsu.

"General Sanzenin," she and Konatsu returned. There was a considerable difference in the level of enthusiasm present between the two of them, and Ukyo felt like stomping on her adjutant's foot.

"Have you met Captain Curtiss before?" Mikado asked Ukyo with one of his patented teeth-gleaming smiles. The captain, who couldn't have been in the service more than six months judging by her overwhelmed look, tried to smile and yet still maintain respect for Ukyo and Konatsu's ranks. She had beautiful red hair, deep and dark - not orange like most redheads - piercing blue eyes, heart shaped face, a slim figure and curves in all the right places. She also didn't look terribly bright, although that could well have been chalked up to her present state of bedazzlement in the halls of power. She was a real prize, Ukyo decided. No wonder Mikado had snatched her up.

"No, sir, I don't believe I have," she returned, hoping that he was simply here to show off and then leave. Mikado had always taken somewhat personally her rebuff of him in the past, and every now and then would attempt to demonstrate to her just what she was missing. So far it hadn't had much more of an effect than annoying her.

"Captain Curtiss has just joined my personal staff," Mikado declared.

Imagine that... Ukyo thought dryly.

"She'll be taking over the strategic logistical planning system," he went on, and alarm bells began ringing in Ukyo's head.

"That's quite a task," Konatsu said, stepping blindly into the trap. Ukyo very nearly stomped on his foot in desperation.

"It is indeed," Mikado replied smugly. He was looking straight into Ukyo's eyes as he did so, and she now confirmed by the twinkle in his eyes that he meant to screw her over yet again. "So much so that I'm going to have to personally see to the turnover process with Jane, I mean, Captain Curtiss. We're going to my Winter Headquarters on Calliope to begin the process..."

"But the Spring Manuevers!" Ukyo protested weakly. She was screwed, and she knew it, but still the desperate plea escaped her lips. She wanted to stomp on her own foot now. At least then she might have a dignified excuse to slip away.

Mikado shook his head sadly. "You'll have to take over for me, Brigadier Kuonji. This turnover process is too important to jeopardize. One mistake could throw the entire army out of kilter for a year or more. Besides, you've handled it exceptionally well before, something that can't be said for other officers of the General Staff."

That's because between you and the Empress you've managed to fill the entire staff up with beautiful looking incompetants! Ukyo screamed to herself.

"I'm here to petition the Empress for diplomatic duty," she said instead. "To the Nerima Confederation as a military attache."

Mikado shook his head.

"Sorry, my sweet, I need you here in the Federated Shiratori. You're one of my only effective generals. You'll have to beg off to the Empress in light of the new situation."

The urge to split Mikado's skull with her spatula began rising within her, and Konatsu turned to offer a concerned look that was resolutely ignored in favor of hellfire eyes directed at Mikado. The Commanding General either ignored her or was oblivious, thinking that even now she was under his spell.

"Yes sir," she sizzled.

"Excellent!" Mikado replied, sickeningly happy to have shirked his responsibility once again in favor of seducing one of his junior officers. "Carry on then, Brigadier. I expect detailed reports from the exercises as they develop, and a copy of your orders has already been sent by guard mail courier to your headquarters." He tossed them both jaunty salutes and then took Curtiss gallantly by the arm. "Later!"

Ukyo Kuonji turned to her adjutant, her green eyes burning and her heart pounding in her ears.

"I hate that man," she growled. "With a passion beyond words..."

Tetsuyama Fortress

Capitol of the League of Five Nails

Planet Angbad, Melkor System

The League of Five Nails

3 February 3025

The private apartments of Hikaru Gosunkugi lay deep within the roots of Tetsuyama Fortress, sheltered from the sanguine glow of the red giant star Melkor and the prying eyes of his meddling parents. Bookcases carved whole from single trunks of ironwood and Aldeberan black oak dominated most of the available wallspace, while the remainder was taken up with portraits of Akane Tendo. The collection of books were mostly of the bound paper variety, though Hikaru was no technophobe, and maintained an equally formidable library of electronic media. The photos and stereographs were a combination of Nerima press shots and ones surreptitiously acquired through his personal network of spies and informants within the Nerima Confederation. Hikaru paid not in C-bills but in gold for the most candid of these second variety.

The air hung heavy in these rooms, both from the many votive candles that burned upon occasion during Hikaru's rituals, and from the lack of adequate ventilation such a remote and withdrawn location within the mountain dictated. Hikaru didn't mind, as he had been living this way for most of his life. Visitors on the other hand frequently succumbed to the oppressive weight of so much black basalt hovering over their heads, the lack of fresh air, and the foreboding stacks of ancient and half-forgotten books that dominated the place. These people often felt the sudden urge to flee to the exposed battlements of the fortress and never return, which suited Hikaru just fine.

He preferred his privacy, and despite his very public status as the heir to the League of Five Nails, he made every attempt to maintain it. His parents, no great lights themselves, wanted him to be some shining example to his people. Hikaru could have cared less about the billions of souls that called the League home and the Gosunkugis their liege lords. Only one thing motivated him: his pursuit of Akane Tendo.

Akane was his love, his driving passion. She was the blessed light of creation, the angelic goddess that inspired the poets of old and drove men mad with desire. She was also, Hikaru was absolutely certain, destined by the very Cosmos itself to be his.

The fact that he had never even met her face to face meant nothing to him. Nor the reality that though the opportunity had arisen several times during diplomatic functions between the two countries, he lacked the nerve to approach her, much less even speak to her. None of it mattered, because as he had read in the various and numerous auguries he had cast, Akane would be ultimately be his.

Despite such cosmic assurances, he did have to admit that he had a deadly rival for Akane's affections. Prince Tatewaki Kuno of the Furinkan Combine also desired her, and had waged continuous war against the Nerima Confederation since the day he took command of the Combine's army in order to get her. The beleaguered troops of the Confederation had fought many hard battles since then to keep her safe, and prevailed each time, which in Hikaru's mind was proof enough of Fate's intention to deliver her to Angbad as his bride.

Grudgingly, he admitted that while the cosmos smiled on his future union with Akane, he couldn't sit completely idle and wait for her to come to him. The Combine's military might was slowly pushing back the Confederation while the League fought indecisive skirmishes that brought him no closer to his goal.

Clearly the path to Akane did not lie with military action. He was intelligent enough to see this, but his entire family was sotted with the old triumphs, the old conquests. They could not see that the glory days of the Army of the League of Five Nails were long past, that they had become weak and impotent on the battlefield.

His parents were the most blind of all to this truth, pushing him into a career as a mechwarrior when it was obvious that he lacked the skills and the temperment to prevail in combat. He was the Heir to the League, they reminded him, and the Heir's first duty was to the Army. They did not want to understand that he answered a different calling.

The alternative to military action was intrigue. It was plain to unclouded eyes such as his. Armed with such wisdom, he considered the facts.

The Furinkan Combine was too great a power to successfully oppose on an extended campaign. That was obvious. The war the Combine waged against the Confederation was driven by one man, Tatewaki Kuno, for the purpose of taking Akane Tendo for his bride. If Tatewaki were removed from the equation, the war against the Confederation might lose momentum and the Inner Sphere would return to its usual state of hostile equilibrium. Even if peace did not immediately result, it solved Hikaru's problem with a rival for Akane's love.

Removing Tatewaki Kuno would prove exceedingly difficult, and thus prohibitively expensive. He had once made discreet inquiries among those darker elements of the Inner Sphere who specialized in such matters. It was at a point not long ago when it seemed that the Combine was about to flatten the Commonwealth like a nuclear powered steamroller, and the situation had seemed desperate. Fortunately the Confederation rallied soon afterwards, though Hikaru had spent many a sleepless night in prayer.

What he learned from his inquiries was that Tatewaki Kuno was often considered for assassination by elements both within the Combine and without, and due to a little healthy paranoia on his part and an elite staff of fanatics who served as his personal guard, was a tough nut to crack. At one point the use of nuclear weapons was bandied about before being quashed as doing more harm than good. In any event no hit man would even consider the job without a ridiculous fee, at least half of it up front, and the rest waiting in escrow, with clauses for the killer's next of kin, to receive on completion.

There were other problems with assassination, and reprisal was one of them. State-sanctioned murder of another state's heirs lowered the bar of acceptable conduct far too much for Hikaru's taste. The Inner Sphere had barely lurched back from the brink after the First Succession War, and he had no desire to be next on the chopping block.

What he really needed was a plan to spirit Akane out of the Nerima Confederation. Once she was with him she would fall madly in love with him, and together they would demand of her father the entire Confederation as a dowry. Grand Duke Soun Tendo was a nervous wreck and a doting fool; there was no chance that he would refuse to capitulate, Hikaru was certain of it.

He also needed to craft and execute this plan from some point away from Tetsuyama and the interferance of his parents. They would not approve of such methods unless it was presented to them as a fait accompli, and so he had no use for them. Where to go, and how to keep his parents out of his hair?

As he paced down a short hall from his study to his bedroom an answer to his dilemma came to him.

He would go on campaign. With a large portion of the League's army at his disposal he would have troops, battlemechs, DropShips, JumpShips, bases near the frontier, supplies, wide access to funds, special forces and intelligence personnel; everything he would need to carry out his plan. His commands to his personal spy network would be concealed within the huge volume of message traffic flowing through the headquarters of an army corps. He would also be far away from Tetsuyama, and his parents would be fooled into thinking that he had finally come around to their desires.

It was perfect!

Suddenly inspired, he rushed to his private shrine. Once there he hurriedly donned the headdress and lit the candles. Two carefully crafted straw effigies were withdrawn from the shrine, one resembling Grand Duke Tendo with a long moustache and the other like Tatewaki Kuno with blue rice paper hakama and a katana etched from a toothpick. Each was stuffed with hairs taken secretly and at great expense from their respective victims.

Hikaru then took a namesake iron spike and drove it with a curse through each effigy. The spike used on the Kuno effigy was driven through with a single blow, an omen Hikaru found to be especially auspicious. The other was driven through with a similar ease. The gods had spoken. Fate had chosen Hikaru Gosunkugi for the richest prize the Inner Sphere had ever known.

Akane Tendo.

A SUMMARY OF THE SUCCESSOR STATES OF THE STAR LEAGUE, ca. 3025 CE

HOUSE TENDO (The Nerima Confederation)

The Nerima Confederation is headed by the widower Grand Duke Soun Tendo and his three daughters, Kasumi, Nabiki, and Akane. The Confederation holds on to its territory by mere fingernails. It is pressed on two fronts by the Furinkan Combine and the League of Five Nails. It maintains a relaxed neutrality and trade pact with the Federated Shiratori, and has little formal contact with the isolationist Jusenkyo Commonwealth. In reality it is a state living on borrowed time, where only the most desperate of gambles can hope to save it from total subjugation.

HOUSE KUNO (The Furinkan Combine)

The Furinkan Combine is the most powerful of the five Successor States. It is led by a deranged lunatic and his two equally unbalanced children. The battlemech forces are led by Tatewaki Kuno, and have made significant attacks on Nerima Confederation territory. Tatewaki is obsessed with Akane Tendo, and hopes to gain her as a prize of his conquest of the Nerima Confederation. Kodachi Kuno has her own axe to grind with Akane Tendo, though she usually prefers to act as foil for her brother's plots.

The Furinkan Combine is at war with the Nerima Confederation and with the League of Five Nails, who are also trying to conquer the Confederation and wed Akane Tendo to one of their own. The Combine maintains a watchful guard against the Jusenkyo Commonwealth and the Federated Shiratori.

HOUSE GOSUNKUGI (The League of Five Nails)

The League of Five Nails is actually second to the last in wealth and power, but by picking on the weakest nation, the Nerima Confederation, its status has improved greatly over the last few decades. The League is run by the Gosunkugi family, once wise and powerful and now decadent and failing. The family's last hope rests with the heir, Hikaru. The League is at war with the Confederation and with the Furinkan Combine. It maintains a good relationship with the Jusenkyo Commonwealth, serving as an access point to the rest of the Inner Sphere for Cologne's covert agents. The League has a tepid relationship with the Federated Shiratori.

HOUSE JOKETSUZOKU (The Jusenkyo Commonwealth)

The Commonwealth is an isolationist state second in wealth and power in the Inner Sphere, and first in the possession of technology. House Joketsuzoku has in its possession a Star League biotechnic research facility and cloning ward, and from this facility has come up with a terrible new weapon: the Jusenkyo Effect. This mutagenic agent forces the victim to assume a new physical matrix (usually an animal) almost instantaneously after suffering a sudden change in external body temperature.

The Commonwealth has ties only to the League of Five Nails, using it to infiltrate their agents into the Inner Sphere. The Commonwealth has also heavily infiltrated Comstar, giving them almost unrestricted access to the message traffic of the Inner Sphere - an Intelligence coup of the highest order. Because of this, it is practically impossible to keep information secret from House Joketsuzoku for long...

HOUSE SHIRATORI (The Federated Shiratori)

The Federated Shiratori is a state devoted to worship of its Goddess-Empress Azusa. All other considerations of statecraft are secondary, although Azusa has declared a jihad against the Furinkan Combine for the loss of one of her pet commanders in a Combine raid. Free enterprise blossoms in the Federated Shiratori under Azusa's benign anarchy, and the country is quite prosperous. This prosperity has not translated into any military success, however, as many of Azusa's generals are appointees chosen by her for their looks rather than their ability.

The Federated Shiratori has declared a jihad against the Furinkan Combine, though the Combine doesn't deign to reciprocate with its own declaration of war. It has poor formal relations with the other states, as Azusa can't be bothered by such trivialities as diplomacy.

Fort Dettmering, on the outskirts of Capra City,

Planet Capra, Capra System,

The League of Five Nails

1 February 3025

Ryouga Hibiki was lost once again. It was absolutely humiliating, but at least no one was about at such a late hour to notice. His barracks room had to be around somewhere, as the fort just wasn't that big.

At least he was still in the fort, he thought with some relief. The other night he had ended up in the middle of the Governor's Mansion lawn facing a pack of paranoid bodyguards. It had taken a little fast-talking to get out of that one without serious trouble.

Tarou was probably asleep, he reflected. The guy was still fuming about having to give up on his Happousai hunt, and without coming out and saying it, he blamed Ryouga for letting him get away rather than admit that the very idea of Happousai being on Capra was absurd. There would be no help from Tarou tonight.

The sight of a passing sentry was both cause for relief and for embarrassment. He was going to have to ask for directions - for the third time in an hour. Maybe the guy would just give up and lead him step by step to the barracks...

Happousai prowled the shadows across the unevenly paved street that separated Fort Dettmering from the sleazy bars and topless joints that had set up within walking distance from the garrison in order to better part the soldiers with their money. It had taken a great deal of resolve to wait in a place like this, and several times he had given in to temptation in order to sample the place's wares. Fortunately for his mission, the girls in the clubs were rather uninspiring to all but the most neophyte of voyeurs. Happousai had seen much better in far more enjoyable surroundings.

Somewhere on the other side of the coils of cyclone wire and the concrete retaining walls of the fort were Ryouga Hibiki and Pansuto Tarou. In just under ten hours a Furinkan Combine battlemech company would be dropping out of orbit to stage a punitive raid on the League, and it was his job to provide intelligence prior to the attack on the city. He knew that the attack would not go very well unless the two mechwarriors were dealt with, and he also knew that unless the attack went well, he would not get paid.

The question was how to deal with them. He was technically under contract with the Combine at the moment, but just prior to taking the job, he had heard whispers out of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth that the two mechwarriors were wanted men. Happousai went back a long way with the Commonwealth, and he was certain that handing them over would do well to ease the current bad blood that sat between himself and the leader of the Amazon nation, Cologne.

He had some ideas about why they were wanted. For example, he was the agent who had signed them up for duty on Lightoller, and he knew to some degree about the things that went on there. It didn't take a scientist (though there were few of those these days) to realize why the Commonwealth might want Bad Things to happen to Ryouga and Tarou before they could spill the beans. They might also want their guinea pigs back in order to complete their experiments...

What to do? Kill them? No, that seemed like a waste of good material. If they died on the battlefield, then so be it, but not underhanded murder. The Inner Sphere needed great mechwarriors like those two in order to remind all those other wannabes what being a great mechwarrior entailed. Standards were slipping as far as he was concerned, and he was not going to help them get worse. It seemed like anyone with a battlemech and access to a training simulator could finagle his way into one of the Successor State armies these days.

Sabotaging their 'mechs was a possibility, but kidnapping them seemed like the best answer. That would take them out of the picture, he'd be able to hand them over to the Commonwealth, and the possible capture of two intact battlemechs by the Combine raiders might well convince them to look the other way when he loaded them on board the Combine DropShip. Hell, he might even get a bonus out of the deal!

His mind made up, he darted across the street. The wall was lit at even intervals by security lamps, but there were gaps in the coverage for him to exploit. There were also motion detectors in place, but he had been observing the fort for the last few nights, and noted that just about anything from a stray dog to a sandy gust of wind set them off, and now they were generally ignored by the sentries.

It wasn't difficult for a man of his diminutive stature and martial arts-imbued grace to slip past the triple coils of razor wire unscathed. A scrabbling leap at the wall put him up and over in scant seconds. As he set down on the firmly packed sand of the fort's parade ground, he mused that it would have been much easier to slip through the front gate, but at least this way he wasn't getting rusty in his old age.

He scampered lightly across the parade ground to a quonset hut, leaving no trace of his passing in the sand. From the hut he skulked into the shadows to let a sentry pass him by. Once the mercenary soldier had passed, he vaulted up onto a stack of crates and from there took to the roof of the quonset hut. The barracks was a low three story building near the center of the fort and within a quick jog to the hangars. Only a few lights burned in the windows at this late hour.

There would be a listing of room occupants in the possession of the Duty Barracks NCO, whose office was likely on the first floor. A quick scan of the building revealed a fire escape that could serve as an entry point. He leaped off the roof and sprinted across the rows of jeeps and light armored vehicles that separated him from the barracks. A younger man would have been winded for certain at this point in his expedition, but Happousai was a man who burned with a strange madness that fueled him with almost boundless energy.

As he had expected, the fire escape door wasn't alarmed. A scattering of cigarette butts on the ground by the door confirmed this. Residents apparently came here to smoke out of sight.

He crept inside the barracks and turned down a hall to a source of light, which turned out to be a lounge. A television glowed soundlessly in the darkness of the room, playing to absolutely no one. The noise of a drinking fountain refrigeration unit was the only sound to be heard.

Continuing on past a bank of unoccupied phone booths, he reached the lobby. A front desk watch dozed at his post, periodically stretching out his arms and yawning loudly. A forest of yellow post-it notes fluttered behind him on the neglected phone message board. It would be interesting to see if anyone called for Ryouga or Tarou, but Happousai doubted it. They were both loners, and from what little he had seen of them, not exactly skilled with the ladies.

A door labeled 'Barracks Officer' seemed the obvious choice. The front desk watch turned back to dozing in his chair, and Happousai slipped past him to work on the door. The lock was a simple single row tumbler; about two seconds work with an automatic release gun.

The Barracks Officer's computer was already powered up. It was a new model; clunky and slow compared to units the Inner Sphere had been able to produce in better days, but functional in a primitive way. A few minutes of noodling with the system produced the answer to his question. Ryouga and Tarou shared a room on the third floor with the other mechwarriors and techs of the mercenary unit.

He slunk out of the room and to the stairwell. The elevator was out of the question in a place like this. A quick jog up three flights of stairs brought him within meters of his destination. Before he left the stairwell he produced the large sack and restraints with which he would spirit the two away. While he could only carry them one at a time, he was confident that he would be able to keep the other from going anywhere or doing anything until it was his turn to go.

The door to room 301 was locked, as could be expected. It was also of the simple single row tumbler variety, and Happousai had no sooner produced his release gun than he was inside. The room was divided into three sections. The living area had a small couch, two desks and standing lockers, and a small coffee table. There were only a few personal touches present, namely martial arts gear and weapons, and a red shamboo umbrella that could only belong to Ryouga. Beyond the living area were two segregated sleeping areas set off with black curtains on a curved track that reached from floor to ceiling. A door to a bathroom lay half-way open on the far wall, between the two sleeping areas.

The wet sounds of someone snoring led him to one of the curtained sleeping areas. Peering into almost absolute darkness he spied a figure lying on a bed underneath the covers. It was impossible to tell who he was simply by looking.

The thought occurred to Happousai to take the other one first, so that any sounds of struggle might be covered up by the snoring. This thought was discarded in favor of shutting off the source of the annoying noise as soon as possible, say, with a nice duct tape gag. He proceeded to draw a fresh roll of the stuff from his sack.

As he crept into the sleeping area to deal with the snoring occupant, the front door of the room opened behind him. He spun around as the lights came on to see Ryouga Hibiki looking tired and thanking a uniformed soldier with a slung assault rifle for his help. Ryouga turned in that moment to look directly into the beady little eyes of Happousai.

Recognition set in immediately, and Ryouga's left eyebrow began to twitch. His hands clenched into fists and trembled. Happousai was certain that a faint yellow glow of battle aura began to flicker from the young man.

"...YOU..." Ryouga growled.

Happousai, momentarily stunned by this setback to an otherwise flawlessly executed plan, stood there clutching his roll of duct tape and looking guilty.

"...I can't believe you actually had the nerve to come here," Ryouga went on, now practically shaking with rage. "...After what you did to us..."

"Now come on, Ryouga," Happousai replied, finding his voice. "What did I ever do to you?"

Something deep inside Ryouga's head snapped. Happousai could almost hear it. The faint flickers of battle aura now became a fiery torrent of ki.

"BECAUSE OF YOU I'VE SEEN HELL!!!" Ryouga screamed.

Happousai only narrowly avoided getting squashed like a bug when Ryouga's fist slammed into the floor where he had been standing. As he sprang to safety, the sharp report of cracking concrete snapped in his ears. Ryouga, unfazed by an impact that should have shattered every bone in his hand, lashed out with a spin kick that caught enough of the airborne little mercenary to send him sprawling into the unoccupied sleeping area curtain.

"What the hell is going on?!" Tarou demanded from his bed.

"Happousai's in the room!" Ryouga barked as he charged for the now entangled spy.

"WHAT!?"

"You heard me," Ryouga snarled. Happousai turned his grasping hands aside with a deft flick of his pipe and tried to squirt free of the melee. Ryouga struck back with a desperate sidelong head butt that knocked him back into play just as Tarou was leaping clear of his bed.

"Save some for me!" Tarou demanded.

"Come and get me!" Happousai chortled. He had his back against the wall and was facing two skilled martial artists with murder on their minds, but he wasn't going to lose his nerve over it.

There was only one possible escape route, and that was through the bathroom. Ryouga and Tarou realized this at about the same time and rushed him in order to block his exit. Happousai narrowly avoided two wall-splintering fist smashes, and slipped into the bathroom anyway. Tarou recovered first and charged in after him, lunging with a reverse roundhouse kick that missed Happousai and ended up smashing the sink with an ear-splitting crash of porcelain and tile.

A fountain of water gushed into Tarou's face, transforming him into his hideous Jusenkyo form. Happousai had never seen anything so horrifying in his entire life, and stood aghast at Tarou's feet, practically gibbering in terror. A howl of agony and rage lit across Tarou's lips as he raised his huge hairy arms over his head to crush Happousai flat.

"Kill him!" Ryouga shouted before catching a splash of water from the ruptured sink and collapsing into the folds of his uniform with a squeal of surprise.

The sight of Ryouga as little black pig was enough to break the spell of horror Tarou had woven over Happousai, and he laughed with maniacal glee at the mechwarrior's misfortune. He also managed to dodge the double fist smash that Tarou drove down at him, and without a human Ryouga to impede him, slipped effortlessly past the pig.

From outside the room came an insistant pounding on the door. It was the soldier who had escorted Ryouga back to his room. When he got the door open he was immediately bowled over by the fleeing Happousai.

Tarou was about to tear off after him when an insistant squeal from Ryouga cut him short. Any second now the soldier was going to sit up and see them in their Jusenkyo forms. Action had to be taken, and quickly, lest their terrible secret be revealed.

Tarou grabbed Ryouga with one hand and with the other hand cranked shut on the sink's shutoff valves, securing the spray of water. He then pulled Ryouga into the shower with him. He spun the valve for hot water, getting a blast of lukewarm water that immediately became scalding. A twin scream of pain erupted from the now human fighting duo, followed by a frantic rush to get into dry clothes.

The soldier was clocked a little harder than they thought, for they actually got away with it. When the man came to, they were both dressed, though suitably mussed, and the room around them was totally destroyed.

"What the hell happened?" the soldier demanded of them.

"There's a sapper in the building!" Ryouga replied. "Sound the alarm!"

The soldier nodded his head vigorously and fiddled with his radio. It wasn't necessary, for the racket the brawl had raised had already roused the entire building and caused a general alarm to be sounded. Lights were now snapping on all over the place and sirens blared.

Happousai watched from the safe vantage of his well concealed Locust as the mercenary garrison of Capra annihilated the Furinkan Combine raiding party. At the center of the conflagration, indeed the cause of it, were a Hunchback and a BattleMaster. The two 'mechs fought like raging demons, obliterating their opponents and sowing fear in the Combine ranks.

He knew that every time they had an enemy 'mech in their sights they were visualizing his Locust in its place, and that was fine with him. As long as they worked off their wrath on someone else, it was all good as far as he was concerned. Like the brawl the previous night, they would be lucky to get in a blow, much less destroy him in actual 'mech combat.

The raid was obviously a debacle. He would be lucky if the DropShip commander even let him aboard, and his work with the Furinkan Combine was certainly over. Forget about the money.

It made his skin crawl to be humiliated like this, but he wasn't about to face the two now, while they were knee-deep in Combine blood and thirsting for more. He would have to cut his losses, and that meant getting off Capra. After that, he wasn't certain. He wasn't likely to be welcome in the Furinkan Combine for awhile. Of course he would have to put just the right amount of spin on his report to shift the blame over to the hapless raid commander. That would certainly help his cause.

He loped his 'mech away from the battle to take up a position along the projected Combine path of retreat - assuming any of them managed to disengage. He would deal with the survivors as they limped for retrieval, for it was easier to lay blame elsewhere when there wasn't anyone left alive to dispute your version of the facts. It would serve them right for not heeding his warnings of the garrison's fighting ability. Two 'mechs can make all the difference when the right two mechwarriors are at the controls.

His options seemed limited. The Combine paid the best for his line of work, although there was never a lack of demand for it in the League of Five Nails. Perhaps he should kill two birds with stone, and go pay Cologne a visit. She might be very interested in Hibiki and Tarou's whereabouts, and better still, pay handsomely to get them back. At least that way he could work without any unfortunate conflicts of interest.

FCJS Libertine,

Wolf 142 System Zenith Point

Furinkan Combine

29 January 3025

Colonel Princess Kodachi Kuno stood alone on the grav deck of her regimental flagship. News of her defeat on Abydos was spreading at the speed of Jump, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Her reputation was damaged, though not beyond repair, not yet!

She had spent the last week thinking of nothing other than revenge against Akane Tendo. It had been stewing within her ever since her defeat, but hadn't become an obsession until her stern dressing down at the hands of her brother. His effrontery was galling, coming from a man who had yet to defeat her in six separate engagements!

Now she was hearing disturbing news from the Confederation. That treacherous snake Nabiki Tendo had made Tatewaki an offer, one that had him firing off his entire diplomatic staff to Nerima aboard the Acropolis, the Combine's finest JumpShip after the Imperator. What were Nabiki and her dear brother Tatewaki up to, and how could she ruin their plans in the most amusing fashion?

"Sasuke!" she called to the empty compartment.

"Yes, mistress!" a voice responded.

A short chameleon-suited figure seemed to step out of the wall at her feet and bowed face down on the deck before her.

"I want you to find out what is going on with my brother and Nabiki Tendo. You've heard a little of what's transpiring, I'm sure. I want to know the rest in detail and immediately."

Sasuke nodded, his face still lowered to the deck.

"At once, mistress!"

He scuttled off into the shadows and disappeared. When she was certain that he was gone, she chuckled to herself. The family ninja was useful to her for his ability to probe into Tatewaki's plots, but she was also quite certain that he was being used by her brother for the same thing against her, and on top of all that was playing his own game between them. She had to admire him for having such a zeal for intrigue, though if she ever caught him at it she would have no choice but to see him flayed alive. She was also certain that he knew this, which made their little games all the more amusing.

Yes, someday she would miss her little games with Sasuke, but in the grand scheme of things there could be only one winner, and that winner would see the losers crushed under her stilleto heeled boots. That went for her dear little ninja and her dear older brother, and it was doubly true for that psychotic bitch Akane Tendo. She would definitely get hers.

Army Group 'B' Headquarters,

Planet Veridian, Alpha Canaris System,

League of Five Nails

3 February 3025

Hikaru Gosunkugi had been on campaign for less than a week, and he was already hating it. He had yet to actually launch any offensive, having barely had time to start setting things up and organizing his forces, and already his parents were bombarding him with demands via HPG for the status of his operations. He had left Tetsuyama to get away from their meddling, and he still couldn't shake them!

His cousin Tetsuo was with him at his command post in the Hotel Lyonne, which was one of his few comforts. They shared a common view in that the League was incapable of lasting military success against the Combine and had managed to become a capable diplomat and intelligence operative instead of a mechwarrior. Tetsuo also happened to share Hikaru's affectation for black magic and astrology.

They were discussing the precession of the galaxy and its effects on astrology at breakfast. It was usually an entertaining diversion, but a recent development weighed heavily on both their minds and sapped their debate of its usual delight. Nabiki Tendo of the Confederation, Akane's older sister, had dropped an interesting proposition to their agents on Nerima through the usual cut-outs and middle men. It seemed too good to be true, and they wanted to know if it really was.

"I tell you, cousin, that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by attending," Tetsuo offered.

"That's what concerns me," Hikaru replied. He may have been frail and sickly, but his gift for intrigue was clear. "It seems like that at first, but the fact is that we can't possibly outbid the Combine. To even dare would be to lay bare our weaknesses to those Furinkan butchers, and invite them to more than just a few raids. We were lucky on Capra with a mercenary unit - a mercenary unit! - that smashed a Combine raid of equal strength. We won't have such good fortune a second time."

He lowered his face to his bowl of rice and scooped up a few mouthfuls while Tetsuo considered this.

"That may be true, cousin," Tetsuo admitted. "But to let the Combine succeed without effort would be foolish, no, suicidal. At least the threat of competition from us would drive the price up, and perhaps we can bluff them into paying more than they would otherwise dare. And in the meantime -"

"- We take steps to ensure that Tatewaki Kuno does not get what he craves most from the Confederation," Hikaru finished for him. "I see your point, cousin, but there is little time to put an such an operation as that together."

Tetsuo wasn't put off.

"Nabiki holds the strings in the Confederation, and she's a lawyer through and through. She won't finalize any deal without a representative from every Great House present, just like in the old days of the Star League. You know as well as I do how easily the Federated Shiratori can be put off from such matters, even without a little help from us. Let me represent the League, and I'll get you the time you need."

Hikaru began to see the merit of his cousin's proposal.

"Okay," he said after swallowing a spoonful of miso soup. "I'll send you to the Confederation as my Ambassador Plenipotentiary. You can take the Third Special Group along as well - the diplomatic immunity should cover them nicely." Having a unit of Special Forces on hand could prove valuable indeed should the opportunity arise to use them.

He began to plot out the success of their endeavor on his pocket computer. The stars formed and whirled in their great circle of motion for the projected dates of the operation. Hikaru studied them intently, searching for a clue among the heavens that this was the proper path. Tetsuo himself leaned over the display to look.

There were several signs that pointed to failure for the Combine, which was a victory in itself, though the stars were not as clear for the success or failure of the League. There was even a puzzling omen in the position of the Equus Nebula in relation to the Capella System, which was the capitol of the Confederation, and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy on the opposite side of the Milky Way's core from Sol. The triad formed by these three important celestial bodies signified conflict - a sure warning from the gods to tread lightly.

Tetsuo looked to Hikaru Gosunkugi and nodded solemnly. He had read the signs and found agreement with his cousin in their portents. He would go to Nerima, and Hikaru would prepare the way for the fatal coup against both the Confederation and the cursed Furinkan Combine.

Once Tetsuo had gone he bent his mind towards a proper plan of action. A full scale raid on the most heavily defended system in the Confederation was not going to succeed without a heavy price paid. A covert action had the advantages of being cheaper, less man-power intensive, and under the right circumstances, plausibly deniable if it failed. He also had the perfect man for the job.

He punched for his aide de camp, who appeared without delay to await his instructions.

"Send for Kurenai at once," he told his aide.

"Yes, my lord," the aide acknowleged.

Tsubasa Kurenai was a man of many talents. He was a master of disguise, including some of the most unorthodox methods of concealment. He had a good network of personal contacts throughout the Inner Sphere. He wasn't much to speak of in a fight, but a man like him rarely found himself in those kind of circumstances. Hikaru empathized with him in that respect, although Tsubasa did have one disturbing mark against him. He was an ardent transvestite, and an uncomfortably convincing one. It was a trait that Hikaru felt certain would allow him to get close to Akane to effect the snatch.

The Jusenkyo Laboratory

Planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System,

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

3 February 3025

Doctor Gaido was a rare thing in the Inner Sphere: he was a scientist. He would be the first to admit that the one truism about being a learned man in the 31st Century was how monumentally ignorant he actually was. Such a declaration would mean little to the masses, for what little he did understand about the workings of the universe was several orders of magnitude greater than theirs.

Personally, he considered himself something of a witch doctor and a tour guide, and given his research assignment for the last forty years, he was probably closer to being a tour guide. The Star League Biotechnic Research Facility - Lightoller Complex (its official title from antiquity, although Gaido had unlocked enough of the place's secrets to know that this was deliberately misleading) had remained essentially unchanged throughout his tenure, as well as the tenure of his predecessors. This was because no one, himself included, had any rational explanation for what went on here, and rather than risk destroying the facility's properties, they left well enough alone.

The Jusenkyo Labs, as they had been renamed since their discovery by House Joketsuzoku over a century ago, always gave Gaido the creeps. If it had been his decision to make way back then, he would have preferred to strip the place for its critical lostech and then rebury it. Cologne on the other hand saw the facility as the key to gaining the Star League for her children, and had drafted her Breeding Program from the faltering scraps of knowledge they had gained in studying it.

The place had been something of a bastard step-child even in the days of the Star League, Gaido noted from ancient diaries and memoranda recovered from the nearby ruins of the administrative section. There was no mention of what had ultimately happened to the scientists and technicians who had tended to the facility, though after forty years of experience with the place Gaido could now hazard a guess. They were likely the last victims of the facility for over two centuries.

Gaido stepped through the security doors and into the facility. Large white and red signs were scattered about reminding staff to watch their step at all times and to report accidents at once to the Chief of Staff's Office. Fresh non-skid had been applied, and the adhesive smell lingered in his nostrils as he started on his way to the office.

The facility proper was a large geodesic dome of clear polycarbonate plates and foamed aluminum spars that had at one time long ago been painted a dull and mottled grey-green to blend in with the surroundings. Gaido knew this because the humidity of Lightoller had taken its toll on the exterior in enough places to reveal dozens of coats of paint in the chunks of material that eroded from the dome. Rather than carefully strip and repaint the dome, his predecessors had simply applied successive coats. There were even ragged holes in the dome, which were haphazardly patched as they were discovered, but given the tangled mass of technology the dome housed, it was easy to see how intruders could get inside without being detected.

Within the dome was an irregular series of shallow pools of water - over a hundred, in fact. Their arrangement corresponded curiously with the ancient practice of Feng Shui, or geomancy, and had the facility not been discovered by the descendants of the Middle Kingdom, this fascinating and possibly critical clue to the nature of the place might have gone unnoticed. Gantries and catwalks criss-crossed the interior and provided access for personnel and staging for a dizzying array of Star League era sensors, instruments, and sampling systems (most of whose functions were lost to the ignorance of the current era), and their supporting power, control, and indication feeds. Large arc lamps dominated the overhead. It had been this way when the facility was discovered, and would likely remain so for as long as Gaido was in charge of it.

The greatest mystery of the facility, aside from its effects on unwary living things, was why it had been built. There were disturbing indications in the surviving documentation that the pools had been transplanted from some other place, possibly even another star system. Why this had been done, where the pools had originally come from, and what the Star League hoped to gain by doing it were lost to antiquity. Only the original staff of the facility had those answers, and they were long dead.

What Gaido did know about the pools were their effects. Any living thing that fell in the pools suffered an immediate and radical alteration of their body structure, assuming the physical matrix of a specific organism exclusively associated with that pool. The organisms represented by the pools seemed to be almost exclusively Earth-based, lending credence to the idea that the pools had come from that planet. At least four of the organisms were considered extinct on Earth at the time the facility was constructed, which lent a possible reason for preserving the pools elsewhere. The origin of the one exception, known as the 'Monster Pool,' had left the Joketsuzoku researchers baffled for the last century.

The effects were from then on triggered by exposure to liquids that were slightly below body temperature in contact with the skin, and could be reversed with exposure to liquids at least ten degrees centigrade above body temperature. The narrow band of liquid temperatures between these two limits apparently did not trigger the transformative process - dubbed the Jusenkyo Effect by his predecessors. Organisms exposed to the Effect remained vulnerable for the duration of their lives. One of the most curious side effects of transformation (outside of the fact that mass was not conserved in the process!) was the preservation of intelligence and the self-identity of the victim in physical forms that should have precluded it, such as reptiles with their extremely primitive brain structures.

The liquid from the pools retained its properties for considerable periods of time after removal from the pool, though a thermodynamic change of state such as boiling or freezing seemed to permanently nullify the liquid's ability to alter an organism's physical matrix. A detailed examination of the liquid revealed it to be pure water, of the expected ratio of light and heavy hydrogen isotopes, and lacking any significant biological contamination whatsoever - a disturbing find for what were essentially pools of water open to the atmosphere.

Gaido had spent the first decade of his forty year tenure cataloging the pools, hence his tendency to think of himself as little more than a tour guide for the Jusenkyo Labs. Early in the process he had discovered that a few of the pools had either lost their properties (possibly by mishandling during their transplantation) or else were yet 'unassigned.' The theory of 'unassigned' pools was confirmed in at least two examples, where the physical matrices were set by the lab staff - in one case accidentally, and the other quite recently, under the deliberate orders of the Matriarch.

The scant remainder of the pools considered to be 'unassigned' represented a potential treasure to Cologne's Breeding Program, and were sealed off as carefully as possible. Given the nature of the one deliberate attempt to 'assign' a pool, Gaido had a few ideas about Cologne's plans for the rest of them. He didn't approve. At least one of the 'assigned' pools was the result of Star League fiddling, and the result was not pretty. Who could guess what half-baked idea might unfold at the machinations of his successors? It was better to leave well enough alone, as far as he was concerned.

Gaido carefully traversed the network of catwalks from the locked and guarded entrance to his office. In forty years he had managed to avoid falling in a pool and succumbing to the Effect. Perhaps it was because he knew and appreciated the danger of the place. He was loathe to assign some sinister anthropomorphic force to the pools, but he had seen staff inexplicably blunder into a pool on the first day at work. The place seemed cursed at times, and he had overheard one staff member or another state just as much over the last four decades.

There were almost a hundred documented cases of people falling into the pools, each its own tragic story. Unfortunately for him, most of them had occured during his tenure, and at least five in one night; the 11th of January 3025 - the night of the security breach. He sat down in his chair and studied the data collected from that night.

Two victims of the Effect were considered to be responsible for the breach, and were probably Furinkan Combine spies according to the Commonwealth's Intelligence apparatus. These were dispatched by Mechwarrior Shampoo shortly after their escape. Their remains had not been recovered, but owing to the damage sustained to their stolen vehicle and the testimony of Shampoo, they were listed as killed in General Herb's incident report.

Two more of the victims were known to be mercenary employees on the Starport Security Battlemech Detachment, an activity he detested, but was considered vital to Cologne's Breeding Program. These two had managed to escape off-world in the confusion that followed the security breach. It was not known which pools they had fallen into, nor their current whereabouts. It was also not known whether they were accomplices of the first two, but an analysis of the sketchy surveillance data for the facility pointed to their innocence. General Herb had nonetheless requested that a reward for their capture be offered, and Gaido agreed. They threatened the very existence of the Commonwealth with their testimony, for outsiders would never understand.

The fifth victim was not confirmed, but Gaido had a sinking feeling about who it was. He had yet to confront her in the hopes that she would seek him out instead.

No sooner had he thought of her when the chime for his door sounded and Shampoo walked into his office. Her face was wracked with worry, and Gaido knew exactly what it was that concerned her.

"Please pardon my rudeness, Doctor," she offered stiffly. "But this is something that can't wait for an appointment."

Gaido nodded. "I understand. You wish to talk about the night of the 11th of January."

Shampoo's violet eyes flashed with surprise.

"You knew?"

Gaido offered her a seat. It did not pay to be discourteous with the favored great-granddaughter of the Matriarch.

"I strongly suspected," he replied.

A brief hint of relief showed in her face. "Then you know what happened."

"Not exactly. Which pool did you fall into?"

Shampoo looked away. "I'm embarrassed to say."

"I need to know," Gaido pressed. "For the sake of the records."

"You can't!"

"The records are confidential," he assured her. "In any event, what are you so worried about? You can't possibly hide something like this indefinitely. The truth will come out when you least expect it."

"I just want a cure!" Shampoo cried. "No one has to know anything. Once I'm cured it will be as if this had never happened."

Gaido shook his head sadly. It always came down to this. Just once he would like to meet someone who didn't mind what had happened to them. Perhaps the transformation caused more psychological trauma than previously considered. Psychology had always been the Achilles Heel of his research staff.

"There is no cure," he said gently. "I thought you knew that."

Shampoo looked at him with horror.

"N-No cure?"

Gaido closed his eyes and remained firm. He did not tell her that they did not even understand what the Jusenkyo Effect did to its victims much less find any kind of way to undo it. Nor did he tell her that the surviving documents from the Star League era indicated that those great men and women were equally baffled. What chance did a scientist of the dark 31st Century have of solving a conundrum that had stymied the brightest minds of the Age of Miracles? "There is no cure. The Effect is permanent."

Actually one of his early contemporaries had proposed one for human victims, for there were in fact two pools which seemed to be linked to human gender rather than an animal species. This idea was never tested due to the existence of the so-called 'Monster Pool,' and the alternative theory that an organism already under the Effect might cross-contaminate a pool other than the one it had fallen into originally. There was also the chance that an affected organism might be forced to adopt some hideous amalgam of the two Effect species and possibly even the original organism's physical matrix. Like his two predecessors, Gaido had thought the idea of testing the proposal abhorrant and completely unethical, and so had left it to die a slow death from neglect.

Shampoo was in denial. "Isn't there something you can do?" she begged.

"Nothing, I'm afraid."

She slammed her fist on his desk, startling him.

"Then I'm tainted forever?!" she cried. "I'm to be stricken from the Program?"

Gaido at last saw the nature of her distress. Shampoo feared for her status as Favorite. He smiled for her benefit and produced a series of flimsies from his desk drawer.

"Not at all," he assured her, pointing to the data on the flimsies. "While the Effect does have some reaction with the chromosomes, it is a purely somatic anomaly. You can't pass on the traits of your Effect organism to your offspring."

Shampoo looked both relieved and puzzled.

"But what about the hybrids?" she asked.

"Ah. A different matter. Hybrids are the result of breeding a normal human to an organism whose Jusenkyo Effect has been fixed into human form through a special process." A process so special they didn't have the slightest idea how it worked. Neither did the Star League researchers who discovered it, but at least they had taken good notes.

Shampoo absorbed this information quietly. Like so many Joketsuzoku, she had never been informed of the realities of the Program. It was all taken for granted. Those few who had fallen victim to the Effect had, for reasons that were now clear to her, never been quick to talk about it openly.

"So there isn't any problem?" she asked.

"None that I can see," Gaido replied thoughtfully. "As long as your transformation doesn't interfere with your duties, and I'm sure you've managed to come up with some countermeasures since your accident."

She nodded with a guilty grin. An insulated flask of hot water was never far from her side these days.

Gaido was pleased with Shampoo's turnaround. Cologne would probably not be happy with the news, but at least there was no real harm done. Perhaps this event would provide the impetus for him to get the funding he needed to do some significant repair work to the dome and install some decent security measures.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" he asked her.

"No, Doctor, I don't think so. I have to go now; if I hurry, I can make the starport in time to catch the next ship bound for home."

She bowed for him, and then left his office with a happy bounce and a whirl of purple hair.

Gaido sat down to fill out the incident report and then realized that she had left before telling him which pool she had fallen in. He sighed to himself and set the form aside. Like he had told her only minutes earlier, the Jusenkyo Effect could not be kept a secret for long.

Shampoo finished packing her kit bag and then sat down on the freshly stripped bed of her semi-private quarters. Her roommate, Kima, had come to Jusenkyo for a secret purpose, and Shampoo had been her escort. Now Kima was gone, having shipped for Nerima aboard a Commonwealth JumpShip to conduct Cologne's bidding, leaving Shampoo stuck on Lightoller and under Herb's thumb.

She was restless to leave this place. Her orders were to escort Kima and some classified cargo to the Jusenkyo Labs, and she had done that. Now she longed for home, wishing that she could have left weeks earlier instead of becoming the latest victim of the Labs.

She had mixed feelings regarding Gaido's pronouncement that there was no cure for her. On the one hand, he had assured her that her status in the Program was unchanged by her accident - and that was a welcome relief. Great-Grandmother was unyielding when it came to the integrity of the Program, and to be stricken from it was to assume a second-class status within the clan.

Mousse was a good example of this, for he was an excellent mechwarrior and in superb physical condition - except for his vision, and that was enough. Now he was relegated to a position in the Household Garrison on Lightoller, with no chance of command, and no future beyond what he already had. In a way, she felt sorry for him. His poor eyesight wasn't something he had any control over, and yet he was being forced to pay the consequences of it.

On the other hand, her own condition frightened her. Becoming a cat, having a small furry body, walking on four legs, the tail! Such a thing shouldn't happen, shouldn't be possible. Now she was doomed to avoid cold liquids at all times if she wanted to keep her human form. She loved to swim in the oceans of her homeworld of Jusenkyo, and now she could no longer do so. The mere sight of an icy beverage made her wary. On top of this, it now seemed to her as if circumstances were conspiring against her to get her wet. She had seen more drinks spilled around her in the last three weeks than in the last three years. Any time she went outside unprotected by her 'mech, it threatened rain.

So far, the few times she had been forced into her Jusenkyo body had been out of sight from others. Her secret was still safe, despite what Gaido had said about the inevitibility of discovery. More importantly, Herb did not know. There was no telling what damage he could do among her peers with a few carefully placed words.

All the more reason to leave Lightoller, she thought grimly. The Commonwealth JumpShip Gathering Clouds was due to leave Epsilon Indi space within the week, and the last DropShip bound for it was lifting up the well tonight. Exploiting her open-ended orders for an excuse, and her natural charm and good looks as a means, she had prevailed upon the captain of the DropShip to find a place for her and her battlemech on board.

She took a last look around the room as she stood with her kit bag to leave. There were no happy memories here, only loneliness and misfortune. Only when she basked in the glow of Jusenkyo's primary and felt the warmth of the sandy beaches between her toes would she feel at home.

She left her room key on the mattress of the bed. The barracks staff could handle the check-out process without her. Her letter to General Herb expressing her intention to return to the capitol - unless otherwise directed of course - had been delivered to his staff office just before the end of normal working hours, knowing that he liked to leave his office early and ensuring that he would not see it in time to countermand her decision and keep her on Lightoller. Her departure would be sneaky and underhanded, but otherwise perfectly legal.

The door chime sounded just as she was about to leave, and her heart skipped a beat. She had made little effort to make acquaintences on the planet in the knowledge that she would be leaving as soon as possible. The only thing that ran through her mind as the door chimed again was that Herb had received her letter too soon, and that he was taking formal steps to keep her on world as one of his subordinates.

She had two choices: she could ignore the chime and hope they went away, or she could answer the door and face the music. If Herb was on to her, he would have taken steps to ensure that his men intercepted her at any point along the route from the Lab Compound to the Starport. He might even contact the DropShip captain. Hiding would solve nothing at that point.

Taking a deep breath first, she opened the door. Mousse stood before her, clutching a wet umbrella. His rain gear was also wet, and little beads of moisture trickled down the impermeable plastic to puddle at his feet in the hall.

"There isn't much time," he said to her. Or almost to her, he was speaking more to the door frame than her.

"Time for what?" Shampoo asked him.

Mousse adjusted his gaze to the sound of her voice. "General Herb is looking for you," he told her. "He seems to think that you're leaving Lightoller tonight."

Shampoo did not reply.

Mousse seemed shocked. Or disappointed. It was difficult to read his face sometimes.

"So it's true," he said quietly. Now the disappointment came through.

"It's true, Mousse," she affirmed.

"I'm supposed to escort you to his quarters," he declared. "He's going to read you your new orders detailing you to the garrison. I guess he's doing it personally so that he can gloat."

Her heart sank. In time she could get an appeal through to her great-grandmother for a transfer back to Jusenkyo, but that could mean weeks for a message to get through the military bureaucracy, and possibly weeks beyond that before a Commonwealth JumpShip passed through the system bound for the capitol. She might have been the Matriarch's favorite, but no ship would be diverted for the express purpose of returning a homesick nineteen year old girl.

"So he sent you, a mechwarrior, to fetch me?" she asked Mousse. One of the things about him that galled her was the way he let himself be treated as a second-class citizen off the battlefield.

"The General feels that I can be trusted to deliver you," he said with the slightest hint of a grin.

Shampoo's eyes widened at this. Something was up with him.

"What are you thinking, Mousse?"

He offered her the umbrella. "You should leave this place, Shampoo. You don't belong here, working for Herb."

"Mousse! Do you realize what you're saying? If Herb finds out that you helped me, you'll be disciplined."

He nodded slowly. "I can't let you stay here," he said to her, though she could hear the heartache in his voice. It should have been a dream come true for him, to have his beloved Shampoo on the same planet, together in the same unit. "If I am disciplined for it, then I accept that as the price for seeing you free."

Shampoo felt a lump form in her throat. Damn Mousse for being so sweet and selfless!

"Come on," he told her as she stood still before him and tried not to cry. "If I don't return with you soon, he'll know something is up for certain."

She followed him down the hall to the cloak room, where her foul-weather gear hung. She could see a staff car waiting beyond the barracks building. She donned her poncho and boots and sheltered under the offered umbrella as they ran for the car. The rain pelted on the umbrella, making her cringe with the thought that she would transform right in front of Mousse and have her secret revealed.

Fortunately she was spared such embarrassment. Mousse opened the door for her and sheltered her all the while with the umbrella. At first she thought he was just being his usual fawning self, but as the door closed she realized that he was acting with great care to keep the rain off her.

He settled into the driver's seat and put the car in gear. The heat was running, making the interior nice and toasty. The car pulled out of the muddy parking lot and headed down the narrow paved road that led to Lightoller's only highway - and from there, the starport.

"I called ahead to the DropShip," he said to her as she watched the rain drops glow before them in the car's headlights. "Your battlemech is already loaded and secure aboard."

She wanted to hit him, he was being so thoughtful. And stupid. If he got caught, he was facing serious disciplinary action, perhaps even the stripping of his mechwarrior status. At least she had an out with her nebulous orders. Until Herb actually presented new orders to her, whether in written or verbal format, she was still acting under her old ones and safe.

"Thank you, Mousse," she managed. There was no sense in leading him on with anything more than that.

The rest of the drive went on in silence. It was clear that Mousse was unhappy to see her go, but he either lacked the courage to say something heartfelt to her, or else had the sense to realize that it would do him no good. Finally, it was Shampoo who spoke.

"You know what happened to me, don't you?" she asked him.

He turned his eyes off the road for a moment. The thick glasses that were necessary for him to see the road distorted his sad blue eyes as he regarded her.

"About your accident? Yes."

"How?"

"Doctor Gaido told me. I went there first to see if I could find you, and when he realized what I was up to, he warned me about what had happened. I think he meant for me to use your Jusenkyo body as a way of sneaking you on board. You know he has no love for the General, either."

Shampoo hadn't thought about the advantages of her new body. If things went sour at the starport, she might still be able to use that trick. Lots of DropShips had Ship's Cats after all...

"It doesn't bother you?"

Mousse smiled, almost to himself. "Why should it bother me?"

"Do you even know what I turn into?"

"No. Doctor Gaido said that you left his office before he could get it from you. Anyway, does it matter?"

Shampoo turned her gaze back to the rain and the lonely road.

"I guess it doesn't."

The starport was shrouded in rainy gloom. The great sodium and mercury vapor arc-lamps of the landing pads suffused that gloom with a yellow and blue-white haze. Two spotlights shone upon the egg-shaped hull of an Overlord Class DropShip, a massive military transport/assault ship capable of carrying an entire battalion of thirty-six battlemechs plus the unit's aerospace fighter squadron and support assets. The Overlord had arrived earlier in the week to deliver a 'mech battalion for training maneuvers on world prior to a campaign in the periphery against a world similar in climate and terrain, but would not be used in the actual attack. It was essentially empty for its return trip.

Mousse pulled off the highway and onto the starport express. They would have to pass through the security checkpoint even though they were military traffic. He shut off his headlights in preparation for nearing the gate, leaving the running lights on to cast their amber glow in the rain.

"If Herb is on to me, he'll have someone waiting for me at the checkpoint," Shampoo pointed out. There was no sense in having Mousse take the blame for this. Why couldn't he see that?

"I'll take that chance," Mousse replied. "Like I said, he trusts me to deliver you."

"That will only make it worse for you when he finds out what you've done!" she protested.

They were almost to the gate. Mousse closed his eyes for a moment and let out a deep breath.

"Do you think I really want to see you go?" he asked her, his tone one of exasperation. "I'm in love with you, Shampoo! I always have been! Having you stay here might be the best thing that ever happened to me."

They rolled to a stop at the gate. A man in battledress with a slung double-barreled laser carbine - known as a blazer - came out of the armored gatehouse to challenge them. Mousse continued, ignoring him.

"But it wouldn't be the best thing for you," he said sadly. "I'm willing to let you go, and I'm willing to pay the price for disobeying orders - so let me!"

The sentry tapped on the driver's side window with his flashlight. Mousse rolled it down and looked impatiently at him.

"Orders?" the guard asked him.

Mousse flashed his mechwarrior's tattoo on the back of his left hand, earning a hasty salute from the common born soldier.

"I'm taking her to the starport," he said to the guard, nudging his thumb in Shampoo's direction. "If she doesn't make her DropShip before it lifts, I'll see to it that General Herb knows your name..."

The guard saw that the car was from the Household General Staff, and that was enough for him. He stepped back into the gatehouse long enough to lower the armored barricade, and then stepped back out to wave them through. Mousse wasted no time returning the man's salute, and sped through the gate.

"You're an idiot," Shampoo spat softly. "Now Herb will find out for certain that you helped me."

"We've just been through this," he replied. There was bitterness in his voice. "Don't treat me like I'm some child. I know what I'm doing, and I'm man enough to face the consequences."

He pulled the car around a tank farm for liquid hydrogen storage and past concrete blast shields to the DropShip gantry. The hundred meter tall DropShip steamed in the rain from the heat of its warming plasma drives, contrasting with the rime of frost from the fuel loading umbilical. Orange-suited ground crew scurried about making last minute preparation for gantry separation and lift off. As far as the rare Overlord Class was concerned, nothing was left to chance wherever possible.

The ship's First Officer was waiting for them when the car came to a stop. There was a sense of impatience on her face, but nothing to denote concern.

"You almost didn't make it," First Officer Wu said to them as they got out of the car. The gantry sheltered them from the rain, but there were enough drops of runoff to keep Shampoo under the umbrella. "Follow me, and I'll show you to your bunk. You don't have much baggage other than the battlemech, do you?"

"Just this," Shampoo replied, holding up her kit bag.

Wu nodded with a knowing smile. "Just like a mechwarrior to travel light. Walk this way, please."

She started for the gantry elevator.

"Wait just a moment," Shampoo called to her. "I'd like a moment, if I may."

Wu looked past her to the solidly built Mousse and grinned.

"I'll wait in the elevator," she told her.

Shampoo turned back to Mousse, who looked absolutely miserable.

"This is good-bye, Mousse. Good-bye and thank you," she said over the rumble of the ship's idling plasma drive.

A cloud of steam occluded his face for a moment, fogging his glasses so she couldn't see the eyes behind them.

"Good-bye, Shampoo," he returned, his voice carefully lacking any emotion.

She couldn't bear to look at him any longer, so she gave him a smart salute and turned on her heels for the elevator. The doors closed behind her without her ever looking back.

The ride up the elevator seemed unterminably long. Wu asked her a few standard questions about her health and DropShip experience, as Shampoo was a bit of a cypher to the ship's crew, and lacking a unit, had no medical officer to forward the necessary information. She answered them in a perfunctory fashion, and filled the gaps with silence.

The elevator came to a stop only halfway up the massive vessel, just above where the battlemech bay doors opened to the primary hold.

"The main access brow has already been withdrawn for departure," Wu told her. "We'll have to take the rest of the way up from the inside."

Shampoo nodded and let Wu lead the way. The secondary brow was still a good forty meters off the ground. She looked over the edge of the rail to see Mousse's car pulling away from the pad to a safe spot opposite the concrete blast shields. He was going to see her off whether she wanted him to or not.

The interior of the Overlord was spartan and cramped despite the fact that it was one of the largest military transports in the Inner Sphere. It was clean smelling at least, something that wouldn't last had the ship been filled to its normal capacity with troops and war machines. Wu lead the way down a short passageway and through an airtight door to one of the secondary holds above the primary battlemech hold.

As they were walking towards the core of the ship and the elevator bank that would take them up to the living compartment, Shampoo spied a curious sight. Two men in medical garb were carrying a stretcher, and on that stretcher lay a clear plastic body bag. There was a corpse inside the body bag, a naked young woman about her age with long blue-black hair. Her lips were blue and her skin pale and blotched with livor mortis.

Shampoo shivered at the sight. She was a mechwarrior, and for her death was usually seen through the protective filter of an instrument cluster, impersonal, and something from which she could distance herself. While she was prepared to kill in single combat as expected of one of the Joketsuzoku, it was something she had never done.

Wu seemed to take it in stride. Or at least didn't show her discomfort as easily. She ordered the two medics to finish up in the hold and get to their launch stations.

As Shampoo watched the doors of the elevator close, she saw the medics load the body into a bulkhead mounted drawer of the ship's morgue; a facility common to warships that carried troops, and seal it shut. It wasn't until the doors had shut that she realized the medics wore badges identifying them as part of the Jusenkyo Labs staff. Shampoo crinkled her nose in thought. There had been no mention of any deaths in the Compound. Something like that did not happen without the word being spread, at least as a reminder for caution and dilligent safety practices in the Plan of the Day orders.

Who was that girl?

Mousse watched as the Overlord rumbled skyward on a brilliant white column of flame. Shampoo was safe. Even Herb didn't have the authority to recall a DropShip once it had lifted off, and it certainly wouldn't turn around if he did. The Commonwealth Navy might have been the junior partner in the Armed Forces, but absolute command of the Fleet's vessels would never be in the hands of a general like Herb.

The car's phone was ringing, but he ignored it. He knew who it was.

A tap at the window took his eyes off the ascending DropShip. Mint was looking at him through the rainstreaked glass. His burly shadow, Lime, stood on the opposite side of the car.

Mousse closed his eyes and sighed to himself. Then he opened the passenger door. Lime got in and looked sternly at him. Mint took the seat behind Mousse.

"She got aboard before I could stop her," Mousse offered them. "I was too late."

"Save your breath," Mint replied. "The General knows the whole story."

Mousse doubted that, but it was likely that he would soon enough.

"We would prefer it if you didn't drive," Lime rumbled. "It would look bad to be chauffered by a prisoner."

"Which reminds me," Mint added with glee from the back seat. "You're under arrest."

Mousse nodded slowly and handed the keys over to Lime. The DropShip was only a tiny speck in the dark sky, its blazing plasma drive shining through even the heavy rain clouds. Shampoo was free.

"Let's go," he told them. "The General's waited long enough."

Auxilary Machinery Room #1, aboard

the Merchant DropShip Belle Marle,

transitting interplanetary space in

the Capella System, Nerima Confederation.

11 February 3025

A hydraulic valve block cycled open and then shut with a hiss and a clunk, an indication that the DropShip's trim was being adjusted by the pilot. Water from the ship's potable and grey-water tanks sloshed around through their respective headers, and the spacecraft wobbled slightly with the impulse of so many tons of shifting mass. It was a welcome sound to Ranma Saotome, even more welcome than the Jump Alarm, for it was an indication that the Belle Marle was approaching a piece of space-time where such housekeeping measures were necessary. In other words, they were within hours of atmospheric interface with the planet Nerima.

Ranma looked to his father in the dim light near the overhead of the Machinery Room. Genma had heard the sound of the pumps and the moving water, and knew well what it meant. He nodded sagely to his son and went back to sleep.

They had spent much of their weeks-long transit aboard the Belle Marle cooped up in the tangle of piping, cable runs, and ventilation ducting of the Machinery Room. It hadn't been as bad as some of their previous journeys, though, for their hiding place was close to the outlet of the air-scrubbers, which was the cleanest and freshest air to be found on otherwise dank and foul DropShips. AMR#1 also opened up to a passageway only a few steps from the ship's pantry, which was convenient if you wanted a quick bite to eat on the sly.

Such was the life of a stowaway. In the last three years since they had become Dispossessed, Ranma and his father had travelled throughout the Inner Sphere, and they had never paid a single C-bill for passage. It was a mark of pride, Genma often reminded him in those few good times when they actually had a little money to book an honest passage. They were part of a vast star-hopping fraternity; unchecked by borders, laws, or the taxes levied by the authorities. Ranma thought it was a bunch of hogwash, but agreed that at least it kept their edges nicely honed.

In keeping with the ancient laws of space and the often remarkably vicious demeanors of DropShip crews, discovered stowaways unable to talk their way out of trouble usually found themselves hastily introduced to an automatic rapid-cycling airlock without the pleasure of donning a pressure suit beforehand.

It had certainly been educational. Through his father he had learned the arts of stealth and graft; how to get past starport security, how to slip on board a ship without being noticed, where to hide aboard ship to avoid being discovered, and when simple bribery failed, how to tap-dance your way out of taking that last doozy of a step out an airlock when you eventually got caught - even if it meant washing dishes, scrubbing bulkheads, and waxing decks for the duration of the trip.

Ranma still didn't know what his father's great idea was for coming to the Nerima Confederation. It had taken five jumps on two separate DropShips to get here, and that was almost too much risk at one time for a stowaway with aspirations of living to see his twentieth year. If it was work they needed, there were places in the Federated Shiratori near the Sol Neutrality Zone that didn't ask too many questions and paid cash up-front to a man with good paper.

Genma had been mum on the subject since their escape from Shampoo on the planet Lightoller. It was kind of strange to see his father, a man for whom the soldier's slang phrase 'Semper Gumby' (Always Flexible) was created, become so resolute and unyielding in his course of action. Ranma had been willing to charge right back into the Joketsuzoku labs to get a cure for what had happened to them, but not his father, and for once it seemed more than his usual instinct for self-preservation.

What were the odds of his father actually knowing someone important on Nerima? Better still, what were the odds of them helping two of the hated Dispossessed?

"Almost there, Pop," Ranma said to his father. He was bored, and with Nerima so close, he was anxious to see why they had risked so much to get here. The white noise of the atmosphere control machinery made it impossible to be heard by a passing crewman, so there was no need to whisper.

Genma opened his eyes slightly, but only long enough to nod in agreement and then go back to sleep.

The urge to pop his old man in the jaw came upon Ranma, but the sudden announcement from the pilot admonishing the Belle Marle's crew to prepare for atmospheric insertion and landing operations quelled it. The crew would be stirring from the rancid animal kennels some long-dead naval architect had dubbed 'Crew's Berthing,' and they would be moving throughout the ship to check on all the systems and machinery necessary to get the Belle Marle down on Nerima soil in one piece. A brawl with his father, while cathartic after so many weeks of being cooped up, would not do in such a dangerous situation.

Within the hour the Belle Marle began to vibrate. At first it was barely noticeable, but within five minutes the DropShip's oscillations became almost violent. The thin scream of superheated air passed over the ship on the other side of the pressure hull, punctuated by sudden blasts of deafening attitude thruster fire. Ranma held on to a stanchion, knowing that the crew were securely strapped into acceleration chairs while he gutted it out against pipes and structural supports. At least on the aerodyne style DropShips there was some semblance of horizontal flight prior to landing. The Belle Marle was little more than a dropped rock.

After falling for about fifteen minutes there came an enormous rush of power from the main drives, and the Belle Marle settled atop a column of superheated air upon the number eighteen landing pad. The landing gear gave a great groan that slammed hydraulic check valves all the way to the Bridge, and then the DropShip fell silent and still.

Ranma pried himself from the stanchion and shook the circulation back into his limbs. Genma did the same. They would have to lay low for a little while longer before they could make good on their escape, but if they were caught now, at least they wouldn't face an airlock.

The announcement they had been waiting for had come. The bribes had been paid, the Customs officials were satisfied, the cargo off-loaded, and now it was time to grant liberty to the crew. The Captain was only too glad to get off the ship for awhile, and quickly passed the word. Within twenty minutes there would only be a small Duty Section left aboard, and those unlucky few would be too preoccupied with thoughts of their liberty the following morning to be much of a threat. If past experience was any judge of what would come, they would probably all sit in the tiny crew's lounge and tune in the local television stations for the rest of the night.

Ranma and Genma slipped out of their hiding spots and down the ladder to the Engine Room. It was still fairly noisy as the machinery that ran the ship's fusion reactor and the cooling systems for the plasma drive required a long post-landing runtime before they could be secured. The single man on watch sat in a closet sized control room trying not to drool as a dizzying array of meters and displays stared at him. Slipping past the control room brought them to the ladderwell that led down into the Ship's Service Locker, a cylindrical chamber with a large hatch through the pressure hull where shore power, telephone and Cable-TV links, potable water, and sewage lines entered from the Service Bunker at the end of the landing pad and connected into the DropShip.

Ranma poked his head out from the lower hatch and surveyed the landing pad. It was early morning judging from the chill in the air. Most of the starport was still waking up. The nearest occupied pad was one hundred meters away, where an ancient Lion Class DropShip sat on unsteady legs. It was mostly scrub grass and asphalt between pads, which would make moving difficult if your aim was to avoid attention.

"Well, boy?" Genma asked him.

"It figures that it'd be daylight when we got here," Ranma replied. "Moving's gonna be hard unless we can come up with some wheels. From the look of things, I'd say that it's about two klicks to the freight terminal, and three and a half to the passenger terminal."

"Nobody ever told you that the path of a true mechwarrior would be easy, boy," Genma admonished him.

"Least of all you," Ranma muttered.

Trying to look like they belonged, Genma and his son stepped off the running board of a truck belonging to one of the three Stevedore companies servicing the starport. The truck continued on to the company warehouse, leaving the two mechwarriors close enough to the Passenger Terminal to blend in when the time came. They took up a vantage point behind a dumpster as a bus load of travellers came in from one of the closer pads.

Interstellar space travel was something that most humans would never experience - in fact the vast majority of the human race would spend their entire lives on the world where they had been born, never leaving it even to go into orbit. It was too expensive for most people, and the centuries of conflict had taken their toll on the number of privately-owned starships in existence. Consequently the only legitimate people who travelled the starways belonged to three distinct types: Merchants and their crews, the military, and the very very rich.

The two Saotomes weren't rich. They couldn't even look the part after spending weeks locked up in the machinery spaces of less than hygenic spacecraft, much less smell it. While they were Dispossessed mechwarriors, the military usually had their own terminals at starports and wouldn't need or desire to use a civilian point of entry. That left only one option available to them, and one they had used many times in the past.

They waited until the powdered and perfumed elite had disembarked from the bus and entered the terminal, then joined the mass of ship's crew that followed once the paying passengers were safely upwind. Those members of the crew who actually cared to notice them offered questioning looks, but Genma and Ranma knew enough to act like they could care less about what anyone might think. Most spacers were smart enough not to ask too many questions on worlds where they were strangers, and they left it at that.

They straggled through the door just ahead of a group of officers, which was a lucky break. Customs and Immigration people knew where the money was to be found, and didn't like to wait. Genma produced passports for himself and his son, declared nothing, and submitted their packs for x-ray scan.

The C&I man thumbed through the two Federated Shiratori passports, noting the many stamps they bore. He also noted the fifty C-bills tucked neatly inside in such a way as to suggest that their presence was in some way accidental. The Customs man was an old hand at port of entry routine, and slipped the grease casually into his pocket even as he stamped their passports. He didn't even look at the two mechwarriors as he waved them to the metal detectors, directing his smile towards the approaching ship's officers instead.

The metal detectors were no problem, as Ranma and his father weren't the type who bothered to carry weapons. As far as they were concerned, anyone with a gun and an attitude problem who stood within three meters of them was going to end up in the Hurt Locker just as fast as someone without one. The Saotome School of Indiscriminate Grappling prided itself on its in-fighting moves.

Genma stopped briefly to change some of their precious store of C-bills into Confederation currency. The exchange rate never seemed to favor them coming or going, but flashing a lot of C-bills was a dangerous habit for an off-worlder. Ranma noted that despite his father's muted grumblings about the money-changers, the Confederation currency was fairly strong. At least any jobs they took here would pay in cash that wasn't worthless somewhere else. Local currency in hand, they left the terminal in search of the fastrail depot that would take them into the city.

Ranma grabbed a newspage with some of their cash on their way out the terminal doors. He selected an edition dating back several weeks, as the time they had spent in space had left them without any news since they left Lightoller. The leading news stories detailed the recent victory against the Combine forces at Port Said. Stereographs of Akane Tendo and her battered Warhammer were prominently featured.

"Hey, check this chick out," Ranma said, grabbing his father's sleeve. "Says here she took on the Black Rose's personal guard almost single-handed and sent 'em all packing."

Genma noted the stereographs with a thin smile.

"Yes, she's quite remarkable, isn't she?" he replied.

"More like macho if you ask me," Ranma returned. "Any chick gung-ho enough to take on a company of the Black Rose's heavies is some kinda psycho. I mean what does she think she's gotta prove?"

Genma's smile became a concerned frown. "But at least she's cute, eh, boy?" he managed.

Ranma took a second look, as if somehow missing it the first time. "Sort of," he offered in reply.

Genma rolled his eyes. "My son, you've got a lot to learn about women."

"Yeah, whatever."

Several minutes passed between them in a silence punctuated only by the distant screams of fusion heated scramjets from the pads. Genma appeared to have let the matter of the Tendo girl drop, and Ranma was content to thumb through the want-ads for something interesting to pay the bills.

"You know, Pop. Nerima ain't so bad, so far," Ranma noted as they waited for the next train. The sun was shining and the sky was a clear and clean blue, with fat white clouds gathering over a range of mountains to the north.

"It's a very beautiful place," Genma agreed. "Why I remember the last time I was here. It was..." His voice then trailed off to silence.

Ranma waited for him to continue. After several moments it became clear to him that his father was deliberately clamming up. The train pulled in quietly, and they both got on board.

"Yeah?" he prompted as they took their seats. "It was how long ago?"

Genma pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Never mind that, boy," he said sternly. "We've got quite a day ahead of us. We must prepare."

With that he lowered his head in apparent meditation, but Ranma knew better. His father was pretending to be asleep.

"Hey, Pop, ya mind telling me what I'm supposed to prepare for?"

Genma remained silent.

"You gotta be kidding me!"

Genma ignored his son's outburst. Azure Cloud Castle sat perched atop a gleaming white spur of solid granite halfway up the side of Mount Aeglos. The capitol city of Gondolin lay in a half circle around the southern foothills of the mountain, itself encircled by a wall of cunningly dressed limestone blocks twelve meters high and each massing close to two hundred tons known as the Girdle of Melian. A wide paved-flagstone road wound its way from a small gatehouse fortress near where they stood up an almost endless zig-zag path to the castle.

"We're going there?" Ranma continued. The look on his face conveyed the opinion that his father had completely cracked.

Genma nodded with a grunt.

"That old friend of mine..." he said to his son. "Happens to be the Grand Duke of the Confederation."

"You're puttin' me on," Ranma replied, absolutely unconvinced. "...The Grand Duke..."

His father shrugged. "Well, he wasn't at the time I knew him," he admitted. "It has been awhile. Before you were even born. Before either of us were married. We were training together to be mechwarriors..." Genma's stern face softened. "Ah, those were the days... Life was simpler then, let me tell you. More carefree."

"I'll bet," Ranma grunted.

Genma clapped his son on the back.

"Just you see, boy. I know I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, and I'm sure he has too."

There was something in Genma's voice that bothered Ranma. He turned his blue-grey eyes upon him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Let's go, boy. Why, I wonder if he'll even recognize me after so many years?"

Ranma rolled his eyes.

"That's what I'm wondering."

Two Crusaders stood at attention guarding the approaches to the small gatehouse fortress, their shadows providing some respite from the now hot afternoon sunshine. Curiously enough, the flags of the Furinkan Combine, the League of Five Nails, the Jusenkyo Commonwealth, and Comstar were displayed with the Confederation flag.

"What's going on?" Ranma asked his father.

"Don't ask me, son. Why don't you look at that newspage you bought earlier."

Ranma noted that there were only four minutes left on his newspage and quickly requested today's edition.

"Aha," Ranma said, scanning as fast as he could. "There's some big summit meeting going on today and the rest of the week. The government ain't saying exactly what it's about, but everyone here seems to think that the end of the war could be coming soon."

"Hmmmm," Genma murmured. "Could be bad for the mercenary business."

"They're probably real busy, Pop," Ranma said, gesturing up to the mountain castle. "Let's go find someplace to eat and then check out the guilds for some work."

"He'll see me, boy," Genma said, voice firm and full of confidence.

"Jeez, Pop, what is with you? You're acting really weird all of a sudden."

Azure Cloud Castle,

Ancestral Home of House Tendo

Planet Nerima, Capella System,

The Nerima Confederation

11 February 3025

Grand Duke Soun Tendo, middle-aged patriarch of the Great House of Tendo, sat in his audience chamber with a troubled look upon his brow. The Confederation was crumbling before his eyes, and there was little he could do to stop it. Though he had inherited the Confederation from his father, it seemed now unlikely that it would be passed on to his own children.

The ambassadors for House Kuno and House Gosunkugi were both present to represent their respective lords, as was an observer for the enigmatic Jusenkyo Commonwealth, and one from Comstar. Only the Federated Shiratori hadn't sent a representative, and Soun judged that this oversight was probably due to Azusa's complete disregard for politics in the Inner Sphere.

It was in his power to send them all away, but the fate of the Confederation lay in their hands. Both the Furinkan Combine and the League of Five Nails had encroached steadily upon Confederation territory over the last hundred years. The very purpose of the summit was to determine whether the Combine or the League would receive the lion's share of the Nerima Confederation, and how they would get it.

Soun was aware that he had enough military strength remaining to hold them off for another ten, perhaps fifteen years, and he could probably keep the core of the Confederation for another five beyond that if he was willing to make a suicidal stand on every remaining world. All this was possible, his second daughter Nabiki assured him, but the end result would be a Confederation reduced to ashes, its surviving population starving and slowly dying. The destruction of the Confederation and the stripping of the Tendo Clan's claim to the Star League were inevitable, she declared, and it was hard to argue with her assessment of the situation.

It was Nabiki who had proposed a deal between the Combine or the League. Rather than continue the fight and see the Confederation utterly destroyed, she proposed that the Combine and the League bid for possession. Her proposal garnered immediate attention from those two countries, for any tenders of wealth paled in comparison to the tremendous loss of life and (even more precious) battlemechs that would be incurred in continuing the war to its ultimate conclusion. The Tendos could then retire to a life of peace and luxury, free at last from the intrigues and the strife of the Succession Wars.

Soun was a warrior, and his pride ran deep, but her plan made sense. If the Confederation was doomed in ten years no matter what he did, how could he possibly send his soldiers and his people to such a hopeless end? If it were simply a matter of selling the rights to his Confederation in exchange for wealth and a promise of safety and hospitality from his new overlords, he would abdicate on the spot.

Unfortunately, he knew that both Prince Tatewaki of the Furinkan Combine, and Hikaru Gosunkugi of the League of Five Nails wanted his youngest daughter Akane for a bride, and that her hand in marriage would be a non-negotiable item in the deal. He did not want to see his little Akane, the apple of his eye, married off to either man.

He sighed sadly and wished that his good friend Genma Saotome were there by his side. Genma could always find ways out of unpleasant situations.

A gentle throat clearing in front of him seized his attention. At a respectful distance from the raised dais where his throne sat was the Combine Ambassador, who looked distinctly impatient to begin.

"Your Grace," the Combine Ambassador addressed him. "May we formally convene this summit?" He waved a hand towards the sunken eyed Tetsuo Gosunkugi, cousin of Hikaru, and Ambassador Plenipotentiary for the League. "Even my counterpart in the League reluctantly agrees that the Federated Shiratori delegation won't be coming."

A sultry and slightly mocking woman's voice answered him from behind the Grand Duke. "Really, Domitian, I would have thought patience a virtue for someone in your line of work."

Nabiki Tendo stepped from behind Soun's throne, clad in a dark green shimmersilk bolero jacket and high waisted slacks. Her clothes were cut to show off her narrow waist and long coltish legs, which they did quite admirably. The various male delegates to the summit were instantly hushed and turned their eyes in her direction. Basking in their attention, she continued.

"The purpose of this summit was to hammer out a deal. No matter what is said in these chambers over the next few days, nothing is final until the principals of each of the five Great Houses, and I mean all of the Great Houses, are on hand to witness the Dissolution of the Confederation and Forfeiture of Claim. Until then, House Tendo remains a valid claimant to the Star League, and the Nerima Confederation a sovereign nation."

She turned her sharp walnut-brown eyes to Domitian, the Combine Ambassador, with a flick of her mahogany bob of hair.

"So a little patience would be in order, ne?"

Domitian bowed his head in deference to the Grand Duke, and returned to the table reserved for the Combine. His bitter reply regarding the Federated Shiratori's political apathy was cut far short of being voiced.

Looking smug, Nabiki turned to her father and patted him on the head."Don't worry, Daddy. I've got everything under control."

Soun nodded absently in agreement. There was a time when he had been a formidable administrator, diplomat, and general, but that was years ago, before his beloved wife died. He had been wandering through life in a kind of shell-shock ever since, forcing his three daughters to assume his reign.

His eldest daughter Kasumi had become the administrator. She was Lady Castellan, Steward, and Chamberlain, keeping the household solvent and everything in working order. Nabiki bargained with the banks for the capital to run the Confederation, but Kasumi determined how it was to be spent.

Nabiki had become the diplomat and bargainer of the three. She was shrewd and ruthless, there was no doubt about that. If Soun had been capable of looking at his children with less than an adoring eye, he would have noted her dangerously self-centered nature. The Tendos might be saved from destruction with this summit, but Nabiki would come out of it richer and more powerful than ever.

Finally there was Akane, his youngest daughter, and the one who most resembled his wife. She had become a mechwarrior, taking Kasumi's place as Captain of the Household Guard at fourteen. Her red Warhammer had turned the tide of many a battle against the Combine and League forces, and was in part responsible for their willingness to bargain for the Confederation rather than fight for it. Akane was the Heir Apparent to the throne; Kasumi politely declining, and Nabiki being too smart to want such a dubious honor.

He lowered his head and sighed. It would all be over soon enough.

The crash of masonry filled the air of the family dojo. Akane stepped back from the shattered bricks to survey her handiwork, and called it good. She then noted that her oldest sister was standing against the wall, giving her a concerned look.

"What is it, Kasumi?" she asked.

Kasumi gave her a weak smile.

"Are you feeling all right, Akane?"

Akane frowned. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"Because I've never seen you spend so much time in the dojo before," Kasumi replied. "You've always been enthusiastic about your training, but the last two weeks you've been home from the front have been disconcerting. Are you upset?"

"No."

Akane's reply came much sharper than she had intended. Was she really that much on edge after all her work breaking bricks?

"Are you sure?" Kasumi pressed. "I'm worried about you, Akane."

"Don't be," her youngest sister shot back. "I'm fine. I just need some time alone."

Kasumi nodded ruefully. It wasn't easy staring defeat in the face.

"If you want to talk about it, I'm always willing to lend an ear," she offered to Akane.

Akane's face softened. "It's okay, big sister. I'll be all right. I just need to work this through. But alone."

"As you wish."

Kasumi left the dojo soundlessly. Akane felt bad about the way she had dismissed her, as Kasumi was nothing if not completely supportive of her. Kasumi was trying so hard to replace Mom that it hurt sometimes to treat her as simply a sister, but she had to maintain her perspective. Kasumi would never be Mom. Not to her, not to Nabiki, and not to Dad.

Besides, Kasumi had enough to worry about just tending to the country. That was enough for any dozen people, and she was trying to play the supportive parent figure on top of that.

Akane lined up another set of bricks.

"Don't worry, big sister. Nabiki will take care of everything. You'll never have to worry about running the Confederation again when she's done. There won't BE a Confederation anymore!"

She brought her fist down with an angry cry, shattering the bricks and breaking the supportive plank of wood beneath them. It didn't seem to give her any comfort. Maybe Kasumi was right, and she did need to talk to someone. There was only one person she felt she could talk to, and hopefully he would be there.

"Hello, Doctor," Akane said hopefully as she stepped through the door of Doctor Tofu Ono's office. Tofu was the personal physician of the Tendo family, and a handsome friendly-faced man in his early thirties who typically wore a dark colored gi instead of more traditional physician's attire. This was because Tofu was also a practicing martial artist and at one time had been a mechwarrior in service to the Confederation.

His fighting skills rarely showed through his gentle demeanor. Looking up from his desk with a smile, he greeted Akane.

"Hello, Akane. Did you hurt yourself again?"

Akane blushed in embarrassment.

"No, Doctor. I'm fine."

Tofu nodded. Akane was such an energetic girl, and had always been so. It seemed like she was constantly getting a skinned knee or a sprained ankle or something of that nature. Now that she was a mechwarrior out on the front lines, Tofu tried not to imagine more serious injuries befalling her.

"What brings you down here, then?"

She lowered her eyes.

"I'm depressed."

Tofu cocked his head. "Really? It doesn't show."

"I'm doing my best not to let it," she replied. "Kasumi keeps telling me to keep my chin up."

He regarded her for a moment. To Akane, his dark eyes seemed so penetrating and mysterious, and it was all she could do to keep from blushing again.

"It's about the surrender, isn't it?" he asked at length.

She nodded meekly. "There's no hiding it, I guess."

Tofu offered her a chair. "Would you like to talk about it?"

She stood paralyzed with indecision for a moment before accepting the offered seat. Tofu produced a teacup from his pocket and placed it before her. Freshly brewed pekoe from Alshain soon filled the cup.

"Thank you, Doctor," she demurred.

"Now tell me what's really bothering you," Tofu said. He was one of the few citizens of the Confederation outside the Tendo family and the primary nobility who knew that the peace summit was really a meeting to discuss the Confederation's surrender, and so he had a good idea what was getting to Akane. He also knew that it was better for a person to face a problem themselves rather than have it spelled out for them.

"I don't know," Akane began. "I guess I just feel like everything I've been doing is for nothing. I just won a victory over the Combine in my first battle ever as commander of the 1st Nerima, and if this surrender goes through it won't mean a thing. A lot of people died protecting the Confederation in that raid, and now their sacrifice is going to be in vain."

Tofu nodded. He felt the same way. He knew, as did almost everyone who called the Confederation home, that the writing was on the wall, but they had been beating the odds for years now. As he looked at Akane, he realized that it went much deeper than the idea of disappointing all those honored dead.

"It's more than that, isn't it," he said to her. "You're mad at Nabiki."

Akane looked up at him, eyes blazing with guilt.

"I know why she's doing it, and a part of me understands that in the end it's all for the best," she said defensively.

"But you're still mad at her," Tofu prompted.

"Wouldn't you be!?" Akane cried. She set her teacup down. "I'm sorry, Doctor Tofu. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

Tofu shook his head. "Don't worry about it, Akane. You have strong feelings about your duty to your people, and I think that's good for any leader. This is a difficult time for us as a nation, but for you and your family most of all."

Akane nodded in thoughtful silence.

"Do you think Nabiki is wrong for doing this?" she asked him at length.

Now Tofu was on the spot. He took a sip of his own tea while he tried to compose a reply.

"I really don't know," he said after failing to come up with anything he could believe in. "Deep down inside I think that she really does believe that what she's doing is the right thing."

"B-But how can she think that?" Akane spluttered. "She's never been a mechwarrior. She's never put her life on the line for her people. Even Kasumi fought the Combine once, before Mom died." Akane began to turn red faced with anger. "How can Nabiki really know what she's doing to us by giving up? What right does she have to be the one to make us surrender?!"

"Akane!" Tofu barked, startling her. "That's enough of that kind of talk," he continued firmly. "Nabiki is not the one who is making us surrender. She does not have the power to do anything of the kind. Your father is the one who will ultimately make that decision, not her. You need to give him your full support, because I know that this can't be easy for him."

Akane sat in her seat, ashamed of herself. As usual, Tofu had seen straight through to the heart of the matter. Was she actually mad at Nabiki, or was she just using her as a scapegoat instead of facing the fact that her father was no longer the man she had looked up to since childhood? She didn't know. All she really knew was the pain and hopelessness she felt deep in her heart. "I wish Mom were still here," she whispered. "Dad was so much different back then..."

Tears began welling in her eyes, and she wiped at them aggressively. Doctor Tofu stepped from around his desk and offered her his hand. She took it and rose to throw her arms around him. Only then, with his strong arms holding her, did the tears come with abandon.

"Oh, Doctor Tofu..." she whimpered between sobs.

Doctor Tofu held her for some time in silence, finally giving her a squeeze and releasing her when it seemed like she had at last cried herself out.

Akane looked up at him with red eyes and felt both utterly ashamed and sincerely grateful for his kindness. She had acknowledged her crush on him from the time she was fifteen for what it was; a simple crush, with no hope of being requited. She was the Heir to the Confederation, and as such all she could look forward to was a political marriage. Nabiki had sworn up and down that she would never allow the likes of Tatewaki Kuno or Hikaru Gosunkugi to get their hands on her in that regard, but how could you really trust someone who was even now upstairs in the Grand Hall preparing to sell out her entire country?

But that wasn't the worst pain from her crush on the doctor. The worst pain was that he was in love with someone else; her oldest sister Kasumi. It was as plain as day to everyone in the castle that Tofu was head over heels for the eldest Tendo daughter. Plain to everyone but Kasumi herself, and that was what made it so painful for Akane to bear.

"Feeling better now?" Tofu asked, startling her out of her reverie.

"I-I guess so," she said softly. She took a deep breath and let it out with a rush. "Yep. Much better after a good cry."

She turned for the door, stopping just short of the threshold.

"I'm sorry I bothered you with this," she said.

"Nonsense," Tofu replied cheerfully. "My door is always open for you, Akane."

Akane nodded her head and stepped through the door.

If only your heart was, too...

Kima, the representative for the Jusenkyo Commonwealth, excused herself from the table, leaving the dubious honor of leading the delegation to one of her aides. The summit was only a few hours old and it was already clear where Nabiki's sympathies lay. The Combine would surely triumph when all was said and done.

Unless of course someone interfered.

Tetsuo Gosunkugi was putting on a pretty good show, managing to look sincere in his negotiations while putting up stumbling blocks to the process wherever he could. She wondered what he was trying to gain by stalling. It was clear that the League was every bit as interested in the Confederation's surprising offer, but was hampered by their inability to match the enormous resources of the Combine - to say nothing of Tatewaki Kuno's hunger for Akane Tendo's hand in marriage. If anything could bring the summit to a grinding halt, it would be the final disposition of Akane after the surrender.

The palace had clearly designated areas for the visiting diplomatic staff, and it was these boundaries that Kima now violated. She ducked into the first lavatory she could find, and locked the door. Her wings ached for release from the confines of her heavy cloak, as did her taloned feet from their boots.

There wasn't time to treat them the way they needed; she would have to make them go away. The process was still taking some getting used to, but she was far more comfortable now with her alter ego than she was a few weeks ago. This was something for which she had been training for over a year, and despite the fact that she had been activated far earlier than originally intended, she knew she could pull it off.

She stripped off her clothes and folded them neatly next to a diplomatic pouch that she had been carrying under her cloak since she arrived on Nerima. From the pouch she drew another set of clothes; items sized for a woman somewhat smaller than her own Amazonian frame. Next, she turned the valve on the sink for cold water and took a deep breath.

Kima appeared from the lavatory slightly pale, but in control. She was getting more and more into the part with each moment, and her confidence rose as palace servants treated her with the deference expected by her new identity. She made her way up a grand staircase and turned left past armed sentries who popped to attention as she passed them without breaking stride. She was in the Tendo family wing of the palace, reserved for their private apartments. One of the sentries she passed went back to parade-rest while the other bent over a log book to make the appropriate entry.

16:19 - Akane Tendo entering the west wing.

Psychiatric Isolation Ward

Jusenkyo Laboratories Medical Center

Planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

4 February 3025

General Herb scratched his chin thoughtfully as several thousand volts of high-frequency alternating current lanced across the moist bare back of Commonwealth Mechwarrior Mousse. The application of said current was done so as to inflict the most agony possible without the embarrassing risk of causing the subject to go into instant cardiac arrest. Mousse screamed in appreciation for the efforts made on his behalf, as he had been doing for the greater part of an hour.

"It should go without saying that I'm extremely disappointed in your conduct," Herb said after the current was secured, and his victim capable of responding to his voice.

Mousse looked up from the padded table, his eyes bloodshot and trembling. "I've already told you everything," he croaked. Blood trickled down the corner of his lips from where he had bitten through part of the hard rubber mouthpiece provided by Lime during the jolts. "What do you want to hear from me?"

The taciturn Herb actually smiled at this.

"I'm not conducting an interrogation," he told the man. "I am well aware of the details and extent of your treachery."

Mousse's eyes blazed. "There's been no trial," he gasped. "I have a right to a trial... A trial of my peers or one of ritual combat against my accuser..."

Herb motioned to Mint, who cranked up the juice.

When Mousse was finished screaming and was down to shuddering gasps of agony, Herb answered him.

"This is your trial" he said with a smirk. "Though in fact you were tried by me the very moment I learned that you were at the starport instead of following my explicit orders. We now dispense with the formalities." His smirk became a beatific smile. "You must have been too busy screaming when I formally convened."

Another jolt of current shot through Mousse's body.

"Did I tell you that I was extremely disappointed in your conduct, Mousse?" Herb asked through the blast of hoarse screams. "I had plans for the lovely Shampoo, and in a misguided moment of weakness - fostered by an affection that she will never share with you - you went and ruined them. I had thought you far more intelligent than that."

He turned to Mint, and with a raised eyebrow, had the voltage and frequency increased beyond a particular threshold level. The higher the current's frequency, the greater the tendency for it to travel along a shallow path between the terminals rather than cause deep and potentially fatal wound channels. Herb found the resultant burst of flame and acrid smoke from Mousse's flesh particularly gratifying.

He brushed away the greasy blue smoke and nodded with satisfaction. A long black char mark branded Mousse from a point above his right kidney to a point between his shoulder blades and just right of his spine. Mousse was barely conscious now, twitching, and drooling facedown onto the floor to form a small puddle on the scrubbed white tile that was tinged ever so slightly with pink.

"Mint, a little speed, if you would be so kind," he said to the smaller of his two henchmen. "It isn't yet time for Mousse to go into shock."

Mint scrambled to comply, producing a prepared syrette of amphetamines and jabbing Mousse in the thigh, while Lime removed the terminal clips from the cracked and blackened skin and set them aside. Lime followed this with a perfunctory application of white antiseptic foam along the char streak, leaving the rest for a member of the medical staff that would not question such gruesome methods to finish tending to. He then lifted Mousse's head up by a length of hair to face his tormentor.

"It is the judgement of this Court that you are found guilty of willful insubordination against a flag grade officer, and guilty of disobeying his lawful orders," Herb told him. "These charges levied during the continuing state of emergency are normally punishable by death, but given the otherwise exemplary service record of the accused, this Court has decided a certain leniency is in order."

He leaned in close to Mousse.

"Your status as a Mechwarrior of the Commonwealth is provisionally stripped..."

Mousse closed his eyes. As if torture wasn't cruel enough, Herb had just taken the only mark of distinction he had enjoyed over the rank and file of the Commonwealth. The general continued the pronouncement of sentence, though anything he had to say at that point would mean nothing to Mousse.

"You are furthermore awarded thirty days confinement - to be sustained only on rice and water, given ten lashes by whip, and upon arrival of the JumpShip Reflections of Wisdom you will be transferred to a Correctional Custody Battalion on the Periphery world of Dok To, where your status as a mechwarrior will be reviewed after evaluation of your conduct for a period of two years."

Dok To was a world administered indirectly by Herb, and as such, ousse knew he could expect much more of the same when he got there. His future as a mechwarrior was over no matter how well he conducted himself in the Correctional Custody unit, and he knew that he could expect no support from his family. They would receive Herb's version of events first, and the shame would be great enough for them to disown him outright.

Despite his crushing vengeance, Herb apparently wished to gloat, as he had not yet left the room.

"So, Mousse, was your gallant mission worth the trouble? Was assisting a woman who holds no affection for you and will never consider you worthy of her attention worth all of this suffering?"

Mousse was beyond caring about reprisals.

"If it meant keeping her away from the likes of you, then I'd do it again and again," he spat. "I'd die to keep her from you, even if everything you said about her was true."

Herb's face remained impassive and aloof in spite of the insult he had sustained. He turned to Lime, who prepared to deliver a backhanded blow in response to Mousse's insolence, and shook his head. With a weary sigh he steepled his fingers in sympathy for such a deluded man, then made a dismissive gesture to his henchmen.

"Take him away."

Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System

Nerima Confederation

12 February 3025

Grand Duke Soun Tendo was a man nearly broken on the wheel of fate. He sat upon the tatami of his personal chambers and tried to determine where and how he had gone astray. While it could be said that the Confederation had been threatened long before he succeeded to the throne, it would be during his reign that it would fall.

There were no easy answers for him to face. He knew that he had let his people down in the hour they needed him most. He realized at last that he had wallowed in grief after the death of his beloved wife, and that his selfish and weak indulgence was responsible for the end of his rule. His daughters had bravely bought his country time, but without his leadership they could not hope to ultimately prevail.

Hence his reluctant decision not to go into exile with the rest of his family at the end of the surrender process. Despite his shortcomings as a ruler and a father, he was a proud man. Only his death could atone for his failures. He would put his affairs in order, and then commit suicide as soon as practical.

Kima happened by the open door of Soun's chambers and paused to regard the leader of the Confederation. His face was grave, and tears streamed freely down his cheeks. She had never seen a man cry so proficiently before.

It was understandable, she thought to herself. He was facing the imminent destruction of his reign - a reign that had been passed down since before the fall of the Star League. He was also a man, and men were known to be inherently weak creatures; all bluff and bluster and no substance underneath.

Her mission was to gather intelligence, and if necessary, disrupt the summit as surreptitiously as possible - thus preserving the status quo of the Inner Sphere. Now upon seeing Soun Tendo, she realized how futile that mission was. He was a beaten man, defeated by his inner weakness more than by any force of arms. Whether she stopped the summit or not, the entire Confederation was doomed in short order with this man on the throne.

It was time to return to the delegation before she was missed. Her exploratory journey into the heart of the Tendo sanctum had proven the effectiveness of her disguise. She could enter and leave at will, without fear of challenge, all thanks to her exhaustive studies and her Jusenkyo body.

She had been reluctant to assume a form that would be obsolete as soon as the Confederation fell, as fall it must, but she was also a warrior of the Joketsuzoku. Unquestioning obedience was what the Matriarch demanded, and Kima would not shirk from that responsibility. Doctor Gaido had told her prior to the process that there was no way to reverse the effects, and that she would be forced to bear the body of Akane Tendo for the rest of her life. She was promised governorship of her own system in return for such a curse, but would the price paid come dearer than the prize gained?

As she left the west wing and was logged out by the sentries, she tried to grapple with that question. She did not notice the soldier that passed her coming the other way, so she did not see the freshly given shiner that graced his right eye.

Soun heard the respectful tapping at his chamber door. He wiped away his tears and turned to face a soldier normally posted to the gatehouse at the foot of the mountain. The man saluted smartly and presented himself before his liege.

"Your Grace, Corporal Ward reporting with an urgent dispatch."

Soun nodded gravely, apparently taking no notice of the soldier's black eye.

"Go on, Corporal."

"Your Grace, there is a man at the gatehouse who claims to have been a close friend of yours prior to your ascension. His name is Genma Saotome. We thought he was just some crackpot and tried to turn him away, but, well, he and his son overpowered the garrison, and are holding them hostage until you grant them an audience. We don't dare use the battlemechs stationed outside for fear of..."

The Grand Duke was across the room in a heartbeat to grab the soldier by his lapels.

"D-Did you say Saotome?" he demanded.

"Y-Yes, your Grace! Saotome!" the corporal replied fearfully.

"Send a car at once!" Soun demanded. "No harm is to come to him and... his SON did you say?"

"Yes, your Grace!"

"They are to be treated with the greatest courtesy and respect," Soun gushed happily. "See to it at once!"

"Y-Y-Yes, your Grace! At once, your Grace!"

Soun released the man, who saluted again and tore out of the room at a full gallop. The Grand Duke's face beamed with delight, and tears of joy streamed down his face. From a man facing his imminent suicide, he had become a man reborn with hope.

"Oh, how I've waited for this day!" he cried.

"Pop, this is without a doubt the dumbest thing you have ever done."

Genma ignored his son in favor of keeping an eye on the two heavy battlemechs that stood outside with their missile launcher caps open and red-tipped Magna-Longbow missiles glinting dreadfully in the sun. They were followed by several Infantry Fighting Vehicles that disgorged troops into protected positions uphill, and by two more IFVs that covered the escape route back into the city. They were effectively bottled up inside the gatehouse.

"What are you afraid of, boy?"

Ranma looked around to the battered huddle of hastily secured soldiers and shrugged. "Oh, I don't know; death by firing squad, getting stepped on or blown to bits by one of those Crusaders out there, maybe a slow and thorough torture session followed by life in prison. You know, things like that."

"Don't be so spineless, Ranma," Genma chastised him. "If you were so concerned about that, why did you bother to help me?"

"It was either that or get shot!" Ranma protested. "You think any of these bozos were going to discriminate between the guilty and the innocent once you started bonking heads?"

Genma rolled his eyes. "Always thinking of yourself, eh boy? Where did I go wrong in raising you? You've turned into such an ingrate!"

Ranma popped his knuckles in reply.

"Don't even get me started, old man. You didn't have to attack them."

"They were trying to throw us out!" Genma shot back. "They didn't even bother to telephone the palace and tell them that we were here!"

Ranma swept his arm out angrily at his father.

"Can you blame them!? I don't even believe your crazy story! You and the Grand Duke of the Confederation are bosom buddies... What a bunch of crap!"

Genma clenched his fists.

"Boy, you've got a lot to learn about respect for your elders."

"Well I had such a great teacher!" Ranma sneered. He dropped into a fighting stance. "You want to throw down, Pop? Come and get some!"

Genma was about to take his son up on the offer when the soldier they had released to notify the Grand Duke returned in an open-topped car. The IFVs parted for the car as it drove up to the gatehouse. He jerked his thumb out the barred window and grinned with triumph.

"You see, boy? Our transportation has arrived."

Ranma looked out the window and frowned. There were dozens of men armed with assault rifles and blazers pointed at his face from the cover of their positions. The car was there, but it was too far into the open to reach it without becoming an easy target.

"Looks like they're just trying to draw us out, if you ask me."

The soldier exited the car and approached the rear gatehouse door.

"Not too close, man!" Ranma warned him.

"Quiet, boy!" Genma returned. "Let's hear what he has to say."

The soldier held his hands out to show that he was unarmed, then opened the armored door. Ranma tensed for action, which did not come.

"His Grace, Grand Duke Tendo, has asked me to convey his best wishes and welcome you to Azure Cloud Castle. This car has been put at your disposal," the soldier declared. "If you'll please accompany me..."

"How do we know this ain't some kind of trick?" Ranma asked him. "Once you get us into the open you could just gun us down."

The soldier wasn't prepared for the question, and stood slackjawed.

"I knew it," Ranma growled. "It's just a trick."

"No!" the corporal protested. "The word has already been passed. No one is to harm you. You are to be treated with the greatest courtesy and respect, honest! The Grand Duke told me himself!"

"Yeah, well we ain't leaving until all those troops back off, and back way off," Ranma returned.

"I have to agree with the boy," Genma rumbled.

The soldier nodded wearily. "Just a moment, please."

He might have only been a corporal, but with a quick confirmation from the castle to back him up, the troops piled back into their IFVs and the two battlemechs withdrew to a distance of a hundred meters. Genma decided this was good enough, and stepped outside. When no snipers gunned him down, Ranma reluctantly joined him.

The ride up the mountain also came without incident. Ranma almost preferred a fight, as the sudden cooperation was pointing dangerously towards the chance that Genma and the Grand Duke really did know each other. That was too weird to even think about.

They were escorted through the upper donjon and into the inner keep. From there an honor guard of four soldiers of the Household Guard escorted them to a lush garden terrace with a blue marble fountain and a stunning view of the city below. Ranma kept waiting for that white hot flash of a laser beam between his shoulders, but it never came. Instead, they were offered refreshments of tea and small cakes from golden trays.

"This is totally whacked," he said to himself as he nibbled on a cake. A small part of him still feared that they had fallen into a trap.

"What is, boy?" Genma asked smugly. "The fact that your father was right?"

Ranma turned to face his father.

"Yeah, well, that would be pretty earth-shattering," he agreed. "So now that we're here eating the Duke's cakes and drinking his tea, just what was your big idea for coming here?"

Genma narrowed his eyes. "You'll know soon enough, boy."

Ranma would have none of that.

"Enough with that crap, Pop! I'm tired of your whole cryptic routine! Just tell me already!"

Genma set down his teacup.

"Boy, don't push me. My patience with your attitude problem is running out."

Ranma leaped at him.

"Daddy, I don't understand what could possibly be so important that you would drag me out of the summit meeting! Don't you understand how important this is to the future of the Confederation?"

Akane bit down on her lip as Nabiki finished. It was all she could do to keep from screaming at her mercenary sister.

"Really, Father," Kasumi agreed. "This isn't like you at all."

Soun was still beaming with happiness.

"My dear children, a moment I have been waiting for since before you were born has finally arrived."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Akane pressed.

"The son of a very dear friend of mine has come to Nerima," Soun explained. "It was agreed over twenty years ago that our two mechwarrior families be united."

"United?" Nabiki asked. "As in, one of us marries this guy's kid?"

"Precisely," Soun replied, and the color drained from Nabiki's face. "One of you will marry Genma Saotome's son."

"Who?" Nabiki asked incredulously. It was clear that she was liking this arrangement less and less by the moment. "I've never heard of the name 'Saotome.' Are they nobility?"

"Not exactly," Soun grunted.

"Are they even rich?"

Soun shrugged. "I'm not really sure. Genma wasn't exactly rolling in money the last time we were together."

"Do you even know who this son is?" Nabiki pressed. "What he's like? How old he is?"

Soun took a long drag on a cigarette.

"I've never met him."

Nabiki rolled her eyes. "Great. You can count me out."

"Really, Father," Kasumi clucked. "It sounds like such a rash decision on your part to make such an arrangement without thinking it through."

"Yeah," Akane chimed in.

Soun was undeterred by his daughters' lack of enthusiasm.

"Your mother agreed with me on this," he declared, knowing that any mention of their mother would force them to listen to him. "We were both good friends of the Saotomes, and the Saotome School of Martial Arts is one of the last of the Anything Goes Schools in the Inner Sphere. Think of it as your duty as heirs to the School."

"What about our duty as heirs to the Confederation?" Nabiki pointed out. "I would think those obligations come first."

Soun now grew impatient.

"One of you will marry Genma Saotome's son," he declared, his voice having regained the stern and unyielding character of the old days. The sudden outburst of charisma momentarily cowed his children, who had grown used to the impassive and listless man of the past decade. "That is my final decision, as your father and as your liege lord."

There was a long and oppressive silence between them then, broken at last by a gentle cough from Nabiki. "Is he at least cute?" she asked meekly.

"I suppose we'll find out," Kasumi added with some apprehension as they stepped through the doors to the garden terrace.

"REALLY CUTE, OLD MAN! REALLY DAMN CUTE!"

Ranma was beside herself with rage, the water from the fountain almost steaming off her body. She faced off against her giant panda father, fists clenched and murder in her eyes. The panda snarled back at his son, now a daughter, and prepared to leap back into the fray.

Soun Tendo could not believe his eyes. He had given explicit orders that Genma and his son were to be shown to the garden terrace and made comfortable. Where had this circus act come from!?

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Who are you?"

"This is supposed to be your old friend and his son?" Nabiki quipped. "A redhead and her giant whatever-it-is pet?"

Soun shook his head vigorously in the negative.

Genma stumped over to Ranma and spun her around, his paw draped over her shoulder. He then pushed her forward and grunted that she introduce herself while trying to look dignified in the presence of his old friend.

Soun, his mind still groping for rational explanations, found himself asking "...you wouldn't happen to be...?"

Ranma stepped forward. She was blushing with shame as she cleared her throat to speak. "I'm Ranma Saotome," she declared. Nudging a thumb backwards to the panda she continued, "and this is my father, Genma." For a moment her eyes locked with Akane's, whom she recognized from the newspage as the chick who had whipped the Black Rose of the Furinkan Combine.

"Sorry about this," she added as an afterthought.

Nabiki could not believe that she had been taken from the summit meeting for this. There they were in the garden, ostensibly to meet one of Daddy's long last mechwarrior buddies and the guy's son - whom either herself or one of her sisters was going to marry - and instead what they found was a red-haired girl and a panda. The girl claimed to be Ranma Saotome, but where was her father?

Meanwhile, her own father was trying to make sense of this development himself.

"Are you really Ranma Saotome?" Soun asked.

Ranma nodded, blushing furiously with shame.

"And Genma Saotome is your father?"

Ranma turned to face the panda, who growled something in reply.

"It's true," she replied.

That was good enough for Soun in his fractured state of mind. He ran forward and embraced Ranma like a long lost child. Ranma tried not to choke as the man's arms wrapped around her like bands of iron.

"Oh, happy day!" the Grand Duke exclaimed. "At last you've come!"

Nabiki stepped forward and tapped her father on the shoulder.

"Um, Daddy? Are you sure this is what you want for us?"

Soun disengaged from Ranma enough to keep from crushing her.

"What are you talking about, Nabiki?" he asked.

Nabiki rolled her eyes and pointed to Ranma's buxom chest. "This 'son' of Genma Saotome has quite the rack, don't you think?"

"Oh dear," Kasumi clucked. "Nabiki does have a point, Father."

Soun looked down to Ranma's bulging breasts.

"I-I don't understand..." he mumbled.

"Oh come on," Nabiki cried. "Ranma's a girl!"

Soun looked again. Ranma did in fact have quite a chest. He moved his hands down her sides, confirming the narrow waist and roomy hips of a perfect hourglass figure.

"A... A girl...?"

He felt faint, but managed to keep it together.

Ranma's face was now blazing red, her eyes cast straight down to her feet.

Akane stepped forward to pull her father off Ranma. "Okay, Dad. The show's over. Give her a chance to breathe, already."

Soun stumbled backwards, reeling.

"I don't understand," he muttered. "They said a man and his son... at the gatehouse..."

"It's a long story," Ranma said at length. "One which my old man would just loooooove to explain." Suddenly clutching the kettle of hot water for tea, she turned to the panda. "Ain't that right, Pop!?"

The panda backed away from the kettle.

"Come on, Pop," Ranma growled. "This was YOUR idea, remember?" She flung the kettle at the panda, dousing him with scalding hot water. Genma yelped in pain. As the steam cleared, a man in a soaked white dogi stood before them, his glasses knocked askew on his face.

A heavy silence hung over the garden, leaving Nabiki to be the first to say something.

"Oh. My. God."

Soun, his fragile eggshell mind hanging on by a wispy thread, now looked upon the man, and at last recognition set in. Subtract about forty pounds, add some thinning hair, and it was like they had never been apart these twenty years.

"Saotome!" he cried. "It IS you!"

Genma, tears flowing down his face, nodded gravely.

Akane and Kasumi stood dumbfounded. There had to be some kind of rational explanation for this. They'd even settle for something irrational, so long as it explained what they had just seen.

"My son is correct," Genma told them. "It is a long story, and one that must be kept in the strictest secrecy."

"Of course," Soun replied. He was willing to accept just about anything so long as his old friend was really there and not just as some delusional fantasy. He gestured towards his daughters. "These are my three little girls -"

"Dad!" Akane protested. She was not a little girl!

"Right," Soun harrumphed. "This is my eldest daughter, Kasumi, who is twenty-two."

Kasumi bowed formally for them. She seemed kindly enough in Ranma's opinion, which was a relief given the discomfort of their situation.

"Next is my second daughter, Nabiki. She's twenty."

Nabiki offered a terse smile. "Charmed, I'm sure." It didn't take a genius to figure out how welcome they were with her.

Soun continued, hastily ignoring Nabiki's clipped greeting.

"And finally, my youngest daughter, Akane. She's nineteen."

Akane curtsied and offered a friendly, if cautious, smile.

"My son and I are very pleased to meet you," Genma said for the two of them.

Ranma, still a girl, looked around for more hot water, and tried to ignore the stares she was getting from the three girls at his father's reference to him as his 'son.'

"Hey, can I get some hot water?" she asked them. "I used it all on Pop."

The Grand Duke nodded. "Certainly! Akane, be a good girl and show Ranma to the kitchens."

Akane looked incredulous.

"Me? Why does it have to be me? Why couldn't one of the guards just -"

"- It's no big deal," Ranma interjected. "Just point me in the right direction and I'll get it myself. I don't need some girl to lead me around."

Akane turned back at Ranma and fumed.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I thought it was obvious," Ranma replied.

Nabiki shook her head. "Okay. That's enough for me. I'm going back to the summit meeting. Have fun with your little friends, Daddy." She turned and quickly left the terrace before Hurricane Akane started blowing up.

"I can show you the way, Ranma," Kasumi said sweetly. She knew as well as Nabiki when her youngest sister was about to explode.

Akane's eyes darted between Kasumi and Ranma, unsure if she was being made to look bad, and unwilling to take the chance. "No, I'll do it. Come on, Ranma."

She started for the doors, not even waiting for Ranma to follow, but with a shrug and a sigh, the pig-tailed mechwarrior quickly caught up.

Soun and Genma watched the two of them go, and then turned to each other with sly smiles.

"You remember our promise, don't you, Saotome?" Soun asked him, tears of joy in his eyes.

"How could I forget?" Genma replied, equally dewy.

Soun nodded briskly, then spit into his hand. Genma followed suit. They clapped their hands together and shook.

"You don't know how happy I am to see you, Saotome."

"The same goes for me, Tendo."

Kasumi, up to now a mute witness to their secret pact, now cleared her gentle voice to speak.

"What is it, Kasumi?" Soun asked her.

"Is there anything else, Father?"

"No. Not right now. Saotome and I have a lot of catching up to do, so we'll probably retire to my study until supper."

Kasumi bowed deferentially.

"Very well, Father. I'll have the stewards send up refreshments."

"So, you're really a guy, is that it?" Akane asked Ranma as they walked down the marble halls of the palace.

"Yup," Ranma grunted.

"You want to explain that trick with the hot water?"

"Nope."

Akane grit her teeth. "Fine. As long as you do whatever it is that you came for and leave, I don't care."

"Amen, sister."

Akane stopped short. "What was that?!" she cried angrily.

Ranma halted and turned to face her.

"Look, you want the truth? Fine. Yes, I'm really a guy. Something happened to me that I really don't want to talk about, okay? As for why I'm here, your guess is as good as mine. My old man clams up every time I ask him about it, so stop asking me. Got it?"

Akane said nothing for a moment while Ranma glared.

"All right," she conceded. "I can respect that. If you don't want to talk about what happened, okay. I don't really blame you for wanting to drop the subject."

This seemed to placate Ranma, so Akane continued on her way.

"My father tells me you're one of the last students of the Anything Goes Style," Akane said as they walked.

"Yup," Ranma agreed. "Me and Pop."

"So you're both mechwarriors?"

"Of course!"

Akane smiled a little at this. "What 'mech do you pilot?"

Ranma frowned briefly and said nothing. It was obvious even to Akane what the answer to that question might be, and instead of looking down on Ranma for being one of the Dispossessed, she actually pitied her - him - a little.

"Okaaaay..." she went on. "What 'mech did you pilot?"

"Phoenix Hawk LAM," Ranma muttered. Reminding one of the Dispossessed about the days when they were true mechwarriors was never very polite, but there seemed to be no malice in Akane's question.

"Really?" Akane gushed. LAM pilots had to master the intricacies and fighting tactics of operating both the humanform battlemech and the fixed-wing aerospace fighter. It was not something that most mechwarriors could manage to do well.

Her response surprised Ranma, prompting her to continue what would have been a painful subject. "Yeah, but it was pretty beat up. Eventually the thing wore out, and we didn't have the parts or the money to keep it going." A tear welled at Ranma's eye, but she quickly brushed it away. "We had to sell it for scrap, but then all our creditors swooped down to collect. We didn't have enough money left to buy another 'mech, even a salvage job."

Akane nibbled uncomfortably on her lip. As the daughter of the Grand Duke she would never have to worry about losing a battlemech to a lack of parts, and certainly not money. Ranma was a sober reminder of the many mechwarriors in the Inner Sphere whose battlemechs were their only means of wealth and status.

"But at least you didn't lose it," she offered. "I mean, you didn't get your 'mech shot out from under you, so it's not like you were defeated or anything."

Ranma nodded her head. Her father had consoled her with the same words. It had been three years now, and the wounds of shame and poverty were slowly scarring over for her.

"Something like that," she replied. "Thanks."

The kitchens were huge, capable of serving the entire population of the castle plus a sizable contingent of guests. Numerous cooks, sculleries, and stewards bustled about them. Hot water was easily obtained for Ranma, but this was no place to change back into a guy.

"What is it?" Akane asked Ranma when she hesitated to do whatever it was that turned her into a man.

"Uh, could I have some, you know, privacy?"

Akane blushed.

"Um, sure. There's a storage room over there."

Ranma nodded and went over to the door. After carefully checking to see that no one was inside, she entered and closed the door. Seconds later a young man of nineteen emerged. His hair was black and tied with a pig-tail, and his eyes were the same blue-grey as Ranma's. If not for the water stains on his red mandarin blouse, Akane would not have believed that the man she now beheld was the girl she had just spoken to.

"R-Ranma?"

He nodded with a grin and stretched out his arms. "Man, I hate being cooped up in that little girl body."

She looked him up and down.

"Are you sure you don't want to explain this?"

Ranma Saotome eased off on the backpressure and brought his battlemech to a halt within the cover of some coniferous trees. His sensors probed the surrounding plains for some sign of his target, but so far all he had was nothing. He decided to switch his active sensors off and continue the search passively.

He wasn't sure why he had accepted Akane's challenge to a simulator duel. It might have been boredom, or the fact that he was eager to jump into a cockpit - any cockpit - once again. The simulated battlemech he controlled was a 45 ton Vindicator, one of the Confederation's own designs. It wasn't half bad for a medium 'mech, and although it was slower than he would have preferred, at least it had jump jets.

He wasn't sure what Akane would be piloting, but from what little he had read of her tactics in the newspage, he felt that she would come looking for him when he didn't show. That was fine with him. A single throw of a control switch powered his battlemech's reactor down to idle, and brought his heat output to minimum. The tree cover would further absorb and disperse his thermal emissions to the point where Akane would have to practically run into him to notice.

It wasn't a long wait before his neutrino detector began to ping. Neutrino detectors capable of being carried aboard a battlemech weren't very accurate; they gave a fuzzy estimate of bearing and range, but as early warning systems they could be pretty useful for detecting the radiation from an operating fusion plant. Their drawback was that they had to be fine-tuned to local conditions or else they would be set off by the planet's sun and rendered useless. Fortunately, this was a simulator, where things generally worked as they were supposed to.

Akane (or at least a neutrino source) was roughly in front of him, and within a thousand meters. She was also closing on his position, having either detected him or else deciding that there was no other place he could be hiding. He decided to play it cool and let her come to him.

After a few moments he was rewarded with the tiny vibrations of his analog clinometer; the tell-tale of a large humanform 'mech stomping across the ground nearby. He couldn't quite hear the heavy metal-shod footfalls of the approaching 'mech, but he knew she was close. A quick flick of his eyes towards his engine exhaust duct temperature gauges told him what he needed to know - that his jump jets were still hot enough for a brief blast of thrust while his reactor was idle.

A bright flash of light glared through his cockpit as a laser beam rippled through the trees and set several alight. She was trying to smoke him out. He waited calmly, fingers tensed on the jump jet studs of his control yoke. He had another forty seconds of thermal reserve left in his jets before he would have to power up.

A second beam of laser fire screamed through the trees, this time to his right. She didn't know where he was, and was just trying to spook him. He wasn't going to let her. Thirty seconds.

The clinometer shook in its mount. This time he could feel the 'mech stomping closer. Trees only a few dozen meters before him began crashing down as they were pushed over. Twenty seconds.

He caught the sight of a whip antenna and goosed his jets. The turbines screamed behind and below him as the outside air was sucked in and superheated over the engine coils. His hand shot out to the reactor control panel, bringing it to life.

Akane was caught by surprise by his jump, and fanned laser fire in a frantic attempt to catch him. Ranma put on a little more thrust to his left leg jets as he eased off on his right, side-slipping in a midair evasion maneuver. The clouds of dust, steam, and tree bits from his jump would obscure her vision long enough to do what he intended.

Ranma's Vindicator was too close to use its Long Range Missile launcher or its particle cannon effectively, leaving him with a light and a medium laser. That was no good against his opponent, who faced him in an Enforcer - a 50 ton Federated Shiratori 'mech which packed an autoloading 155mm cannon and a heavy laser that had no such minimum range difficulties. The reactor's output climbed rapidly as he put greater demands for thrust on it. He was sucking every last watt of power out of the plant as his Vindicator soared over the Enforcer to touch down just behind it.

Ranma's limb controls groaned against the abuse he put them through as the Vindicator sprang up from its touchdown, pivoted on its left heel, and brought the right leg up and out in a roundhouse kick. The blow smashed into the thin rear center torso armor of the Enforcer, scattering shards of diamond-hard aligned crystal steel and brilliant yellow sparks of flame. The Enforcer staggered forward, crashing into more trees as it fought to stay upright.

He had to give Akane credit as she regained control of her 'mech and whipped out her right arm to bear on him. His fingers caressed the boost studs in time to avoid a long-rod tungsten carbide penetrator from the autocannon. His Vindicator shot airborne once again, only the upper portion of the passing shell's discarded sabot striking his armor - ineffectually.

"What the -?" Akane cried to herself as the autocannon shell sailed far downrange. "Is he reading my moves?"

Her heavy laser arm came up to bear, firing point blank at the Vindicator, and still missing as Ranma once again side-slipped in midair. Her pupils shrank to tiny dots as the 45 ton battlemech loomed overhead. Catching hold of herself, she gunned her throttles in an attempt to avoid what was surely a death from above attack aimed at her cockpit. The Enforcer scrambled forward and past the falling Vindicator.

Ranma pivoted the Vindicator in mid-air, allowing the Enforcer to flee while he steadied his 'mech for an easy landing. As he touched down, Akane had thoughtfully opened the range to ninety-three meters, and his HUD's targeting reticle glowed green for PPC release. He squeezed on the trigger, sending a bolt of blue-white lightning square into the Enforcer's heavily damaged rear center torso, and watched impassively as the battlemech burst apart into a white cloud of plasma with a fatal reactor crash.

Akane stared at her snowy instrument bank in disbelief. Her simulated battlemech had been destroyed by a direct hit to the fusion reactor. Had this duel been real, she wouldn't have even known what had happened, she would have simply ceased to be.

As a mechwarrior she had experienced death in the simulator many times. It was a part of the training process to be defeated in sim combat. But this was more than defeat, this was humiliation. She watched as the duel's statistics scrolled across the display and groaned. He had struck just two blows - one of them a kick! She hadn't hit him once, not even once! The actual combat had taken mere seconds!

She raised her cockpit canopy and stepped out into the real world. Ranma's cockpit was already open, with the guy standing impassively next to his unit, arms folded over his chest. It was clear that he hadn't even bothered reviewing the statistics.

"Wanna go again?" he asked her. "Only this time don't hold back, okay."

Akane's fists clenched tight. He couldn't be serious, could he? The impudent jerk!

"What the heck was that?" she cried angrily.

"What was what?" he replied. He seemed perplexed by her question, which only made it worse.

"You call that a duel?" she spluttered. "All you did was jump around!"

Ranma unfolded his arms and set them akimbo. "Hey, it worked. I'm alive, and you're dead. End of story."

She knew he was right, but he was so infuriating that she couldn't let it go. She just stood there trembling and fuming with rage.

"Hey, don't take it so hard," Ranma offered when he realized how angry she really was. "You did pretty good. Most mechwarriors wouldn't have been able to stay upright after that roundhouse kick, especially in the middle of all those trees." He brushed his hand absently against his red satin shirt. "Of course after reading about how you walked all over the Black Rose's personal guard, I expected a bit more of a fight..."

That was the last straw. Akane stumped over to Ranma and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. Ranma, caught off-guard by her attack, spun around and slumped to the side of the simulator unit. When he was able, he sat up and touched the bright red hand mark on his cheek gingerly.

"What was that for?!" he demanded.

"That's for being such a jerk!" she shot back, and stomped out of the room.

Ranma stood slowly and watched her go. One moment she was actually nice to him, the next moment she was slugging him.

"Man, that chick is psycho."

The Grand Duke's Personal Apartments

Azure Cloud Castle

11 February 3025

"So what do you think, Tendo?"

Soun Tendo once again looked over the tattered notebooks and scattered relics that lay before him. It was a fantastic tale, but could it really be true?

"I don't know what to say, Saotome," he hedged. "The fact that wild stories about Ryuugenzawa have been circulating for centuries makes all this very hard to take at face value."

"Ryuugenzawa exists," Genma said firmly. "I feel it with every fiber of my being. Isn't what I've shown you enough? The fact that the boy and I fell victim to the very Star League laboratory detailed in these journals practically screams their authenticity."

Soun tried to look supportive.

"But really, Saotome. Try to look at it from my perspective. I admit that you and your son's, er, accident is fairly convincing proof that the Star League had installations detailed in these journals, but -"

"- I understand, Tendo," Genma said slowly. "There's no need to go on." He stood and bowed respectfully before his friend. "The boy and I won't trouble you with this any longer. We'll be leaving first thing in the morning."

Soun's eyes bulged.

"B-But, Saotome! Our agreement!"

Genma stood motionless.

"I'll need the boy with me if I'm to continue the search," he said evenly. "I'm not as young as I used to be, and in my line of work it's necessary to have someone you can trust watching your back."

Soun was almost trembling. "Saotome! You can't mean this!"

"Don't worry, Tendo. Our agreement stands. We'll just have to wait a little longer; just until the boy and I find Ryuugenzawa. Then we'll return, and we can unite our two schools."

"But that could be years from now!" Soun protested. "If ever!" He leaned in close to his friend. "Saotome, you mustn't breathe a word of this to anyone, but this summit meeting isn't just a peace conference..."

He let that confidence hang before them for a moment before continuing.

"The Confederation is going to surrender."

Genma was aghast.

"Tendo! You can't mean that!" he hissed.

Soun closed his eyes and sighed heavily. "It's true. The Confederation is at its breaking point. We've been pushed beyond the limits of endurance. Any further struggle is pointless and would only bring great calamity to our people." He sobbed. "I can't allow that. Right now my daughter Nabiki is bargaining with the Combine and the League for the most equitable terms."

He paused for a moment as Genma looked on in disbelief.

"It won't be so much of a surrender as an orderly transfer of power, but it will mean the end of my reign and of my family's claim to the Star League."

"But what will happen to you?" Genma pressed.

"We'll go into exile," Soun replied gravely. "We'll probably keep the Capella system as a personal fief, and perhaps the title of Duke just as a sop, but in the end the Tendos will either have a Kuno or a Gosunkugi as Lord."

Genma nibbled at his lip.

"I see. There's no choice but for you to surrender then, is there."

"None, Saotome."

Genma thrust his fists to the ceiling.

"Come on, Tendo! You can't give up now! Why, this is the best reason yet for helping me in my search for Ryuugenzawa. Once its secrets are in your possession, the Combine and the League won't stand a chance against you! It'll tip the entire war in your favor!"

Soun looked up at his friend. Once again the embers of hope began to glow within his soul.

"Do you think so, Saotome?"

"Of course I think so!" Genma replied. "Trust me, Soun old friend! And besides, if what you've said is true, what have you really got to lose?!"

Soun thought hard about this. It was said that opportunity only knocked once. But Ryuugenzawa couldn't be true, could it? What should he do?

While Ryuugenzawa remained an unknown, he did know one thing: he had asked for Genma's help in an hour of need, and his friend had appeared without warning out of the vast gulf of more than twenty years to answer his plea. If that wasn't the voice of Providence speaking, there was no such thing.

"I'll do it," he intoned.

Genma perked up his ears. "Come again, Tendo?"

Soun Tendo's eyes burned.

"I said I'll do it."

The Grand Hall, Azure Cloud Castle

Nabiki Tendo couldn't have been more pleased with herself. Everything was going as she had expected, right down to Tetsuo's stonewalling on parliamentary procedures and nitpicking on every last detail. He was doing his job so well that even the Commonwealth representative, who she expected to cause trouble, felt little need to add any interference to the process.

One of her aides handed her a note from the Combine table as Tetsuo filibustered on the process of verifying Confederation troop levels for a proper muster over to the succeeding house's army. She looked over to Domitian, who sat calmly ignoring the League ambassador while appearing rapt with attention. She had a feeling about the contents of the note, and carefully opened it away from her staff.

The Furinkan Combine agrees to all terms with the exception of article IX, section 3 - regarding final disposition of Akane Tendo. My government has instructed me to accept no final arrangement until your sister has been formally betrothed to Prince Tatewaki. I also must confess that I am impatient to end as soon a possible this diplomatic charade you've crafted, and get down to an unencumbered resolution of these issues as we have previously agreed.

- D

She fed the note into a paper shredder next to her at the table, blinking at the flash of light from the built-in plasma arc incinerator as it turned the confetti into ash. She had expected this as well. The entire summit was counterfeit, as she had been meeting with Domitian through cut-outs and middle men for months now on the terms of the surrender, but the show had to go on.

The details of arranging the orderly transfer of possession of over a hundred star systems and the absorption of billions of loyal citizens into the Furinkan Combine were nothing compared to the difficulty in getting Daddy to agree to offer Akane in marriage to Tatewaki Kuno. It seemed that only she understood how important the marriage would be politically. It would be an important symbol of the union of the two Successor Houses, and the one most likely to make the people accept the surrender and annexation peaceably.

She already had him on the ropes with her defeatist propaganda. Well, it wasn't entirely propaganda, but she had exaggerated a few figures here and there to get her point across. He just needed a little more prodding, and then she would be able to get from him this last provision of the agreement.

Perhaps those two freaks who showed up on the castle's doorstep would serve as an ideal distraction for him. As for this supposed promise to unite their two families, well, if Daddy was going to insist upon it then Kasumi was the only possible choice. With the surrender, her role in running the day to day operations of the Confederation was moot. It wouldn't take much effort to get her to go along with it either - she did what Daddy told her.

Nabiki sat back and stretched. It was all turning out as expected, and that was all right by her. Once she pushed the agreement through, she could relax. It had taken her five years to get to this point, and she was eager to return to a normal life. The hated Succession Wars would no longer be her concern, and soon the Inner Sphere would be united into a Star League once again - all thanks to her.

Tetsuo Gosunkugi was not a fool. He had been carefully observing the summit, even while he was speaking, and it was clear that the fix was in with the Furinkan Combine. The question now was whether to continue to stall, as he had been doing, or should he seek to expose Nabiki's back room deal with the Combine Ambassador?

Exposure would certainly test Nabiki's grip over the Confederation nobility. The masses wouldn't stand for it, and in the ensuing riots the country might collapse into civil war - with Hikaru in the ideal position to take advantage of the chaos to grab territory for the League that they wouldn't have a chance of getting at Nabiki's rigged bargaining table. The Combine would probably still be able to subdue whatever the League couldn't grab, but anti-Combine sentiment among the populace would be high enough to tie their hands dealing with insurgency movements for years.

Even if a civil war didn't happen, a coup might well depose the Tendos, and see a Confederation noble with sympathies leaning towards the League take the throne. That might prove just as effective strategically against the Combine as a civil war. He knew several Confederation nobles who would be ideal for this, but there was no way to warn them to prepare without tipping his hand.

There were so many options, and the situation was even more volatile than he and Hikaru had imagined during their talks on Viridian. Should he risk a transmission via HPG requesting instructions? There simply wasn't time to send a courier via JumpShip.

He decided that come what may, he would have to act on his own, and hope Hikaru approved. If things got ugly there was always his platoon of Special Ops people infiltrated among his diplomatic staff. Once they had Akane Tendo, there would be no risk of counterattack, and Hikaru could force his way into the Confederation through marriage to her. Wouldn't that burn Tatewaki Kuno's ass!

Nabiki was calling a recess. She must have wanted to clear something up with the Combine stooge, Domitian. That was fine with him, his voice was getting tired. They wouldn't dare pull anything today anyway, as it wouldn't look right. Probably not tomorrow either. Saturday would be the fateful day.

Kima compiled her report to Cologne for HPG dispatch as Tetsuo wound down his speech in response to Nabiki's call for a recess. Unlike her League and Combine counterparts, she had nothing to fear from handing over an encrypted message to Comstar for transmission. The Third Circuit representing Comstar at this summit might have suspected Joketsuzoku infiltration of his organization, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. His predecessor had been taught a painful and ultimately fatal lesson in minding his own business.

She hoped it would be an extended recess until the morning. There was much to learn about the Tendo stronghold that her unique new perspective could give her. Especially in the family quarters. She had a mind to check in on Nabiki that evening.

It was dangerous to have a direct conversation with the woman, as there were too many unknown factors present that could compromise her. Her intelligence briefs seemed to point towards some tension between Akane and her sibling, and Kima counted on that to remain sufficiently distant from Nabiki without drawing attention.

The middle Tendo daughter clearly had her own agenda at the summit. The real question now was when she would show her true colors. Nabiki was very intelligent, but showed a carelessly positive assessment of her capabilities. It was practically arrogance, and it might well backfire with a little help from the Joketsuzoku.

Her wings continued to ache underneath her heavy cloak. She wished that she could stretch them out and get a little flying in, but that would be impossible. The Inner Sphere was not ready to know about the existence of the hybrids. Not until Saffron was ready, and Cologne would be the judge of that.

Ducal Guests' Chambers, Azure Cloud Castle

Ranma Saotome lay back in the bath and let the steaming water soak into his pores. It had taken thirty minutes of scrubbing to get the smell of the Belle Marle off him, and his skin glowed pink. Across from him in the bath was his father, who dozed with a damp washcloth over his eyes.

"Hey Pop, you still awake over there?"

Genma stirred.

"More or less," he grunted. "What is it?"

"You mind telling me now why we're here?"

Genma was quiet for a moment before responding.

"You'll find out tomorrow night," he told him. "Now stop asking me about it."

Ranma splashed at the water. "Does this mean we're done looking for Ryuugenzawa?" he huffed.

Genma opened his eyes. "What if we were?" he asked.

Ranma looked hopeful.

"Well, it's just that we've been searching for three years now, and I'm gettin' kinda tired of being on the move all the time. I mean, I never really believed in any of that junk anyways, it's always been just something to do."

Genma sighed wearily and looked skyward.

"How quickly they lose heart," he lamented to the heavens. Then he faced his son. "Hasn't our time on Lightoller taught you anything, boy? We've never been so close to finding Ryuugenzawa, and now you want to go home..."

Ranma bit back a curse.

"Don't you even miss Mom?" he asked bitterly. "Or wonder how she's doing? Do you know that it's been so long since we've seen her that in dreams I can't even remember what she looks like? I wake up in the morning and I have to pull her picture out of my pack just so I can prove to myself that she's real."

"Don't get sappy on me now, boy," Genma warned.

"Or what, old man?" Ranma returned. "So what if I miss her? At least one of us does. You make me sick sometimes with this stupid quest of yours." He stood up to leave, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist. "I used to believe in you, you know! I used to think that you were this all-knowing and undefeatable mechwarrior, and that once we found your goddamn Ryuugenzawa we'd be heroes!"

He splashed out of the bath and stepped into his bathing slippers.

"Where do you think you're going, boy?" Genma demanded.

Ranma turned back to his father, his eyes bloodshot with betrayal.

"I'm leaving... I'll give your best to Mom when I see her."

Genma watched him go. It would do no good to fight him at this point. Ranma wasn't really going anywhere. Once his temper had cooled, he would come around.

"Damn fool boy is just like his mother," he observed. "All emotion and no sense."

The garden terrace was still and dark when Ranma stepped through the doors. The golden strings of light that made up the capitol city of Gondolin glittered silently far below, and the stars shone brightly in the heavens far above. One of those stars was Sian, his home, only twelve parsecs away. For all of its relative proximity to Capella, it might have been on the other side of the galaxy to him right then.

He could not remember the last time he had set foot upon the soil of his birth. He and his father had been on the move since he was little more than a baby. He had been learning martial arts, 'mech and aerospace fighter piloting, technical skills, and combat tactics from anyone who could offer useful instruction, and this at a time when even children of other mechwarriors were still playing in the yard.

It had been a hard life, and he had rarely complained, but now the pangs of regret knifed into his breast. What had it all been for? The family's battlemech was gone before he turned sixteen, and he and his father had been chasing a myth for the last three years. Was he just living a lie, or was he an accessory to his father's delusions, or both?

Ryuugenzawa didn't exist. It might have at one time, but the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere started searching for Star League depots and facilities to plunder just as soon as General Kerensky abandoned them, to say nothing of the hundreds of wildcat treasure hunters like themselves who searched the lonely backwater systems of space. Ryuugenzawa might have existed once, but it had probably been stripped and looted long ago, just like practically everything else belonging to the fallen Star League.

It was time to go home. He owed it to his mother, and he owed it to himself. To hell with his old man.

"Ryuugenzawa doesn't exist," he told the night sky. "I don't care what Pop says about it."

The soft footfalls on the grass alerted him, and he turned to face Akane Tendo.

"Akane?"

She halted several paces from him.

"What is it?" she asked him.

Ranma scratched his head nervously. She was really putting out bad vibes, and he decided to play it safe.

"Nothing. I was just asking if it was you or not."

Akane shrugged. "It's me."

She continued standing there, looking at him, which was unnerving.

"Look," he began. "If you want, I'll leave. It's no big deal, and this is your home, so just say so."

"Stay," she replied.

Now he was really confused. Was she still angry with him, or was she one of those girls who ran hot and cold all the time?

"Hey, uh, about this afternoon..." he said nervously.

"What about this afternoon?"

Ranma cocked his head. If that was how she wanted to play it, he was okay with that, but her reaction wasn't what he was expecting. Perhaps it was best to play it safe anyway, and apologize.

"Look, I'm sorry about this afternoon, okay?"

She shrugged again. "Okay with me."

Ranma blinked twice. "Uh, great. Cool."

A heavy moment of silence passed between them.

"Hey, uh, Akane. I was just thinking that it was getting kinda late, so I'll be turning in, okay?"

"If you insist," she replied. "I couldn't help but overhear you talking about Ryuugenzawa, though. Do you want to talk about it some more?"

Ranma blushed, a reaction that was fortunately unnoticed in the dim light of the terrace. "Oh that? It was nothing. I was just talking to myself."

Akane frowned. "Oh. My apologies."

Ranma stepped past her with a nervous bid of 'good-night,' and went back into the castle.

That was kinda weird...

He was making his way towards the guests' quarters when he ran into Kasumi - quite literally.

"Oh dear," she cried softly. "I'm so sorry, Ranma."

"Nah, it was my fault," he demurred. "I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going."

"It's very late," she observed. "Is there something wrong?"

Ranma shook his head. "Not really. My body's still on ship time, so normally it would take a little getting used to local time."

"Normally?" she asked.

"Well, I don't mean to sound disrespectful or nothing, 'cause its nothing against you or your family, but I'm not sticking around on Nerima for much longer. The first ship headed to Sian is gonna find me on it."

Kasumi gave him a puzzled look.

"You're leaving? So soon?"

"Like I said, it ain't nothing against you guys; this is between me and my old man."

"Are you sure?" Kasumi pressed. "I think my father and yours had something important planned, remember?"

Ranma rolled his eyes. "First I've heard about it."

Kasumi seemed even more surprised at this.

"Really? So you don't know about...?"

"Kasumi, I don't have a clue about why I'm here," Ranma returned. "Not one. My old man said I'd find out tomorrow night, but I don't plan on sticking around that long."

"Well..."

"Do me a huge favor, okay?"

Kasumi did not like where this was going.

"What is it, Ranma?"

"Pretend you didn't see me tonight, okay?"

She wrung her hands for a moment. Dishonesty did not come naturally to her.

"I'll try," she managed, not at all pleased with herself.

"Great," Ranma replied, clearly satisfied in spite of her decidedly uneasy assurance. "You've all been great, so thanks for everything, huh?"

"O-Of course, but..."

"No time," Ranma said with a wave. "Have a good night."

Kasumi watched him go and wrung her hands with concern. Father would not be pleased about this, and just at a time when he was starting to act more like himself again. She couldn't let this happen to him; it would crush him! Determination set itself within her breast and she stomped her foot on the polished marble floor for his attention.

"Ranma, I can't allow you to leave. It wouldn't be proper."

Ranma stopped short.

"Aw, come on. This really doesn't concern you."

Kasumi gave him a hard look. "It does concern me, Ranma. Your presence here is very important to my father. Now please go back to your room and promise me that you won't try to run away." She set her arms akimbo. "PROMISE ME."

Ranma suddenly felt very small.

"Uh... Sure. Whatever, Kasumi."

She did not let up. "PROMISE ME."

The weight of her gaze was staggering to Ranma, who began to sweat profusely with dismay.

"Okay! Okay! I promise I won't try and leave!"

Kasumi immediately brightened.

"Thank you, Ranma. Run along back to your room now."

Ranma did so, feeling very small indeed at having been browbeaten by someone like Kasumi.

The Grand Duke's Private Apartments

Azure Cloud Castle

12 February 3025

The second day of the summit had passed much like the first, and Nabiki was ready to present the final draft of the Furinkan Combine proposal to her father. Once he had approved it, she would keep the delegates hanging on for a few more days of the same bickering before springing the decision. In case he was less than receptive to the idea of betrothing Akane to Tatewaki Kuno, she would still have those few days margin to work on him before Domitian ran out of patience.

He had called them all to his chambers after the State dinner given in honor of the delegates to the summit. She was a little concerned that it might have something to do with the two freaks that were staying in the castle as guests, but wasn't going to let it deter her from the evening's mission. He would be made to see reason, and that was that.

Kasumi was, predictably, already there when she arrived. So were the two freaks, but at least they were in their so-called 'normal' forms. She had to admit that Ranma as a man was pretty cute, but if his father was any indication of what he would look like in middle-age, she would happily decline the offer of marriage.

Only Akane was absent, and so she took the opportunity to approach her father with the draft.

"Everything is going well, Daddy," she announced to him. "We're getting a better deal than I thought we would."

Soun seemed not to hear her.

"Hello..." Nabiki said, waving her hand in front of his face.

"Oh, Nabiki," he responded. "I'm sorry, daughter. You were saying?"

"I was saying that we're getting a better deal out of the Combine than I thought we would," she said with a touch of irritation. She handed him a copy of the draft, which he breezed through distractedly.

Soun nodded. "The Combine you say?"

"Of course! You don't think those weasels in the League of Five Nails can match an offer from the Furinkan Combine, do you?"

"No," Soun replied. "No, I guess not." He looked around the room for Akane, and did not see her. "So," he went on. "I suppose they have a special condition attached to their terms, don't they?"

Nabiki frowned. "You knew this was going to happen, Daddy. I tried the best I could, but was there ever any doubt that it would come to this?"

Soun nodded again. "Not really," he said uneasily.

"Then it's settled?" Nabiki asked him hopefully. "Naturally we'll wait a few days to work out the last little snags before we announce the decision, and we'll have to begin with the betrothal to put the best diplomatic spin on it."

Soun was silent. He looked in Genma's direction, and received a supportive nod. Then he looked to Kasumi, who gave him a similar gesture.

Nabiki began to get uneasy at this. Something was up.

"So, if you'll just put your preliminary chop on this," she said, holding up the draft. "Then we'll sign the Power of Attorney granting me Plenipotentiary authority, and it will all be taken care of..."

Soun remained silent.

Nabiki's eyes drifted around the room. She felt very alone.

"You mind telling me what's going on?" she asked as an open question to everyone present. Only Ranma seemed to share her ignorance, the rest remained silent.

Akane walked into the room moments later, noting Ranma and giving him a dirty look which made him start in surprise.

"Okay, I'm here, what did I miss?" she asked them.

"That's what I'd like to know," Nabiki sniffed.

Soun cleared his throat for attention.

"I have given this a lot of thought," he began.

"Marvelous..." Nabiki snorted under her breath.

Soun disregarded his daughter's flippant remark. "And I have come to a decision," he continued. He looked at Nabiki and tore the draft of her proposal in half.

"There will be no surrender to anyone," he declared. "The Nerima Confederation is not yet defeated."

Nabiki started to protest, but was cut off by a sharply raised finger from her father bidding her be silent.

"I'm not through speaking," he told her. "Furthermore, I have decided, and my friend and fellow mechwarrior Genma Saotome agrees, that we should now fulfill our promise to unite our families and our fighting schools."

He looked at Ranma, who stood paralyzed before his father with a sudden nameless dread.

"We have decided to betroth Ranma Saotome, Heir to the Saotome School of Martial Arts, to my youngest daughter, Akane - effective immediately. Saotome and I have already signed the appropriate documents."

Ranma's jaw dropped against his chest, and his eyes bugged out of their sockets. Genma beamed with satisfaction.

"WHAT!?" Akane stormed. She had always known that an arranged marriage was in her future, but the future had always seemed so far away. Now that the future was here, she was near panic. "Dad, you can't be serious! Me and... and... HIM?"

"Daddy, you're insane!" Nabiki added. "And you're dragging your entire family - your entire country - down with you!"

"Nabiki!" Kasumi scolded.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ranma snapped at Akane, suddenly realizing that he was being insulted. "You gotta problem with me?"

"Look at you!" Akane shot back. "Even if I wanted to, how could I possibly marry a perverted freak like you?"

Ranma clenched his fists and sent Akane a heated look. "Oh, yeah? Well it's mutual! Who'd want a psycho macho chick like you anyways?"

"Psycho?!" Akane shrieked. "Macho!?" She stomped towards him with murder in her eyes, grabbing a pitcher of ice water from a nearby serving tray and dousing him. "At least I'm not some kind of sex-changing freak!"

"Hey!" Ranma spluttered. She wiped away the wetness from her face. "See what I mean? You're just like your Warhammer - I've never seen a chick get so overheated so fast!"

"You take that back!" Akane cried, lashing out with a jumping front kick that Ranma barely blocked with crossed forearms. She sidestepped the follow up roundhouse kick and continued waggling her tongue at her.

"Akane! Ranma!" Kasumi protested. "No fighting!"

"I've never seen a chick so unfeminine as you!" Ranma chortled, ignoring Kasumi and fanning the flames.

"Unfeminine?" Akane echoed. Her attacks stopped abruptly as Ranma's declaration stunned her. "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh come on," Ranma said, rolling her eyes. She struck a cheesecake pose. "Even I'm more feminine than a crazy uncute chick like you!"

Akane grabbed the back of a leather upholstered divan, and in one fluid motion she lifted it and threw it over her shoulder to land squarely on Ranma's head.

Genma observed his dazed son dispassionately as Akane fumed and sputtered with rage over the wrecked divan. "I hate to admit it," he remarked. "But even I wouldn't have said something like that."

Soun seemed terribly pleased with himself - all the while ignoring Nabiki's attempts to get his attention. "I agree, Saotome. But it seems as if the remark has received redress."

"They fight like cats and dogs," Genma added. "Still think this was the best choice, Tendo?"

Soun nodded confidently. "At least it will be entertaining."

Nabiki was steaming mad. Her protests to her father had gone unheard over the din generated by Ranma and Akane. This was not how things were supposed to happen. Her father had quite obviously lost his mind, and she knew who to blame for pushing him into this.

"IS ANYBODY LISTENING TO ME!?" she screamed in frustration.

Those occupants of the chamber who were still coherent turned calmly to face her. Once she had their undivided attention, she displayed her intact copy of the Furinkan Combine's proposal.

"In case any of you had forgotten, we are still in the middle of fighting a losing war with the Combine and the League. This document is the only way we can end that war honorably, and without any further bloodshed and destruction!" She bored her eyes into her father. "But instead of doing the right and just thing, even if it was distasteful, you've decided instead to indulge in some facile delusion!"

She gave them severe looks. They were all idiots. Even Kasumi, for all her misguided loyalty to Daddy.

Soun turned to Akane and Kasumi. "Perhaps you should take Ranma to the clinic. Nabiki and I need to talk."

Akane looked down at the senseless, half-concious Ranma. She felt bad about what she had done to him, but the jerk had asked for it!

"Honestly, Akane," Kasumi asked her. "Was it really necessary to do that to poor Ranma?"

"He had it coming," she muttered, but Kasumi gave her a thoroughly disappointed look, shaming her into complying. Two of the palace guards entered to assist them with Ranma, leaving Nabiki to face Soun and Genma.

"Well?" she said to them.

"We can save the Confederation," Genma said to her.

"You?" Nabiki snorted. "A fat old freak? You and your transsexual son are going to save the Confederation? Don't make me laugh!"

Genma was unbowed by her insults.

"The boy and I have the secrets to Ryuugenzawa," he said flatly. "We've been on the trail for three years, and now we've come to the end of the search. It's within our grasp."

Nabiki was floored by his naivete. Ryuugenzawa? This was the secret hope of her father, by which the Confederation would be saved? He was throwing away their only chance of escaping with their lives and their fortunes on a fantasy like Ryuugenzawa?

"Do you hear what your saying?" she returned, her voice trembling with disbelief. "Ryuugenzawa is a fairy tale, a myth! It's part Shangri-La, part Brigadoon, and part Lost Dutchman Mine! There isn't a single planet on any chart in the Inner Sphere with the name Ryuugenzawa on it! There is no such place!"

She approached her father, holding the remaining copy of the draft before her like a spirit ward.

"Get ahold of yourself, Daddy," she pleaded with her father. "I don't know what this fat fraud told you, but it doesn't matter. You're still in charge here. You can say no to his delusions and send him away. No one has to know about this; we can continue as if nothing happened."

Soun looked very tired. He shook his head slowly at her, and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"It's clear that you've been working too hard on this," he said gently to her. "I'm sorry that the burden fell so heavily upon you. The blame is all mine."

"Wha-What are you saying?" she managed.

"You need rest, Nabiki. The stress has been too much."

"You need your head examined!" Nabiki retorted.

Soun shook his head. "I'm asking you to retire for the evening," he told her. "If you don't, I will be forced to ask Doctor Ono to give you something to calm you down. The delegates will be informed tomorrow morning of my decision."

"You wouldn't," Nabiki growled.

Soun picked up a telephone and punched in a number.

"Have Doctor Ono and a nurse report to my chambers at once with a tranquilizer," he said into the receiver.

Nabiki couldn't believe this!

"All right! I'm going!" she barked angrily, and headed for the door. "You'll regret listening to this fool," she added as a parting shot. "Mark my words."

When Nabiki had left the room, Soun punched for the Sergeant at Arms of the castle.

"Yes," he said to the man. "See to it that Nabiki remains in her quarters. Use good judgement in dealing with her, but under no circumstances is she to come in contact with any delegates until tomorrow morning. If that means some measure of restraint is necessary, then so be it. I can have Doctor Ono pay her a visit."

Soun nodded his head slowly.

"Yes, you should secure her telephone communications," he agreed. "Suspend her cell-phone account too... Yes, she's very tired, and needs her rest... Thank you, sergeant major."

Genma looked at his friend. He hadn't expected such a blow-up over this. Would he still feel as commited to helping him find Ryuugenzawa as he promised after this?

"Are you all right, Tendo?"

Soun lit a cigarette and sucked it down with a single drag.

"I haven't felt this much control over my life in years," he replied, blowing the smoke out in a steady blue cloud that wreathed his head. "I feel like a new man."

Doctor Tofu Ono helped Ranma to sit up.

"How do you feel?" he asked her.

"Like someone dropped a couch on my head..." she replied.

Tofu examined the small cut on the large lump, and decided that a few stitches would be in order once the swelling went down.

"Should I ask how this happened?"

Akane affected a guilty look and excused herself from the room. Kasumi hadn't accompanied her to the clinic, deciding instead to find Nabiki and calm her down. It was obvious that Kasumi had been in on the engagement - and the decision not to surrender. Was she the one who suggested Ranma for her?

Tofu turned back to Ranma as Akane excused herself. "Let me guess..." he said dryly.

Ranma said nothing at first, wincing as a nurse dabbled at her cut scalp with an icy disinfectant swab, and then left the room. Finally it dawned on her.

"You mean she's always like this?" she asked him.

"She's very high spirited," Tofu said somewhat diplomatically. "But very sweet," he added.

"More like psycho."

"I heard that, Ranma!" Akane cried from the next room.

Ranma turned to Tofu. "I can't believe I'm supposed to marry that chick..." she muttered. "No way in hell."

Tofu did a double take. "You, Ranma? Marry Akane? I don't understand."

Ranma immediately regretted saying it.

Akane stepped back into the room before she could explain. "There's something about Ranma you should know about, doctor." She stepped over to the sink and began running the water until it became nice and hot.

"What do you think you're doing?" Ranma protested. "This was supposed to be a secret, remember?"

Akane took a paper cup from the dispenser and filled it with steaming water. Tofu looked on in puzzlement as Akane flung the contents of the cup straight at Ranma's face.

She put up her hands in defense, but the splash of water affected the change nonetheless.

"Yeowtch!" he cried. "Dammit Akane, that hurt!"

"Serves you right for what you said to me," she replied.

"Yeah, well you ain't helping your cause like this!"

Tofu blinked a few times in disbelief.

"Ranma?"

The pig-tailed mechwarrior rubbed his aching head and glared at Akane.

"Yeah, it's me. Now you know my secret, no thanks to her."

"This is remarkable!" Tofu exclaimed. "Do you mind if I run some tests on you?"

"Yes, I mind," Ranma grumbled. "No tests. No one says a word about this. Duke Tendo promised to keep this a secret."

Tofu looked crestfallen. Ranma's change was incredible, and warranted further investigation, but he respected the decision of the Duke.

"Now I understand," he said to Ranma, patting his shoulder. "I'd like to offer you congratulations."

"Huh?" Ranma grunted. "What for?"

Tofu smiled. "She'll make a wonderful bride. You're very lucky."

It was Ranma's turn to blink. "Huh?"

"There's no way I'm marrying him," Akane declared. "This is all a big mistake."

"That goes double for me!" Ranma added.

They both glared at each other in silence.

Tofu looked at them both and shook his head. "I can see that this will be an interesting engagement."

The Great Hall of Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System

13 February 3025

"You look quite handsome, Ranma."

Ranma looked down at himself and shrugged. The formal outfit was borrowed, as he had no previous need for such a ridiculous get up. Kasumi was just trying to make him feel better about this whole nightmare. Easy for her to say, he thought. She's not the one getting railroaded.

"Uh, thanks," he muttered to her.

Grand Duke Soun Tendo waited nearby to step out into the hall and address the delegates. Genma Saotome, looking very sharply dressed, stood by his side. The smug looks the two gave each other were revolting. How was it possible that his father and the Grand Duke were old friends? Not only that, but they were close enough to want their kids to marry, and still did after more than twenty years of separation!

"I don't believe this is happening to me," Ranma moaned quietly.

"Now, Ranma," Kasumi said to him. "This is all for the best. Try to show a little more enthusiasm."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "That's easy for you to say; you're not the one getting hitched."

Kasumi took his rebuke placidly.

"Be that as it may, I expect the future heir of the Confederation to comport himself in a proper and fitting manner."

Ranma's mouth dropped open.

"Heir?"

Kasumi frowned. Men could be so dense at times. "Of course, Ranma. Akane is the Heir to the entire Confederation. By marrying her, you become the Grand Duke when my father steps down." She wasn't certain if he heard this, as Ranma's eyes were glazing over, and a silvery thread of saliva cascaded down his lip.

"Ranma?" she asked worriedly.

Ranma remained vacant.

"Oh dear," Kasumi clucked. "Perhaps you should sit down. Father won't be presenting you just yet."

She motioned for a servant to bring a chair, and bade Ranma to sit. He complied absently, sitting and staring into space.

"It's not as bad as you think," Kasumi offered. "Father has years and years to go before he steps down, so you'll have plenty of time to learn the job."

Ranma made a gurgling noise from deep within his throat, but continued to stare with glazed eyes straight ahead.

Kasumi shook her head slowly in pity for him. "Poor Ranma."

"What's his problem?" Akane asked, having just arrived in the small antechamber set off from the great hall to wait with the rest of them for Soun's announcement.

Kasumi turned to her youngest sister and sighed.

"I'm afraid Ranma simply isn't ready for this," she replied.

"That makes two of us," Akane agreed.

"Oh, not this again," Kasumi lamented. Akane was such a stubborn girl. "We've already been through this, Akane."

"And nothing's changed! I don't want to marry this... this pervert."

The word 'pervert' snapped Ranma out of his catalepsy.

"Who're you calling a pervert?" he demanded.

Akane set her arms across her chest. "Who do you think?"

Tetsuo Gosunkugi sat quietly with the League Delegation, dreading the Grand Duke's announcement and yet knowing it to be inevitable. The Combine would be declared the successor to the Confederation, and the League would be left out in the cold. The only chance for success now lay in kidnapping Akane Tendo.

He had ruled out exposing the deal between Nabiki and the Combine. There simply wasn't time to exploit the chaos that it might generate, and he didn't want to blindside his cousin Hikaru. There was also little chance of installing a League-sympathizer after a coup, as he was unable to contact the handful of Confederation nobles who met the criteria of being friendly to the League and possessing the resources to take and hold the throne.

The Special Ops group he had brought with him was ready to act, but a new factor to the game had just been introduced. Apparently Hikaru had decided to stack the deck, for the nefarious Tsubasa Kurenai was on planet, and had infiltrated the palace.

Tsubasa was an enigma, and Tetsuo did not like enigmas. Rumors placed the transvestite as originating from the Federated Shiratori, where he had been a mechwarrior and scout. There were also interesting bits of gossip stating that he and the Federated Shiratori Chief of Staff had suffered some kind of falling out, which was interesting, but in Tetsuo's opinion questionable. Mikado Sanzenin was as straight as they came, so unless he had mistaken the strikingly bishonen Tsubasa for a woman, there was no chance of anything romantic between them.

What Tetsuo did know about Tsubasa Kurenai was his effectiveness as an infiltrator. The man was a master of all manner of impossible disguise, and his hastily drawn sketches of the layout of Azure Cloud Castle had been superior to the carefully crafted ones from his Special Ops group - who had more time to prepare, it must be noted. The chances of the operation's success were greatly improved by Kurenai's presense.

He considered using Tsubasa for the actual grab of Akane, and the Special Ops group for support in case things got ugly. The diplomatic fallout from a failed attempt would be bad enough, and so he didn't want to create any more of a scene than necessary. Tsubasa could work quietly, which was vital.

The palace heralds announced the entrance of the Grand Duke, stifling further reflection. He stood with his delegation and prepared to face the inevitable.

Ambassador Domitian was worried. He had been unable to contact Nabiki since dinner last night, and now the Duke had called a hasty gathering of the delegates. What was going on?

He considered the possibilities. One was that Nabiki had succeeded in getting him to sign over the power to deal in an official capacity for the Confederation, and he was going to announce this. That was fine, though it might be a bad signal to send the other delegates, who would likely suspect that something was up.

Another possibility was that he had decided on his own initiative which delegation to accept, and that Nabiki was being sequestered somewhere to keep the Combine in the dark until it was too late. Domitian couldn't imagine the League coming up with an attractive offer capable of matching the Combine, but perhaps there was some personal stake in this. He winced at the thought that the Gosunkugis were willing to give up Akane for the ability to outdeal the Combine - knowing that Tendo was reluctant to see his daughter married to Hikaru or Tatewaki, and profiting from this at the Combine's expense. Domitian's hands were tied in that matter. Prince Kuno would not accept any deal that did not include Akane as a bride.

The third possibility was that Tendo was wavering. It was a difficult matter to surrender before you had been truly beaten. He didn't like that possibility at all, but it changed little in the long run. The Combine couldn't be beaten, which was the whole point of this summit in the first place. If Tendo was having second thoughts, then perhaps a few more attacks by the Black Rose and Blue Thunder regiments were necessary to bring the Duke back to the bargaining table.

The Grand Duke was making his entrance, and Domitian stood with the rest of his entourage. There would be answers to these questions soon enough.

Kima was not eager to end the summit and return to Jusenkyo. Something very odd was occuring within the Tendo family, and all previous bets about the summit's outcome were off. She wanted to discover more about the two mechwarriors currently staying in the private guest chambers of the castle, and more importantly, what they knew about Ryuugenzawa. She faced a hard choice: leave with the rest of her small delegation and return to the Commonwealth, or stay on the planet and continue her impersonation of Akane Tendo in order to learn more. It would be dangerous to stay, but would it be more dangerous to the Commonwealth to leave?

The young man named Ranma had declared his disbelief in Ryuugenzawa, but when asked, had been unwilling to discuss it. Was he really hiding something? Did Ryuugenzawa exist, and did he know its secrets? If the answers were yes, then this was something the Commonwealth had to know. The Joketsuzoku must control Ryuugenzawa, or at least deny it from the Confederation, the League, and especially the Combine.

The Grand Duke entered the hall as she grappled with these questions. The look on his face was proud and stern, and not at all what she had seen of him previously. Something very dangerous was about to happen, she felt suddenly, and her nerves began to tingle.

"His Grace, The Grand Duke of the Nerima Confederation!"

Soun Tendo walked purposefully from the antechamber and into the Great Hall to the polite applause of the delegations. He approached the rostrum with a determined look upon his brow, mindful of what he was about to do and confident that it was the right thing. His daughters Kasumi and Akane stepped out from the antechamber to stand well off to the side from him, and they were followed by Genma and his son Ranma.

Nabiki was conspicuously absent, having chosen to remain in her apartments rather than lend any support for him. It wounded him to see her acting this way as much as it did to know that she considered him to be insane, or worse, totally incompetent. He didn't blame her for this last sentiment, knowing full well how he had failed his country for so long, but when the time had come for him to finally take decisive action on his country's behalf, she had scorned him.

He did not know what he was going to do with her after this. Perhaps a nice long vacation would clear her head and calm her down. Perhaps even a sabbatical off the planet to put some distance between them for a time. Yes, that sounded best.

He looked up from the rostrum to face the delegations, satisfied with this preliminary solution to the problem of his middle daugther. He touched a stud on the polished wooden podium and a tiny beam of laser light projected from the reading lamp and into his eyes, scanning the notes from his speech directly onto his retinas. The speech would be rebroadcast later to the public, and he wanted to look decisive and strong for his people.

"Honored delegates," he began, mindful that all eyes were upon him. "I welcome you this morning to my home and thank you for the great distances you have travelled to be here. I ask you all to please be seated."

There was murmured applause from the audience before they began to sit down. Soun continued when the hall was again silent.

"Peace in the Inner Sphere has been an elusive goal. It was hoped from this summit that we could achieve some small measure of it in our lifetimes, and I am confident that this is still possible."

He could see Domitian begin to fidget in his chair at this. The Combine Ambassador was not alone.

"However it is my duty as the Grand Duke of the Nerima Confederation, and the leader of its people, to reject the overtures made these last few days, and to continue what is a rightful claim to the Star League. The war to defend ourselves against the aggression of the Furinkan Combine and the League of Five Nails will continue until such time as these two countries have proven by their actions that they truly embrace peace."

The audience began to yammer amongst themselves at this revelation, which was clearly not expected by anyone. Soun motioned for silence, which came somewhat reluctantly.

"In the interest of promoting a just and honorable peace, I have decided to remove a bitter and divisive matter of contention between our three Great Houses."

He looked to Akane, who stepped forward hesistantly.

"I wish to announce that my youngest daughter Akane, the Heir to the Confederation, has been formally engaged to be married."

Akane blazed red and fought the urge to flee. Domitian's eyes lit up with brief hope, as did Tetsuo's. Only Kima seemed to know better, and remained stoically silent awaiting the news.

"Akane shall be married to a mechwarrior from the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts, a school that the Tendo family has been a part of for centuries, and one that has protected the Confederation for just as long."

He turned his head to Genma and Ranma. Ranma remained where he stood until a subtle shove from his father pushed him out onto the raised dias to stand next to an even more embarrassed Akane.

"I present to you Mechwarrior Ranma Saotome, Heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts."

There was a shocked silence at first as no one recognized Ranma or even had any clue as to who he was. This was followed by a rising buzz of questions amongst the delegates until a halting applause began rolling forth. Domitian turned beet red and stormed with no little fanfare out of the hall, leaving his delegation to make an awkward retreat behind him. Tetsuo remained stonefaced, and his delegation followed suit. Kima gave the Grand Duke a tiny grin of approval and then began to applaud.

What should have been an embarrassing political blunder made Soun smile with delight. He had humiliated the Combine and taken the control of his country back into his own hands. Better still, he had placed his beloved daughter out of his enemies' reach.

Ranma and Akane turned briefly to each other as the applause grew in strength. Akane still couldn't believe her father had gone and told the entire planet about the engagement. What was worse was that news of this would be spread throughout the Confederation, even the entire Inner Sphere. What was he thinking?

It was bad enough that she was now engaged to a thoughtless, arrogant jerk, but one who was afflicted with some weird sex-changing condition that happened any time he got wet? Furthermore, what did this mean for her command of the 1st Nerima Guards? Would Ranma end up with command once they were married? She couldn't stand the thought of it. The 1st Nerima had been her dream since she was little. Ranma didn't deserve it, not after all she had done to fulfill that dream. He didn't!

She looked into his eyes then, and saw that this was no picnic for him either. She felt a little bad for him, seeing as how it was obvious that he had no idea about the whole mess until it had been sprung on him. The guy was a total jerk, but at least this wasn't his fault.

Ranma remained in shock at the sudden twist of fate that would catapult him one day into the throne of Nerima. It was too much for him to even think about, much less understand. Akane seemed no less affected by this turn of events. For a moment he almost saw some warmth in her eyes, but it was probably just pity for him. He didn't need her pity. He turned away and faced the audience once again.

Ambassador Domitian was through with pleasantries.

"Tendo, do you realize what you've done!?"

Soun nodded thoughtfully.

"I don't think you do!" the Combine Ambassador shot back. "The war will continue, and you will continue to lose. Do you really think Prince Tatewaki will hold back after this insult?"

Soun took a puff on his cigarette, enjoying the way the Combine stooge had come unglued. Domitian enjoyed a reputation for being unflappable.

"I expect he won't," Soun agreed.

Domitian flushed a deeper shade of red. "I'm offering you one final chance to reconsider your actions, Tendo," he said angrily. "Put me back in touch with Nabiki, stay out of our way, and let us handle this problem - you've done enough damage to the peace process!"

Soun opened his eyes briefly, smoke streaming from his nostrils like a dragon in fitful slumber.

"And if I refuse?" It was a rhetorical question, as he would certainly refuse to capitulate.

Domitian almost spluttered with exasperation. Catching hold of himself, he stabbed an accusing finger at the Grand Duke. "Then I can't guarantee any measure of security for you or your family when the Confederation is conquered. It will all hang upon your neck."

Soun closed his eyes again and nodded. "I see." He crushed out his cigarette. With a sizzle and hiss from a wooden matchstick he lit another. "Consider yourself and your diplomatic mission formally expelled," he told the Ambassador. "You have two hours to remove yourself and your entire delegation from the castle, and six hours to get off my planet. If you do not make best speed from orbit to your JumpShip, I will see to it that your ships are blasted out of the sky."

He regarded the trembling Combine Ambassador.

"Go."

Domitian stifled an obscenity and whirled out of the room, leaving Soun, Genma, and four bodyguards who knew better than to remember anything they might have accidentally seen or heard.

Soun turned to his old friend. "I'm really sticking my neck out on the chopping block, Saotome. You had better be correct about Ryuugenzawa."

Genma smiled nervously. "Of course, Tendo. Don't worry. Once we get those two kids married, we'll start provisioning for the expedition and be on our way."

Soun nodded slowly.

"Perhaps it would be best not to force the issue of marriage, Saotome," he said. He had been thinking about the two kids ever since he had told them of his plans for them, and it was clear that entertaining or not, the way they got along together was going to be very important for the future of the Confederation. "Akane is a spirited girl, and I see that your son isn't exactly fond of the idea himself."

"He'll grow into it," Genma assured. "He's a stubborn one, but he'll grow into it." He cracked his knuckles. "Even if I have to pound some sense into him."

"All the same, perhaps we should allow them some time to get to know each other first. After all, there's no hurry. We've waited this long, right Saotome?"

Genma nodded half-heartedly. Life would be much simpler for him after the wedding that he was rather impatient. All the same, even he could see the sparks that flew between those two. "You're right, Tendo."

Tetsuo was beside himself. How could Tendo do such a thing? The implications were staggering, though he should have known something like this was up when he did not see Nabiki standing with her sisters. Tendo had scored big at home with his people for canceling the summit and sticking his enemies with the blame. It was slow suicide for the Nerima Confederation, but to their credit at least they would go down swinging.

He had his intelligence staff working at a fever pitch to find out who Ranma Saotome was. If he was such a great mechwarrior, and obviously close to the family, there should be something on him. Tendo wouldn't engage his daughter to a total stranger.

Unless he was a total fraud.

Tetsuo almost struck himself for not thinking of it sooner, but with the feverish preparations for abducting Akane, he was terribly sapped for mental resources. What if this Ranma Saotome fellow was part of a scheme by Tendo to put off the League and Combine hopes for securing Akane as a bride? He couldn't think of any practical reasons for this, but it made a certain kind of sense. It would certainly explain Saotome's anonymity.

There wasn't much time to consider this, as he and his staff were living on borrowed time. The Combine had already been forcefully expelled from the castle following a private meeting with the Duke, and it seemed likely that the League would also be asked to leave with all haste. His men were still getting into position, and that included Tsubasa.

In the meantime he had to finish preparations for getting off planet.

He and his staff would leave on their own ship, while the Special Ops group would use a stealth shuttle that had landed with Tsubasa in secret about a hundred kilometers from Gondolin and safely over the horizon. He also had an aerospace fighter wing (for air support and to cover a fighting retreat) in orbit aboard a converted Behemoth Class DropShip supposedly under a merchant flag. He hoped for a quick and bloodless operation, but was prepared to deliver Akane to his cousin one way or the other.

"Our men are in position, excellency," one of his staff informed him.

Tetsuo nodded gravely. "Tell the remaining staff to head for the starport immediately. Once we are aboard our DropShip, and only then will I give the order to commence."

"Yes, excellency."

Ranma Saotome was livid.

"I'm on to you, Old Man," he said tersely to his father.

Genma looked up from his lunch in their private quarters.

"Now what it is it, boy?"

"I know why you're doing this to me," Ranma continued. "You're trying to get me to marry that macho chick daughter of the Duke so you can live it up as one of the royal family!"

Genma slurped up a mouthful of noodles and regarded his son. "What are you talking about, Ranma?"

"Don't play dumb with me. Kasumi explained the whole thing. If I marry Akane, and her father retires, then that makes me Grand Duke."

Genma gave his son an incredulous look.

"And you have a problem with this, boy?"

"You're damn right I do!" Ranma yelled. "You're just using me so you can live fat, dumb, and happy here on Nerima. You don't even care what I think about all this - hell, you didn't even tell me about it first 'cause you knew I wouldn't play along!"

Genma set down his chopsticks.

"That's right, boy. I knew you wouldn't, but that doesn't matter anymore. The matter is settled."

"How'd you do it, Pop?" Ranma asked angrily. "How'd you get Duke Tendo to agree to this? Even he has to realize what he's doing by this."

Genma took off his glasses and wiped at them with the front of his dogi. "I thought it was obvious, boy. We made a pact when we were young to do this. In fact, it was Tendo's idea in the first place. So yes, boy, Tendo does know what he's doing."

"I'm not marrying that girl," Ranma replied, secretly stunned that Duke Tendo could have done such a thing. "You can't make me."

Genma began to redden. "Ranma, I'm tired of your selfish attitude. Just for once try to think about someone else."

"You mean someone like you?" Ranma sneered.

"I expected such a snotty remark from you," Genma said sadly. "But I suppose it couldn't be helped, trying to raise you on my own..."

"Let's talk about that," Ranma retorted. "Let's talk about Mom."

"Yes, let's," Genma agreed. "Think about how happy your mother will be, how proud of you, as you step up to rule the Confederation." His eyes narrowed and his voice took on a low reproachful tone. "Then think about how disappointed and embarrassed she'll be when you rebel against me and leave poor Akane at the altar."

Ranma cringed. "W-What are you talking about?"

Genma, sensing his son's sudden weakness, struck for the opening. "You know what I'm talking about, boy. Think it over very carefully. Do you want to make your mother proud, or ashamed?"

Ranma fought for a reply. "Well, I, uh... That is..."

Realizing his son was on the ropes, Genma stepped in with the final blow. "Face it, boy. This is bigger than you. Much bigger. Accept it before it destroys you."

Ranma's will almost crumbled. "But how the hell can I marry a girl who hates my guts?" It was a last desperate grasp, and he took it.

Genma was unfazed. "Is that all?" he laughed heartlessly. "Boy, if that's the best you can come up with, you might as well just give up."

Ranma had lost the fire of his convictions, but he wasn't yet ready to capitulate. "I thought you were supposed to be in love with the person you marry. Isn't that how it was with you and Mom?"

Genma nodded. "Of course your mother and I loved each other," he agreed. "But this is different. This is more than just a marriage, this is a formal matter of state. With this marriage, Duke Tendo is making a statement to the entire Inner Sphere that the Confederation won't give up the fight, and you're it."

"Now that you put it that way..." Ranma said slowly. Genma moved to put a reassuring arm around his son, only to get a punch in the jaw. "Now I really hate it! You're both using me! Hell, you're even using Akane! The last time I checked, she wasn't too thrilled about this either!"

"She knows the responsibility of a Tendo daughter," Genma retorted, rubbing his chin. "She's lived with the prospect of an arranged marriage all her life. She might complain, but she'll do her duty. Will you do your duty to your family, your school of martial arts, your very country? Or will you just run away?"

There had to be a way out of this, Ranma thought desperately. He could not marry a girl who hated him, even if it was his duty.

"Let me think about it," he replied. He stood from the table and walked out of the room.

"Don't take too long, boy."

Ranma found himself once again at the garden terrace. He supposed it was natural, considering that the garden had been intended as a place of peace and quiet, removed from the hustle and bustle of the castle. It was a good place to think, and he needed to do a lot of that.

Thoughts of Akane, and their sudden engagement, were foremost. He knew that he didn't hate her, but he wasn't all that fond of her either. She was the most violent-tempered girl he had ever seen, exploding in his face if he so much as breathed funny around her. He was just like her in that he wasn't happy with the engagement, so why couldn't she see that and cut him some slack?

He was definitely not ready to get married. If marriage was so great, then why did his dad leave the house as soon as possible, never to return? - and this from a man who supposedly loved his wife! No, there was no way he could marry a girl who hated him, and Akane apparently hated him a great deal.

The thought occured to him that he should ask her about it, and maybe she could convince the Duke to change his mind. Then he thought better of it. The Duke was pretty set on fulfilling this stupid pact, and if a marriage to Akane wasn't going to work out, he'd just pick a different daughter, and that wouldn't be any better.

Nabiki made his skin crawl. He admitted to himself that he wasn't the most socially adept of people, but even he could feel the contempt from her. Akane's temper was nothing compared to the cold and mocking hatred that Nabiki nursed for him. No way in hell was he going to marry her.

That left Kasumi, who was actually nice to him, and was also pretty cute. Unfortunately, she was physically three years older than him, and acted about twenty years older than him. He didn't have a whole lot of experience with mothers, but he figured Kasumi for a pretty good one. He didn't want a wife, and he really didn't want a wife that acted more like a mother.

He shook his head in frustration. He had just run through all of his marriage prospects, and they weren't comforting. That could only mean one thing: he had to somehow talk his way out of marriage altogether. Perhaps his cursed Jusenkyo body would help.

"What are you doing here?" a voice asked. Ranma quickly registered it as belonging to Akane.

He turned around. She stood in the doorway to the castle dressed in a yellow floral print dress that she had apparently changed into after the Duke's announcement.

"Nothing," he replied quietly. "I was just thinking. This is a good place for that sort of thing."

She gave him a strange look, as if never expecting in a million years that he was capable of rational thought, then offered a weak smile.

"Funny, I was coming here to do the same thing."

Ranma rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably.

"If you want, I'll go. This being your place and all..."

Her expression softened. "No, that's all right. Stay." As she said this, Ranma was gripped with an intense feeling of deja-vu. They had played a variation on this theme just last night.

She noticed his reaction and frowned.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked archly.

He shook it off. "Fine. I'm fine. Really. Just a little deja-vu. It's nothing."

"What are you talking about? Deja-vu?"

Now he was really confused.

"You know. Last night?"

Her frown deepened. "I didn't even see you last night, Ranma."

He laughed nervously. What kind of game was she playing with him? "Oh come on, Akane. Remember? You asked me about Ryuugenzawa?"

"Why in the world would I ask you about some mechwarrior's fairy tale?"

Ranma turned pale.

"You're kidding, right?"

Akane set her hands on her hips. "Of course I'm not kidding. I never saw you after dinner, and I never talked to you about something dumb like Ryuugenzawa." She looked at him with surprising concern. "Are you sure you feel okay? I think maybe I hit you harder than anyone thought."

Ranma did not know what to make of this. He was positive that he had spoken to Akane, but it was dark in the garden, and he could have been mistaken. But there was also the fact that he had asked the girl if it was her, and she had said yes. Was someone trying to put one over on him? If he was delusional, was his encounter with Kasumi last night also just fantasy?

"Ranma?"

His eyes shifted back into focus to regard Akane.

"Yeah?"

"I think we should go see Doctor Tofu," she told him. "You don't seem well."

"No, I think we need to find Kasumi," he replied. If Kasumi didn't remember bumping into him, then he would go see the doctor.

"What does Kasumi have to do with this?"

"I'll explain in a minute."

Before Akane could protest, a distant flash of light caught their eyes, drawing their attention to the horizon. Several DropShips could be seen lifting into orbit on their plasma drives. Presumably they were the League of Five Nails ships leaving the planet, as the Combine had been forced out an hour earlier.

"Well, two down, one to go," Akane announced. Until the Jusenkyo Commonwealth delegation left, she would not feel entirely at ease.

Ranma nodded once in agreement.

"So, any idea where Kasumi is?" he asked her.

"She's probably with my father," Akane replied. "You can try in the library or maybe the study."

He gave her a puzzled look. "You're not coming?"

"Why should I? You don't seem to need my help."

Ranma frowned. This chick was impossible. One minute she's concerned about me, the next she could care less...

"Uh, okaaaay... See ya."

He gave her a jaunty wave and started out the door.

Akane watched him go. What was with him, anyway? Expecting her to tag along with him wherever he went... What a conceited jerk!

She walked to the edge of the fountain and gazed into the rippling water. The spray of droplets was cool and soothing on her face. Her mother used to come here often, so for Akane, the garden and its fountain was a special place.

What was she going to do? Having to marry Ranma was almost as bad as having to marry Tatewaki Kuno or Hikaru Gosunkugi. Why did her father have to make such a stupid promise, and why had Mom let him?

She felt like dropping to her knees and crying. Her life was coming apart around her. All her hopes and dreams were being crushed by this ridiculous promise. Nabiki threatened to tear apart the family over it.

She needed someone to turn to for support, or at least a shoulder to cry on. Kasumi usually filled that role, as did Doctor Tofu, but now Kasumi was just as impossible as Dad, and going to Tofu would only hurt her more. Nabiki was never close to begin with, and now she was hostile to everyone. She had no one. No one at all.

She looked down into the waters of the pool in search of answers and found instead the reflection of a tree that should not have been so close behind her.

"What -?" she cried, spinning around.

Tsubasa, disguised as a tree, hit her in the face with a blast of narcotic mist. Akane staggered backwards, half-blinded by the numbing mist, and stumbled into the pool with a shriek and a splash. Realizing that she was going to drown if he didn't do something quickly, Tsubasa found himself hampered by the rubberized material of his disguise and unable to pull her free of the water.

Akane felt the icy water squeezing at her chest, threatening to force the air from her lungs. Her heart trip-hammered in her ears as she gasped and spluttered half-paralyzed by the numbing fog of the drug. She was going to drown, and she was powerless to stop it. All she could manage was a thin scream of panic.

Tsubasa ripped frantically at the seals of his disguise. This wasn't supposed to happen! If he let her die he would never collect for the job. He managed to strip the tree disguise down to his waist when a man in a red mandarin blouse and black draw-string trousers walked into the garden.

"Hey Akane, where exactly is the librar- urk!"

Ranma Saotome saw a woman who was dressed as a tree shirking her disguise as Akane spluttered and splashed weakly in the fountain. From her lethargic attempts at getting out of the fountain, it was clear that she was somehow incapacitated. It did not take a genius to realize that This Was Not Good.

"What the hell's going on?" he demanded, rushing the tree chick.

In response to his question the girl in the tree suit whipped out a small handheld device rather like a flashlight, only Ranma could tell by the tinny whine of a millimeter wavelength radar array that it was in fact a laser pistol. The radar beam tickled like pins and needles across his chest, giving the weapon a precise range for the focusing optics.

He threw himself to the right as a burst of light rather like a camera flash filled his field of vision, and by the time the nearly silent sizzle of ionized air reached his ears, his left arm was already burning. A jolt of pain shot up his arm and hammered in the back of skull behind his ear as the laser beam went wide of cutting him down. He tumbled into a roll and sprang for the cover of a nearby marble statue.

As he rolled upright and threw himself against the statue, the sweet smell of his own cooked flesh assailed his nostrils. His left arm was badly burned from the elbow to the wrist, and where it was not burned, tiny steam explosions had left the tissue lacerated and bleeding freely. The sleeve of his blouse was melted in spots to the charred skin. The beam must have grazed him in passing, or else he would have had a stump instead of a barbecued arm.

He grit his teeth and tried to focus beyond the pain. The statue wasn't very good cover, so he couldn't stay there long. He needed to take this assassin out and fast - without getting burned down in the process.

A laser as small as that one would only have a few shots worth of juice before it ran dry. That was in his favor, but it only took one good shot to cut him in half. The other problem was that Akane was flailing in the fountain and did not have long before she drowned, and so he really couldn't afford to play around with this assassin chick in order to get her to use up all her ammo.

As if to make a point, a beam sizzled into the statue, cracking the hard stone as it expanded with sudden heat and peppered him with tiny slivers. He sprang to his feet and sprinted for another statue. A third beam crackled just in front of him, its fading tenth-of-a-second pulse of light registering in his eyes far too late for him to react. All he could do was throw himself into another somersault and roll clear before beam number four found him.

The next beam churned up the grass behind him in an explosion of moist sod and steam that pelted his back. Ranma sprang to his feet in time to see the assassin fumbling through her disguise for another powercell. He charged, knowing that this might be his only chance.

Tsubasa bit back a curse as the grip of his laser pistol tingled with the low energy warning. This character in the red and black was some kind of greased lightning, evading his shots at every turn. Even the beam that should have cut him in half managed only to graze his arm.

He ejected the powercell with a flick of his thumb and reached for another one on his belt. He needed to kill this guy now, before Akane drowned and before someone heard the commotion and sounded the alarm. The only things going for him at the moment were an Akane too drug disabled to make much noise, a nearly silent weapon, and an opponent who wasn't smart enough to yell for help.

Ranma's foot was practically in his face a moment later, as the pig-tailed mechwarrior flew at him in a jump kick. Tsubasa twisted clear of the blow, sending Ranma over and past him to crash into the fountain. The laser pistol fell from his hand as he tried to steady himself in the clumsy half-donned disguise.

Ranma slammed into the fountain and bounced off with a yelp to land in the pool next to Akane. Tsubasa loomed over him, bent double to retrieve his laser pistol, which made for an easy target. As the would-be kidnapper popped up with the weapon, Ranma grabbed onto the pillar of the fountain for leverage and wrenched her legs up into a double kick to Tsubasa's midsection.

He saw the assassin stagger over with a grunt of pain, giving him enough time to get Akane's head out of the water. She was coughing and choking, her eyes bloodshot and wild with fright, and Ranma's heart nearly seized at the thought of how close she had come to dying. As Tsubasa struggled with his disguise, Ranma took Akane up into her arms and made a break for the door.

She didn't quite make it before one of the League's Special Ops men burst through the door with a suppressed submachinegun under his stolen Confederation Army uniform cloak. Over a dozen more were right behind him. Ranma stopped short, relief evident on her face upon beholding the men she thought were on her side.

At least until the soldier put the fat black muzzle of his weapon against the tip of her nose.

She jerked her head hard enough to the side to give herself a case of whiplash, which was a small price to pay for not getting it blown off. A dozen rounds of subsonic 10mm hydrashok sailed millimeters past her ear and the burning powder from the muzzle flash singed her hair. As she dodged the burst she planted her left foot, held tight to the girl in her arms, and pivoted into a savage roundhouse kick that hammered unchecked through a full circle, and with the knife-edge of her foot coming squarely into contact with a point just behind the soldier's ear. The sound of crunching bone went unnoticed as Ranma hopped clear of the doorway in search of another exit.

Unfortunately, it didn't look like there were any other exits, except the edge of the garden wall, which was a precipitous drop of about four hundred meters to a hard and jagged spur of mountain rock, and therefore right out.

To make matters worse, the assassin had reloaded her laser pistol, and a strobing flash of light cut into the stone wall by Ranma's head. More splinters of rock stung her face as she finally got it through her head to scream for help. The rest of the League commandos poured through the door as she hollered for somebody, anybody, to help. The only thing that kept them from cutting her down in a hail of bullets right then and there was the fact that she was carrying Akane in her arms.

"Give it up," Tsubasa replied coldly. "We've got you outnumbered and outgunned."

"Bite me!" Ranma shot back. "Any second now this place is gonna be crawling with troops."

Tsubasa grimaced, knowing this to be true. He also knew that whoever Akane's protector was, he suddenly seemed shorter than before. His voice seemed surprisingly feminine, and wasn't his hair black just a minute ago?

It was more important to resolve this as quickly as possible, for the extraction ship was already on its way, and save the analysis for later. "Hand her over and we won't hurt you," he said soothingly. He motioned for his men to lower their weapons even as he dropped his laser into his belt pouch.

He started towards Ranma and Akane slowly, and in as unthreatening a manner as possible. While he had ditched the laser, he still had the narcotic mist sprayer in his fingertip. One good shot would drop his pig-tailed nemesis in his tracks.

"Stay back," Ranma growled.

"Make it easy on yourself," Tsubasa countered. He was almost within sprayer range. The remaining commandos kept watch both on Ranma and on the only exit from the garden. "You would already be dead by now if I wanted it."

"You can't have her," Ranma retorted, coiling to strike before the tree chick could do something sneaky. Her left arm was about to give out from bearing Akane's weight in its wounded condition, and her knees were shaky. She had to do something before she ran out of gas.

It was looking fairly hopeless for them until the low wail of an air raid siren began to echo across the mountain top castle. Tsubasa cursed bitterly. Their extraction ship was on schedule, but they weren't, and its arrival had tipped off the Confederation garrison before they had Akane. The garden began to throb as Rifleman and Crusader battlemechs stomped from hangars to their reinforced air-defense positions high on the castle walls above them.

"Time's up, ya crazy broad!" Ranma cackled triumphantly. If you're lucky, you might be able to bag ass out of here before you get captured."

Tsubasa's blood began to boil. He couldn't believe that pig-tailed bastard had just called him a broad!

"How dare you call me that!" he cried, and charged the last few meters to get within sprayer range.

Ranma saw the outstretched finger and knew no good could come from it. With a desperate groan of exertion she tossed the unconscious body of Akane Tendo straight into the air and out of immediate danger even as she threw a high front kick that struck Tsubasa's hand and knocked it aside. The narcotic spray burst forth into a shimmering cloud of droplets that missed the mark completely. Tsubasa screamed with pain at his broken wrist and crumpled to the ground as Akane fell back into Ranma's arms.

The battlemechs began to open fire above them as the small and fast stealth shuttle screamed over the garden. Two turrets on the spacecraft belched deafening bolts particle beam fire at the 'mechs, suppressing them long enough to hover above the garden on four tongues of thruster flame that sprayed out at angles to keep them from incinerating the garden below. Despite the shuttle pilot's precautions, the air burned with the heat of the particle beams and the shuttle's fusion drives.

A hatch opened in the bottom of the shuttle and twenty long nylon shock cords fell from inside. Tsubasa knew when he was beaten, and took hold of one of the cords with his good hand to latch the carabiner hook to his belt. The commandos followed his lead, spraying suppressing fire of their own at the doorway to keep the real Confederation soldiers from getting through.

Ranma watched them spring into the air as the shuttle pitched up, right, and down the mountain to get below the castle battlemech weapons. It then took off straight for Gondolin, knowing that the Confederation 'mechs would be loathe to fire at them for fear of stray shots landing in the city. The League agents were just tiny specks in the distance when they were finally pulled inside and the shuttle screamed aloft for orbit.

"Ranma! You risked your life to save my little girl! I'm so proud of you!"

Ranma Saotome gasped for breath under the crushing and tearful embrace of her future father-in-law, Grand Duke Tendo. She was seated on a litter in the garden as several paramedics under the supervision of Doctor Tofu examined her. Akane sat nearby, weak and dazed from the drugs, but otherwise suffering no serious injury. Numerous soldiers and medical staff clustered around them, as did Genma and Kasumi.

"That's quite a laser wound," Tofu remarked as the Duke unlatched himself from Ranma. "You're lucky to still have an arm."

Ranma looked down at the charred and bloody arm. The pain was deadened somewhat by the nerve blocking acupressure points Tofu had stimulated. She could still move her fingers, but the lack of strength concerned her.

"How bad is it?" she asked. It looked pretty bad.

Tofu moved a sterile gloved finger along the arm at various points.

"I'm afraid we're looking at a few hours of minor surgery to debride the arm before we can attempt any skin grafts. It might be a few days before we get any indication of permanent nerve damage, but I think the wound was shallow enough to preclude anything serious. It also looks like a few quality hours will be spent picking tiny bits of stone shrapnel out of your skin, but I can get a nurse to do that."

"So I'll be okay?"

Tofu smiled and patted her on the back.

"In a few weeks you'll be just fine. Once we get your arm bandaged up I'll take a look at that neck of yours. A little acupuncture should probably do the trick." He looked towards Akane. "I'm going to see to Akane now."

Ranma followed the doctor's glance over to her. She seemed pretty out of it.

"Is she gonna be all right?"

Tofu smiled again. "She'll be fine as well, don't you worry."

"Who's worried?" Ranma asked nervously.

Tears continued to stream down Soun Tendo's face as he looked upon Ranma. "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for Akane, son," he blubbered. "Oh, I can almost feel the love between you two..."

"What?!" Ranma squawked. "Now wait just a second here..."

Genma stepped in before his son said something stupid. "I don't think there was any doubt where the boy's priorities lie, Tendo. The real question here is who was responsible for this?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Ranma agreed.

Soun frowned with contempt. "It was the Combine," he intoned. "It had to be. They couldn't get my little girl one way, so they tried another." He clenched his fists tight and the tears began to flow even swifter. "I have a mind to order the System Defense units to destroy them before they can reach their JumpShip and escape."

"That might be a bit hasty," Genma hedged. "After all, we can't prove anything yet." He looked down at Ranma. "Well, boy, who do you think was responsible for this?"

"Didn't I just say that I'd like to know?" Ranma groused.

Tofu had completed his preliminary examination of Akane and turned to the Duke. "These two are safe to move," he declared. "I would recommend taking them down to the infirmary at once."

Soun agreed. He felt vulnerable in the garden, and there was no reason not to believe that other hostile agents might still be within the castle. The Jusenkyo Commonwealth delegation had been about to depart when the air defense units went on the alert and the castle was sealed. They could have easily infiltrated spies or assassins in the confusion.

He gave orders to his troop commanders to allow the Commonwealth delegation to depart, followed by a thorough inspection of the castle and its grounds. This would not happen a second time.

Kima was commited to leaving now. Whoever had pulled the stunt with Akane had loused up her chances of staying on as a spy. Tendo would most certainly tighten security around the castle in the wake of the attack and attempted kidnapping of Akane.

She suspected that the League was responsible, as kidnapping really wasn't Tatewaki Kuno's style, and certainly not something a career diplomat like Ambassador Domitian would do. It did however fit Hikaru Gosunkugi's usual modus operandi She wondered how long it would take the Nerima Confederation's espionage network to find out. Probably a while if Nabiki continued to remain on the outs with her father.

The last of her staff had already departed down the mountain under heavy security, and it was just the primary diplomats that remained. She wanted one last look at the castle, under the pretext of seeing the Grand Duke a final time and paying her respects. Surprisingly, the Duke had been willing, if somewhat reluctant, to see her.

She was under escort of course, and they came to a long hallway adjacent to the garden and the scene of the incident. Duke Tendo appeared shortly, along with his own entourage of bodyguards and staff types. Akane and her new fiance followed next with various medical people and the family doctor. Tendo and his bodyguards stopped for her as the rest of the group continued on.

"I apologize for the less than hospitable farewell," Soun offered her.

"I understand, your Grace," Kima returned. "This has been a disgraceful moment in Inner Sphere relations. I would like to state for the record that the Commonwealth categorically denounces this incident and those responsible for it."

Soun nodded solemnly.

"Perhaps our two countries can come to a better understanding through this."

"Perhaps. Time will tell," she replied. Ranma and Akane were passing behind the Duke on litters as she said this, and she found herself more than a little distracted. Particularly by Ranma, who seemed much smaller than when she had seen him in the grand hall. His hair was also a different color now, and...

Kima turned pale. Ranma had very obvious breasts. Unless she was seeing things, which she doubted, it could only mean one thing.

Ranma was a woman.

But Ranma had been very much a man that morning. It made no sense. Unless... She felt her own body begin to tingle at the thought. Unless Ranma had a second body just like Kima did. A Jusenkyo body... The thought would never have occured to her if she hadn't already been exposed to the Jusenkyo Effect.

The only way that was even remotely possible was if Ranma had been to the Jusenkyo Labs. She knew of no outsider participant in the Breeding Program who had been exposed to the Jusenkyo Effect. Only Doctor Gaido would know for certain, though.

"Is there something wrong?" Tendo asked her. Her reaction to seeing Ranma must have been more telling than she imagined.

"Oh. Nothing at all," she managed. "I was simply overcome by what had befallen your daughter's fiance." She bowed for him. "By your leave, your Grace?"

Soun nodded. "Of course. I wish you a safe and speedy journey."

Kima thanked him and left as quickly as she dared. This was probably the most important piece of information she had to offer the Matriarch regarding the summit.

"How do you feel, Akane?"

Akane shrugged half-heartedly. She was in her own room again, now dressed in a yukata, her dress folded neatly at her side on the bed. Kasumi continued to hover over her since her release from the infirmary, and it was getting annoying.

"I'm okay. A little nauseous, but that's because of whatever it was they hit me with."

Kasumi nibbled at her fingertips. She always worried about Akane, but this was one of the few times that she had felt completely powerless over matters. Now she felt guilty for somehow letting her baby sister down. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Akane gave her a wan smile. "I'm okay, Kasumi. I just need a little rest."

"Are you sure?" Kasumi pressed. "It's no trouble."

"I'm fine."

Kasumi didn't look convinced. "Well, if something comes up, just let me know."

Akane smiled. "I will."

"And you know there's always two guards outside your door," Kasumi added.

"I know." She hated it, but she knew enough about her father and eldest sister to know that keeping guards close by was the only way they were going to be able to sleep nights for the next few weeks.

"All right," Kasumi conceded. "You rest now, and I'll have dinner sent up to your room."

Akane nodded again somewhat despairingly, and Kasumi finally took the hint. She left without another word, leaving Akane alone at last. She fell back onto her bed and let the anti-tox drugs work their way through her system to clean out whatever it was the spy had used on her.

She couldn't sleep, despite her fatigue. It ate at her self-confidence to have been taken so easily by an enemy agent. She was better than that, and smarter than that. If it hadn't been for Ranma, why she'd...

Ranma.

She didn't remember much of anything after the spy had drugged her, only hazy nightmares of drowning and gunfire. She certainly didn't remember Ranma coming to her rescue, or of getting shot in the process. Once the narcotic agent had started to wear off in the infirmary, Ranma was already in a separate room, so she had to take other people at their word for what had happened.

The idea of Ranma risking his life for her didn't click. It didn't seem like something he would do. Why should he even care?

She sat up in bed once more, and unfolded the dress she had been wearing that day. Ranma's blood stained the fabric in wide, messy, and slowly browning streaks along the back panel, left shoulder, and below the bodice. There was far more blood than she was expecting.

A lump formed in her throat, and her eyes began to water as she realized that it was all true, but her biggest question remained as yet unanswered.

Why did he even care?

Furinkan Combine JumpShip Imperator,

within four light-seconds of the

Alpha Centauri-A Zenith Jump Point,

Alpha Centauri System, Furinkan Combine

17 February 3025

FCJS Imperator hung high above the yellow sun of Alpha Centauri-A awaiting news from the Nerima Confederation. Pacing the Executive Bridge of the JumpShip in his dark blue hakama was Tatewaki Kuno, Prince of the Furinkan Combine, Heir Apparent, and General of their Battlemech Forces. The prince, known throughout the Inner Sphere as the Blue Thunder of Furinkan, was not in an agreeable mood.

"Communications," he barked. "What news?"

The Communications Officer, long accustomed to his prince's temper, managed to keep his voice fresh and free of irritation at this sixth query in the last thirty minutes.

"The Ambassador's ship has not yet appeared from Jump, Highness."

Kuno nodded coolly, though it was clear that he was anything but. Had that fool Domitian failed, or would that vision of beauty known as Akane Tendo finally be his? If Domitian had succeeded in bargaining with the treacherous Nabiki, the price he would pay for Akane's hand would be dear, but worth every last C-bill. He would gladly hand over a dozen worlds if it would mean that Akane was his.

So lost was he in his rapture for Akane that he did not hear his sister, Princess Kodachi, enter the Executive Bridge.

"Ah, brother dear," she simpered for him, making him start in surprise. "Do you really believe even that horrid Nabiki Tendo would be so callous as to sell her own sister to you?"

"Be silent," he admonished her.

"What then of your declaration to the entire Inner Sphere that no man shall marry Akane Tendo without having defeated her in battle?" Kodachi continued with a malicious grin. "It seems to me that you have yet to accomplish this task."

"Hold thy tongue, sister," Kuno growled. He hated having his sister point out the glaring flaws in any of his ideas, but most of all those ideas concerning his pursuit of Akane Tendo. Her words were a cut enough to the quick that he did not think to mention his sister's own recent personal defeat at Akane's hand. "The Blue Thunder shall yet prevail over her."

Kodachi laughed heartily in her brother's face at this. Officers and crew on the bridge quickly turned away from the two and pretended that they didn't exist.

"My dear brother," she chuckled. "Ever the optimist."

Tatewaki grew weary of her impertinence. "Hath not thy regiment orders to carry out?" he demanded.

Kodachi snickered at his feeble attempt to dismiss her.

"Of course, brother dear," she affirmed with a smirk. She struck a forlorn pose with her arm across her brow. "How careless of me to forget!"

She continued to stand there, mocking him with her eyes.

"Be off with you then!" Tatewaki barked, throwing his hands up in frustration.

Satisfied with his outburst, she gave him a peck on the cheek and sauntered off the bridge with a wave of her hand.

"Farewell, brother dear," she called with her back turned to him. "Give my love to father if you see him."

Tatewaki Kuno, Crown Prince of the Furinkan Combine, clenched his fists in rage as his sister stepped through the airtight door to the Senior Officers' quarters. How dare she make sport of him in front of the crew!

"Contemptuous witch," he hissed to himself. "How I loathe thee, sister, and look to the day when I, Tatewaki Kuno, shall sit upon the Star League throne and laugh whilst thou art exiled to a convent in the Periphery! Mark me well, sister, for as the stars shine, so shall this come to pass!"

He was closing his eyes in rapture at the thought when a brief flurry of activity possessed the bridge crew.

"Conn, Sensory;" a voice called over the intercom. "New contact designated Romeo Four bearing zero-three-three plus zero-one, range three point four light-seconds. Contact appears to be a ship emerging from Jump."

"Sensory, Conn; aye," the Officer of the Deck acknowledged.

Tatewaki watched his bridge crew swing into action as the contact was probed further, and tactical displays updated with fresh data. The Battlecomp made initial recommendations. If the contact was evaluated to be hostile, four squadrons of aerospace fighters were available for rapid response, as were several Union Class dropships fitted out as gunships. The Imperator's crew would be ordered to battlestations.

Because the technology to build new Kearny-Fuchida Jumpcores was lost to the antiquity of the Star League, the Articles of War forbade his forces from firing upon any enemy JumpShip that did not first open fire on them. However, any DropShips it released were fair game. Most of the remaining starships of the Inner Sphere had been stripped of all but the most basic defensive armaments in light of this convention. The Imperator itself was an exception to this; being one of the few comparatively intact Star League battlewagons in service.

These precautions proved unnecessary mere moments later.

"Conn, Communications; Receiving hails from the JumpShip Acropolis,"the Communications Officer announced. "They request permission to depart the Quarantine Zone under normal drive."

"Conn, Sensory; Confirming Contact Romeo Four as FCJS Acropolis by IFF transponder and JumpCore EMS Emissions Signature," the Sensory section added.

The Officer of the Deck turned to Prince Kuno, who gave a nod of assent.

"Inform the Ambassador's staff that I expect a full report upon docking," he told the Officer of the Deck. "I shall await them in the Salon."

"At once, your Highness."

Tatewaki Kuno was barely able to contain the excitement in his voice when his steward announced the arrival of Ambassador Domitian and his staff. He took a calming sip of hot sake before giving his permission for them to enter.

Ambassador Domitian entered the salon, his face an expressionless mask. Tatewaki Kuno knew the man was not given to much emotion, and so did not see anything amiss with his ambassador's blank countenance. His aides however could not claim poker faces half as good as their master's.It was enough to set him on edge.

"By your leave, Highness," the man offered.

Tatewaki motioned for him to begin.

Domitian collected himself before speaking. His serenity became more pronounced, which began to worry Tatewaki even more.

"It did not go well," the ambassador began at length.

Tatewaki's blood pressure rose a few points.

"Those League swine outbid us?!" he cried out in disbelief.

"No, Highness. The League's offer was spurned as well."

Tatewaki's ire became puzzlement.

"Who then?" he demanded. "Speak, man! Was it the Commonwealth? Indeed, I put no fell deed past those harlots!"

Domitian shook his head slowly.

Tatewaki became livid at the implications. "Th-The F-F-Federated Shiratori?!" he stammered in utter horror of the idea that Azusa Shiratori might take easy possession of that which he had striven so mightily for. "Say it not!"

"Nay, Highness," Domitian replied.

"Speak then!" Tatewaki raged. "With whom hath the brazen Nabiki Tendo found favor?"

"Grand Duke Tendo has withdrawn his surrender offer," Domitian replied carefully. "As the documents favoring our custody of the Confederation were being presented for his approval, he dismissed all of the representatives and announced the betrothal of his daughter Lady Akane to a Mechwarrior named Saotome."

Tatewaki Kuno's lower lip began to tremble. Veins bulged out of his forehead and neck. His skin took on a deep and distinctly unhealthy crimson hue. Not a breath escaped his lips for over three minutes, before he at last gave rise to his voice.

"HE HATH BETROTHED MY BELOVED TO ANOTHER, A MAN NOT MYSELF!?"

Domitian took a step toward the door. His aides followed his lead.

"I am afraid so, your Highness..."

Tatewaki leaped up from his chair and across the salon to strangle his ambassador.

"EXPLAIN YOURSELF, CRETIN!" he bellowed, shaking the man's head so vigorously that his neck made popping sounds. "WHY HAST THOU RETURNED WITH SUCH NEWS TO MINE EARS!? WHY HAST THOU NOT PERSUADED TENDO TO HIS BETTER REASON!? WHY ART THOU NOT EVEN NOW RIPPING THY BEATING HEART FROM THY BREAST IN SHAME AS I THROTTLE THEE!?"

Ambassador Domitian could not reply, having slipped mercifully into unconsciousness - a fact that went unnoticed by Kuno as he continued his tirade. Only after watching the man's eyes roll up into the back of his head did he release Domitian and let him drop bonelessly to the floor.

"Be gone from my sight, man!" he told his half-dead ambassador. "Until sweet Akane Tendo is my betrothed, get thee hence, and darken not the chambers of the great Tatewaki Kuno with thy feckless and timid presence!"

Tatewaki Kuno pondered matters before his personal shrine well into the ship's night cycle. Domitian had failed him. He had a mind to execute the fool, but put the notion aside. Spur of the moment executions were bad for morale, no matter how well deserved.

He looked up at his shrine, with its numerous depictions of Akane Tendo, and sighed mournfully. The photos, stereographs, paintings, and even a sculpture carved from a single block of white diorite captured the essence of her in every mood, in every delightful way, and were each masterpieces of art and craftsmanship. Yet she was not there in his arms, warm and vital, making his shrine but a hollow counterfeit of her glory.

"Long do I pine for thee, Akane Tendo," he said to the images of her.

Slowly he looked down from the shrine to the detailed report Domitian had prepared prior to his Jump to Alpha Centauri. One image captured his eye, and brought the bitter taste of bile to his throat. This cur, this oaf, this Ranma Saotome, had dared to presume himself her fiance - mocking the great Tatewaki Kuno!

He would be brought to his accounts, Tatewaki vowed. He made plans to display this cretin upon the prow of his mighty battlecruiser as a warning to the Inner Sphere. It would be a fitting gesture for the one who had stolen his goddess in the night like a common burglar to endure forever as his trophy in the cold dark reaches of space.

The Duke would have to suffer for this insult as well. Indeed, the entire Confederation existed only to keep Akane from her rightful place as the wife of the Blue Thunder, and would have to pay.

"Very well," he decided grimly. "Where diplomacy hath failed to gently persuade, so shall the might of Tatewaki Kuno prevail. We shall raze the Confederation unto the ground, and scatter its ashes unto the winds. 'Til sweet Akane be mine, let no man of the Confederation remain who doth not gibber and quake at the sound of my voice!"

A tone sounded at his door.

"Speak!" he commanded.

"I have a dispatch from the Nerima Confederation marked most urgent," the voice of his aide de camp replied.

Tatewaki thought for a moment.

"Enter."

Tatewaki looked over a sheet of paper from his Intelligence staff regarding the dispatch. It had been sent via HPG using a Combine code that the Confederation had obviously broken, and purported to be from Nabiki Tendo. She desired a meeting with him, in person, on neutral ground, and in regards to the affair with the Confederation.

He considered it. She had failed him as much as Domitian, but perhaps there was still something to be gained from entertaining her suggestion. There would have to be an accelerated military campaign against the Confederation - for honor's sake if nothing else - though he would gladly accept a brokered surrender if it meant that Akane would be his.

He decided that he had little to lose by meeting with Nabiki at this point, and gave the appropriate orders to his staff.

Eight Shining Pearls Fortress,

The Ancestral Home of House Joketsuzoku

Planet Jusenkyo, Jusenkyo System,

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

18 February 3025

Happousai allowed himself to be led by two formidable ladies of House Joketsuzoku into Cologne's presense. Being the kind of man that he was - that is, completely full of himself - he took for granted the fact that he was one of the few outsider males allowed such priviledged access to the Matriarch. Instead he took advantage of his diminutive stature to look up the two girls' uniform cheongsam minidresses.

The two either didn't notice his visual groping or else were possessed of considerable self-restraint. With martial precision they conducted him past exquisitely painted silk partitions and into the private audience chamber of the Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku. Incense burned in a corner of the octagonal chamber in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui, and the faint hum of hidden electronics confirmed his suspicions that even in this place of thoughtful introspection and quiet meditation, Cologne was never far from the instrumentality that connected her with her empire.

Cologne, wizened and shrunken beyond any practical estimates of her age, sat quietly in the center of the chamber smoking a pipe. The acidic tang of the smoke, enough to overcome the sublime blend of the incense, told Happousai that whatever the substance was that she was enjoying, it was not tobacco. She looked up briefly at them, narrowed eyes glinting in the soft golden light of scattered candles, and puffed on her pipe. For a moment Happousai tried to remember that the shriveled crone who sat before him was at one time a tall and willowy young woman of celestial beauty.

"Pink, Link, that will be all. Leave us," she said in a dry voice. The two Joketsuzoku hesitated, then retired from the chamber. They would be out of earshot, as was expected of them, but not unable to answer an urgent summons. Happousai watched them go.

Cologne cleared her throat and cast her rheumy eyes up to regard him. He wasn't certain if he detected approval or reproach in the cast of her face.

"I am informed that you have urgent news to bring me," she said in a voice of measured disinterest.

Happousai pawed at the ornate rug with his foot.

"Never mind that, Cologne," he said spryly. "How've you been? It's been, what, two years now?"

Cologne's passive face grew cold.

"I am a busy woman," she reminded him. "Because you have been useful to me in the past and because of our shared history I am perhaps overly indulgent of you, Happi, but if you don't tell me immediately of your news, I shall have you thrown out."

Happousai tried to look hurt at her reproach.

"Fine then," he pouted. "It so happens that I ran into two of your guinea pigs on Capra. It seems that's as far as they could run. I thought you might be interested in getting them back, and if so, I could make myself available to help."

Cologne closed her eyes and shook her head. Herb and Doctor Gaido still had to answer for their lack of restraint concerning those two. She then opened her eyes and put on a bland face for Happousai.

"If I were interested in having them back, they would already be in Gaido's lab," she said evenly. "You have wasted my time."

She was about to send for Pink and Link when a purple-haired vixen in a dangerously short cheongsam bounded breathlessly into the chamber. Happousai's eyes bulged out of their sockets in appreciation for her pulchritude.

"Great-grandmother!" she cried happily in Chinese. She then noticed the gnomish lump of Happousai and fell to her knees to give the Matriarch her proper due in front of outsiders.

"What is it, Shampoo?" Cologne asked gently in the Standard tongue. There was little wrong that Shampoo could do in her eyes, and she often doted on her without thinking of it.

"Is good news!" Shampoo reported. Her Standard was a little weak, since she had devoted her considerable energies toward fighting skills rather than more scholarly pursuits. "Confederation surrender talks have failed!"

Cologne nodded briskly. This was good news indeed. Such good news that she forgot that Happousai was still present.

"Was Kima successful in throwing the talks off track?"

Shampoo beamed.

"Was not necessary, Great-grandmother! Duke Tendo withdrew surrender offer at last moment."

Cologne frowned. While it was vital to the Commonwealth's interests to maintain the status quo within the Inner Sphere until her plans had come to fruition, she had not counted on Tendo to do such a rash thing. Kima's very role as Commonwealth observer was to derail the talks in such a way that an orderly transfer of power to the Combine could not happen. Cologne worried less about the League winning Tendo over, as they were weak and already unwittingly deep into her pockets, but better still to keep things as they were. Now Tendo had done something unexpected.

"Explain," she demanded of Shampoo.

"No have full details yet," Shampoo demurred. "Report came over Hyper Pulse Generator from agents in Comstar. Kima due to arrive in two weeks from Nerima to report in person."

Cologne frowned deeper. What was so important that Kima wouldn't seek to report via HPG message rather than delay for weeks to Jump back to the Joketsuzoku? She of all people knew how deeply infiltrated Comstar was with Commonwealth agents. A message could easily slip through unnoticed by the ignorant tech-priests of that misguided and self-serving organization.

What was Duke Tendo up to? Could it be that the man was taking back his throne from his manipulative daughter Nabiki? Was this merely a petty squabble between the family, or did it hint at something darker? By all reasonable estimates the Confederation was a lost cause within twenty years no matter how hard they resisted. What was Tendo doing? Had he really cracked, as some had long suspected, after the death of his wife?

Cologne thought hard as she puffed on her pipe. Fortunately, Happousai seemed too interested in Shampoo to be curious of Commonwealth affairs. She was about to dismiss him a second time when she came to a decision.

"Happi?" she asked sweetly. Her hoarse croaking voice almost pulled it off.

Happousai turned his ravenous eyes away from Shampoo long enough to regard her.

"Yes, Cologne?"

"I have a job for you. I want you to go to Nerima and find out what's going on within the Tendo family. It is my understanding that you have something of a familiarity with the Duke. Use that to get close to them, and report via HPG everything you can."

"Why me?" he whined. He always whined. Cologne usually raised her compensation rates just to get rid of him and his huge dewy eyes.

"Because you are the best man for the job," she told him. "And for reasons I have already outlined. You know that I will be generous in my compensation for your efforts."

Happousai's eyes went alight, and he spared a lascivious glance towards the oblivious Shampoo.

"You know what I want, Cologne," he said, voice quavering with hope.

Cologne's eyes darkened like roiling thunderclouds.

"While you may be a mechwarrior of considerable skill, you are far too old to be of use to my breeding program. Your potency is suspect, and furthermore, you will not enjoy such a boon with Shampoo."

Happousai's face trembled halfway between crushed and enraged, and Cologne was quick to let him off easy. The gnomish little mechwarrior could be extremely dangerous in his wrath.

"But perhaps I have someone else who could 'entertain' you in some way," she added slyly. "Think it over, Happi. Time is running short for you to reach Nerima while the situation remains sufficiently undeveloped to do any good."

Happousai nodded slowly, a wide boyish grin spreading across his face. His eyes became huge and dewy at the thought of an evening or six with one of Cologne's gorgeous Amazons.

"When do I leave?"

Fisherman's Wharf, City of San Francisco,

North American Protectorate,

Planet Earth, Sol System

24 February 3025

"What's the matter, Kuno-chan; is your espresso too strong?"

Tatewaki Kuno looked up from his demitasse and into the deep walnut colored eyes of Nabiki Tendo. There was a playful cruelty in those eyes and in her crooked smile as she sipped from her own cup.

"Thy choice for a rendezvous unsettles me," he said evenly.

Nabiki did not reply at first. Her gaze was taken by the fog that shrouded the distant towers of the Golden Gate bridge and the green expanse of the Presidio to the north, and by the crumbling ruins of Alcatraz across the icy slate colored bay. This was her first time on Earth, and she was in love with San Francisco.

"The Sol System is neutral ground, Kuno-chan," Nabiki said at length. She knew how much he despised the Earth. Only the island of Yamato meant anything to him, and that was out of respect for his ancient samurai heritage. "And if you come all the way to Sol, you might as well set foot on Earth."

"Thou wouldst do well to refrain from addressing me in such an uncouth fashion," Tatewaki sniffed. Nabiki always managed to rub him the wrong way; one of the reasons he had delegated the surrender negotiations to Domitian. Now he was pressed into dealing with her in person.

Nabiki laughed.

"What, you expect me to call you 'Your Royal Highness?' Give me a break, Kuno-chan. As the Tendo Family voting proxy in Ceres Metals Corp - which has offices in this system - I can be here without a fuss. Your presence here as Heir Apparent to a household with a claim to the Star League is patently illegal and a threat to the Sol System's neutrality. You want Comstar to shut you down - forcing you to communicate solely by JumpShip - fine, I'll address you as Prince and watch as the Combine falls apart from within."

Tatewaki seethed in silence. Comstar would indeed act to protect their interests, and a communications embargo was their most effective weapon. The Combine had a small handful of ships with HPG transceivers, but needed techs from Comstar to maintain them. With no access to the HPG network, he would be forced to use the XBoat Method, and that would create unacceptable communication delays.

Nabiki winked at him. "Or, we can keep this unofficial. I'm Nabiki, and you're my old friend Kuno-chan, both Private Citizens. Which would you prefer?"

Tatewaki continued to seethe. He had personally beheaded people for lesser offenses than those she heaped upon him, but on neutral Earth he was powerless to give Nabiki her just desserts.

"Thou didst request this meeting for our mutual benefit," he said between clenched teeth. "I suggest that you stop wasting my time and come instead unto the crux of this matter."

She flashed him a brilliant smile.

"Sure thing, Kuno-chan. Now as you know, my father, for reasons better left unmentioned, has decided to withdraw the surrender offer I had so carefully crafted..."

"And betrothed sweet Akane Tendo to a churlish cretin named Saotome," Tatewaki was quick to add.

Nabiki nodded ruefully. "I was getting to that. Why he did this is completely beyond my understanding. I hesistate to add that I fear for his mental stability." She said this last with a penetrating look, to make certain that he understood exactly where she was going with this.

It took a moment, but he nodded sagely. The word treacherous did not begin to do justice to this woman. She was ready to depose her own father on the grounds of mental incompetance, which, although it might well be true, was a betrayal most foul. It smacked of something his own sister Kodachi might do if she ever fell out of favor with their father (O joyous day!).

Nabiki continued.

"I am still prepared to hand you the entire Inner Sphere on a silver plate, Kuno-chan," she told him with utter sincerity.

Tatewaki, still reeling from the idea that he was dealing with such a treacherous woman, cocked an eyebrow at a statement that was simply absurd.

"I did not realize that the Inner Sphere was yours to give," he replied with more than a little sarcasm.

"Of course it is," she returned. "The Confederation is the lynch-pin of this entire conflict; the fulcrum upon which the Inner Sphere's balance of power shifts."

Tatewaki wasn't in the mood to draw her out one piece at a time. "Explain thyself," he said to her.

"Think about it, Kuno-chan. Why haven't you been able to utterly crush the Confederation? You have the most powerful and numerous army in the entire Inner Sphere. Is it because the Confederation mechwarriors are superior to the Combine's?"

Tatewaki was about to reply in the firm negative when Nabiki answered her own question.

"Not really," she said flatly. "So tell me why you haven't been able to do it, Kuno-chan."

"The answer must be obvious even to an untrained female such as yourself," he replied. "Because the Confederation lies opposite the neutral territory of the Sol System from the Combine, it presents the smallest possible front. Given the limited range of JumpShips, our advantage in numbers is negated by the small number of worlds which we may strike at from our bases on the frontier."

Nabiki smiled again and took a sip from her demitasse.

"I couldn't have said it any better myself. You need a broad front to take advantage of your numerical superiority. The same goes for your war with the League of Five Nails. Granted you've been focusing mostly on us, but you face the same limited front with them too, which brings me to my proposition.

"By taking over the Confederation lock, stock, and barrel, I'm giving you your broad front against the League. Or the Federated Shiratori, whichever turns you on, but I'm guessing that you want the League out of the picture first so you can put the squeeze on the Combine's only true rival in the Inner Sphere."

"The Jusenkyo Commonwealth," Tatewaki muttered.

"Exactly," Nabiki said with a gleam in her eye. "With the League conquered, you have the Commonwealth boxed in on two fronts. Hell, once you break out of your primary invasion areas I'd be willing to bet that most of the League's barons will defect to your side within two weeks rather than get forced off their land, and that will let you conserve your military strength against the Commonwealth while adding the League's armies to your forces.

"That old biddy Cologne will never surrender to you of course, but I'm also going to bet that Empress Azusa aside, the real movers and shakers in the Federated Shiratori will be willing to give you very favorable terms rather than end up next on your list. That country has no stomach for war, as I'm sure you've noticed. After that, it's a fait accompli. Those crazy Amazons might fight to the death, but by then you'll have over seventypercent of the Inner Sphere in your back pocket. There is no way they could withstand you for long if you went all out."

She stood up and stretched out her arms.

"And voila! The Inner Sphere belongs to the Furinkan Combine! Of course it would go to your father, but what you do with him is your own business."

She leaned in close enough to him that he could smell her perfume.

"I hear from very reliable sources that he isn't exactly right in the head either, if you catch my meaning..."

In spite of himself, Tatewaki smiled. What she proposed was base and most foul, but coming from her lips sounded sweet and just. It also made a great deal of sense. Had not his own staff bemoaned their less than ideal strategic positioning time and time again?

Bases within the Confederation would mean a vast front, one potentially fifty parsecs long. The weak and fractious League of Five Nails could not possibly hold such a front, and a lightning swift strike by his massed Combine forces could break through their lines before they could even fall back to more defensible positions. A total rout would ensue, and victory would be his.

Once the League was subjugated and its forces integrated into the Combine Army, he would have the Jusenkyo Commonwealth facing two broad fronts. Their weakly garrisoned worlds on the League border would have to be reinforced, sapping their strength and leaving them vulnerable. Of course the assimilated League forces would be used as shock troops against the Commonwealth, but high casualty rates would ensure that his new vassals did not get uppity with him as they occasionally did with their House Gosunkugi masters. As for the Federated Shiratori, they would keep until after the Commonwealth was annihilated, and that would be the true fait accompli.

His smile broadened at a new thought. The deposed Empress Azusa could join his sister in a convent on the Periphery! Oh, how he would savor their combined misery!

Nabiki cleared her throat, abjuring him from the realm of fantasy and back to the gulls and the tourists of the Embarcadero.

"Judging by the smile on your face, I'd be led to believe that you like what I have to say," she said smugly.

Tatewaki composed himself.

"Your proposal has merits, Nabiki Tendo," he replied stiffly. "But in truth I am not convinced that thou art capable of delivering what thou hast promised."

"Kuno-chan, I'm hurt."

"Pray spare me the theatrics, Nabiki Tendo. Thou hast failed in thy endeavors thus far; what giveth you such faith that thy endeavors will yet bear fruit?"

Nabiki's eyes hardened, and her voice grew taut and cold.

"I hold the nobles of the Confederation in the palm of my hand, Kuno-chan. If I were to declare that Grand Duke Tendo was mentally unfit to rule, they would back whomever I cared to name as successor, including myself. I have nothing against my younger sister, but the only reason she was named Heir over me is because I don't need things like arranged marriages spoiling my plans. I might also add that I have already removed everyone from the capitol that give more than token support to my father."

Her thoughts flashed to her older sister as she said this, but her face remained stern and unyielding. Everyone but Kasumi, anyway, and what can she do?

She jabbed her finger in his chest.

"Never forget, Kuno-chan, that I am the power behind Nerima. What happened two weeks ago happened because I was too soft regarding my father. I've got too much at stake to let that happen again."

She removed her finger and sat back down to her espresso.

"Now, Kuno-chan, do we have an understanding?"

Tatewaki was beside himself with fury at this insolent woman, but at the same time he was fascinated with her. The resultant expression on his handsome face was one of puzzlement.

"Of course, Nabiki Tendo," he finally managed.

"Splendid!" she exclaimed. "I'll fax your people at the Regency a copy of my terms. Assuming you still keep Domitian around, he'll verify that they remain identical to my original offer as outlined in the surrender agreement."

She finished her espresso and rose. She had a meeting with a local broker about an estate in Hyde Park coming up later, and she wanted to do some sightseeing and a little shopping on the way. After that she had to endure the semiballistic to the Lima Beanstalk, followed by a two day trip up the well to Jack's Castle. From there a passenger liner would ferry her to the Sol Zenith point and the Confederation JumpShip Transcendant. She wished she could spend more time on Earth, and consoled herself with the fact that once her plans had reached fruition she would be on a JumpShip bound for Sol - the only safe place remaining in the Inner Sphere until the Furinkan Combine had completed the conquest.

"The next time we meet face to face, I will assume it will be as sovereign to sovereign," she purred. "In fact I look forward to it, Kuno-chan."

Tatewaki did not take her offered hand. Instead he gave her a solemn nod and left her standing at the table. She watched him join the party of vigilant bodyguards as his black Cadillac Phaeton limousine slid up from the Embarcadero on silent hoverfans. The doors opened, the Prince and his entourage entered, and then they were gone.

Enlisted Dining Facility,

Jusenkyo Laboratories Complex

Planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System

25 February 3025

"PRISONER ON DECK!!!"

A sudden hush fell upon the dining facility patrons as the burly military police sergeant barked out with a distinctly sadistic glee the announcement that Mousse was coming. Soldiers and techs alike cleared a path from the doors to the chow line as the clink of leg irons rattled on the polished tile floor. The normally chatty lunch hour became silent save only for the occasional clatter of cookware from the kitchens.

None dared to look Mousse in the eye as he walked in from the foyer in the company of two military police escorts. His face betrayed no shame as he brought his manacled hands up to the registration desk and signed his name carefully on the log for that day's meal. An MP countersigned for him, and then he was led past the young and pretty recruit manning the sign-in post. She watched him go with a mixture of pity and dread.

Since the chow line had cleared out ahead, it was a straight shot to the meal that awaited him. He had a choice to make. If he openly declared to the troops in attendance at the meal that Shampoo did not, and would not ever love him, he would be fed as any other soldier of the Commonwealth. If he chose instead to cling to his so-called delusions, his usual prison fare would await.

He chose Shampoo.

The pimply-faced mess-crank behind the serving line hastily prepared a bowl of plain white rice and set it on a plastic tray. Mousse accepted it wordlessly and continued on to take a glass of ice water for himself. The troops in the dining facility muttered and shook their heads in a melange of sympathy and contempt.

There were no empty tables available at the height of the lunch hour, but a sharp glance from the MPs cleared several of their junior enlisted diners within seconds. Mousse now had a table to himself that normally seated twelve, and a one-table cordon of isolation beyond. His captors remained standing behind him.

Lacking any chopsticks with which to eat, Mousse was forced to use his fingers. This he did with as much dignity as he could manage, taking great care not to rattle his double manacle chains on the table. He ignored the stares that he drew from the others, and he ate quietly, ensuring that not a grain was missed. It would be his only meal of the day.

He had endured three weeks of this without vocal complaint, though his strength was sapped with hunger and his body wracked with pain from the abuse of his jailors. The assault on his pride that was his daily meal was merely the accidental result of a base with no dedicated facilities for housing and feeding prisoners, but was certainly within the scope of the punishment meted out to him by Herb.

He wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing him beg for mercy. Especially Herb, who was keeping a close watch over him, waiting for him to break. The torture he had endured wasn't enough for the general; Herb wanted to extinguish his spirit as the price for betrayal. Herb was going to have to get used to disappointment.

There were only nine days left to his confinement, which was nothing after the last twenty-one. What the next two years as a prisoner in the Dok To Correctional Custody Battalion would bring, he did not know, but he would survive that too. No matter what he faced he would endure. For Shampoo he would suffer anything.

He did not doubt that Shampoo would come to love him some day. She had to realize sooner or later that he loved her above all else, and come to value that love for the treasure that it was. When she finally came around, he would be there for her. To do that, he had to survive Dok To.

His rice was finished, giving him just enough time to gulp down his water before being jerked to his feet by one of the MPs. He collected his dishes quietly and proceeded to the scullery, where he placed them upon a green conveyer belt. The exit was only a few steps beyond, and soon he would be back in his tiny holding cell - a cell normally reserved for those facing their imminent execution; for the spectrum of punishment among the Joketsuzoku often ran to extremes.

The MPs shoved him through the door, tripping his shackled legs up and sending him sprawling into the mud beyond. His manacled wrists ached from the impact, as he had been forced to catch himself in an awkward manner. As he struggled to his feet and wiped the mud off his face with his hands, he looked to the hazy Lightoller sky and vowed revenge upon Herb.

To do that, he would have to survive. Survive here on Lightoller, and survive on Dok To. When Shampoo was his bride, vengeance would indeed be his.

General Herb switched off the monitor for the dining facility surveillance system and shook his head in wonderment. The contemptible fool remained unbowed. Was he actually that delusional, or was this merely a show of the same defiance that had landed him in hack?

He could have made arrangements to have Mousse served in his cell, but on the whole, he had thought this way would have been more entertaining. He had the idea that Putting Mousse on display before the troops would be good for discipline, and would allow him the pleasure of observing his daily punishment. Mousse's defiance had made it something of a disappointment.

The rest of his day didn't promise to be any more encouraging. The HPG dispatch he just received from Jusenkyo had left him in an uneasy humor. For some reason Cologne wanted additional information regarding the break-in at the Labs on the eleventh. She was sniffing for something, and he had the idea it was blood. His blood.

A sudden harrowing thought had occured to him in the wake of the message, and he had sent his henchmen, Lime and Mint, out to the map reference where Shampoo claimed to have killed the intruders. A salvage crew had recovered the wreck some time ago, without finding any remains. There were some blood stains in the driver's compartment, but nothing that would indicate a body. Even an intense fire would have left small fragments of bone, and the ATV had not suffered such a fire.

The indigenous scavengers of Lightoller were capable of hauling away the corpses. They were known to be practically fearless of humans and their technology, and they were active in the area. It was quite possible that they had struck before the salvage crew arrived. Herb did reluctantly admit to himself that he had been slow in dispatching them to the scene, though he justified this with his immediate efforts to find the holes in the Labs' security arrangements - an arguably more important affair in light of Shampoo's assurances that the intruders were dead.

Lime and Mint had reported back that there was no sign of any bodies at the scene, and that the tracks of the salvage crew plus the heavy rains of late had obscured any evidence of survivors leaving the scene. The only place the survivors could have gone was the starport, and by the time the alert had reached the security there, several ships had lifted for the long journey to the jumppoints. The trail was cold.

He should have known better than to trust Shampoo at her word! In a matter such as this, he was ultimately responsible. It did not matter that the person telling him the intruders were dead was the favorite of the Matriarch - if anything it should have made him wary.

He had expected the bad news from the moment he sent the two out on their errand. The question now was whether or not it was simply a matter of Shampoo bungling the pursuit or was it something more sinister - perhaps part of a complicated scheme designed to remove him from command.

He cast this second notion aside. Cologne did not operate that way. If she wanted him removed, she would have done so. Still, she needed a motivation for her odd demand. Perhaps she had discovered something about the two mercenaries that were known to have escaped. Why more direct action to eliminate them had not been authorized by the Council, he did not know.

What the Matriarch knew was still a mystery to him, and so he was left with a reply to her. It might prove to be quite an embarrassment to the prima donna Shampoo to have failed in such a spectacular fashion. It might even be suitable revenge for her escape from Lightoller. Of course, it would also be seen as a personal failure on his part to have let this mistake go unnoticed and unreported for so long. He would have to word his report carefully so as to shift maximum responsibilty onto Shampoo while minimizing his own exposure - and, to top it off, to keep from looking vindictive so as to avoid provoking the Matriarch. It was a tall order, but he felt he was up to it.

His only comfort for the day was knowing that Mousse was going to be departing for Dok To even sooner than expected. The starship bound for the Periphery had arrived ahead of schedule. He had to give the stubborn fool credit for his strong will, for he had not yet broken. Perhaps it would take a year or two on the cold forbidding tundra of Dok To to make him see the light, and realize that Shampoo's love was only a fantasy.

A comm tone sounded at his desk, and he sat up in his chair to answer it. Doctor Gaido appeared on the screen, his pudgy face showing signs of anxiety. That was never a good thing.

"What is it?" he demanded. Gaido could be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

"I have urgent orders from the capitol, General," he replied.

Herb frowned. What was Gaido doing getting orders that didn't pass through him first?

"Don't keep me waiting, Doctor. I'm a busy man."

Gaido was visibly sweating on the monitor display. "You're still keeping Mechwarrior Mousse under guard, aren't you, General?" he asked.

Herb began to scowl. What the hell was going on...?

"Yes I am. Only he has been provisionally stripped of his mechwarrior status, and is awaiting transfer to the Dok To Correctional Custody Unit. What's it to you, Doctor?"

Gaido cleared his throat before responding.

"I have orders from the Council of Elders to present Mechwarrior Mousse for final selection status in the Breeding Program. He needs to report to the capitol as soon as possible."

Herb nearly choked.

"HIM?" he barked. "For the Breeding Program? You must be joking! That insubordinate half-blind idiot was disqualified when he was a child!"

Gaido shrugged. "I have been informed by the primary breeding computers tracking the Program that Mechwarrior Mousse represents a vital genetic addition to the next generation of mechwarriors," he replied. "I dutifully reported this to the capitol, and they have made their wishes for Mechwarrior Mousse known."

Herb could not believe this. "Does Cologne want a generation of witless nearsighted fools commanding her battlemech forces?" he asked incredulously. "Are you certain that Mousse was named by the Program computers? There has to be a mistake."

Gaido nodded. "It's all very clear, General. I will send you copies of the computer determination and the Council's orders at once."

Herb continued to reel at this news, but he was not through protesting. "Why wasn't this routed through me as Mousse's commanding officer?"

"Breeding Program concerns are part of the Jusenkyo Laboratory research," Gaido offered. "As head of the Research Department, it would go through me."

Herb rolled his eyes in disgust. The Breeding Program's chain of command was a nuisance to field-oriented commanders like himself. He slammed his desk in anger.

He did not want to let Mousse go. He wasn't finished with him for one thing, and for another the man could prove to be an embarrassment so close to the Council's ears. Though his maneuver with Shampoo was perfectly legal, it was a bit underhanded, and he did not need vengeful corroboration of whatever story she might have cooked up for Cologne.

"General Herb?" Gaido asked when Herb did not respond.

"I'll have it taken care of," Herb replied with a scowl.

"Thank you, General. I would like to examine Mechwarrior Mousse prior to his departure, and as soon as possible would be best."

I'll just bet, Herb thought darkly, and disconnected.

Doctor Gaido switched off the phone and sat back in his chair. Beads of sweat trickled down his brow. He was not cut out for subterfuge. He doubted that Herb was capable of detecting the subtle trickery required to jigger the computers into thinking Mousse was a highly desired addition to the Breeding Program, but there were other ways to detect treachery.

At least Herb's hands were tied with a computer investigation. Even if he made an effort to look - which Gaido doubted since most Joketsuzoku, Herb included, tended to view the Breeding Program as an unimpeachable work of science - he lacked techs with the skills and familiarity with the ancient computers to succeed.

Gaido was the only person left alive who knew how the system really worked, and he had been careful to let Herb know this at every opportunity. As additional insurance, he had never bothered to train a replacement. It was risky to the Commonwealth's future, as he was getting on in years, but it beat finding a poisoned dagger in his back one night.

All this being true, he did not like being Cologne's pawn against Herb. He owed his entire career to her of course, but crossing the hybrid general was extremely dangerous - as Mousse had learned the hard way. Why Cologne wanted Mousse out of Herb's clutches, Gaido could only guess, but it was even money that he was eventually going to be used against the general. He hoped the final showdown would happen somewhere other than Lightoller.

He realized a power struggle that would shake the very foundations of their culture was inevitable. The Commonwealth's radical Breeding Program had created two distinct classes within the Joketsuzoku. The matriarchal hierarchy of the clan was rooted in four thousand years of tradition, and though it was rigid and unyielding, it had endured through ages of empires, foreign domination, the brief flirtation with communism, and ultimately the perils of interstellar colonization. Those obstacles had all been external threats, something the insular Joketsuzoku had been able to fend off. Their undoing could come only from within, and they had been breeding and nurturing it for a century.

Herb was not the first of the new second class, the hybrids, to dare challenge even peripherally the authority of the Matriarchy, but he was the first one to have risen so far in the ranks. Perhaps it was because most of the hybrids were male that they chafed under the yoke of the Elders. Their loyalties naturally tended towards their own kind, rather than towards the exclusive sisterhood of the Joketsuzoku. He had even heard whispers of a 'Musk Dynasty' among them, a seditious organization that couldn't possibly have escaped the notice of the Council, yet still went unexposed and unpunished.

Cologne and the rest of the Council of Elders thought the answer lay in the hands of a hybrid they felt they could control. Gaido wasn't as certain. When Saffron was mature, he would be an order of magnitude more powerful than Herb, the current pinnacle of the Program's hybrids, and one who was capable of almost casual projection of lethal chi-abilities. Saffron in comparison would be almost a god by any reasonable index of human potential.

How do you control a god?

Army Group 'B' Headquarters, The Hotel Lyonne

Planet Viridian, Alpha Canaris System

The League of Five Nails

25 February 3025

Hikaru Gosunkugi was a nervous wreck, and even more sunken-eyed than usual. Grand Duke Tendo had surprised them all with his declaration, and to Hikaru's horror, had engaged his beautiful daughter to an unknown mechwarrior named Ranma Saotome! To make matters worse, Tsubasa had failed spectacularly in his mission to kidnap Akane, and had probably stirred up a massive political hornet's nest in the process.

Had all his prayers and sacrifices been for naught? Would his parents discover his plottings and step in against him? Was he damned to spend the next six months grounded to his room for this failure?

His cousin could see the play of horror, sorrow, and regret across his face and cleared his throat to speak.

"The responsibility is mine, cousin," Tetsuo declared solemnly.

Hikaru looked up from his astrological charts and frowned.

"If anyone failed us, it was that fool Tsubasa," he returned. His blood boiled with rage at the bumbling transvestite. There would be more than a few hexes cast tonight... "But still, we should have read the horoscope with more than half an eye. Our failure was in fact foretold. It's in here somewhere, but somehow we missed it."

Tetsuo cocked his head. "I still don't believe that this Ranma Saotome fellow is anything more than a clever fraud meant to throw us off-balance."

"You see!" Hikaru cried, at last understanding exactly how they had failed. "The Equus Nebula! We see and yet we are blind!"

"Say again, cousin?"

Hikaru pointed to the horoscope they had cast before answering Nabiki's summons to Nerima. "Ran-Ma... 'Wild Horse.' The Equus or 'Horse' Nebula." He looked up for a moment before turning upon Tetsuo. "What did you say Ranma's father's name was?"

"Genma," Testuo replied, at last understanding. "'Dark Horse'... Yes, I see it now. The conflict provided by the Equus Nebula-Capella-Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy triad was a direct warning to us and we missed it." He hung his head in shame.

"It couldn't be helped," Hikaru returned, steadying his cousin. "Who could have known that the gods would be so literal?" He looked down at the horoscope again. "And yet we can draw hope from this."

"How, cousin?"

"By this horoscope it is clear that the gods are speaking to us. We'll just have to pay closer attention in order to divine the correct message."

Hikaru's proposal seemed most reasonable, and the matter was tabled until further study and meditation revealed answers. They had more immediate problems to face, and they concerned the Furinkan Combine.

"There's no question of a force buildup on the Combine border," he told his cousin. He shuffled through a huge stack of reports from his J-2, or Army Group Intelligence section. "Message traffic has tripled in the last ten days, and independent shipping as far as St. Ives has been pulled in on contract with the Combine for transport of supplies."

"Leaving the Combine's JumpShips free to haul troops," Testuo observed dryly.

"The real question is where are they going to hit?" Hikaru went on.

"Tatewaki's got to be angry with the Duke over this Saotome fellow getting Akane," Tetsuo pointed out. "A massive attack on the Confederation worlds he can reach in one Jump would seem to be the likely answer. You know how single-minded he can be."

Hikaru wasn't so sure. The Confederation knew their defense rested on these One-Jump systems, and had almost eighty percent of their armed forces garrisoned there. It was the only reason Tatewaki Kuno hadn't conquered the Confederation. Even a single-minded blowhard like him had to realize that after five years of trying.

He picked up one of his namesake nails and fiddled with it in his hands. It helped him to relax, and it opened his mind to possibilities.

"Let's say Kuno is really pissed," he broached.

"Okay," Tetsuo agreed. "Let's."

"He wants to pay the Duke back for engaging Akane to this Saotome creep."

Tetsuo nodded. "I'm with you so far, cousin."

Hikaru rolled the nail around in his fingers, clumsily dropping it several times, but not letting it get to him. He was on to something.

"What's the fastest way to get a large force within range of the Capella system?"

Tetsuo studied the starchart before them. As the thickness of the Orion spiral arm in the vicinity of Sol was less than thirty parsecs, a two-dimensional map was sufficient for the task of representing the Inner Sphere. There were several systems at the end of Kuno's potential One-Jump range that would put him within one jump of Capella.

"I see at least three places where he can hit and be within range to strike Capella at will."

Hikaru shook his head. "And the Confederation knows that. Those three systems are armed to the teeth and garrisoned with highly motivated troops. He could try for them, but it would be a meat-grinder. They might even break with convention and go for his JumpShips if it looked like he was going to succeed."

"Then I don't understand what you're getting at, cousin," Tetsuo replied.

"What if he tried for an end-run around these heavily protected systems?" Hikaru proposed. His sunken eyes seemed to flash with inspiration.

Tetsuo looked at the chart again.

"But that would mean attacking into either the Federated Shiratori at Merkesh, or hitting us at Capra..."

Hikaru nodded. "There are advantages to both places. The Federated Shiratori forces won't be expecting an attack from the Combine, but Capra is lightly garrisoned."

"Assuming you're correct, which one will he hit?"

Hikaru closed his eyes and lifted his hand over the chart. He let the nail drop onto the table, where it embedded itself firmly in the heartland of the League of Five Nails. The gods had spoken.

"We're going to Capra," he announced. "I want to give Kuno the surprise of his life."

Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System

Nerima Confederation

25 February 3025

Akane didn't spend more than a night in her room before being removed to the lonely South Tower for her 'safety.' The South Tower was a stone ediface of hard and skillfully-dressed granite that perched well above the castle upon the mountain, and was accessable only by a long and winding passageway, carved within the living rock, that linked it to the keep. For protection against airborne assault, the stone walls and sharply sloping tile of the tower's roof were lined with battlemech armor, and an array of point defense laser and autocannon weapons could be deployed within moments of an attack warning.

Spending time in the South Tower meant that anyone who wanted to get close to Akane would have to pass the guards and maglocked gates placed at the bottom of the passageway - and the entire garrison of the castle keep - traverse the narrow and winding stone stairs, and then face the guards and a further maglocked gate at the top of the passageway. It was either that or scale the three hundred meters of nearly sheer rock face from the castle. This was a place the Tendos of old had used as a prison or as an asylum for their estranged relatives from time to time, and its heritage was not lost upon Akane.

For obvious reasons, she did not receive many visitors. Somehow Kasumi managed to climb those thousands of lonely steps twice a day to visit, though Akane sensed that her sister's devotion was driven by more than a little guilt. Dad had decided to move her to the Tower while the castle was being swept for more spies, and Kasumi had not objected.

She understood her father's concerns, but that did not make her stay in such a creepy place any easier. Though the Tower was spacious and well appointed for her, it also had a musty smell that no amount of fresh air from the tall French-style windows could displace. It was the smell of murder and madness from the early days of the Confederation, when her ancestors had collectively gone insane and turned upon each other at the beginning of the First Succession War. The current gloomy future of the Confederation was in no small part due to their fratricidal and self-destructive power struggles. This while the other Great Houses were busy consolidating their territories and seizing Star League assets.

She did not know how much longer she would have to stay a prisoner of the Tower, and she did not like it one bit. If anyone deserved to be locked up, it was Nabiki. Instead, Dad had sent her away to tour the Tendo family holdings - mostly in the Ceres Metals Corporation, an industrial conglomerate that dated back to the pre-Jump era. It served as the backbone for Tendo wealth that made them a Great House so many centuries ago - and had kept them great to the present day.

So while she played solitaire and practiced her katas in the dreaded South Tower, Nabiki got to tour the Confederation aboard the family's private JumpShip! Where was the justice in that? She had played along with the stupid engagement, even if she didn't like it. Nabiki had all but mutinied against Dad, and she got to spend a few choice months as a privileged tourist!

Akane sank back into her chair facing the window and sighed. There was no justice in the world. If there were, she would be out in the field once again commanding the 1st Nerima Guards to victory over the Kunos and their Furinkan Combine, instead of sitting here playing cards. Her red Warhammer was probably fully restored by now, and sitting idle and useless in the family's Armory.

Further depressing thoughts were stifled by an insistant tapping at her window - which was impossible considering that it looked out over a sheer drop of over three hundred meters.

She turned and looked with utter astonishment at Ranma Saotome, who was hanging off of the stone sill of her window with one hand, while the other gave her a casual wave.

"Ranma?" she gasped.

He motioned to the window latch. It was apparent from the urgency in his eyes that he needed her to do something about it fairly quickly.

She leaned over and threw open the window, and Ranma pulled himself through with a grunt to sprawl across the table and ruin her latest boring game of solitaire.

"Thanks," Ranma panted from the table. "It was getting a little rough out there."

Akane looked at him with wide unbelieving eyes.

"How on earth did you get here?" she demanded.

He pulled himself upright on the table and swung his legs over to dangle before her. "I climbed," he said, still panting for breath. He motioned with his chin to his bandaged left arm. "It was pretty rough going with one arm at only fifty percent, but what the heck, training is training, as Pop always says."

Akane's eyes bugged out.

"You free-climbed a three-hundred meter cliff? With only one good arm?"

Ranma rubbed at his left bicep. The bandages on his forearm were starting to bleed through in places with serum and other fluids.

"It's no big deal," he replied casually. "I've done bigger, and in higher gravity fields than Nerima. The rock out there is actually pretty good for this sort of thing. It's fissured enough for a straightforward ascent, but stable enough to hold weight."

"But weren't you afraid of falling?"

He shrugged. "A little," he admitted grudgingly. "But it's not something you think about, or else you'll never make the climb."

She gave him an incredulous look. He was totally nuts. Certifiable.

"Just what possessed you to risk your neck coming up here, anyway?"

"I dunno," he said with a shrug. "I heard you were locked up in this tower, and I was getting bored down in the infirmary, so I thought I'd come up here and see how you were doing."

"It's just as boring up here," Akane replied sullenly. She looked at his left arm again, and the bloodstains that were starting to spread on the bandages. "Aren't you supposed to be taking care of that?" she asked, pointing at the arm.

Ranma looked down. He had overdone it a little. Hopefully he hadn't screwed up the skin grafts. "Just got a little carried away," he replied sheepishly.

"What an idiot," she spat.

Ranma looked up at her as if he had been struck. "Hey!" he protested. "Maybe you'd prefer it if I just left you then?" He pulled a playing card out from under his thigh and showed it to her. "That way you could get back to your exciting game of cards."

Akane felt her anger rising. Just who did this jerk think he was? Coming and going whenever he pleased - even if it meant reinjuring himself just so he could show off!

"Go then!" she cried. "I didn't want to see you anyway."

There was a hurt look in his eyes for just a moment, and then it was gone. Ranma rose from the table, causing her to step back uneasily from him, and he stretched out his arms and rotated them at the shoulders. It was clear from his exercises that he intended to leave the way he had come.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" she demanded as he turned for the window.

He looked over his shoulder at her. "What's it look like? You told me to leave, so I'm doing what your royal worshipfulness says. I'm outta here."

He climbed back up on the table and started through the window, only to be pulled back inside by Akane.

"You idiot!" she yelled worriedly. "Do you want to get yourself killed? There's no way you can make it with your arm in that condition."

Ranma's brow furrowed at this, and he gave her a puzzled look.

"So what do you care?" he asked her defensively. "If I fall and get creamed on the rocks, then at least YOUR problems are solved."

Her eyes flashed with ire.

"What are you talking about - 'my problems'?"

"Oh, come on, Akane," Ranma scolded. "Think about it. If I die right now, then you don't have to worry about marrying me. End of problems."

She balled her hands up into fists and nearly shook with emotion.

"That's not fair, Ranma!" she retorted. "Just because I don't want to marry you, doesn't mean I want to see you get yourself killed!"

Ranma cocked his head to the side and smirked. "So don't watch, okay?" He started back towards the window.

"You are such an unbelievable jerk!" she cried, and pulled him back once again. "Get away from that window, and come down off that table right now!"

He was torn for a moment with the desire to throw her off and continue on, but the truth of the matter was that his arm was really starting to hurt. With only a token effort of resistance, he allowed himself to be pulled back inside the room.

"Have it your way," he said to her. "Just point the way to the door and I'll take the stairs."

Akane was only mildly relieved to see that he had given up his ridiculous quest for suicide. "How did you ever manage to become so rude and obnoxious?" she asked him. "Didn't your mother teach you anything?"

Ranma, who had been cocksure and full of himself until then, now looked as if he had been hit below the belt. His ego deflated in an instant, and for a brief moment he looked like a five-year-old on the verge of tears. He sank down onto the table and stared into his lap.

The reaction did not go unnoticed by Akane, who found herself strangely moved. Could this arrogant jerk actually have a side of him that wasn't ruled by the 'Y' chromosome?

"What is it, Ranma?" she asked softly.

"No," he growled sullenly. "No, my mother didn't teach me anything." His face fell into a scowl. "I haven't seen my mother since I was really little."

So that was it, Akane thought to herself. His behavior made a lot of sense when she considered that he must have been raised solely by his oafish, lazy, and shiftless father.

"I know the feeling," she said to him gently. "My mother died when I was little."

A heavy silence hung between them for a moment.

"At least it's easier for you that way," he muttered at length.

She lost all pity for him at that remark.

"What!? How can you say that?"

Ranma looked up at her with his wounded blue-grey eyes. "All I'm sayin' is that at least you know she's gone. You can learn to cope with it and go on with life. I'm sorry your mom died, Akane, but at least you have that finality. I don't even have that."

Akane was struck silent by that. She didn't agree with his assessment, but she was starting to see what made him tick. Taken from that perspective, he wasn't nearly as bad as she had first thought. He was still a jerk, but maybe not completely hopeless as a human being.

"Can we start over?" she asked him quietly.

He gave her a puzzled look.

"Huh?"

"Can we start over," she repeated. "I mean, before we started arguing."

He thought about what she was asking for a moment and then nodded slowly.

"Sure. Where do you want to begin?"

She leaned forward and touched his shoulder gently with her fingertips.

"Thank you, Ranma," she whispered.

His body stiffened in surprise at her touch and he nearly jumped from his seat on the table.

"Huh? Th-Thanks for what?" he stammered.

She stepped back and tried to smile. "For what you did in the garden. For saving my life. I never got the chance to thank you until now, so I was thinking that this would be the best place to start over."

He flushed red and looked down into his lap again. "It was nothing."

"It was more than nothing," she protested. "You risked your life to help me - and you almost lost your arm because of it."

Ranma looked over at his injured arm and shrugged. "I don't know what to say, Akane. I mean, I didn't stop to think about it or nothin'. There wasn't time for that. I just did what I felt I had to do."

"Well thank you for doing what you felt you had to do," she replied. She looked away for a moment before turning her soft brown eyes upon him. "And thank you for coming up here to visit me. It was a stupid, crazy way to do it, but I guess you're the kind of guy who doesn't stop to think about it." She offered him a smile. "You just do what you feel you have to do."

Ranma Saotome met Akane's gaze with his own and fought back the sudden flush of heat in his face. It wasn't possible, was it? That this girl was actually... Was actually... Somehow... Cute?

Akane gave him a thump on the right shoulder that nearly bowled him over. "Now get out of here and go see Doctor Tofu, all right? You're starting to bleed on the carpet."

Ranma grimaced. Nope. Not cute at all.

Well, maybe just a teeny tiny little bit...

Soun Tendo looked over Genma's proposal carefully. He had quite a request list. A JumpShip plus at least one DropShip, battlemechs, some aerospace fighters, an experienced crew, supplies, cash, and a line of credit that wouldn't trace directly back to the Tendo family or the Confederation government. Plus one other important item.

"I agree with you that there is an urgent need to continue the search, Saotome, but really, why bring Akane with you?"

Genma regarded his old friend with a grave look.

"Two reasons," he began. "One is that she'll be safe with us. No one will even know she's gone from the Tower."

Soun nodded slowly. There was a twisted logic to it, even if he felt the risks were just as great, if not greater, as having her stay on Nerima.There was no reason why the Combine, or the League, perhaps both, wouldn't try again to kidnap Akane if they were able, but the risks she would face on the expedition...

"So what's the other reason?" he pressed, having a dire need to be convinced before he sent his little girl away for what might be a very long time.

Genma raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it obvious, Tendo? We've got to get Akane and the boy to know each other better - otherwise they'll fight this engagement with their dying breaths."

Soun nodded again. "I see your point. They do seem to have a certain, shall we say, antagonism towards each other."

"That's putting it mildly, I think," Genma agreed. "But the hardships and the thrills of a life of adventure can only draw them closer, right?"

"I suppose so," Soun replied confidently. "I remember the times we spent training together, and we're friends to this very day."

"And those weren't easy times," Genma added with a shudder. No sir.

Soun looked back over the proposal. "This is quite a list, Saotome. It can be done, but why do you want everything procured from sources other than the Confederation military?"

"We need to move without drawing a lot of attention. A small mercenary force can move around throughout the Inner Sphere without raising too many eyebrows. All we need to do is fix Ryuugenzawa's location. Once we do that, we can return to Nerima and gather up a transport fleet big enough to haul everything away."

Soun puffed on a cigarette as he looked over the search notebooks Genma had been using for the last three years of his quest.

"You make it sound so simple, Saotome."

"It is, Tendo," Genma assured him. He pointed to one of the notebooks. A photograph of a man with an enigmatic face and an oddly styled beard was taped to the cover, for reasons lost to Soun. He bore an uncanny resemblence to a figure on a playing card... "Why, this guy had almost all of the pieces of the puzzle when he died," he continued. "He just didn't put them all together."

"And how exactly did he die, Saotome?" Soun asked archly.

"Tendo!" Genma protested. "It wasn't like that at all! As far as I could tell, he had Nevermore Fever."

Soun shuddered at the thought. Nevermore Fever was one of the more insidious diseases to ever make its way through the Inner Sphere. You could carry it for years without knowing, before it suddenly flared up and killed you within hours with a massive fever spike that fried your central nervous system.

"You did get tested afterwards, didn't you?" he asked Genma.

"The boy and I are clean," he replied. "It's not contagious in the terminal stages. It's not that contagious at all, or else the entire Inner Sphere would have been wiped out centuries ago."

"I see," Tendo intoned, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. "Well, enough of that. We've got work to do."

Headquarters Company, Blue Thunder Regiment

Planet Calypso, Proteus System

Nerima Confederation

1 March 3025

"Faster, men!" Tatewaki Kuno exhorted his troops. "Let not these cowards flee the field!"

He was having a very good day for himself, on this the first day of his renewed campaign against the hated Nerima Confederation. Their Air Force had put up a stiff fight in orbit over Calypso, but had been crushed by sheer Combine numbers. Now it was the famed Blue Thunder Regiment's turn to make the Grand Duke regret his foolhardy decision to spurn the great Tatewaki Kuno!

His mint condition Thunderbolt battlemech led the charge against the retreating Confederation 'mechs. With a simple thought he made the squat 65 ton juggernaut raise its glittering forged tungsten-carbide steel katana aloft so that his enemies could see him and know that they faced the Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine. They answered with hasty pulses of laser fire and streams of autocannon shells, which he ignored for the feeble attempts they were.

The Confederation 'mechs were clearly trying to draw his forces into an ambush with their retreat, but he was the great Tatewaki Kuno, and would not be so easily trapped. Even now his 3rd Battalion was closing off their withdrawal that he might fix them against the anvil and drive home his mighty hammer. Once they were crushed, he would have his beachhead secured, and the subjugation of the planet could begin.

He would not be around to see it however, as he had plans elsewhere in the Inner Sphere. He laughed with haughty pride at his cunning as his battlemech ranged over the gently rolling farmland of Calypso. The simple-minded Confederation forces would be allowed to see him in battle just long enough for them to send word of his presence to their rear-areas. They would surely send reinforcements to Calypso to dare the impossible and defeat him, but little would they know that by then he would be in position to strike the fatal blow against Capella!

A sudden flurry of voices over his tactical net let him know that the trap was sprung, and the Confederation forces cut off. He could see thin lines of black smoke rising on the horizon, punctuated by bright flashes of light. They would not be able to break through his blocking force, which would give them only one option: to face him in battle in the hopes of escaping the way they had come.

"Let them come," he muttered over the command channel. His battlemech's RCA Instatrac Mk X sensor array began to seek out targets. He was rewarded with a lance of 'mechs cutting a diagonal course to the right across his projected line of advance, obviously hoping to slip through the net before it was drawn tight.

His eyes flicked to either side of his cockpit and the visual reference displays. The rest of his company was arrayed in a skirmish line to his left and right, centered upon him. He ordered them into an Echelon-Right formation, and noted with pride that they executed it flawlessly.

Long Range Missiles were coming into range, and though his Thunderbolt had a 15-tube launcher, he held his fire. He prefered close-combat to a sterile artillery duel. The other 'mechs in his company began to soften up the enemy with extreme range salvos meant to throw them off-balance and to loosen up their formation.

His threat-indicator board lit up with the warning that a Mk XII Instatrac array was locked on to his 'mech. Its distinctive high-low-high frequency tonals sounded in his headset; the sign that an Archer was preparing to launch a huge spread of missiles. It was often the last thing an inexperienced or unlucky mechwarrior ever heard.

Tatewaki Kuno was neither. He caught the flash of orange flame and the twin puffs of smoke from the green painted Archer in plenty of time to fix the missiles' incoming trajectory. There was no cover to be found on the broad expanse of wheatland surrounding him, but that was of little concern.

As the forty-missile volley reached the top of its ballistic arc, he tightened his stomach and squeezed twin thrust studs on his control yokes. The rare jump-capable Thunderbolt variant surged aloft on two plumes of superheated air. The stubby battlemech soared up and to the right, clearing the impact point of the missiles and keeping him on track with his Archer adversary.

Kuno's Thunderbolt touched down as the missiles exploded well behind him in a cataclysmic burst of fire, smoke, and clods of earth. His 'mech was silhouetted in the flames for an instant, its gleaming katana shining blood red on high. He hoped the effect was suitably intimidating.

Lines of laser light criss-crossed the battlefield now as his company and the fleeing lance became fully engaged. The range was still as far as four hundred meters, though that would change within moments. Whether it would turn into a brawl depended on the skill, or perhaps nerve, of his opponents.

Kuno observed one of the Confederation 'mechs explode to his right as his fire lance bracketed it with missiles. His target Archer was still moving out in front of him, its radar painting him, though his surprise jump capability had obviously given the enemy mechwarrior pause. Let him regret that the remainder of his short life, he mused, and triggered his heavy laser.

The cobalt blue beam of light lanced into the Archer's midsection, burning a long streak that reached from the torso to the shoulder joint. He fired a second time as the Confederation pilot got up the nerve to shoot back. The beam tore into the shoulder armor with a spray of sparks, and then the twin Doombud launchers released their lethal cargo of high explosives.

The range for this volley was much shorter than the first volley, and the trajectory flatter. He jumped again, keeping his altitude low and his motion vector forward. The missiles dropped around his 'mech with tooth-rattling whomps, spanging off his pristine armor and gouging small craters. Only a handful had struck him, and nothing had penetrated his Thunderbolt's excellent armor, but the attack had wounded his pride.

"Cur!" he swore to the Archer pilot. "Thou shalt pay in kind for such effrontery!"

The triple medium laser array on his mech's left torso and the heavy laser outboard the right arm blazed forth a salvo of coherent death. The brilliant pulses of light slashed through the Archer's exposed right hip and knee joints, and engulfed the limb in a nimbus of flame. Tatewaki fired off another salvo, heedless of his rising waste heat status, and noted with grim satisfaction as the beams shattered what little remained of the armor and bit into vital components.

The Archer staggered as its right leg was immobilized, slewing suddenly to the right and face on with Kuno's Thunderbolt. A twin salvo of medium laser fire answered his barrage, but Kuno was wroth and did not heed the beams that crazed his Thunderbolt's torso. Instead, he lit his jump jets for the killing blow.

The Thunderbolt again lurched skyward, its katana raised overhead to strike. Though the sky was cloudless, a bolt of blue lightning seared the heavens above and behind his battlemech.

"Feel the wrath of the Hundred Blows!" he cried out over the enemy tactical frequency.

The Thunderbolt fell upon the Archer, its katana cleaving again and again with mind-numbing speed into the crippled battlemech. Kuno punctuated each blow with a shout, and the flurry of strikes came at an impossible rate. The superhard blade bit deep into armor, severed vital linkages, and cut apart critical systemry.

The attack ended as swiftly as it had begun. The Thunderbolt stood proudly over the mutilated Archer as it crumbled into a pile of smoking scrap metal. Flames licked up from the ruins, glinting off the katana.

Tatewaki Kuno looked over his handiwork and saw that it was good. There was only one enemy battlemech remaining; a Valkyrie missing an arm and trailing smoke from the destroyed missile launcher.

"Let yonder Valkyrie flee unhindered!" he ordered his troops. There had to be a survivor to tell the tale of his mighty victory this day. His men complied unquestioningly. The Valkyrie pilot did not question his good fortune either, and sped from the fray with all haste.

"Get thee hence to thy commanders," he said to the fleeing 'mech over the Confederation frequencies. "Tell them that they face the Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine! Let them come forth upon their knees and beg for mercy! The Blue Thunder will hear their pleas for clemency!"

Tatewaki Kuno stood through the open hatch of his Thunderbolt to watch the regiment load into its DropShips. Repairs and rearming would have to take place in space, as there was not time to dawdle if he wished to spring his trap. He did not expect a significant battle at his next destination anyway.

The battles for Calypso, however, had only begun. He intended to allow the Confederation to put up a good fight in order to draw off reinforcements from deeper within their territory. By the time they realized that they had fallen for his ruse, he would be in position for the fatal blow.

Grand Duke Tendo would be brought to heel, Akane would be his bride, and the Confederation ceded to him without Nabiki's treacherous assistance. Her honeyed words had left him feeling ill at ease during the trip from Sol, and he had decided upon a more honorable course of action. It was fitting and noble for the future First Lord of the Star League to conquer his foes by force of arms, not black-handed treachery.

Nabiki would have to be dealt with. He had a mind to have her quietly strangled after the conquest, though he would have to let events take their natural course and determine later whether this was necessary. Doubtless she would try to ingratiate herself with her new lord, but now he was justly wary of her.

Perhaps eliminating her would be best after all.

Tendo Family Armory, Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System

Nerima Confederation

1 March 3025

Ranma Saotome followed after his father, the Grand Duke, Kasumi, and Akane as they toured the family's armory. He had never seen so much hardware in one place before, and was more than a little envious. It did not help that Akane was so eager to point out the abundance of spare parts and 'mech stores. She didn't seem like she was trying to rub it in, but part of him tensed up any time she mentioned how quickly the family's techs could rebuild a battlemech.

He also tensed up when they passed the Tendo family's stockpile of nuclear weapons. They were securely entombed within a meter thick case-hardened steel vault, guarded at all hours of the day, and electronically locked down by a code sequence that only the Duke and Kasumi knew, but they still gave him the creeps. The use of nuclear weapons, even in deep space, had been outlawed by the Ares Conventions, but the Great Houses had held on to their stockpiles as insurance against any state unscrupulous enough to use them in spite of the ban.

He risked a quick look at Akane when they passed the nuke storage. If he ended up marrying her - which was unlikely, but a disturbing possibility - then some day all of those hydrogen bombs would become his to command. It was a frightening thought, but most uncomfortable of all was his sudden realization that he did not know if he possessed the nerve to dispose of them for good.

Akane must have noticed his unease, for she gave him a sympathetic look. What was with her anyway? Always running hot and cold. Angry and then friendly. It made him wonder if she needed medication for her condition, or if girls in general were like that. A life on the move, spent mostly as a DropShip stowaway, or training in the martial arts, or getting shot at by some local security force, had not been very helpful in regards to understanding girls.

His father hadn't been very helpful either. A strip joint was no place to break your son to the news that girls and boys were different, and definitely not when the son was only eight years old. The most Ranma had been able to get from his father was that women were okay when you needed a little attention (whatever that meant), but in general were just whiney, hypersensitive, overly emotional, and more trouble than they were worth.

He looked at Akane again. She was definitely hypersensitive. Decomposed Semtex charges were more stable than her. Overly emotional - check. She wasn't all that whiney, preferring instead to scream and shout. More trouble than she was worth?

She smiled at him, making him turn away in a rush, and earning a snicker from her.

The jury was still out on that one...

They stopped before a series of 'mech hangars cut deep into the living rock of the mountain. The Grand Duke turned to regard the two Saotomes.

"Genma, my old friend. You don't know how sorry I am to hear that you had to scrap your family's battlemech."

Genma made an uninspired grunt, though his eyes sparkled with greed.

Soun continued. "I happen to have a Griffin in good condition that was passed down from my mother's side of the family. I would be honored if you would take it into battle once again."

Genma nodded casually, as if he had been expecting this.

"I'd be honored to accept it, Tendo."

"Splendid!"

Soun turned to Kasumi, who would take care of the particulars of transfer. Then he gestured to one of the hangar bay doors, which began to roll up into the ceiling at his cue.

"And for my future son-in-law..."

Ranma froze up. His own battlemech? His heart raced at the possibility, but wouldn't that commit him to marrying Akane? The idea suddenly started losing its appeal. He was not going to get bribed into marrying her. No way.

Then he saw what it was that waited for him within the hangar.

"It's a rare variant," Soun declared. "I must confess that these are so rare in the Confederation that this one hasn't seen much prior use. The weapons loadout sacrificed the machineguns in favor of a twin-rack SRM in the left forearm, but I'm sure that won't be a problem, will it, son?"

Ranma Saotome looked upon a PHX-HK2S Phoenix Hawk Land Air Mech. It squatted in airmech mode like a bird of prey tensed to strike. The red and black paint gleamed under the hangar lights. It was magnificent.

"Uh... No... Not at all..." he droned in awe.

"If you must know, it was Akane who suggested it to me," Soun added.

Ranma turned slowly to Akane, who blushed and looked at the ceiling with an innocent smile. He turned back to the LAM.

"You're just giving it to me?" he asked the Duke.

Soun nodded. "Of course, son. I can't have any mechwarrior son of mine going without a battlemech, can I?"

It keeps coming back to that 'son' thing, doesn't it? Ranma thought bitterly. The Phoenix Hawk cried out to him, but...

"I don't know if I can accept it," he said quietly. He wanted to kick himself. He would never get a chance at a 'mech like this ever again.

"Nonsense, Ranma," Soun replied. "I insist."

"Don't embarrass me, boy," Genma added in a warning tone.

"Ranma!" Akane protested.

He gave them all uneasy looks.

"I haven't said that I was going to marry Akane," he began. A harsh look at his father cut him off before he could protest. "And I don't want it to look like I'm being bribed into doing it. If you want to let me pilot a 'mech, how about lending it to me instead?"

Soun's brow furrowed. Ranma's resistance to the engagement was irritating, but he saw the boy's point. There was no harm in humoring him, he supposed.

"Very well, then," he said genially. "I would be happy to let you borrow the 'mech for the duration of your expedition, with no strings attached. Accept it with my compliments."

Ranma felt a wave of relief wash over him. They weren't going to hold it over his head. He stepped forward and shook the Duke's hand.

Genma chuckled at this.

"Well, now that that's settled, we can get down to some serious business."

"You mean lunch, Saotome?" Soun asked with a grin.

"You got it, Tendo!"

Kasumi rolled her eyes in amusement. "I'll call up to the pantry, Father."

The three started for the elevators, leaving Ranma and Akane alone before the Phoenix Hawk.

"So," Akane began. "You like it?"

Ranma gave her a sidelong glance. "It ain't half-bad," he replied. "So what's the big idea with you telling your father about this?"

Akane crossed her eyes in ire.

"Does everything have to have an ulterior motive for you?" she asked him tersely. "I was just trying to be nice. Is that a problem, Ranma?"

Her response stung him.

"Well?" she pressed.

He didn't know what to say, so he changed the subject.

"So, what do I have to do to take this thing out for a test flight?"

He heard her knuckles crack as she squeezed her hands into fists.

"Damn you, Ranma!" she cried. "You are the most pig-headed, egotistical jerk I have ever met! Can't you for once accept the fact that not everyone is trying to manipulate you, or out to get you? I mean, the nerve of you suggesting that this was some kind of bribe to get you to marry me?!"

He whirled on her. "You might not have meant it that way," he retorted. "But I know how my old man thinks, and I know your old man wants us to get hitched, so yeah, I do think that was what they meant!"

Fire flashed in Akane's eyes.

"How dare you accuse my father of something like that!"

He didn't know what hit him until much later, when Kasumi cheerfully suggested that he see Doctor Tofu about the prominent red hand print on his cheek.

Eight Shining Pearls Fortress

Planet Jusenkyo, Jusenkyo System

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

2 March 3025

Shampoo soaked in the steamy waters of the spa, enjoying the heat and letting it work into her tired muscles. She had been training hard ever since her return to Jusenkyo from Lightoller, mostly to get her mind off the place, and especially Herb. As for Mousse, she felt sorry for him, but tempered this with the knowledge that he was aware of the consequences of his actions.

In spite of this, she couldn't help but feel guilty about him. He wouldn't have helped her at the cost of his own career if he hadn't been in love with her. It was maddening, because at any time in her life she had never given him any indication that she loved him, or ever would.

She lay back in the waters and sipped at a restorative drink. She hadn't set out to think about Mousse, but the fool had managed to intrude into her life even here. What she needed to consider was her own career.

She did not yet have a unit to call her own. For reasons unknown, her great-grandmother was content to keep her out of the regular Commonwealth Army command structure, using her to 'fight fires' here and there, though in many cases it was simply running errands.

Her status as Cologne's errand girl wasn't for a lack of experience or of talent. She had fought in numerous small battles and raids, and had swept the Joketsuzoku fighting tournaments that she had entered, but she longed for real combat, against the real enemies of the Commonwealth. Punitive raids and skirmishes in the Periphery were for amateurs, and she was tired of her amateur status.

She wanted to tangle with the Combine.

It wasn't necessary to remind her that open war with the Combine was not currently in the Commonwealth's best interests, for she had listened well in her Strategic Assessment courses. That did not mean that small unconventional actions were not possible. She would kill for a command in a SpecWar regiment posted to the Combine border.

Though she was only a Mechwarrior, she knew in her heart that she had what it took to command. She preferred tactical level actions rather than the heavy planning and logistics of a theater level battle, and would not be upset to never command higher than a 'mech battalion. That was where a warrior of the Joketsuzoku could find glory and honor, not sitting in a command post kilometers from the lines of engagement.

The sound of splashing water and padding feet on the rough tile of the spa caught her off-guard, and a feather of purest white drifted across her nose. She looked up to see Kima standing over her. Kima's wings were folded behind her back in a manner that suggested concern.

This was the first she had seen of Kima since she had departed for Nerima and the failed summit. She had been in conference with the Council since her return to Jusenkyo. What she had told them had remained in the strictest secrecy ever since.

Shampoo was on good terms with the Joketsuzoku hybrid, mostly because their areas of expertise were so different. Shampoo was a mechwarrior, Kima an agent provocateur. There was little opportunity for rivalry. Shampoo's personal attitude towards hybrids was one of measured indifference. She told herself that they were blood of the Joketsuzoku, judged according to their service to the clan. Usually this worked for her, though people like General Herb and his cronies in the so-called 'Musk Dynasty' made her blood run cold.

"Mechwarrior Shampoo," Kima addressed her.

Shampoo tensed. Kima was not usually this formal with her. Something was wrong.

"What is it, sister?" she asked.

"Your presence is demanded before the Matriarch and the Council," she replied sternly. "You are to report promptly to the Council Chambers at seventeen hundred. The uniform will be full-dress black with sidearm."

Shampoo reeled. What had she done? Full-dress uniform with sidearm meant that she might be expected to defend herself and possibly die in single combat. Only the gravest of charges would bring about such an event.

"Kima, what -?"

The hybrid woman looked down at her, and her expression softened. "I cannot tell you the details," she said quietly. "But I caution you to be on your guard, and to say nothing more than the minimum expected of you."

Shampoo nodded in silence as Kima left her.

The last time Shampoo had stood inside the Council Chambers, she was thirteen years old and about to be made a Mechwarrior of the Commonwealth. She had worn her dress-blacks then, though until she had been named a mechwarrior, the right to bear a weapon before the Council was not hers.Today she wore a long curved dagger of cold blue Damascus steel upon her left shoulder; hilt down and crossing over her breasts for an easy cutting-draw with her right hand.

The dagger was not her preferred weapon; that distinction belonged to the heavy mace-like bon bori. Her dagger symbolized her status as a mechwarrior, and the deep red and gold bindings of the hilt her place among the Matriarch's bloodline. Her black and silver-trimmed uniform cheongsam was ankle-length and impeccable, having spent most of its service life sheathed in plastic and hanging in her closet. The precious silver and gold thread of the embroidered characters sparkled in the light, as did the eight butterflies chasing flaming pearls that symbolized her House.

Her appearance was calculated to impress upon her accusers who she was and what she stood for, but would that matter if they came from among the Council itself? She still had no idea why she had been called to the Chambers, though from the tone of Kima's voice and her admonition to be on her guard that it was not for a promotion. What had she done wrong? Was it because of General Herb?

Pink and Link approached her as she presented herself at the appointed time outside the Chambers. They were dressed in matching uniforms; their embroidery was skillfully offset to be the opposite of the other. It was the only way Shampoo could have told the twins apart.

"Mechwarrior Shampoo, we shall be your escorts to and from the Chambers," Pink said to her.

Link followed this with, "You shall be upon your honor at all other times."

Shampoo nodded in silent acknowledgement.

They did not have to wait long. A pagegirl appeared from behind a door and motioned for them to enter the Chambers. Pink and Link stood to either side of Shampoo as the trio stepped through the door.

The place was as dim and sparsely furnished as she remembered. Even the smell of the incense had not changed in the last six years. The faces that regarded her from their low couches were just as wrinkled and age-worn, and betrayed no hint of what was to come.

The Elders of the Joketsuzoku were arrayed in a half-circle facing east. Shampoo's place would be opposite them, facing west, and standing while they remained seated. The Chamber was one of the few places in the fortress illuminated by fire rather than electricity, and the sanguine glow of the lamps flickering across the Elders' faces caught in their eyes and upon their embroidered robes in tiny glittering flashes.

Pink and Link brought her to the place expected of her and stepped back a pace to fade into the shadows of the mahogany-paneled walls. The Elders remained silent and impassive, and appeared content to do so forever if necessary. Shampoo's eyes flicked about, searching in vain for her Great-Grandmother, while she remained at attention, staring straight ahead.

Cologne arrived only after an agonizing period of silence. The Matriarch appeared from behind a silk partition and sat upon her couch in the center of the half-circle. She did not look at Shampoo, contenting herself with a few whispered conversations with those on her immediate right and left.

Finally, she looked up as if only just realizing that Shampoo was standing there.

"This Council now convenes an inquest into misconduct by Mechwarrior Shampoo," she announced. Then, addressing Shampoo directly, she went on. "You have been brought before this Council on the gravest matters of Commonwealth Security," she told her. "On your oath as a Mechwarrior of the Commonwealth, and as a Sister of the Joketsuzoku, you will answer truthfully and to the best of your knowledge all questions put before you."

Shampoo cleared her throat quietly and gave the expected reply.

"On my oath, I shall."

Cologne nodded at her statement and then consulted her notes.

"Were you assigned under Classified Directive 25-06 to the planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System, on the 11th of January of this year?" she asked.

"I was, Elder," Shampoo responded. Her heart raced at the question. That was the date of the break-in, and the date she had fallen victim to the Jusenkyo Effect.

Cologne continued. "Were you assigned in a temporary duty status to security detail at the Laboratory Complex for the duty period of Ten through Eleven January, inclusive?"

"Yes, Elder."

"According to the incident report signed by Governor-General Herb, a breach of security occured at the Laboratory Complex shortly after midnight local time on the eleventh of January, and that you were the first member of the security detail to engage the intruders. Did this occur as specified?"

Shampoo wished her great-grandmother would get to the point.

"Yes, Elder."

"During this breach, you were to respond as part of the security detail. Were you mounted at this time?"

"No, Elder. I was dismounted at the time of the breach." This referred to the fact that she had not been piloting her battlemech.

"Were you mounted when you first engaged the intruders?"

Shampoo shook her head slowly. "No, Elder. I was not."

"Then you responded in a capacity for which you were neither trained nor qualified; nor was it in keeping with your orders," Cologne intoned. Technically, as a mechwarrior, her required response during the security breach was to secure her designated area with her battlemech. The job of rooting out intruders in the labs went to a squad of grunt infantry that had been too slow in responding that night.

Shampoo was not going to take this accusation lying down. Mustering her courage, she spoke out.

"Elder, the designated security was not on-station. I responded to the Laboratory Complex only after several calls over the intercom for the Reaction Force went unacknowledged."

Cologne raised an eyebrow at this, as did several other Elders.

"The matter of the security detachment is a local matter, and the concern of Governor-General Herb," she said formally. "It is not within the bounds of this investigation into your misconduct."

She looked down at her notes again.

"The result of your disobedience was the escape of the intruders from the Complex, and your own exposure to the Jusenkyo Effect - an exposure that you did not immediately report to higher authority, and in contravention of posted regulations and the Governor-General's standing orders. According to an affidavit signed by Doctor Gaido, you did not report your exposure until twenty-three days after the incident."

Her great-grandmother's words stung. Her knees became weak, and it was all she could do to remain standing at attention.

Cologne continued. "According to the report, when you finally reported to your duty station in your designated capacity, you gave mounted pursuit to the two intruders, who had stolen an All Terrain Vehicle. Is this correct?"

Shampoo was stony faced.

"Yes, Elder."

Cologne once again consulted her notes.

"At Map Reference Delta-Six-Mike by Echo-Three-Lima, Local Time zero-six-three-nine; you reported destroying the All Terrain Vehicle and killing the intruders with a volley of short range missile fire. Is this correct?"

"Yes, Elder," she said with a thickening voice.

Cologne regarded her closely.

"Did you personally verify the deaths of the intruders?"

Shampoo cringed inwardly. This was what they were after. It could only mean that at least one of the intruders had survived her attack, and had somehow escaped off-world. The implications for Commonwealth security were staggering, and she had been responsible.

She swallowed hard and faced the Elders.

"No, Elders. I did not personally verify the deaths of the intruders. The damage to the ATV appeared severe enough for me to make the assumption that no survivors were possible."

Cologne and the other Elders whispered amongst themselves for several minutes while Shampoo perspired in her uniform. This was it, the end of a career that had not even begun. If the Elders were kind, they would simply have her put to death - perhaps even in a trial by combat, fighting until she was at last overcome. That at least would be something better than being stripped of her mechwarrior status and cast down into the ranks of the lowborn.

When the Elders had finished their brief discussion, Cologne signalled for Pink and Link, who escorted Shampoo from the Chambers. They remained with her outside, keeping to themselves, and leaving Shampoo to her own dark thoughts. Obviously the Elders were deciding on her punishment.

She was called back inside the Chamber after nearly half an hour of waiting and worrying. The Elders continued to regard her in their impassive way, leaving her with no indication of what was to come. Only Cologne's face showed any expression, and it was one of great disappointment.

"Mechwarrior Shampoo," her great-grandmother intoned. "This Council has reviewed the evidence presented to it, and finds that you are guilty of one count of disobeying orders, one count of dereliction of duty, and one count of negligence in battle during a matter that threatens the security of the Commonwealth at its highest levels."

Shampoo felt her world collapsing around her. The dereliction of duty charge alone could bring a death sentence if the Council was so inclined.

Cologne continued in a dry voice. "This Council will reconvene at a later date to determine punitive sanctions. At this time you are remanded to the authority of the Special Operations Command, effective immediately." She looked to the other Elders. "Are there any further comments or questions from the Council?" There were none. "This concludes this inquest. Mechwarrior Shampoo shall remain in chamber after the Council departs."

Shampoo stood as still as death while the old crones of the Council stood and made their shaky exits. Cologne remained behind, as did Pink and Link, her perpetual shadows.

Once the rest of the Council had departed, Cologne stepped out from behind the low table that served as her desk, and approached Shampoo.

"I am extremely disappointed in you, Great-Granddaughter" she said to her. "Your conduct on Lightoller was deplorable. I thought I had trained you better than that, but apparently I have failed. You are rash and undisciplined; these are qualities that do not become a mechwarrior, nor a future leader of mechwarriors."

Shampoo hung her head in shame. There was nothing she could say to her great-grandmother that would make any difference. All she could do was accept her fate.

"I await my punishment, Great-Grandmother."

Cologne tapped her gnarled ashwood staff on the floor. "That remains to be seen."

Shampoo looked up at this, clearly confused. Cologne answered her unspoken question.

"This incident is as much General Herb's responsibility as yours," she told her. "Normally I would have no choice but to see you answer for your failure, but circumstances have allowed me some latitude on your behalf."

A glimmer of hope welled within Shampoo's eyes. Cologne continued to speak.

"Kima's report from Nerima was quite disturbing," she said. She then produced several stereographs and showed them to Shampoo. "The Duke has thwarted Combine and League attempts to secure his youngest daughter as a bride by engaging her to a mechwarrior named Ranma Saotome."

Shampoo recognized one of the stereographs. It was taken by a button-hole camera concealed in Kima's clothing. It showed a buxom red-haired girl being carried on a litter. Her left arm was swathed in bandages. Shampoo had seen that girl before, and would never forget her.

Cologne read the look of hate on her great-granddaughter's face and had her suspicions confirmed.

"That's the girl who broke into the Lab," Shampoo said angrily.

"That also happens to be the young man engaged to Duke Tendo's daughter," Cologne added, showing her stereographs of Ranma in his normal body. "They are one and the same, thanks to the Jusenkyo Effect."

Shampoo looked at the stereograph of male Ranma. His arrogance was appalling. It made her want to wipe the smile off his smug face. "Send me to Nerima, Great-Grandmother," she pleaded. "I will kill this Ranma Saotome as atonement for my failure."

"That will become your assignment soon enough," Cologne agreed. "But there are more important matters that may well require Saotome to remain among the living for the moment. It appears that this young man and his father are engaged in a search for the legendary Ryuugenzawa."

Shampoo frowned. Ryuugenzawa was a story mechwarriors told their children at bedtime. "You don't believe they've found it, do you, Great-Grandmother?" she asked.

"I am of two minds," she replied. "However, Grand Duke Tendo is taking it seriously enough. There is no other rational explanation for why he withdrew his surrender offer, and it would also explain his haste to engage Akane Tendo to Saotome. On the off chance that Ryuugenzawa does exist, the Commonwealth must possess its secrets - or else destroy Ryuugenzawa to keep it from our enemies in the Furinkan Combine."

She handed Shampoo a set of flimsies. "Your assignment is to accompany Agent Kima and a select mission team to determine the validity of the Ryuugenzawa rumors. If it exists, you are to report its location and other key information to the Commonwealth at all costs; then you will terminate Ranma Saotome and his father, and return home. If Ryuugenzawa is a hoax, you have only to terminate Ranma Saotome and his father, and then return home. Use discretion in the matter, as the Commonwealth wishes to avoid a diplomatic entanglement if at all possible."

She narrowed her eyes at Shampoo.

"Your conduct of the mission will have a direct bearing on the decision of the Council regarding possible disciplinary sanctions levied against you. Do not fail, Shampoo, or your fate will indeed be out of my hands."

Nerima Confederation Phoenix Hawk LAM #T507-1

12,000 meters above Mean Sea Level

Planet Nerima, Capella System

2 March 3025

The pressure suit inflated against Ranma Saotome's stomach and thighs with a soft hiss, constricting and keeping precious blood where it was needed. A grunt of exertion sounded over the crackle of the aircomm net. To anyone on the ground who might have looked straight up in that moment, he was a rapidly climbing black dot against the clouds.

The LAM's engine turbines shrilled above and behind him, and the low drone of the fusion plant was a rumble in the pit of his stomach. Watching his engine status with half an eye, he eased the throttles forward and into overthrust. The reaction was almost instantaneous; a kick in the seat of the pants and the sudden howl of the turbines as raw helium plasma was dumped into the thrust coils. His relative airspeed - along with his altimeter - jumped dramatically, pushing him through the sound barrier and into a zone of eerie silence.

He was riding a fusion powered comet climbing straight for the empty heavens. Twin streaks of flame streamed from the drives with blue-on-blue shock diamonds burning brightly deep within the ducts. If he continued his climb he would find himself in low orbit very soon. It was tempting, but he was not cleared for an orbital burn by the local Close Orbital and Aerospace Control, or COAC.

The aircomm crackled in his ears as if to remind him of this.

"Tango Five-Oh-Seven, Nerima COAC; please advise on your altitude excursion, over."

Ranma thumbed the radio 'talk' button on his control yoke. Killjoys...

"Nerima COAC, this is Tango Five-Oh-Seven; I thought I made it clear that I was conducting a performance test."

"Copy that, Tango Five-Oh-Seven. Nerima COAC advises that you are not clear for flight operations above Flight Level Three-Zero-Zero."

"Roger that," Ranma grumbled. A flick of his eyes across his HUD confirmed what he already knew: he wasn't even close to the 30,000 meters above Mean Sea Level limit!

He eased off on the throttle, and pushed the nose of the Phoenix Hawk down into level flight. It was time to see what this thing's wings were made of. But first he would have to ask 'Mother May I?' from his babysitters.

"Nerima COAC, this is Tango Five-Oh-Seven; request permission for unrestricted flight ops below Flight Level Three-Zero-Zero."

There was a pause, probably longer than necessary.

"Copy That, Tango Five-oh-Seven. You are clear for unrestricted flight ops below three-zero-zero and within the proscribed area. Squawk Three-Seven Hundred to confirm."

Ranma dialed his 'mech's transponder setting to '3700' as ordered, and shoved the throttle forward again. The Phoenix Hawk LAM responded with another jolt of power and an angry scream from the engines. He set his leading edge trim with a brief thought through his neurohelmet, and then pushed the control column forward. The red and black aerofighter's nose sank towards the grassy veldt far below him. The Phoenix Hawk LAM was now in a steep full power dive.

Ranma sank into a deep trance, letting the myriad inputs from the 'mech's internal sensors wash over him. He could feel the freezing bite of the rushing air over his wings as if it was his own skin, and the throbbing of the reactor coolant circulating pumps echoed the jiggling of his own insides as the ship tore straight down at the planet. Tiny stress gauges flexed and strained within the internal structure of the ship, keying him to the health of the machine. The steady drone of the inverters supplying direct-current power to the 'mech's myomer bundles told him of the integrity of the muscle groups and their power and control feeds. The faint tickling of microwave energy captured by his phased array radar receiver was clean and free of extraneous signal noise - a vital quality when his life could depend on the radar data he received in combat.

All in all, Duke Tendo's 'loaner' was in fantastic shape. It was far superior to the old clunker he used to pilot. He was going to hate to have to give it up at the end of their wild goose chase for Ryuugenzawa.

He pulled several hard banking turns, followed by a climbing inside loop that twisted into a split-S halfway through the maneuver. He gutted out the gee-forces with strangled gasps over the aircomm net, fighting for breath even as he squeezed his abdomen and thigh muscles with all his might to supplement the effects of his pressure suit. The procedure, which was as old as aerial combat, would let him take up to an additional gravity of acceleration before he risked a blackout. At the fringes of his vision lurked icy walls of darkness that threatened to swallow him. He eased off his second climbing loop slightly and felt the blood pounding in his brain with renewed vigor.

Kasumi Tendo peered through a large set of field glasses to the open blue sky. Akane stood beside her as they watched Ranma's aerobatics from the castle's garden terrace. The sound of the Phoenix Hawk's engines was a low rumble, faint and distant as a far away thunderstorm.

"He's quite a pilot," Kasumi observed.

Akane didn't reply, causing her older sister's mouth to turn down slightly at the corners.

"Akane?"

"What is it, Kasumi?" she said wearily.

"I don't understand why you are so angry at Ranma. He has always been very kind and polite to me."

"Terrific," Akane snarled. "YOU marry him."

Kasumi's eyes widened with momentary surprise. She then composed herself, and placed a friendly hand upon her baby sister's shoulder. "Akane," she began calmly. "That's no way to talk to me."

Akane's shame was evident, and she cast her eyes to the grass at her feet. "I'm sorry, Kasumi."

"Now I can understand why you are upset with the engagement," Kasumi went on. "Father has certainly outdone himself, but this promise must be kept. Our honor -"

"- I understand about how honor must be met," Akane interrupted dourly. "You don't need to remind me about it."

Kasumi tried another tack.

"This can't be any easier for Ranma," she said, gesturing up into the sky where the red and black Phoenix Hawk courted the clouds. "You can try to look at things from his point of view at the very least."

"I have," Akane replied.

"And...?"

"He's still a jerk," she concluded. "Even if this engagement isn't his fault."

Kasumi tsked to herself.

"For a jerk he certainly went out of his way to protect you."

Akane tensed up with sudden ire. Leave it Kasumi to drag that old chestnut out of the fire!

"Of course," she replied tersely. "After all, I'm his meal ticket, right?"

"Akane, you know that he doesn't think of you like that," Kasumi scolded. "If he did, would he have insisted upon merely borrowing a 'mech that he knew Father was eager to give to him?"

Akane bit her lip. Score another one for Kasumi.

"Now, Akane. Tell me what's really bothering you. It's not just Ranma."

Akane stepped back from her sister and sighed. "It's a lot of things, Kasumi. Ever since word of the Combine's attack on Calypso, I've been on edge. The 1st Nerima Guards are about to deploy for a counterattack. This could be the most important battle they will ever fight, and I won't be leading them! I should be with them, not getting ready to chase some stupid fairy tale!"

Kasumi nodded sympathetically. "I understand, Akane. But at the same time, if Mister Saotome is correct about Ryuugenzawa, then you will be a part of the expedition that can actually save the Confederation. Battles are won and lost, and soldiers live or die, but what matters most is the final outcome of the war."

She stepped closer to her sister, placing both hands on her shoulders now. "Your burden won't be any easier than those of the troops on the battlefield, Akane, but your success will make their struggles and their sacrifices mean something worthwhile."

Akane nodded slowly at her sister's words.

"I don't wish to weigh your spirit down any more than it is, Akane," Kasumi continued. "But the fate of our people rests in your hands, and in Ranma's. Promise me that you will work together for a future we can all be proud of."

Akane looked up at her sister and saw the weariness that hung behind her eyes. No one had shouldered the burden of the war against the Furinkan Combine more than Kasumi. Though she was young and pretty looking by nearly anyone's standards, Akane could see how old and drained Kasumi felt inside.This was more than just a motherly admonition from her sister, it was an urgent plea.

Her heart clenched tight in her chest and her throat began to sting with grief. She caught Kasumi up in a fierce embrace, clinging tightly to her sister in a way she hadn't since she was very little. She felt Kasumi's arms close around her and hold her gently in response, and felt a single splash of warmth upon her arm that trickled down and was lost within the fabric of her blouse.

"I promise, Big Sister," she whispered.

"I know you'll do just fine," Kasumi responded. "You always make me proud, Akane. I know if Mother were here, she would feel the same way."

They held each other for some time in silence, the knowledgelingering in the backs of both their minds that this would be the last real time together they would have until the end of the war.

"Oh my," Kasumi exclaimed suddenly. "Ranma is diving awfully steep for being so low to the ground."

Akane turned from her sister to see the Phoenix Hawk LAM plummeting straight for the ground near the Battlemech Firing Range.

"Pull up, you idiot...!" Akane whispered to the sky.

A strident alarm tone sounded in his headset as the Phoenix Hawk LAM approached Vmax, or the maximum permissable velocity for the current atmospheric pressure and density. Ranma's hand clenched tighter on the throttle controls as his mind opened further to the cries of his stress gauges. He wanted to see right now how much punishment the fighter could really take, since the middle of battle was no time to discover your limitations.

When the alarm inputs from the stress gauges in the wings and the vertical stabilizers began to sound, he eased the throttle back to seventy percent and gingerly pulled out of his dive. To 'flat-hat' the LAM so close to the edge of the performance envelope was asking to get your wings snapped off.

He made it with an easy hundred meters to spare before he ran out of sky, and tugged at the transformation lever. The Phoenix Hawk barrel-rolled into airmech mode, a hybrid between sleek aerospace fighter and the human form Battlemech. The legs dropped down from the undercarriage and fired blue cones of braking thrust, stopping the 'mech in midair and bringing it into a hover.

The aerofighter had performed as well as expected, though Ranma was well aware of the fact that his LAM was no match for a dedicated aerospace fighter of the same displacement. For one thing they were a lot faster, and definitely better armed and armored. That meant that any dogfights he found himself in would require him to fly with as much brains as guts.

When the airmech was in a stable hover at ten meters, Ranma shifted it into Battlemech mode and dropped it to the loamy soil of the plains surrounding the mountain and the city of Gondolin. The fifty-ton war machine touched down into a crouch with a tooth-jarring impact and a groan of hydraulics, its gunpod heavy laser at the ready. Ranged on the plains before the Phoenix Hawk out to four hundred meters were numerous target silhouettes in the shape of battlemechs, tanks, and armored vehicles.

His gunsight floated in the HUD, its pipper an angry red dot haloed in green upon one of the targets. A squeeze of the trigger sent a pulse of light from the rifle-like heavy laser in the Phoenix Hawk's right hand. The beam burned into the steel target with a coruscating spray of sparks, its ten-thousand degree heat melting through the metal and bursting forth into a roiling cloud of vaporized iron.

Ranma frowned at the results of his hit. The aimpoint was off by several milliradians, an error of about a meter at the maximum range of the laser, and completely unacceptable for an energy weapon. The targeting system was badly out of alignment. He could have the armorers realign the targeting system, but that was a band-aid fix.

Part of the problem lay in the LAM's Anderson 2000 series heavy laser, which was so unreliable that on this particular 'mech, it had been replaced with the standard Phoenix Hawk Harmon series weapon. The other part of the problem was that the LAM's fire control system had been specially designed around the primary weapon - a laser whose integrity had not stood the test of time and had been replaced.

The odds of finding an Anderson 2000 laser in good working order almost two centuries after the production facilities had been bombed into rubble were practically nonexistent. The alternative was to find a Tek Tru-Trak fire control system, which was the standard Phoenix Hawk unit - but that was its own set of problems. For one thing, the engineering protocols that separated the two systems were almost two hundred years apart. Ranma didn't know of any techs who could gateway the older Tek system with the more modern Allied Aerospace technology without creating a cumbersome and unreliable mess.

A dark thought passed through him, dimming several lines of indicator lights on his neurohelmet display and bringing a chirp of protest from his main computer. If Ryuugenzawa did exist, and was still intact, then he would never have to worry about jerry-rigged fire control systems ever again. But that would also mean that his father was right about Ryuugenzawa and that he was wrong.

The thought passed, and the neurohelm indicators shot back into the green. The Phoenix Hawk sprang forward, weapons blazing, as Ranma attacked the silhouettes with gusto. Those that were not burned down with his lasers felt the double-barreled punch of his arm-mounted twin Short Range Missile rack. Anything still standing was dealt a punishing series of kicks, stomps, punches, and chops.

The Phoenix Hawk LAM drifted into the hangar bay on a column of superheated air from the leg thrusters. Genma Saotome watched Ranma guide the 50 ton airmech to a perfect touchdown in the designated revetment, and waited until the turbines began spooling down before approaching. Ground crew in heavy canvas and metal foil smocks were already connecting insulated hoses to the airmech's exterior coolant ports.

The tinted canopy rose from the fuselage, and Ranma's helmeted head became visible to him. Genma waited at the foot of the Phoenix Hawk as one of the ground crew extended the boarding ladder and climbed up to safe the ejector seat and help Ranma disconnect from the 'mech. The bundle of control and indication feeds, life support, and pressurization hoses were carefully removed and stowed in a clean plastic pouch. Only then was Ranma allowed to stand up and exit the ship, a formality that clearly irritated him.

He unlocked the neck ring seals and twisted his helmet off. His black hair was matted against his head with sweat, and he looked worn from his exertions, but his eyes were bright with excitement.

"How did it go, boy?" Genma asked his son.

Ranma flashed him a 'thumbs up.'

"Great," he replied. "Heck, it was almost worth the three year wait."

Genma nodded in reply. "I'm glad to hear it. Don't bother washing up; I've got a mind to continue some necessary training with you."

Ranma gave his father a sour look.

"You gotta be kidding me," he said to him. "We already worked out today, and I just put myself through the nine-gee wringer up there. I'm beat."

"All the more reason to train," Genma retorted. "You've got fifteen minutes to change out of your pressure suit and get to the big bore range."

Ranma cracked his knuckles in frustration. It was nothing new to see Pop get gung ho over training, but there was something else in the tone of his voice that bothered him.

"Whatever."

The castle maintained a firing range at the base of the mountain for large caliber, or 'big bore' small arms; usually heavy machineguns, grenade launchers, and light cannon. Ranma was unsure what his father had in mind for training. He had maintained his proficiency in just about every crew-served or man portable heavy weapon to be found in the Inner Sphere - in keeping with the Anything-Goes credo of being ready for anything at any time.

Genma stood impatiently at the end of the firing line with a Krey Ballistics 20mm autocannon cradled in his massive arms. At first Ranma thought he was going to have to do something stupid like field strip and reassemble the thing blindfolded - a waste of time for someone who could practically do so in his sleep.

Then he saw the boxes of Gelshok ammunition sitting on the shooter's bench. The hard gelatine projectiles were used in live-fire exercises by infantry against vehicles and battlemechs, and in more oppressive regimes they were used as less-than-lethal riot control measures. Getting hit with one in the 20mm range was the equivalent of getting popped with a 90 MPH fastball; not likely to cause a life-threatening injury, but definitely something that would knock the snot out of you. It was the sort of thing you wanted to avoid if you could help it.

Which was, of course, the object of today's training.

"How's the arm, boy?" Genma asked his son.

Ranma rubbed at the mauve film of spray-on plastic flesh that protected his skin grafts.

"It itches, but that's about it," he replied in a steely voice. He did not want to show his apprehension for the day's training, as it would be asking for trouble.

Genma slapped an eight-round magazine into the weapon.

"Good. You've obviously gotten out of practice against firearms, Ranma, and I mean to do something about that. We'll start at fifty meters for now, and work in from there."

He jacked a shell into the chamber.

"Get moving, boy."

Ranma started for the fifty meter line without a word, dreading the moment when he would face his father over the barrel of a 20mm cannon. He didn't question the fact that he was going out there without any personal protection - complaining would only make it harder for him. He had learned that lesson well enough in the sixteen years he had spent training in the Anything Goes Style. Besides, this wouldn't be the first time he had done this drill cold, and the sooner he got it over with, the better.

The fifty meter line was marked with metal target silhouettes of men and light vehicles. Ranma chose a spot between two targets that would give him a little room to manuever. His father must have paid off the Rangemaster, because he could not imagine any rational human being allowing this kind of activity on a firing range.

Genma settled into a prone position at the firing line and took aim. It was hard to see him clearly from a such a distance, but Ranma focused himself to the task. His father would hold his breath just prior to shooting, and he was supposed to detect that subtle shift in the breathing pattern and react in time to keep from getting shot. He had to move before the trigger was squeezed, for even a less-than-lethal gelshok round was still traveling faster than the speed of sound. He'd get hit before he even heard the weapon's report.

He jerked to the right as the cannon's muzzle leapt off the berm of the firing line. The shell sailed centimeters past his head, close enough to feel it zip by. His heart pounded in his ears, deafening him to the sound of the gelshok round smashing into a flat pink splatter pattern on a silhouette at the hundred meter line.

"What's the big freakin' idea of aiming at my head?!" he screamed at his father.

Genma replied with another shot.

Ranma realized this with enough time to only just throw himself clear. The passing shell clipped his tank top and ripped out one of the seams. Pink goo splattered against his skin in a stinging spray.

"You've gone soft on me, Ranma!" Genma yelled when his son tumbled through an evasive roll to pop upright and ready for number three. "Don't think for a minute that you deserve having it easy after that disgraceful performance against your poor fiancee's kidnapper!"

"Hey, I saved her, didn't I?" Ranma returned. He was angry, but also intensely focused, the adrenaline coursing through him and making time slow down.

"Twenty meter line, boy!" Genma called, taking aim again. "Move your sorry ass!"

Ranma sprinted for the twenty meter line, jinking just enough to spoil Genma's aim. His father was shooting from the kneeling position now, and fortunately for Ranma, the 20mm Krey had a hefty twelve pound trigger pull, which made it easy to see the forearm muscles flexing as Genma squeezed the trigger. The cannon fired as he stopped short, nearly catching him off-balance and out of luck, but not nearly enough.

"Have to do better than that!" Ranma chortled. He was in the groove now, and though being closer meant less time to react, at least now he was in a better position to see the shot coming.

"Don't get cocky!" Genma shouted angrily. He fired again, aiming low for an extremely painful shot to the thighs. Ranma sidestepped it easily, and anticipated the follow up shot by leaping into the air and spinning to give himself the necessary angular momentum to dodge a third shot when he landed.

The third shot didn't come. He landed on the balls of his feet, ready to break for safety, but Genma chose instead to stand.

"Always jumping, eh boy?" he said tersely to his son. "Even in a 'mech, that's your favorite tactic."

"Hey, it works," Ranma returned.

"It makes you predictable, you idiot!"

Genma fired again, but Ranma was already bending double backwards. The pig-tailed martial artist planted his hands in the sandy soil and flipped over with a smug grin on his face.

Genma raised an eyebrow at this.

"Not bad, boy. Not bad. You might make something of yourself yet."

Ranma was taken aback by this. Compliments did not come freely from the lips of his father, even ones as shallow as this one.

"Hey, you really mean that?"

"Of course not!" He fired again.

Ranma remained still, letting the shell pass harmlessly over his head. His father gave him a hard look while still sighting down the barrel of the weapon.

"Awfully sure of yourself, eh boy?"

"Come on, Pop," Ranma said in reply. "What's the big deal with all of this? What gives?"

Genma's face hardened and his eyes narrowed in distaste.

"Has it occured to you that we're about to embark on one of the most dangerous missions of our lives? On top of that, we're going to be responsible for the safety of your fiancee. Don't think for one moment that I'm going to cut you any slack where her welfare is concerned!"

"What?" Ranma cried in disbelief. "No way! She's coming with us?"

"That's right, son."

"What for?" Ranma protested. "She's just gonna get in our way, and besides that, who says I even want her coming along?"

"That's not your decision to make, Ranma," Genma said evenly. "Now are you going to stand there, or are you going to do something about this cannon?"

"I'd like to shove it straight up your ass, old man."

"You're long on talk, boy."

Ranma remained where he was.

"Well?" Genma demanded of him.

"You've only got one more round left in that thing," Ranma said to him. "So go ahead, take your shot. When you miss, I'm gonna beat the living shit out of you."

Genma shook his head sadly.

"Son, you had best hope that I miss."

Ranma watched as his father drew taut, pulling the stock of the cannon hard up against the meaty spot of his shoulder to absorb the punishing recoil. His eyes noted the angle of deflection of the cannon's ribbed muzzle brake, and extrapolated an impact point. From there it was merely an exercise in getting that portion of his anatomy - the top of his head - out of the way. He ducked.

The cannon's report at twenty meters was ear-splitting, but even worse was the sound of the shell passing over him. It was not the buzzing sound of a gelshok round, but the keening zing of something far more dangerous.

The sharp crump of an Armor Piercing EXplosive round sounded behind him as the shell burst against a silhouette. The ring of steel echoed in his ears as bits of shrapnel pattered to the ground. The APEX round had been too close at twenty meters to arm its explosive charge, but that wouldn't have mattered much if it had struck him in the head. He stood quaking with terror after the fact, not saying a word.

"If you're to become a great martial artist someday, you can't take anything for granted, boy," Genma said, lowering the smoking muzzle of the cannon. "Not even me."

Nothing was said between father and son as they returned to Azure Cloud Castle. Genma was satisfied with the training session - and with the effect it had on his son. Ranma was too angry with his father and too shaken by the live round that could have blown his head off to say anything.

They were a familiar sight now with the troops garrisoned at the castle, and passed without pause through the layers of security that protected the Tendos. Soun had decided to let Akane loose from the dreaded South Tower, and the castle seemed a less foreboding place than it had in the days following the attempt to kidnap her. It was even beginning to feel like home, which was an odd experience for Ranma, who had never spent much time in any one place. Two weeks in the castle had seemed like two months elsewhere.

That bothered him almost as much as his father's idea of training for the day. He was starting to get used to the idea of living in the castle and being at least a small part of the Tendos' lives. It helped that Kasumi was always there to make him feel at home. Because of the renewed offensive by the Furinkan Combine, Nabiki had just returned from wherever it was that the Duke had sent her, but she was staying in the city of Gondolin at the foot of the mountain and so wasn't around to make them feel like unwanted guests. Akane was still sore at him for gods only knew what reason, but then, what else was new?

He guessed that none of it really mattered, because they were going to be getting underway within two days on their fool's errand to find Ryuugenzawa. The last logistical hang-ups were being resolved, and the DropShip that was to be their primary transportation between jump point and planetary surface was to arrive from the service yard sometime today. It would only take a day or so to load the DropShip, and then they could leave at any time.

He had no idea when they would be returning, if ever. Should his suspicions about Ryuugenzawa prove correct, it would be a very long time before his father admitted defeat and gave up the search. Perhaps he never would, or at least not until he went to his grave.

There was the crew to consider as well. They were supposed to be covert operatives and used to long term deployments, but they were still members of the Confederation armed forces, and at least a few of them had to have family somewhere. How long could the search last before the threat of mutiny reared its ugly head?

Ranma saw that this was at the heart of his unease with his father's plan. For the last three years they had been going it alone, just the two of them, answering to nothing and no one. It was slow going without their own ships, but at least they didn't have to worry about what they would do if they had to beat a hasty retreat. Now they were going to have a whole crew of soldiers, sailors, and technicians along for the ride. The entire mission would depend on them in one way or another, and at the same time Ranma felt responsible for them, unnecessary baggage though they were in his eyes.

They reached the Salon, a common hangout for them, and the place where Genma and Grand Duke Tendo often played a game of shogi. Since the Combine's renewed offensive against the Confederation, and word of troop movements by the League on their shared border, the Duke's time had been taken up with conferences and the hasty preparations for the expedition to Ryuugenzawa. It had been a busy few days.

They did not expect to find the Grand Duke of the entire Nerima Confederation face down on the plush carpet, groveling before a wizened old man who looked less than a meter tall.

Ranma turned to his father for an explanation, but his old man was frozen in place, his face ashen with fear and dismay.

"Hey Pop, what gives?"

The geezer who stood imperiously over the Duke turned to face them upon hearing this.

"So, if it isn't Genma Saotome..." he intoned. "I never thought I'd lay eyes on your sorry carcass ever again."

Tears sprang from Genma's eyes.

"Master!" he cried, and flung himself prostrate before the old man. "Oh Master, I'm so glad you're safe and sound! We feared the worst!"

"Stuff it," Happousai replied, drawing his finger across his throat. "I didn't come here for revenge." He cast a glance towards the Duke. "You two took your best shot, but truth be known, you should have finished me off personally rather than leaving me to die at the bottom of the ocean. If you clowns had actually paid attention to the charts, you'd have known the water wasn't all that deep there to begin with. Even a Locust has more watertight integrity than what a mere two-hundred meters of sea pressure can dish out."

Ranma cocked his head in wonderment.

"Who's this old freak?" he asked his groveling father. "And what'd he do to make you want to kill him?"

Happousai's eyes went wide in disbelief.

"Freak?" he croaked. "Freak?"

"Show your Master some respect, boy!" Genma cried nervously, and reached up to pull Ranma to the carpet by his shirt.

Ranma shrugged him off. "Master? Him?"

Happousai stumped over to him. He looked him up and down as if were planning on buying some livestock.

"You must be Genma's boy," he observed. "Soun was just telling me all about you." He looked him over again. "I must confess that I'm a bit disappointed by what I see, but you'll have to do."

Ranma cracked his knuckles. "What's that supposed to mean, you old fart?"

Happousai nudged the cowering Genma with his foot. "I can see where he gets his sense of respect."

"Don't kill me, Master!"

"Aw, knock it off already!" Happousai barked. "I said I wasn't here for revenge. I hate to say it, but I'm getting on in years. And so I'm here to train my Heir to the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts." He looked at Ranma a third time, adding a reproachful shake of his head. "I can see what you two bozos have left me to work with. He's not much, but we'll see if I can still make a silk purse from a sow's ear."

Ranma grit his teeth. "Just who do you think you are, anyway?"

Genma succeeded in grabbing his son and pulling him to the carpet. "You idiot! That is the Master of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts! Don't you listen, boy?!"

Ranma looked up at the wizened Happousai.

"That's the master of the Anything Goes School? You gotta be kidding me. And here I was proud to be part of the school..."

Happousai began to turn red.

"He didn't mean it!" Genma pleaded. "He's just a foolish boy! No harm done!" He turned angrily to Ranma. "Show some respect, boy! Bow before your master!"

Ranma stood and folded his arms over his chest.

"I ain't bowing an' scraping for the likes of this old fart."

"Ranma!" Soun begged. "You know not what you say! The Master -"

"- Has had enough of your lip," Happousai finished for the Duke. "Prepare yourself!"

Akane and Kasumi walked in, oblivious to what was about to happen.

"Hi, Dad," Akane called to her father. Then she realized that he was prostrate on the ground and looking up in terror at a strange old man. "Dad?"

"Not now, Akane!" Soun protested.

Happousai was distracted from Ranma, and turned to face the two Tendo daughters. His eyes lit up with delight. "Hotcha!" he cried, and leaped with a lecher's glee for them.

He made it about half a meter before being pounded senseless into the floor by Ranma's fist.

"Some master of martial arts," Ranma cracked. "Getting distracted in the middle of a fight by a couple of girls." He turned to his father, who looked on in mute horror at what his son had done. "You're actually afraid of this guy, Pop?"

"Y-You don't realize w-what you've d-done, b-b-boy," Genma gibbered quietly.

"What's going on here?" Akane demanded of them.

"That's what I'd like to know," Ranma replied.

Happousai pulled himself upright from the carpet and turned to Ranma. "Not bad," he observed. "Perhaps I misjudged you." Then he cracked his knuckles with determination, his wispy moustache trembling with loosely restrained rage. "Now... DIE!!!"

A burst of power flooded the room, and Happousai seemed to grow to ten times his normal size. Two massive hands loomed over the pig-tailed mechwarrior, poised to strike. Ranma stood stunned by Happousai's very battle aura. There was an intense flash of light, and then silence.

Ranma lay unconscious on the ground, with Happousai, now normal sized, standing victorious over him.

"Ranma!" Akane cried, loudest among the others.

"Oh dear," Kasumi added. "I hope Ranma is all right."

Happousai patted his hands as if shaking off the dust of a simple chore. "None can stand before the power of my battle aura attack," he said calmly. "I'll give him credit for landing the first blow, but it's the last blow that counts."

He reached over and grabbed a convenient pitcher of ice water from a tray, and splashed its contents on the fallen mechwarrior.

"Wakey wakey time, boy! That was your first lesson!"

Ranma screeched with surprise and sat bolt upright, her breasts bouncing in a manner that was immediately noticed by Happousai.

"What the hell was that for?" she cried angrily.

Happousai looked at the empty pitcher and then back to Ranma's chest.

"Are those what I think they are?" he asked himself in disbelief. Unlike most people outside of the Joketsuzoku, Happousai had an inkling that such things were possible.

"Oh, how shameful!" Soun wailed from the floor.

Ranma brushed away streams of water from her eyes. "Yeah, so what, you old freak! Go ahead and stare. Everyone else does!"

"You've been to the Jusenkyo Labs? SWEET-O!" Happousai cried in delight. His eyes went dewy as he glomped onto Ranma's bosom and snuggled close. "You're definitely my heir, all right! We'll have to spend extra time training together - just the two of us, of course!"

Ranma crushed Happousai once more into the carpet.

"Not now, not ever, you lech..."

"We're all here now, correct?" Grand Duke Tendo asked them as they assembled near the elevators to the hangars.

Ranma and Genma were there, both looking uneasily at Happousai, who stood next to Doctor Tofu Ono and discussed esoteric martial arts. The doctor was accompanying them as their Medical Officer, and one who could pilot a battlemech when things got ugly. Kasumi was also with them, notepad and stylus in hand to take down comments and suggestions from the final tour before departure.

No one had invited Happousai along, and aside from Ranma, no one had the courage to tell him so. Soun and Genma were disgusting in their timid fawning over the little bastard. The next thing they knew, Happousai was going to invite himself into the expedition!

Akane arrived even as they looked around to confirm that all were present, earning an immediate double take from Ranma, and distracting him from his dark thoughts of Happousai.

"Akane!" Happousai cried. "What happened to your lovely hair?" He seemed on the edge of tears.

"Uh, yeah," Ranma added, dumbfounded. "What happened?"

Her long blue-black hair was gone. Her new hairstyle fell just above her shoulders. She looked almost like a different person, and had at least to Ranma.

"I had a little extra time before we were supposed to meet, so I had it cut," she replied, walking past Ranma to stand next to her sister. Ranma could smell the lilacs and heather of the stylist's shampoo lingering in her hair as she passed. "If I'm supposed to be traveling incognito, I have to change my appearance." She cast a wistful glance towards Doctor Tofu before turning back to Ranma. "The hair was the easiest way to go. It was getting to be kind of a hassle anyway. Kasumi knows what I mean."

Kasumi nodded quietly. It had been her gentle suggestion to Akane that had prompted the haircut.

Akane twirled for them. "You like it?"

"It looks very nice," Kasumi commented.

"Sweet-O!" Happousai cackled.

"You always look beautiful, Akane," Soun observed proudly.

"Quite fetching," Genma added with a nudge to Ranma's ribs. "Eh, boy?" He refrained from comment.

"Short hair always did suit you best," Tofu agreed. Ranma caught a flash of regret in Akane's eyes as the doctor said this. Was there something between these two?

Akane looked right at Ranma, her eyes demanding from him an opinion. "Well, Ranma?"

He looked her over carefully. There was something fascinating about her with short hair, something lively, energetic, and sort of cute. Sort of. He fought off a blush. "I gotta go with the Doc on this one. Short hair looks good on you."

Akane smiled demurely for his benefit.

"Great," she said with an exagerated nod. She appeared to be satisfied with everyone's opinion. "Can we start the tour now?"

"Of course," Soun replied. He led the procession down to the castle's cavernous hangar, followed by his two daughters. Ranma and Genma followed behind them along with Doctor Tofu. Happousai brought up the rear, all eyes and ears, but mostly eyes for the ladies.

Grand Duke Tendo presented them before two ranks of officers and enlisted in their dress uniforms. Behind them was the DropShip that was to carry them into deep space. It was a Leopard Class, old and rough-looking, but reliable, and not likely to draw much attention, just as Genma wished. The Tendo livery and the giant white and purple fishcake device of the Nerima Confederation had been sandblasted from the hull.

The first person Ranma noticed among the crew was a strikingly beautiful dark-haired woman dressed in a Confederation uniform that could only charitably be considered regulation. For one thing, the hemlines he saw on the other female members of the crew terminated only just above their knees. This lady was pushing the envelope of decency with hers. She also seemed like she was about to burst from her tight fitting red wool jacket.

"Hotcha!" Happousai cried at the sight of her. He was about to spring when Ranma collared him.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"Where does it look like?" Happousai returned.

"You're something else," Ranma muttered. "Don't you think about anything else besides women?"

Happousai appeared horrified with the very notion. "Of course not!" he nudged Ranma in the ribs. "You should try it some time. You might like it."

"What are you saying?"

Happousai motioned conspiratorily for Ranma to come closer.

"Like the lovely Akane, for example," he said to his new student. "You're her fiancee. Haven't you thought of... well... you know what I mean."

Ranma looked at Akane.

"You mean..." he left the idea unspoken between them.

Happousai nodded.

"With her?"

Happousai nodded again, a wide grin spreading over his face. "She's quite the cutie!"

Ranma made a disgusted face. "You've got to be kidding me. Do that... With her? I..."

Happousai shook his head in disbelief. "You amaze me, Ranma. How can you possibly turn down that kind of action?" He recoiled in sudden horror. "You aren't gay, are you, boy?"

Ranma shook his head in the firm negative. "No way!" he protested.

"Then you're sexually repressed something fierce," Happousai declared. "What did Genma do to you, anyway? All those lonely years on the road..."

"Don't even go there, freako! Nothing like that ever happened!"

"Then what's the matter with you, Ranma? You're nineteen years old; strong and virile. She's nineteen years old; sweet, and beautiful. You're both engaged to each other. Why, you two should be banging away like an outhouse door in a typhoon every chance you get!"

"No way!" Ranma protested louder than he should have. "She's some kind of psycho chick, and she hates my guts!"

Akane's ears twitched at the words "psycho chick."

"...Raaaannnnmaaaa..."

Ranma froze up for a moment. "See what I mean?" he hissed.

Happousai shook his head slowly. "You're hopeless..."

The Grand Duke began the introductions with the voluptuous officer, oblivious to what was going on behind him.

"This is one of my finest ship captains, Hinako Ninomiya. She will command your JumpShip." He turned towards the woman. "Captain Ninomiya, if you would please."

Captain Ninomiya snapped to attention with her crew.

"Captain Hinako Ninomiya and the crew of the Confederation JumpShip Dragonfly and the DropShip Palomino are at your disposal." Her voice was low and sultry, and Ranma could almost see his father drooling out of the corner of his eye, to say nothing of Happousai. What a couple of assholes! he thought angrily.

Hinako introduced the crews of the DropShip and those of the JumpShip that were not on duty at the distant jump point. Each seemed competent and full of self-confidence, which made Ranma feel a little more at ease.

Next came the Air Lance pilots, two girls named Yuka and Sayuri. Ranma couldn't speak for their skill based on appearance alone, though it helped that they had been part of the 1st Nerima Guards before their reassignment. Akane seemed to know them, judging by the friendly looks that passed between them. Happousai made cooing noises.

The techs came last, though they would be vital for any extended period of time away from Confederation resources. Captain Ninomiya started with a girl about Ranma and Akane's age. Her hair was a dark walnut, with long streaks of pink that fell from her temples. Even standing at attention, she seemed shy and demure, almost meek.

"Allow me to introduce our Chief of Technical Operations, Senior Technician Akari Unryuu."

Akari saluted smartly and dropped back to attention.

Ranma was impressed. Anyone who made Senior Tech at such a young age had to know her stuff. He was feeling better and better about the crew.

"Well I've seen more than enough," Happousai declared out of the blue. Ranma's unease became palpable.

"W-What do you mean?" Soun asked fearfully of his master.

"I've decided to join your little expedition," he declared. "I can see that you're going to need all the help you can get, and besides, look at all these lovely young maidens who need protecting!"

Several of the crew muttered protests at Happousai's remarks, Hinako chief among them. Soun, however, was loathe to provoke his master.

"Really, Master," he began tactfully. "There's no need to put yourself out on our account..."

"Nonsense, Soun, old boy. I insist."

"Daaaad..." Akane groaned in protest.

Grand Duke Tendo caved. It was clear that he was more than willing to make Happousai someone else's problem, even it was his personal savior, Genma Saotome.

"Of course, Master. After all, you have a commitment to train the boy, right?"

Happousai looked at Ranma. "Indeed I do."

Both Saotomes cringed; one out of fear, the other disgust.

Ranma found an excuse to separate from the party as soon as practical. He wanted to avoid the blow-up between his father and the Duke over letting the old bastard Happousai join the expedition, and he himself wanted to get away from the old freak. The guy was some kind of turbo-charged satyr, and he was going to cause all kinds of problems with his overactive libido among the expedition. Any idiot could see that, right?

He didn't dwell any further on it. There was one last matter to take care of, and it was one he needed to resolve quickly, and above all, anonymously.

Akane's bright red Warhammer stood silently in its bay, awaiting its mistress to take it into battle. The technicians had rebuilt the shattered torso and replaced the damaged components in the leg, and now it looked fresh off the assembly line. The war machine was scheduled to be loaded into the DropShip in sixteen hours, which was just enough time to repaint it.

When the subject of painting it had been broached by him during one of the planning sessions for the expedition, she had adamantly refused. She was willing to cut her hair short in the name of secrecy, but she wouldn't repaint her battlemech? In its bright red livery the thing was a twelve-meter-tall walking billboard proclaiming "Here Stands the Heir to the Nerima Confederation: Akane Tendo! Please attack me to the exclusion of all else!"

Which was great if you were the type who liked getting attention. It wasn't so hot if you had to travel to places outside the Confederation, like the League, or even the Furinkan Combine, where you were public enemy number one! Who knew where the hunt was going to take them?

There would be just enough time to crane the battlemech into the massive automated sprayer booth, mask all of the sensitive components like sensors and weapon ports, paint over the existing color scheme, and bake it on long enough to keep the paint from rubbing off during the loading procedure. It could cure the rest of the way on the trip to and from the Jump Points. The Duke had given his tacit approval for this aggressively underhanded mission when Ranma suggested it, and so he would have the help of the tech staff. The Duke had not been as forthcoming about shielding him from his daughter's wrath...

Ranma motioned for the rigging crew to commence. If Akane was going to be coming along with them, she had to learn that the game was played differently from the way she was used to. This was not some big invasion force or an army resisting a siege. This was a scouting mission and a treasure hunt all rolled into one, and discretion was the only thing that was going to see them home alive.

As the Warhammer was picked up by the gantry crane, Ranma hoped like hell she'd figure that out, and, most importantly, not take it personally. Otherwise it was going to be a very long trip.

Nerima Confederation DropShip Palomino

Landing Pad #1, Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System

Nerima Confederation

4 March 3025

Ranma Saotome lay strapped into his acceleration couch on the Palomino's Middle Deck. The other mechwarriors and aerospace pilots, as well as the Technical Section and Doctor Tofu, were similarly restrained. It was another formality he wished the Confederation crew would dispense with. Captain Hinako was not the DropShip pilot, but as ranking naval officer she called the shots aboard ship, and was one of those martinets Ranma dreaded. Fortunately his father, who was named Commander of the Expedition by Duke Tendo, outranked her.

They had said their goodbyes at breakfast and finished the last minute loading of their remaining supplies and materiel. Happousai's Locust had taken up the fourth and last 'Mech Bay, the one they had originally planned to keep empty and use as a repair center. It was going to make Akari and her Technical Section's job much more difficult, but she took it in stride, and did not complain in the slightest. Ranma got the feeling that she was very difficult to upset.

As for hardware, they had Pop's Griffin in Bay #1, his Phoenix Hawk LAM in Bay #2, Akane's Warhammer was stowed in Bay #3, and Happousai's Locust in Bay #4. Yuka and Sayuri both flew CSR-V8 Corsairs, a fighter common in the Federated Shiratori, but available in sufficient numbers throughout the Inner Sphere to draw no undue attention. They were kept in the two fighter bays forward of the 'mech bays and below the forward crew compartment. Every additional cubic meter of available space was taken up with supplies, including the two berthing areas, which had a layer of steel food cans plus sheets of cardboard on top to serve as the deck. They would eat their way to the real floor.

"Two minutes to liftoff," the voice of the DropShip pilot said over the intercom circuit.

Ranma looked over his shoulder at Akane. She looked very different without long hair. So different, in fact, that he was having trouble recognizing her.

She had not been pleased to discover his handiwork with her Warhammer, and was currently not speaking to him. At least she hadn't hit him. A man could only take so much abuse before he forgot himself and... Well, who was he kidding - he wasn't real big on hitting girls, even if they deserved it.

Akane's silent treatment wasn't such a bad thing in and of itself. If she didn't speak to him, then he had no reason to speak to her, and thus he kept himself from putting his foot in his mouth. There was no limit to the things that set her off sometimes.

She stuck her tongue out at him, and he turned away.

"Well, boy," Genma said to him then. "This is it. We're finally back on the trail of Ryuugenzawa. It's good to be on the move again."

Ranma wasn't so sure of that. He for one was tired of wandering.

"Whatever, Pop. The sooner we get this over with, the better."

"I understand, Ranma. If I were your age and still single, and had Akane waiting to marry me at the end of the expedition, I might wish that too."

"That ain't what I meant."

The roar of the DropShip's engines sounded all around them, and the force of acceleration had them in its grip. The Palomino began to rise off the landing pad and into the sky. Ranma almost smiled in spite of the three-gee force that crushed him into his chair.

For the first time in years he was riding a DropShip as a passenger, not as a stowaway.

From her penthouse suite at the Hyatt Towers of Gondolin, in the heart of the city at the foot of the mountain, Nabiki Tendo watched the Leopard Class DropShip lift from the castle on columns of blue-white flame and climb for the heavens. Her sister Akane was aboard the ship, as were the two meddling Saotomes. They were off to find the land of Oz, or Ryuugenzawa, depending on what you believed.

She took a stiff drink of her Chivas and Coke, not caring that she had only brought back a single bottle of the rare and expensive whiskey from her trip to Earth, nor that some might consider it sacrilegious to cut it with something like Coca Cola. Under other circumstances she would have toasted them to their success, but now they represented an open wound in her pride.

Tatewaki Kuno had launched a major attack against the Confederation, and that worried her. Was it merely to keep up the pressure, or had he changed his mind about their agreement? It was tough to say at the moment, and that uncertainty was what plagued her the most.

She took another belt, letting the whiskey linger in her mouth for a few moments, warming her considerably. She was already a little high, and ideas flowed through her loosened mind.

Perhaps a sign of good faith was in order. The question was how much to give Kuno. If she could only hand over the Saotomes without giving up Akane, she would. She was unsure of Kuno-chan's willingness to come to the bargaining table if her sister was already in his clutches. That might depend on the opposition he faced in battle. So far he was getting a stiff fight.

She took another drink. What to do about Akane? Those two Saotomes wouldn't dream of actually taking her with them everywhere they went, right? The smart thing to do would be to keep Akane on the JumpShip the whole time. She might not like it, but hey, it was better than getting killed on some wild goose chase.

She laughed to herself. That would be accusing Akane of far too much common sense. Of course she would come with them wherever they went. Anything not to be left behind on the JumpShip.

It would serve her right to get captured by Tatewaki Kuno.

She finished her glass and set it down on the table by her chair. The ice clinked hollowly in the glass, empty and cold like Nabiki's broken heart. Damn them all for interfering with her dreams.

She picked up the telephone and dialed an unlisted number.

Merry Christmas, Kuno-chan...

Fort Dettmering

Planet Capra, Capra System

The League of Five Nails

8 March 3025

Ryouga Hibiki wanted the hell off of Capra.

It was bad enough that he and Tarou had been held responsible for the damage done to their barracks by Happousai, but then after the Combine raid was crushed the next morning, their employers garnisheed most of their share of the salvage to pay for it. The pittance that remained was not enough to pay for passage into low orbit, much less get them to the next star system. Tarou, of course, blamed him for both Happousai's escape and for their continuing fate as virtual castaways on a desert rock in the depths of space - the Armpit of the Universe, as some on Capra called the planet. That attitude had not done wonders for their less-than-cordial relationship.

Like it was his fault that Happousai got away. If Tarou hadn't been so clumsy with his kicks, the sink wouldn't have broken and Ryouga wouldn't have gotten wet, nor would there have been any damage to the barracks to pay for. Monster-boy conveniently side-stepped that issue whenever Ryouga brought it up.

He had started calling Tarou 'Monster-boy' in retaliation for his Blame Game tactics, and also because his mechwarrior comrade had taken a sudden and decidedly unhealthy liking to his Jusenkyo body. He wasn't running around in public in his monster form - yet - but he was seeking any opportunities he could get to slip away from the city so he could transform himself. Ryouga had stopped accompanying him on these sojourns as soon as it became clear what Tarou was doing.

Why he was doing it was anyone's guess, but Ryouga was of the growing opinion that Tarou could now be officially certified as Damaged Goods in the psyche department. His obsession with Happousai and with the Jusenkyo Commonwealth was understandable before, but now it was getting worrisome. He would talk to himself about his revenge in the small hours of the morning when Ryouga was trying to sleep. He would talk to himself in the chow line, his lips moving faintly in some silent conversation that only he was privy to. Ryouga had even overheard snippets of the same hateful mantras over the tac-net when Tarou's finger's slipped on the 'talk' button of his Hunchback's radio controls.

Unfortunately, there was no form of psychiatric medicine available on Capra. The mercenary unit they worked for was too small to have that kind of medical help on tap, and the League was too cheap to provide service to a world they hadn't even bothered to garrison with their own regular troops. The only form of counseling to be had was a lady with a struggling private practice in town, but she was old and rumored to have a bad heart. The last thing they needed was for Tarou to monster-out and kill her from fright. That was assuming, of course, that Ryouga could get his roommate and comrade-in-arms to admit that he had a problem. Not bloody likely.

He looked skyward, wondering when, if ever, he could escape from this rathole planet.

Jusenkyo Laboratory Complex

Planet Lightoller, Epsilon Indi System

Jusenkyo Commonwealth

7 March 3025

Mousse did not question the orders from the capitol which freed him from the clutches of General Herb. Nor did he question the fact that his status as a Mechwarrior of the Commonwealth had been restored. It was the circumstances of those orders, namely that he had been selected for the Breeding Program, that he could not fathom.

Doctor Gaido didn't appear to be forthcoming with answers to the mystery. The portly Chief Scientist had evaded his questions, saying only that the computers had selected him, and that he was to report to the capitol. His reluctance to provide details seemed to stem from a distrust of General Herb; something Mousse could now fully appreciate, having felt the hybrid general's wrath firsthand.

There was one other aspect of his new-found fortune that Mousse did not question. As he was now qualified for the Breeding Program, he was also eligible to become Shampoo's husband. It was a dream that he had applied himself towards since he was a child; that somehow in spite of his atrocious vision, he could distinguish himself as a mechwarrior in the eyes of the Elders well enough that they would allow Shampoo to be his.

"Hey, boy," Gaido said to him. "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

Mousse didn't realize that he had spaced out on the good doctor.

"Uh, of course," he said quickly.

Gaido gave him a dubious look.

"Good, because I'm not going to repeat it."

Mousse nodded. Whatever it was, he had missed it. Oh well, no sense crying over it.

Gaido continued.

"As I was saying, you have been chosen for a very special assignment. The fate of the Commonwealth rests upon a successful conclusion. Now get back to your quarters and prepare yourself!"

Mousse saluted and turned smartly on his heels for the catwalk that would lead him away from Gaido's office and to the security checkpoint. He got about two steps before he heard the panicked voice of the doctor cry out for him to stop, but it was too late.

He was soaking wet just a moment later, nearly choking on the water that flooded into his mouth. When he at last scrambled for the surface and broke clear, the first thing he heard for some strange reason was the frantic quacking of a duck.

A duck?

Come to think of it, where were all those choice curses he was in the process of shouting at the top of his lungs?

He looked around to catch his bearings, and spied the copious red and white danger striping of a Jusenkyo Pit surrounding him. As were his robes, floating in the water with him. Even better, where his thrashing arms used to be were a pair of snowy white wings.

The wings of a duck.

Doctor Gaido looked down at him in utter disbelief.

"T-That is the first time I have ever seen someone walk straight into a pool," he said in a shaky voice. "Are you sure that was an accident?"

He quacked a mournful reply. His life had just been turned upside down - again.

Gaido shook his head slowly and stepped aside as a lab assistant with a pool-cleaning net fished him out. The scientist walked back into his office and produced a pot of hot water that he kept handy for just such an emergency, and poured it over him.

The water was very hot, and he cried out in pain, surprised and relieved to hear his own voice again. He now sat naked on the steel non-skid diamond deck while the assistant fished out his robes with the net. These were carefully double-bagged by another assistant wearing a waterproof overall, and set aside for recovery of the water. He was given a cheap paper pullover jumpsuit for modesty's sake.

Gaido shook his head again.

"This is turning out to be an embarrassing first quarter for the Labs," he said mostly to himself. "Don't worry about the report. I'll fill it out without you. You can sign it later. Just go, and good luck with your new body. Remember: hot water changes you back to normal. Stay away from cold water."

Mousse could not believe this. This was it? Good luck? Stay away from cold water? He knew there was no cure for what had happened to him, but there had to be something the scientist could do for him. He cursed his fate at having such a stupid accident. Why did everything bad happen to him?

Gaido motioned for one of the assistants to escort him out. The guy was clearly taking no chances on him falling in another pool. He let himself be led out of the Labs, still shaking with horror at what he had experienced.

There was supposed to be a counseling program for victims of the pools to help them adjust to their new lives, but with him due to ship back to the capitol, and Gaido less than sympathetic, there would be no help. He was on his own.

Just like Shampoo.

He found that thought comforting for some odd reason.

Doctor Gaido returned to his office and pulled out the file folder containing blank Incident Reports. He began to work on the form while the memories of the event were still fresh in his mind. Had the boy been paying attention to where he was going, or was he simply the victim of his bad eyesight? He noted that Mousse was not wearing his glasses properly at the time. Mousse rarely wore his glasses properly when he wasn't operating a battlemech.

In any case, this little disaster was not going to make him look good coming so soon on the last outbreak of exposures. It would be a wonder if he kept his job for much longer. Even what little value he possessed as Cologne's spy against Herb wouldn't be enough to help.

"The General won't be pleased about this," he muttered.

"I'm certain of that," Herb said from the open doorway, startling the doctor.

Gaido looked up from his report.

"General Herb?"

Herb's crimson eyes flashed in the light. "I was already in the neighborhood," he began coolly. "So when I was given an urgent message from the capitol concerning Mechwarrior Mousse (he seemed to almost choke on the word 'mechwarrior'), I rushed over to see that everything was in order."

He looked at the form that Gaido had reluctantly set aside.

"I can see that everything is NOT in order." he concluded coldly. "In fact, you can imagine my, shall we say, dismay, when I learned of Mousse's little spill..."

Gaido nodded slowly.

"Accidents happen, sir."

Herb snorted derisively. "You're getting senile, Gaido. The Lab is obviously too much responsibility for you in your advanced years. I strongly urge you to begin training your replacement. One can never tell what might happen these days."

Gaido's spine stiffened. If anyone cashiered him for this, it would not be a seditious archfiend like Herb.

"I suppose you already have one picked out," he observed.

Herb nodded indulgently, seeing exactly where Gaido stood on the matter and not minding a little insolence when the final dig would be his. "As a matter of fact I do..." he replied. He then changed the subject. "That is a discussion for another time. Soon, to be sure, but not now. In the meantime, I want to discuss Mousse's ability to perform in combat."

"I don't understand what I have to do with this," Gaido replied. "That would be a matter for the Chief Medical Officer, not the Chief Scientist."

Herb arched an eyebrow.

"Really, Doctor? I presume then that you had another reason for needing to see Mousse before he was shipped to the capitol?"

Gaido began to sweat.

"Just a matter of a questionnaire and some additional tissue samples for the record. Since he is part of the Breeding Program now."

Herb nodded slowly. Gaido wondered if the demonic hybrid could see right through him.

"I see," the general replied. "In any case, it's a moot point. Mousse will not be going directly to the capitol." Gaido gave him a questioning look, and he continued. "It seems he's been assigned to a Special Mission Team that is currently en route to Lightoller. They will arrive in a little over two days to collect him and his battlemech. Now that Mousse has had his little, accident, I want you to certify that he will still be capable of performing his duties."

Gaido smelled a trap. Was Herb giving him rope to hang by?

"That's a difficult question," he hedged.

Herb smiled thinly. "Indulge me."

The doctor cleared his throat thoughtfully before speaking.

"Well, physiologically there shouldn't be anything wrong with him. There haven't been any long term side-effects observed with exposure, other than the subject remaining vulnerable to the Jusenkyou Effect for the rest of his life. As for psychological, well, every subject is different. Most learn to live with it and adapt. A few become mentally unstable, an even smaller number of these commit suicide."

Herb knew the song and dance. "But what of Mousse, Doctor?"

"I can't say. Even the figures I could give you on known cases are not necessarily reliable indicators, as there have been too few overall exposures upon which to build a decent statistical analysis."

Gaido's evasion was becoming visibly irritating to Herb. Lime and Mint poked their heads in to see what had caused their master such distress. Both hybrids gave scathing looks to Gaido.

"Best guess then, Doctor," Herb managed.

Gaido at last understood what the general was pushing for. He was looking for an ironclad excuse to keep Mousse on Lightoller, and under his thumb. If the renowned Doctor Gaido was to assert that there might be something wrong with Mousse following his exposure, something that might disqualify him from the mission, and better still, from the Breeding Program, then Cologne and her cronies on the Council could do nothing but accept it. Herb would win.

He wasn't going to let Herb win. Not like that.

"My best guess is that there will be no harm in sending Mechwarrior Mousse on this assignment," he declared.

Herb took the response in silence. It was clearly not what he had hoped for. His red eyes burned for a moment, then buried their scorn deep. Like banked coals, they would one day be reignited when they were needed.

"I see," he said at length. "I shall duly note your input in the Garrison Command Diary and in Mousse's transfer papers."

Gaido bowed deeply, expecting nothing less from him and accepting it as it came.

Herb turned angrily to go, blundering into the lurking Lime, tripping himself, and stumbling forward out of control. Mint rushed to catch hold of his general, but at the same time Lime also leaped to the rescue. It sounded like a wrecking ball striking a solid masonry wall, the net effect of which was Herb being pushed headlong into a nearby Jusenkyo Pool.

Gaido heard the splash and started out of his office in a panic. Not again. Not so soon after Mousse. Not with Herb watching!

He was relieved to hear a high pitched human voice screeching with rage and uttering black oaths too foul to find print in this narrative. Anything other than the alien bleats of some animal in distress. His relief quickly turned to dismay when he realized that General Herb was not among the throng of people looking down into the fateful pool at the latest victim of the Star League's ancient madness.

Gaido knew the pool well, for it was one of the unusual ones. That pool turned its victims not into animals but into human females. It was one of the more commonly occuring accident sites in the Labs.

General Herb was treading water in it, and she was Not Amused.

"Look, Lime," Mint gushed in wonder. "...Boobs..."

Lime cooed in awe at his general's outstanding rack.

Doctor Gaido turned slowly back to his office and locked the door behind him. If Herb wanted a reckoning with him, it would have to be over the barrel of a cone rifle. At least anyway until he was good and drunk on the five liter jug of plum wine he kept handy in the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, and then he wouldn't care what Herb said or did.

Shampoo floated through the airtight door to the flight deck of the Union Class DropShip Jade Lotus, with her luxuriant mane of hair spilling behind her in long filaments of glossy purple silk. Unlike most people who had the opportunity to travel in space, she enjoyed zero gravity. It was a thrilling sensation, making each conscious moment an adventure for her.

They were in the middle of a short period of free fall prior to their two-day deceleration burn that would leave them in a stable parking orbit around the planet Lightoller. She could see it as nothing more than a fuzzy blue dot in the 50cm telescope monitor. Soon she would be far closer to it, the Jusenkyo Labs, Mousse, and especially General Herb, than she ever wished to be. The Elders had decided rather abruptly that it would be more efficient to collect Mousse on Lightoller and then proceed with the mission than to ship him back to Jusenkyo first.

She had not taken the news that Mousse would be joining the Mission Team very well at all. Kima was to handle the espionage and intelligence aspects of the assignment, leaving Shampoo free to kill the damnable Ranma Saotome and his father when the time finally came. Mousse was at best extraneous to the mission, and at worst he could be a dangerous hindrance. Why he had been selected by Cologne, Shampoo did not know. Her great-grandmother had never been warm to the idea of a union between them, so what could it be? Perhaps it was a reward for his service to her against Herb's machinations, but there were surely other ways to repay him!

"How long until we arrive?" she asked the Deck Officer.

Senior Lieutenant Li Chang consulted the astrogation boards before him.

"Fifty-one hours, nineteen minutes; plus or minus ten minutes to our parking orbit," he replied. "Depending on local weather conditions, we could complete our de-orbit burn and atmospheric entry maneuvers and have touchdown about thirty-five minutes from the moment we get our landing window."

Shampoo thanked the officer and withdrew to the far corner of the cramped flight deck. She had that long at least without Mousse. Or Herb. She wondered whether he would risk losing face by putting in an appearance, or simply ignore her and pretend she didn't exist. She hoped it would be the latter.

The Jade Lotus wouldn't spend more than a few hours on Lightoller in any event; just long enough to gather up Mousse and his battlemech, take on reaction mass for the trip back to the jump point, and exchange mail and other light cargo. After that it was another four days in space before they reached their JumpShip, and then they'd jump for the contested border between the Combine and the Confederation. Only Kima knew what their next step would be, but in order to maintain the most up-to-date information on their quarry, their JumpShip was one of the precious handful in the Commonwealth fleet that carried a functional HPG array.

Their infiltration of Comstar over the last few decades was about to pay huge dividends for the Commonwealth. Information bound for Cologne and the Elders was compressed and secretly bundled within Comstar's core HPG network streams, where it could easily be routed from one compromised station to another. While the data streams instantly breached the gulf of up to fifteen parsecs of space-time (almost twice what a JumpShip could do in one hop), and converged like a Niagara of information upon Comstar headquarters on Earth, a tiny trickle would flow away undetected from the Sol system to arrive on Jusenkyo.

Any vital updates on their assignment could be sent along the Commonwealth's network of ship-mounted HPG sets. They might have been maintained by the tech priests of Comstar, but the knowledge of how to operate them was not yet lost to the technical caste of the Commonwealth. They would have access to information that was at worst two days old, and possibly less than twenty-four hours old - depending on the length of the relay chain from source to destination. It was a powerful advantage that the other Successor States did not enjoy.

The Furinkan Combine was especially vulnerable in this regard. Between Commonwealth infiltration of Comstar sowing the seeds of discontent, and the technocracy's own dim view of both Princess Kodachi's atrocities and the seizure of the once-neutral Alpha Centauri system by the Kuno Shogun for his personal pleasure as a surfing paradise, the Furinkan Combine was extremely close to a service lockout of its HPG network. That would force them to use what was called the 'XBoat Method,' which came from a term used in an ancient science fiction role-playing game from a time when fast interstellar travel was only a fantasy.

The 'XBoat Method' was essentially a network of JumpShips that travelled a prearranged route through the Combine's territory. They carried as cargo the message traffic of the Combine, both personal and governmental, and upon arrival in a system they would relay it by radio to a waiting JumpShip whose power banks were charged for a Jump. The ready JumpShip would then depart for the next system in the relay chain while the first ship recharged and awaited another set of messages. Shampoo likened it to a system of runners on the battlefield, although the usual explanation mentioned something called a 'Pony Express.'

In theory, the 'XBoat Method' could relay messages almost as fast as an HPG network, since a JumpShip's transit of hyperspace from Point-A to Point-B was instantaneous, and its ability to travel great distances was limited only by the time it took to recharge the huge amounts of energy required to fire the jumpcore for its next trip. In practice, the method was limited by the number of JumpShips available for XBoat duty. For the Combine to maintain adequate communications for its vast territory, it would have to sacrifice most of its remaining military transport fleet. The renewed offensive against the Nerima Confederation would be snuffed out in a flash from a lack of ships to support it.

She wondered if this fact was being held in reserve by the Elders as an ace-in-the-hole in order to maintain the status quo of the Inner Sphere. If she could figure out the Combine's Achilles' Heel with just a few moments of contemplation in a dark corner of a DropShip flight deck, then they certainly had after years of study and reflection on Jusenkyo.

Two days later and on schedule, the DropShip Jade Lotus settled in on its hydraulics atop the reinforced concrete landing pad. Shampoo and the others unhooked their restraints and stood up in the small compartment, eager for a breath of fresh air. It would be anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes before the ship's crew would be ready to let them out.

Shampoo was the first to reach the airlock when the word was passed allowing passengers and crew not-on-duty a brief amount of liberty, but due to their press for time, they would not be allowed beyond the landing pad. That was fine by Shampoo. She had no intentions of getting any farther than the gantry.

The air was sweet and cold as she stepped through the open airlock doors and onto the boarding gantry. Rain had fallen earlier, before their arrival, and pools of it shimmered in the hazy afternoon sunlight. It would probably rain again sometime before they lifted for the jump point, which was a good reason to stay close to the ship.

From her high vantage she could see Mousse's battlemech being carried on a flatbed HET, or Heavy Equipment Transport, towards one of the Jade Lotus' open 'Mech Bay Doors. The steel cables that supported the white and grey Crusader in a standing position on the flatbed were stretched taut and glinted in the light. She looked, but could see no sign of Mousse himself anywhere below.

There was also no sight of General Herb's staff car, which was a welcome relief. Apparently no one from the Complex had bothered to come in any official capacity other than Mousse.

She felt a presense close by, and turned to find Kima standing there, her wings folded behind her.

"What is it?" she asked the hybrid.

"I've just received word from the capitol via our JumpShip. Our destination has changed, and we must leave Lightoller at once for the Capra System."

Shampoo blinked. "Capra?"

"Yes. Genma Saotome and his son are en route to that world. We are to locate them and seize any materials pertinent to their search for Ryuugenzawa. Once we have them, you are to eliminate the two as per your previous orders."

"Why the change in plans?"

Kima shrugged. "I'm not certain. I've been told of an agent within their expedition, and it seems the most likely thing that has happened is that this agent has passed the Elders important information since we left Jusenkyo."

Kima looked out upon the world of Lightoller and shuddered. Shampoo did not know that it was here that the hybrid had been reborn as Akane Tendo's doppleganger. Nor did she hear Kima's silent prayer to the gods that she never return again.

"I shall be on the Flight Deck," she said to Shampoo, and left her as silently as she had approached.

Shampoo watched her step back through the airlock and into the ship. When she returned her attention to the gantry, she could see Mousse stepping out of one of the Lab cars and heading for the gantry elevator. She did not want to be there when he came on board.

She followed her commander through the airlock and proceeded directly for the small mechwarrior's lounge off the main passageway from the ship's core. It would take Mousse awhile for him to check in with Kima and stow his small kit for the trip. With any luck it would be time to strap in for lift-off before he could get a free moment to look for her. She couldn't avoid him forever, not on a DropShip, but she could delay for as long as possible their reunion.

FCJS Imperator, in orbit at the

Proteus System Zenith Jump Point,

Proteus System, Nerima Confederation

11 March 3025

General Prince Tatewaki Kuno of the Furinkan Combine was not a happy man. His plans were slipping far behind schedule, no thanks to the dogged resistance of the Confederation. What insolence! Didn't they know when they were beaten?

His beachhead had nearly collapsed even as he was about to lift from the planet, and he was forced to disembark his famed Blue Thunder Regiment from their ships to quash the counterattack. The Confederation dogs had scattered by the time his troops were organized, though their persistant raids had left him unable to secure the starport sufficiently enough to leave. Hunting them down had taken four precious days, and even then he was not certain that he had found all of them.

His troops had obviously missed some of the Confederation fighters as well, as his formations of departing DropShips had been ambushed leaving orbit. They had fought them off, but had lost several of their own ships in the process. How was it possible that these curs could maintain fighters when he had gone to so much trouble bombing the airfields prior to the invasion?

His staff were of no help, standing mutely by their reconnaisance photographs and their troop reports. The best answer they could come up with was that the Confederation was planning on hitting back in this system, and that the defenders were engaged in a suicidal attempt to buy time for the attack to assemble. That at least was good news. It meant that they had fallen for his ruse, and his way to Capella would be clear!

The Confederation's defiance still bothered him, though. If they fought like demons on a world like Calypso, what would they be like when he stood at the gates of their capitol? He would crush them of course. There was no doubt of that, for he was Tatewaki Kuno, the Conquerer, and the future First Lord of the Star League. What concerned him was that it would take longer to rule the Inner Sphere than he had planned.

His Operations Officer approached him as he pondered these matters, sensing that his lord was occupied, and waiting patiently for leave to speak.

Tatewaki gave it. "Speak, man."

"Your Highness, we have received another communique from Nerima."

Tatewaki frowned. "Another plea for a cease-fire? I think not."

The officer presented a decrypted communication print-out.

"No, your Highness. It is from the other source on Nerima."

Tatewaki snatched it up into his hand and began to read. What was the treacherous Nabiki up to now? As he read, his heart began to beat faster, and his palms began to sweat. The gods smiled upon him!

"When shall our fleet be assembled for Jump?" he demanded.

"Another four hours to dock the last DropShips and recall the fighters from patrol, Highness."

"Two hours!" Tatewaki shouted. "You have two hours to make ready. I shall not wait a minute longer. Make it so!"

The Operations Officer saluted hastily and begged leave to carry out his orders. Fortunately, he had taken the liberty of reading the communique beforehand, and correctly determined his lord's response to it. The fighters were already returning. They would be ready to jump in an hour if everything went well, and certainly within two.

He was so pleased with himself that did not notice the hazy shadow that tailed him back to the Executive Bridge.

Tatewaki Kuno took his place on the Bridge for the Jump to Capra. The fleet was assembled and ready to depart the Proteus System for the next stage of his plan. They would sieze the System's jump points, set up a network of DropShips modified into mobile charging stations to swiftly maintain his supply lines, and when the system was secure, the armada would Jump for the Capella System and the domination of the Nerima Confederation.

While he was at it, he would investigate the information Nabiki had given him. If the Saotomes were to be found on Capra, he would have no choice but to slay them and end this farcical engagement to his true love. He relished the task so much that he would see to the planet's conquest personally, just so he could be at hand when they were located.

As far as Nabiki's assertion that sweet Akane accompanied them, he was unsure. It defied reason that she would wish to travel with the curs. Perhaps it was a misguided attempt to keep her from the great Tatewaki Kuno that the foolish Duke had sent her away.

The middle Tendo daughter obviously had some motivation for this betrayal. Was this part of her promise to deliver Akane unto him? He had expected a harder bargain from the steely and shrewd Nabiki Tendo. It would be prudent to remain wary of her, and above all to eliminate her as soon as practical.

He turned to brighter thoughts, despising Nabiki for the black pits of treachery she had opened for him. If Akane were truly with the Saotomes, then she would be rescued from them. He would bring her with him to Capella, and when he had conquered the Confederation, he would marry her within the Duke's very castle!

"Countdown Commencing," the Operations Officer announced over the fleet-wide radio channel. "T-Minus twenty minutes to Jump."

Tatewaki smiled. Within minutes they would be in Capra space, and within days the Saotomes would be dead. He could almost feel the cretinous Ranma Saotome's throat in his gloved hand. If he had despoiled the fair Akane, then the tale of his torture and slow death would become legendary.

His reverie was interrupted by the sudden and furious activity that seized his Bridge crew. Were the cursed Confederation fighters attacking yet again?

"Conn, Sensory;" the intercom crackled. "Be advised of fleet ships Bravo One and Two breaking formation and closing on plasma drive."

The Officer of the Deck conferred with the Operations Officer before responding. "Sensory, Conn; confirm CPA at once. Communications, Conn; raise Princess Kodachi's starship immediately, and establish intentions!"

"Communications; aye..."

"Conn, Sensory; aye... Closest Point of Approach bearing two-four-zero plus one; range five point one kilometers. That's within the optimum Jump Point radius."

The Communications Officer looked to his people, who shook their heads. He then turned to the Deck Officer.

"Officer of the Deck, Princess Kodachi's ships do not answer hails."

Tatewaki Kuno sprang from his chair in a rage. His damnable sister was supposed to be taking over the conquest of Calypso!

"What is thy game, sister?" he said angrily to himself as he watched the two Invader Class JumpShips close with his armada. The minutes passed slowly as the two vessels reached their intended destinations and came to a halt relative to the other ships of the fleet.

"Captain, we're getting a hail from Princess Kodachi's flagship," the Communications Officer announced abruptly to the Ops Officer. His eyes darted towards Tatewaki. "She requests to speak with General Prince Kuno."

"On screen!" Tatewaki barked.

The smiling face of Colonel Princess Kodachi Kuno appeared on the oversize Bridge display set high on the forward bulkhead. She was wearing a breathlessly low cut number in black vinyl, as was her custom when battle was nigh. She seemed to sense her perspective, and looked down at her brother surrounded by his confused and scrambling staff.

"Hello, brother dear," she began.

"What is the meaning of this, sister?!" Tatewaki shot back. "Thy orders were clear!"

Kodachi chuckled.

"I have a score to settle, Tachi. I've just received word that Akane Tendo is to be found on Capra, and I mean to repay her for her insult at Port Said."

"Cease this mutinous activity at once!" Tatewaki raged. "Return thy ships to their station and speak no more of harming my bride. Were I not your brother, I would have you fired upon!"

Kodachi blew him a kiss. "Give my love to Father. Adieu!" She signed off, and the screen went blank.

Imperator's Sensory Section broke in on the intercom.

"Conn; Sensory, we are detecting an energy buildup from Bravo One and Two. Possible Jump signature."

Tatewaki whirled on his staff.

"Fire Control!" he thundered. "Target the JumpCore of my sister's ship and fire all weapons that can be brought to bear!"

His gunners scrambled to comply, but most of Imperator's weaponry that could reach Kodachi's starship were massive Naval Lasers that would take several minutes to energize and bring to bear.

A brilliant flash of light through the viewports told them that they were in vain.

"Conn, Sensory; Ships Bravo One and Two have Jumped."

Tatewaki Kuno bowed his head in contempt of his sister, his blood boiling with useless anger. He reached out to collar his Operations Officer, and dragged him close.

"When we arrive in the Capra System, you shall dispatch marines to board and seize my sister's ship. See that no harm comes to her, but slay at once any of her crew that resist. Bring her unto me only when I deem fit to pass judgment upon her, but keep her comfortable and well guarded. Is that understood, Captain?"

The Operations Officer nodded vigorously.

"Good. Now resume the countdown and carry out the fleet deployment."

Tatewaki Kuno seethed quietly to himself as his crew prepared the fleet for Jump. His sister could not and would not escape him. Nor would the cursed Ranma Saotome.

Nerima Confederation JumpShip Dragonfly

Capra System Zenith Jump Point

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

8 March 3025

NCJS Dragonfly winked into existence in a flash of cerenkov gammas and short lived exotic particles, to appear high above the Capra primary's zenith rotational pole. The Invader Class JumpShip fired its maneuver drive in fitful spurts, rolling and turning to set its relative velocity so as to keep a stable orbit above the star - in accordance with its new position in space-time. It was the most dangerous time for a JumpShip, as the velocity vectors that had held it in the proper position for Jump from the originating star were never the same as those required at the destination.

This was particularly the case when the two stars were of different spectral classes. Capra was much less massive than Capella, and its streams of solar wind less intense. It was also slightly closer to the galactic core (and the center of rotation about the Milky Way), which made the star's relative velocity different from Capella's by several dozen kilometers per second. Dragonfly would have to make up this difference quickly and efficiently; otherwise it could find itself hurtling off on some undesirable vector - such as directly towards the star, or out into empty interstellar space.

Captain Hinako Ninomiya directed her crew with just such speed and efficiency. Or at least with speed. Her management style tended towards the manic in these moments, and only a crew well accustomed to her rapidly flailing limbs could have survived this dangerous transition from Jump.

Dragonfly was stable and secure in its orbit within ten minutes. The massive JumpSail was unfurled, allowing the starship to tack against Capra's solar wind and keep the ship in position indefinitely without expending excessive reaction mass. The kilometer-diameter sail itself was embedded with billions of photovoltaic elements that channeled energy into the ship's Jump Batteries to recharge them.

When she was satisfied with her starship's orbit, Hinako ordered the grav-deck brought up to speed. The main habitat for the JumpShip began to rotate about the central core to provide a comfortable eight-tenths of a gravity for the crew's health. The Invader Class was a good ship for its passengers and crew, having a decent-sized grav-deck and two large garden domes to help purify and oxygenate the air, as well as provide fresh produce to eat and a little green to look at.

"Grav-deck rotation nominal," the Chief of the Watch announced.

"Very well," Hinako nodded. "Sound 'Clear to Stations' on the 1MC."

"Sound 'Clear to Stations' on the 1MC, aye."

The Chief of the Watch reached over his panel to a handheld microphone and clicked it twice for attention. An electronic bosun's whistle shrilled over the ship's general announcement intercom speakers.

"Clear to Stations! Set the Station-Keeping Watch; Section One provide. Section Three, eat and relieve the watch!"

Several stations upon the bridge changed hands, an event that took place on the other decks as well. Crew stowed damage control equipment that had been readied for the brief but potentially dangerous transition through hyperspace, and hurried for the mess deck to eat a quick meal and relieve their comrades. Those members of the crew neither on watch, nor expected to relieve, made a beeline for the berthing spaces.

Once the Dragonfly was in order, Hinako ordered her Sensory Section to take a look about the system. The ship's primary synthetic-aperture radar array began to probe the void, and two 1.5 meter telescopes scanned for signs of the distant planet of Capra within the expected orbit.

"Captain Ninomiya?" her radar operator called.

She flitted over to the Sensory Section.

"What is it?"

"Take a look at the radar display, ma'am."

Hinako leaned over the sensory operator's shoulder as Ranma, Genma, and Akane made their way up from the passenger compartment. The three seemed a little disoriented from the Jump, and the free-fall conditions of the bridge did not help. She took note of them and then returned her attention to the puzzling information on the radar display.

"That's very odd," she remarked to the operator in her sultry voice. "Have you checked for damage to the array?"

"Yes, Captain. The array checks out."

Hinako folded her arms across her breasts.

"Interferance from the Jump?"

The operator shrugged. "It's nothing I've ever encountered before, ma'am."

Genma and Ranma floated over to the sensory section, leaving Akane

to peer out into the darkness of space.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Genma asked Hinako. Ranma could see his father's eyes wandering towards her chest more often than they should have.

"I'm not absolutely certain that there is any trouble," Hinako replied, her voice low and breathy as always. It was obvious from her look of distaste that she knew exactly where Genma's attention was focused.

"Why not check out the display instead, Pop," Ranma said tersely.

Genma flushed red. "O-Of course," he stammered.

The two mechwarriors studied the curious radar returns on the display. It was odd, but as they had little experience with a starship's sensors, they were reluctant to put their opinions forward just yet.

"It almost looks like chaff," Ranma remarked after a bit of strained silence. He referred to the practice of scattering strips of radar reflective aluminum to confuse hostile radar operators. "A whole bunch of it."

"Get a grip, boy," Genma countered. "Who would scatter so much chaff out in the middle of nowhere, and why?"

Ranma shrugged his shoulders. "Beats me. But you gotta admit, that's what it looks like."

The radar operator nodded his head in agreement to Genma. "He has a point, Commander. It doesn't make much sense, but it's the only logical explanation."

"I don't like it," Hinako grumbled. She seemed very young and petulant in that moment, rather like a six-year-old. "Keep scanning until you find something."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Ranma turned to his father. "So. We gonna get a move on or what?"

Genma watched Hinako float away from them and towards the astrogator's station. The view was quite inspiring given the Captain's extremely short miniskirt, and he realized at last what the Dragonfly's crew had meant by their daily announcements of 'the Color of the Day.'

"You were saying something, boy?" he muttered.

Ranma slugged him on the arm. "You pig."

"What?" Genma replied indignantly.

"You're married, you know," Ranma pointed out. "Remember Mom?"

"A man can look, boy, even if he can't touch," Genma harrumphed in reply.

Ranma rolled his eyes in disgust. "Try to remember that, old man."

Hikaru Gosunkugi looked with interest at his Sensory Section's update on the new arrival. His own JumpShip, a massive Starlord Class known as the Impaler, watched the unknown starship with passive sensors.

"Your thoughts?" Hikaru asked his Admiral, a competent but dour fellow of ancient Scotch descent named Colin Ian Morag, who often bemoaned the domination of Inner Sphere military operations by mechwarriors. Like most Navy men, he was sick of the Army seeing the naval components as little more than truck drivers, and the aerospace units as nothing more than close air support. The man was one of the few of his senior commanders who had been in favor of his latest campaign. That was no surprise, Hikaru supposed, considering that most of the glory would belong to Morag and the League Navy should it succeed.

"It's possibly a Combine Pathfinder ship," he replied. "Until its intentions are better defined, however, we'll have to play this encounter very cautiously."

Hikaru nodded slightly. His bout with Jump Sickness was not yet over, and he liked to keep as still as possible in free-fall. Only the arrival of this mystery ship had been enough to pry him from the relative comfort of the Starlord's grav-deck.

"I agree," he managed queasily. "Continue to monitor it passively, and inform me of any changes in its condition, or if it releases any fighters or DropShips."

"At once, my lord," Admiral Morag said, and saluted crisply.

Hikaru made his way carefully to the elevator and punched for the grav-deck.

The descending elevator granted him some small measure of gravity as it approached the farthest point of the rotating habitat from the core. He hated space travel, and he hated others seeing how poorly he handled it. It was bad enough that the League's barons were ever-fractious and itching for an opportunity to secede, but for so many in his command to see their Gosunkugi overlord debilitated by a single Jump was practically dangerous.

At least the Navy was with him on this operation. For a chance to outshine their mechwarrior cousins, they would do almost anything for him. It didn't matter who they would face, but to have a chance to stick it to the Furinkan Combine, and Prince Kuno specifically, only heightened their morale.

Nerima Confederation DropShip Palomino

Approaching the Planet Capra,

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

10 March 3025

"This is the deal, Ranma," Happousai said to him as they faced off in the Number Four 'Mech Bay. The 20-ton Locust stood in its transit cocoon behind the elder martial artist as he continued his spiel. "Every time I defeat you, you have to change into a girl, got it?" He pointed to several pails of water staged for this purpose.

"So what if I defeat you?" Ranma returned.

"Don't concern yourself with something that will never happen," he cackled in response.

"That does it!"

Ranma leaped at the wizened martial artist, who easily avoided his attack and clouted him on the head with his pipe. The blow wasn't painful, but it stung Ranma's pride well enough.

"Is that all you've got?" Happousai mocked. "I expected better of you."

"I'm just warming up!"

His next advance was more cautious than before, yet it was equally ineffective. Happousai was too slippery for him to get hold of. The fight ended with him being sent flying into the outboard bulkhead, which was fortunately padded with insulation against the frigid void of space.

"Quit jumping around, you little freak!" he cried angrily as he picked himself up off the deck.

Happousai laughed.

"You might have thought you were fast, but to me you're standing still!"

Ranma brushed himself off and dropped into a fighting stance.

"We'll see about that."

He charged again, throwing a blinding series of punches that were dodged with little effort by Happousai. Ranma then rolled into an aerobatic volley of kicks, chops, and elbow strikes that failed miserably to land. All he was getting for his troubles was tired.

Happousai sprang out of range to land upon the chassis of his Locust, and looked down on him with pitying eyes.

"You ain't half bad, Ranma m'boy, but you ain't half good either. My grandmother throws a roundhouse faster than you do!"

Ranma flushed crimson. "Bite me!"

"He's just trying to rile you up, you know," Akane observed suddenly. Ranma had missed her arrival in the melee with Happousai.

He turned to her. "So, you're speaking to me again, huh?"

She brushed his comment aside with a laugh. "It looks like you need all the help you can get."

"What's so funny?" he demanded of her.

"I think it's hilarious to see you fighting someone you can't beat," she replied. "You finally get to see how the rest of us mortals feel."

"Hah!" Ranma countered. "This ain't over yet."

Happousai, who had been watching this brief interaction between the two young mechwarriors, chose this moment to intervene.

"It is now," he cried, and leaped down to the deck to face Ranma once again. "Come and get me, boy! I promise I won't jump around this time."

Ranma looked stunned. "You mean it?"

"Of course I do!"

"All right!" Ranma cheered. He charged straight at Happousai, who deftly redirected his energy into the air, flinging him straight up with a yelp of surprise, and dropping him to the hard steel deck with a heavy thud.

"Ranma!" Akane cried. He wasn't moving on the deck, and his eyes were closed.

Happousai produced a pail of water and flung it on Ranma with a cry of "Hit the showers, punk!"

Ranma spluttered back into consciousness and bolted upright.

"W-What the hell happened?" she rambled.

"You lost," Akane observed dryly, though it was clear that she was relieved to see that he was okay.

"To think that a student of the Anything Goes Style of Martial Arts would fail to appreciate such a basic principle as force redirection..." Happousai tsk'ed. "I can see that this will be more difficult than I thought." He gave Ranma an appreciative stare, as her flimsy and waterlogged tank top afforded quite an eyeful to him. "But at least I can enjoy the scenery in the meantime!"

Ranma pulled herself wearily up the ladder to the Lower Deck. She was battered and bruised and utterly disappointed with her performance against Happousai. There had to be a way of beating the old goat!

The guy's only weakness seemed to be his libido, but exploiting it wasn't always palatable. Flashing him was an easy way to distract the old fart, but it almost always led to getting glomped by him before Ranma could land the knockout blow. That was also assuming, of course, that he wasn't too overcome with disgust from the glomp to strike.

No, there had to be a better way. If nothing else, he would train extra hard to improve his speed. That was a good start. If he didn't put Happousai in his place, then the next few months (or even years!) were going to be painful beyond his endurance.

Ranma put those thoughts aside and decided that a hot shower was what he really needed. Not just a hot shower, but a Hollywood shower! Like most DropShips, Palomino was on strict water rationing, as the recycling units often broke down in transit. Showers were thus taken under a very specific procedure.

As in: turn the water on long enough to get wet. Turn the water off. Lather up, shampoo your hair, and shave if you want to. Turn the water on long enough to rinse. Turn the water off. You're done. If you followed the procedure correctly, the longest total time you spent under running water was about a minute.

A Hollywood shower on the other hand was one with the water running the whole time. Ranma had no idea where the term had come from, only that it went back a long long time in history. Hollywood showers were often given as rewards for performance, but considering his hopeless defeat by Happousai, he'd have to settle for some consolation instead.

Ranma made a quick stop through Berthing first, brushing past the black curtain that hung across the passageway to keep out the compartment lighting. The only time the lights came on in Berthing was when the ship was in some kind of emergency condition. She padded across the food cans that lay spread out on the deck, mindful of her step, moving by the dim red fire lights that were spaced two meters apart at deck level.

The soft sighs and snores of people sleeping in their bunks rose only just above the level of the engines. Leopard Class ships had little room for their crews in comparison with the larger DropShips, and as such everyone, officers included, bunked in the same place. Palomino in particular, with its complement of technicians, was especially crowded. Only Akari got a bunk; the rest of her crew slept on cots in the Tech Shop down below.

Ranma reached into her bunk and pulled out her towel and bathing sundries. It was easier to strip down in the narrow Berthing passageway than to try and maneuver in the even narrower space between the toilet stalls and the showers in the Head, and so she peeled off her tank top and shorts, and wrapped her towel around her waist. Lastly she slipped into her cheap plastic shower shoes, which were a necessary precaution against athlete's foot and other fungal infections found in such communal sanitary facilities as a DropShip.

The ship's Head was only big enough to accommodate two toilets, two sinks, and two showers. Stuffed into a tiny alcove on the other side of the shower stalls was a tiny ship's laundry with one washer and one dryer. The drone of the washer competed with the rumble of the DropShip's main drives at it decelerated towards its destination.

Ranma heard voices in the laundry as she stepped into the Head. Her shower shoes slapped against the gritty terrazo of the deck, which must have alerted whoever was in the laundry. So much for the Hollywood shower. She set her towel on the rack and slipped into the stall. The water was immediately hot, and he nearly cried out in pain. All that the people in the laundry heard was a sharp hiss, but this was enough to set them snickering.

His face was red with embarrassment. There was definitely no chance of taking a Hollywood shower now. All he wanted to do was get clean and leave. They would be hitting Capra the next day, and being well rested for it was the best thing he could do to prepare.

He did his business quickly, though the periods of no running water made it easy for him to overhear the conversation in the nearby laundry room.

"I feel so bad for Akane," said the first voice, which he imagined must belong to the Air Lance pilot, Yuka.

"I know," concurred her wingmate, Sayuri.

"To think that she was pulled from command of the 1st Nerima to come along on this mission," Yuka continued.

"And us," added Sayuri. "Not that I mind. I'm in no hurry to die fighting the Furinkan Combine."

There was a pause, prompting Ranma to make some bathing noises lest he be suspected of eavesdropping.

"So what do you think of this Ranma guy?" Yuka asked.

This had Ranma's attention.

"I don't know..." Sayuri replied. "He seems like such a creep to Akane. It's no wonder she gives him the cold shoulder all the time."

Ranma flinched. He was a creep? Since when?

"Still," Yuka said. "Even though we've only been in space for six days, it's pretty clear that she likes him."

Huh? Since when?

"I guess so," Sayuri admitted. "Why else would she even bother with him. But that just makes it worse when he acts like a creep around her."

"Yeah..." Yuka agreed mournfully. "You think he'd get a clue or something."

Ranma clenched his fists. I have a clue, dammit!

"Well, when you consider what a creep his father is, can you really be surprised? I'm not saying Commander Saotome is a bad leader or anything, but you know how he checks us out sometimes when he thinks we won't notice..."

"I hear you," Yuka agreed with a shudder.

"Well, with Ranma it's just the opposite. He just looks right through you. The only time he pays attention to Akane is when he's cutting her down. The guy's so arrogant."

Ranma flinched again.

"You said it, girl. That boy needs an attitude adjustment. He's cute and all, but I think I'd want to slash my wrists if I had him for a fiance."

"Well..." Sayuri hedged. "I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but yeah, it would be pretty harsh..."

Ranma turned the water back on, not caring that it was practically scalding, and rinsed himself off. He stepped out of the shower just in time to see Akane stripping off her towel to step into the second stall.

Their eyes locked for a moment, before Ranma's drifted down Akane's body just far enough to get him in trouble. When he looked back up at her face, she was steaming mad.

"...Seen enough...?" she growled, now clutching her towel protectively to her body.

He fiddled with his own towel for a few moments, wishing he had chosen the other stall so he wouldn't have to get past her to escape.

"Um, sorry?" he managed.

She closed her eyes in an attempt to keep her cool, and stepped aside.

"Just go, Ranma. Go."

He slipped past her, eyes straight ahead, and ignored the fact that their bodies had to rub uncomfortably close together through their towels for him to get by. He ducked into Berthing and dove into his rack, knowing full well that he was going to have a hard time getting to sleep now.

Akane Tendo was no prude. That was impossible for someone who prided herself on being a mechwarrior. Cramped DropShips and shared facilities came with the territory, since there was no practical way to segregate a shower when every last cubic meter of a ship's internal volume counted.

If it had been anyone else but Ranma, she wouldn't have batted an eye. It would have been uncomfortable, but she wasn't going to let anyone see it and possibly judge her as unworthy of her position. No way. As the Grand Duke's daughter she had to work harder and look tougher than any three mechwarriors combined.

She shouldn't have made a big deal about it, she reflected, but when she watched his eyes drift down her body, she nearly flinched out of self-consciousness. It was ridiculous, since she was at the peak of her physical condition, but there she was, embarrassed to get the once-over from a man. That feeling of vulnerability had ballooned into anger out of sheer self-defense.

Perhaps it was because Ranma had looked that she had felt so vulnerable. Since when had Ranma shown any interest in her? He might have felt an obligation to protect her, as he had done against the assassin in the garden, but that was merely because he was now her fiance. It wasn't like he was in love with her or anything.

She heard Yuka and Sayuri gossiping in the laundry as she stepped into the shower. The two Air Lance pilots had been with her in training since they were kids, separating only when the two became aerospace pilots instead of mechwarriors, and transferred to flight school. Judging from their hushed tone, they were probably talking about her and Ranma.

The water was hot, but was nothing compared to the heat in her face.

Let them talk...

The Palomino was on the nightside of Capra, nearing the thin fringes of its atmosphere in preparation for a high-speed, low-profile entry. They were going to treat the landing as a combat drop, with the crew at their battlestations and the pilots in their mecha, ready to deploy. Their intentions were to land well beyond sight and scanning range of Capra City, and then work their way in with low-level flight to a position about forty kilometers away.

The League of Five Nails offered prospectors the ability to file mining claims on many of its worlds in exchange for a ten-percent cut of the take, and Capra was no exception. That would be their cover story if they had to explain themselves. The battlemechs were merely a source of heavy labor and insurance against well armed claim jumpers. The last bit was somewhat of a stretch, but considering that Capra was supposed to be able to field a mixed-forces mercenary battalion with a full company of 'mechs, one lance of strangers wasn't all that threatening.

Genma had been tight-lipped about why they had chosen Capra as their first destination. Only Soun knew the whole story. Ranma, never very interested in the hunt before, had never bothered to look into it.

Now, as they neared the planet, Genma Saotome was ready to show some of his hand. He stood at the forward end of the mess decks to address those members of the expedition entrusted with its true purpose: Ranma, Akane, Senior Technician Unryuu, and Doctor Ono. Happousai, of course, invited himself, and Genma raised no objections to this.

"As some of you may know, Ranma and I have been in search of Ryuugenzawa for over three years now."

Ranma looked around the compartment. "Pop, I think everyone here knows that by now."

Genma continued, ignoring his son. "What may not be clear is how we've been guided on this search."

"Now that's something I'd like to know," Ranma cracked.

"Quiet, boy," Genma growled. "It was shortly after we became Dispossessed that we stumbled across these notebooks." He showed them several battered file folders, data discs, and spiral bound notebooks that were layed out before him.

"Although the boy and I didn't know it at the time, the Scout who owned them was on his deathbed, and he begged us to buy them off him. At first I thought he was crazy, and balked at spending so much money for what little he seemed to offer."

He paused for effect.

"Then, without warning, he up and died on us."

Akane immediately cast a skeptical eye towards Ranma, who returned with a shrug that said Genma was more or less telling it like it was.

"As far as I knew he might have had Nevermore Fever," Genma continued. "And that he was a drifter with no friends or family. I know this sounds callous, but after we called the authorities to come and take care of him, we claimed the material he had tried to sell us."

There was a bit of strained silence at this, and Genma continued uncomfortably.

"It turns out that the search for Ryuugenzawa was the life's work of the Scout. He had compiled an incredible amount of information, and his journals tell of visits to many old Star League facilities that confirm the authenticity of the documents he had collected. The ill-fated trip the boy and I took to Lightoller was to confirm the existence of the Jusenkyo Labs, a facility that was only a rumor to the Inner Sphere, and not a genuine legend like Ryuugenzawa."

"So what are we doing here, Mister Saotome?" Akane asked. "I understand the rest of what you said, but does this mean that this Scout didn't know where Ryuugenzawa was?"

Genma nodded.

"Unfortunately, he did not know its exact location. But he did know enough to put us on the right track. Anyone could continue the search if they had all of his research materials. The reason we're going to Capra is that this Scout was being followed by a gang of pirates and criminals, a group he rarely speaks of in his journals, but when he does, you can feel his fear. In order to keep what he had discovered secret from them, he intentionally concealed important pieces of the puzzle throughout his wanderings across the Inner Sphere." He looked at Ranma. "The boy and I have found most of his clues in the last three years, and now we go to collect one of the most important ones."

"So this is some kind of treasure hunt?" Akane asked him.

Genma cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"Essentially."

He thumbed through several notebooks until he found what he was looking for. He held up a rough sketch of some sort of computer device, along with several bits of electronic schematics.

"This is a RADIANT-SIX quantum-interference cypher machine," he announced to them. "It was a standard encryption device for the Star League Defense Force. Most of them were carried off with General Kerensky at the end of the Star League, and of the remainder, only a handful still work. These units were state of the art back then, and nothing we can produce today can even come close to their power. With the Grand Duke's assistance, I was able to procure one of these working units.

"From what I've been able to learn about the RADIANT-SIX is that it requires three to six quantum-interference-encoded 'keys' in order to decrypt a message, and that each key must be inserted into the proper port. The quantum nature of the unit makes it nearly impossible to decrypt a message without the keys, even if you had access to a quantum computer - which, I might add, the Inner Sphere hasn't seen in over a century."

Genma then reached into his white dogi and pulled out four small colored plaques on a chain about his neck. Each was about the size and shape of a domino.

"The Scout had all six of the necessary keys at one time or another. He hid five of them, and lost possession of the sixth. I've got four of them now, and we'll search for number five on Capra." He opened up a small strongbox and retrieved a data disc to show them. "Once we have all six, we can finally decode the data on this disc, data which the Scout was convinced contained the location and layout of Ryuugenzawa, as well as other Star League facilities in the sector."

Doctor Ono raised his hand.

"Do you actually know that for certain?" he asked.

Genma was prepared for this.

"I am," he said confidently. "Serial numbers on the data disc conform to astrogational library data found in the cargo manifests of Star League ships that visited the system. Ryuugenzawa's location was a secret even in that time, which is why the place has never been plundered or taken over like other Star League facilities."

He held up the disc for them again.

"Star League ships that wanted to go to Ryuugenzawa needed a disc like this one, and they needed the decryption keys and cypher machine to unlock its secrets. Otherwise they were out of luck. Control of these materials was handled with the same custody procedures as Star League nuclear weapons. It was only in the chaos of Kerensky's Exodus and the subsequent Fall of the Star League that these objects were to become available."

Genma looked around the room. "Who knows how long the keepers of these materials held on to their secrets, fearful of Kerensky's return, and passing custody along to their heirs until at last the secrets were forgotten and the keys lost?"

"Okay, Okay," Happousai said. "Stop being so dramatic. So where's the sixth key? The one this clown lost."

Genma grimaced. It was a question he wasn't eager to address. "Well, for one thing, the Scout failed to obtain all of the keys at once. He had a key and then lost possession of it before he could put all six together and decrypt the astrogational disc."

"So you don't know where it is," Tofu observed.

"I do, actually," Genma said uneasily. "The Scout's journals told me where it is. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get to at the moment."

Ranma's ears perked up. This was news to him.

"Oh yeah, Pop? Where would that be?"

Genma cast his son a withering look. "It's better that we concentrate on finding number five before we go after number six."

The General Alarm sounded then, cutting off any further inquiry into the location of the sixth key. It was time to enter Capra's atmosphere. As the assembled group started for their battlestations, Ranma couldn't help but wonder if his father had somehow timed the briefing with the Palomino's mission timetable in order to avoid this very discussion.He doubted it, though; his father simply wasn't that together.

He followed Akane down the ladder to the Lower Deck, and from there down a long and narrow passageway, through a set of airtight doors, and finally to another passageway that linked each of the 'Mech Bays. Just before the passageway was a small alcove lined with pressure suits and survival gear for the pilots. For Ranma, suiting up would be a complicated process of stripping out of his clothes, donning the sensor-studded 'long johns' undergarment, then pulling on his pressure suit and life-support pack, firing everything up, and then checking to make certain that it worked. For the regular mechwarriors like Akane and Genma, it was simply a matter of stripping down to their underwear, pulling on cooling vests to protect them against the tremendous heat of piloting a battlemech, and grabbing a kit bag of survival gear.

Yuka and Sayuri were already finished and on their way to their aerospace fighters as Ranma grabbed his helmet, and he glumly recalled their conversation the previous night. He pulled on his gear as fast as he could, not bothering with the system checks, and ran to catch up with Akane. For no reason he could easily discern, he tapped Akane on the shoulder as she leaned over to open the airtight hatch that led to her Warhammer's bay.

"What is it, Ranma?" she asked tersely. The tension of the drop was already showing.

Ranma found himself at a loss for words.

"I uh, I just wanted to..."

"Come on, Ranma. We need to get our 'mechs warmed up and ready for drop. I don't have time for this."

Ranma stood for a moment in silence, prompting Akane to blow her bangs up out of her eyes in frustration, and then start down the ladder to Mech Bay #3.

"Akane!" he finally called out to her.

"What?!" she demanded from halfway down the ladder.

He steeled himself. "Be careful, willya?"

She looked up at him in silence for a moment before giving him a smile.

"I will. Thanks."

Ranma felt some sort of relief at this, and proceeded to his own 'Mech Bay. The Phoenix Hawk LAM stood in Battlemech Mode below him. He undogged the armored hatch to the cockpit and pulled himself through.

The Palomino began to shake as it struck thicker air. Ranma could hear the thin scream of superheated gasses passing over the heavily armored hull from within his LAM. It wouldn't be long before they were within the planet's troposphere.

He plugged his suit's umbilicals into the Phoenix Hawk's life-support connections. Then his neurohelmet feeds. The DropShip bucked violently as it hit a pocket of denser air, reminding him to strap himself into his cockpit. He reached over to the main computer terminal and flipped a bank of switches that brought the LAM to standby power.

He could feel the subtle tingle of his neurohelmet against his scalp, telling him that it was now receiving input from his brain. As he punched in the start commands to the computer, he projected the password sequence through his helmet. The Phoenix Hawk responded immediately with a sharp crack from the igniting Allied 250 fusion engine. The turbines began to spool up in warmup mode, and the battlemech's myomer groups flexed and and relaxed in their proper preflight sequence.

His preparations turned out to be unnecessary. Word was passed over the intraship commo that they had not been detected, and were about to set down in a concealed position. Battlemechs would not be required for the ship's security as far as Genma was concerned.

Primary Continent, Planet Capra

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

11 March 3025

The Palomino sat within the confines of a narrow wadi within forty kilometers of Capra City. Its two CSR-V8 Corsair fighters sat fore and aft of the giant vessel, ready to lift into the air with only a few minutes warning. Genma's Griffin and Ranma's Phoenix Hawk had set a series of camouflage tarps over the Leopard Class DropShip and the fighters to conceal them from the air, and the wadi itself would screen them from patrols on the ground. Anyone who stumbled across the Palomino would do so quite literally.

Genma had decided to keep the battlemechs inside the DropShip for now, and conduct patrols in a decidedly more low-key manner. That meant hauling out one of the two Boomerang reconnaisance planes from the hold. The task of assembling the plane fell to Akari, who was the senior technician, and Ranma, who would be flying it, and thus had a vested interest in its integrity.

Akari had been a wallflower for the entire trip, never speaking about anything other than battlemechs and their maintenance. Ranma could not recall her ever engaging in more than inane pleasantries on the mess decks, or in passing aboard ship. Battlemechs seemed to be her overriding passion, and the bigger the 'mech, the more she lavished it with affection.

He had to admit though, for a girl whose overalls were always clean and pressed, she knew how to turn a wrench. How she managed to keep neat after putting in a sixteen hour day overhauling Happousai's filthy Locust, he could not imagine. Assembling the Boomerang seemed almost an insult to her skills.

The light recon plane was up in less than an hour, and as Ranma leaned on the spars and kicked at the spindly landing gear, he knew it would perform as advertised. He was eager to get in some hours on the Boomerang, as it was something of a guilty pleasure for him to fly the little turboprop plane. The last time he had done so was two years back, when they had signed up for a brief hitch with a merc battalion in the Federated Shiratori as scouts in order to pay the bills.

Ranma turned to his father as the Boomerang was pushed up the gentle southern slope of the wadi and onto the hard 'desert pavement' of the surrounding ground. The air was dry and hot, but not too hot to prevent his plane's wings from generating lift. The wind was little more than a gentle breeze, but it did wonders to stifle the heat.

"So, Pop. You ready to fly?"

Genma shook his head.

"I've got some planning to do, son."

Ranma was taken aback by this. They had always flown together. Genma had taught him how to fly when he was eight years old. Not having his father in the right-hand seat was too weird to even think about.

"Okay," he shrugged morosely, not wanting to let his disappointment show. "I guess I'll go it alone."

"Take Akane," Genma muttered. He looked down to a topographic map of Capra that was most likely years out of date.

"What?"

"Take Akane," Genma repeated himself. "It'll give her something to do, and you'll need an extra pair of eyes up there."

Ranma scratched his head. "Can she even fly?"

"Beats me."

"Why don't I just borrow one of the Palomino's flight crew, or even Yuka or Sayuri, instead?"

Genma shook his head. "We'll need all of the Palomino's crew on hand in case we need to lift off in a hurry, and the girls will be our only air support when you're not around."

Ranma pointed to Doctor Tofu, who was enjoying the fresh desert air and stretching out his legs.

"What about the Doc?" he asked.

"And lose our only surgeon while you're gone?" Genma harrumphed. "Not going to happen, boy. Take Akane, and get your ass in the air."

Ranma looked around. She was not in sight.

"Where is she?"

"Go find her," Genma grunted. "And stop wasting my time."

Ranma huffed to himself and started for the Palomino. He didn't find her until he searched the 'Mech Bays, and sure enough, she was with her Warhammer. Thanks to his efforts, the seventy-ton death machine was painted in a functional desert camouflage pattern. The topic of its recent change of livery did not come up.

His plan was to ask her to come along with him on the flight. When she refused, he would be in the clear, and could take off by himself.

He didn't count on her accepting his invitation.

The Boomerang's engine roared to life, the large prop kicking up a cloud of surface dust from the hard ground. Ranma checked over his small instrument cluster to make sure the engine was functioning properly. One of the things he liked about the Boomerang was its simplicity. There were no overly complicated instrument displays, no computer controlled systems to malfunction and require parts that might or might not be available in the technology starved Inner Sphere, just a pilot, with all the controls he needed at his hands and feet.

"Do you know how to fly?" he asked Akane as the engine warmed up.

"Nope," she confessed. "I never got around to it."

"Great," he muttered to himself. "Don't touch anything."

Akane gave him a sour look. "How stupid do you think I am, Ranma? Of course I'm not going to touch anything. Jerk."

Her words made him wince, and the conversation of Yuka and Sayuri came back to haunt him once again. He pushed the throttle forward and let the sound of the engine take his mind off the subject. The Boomerang stood in place, vibrating heavily as the turboprop reached maximum output with nowhere to channel all that power. Ranma wanted to make one final check to see that everything would hold together, and so far everything looked good.

"Why aren't we going yet?" Akane asked him over the noise.

Ranma gave her a smart-assed grin as his right hand set the prop pitch, and suddenly the propeller bit into the air. The Boomerang surged forward on its little wheels.

He needed only seventy-five meters to get off the ground, which wasn't bad for a plane that weighed a little over five and a half tons, fully loaded with fuel, sensors, and crew. The Boomerang sprang into the air, and once he had reached his desired airspeed, he engaged the muffler system. It drained him of a little horsepower, but made the aircraft virtually silent.

Akane noticed the sudden silence and grinned with delight.

"Whew," she sighed. "I was hoping the whole trip wouldn't be so noisy."

"Don't worry about it," Ranma replied. "It's going to be nice and quiet the rest of the flight. I won't need a lot of power to land, so we can keep the muffler engaged."

She looked around the wide cockpit bubble at the surrounding desert. "It looks pretty desolate out there," she remarked. "What are we looking for?"

Ranma consulted a copy of the map his father had been studying.

"Just checking to see how out of date the map is," he replied. "There might be settlements or maybe a mine or something out here that isn't on the map. For obvious reasons, no one in the League is real keen on publishing current maps of their planets for public consumption."

"It's like that in the Confederation, too," she agreed.

"We also need to find alternate routes back to the Palomino from the city in case we have to beat feet. Pop doesn't want to use the 'mechs unless we have to, and that sounds like a good idea to me. There might be a dirt road or maybe a dried-up river we can take that'll let us make good time and stay out of sight."

Akane sat back in her comfy bucket seat and folded her arms behind her head. "It seems you've got this all figured out."

"Nah, I'm just faking it as usual," Ranma admitted with a laugh.

He put on a little left yaw and rolled over into an aileron turn. The controls felt good in his hands, a direct mechanical linkage that gave him feedback on the plane's performance. It wasn't a fly-by-light photonic control system, which meant there was the chance a linkage could jam or separate, but this was an acceptable risk in Ranma's eyes. Flying like this felt more natural, and ultimately it was more satisfying than any computerized and soulless hypersonic aerofighter, even his LAM.

A flick of a switch brought up their twin telescopic and forward-looking infrared video cameras. The two units were displayed on a bank of monitors between the two sets of instrument clusters, though controls for the cameras were located on Akane's side of the cockpit. A thin set of crosshairs was centered in each monitor, and several columns of alphanumerics tumbled across the sides.

Akane had only a passing knowledge of aerial reconnaissance, and though she had called for it numerous times during training exercises and actual combat, she had always taken the process for granted.

Ranma pointed out a small joystick for her to operate.

"That controls one of the two camera units," he told her. "You can train it around, and when you find something you want to track, you can press that left hand button on top of the stick. The camera will then lock on to whatever is in the crosshairs, even the ground itself, with a laser rangefinder, and track it no matter what the aircraft is doing."

He pointed out several other controls on the stick.

"You can even send burst transmissions to friendly forces like artillery or close air support, and they'll know exactly where to put their weapons. You can only track with one camera at a time though, so once you've slaved one to the target, use the other one to continue looking around."

"In case I find a better target?" Akane asked.

"Yeah," Ranma nodded. "But mostly in case there's someone down there who's fixing to kill you; like Triple-A guns or SAMs, or an air-defense 'mech like the Rifleman. The Boomerang is made mostly of carbon fiber and composites, so it doesn't have much of a radar signature. The engine is about the only thing that'll give a return, so it's surrounded with Radar Absorbing Material. About the only vulnerable point is the inlet duct, so you can't approach a radar site head-on and at a low angle. The engine exhaust itself is ported throught the prop wash, so there isn't much of an IR sig either. Plus it's real quiet with the muffler engaged."

She gave him a look that said she was wondering when he would come to the point of this lesson. He got the message.

"So basically, the only way to be discovered is visually," he went on. "If you can see them, chances are pretty good that they can see you."

He put the Boomerang through another turn.

"This thing doesn't have any armor," he continued. "One guy with a shoulder-launched SRM pack could blow us right out of the sky."

Akane hadn't realized this. She was used to the heavy wall of diamond-hard armor plate that protected her inside her Warhammer. A feeling of helplessness crept over her for a moment before she got a hold of herself. Ranma spoke like he knew the job of aerial reconnaissance firsthand, and she wanted to know how he had lived to tell about it.

"So how does one stay alive in the recon business?"

"Easy," Ranma replied. "Fly above three hundred meters if you can, and always keep your eyes open for trouble. The second you let your guard down is the second you die. That and don't be afraid to make a run for it."

Akane chuckled at this. "The great Ranma Saotome runs from trouble?"

He bristled in response. "Well, duh. This thing has no armor and no weapons. You're literally sitting on a hundred kilos of high-octane gasoline, so you have no chance in hell of surviving a hit long enough to bail out. What else are you supposed to do?"

"I suppose you have a point," she conceded, though her expression told him that she was secretly pleased at having found and pushed one of his buttons.

They flew on in silence for awhile. Ranma kept his mind on his flying, and Akane played with the camera units. They were easy for her to manipulate, and she marvelled at the details they could provide. At one point she was able to count the spots on one of the indigenous reptiles as it sunned itself on a rock. The sensor dutifully tracked the large lizard through a full banking turn of the aircraft.

"So," Ranma said to her all of a sudden. "Wanna fly this thing for a bit?"

Akane looked at him with equal parts of hope and suspicion.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked him. "I told you I don't know how."

Ranma rolled his shoulders to work the kinks out of them. "Heck, Akane, even you could fly this thing without crashing it once I got it up in the air for you."

"Thanks a lot," she grumped.

"Take your stick," he told her firmly. "And put your feet on the rudder pedals just enough to make contact; don't push on them yet." She did so reluctantly, holding the control column with a virtual death grip. Ranma could feel it through his own controls. "Relax," he told her. "You're gonna give yourself a cramp if you keep holding it like that."

She eased up a bit, but only slightly.

"The thing's gonna move around a little if you let it go," he soothed. "But don't worry about it. It's just the feedback from the control surfaces. All you need to do is keep it steady, like driving a car on the freeway. Just put yourself into a 'cruise' mode."

Akane relaxed a bit more. Ranma could feel the tension on the control column ease.

"Great," he said to her. "Just hold it steady for awhile, while you get used to it."

She did so, tensing up with an audible hiss whenever a gust of wind caught the Boomerang and the controls began to jerk in her hand. It would take her several moments of white-knuckling the stick before she was able to relax enough to hold it as he had instructed her.

"You're doing great, Akane," he told her. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, and she did not notice the fact that he was no longer holding his own control column. The aircraft was hers.

"You can look around, you know," he said calmly. He wanted to put a little bite into it, but held his tongue. Well, almost. "The odds of you running into anything up here are pretty slim."

She slowly took her eyes off the windscreen and looked over at him. Her eyes lit up when she saw that he wasn't flying the plane.

"How long have your hands been off the controls?" she asked quietly.

"A couple minutes now," he replied. "The bird's yours."

"This is a bad idea, Ranma," she returned. Her death grip was back.

"Hey, it's my life too, you know," he said to her. "If I thought you were gonna spike us into the ground, do you think I'd let you do this?"

Her eyes fell upon her instruments. "Well... No..."

"Exactly. Now hold the stick steady and push on the right pedal a little bit. That should move the nose of the plane to the right."

She did so. The plane began to swing hard to the right, forcing Ranma to take back control before they went into a flat spin and crashed.

"You see," Akane said in a tiny voice. She was nearly petrified, and the beads of sweat that ran down Ranma's face weren't helping her confidence. "This was a bad idea."

"Man," Ranma grunted once he had control of the plane. "You don't do anything by small measures. I said push on the pedal a little, not stomp on it."

"I'm sorry, all right!" she cried.

"Apology accepted," he returned. "For your punishment I'm gonna make you do it again. The right way this time. Take the controls."

She gave him a helpless look.

"Come on, Akane," he said firmly. "I learned when I was eight, and anytime I screwed up, I got smacked by my old man just as soon as he had the aircraft stable. You've got it easy."

His appeal to her pride worked. She took back the control column and the pedals. The Boomerang began a gentle slip to the right.

"Hey, not bad," he said to her. "Now ease off on the right and put on some left yaw with the left pedal."

She did so, and the plane responded as intended.

"See? What'd I tell you. You can fly this thing."

Akane smiled for him, which to Ranma seemed to raise the temperature of the cockpit by several degrees. He talked her through the motion of the controls and how they affected the Boomerang, and she was made to perform each basic maneuver, such as turning and changing altitude, until she had proven she could do it without losing control. Finally, the topic of instruction turned towards the instruments.

"I guess you're ready for it," he replied in response to her question. "I just wanted you to get a feel for flying the plane without them before you started flying with them. You fly a plane like this by feel more than you do by instruments or computer."

He began pointing out the various dials and gauges for her.

"The big things you have to keep an eye on when you're flying are your altitude - in this case by laser altimeter - your airspeed, your fuel gauge - which measures the kilos of fuel remaining - your compass heading and attitude on your artificial horizon, and every now and then check your oil pressure and temperature gauges on your engine. Those first five things are on your HUD, so you don't have to look away from the canopy. Everything else gets a look now and then when you aren't busy."

"So don't worry about all this other stuff?"

"Not right now," he replied. "Get the basics down first." He looked out at the bleak mountains of jumbled sandstone that marked one of the places where a copper mine was located. The mine seemed abandoned, but they'd have to take a closer look, as it was close to one of their proposed escape routes from the city. "I get the feeling you'll have plenty of time to learn the rest."

Akane sensed his unease.

"What's the matter?"

He returned his attention to her. "It's nothing. Really."

"Why don't I believe you?"

He frowned at this. What did she care anyway?

"I'm taking back the controls now."

Akane nodded faintly and handed them over to him. "I get the feeling you don't exactly believe in what we're doing..." she said, and let her words hang in the cockpit between them.

Ranma winced. Akane had the uncanny ability of hitting him where he lived.

"I don't believe Ryuugenzawa exists," he replied. "I thought I said that to you once."

"First I've heard of it," she remarked. "So what you're saying is that despite all of this evidence that your father has, the place the entire Confederation is depending on for its survival doesn't even exist?"

"That's about it," Ranma said evenly. "It probably existed at one time, but I don't think it's gonna be there when we figure out where it's supposed to be. What are the odds that something so important could have survived intact for so long, when every treasure hunter and would-be king in the Inner Sphere's been looking for it? Even if it does exist, what are the odds that all the stories about what it contains are true, and not just storytellers puffing up the legend with some exaggerations of their own?"

Akane's heart sank. Ranma's arguments made a lot of sense, and that wasn't good news for her people. "So we're really on a stupid wild goose chase..."

"Basically, yeah."

She bit down on her lip in thought. "I refuse to accept that."

Ranma gave her an incredulous look. "Say what?"

"I refuse to accept that there isn't any hope for the Confederation," she replied in a steely voice. "Even if it's true, I won't just roll over and die. Or worse, get married off to Tatewaki Kuno. I'm going to do whatever I can. Whatever I have to do."

Ranma said nothing at this. The force of Akane's convictions made him feel guilty about his own lack of faith. Was it so wrong to look at things cynically when chances were that things were going to turn out badly no matter what?

The Boomerang circled around the copper mine, the last location they could reach before fuel considerations would force them to return to the Palomino.

Jusenkyo Commonwealth DropShip Jade Lotus

Capra System Nadir Jump Point

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

11 March 3025

The Jade Lotus had set a new Commonwealth record for the longest average distance travelled per day, and the crew were exhausted reflections of this feat. At the urging of the Elders, the ship had foregone the usual steady one-gee transit of the Epsilon Indi system and instead opted for a punishing two-gee transit, followed by four hours of continuous three-gee deceleration just prior to docking with their JumpShip. Such torturous maneuvers had required that most of the crew be sent to their racks with a combination of drugs that dulled their senses against the pain and stress while keeping their cardiovascular systems up to the challenge of working under such a strain.

The Jumps themselves were a carefully orchestrated ballet of moving from one Commonwealth recharge station to the next, covering the fifty parsec gap from Epsilon Indi to Capra in just under eighteen hours. The crew of Jade Lotus used that time to recuperate from their heavy-gee ordeal, though it was clear that they would need the next few days of transit to the planet to return to their battle-ready condition. The trip itself was rated a major success: only two members of the crew had succumbed to the strain and perished, and they were only men - no great loss to the Commonwealth.

Now they were in the Capra system, and things were very peculiar. Someone, presumably the League of Five Nails Navy, had scattered a great deal of radar-reflective chaff throughout the jump point, making it difficult to determine if there was anything else in the vicinity. Visual and passive EMS scans of the jump point had turned up nothing thus far, but it was clear that something was up. It was possible that this was merely a response to the Combine raid earlier in the year, but it seemed a very impractical deterrent to future raids.

Kima's concern was more pragmatic. Assuming their information was correct, the two Saotomes were somewhere on the distant planet of Capra, a trip of several days. Further assuming that they hadn't already visited the planet and then moved on, how was she to find them?

Capra had only one major city, and a handful of scattered settlements comprised mostly of wildcat mining operations. It made the most sense to cover Capra City, as it was the most likely place for them to visit, but what of the smaller settlements? What if they had no reason at all to visit a populated area? She simply didn't have the manpower to stake out the entire planet.

There was more as well, for two mechwarriors reputed to be in the Capra garrison were wanted by the Commonwealth. Not only did she have to find the two Saotomes, but also two men by the names of Hibiki and Tarou. They too had been at the Jusenkyo Labs during the break-in, and were reported to have cursed alter-egos.

She reflected grimly that this was not the sort of operation she was suited to. Her talents were far more personal, and did not involve directing troops. She knew Shampoo was smart enough to take care of herself, and that Mousse would do anything the purple-haired Joketsuzoku told him to do. That left ten more mechwarriors and two aerospace pilots, plus a platoon of Special Forces that clearly balked at the idea of being commanded by one outside their insular community. This was without a doubt the most difficult assignment she had ever been given.

The small mechwarriors' lounge was two decks directly below Kima. Shampoo sat on a comfortable chair with her back to Mousse as Pink and Link played mah-jong. She watched the twins with little interest, her body still aching from the trip from Lightoller, and her mind clouded with uncertainties.

Of General Herb there had been no word. He had not come to the starport, nor had either of his two henchmen. She had been relieved of course, but as for the reasons for Herb's absence, only Mousse was in a position to know.

Mousse had not greeted her with the expected fanfare and annoying declarations of love. Instead he had given her a simple nod of recognition and steered well clear. She was both pleased and unsettled by that, which added to her confusion. Surely the fool would have been eager to capitalize on his sacrifice for her - right?

She turned to face him. He sat in silence, close enough to touch if she was so inclined. His face was taut with determination, as if he was locked in a battle with himself not to speak to her. He did not look up from his lap when she turned her attention his way.

"Mousse?" Though her voice was quiet, the twins looked up briefly from their game to observe.

Mousse's eyes slowly lifted to gaze upon her. His face remained taut, though his breathing quickened.

"What is it, Shampoo?" he replied. His voice was ragged and metallic with disuse.

She looked away. What did she really have to say to him, anyway?

"It's nothing," she replied. "Forget it."

He winced almost imperceptibly at her response. "As you wish," he said to her, and left the lounge without another word.

Shampoo could feel the eyes of Pink and Link upon her as Mousse left. Now she was acting like a fool! There were more important matters to think about, like finding the two Saotomes.

It wasn't going to be easy. If they weren't close to the city, then it would be almost impossible. The only advantage they had was their status as members of the Commonwealth. The League of Five Nails extended certain courtesies towards the Amazon Nation, so at least they could land at the starport and walk about the city as themselves without any trouble from the local garrison.

They were supposed to capture the information on Ryuugenzawa, but as far as she was concerned, that was Kima's problem. Ranma was hers, and he would pay dearly for her cursed Jusenkyo body! His father's death was only an afterthought.

It did not matter if Ryuugenzawa even existed, which she doubted. Only vengeance concerned her, for by killing Ranma Saotome, she erased the stain of failure that threatened her own death in the eyes of the Elders. Her career had not yet begun, and she was already in peril of losing everything she had devoted her life to. She could not fail again.

Furinkan Combine DropShip Thorn,

transitting from the Capra System Nadir Jump Point

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

11 March 3025

Colonel Princess Kodachi Kuno, known to most in the Inner Sphere as the Black Rose of the Furinkan Combine, sat moodily upon a burgundy velvet-upholstered chair within her private sanctum. The ship had been extensively modified from its original configuration, cutting its battlemech complement down to a mere twenty 'mechs, and reserving the space for her Regimental Headquarters staff as well as her personal chambers. It was a place of comforts unknown to other DropShips, even those of her brother.

She was of a sanguine mind, fey, and brooding with heavy-lidded eyes through the dim lighting of the chamber at a fractal hologram of a burning rose. She listened to the darker music of the ages - ancient composers such as Rachmaninov, Mussorgsky, Goldenthal, Kanno, and Elfman. The fractal rose withered and burned away into nothingness before her, each element a smaller copy of itself, its ghostly reflections luminous within the ebon pools of her eyes.

The large glass of Syrah at her elbow trembled with the subsonic vibrations of the ship's main drives, the only indication in this sound-dampened and shock-mounted compartment that they were operating. She sipped at the wine, glad for the warmth that filled her with each drink, and hungry for the narcotic embrace of the alcohol that would let her sleep. She preferred alcohol over tranquilizers; preferred the fuzzy euphoria of drunkenness to the numbing, empty darkness of Nembutal or the dreary half-recalled nightmares of Valium.

The music swelled around her, Rachmaninov's 'Isle of the Dead' reaching its vertiginous and anti-climactic crescendo before drifting dreamily into a languid vaporing of limpid stillness. She felt her heart clench at the tremulous vibrato of the strings rising in counterpoint to the crisp bray of the horns. How could any composer of music compare with the grim despair of aristocratic Russians like poor mad Sergei?

She took another sip of the wine and reflected upon her own struggle with life and death. This would be her one chance for revenge upon Akane Tendo before her dear brother snatched her out of reach. Success depended on reaching Capra first. Failure was unthinkable.

As for dear Tachi's reaction to her disobedience, she tried not to let it concern her, but she knew her brother, and she knew that his anger would be beyond measure once vengeance was hers. Perhaps even sufficient to forget the ties of blood and family that bound them. Her life was too important to be lost over such a trifle as Akane Tendo's death, and steps had to be taken to keep what was hers.

Her ships were well concealed against the inevitable search by his fleet, but she would have to come to a jump point sooner or later if she was ever to leave this dreadful star system. It would prove prudent to keep the Tendo witch alive long enough to use as a shield against Tachi's wrath. Once she was safely within the bounds of her own fiefdom she could murder Akane slowly and by degrees, and Daddy would once again be there to keep Tatewaki in check.

A comtone sounded softly in the lull of the music. Kodachi's hand lashed out into the air, silencing the next performance before it could begin.

"Enter," she called imperiously to the darkness.

The door to her sanctum opened, and the diminutive form of Sasuke appeared against the harsh lighting of the passageway beyond. He stepped across the threshold silently, pausing to let the door slide shut behind him, casting him into the chamber's darkness, before continuing his approach.

"Ah, Sasuke," she purred to him. "I trust your intrusion bears some merit?"

"Of course, Mistress," he demurred. "I wish to inform you of your brother's arrival in the Capra System."

"What distasteful news," she observed, holding the glass of Syrah up to the light of the hologram rose, and swirling the dark red liquid thoughtfully. "I gather that he has begun the search for me?"

"Not yet, Mistress. For the moment he appears to be engaged in some sort of difficulty at the zenith point."

Kodachi was intrigued.

"Explain," she demanded.

"I regret that the details are somewhat sketchy at this point, my Mistress. The Thorn has not yet put sufficient distance between the nadir point and the Capra primary to receive any clear transmissions from the fleet."

"Your regret is noted," she returned. "I expect more than mere speculation from you, Sasuke, if you wish to intrude upon my meditation."

The ninja bowed deeply in apology.

"Of course, Mistress. I shall keep your words close at hand."

"Keep them in your head, Sasuke, or not at all."

"Yes, Mistress."

He bowed again, and turned to excuse himself.

Kodachi watched him start for the door, and waited until he was just about to leave before halting him. "Sasuke!"

"Mistress?"

"Do you think my dear brother will have you executed?"

Sasuke looked puzzled by this.

"Mistress?"

She gave him a predatory grin. "Surely you don't think he hasn't realized who it was that leaked the whereabouts of the Tendo girl to me, do you? Nor the fact that you are no longer embarked aboard any of his ships, and therefore must be in my company?"

Sasuke shook his head slowly. "It has occurred to me, Mistress."

She chuckled softly at this.

"I suppose then that you've thought of some countermeasure against his wrath."

He bowed for her once again, and she gave him a dismissive wave in reply.

"Go now, Sasuke."

"At once, Mistress."

His departure was as silent as his arrival. Kodachi considered putting the music back on, but the mood was spoiled, and the wine no longer had its usual appeal. She drained her glass absently, not bothering to savor its vintage, and then threw it against the bulkhead with a shriek.

The glass shattered against the cherry panelling of the far bulkhead with a crash. Kodachi Kuno sank down into her chair. Her laughter was manic and forced, descending abruptly into deranged shrieks of fear and despair before cascading into wet sobs of hopelessness.

She wept incoherently for some time, her eyes red and wet with frantic tears. Her throat stung from the wracking sobs of anxiety that gripped her soul. This was a desperate game that she played; her pathological fear of her brother pitted against the ravenous hunger, the deep-seated exigency for revenge against Akane Tendo, that clawed at her sense of self-worth. In order to restore herself, she courted her own destruction.

League of Five Nails JumpShip Impaler

orbiting the planet Capra-Beta,

two light-minutes from the system primary

The League of Five Nails

11 March 3025

Hikaru Gosunkugi watched the Tactical Display with his cousin Tetsuo. The Furinkan Combine JumpShips were appearing out of hyperspace at the Zenith point. Numerous passive sensors concealed within the painstakingly sown clouds of chaff revealed each new JumpShip as it winked into existence. There were far more ships present than Hikaru had expected.

"Kuno's really calling in the clans," Tetsuo observed.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," Hikaru replied. "He doesn't know what he can expect in the Capella System, and he's probably sweating the resistance he's getting at Calypso, Tybalt, and the other places he chose for his feint."

"I hope we've brought enough ships."

"Any damage we inflict can only delay his attack on Capella," Hikaru observed. "And now that we've confirmed Kuno's end-run strategy, our little HPG message to Grand Duke Tendo warning him of what's coming can only make it worse for the Combine."

They both laughed at this, explosive snorts and wheezes of breath that filled the Impaler's Combat Information Center. Admiral Morag was busy directing the coming attack, and his forces would engage the fringes of the Combine formation within minutes. So far, Kuno's fleet had deployed only a fraction of its fighter escorts, leaving his starships to flail the surrounding space of the jump point uselessly with their radars.

Tiny green points of light representing League Navy fighter and GunShip squadrons closed within the projected detection zone of the Combine fleet. Hikaru and Tetsuo both lit the candles tied to their heads upon seeing this. Tetsuo began chanting mantras cursing the Combine fleet with bad luck, while his cousin hammered namesake iron spikes through a dozen straw effigies of Tatewaki Kuno. They were leaving nothing to chance in this attack, not even divine intervention.

Tatewaki Kuno shrugged off the effect of a Jump better than most people, a trait he used as further evidence that he was a superior human being. While his crew shook their heads and reached for stimulant inhalers to bring them out of their Jump-induced mental fog, he was floating towards the viewport in search of the planet Capra.

Space itself seemed to shimmer with light, perhaps because of the effects of so many starships appearing from Jump in such a short span of time. Was this not an omen foretelling his victory over the Confederation?

He had his answer only moments later when a small strip of shiny aluminum foil struck the viewport. The strip's low relative velocity ensured that the contact was without incident, but its presence puzzled him deeply. It was only as his sensory crews got their wits about them that the mystery of the foil was revealed.

"Conn, Sensory; multiple paint at all bearings. We're showing very unusual return signatures."

"Sensory, Conn; aye," the Officer of the Deck replied. "Sensory, Conn; can you classify?"

There was a pause.

"Conn, Sensory; we have either jumped into a heavy field of radar chaff, or one of the fleet ships has suffered a catastrophic JumpSail malfunction."

"Engineering reports successful deployment of JumpSail," the Assistant Engineer reported quickly from his Bridge station.

"Sensory, Conn; aye... Very well, Engineering."

The Officer of the Deck summoned his Communications section. "Contact the ships of the fleet and request the status of their JumpSails," he ordered.

The call went out throughout the fleet. No ships reported any problems with their JumpSails.

Tatewaki turned at this news. Had his sister's ships run afoul of some terrible catastrophe? His heart leapt at the thought.

"Whither my twisted sister?" he asked his Operations Officer, Captain Lucius Kyle.

Kyle looked to the Tactical Display, but as expected, the lack of reliable radar data offered no immediate answers to his prince's question. The fleet ships each had a transponder signal, which made it easy to display their locations despite the radar interference, but Princess Kodachi wasn't foolish enough to use them after her little mutiny against her brother.

"Unknown at this time, m'lord," Kyle offered cautiously. "Until we can establish the cause for this radar interference, I would suggest an elevated state of alert throughout the fleet."

"Aye," Tatewaki agreed. "This anomaly smacks of the Gosunkugis and their League swine. Intensify our efforts with passive detection equipment, and find my sister."

"At once, your Highness," Kyle returned crisply. "I request permission to fully deploy our fighter assets."

"Denied," Tatewaki answered coolly. "Our ships will have enough trouble sorting through this cursed interferance, and the fighters will only add to the confusion. Furthermore, I am wary of a collision that may handicap us in our ultimate goal of conquering the Capella system. Our passive sensors will have to do for now."

Kyle nodded and turned to carry out his orders.

Hinako Ninomiya had been in rough situations before, but she had never stared down an entire fleet. The Furinkan Combine's starships kept winking into existence around them, and if not for the screening fields of chaff the League had mysteriously sown, they would have been detected. They could not hide forever, though, and she had taken steps to get them out of the jump point as quietly as possible.

Dragonfly's JumpSail was quickly stowed for starters. It was too big and too reflective to avoid notice for long. They would also have to make do without radar, which was just as well considering how useless it currently was to them. After that it was a matter of pointing their stern in a direction away from the prying passive sensors of the Combine fleet and use their thrusters at their lowest practical outputs to creep away.

She had been playing this game for almost an hour now, and had put on enough delta-vee to make a modest run for the ecliptic plane. She would keep the star between Dragonfly and the Combine fleet for as long as possible, and in the meantime she would try to think of some way to warn the planet-bound Palomino without giving away her position.

Flashes of light reached out into the darkness, signalling men and women to prepare for war. The dot-dash prosigns stood for key words and phrases for the attack, and took the place of radio transmissions that would give away their presence to wary Combine sensory operators. The message was a simple one:

"Hellcat Lead to all Hellcat flights; Engage weapon presets. Prepare to attack."

Hellcat Lead listened to the chorus of double-clicked radio mics over his headset that confirmed the receipt of his orders. Arrayed behind him was an entire fighter wing of eighteen HCT-213B Hellcat II aerospace fighters, and his wing was only one of six that the League Navy had committed to the attack. In addition to the fighters were two GunShip squadrons of Leopard and Union Class DropShips that exchanged their ability to transport 'mechs for heavier armor and more firepower.

The GunShips led the attack, as they were large enough to carry the passive detection gear necessary to locate and home on the Combine fleet in the radar-limited environment. The fighters followed, using pencil-thin laser beams emitted from trackers aboard the GunShips, and aimed at the lead fighters as a guide until they closed to combat range. This was a battle the League of Five Nails Navy had trained hard for, and one that they had prayed would come.

Data streamed onto Hellcat Lead's HUD as the lead GunShip sighted the Combine JumpShips on the perimeter of the formation, and passed on the news through modulations of the laser guidebeam. To the fighter pilot, the enemy fleet was nothing more than tiny shimmering points of light, visible only because of their tremendous JumpSails reflecting Capra's primary. At their considerable velocity, they would be in attack range in just over seven minutes.

His commo crackled for attention on the tactical frequency.

"All flights, this is Hound Lead; We are compromised, I say again, we are compromised. Commencing PsyWar-Op ALFA. Good luck and good hunting to you all."

Hellcat Lead clicked his radio mic twice in acknowledgment, and swallowed a gulp of oxygen streaming from his helmet facemask. The Combine pickets had spotted their formation, as was to be expected at this close range. From that point on, they were operating without any radio communications.

The skirl of bagpipes and the roll of drums howled over all frequencies and at maximum gain. It was the set known as 'Nell Flaherty's Drake', and it would serve as the timing for the League attack - while denying the Furinkan Combine forces the use of the radio. Hellcat Lead winced at Admiral Morag's taste in music, and hoped it would be just as annoying to the Combine. At least the League forces had the advantage of training under the music's effects.

The ships of his wing broke up by squadrons and slipped into their attack formations. They would sight on his fighter for the attack, and would attack the Combine JumpShip that he engaged. Other squadrons fanned out into a wide skirmish line that would take half of the enemy fleet in one point-blank pass. After that, they would mix it up down and dirty with the Combine until their fuel status reached thirty percent, then they'd make a break for their carriers. Hellcat Lead doubted the Combine would attempt to chase them far, as the rendezvous orbit would take over nineteen hours.

'Bonnie Dundee' gave way to 'The Hills of Glenorchy' over the tac-net; the sign that they would be within weapons range in mere minutes. Hellcat Lead couldn't wait.

Tatewaki Kuno had barely taken his seat on the Executive Bridge when all hell broke loose.

"Conn, Tactical; Pickets Charlie-Four-Kilo and Charlie-Four-Lima report enemy spacecraft approaching on intercept with the fleet; bearing two-two-four minus three, range nine thousand kilometers! Time to intercept is four hundred seconds."

Captain Kyle whirled on his tactical staff as the data streamed into Imperator's battlecomp.

"Give me a raid count and classification!" he demanded.

The men and women of the Tactical station hunched over their displays collating and classifying their targets. Angry red points of light appeared on the main monitor as alphanumerics scrolled past them at a dizzying rate. They were almost on top of the Combine fleet!

"Enemy Raid Count estimated at six wings of starfighters plus six to eight DropShips. Identity is unconfirmed, but believed to be League of Five Nails vessels."

"Sound General Quarters!" Tatewaki thundered. "Scramble the fighters to intercept! Smite these heathen upstarts!" How dare the League meddle in his affairs!

Alarm klaxons began to sound. The struggle of the crew on the Executive Bridge shuffling into their pressure suits and plugging their life-support into the ship's service connections at their stations drained the fleet of precious reaction time. Just as they were starting to come together as a unit again, the bagpipes struck.

"What is that infernal noise?!" Tatewaki howled over the din. Someone at the Communications section cut out the tac-net speakers in response, reducing the din to tinny screams from individual headsets.

"Your Highness!" the Commo Officer cried. His ears were still ringing and his face was wracked with discomfort. "The enemy formations are broadcasting some sort of electronic warfare on our command and tactical frequencies."

"Drown them out!" Tatewaki demanded. "End this horrid wailing at once, Commander!"

The Communications Officer steeled himself and answered his lord. "We can jam their transmissions, Highness, but that will still prevent us from communicating with our fleet ships. All we have at the moment are line-of-sight laser comms, and those are useless for reaching our fighter escorts."

Tatewaki began to seethe. "Thy job, Commander, is to see that our forces can communicate. If this requires thee to stand in an open airlock with a flashlight and signal flags, then so be it, but I want these League curs reduced to their component atoms!"

The Commo Officer's face paled.

"As you command, your Highness!"

The Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine turned to Captain Kyle. "Have thy sensory section track the raiders back to their carriers. Dispatch a GunShip squadron from the Caledon to destroy them. See to it personally if necessary, but I will have my revenge."

Kyle bowed in acknowledgement. "Of course, your Highness."

Satisfied that his Operations Officer was up to the job, Tatewaki summoned his harried Officer of the Deck.

"Prepare to come about and engage the raiders with our full firepower," he ordered the man. "We shall face the foe head on, and for years hereafter the widows of the cursed League shall gnash their teeth and wail in despair at the great defeat Tatewaki Kuno has given them!"

Hellcat Lead was no fan of Scottish martial music, but he knew his job depended on a keen ear. 'Muckin of Geordies Byre' had given way to 'The Fox Hunters', and that meant they were committed to attack.

He sighted his target, a fat Monolith Class JumpShip loaded with battlemech carrier DropShips. He aligned his Hellcat with the target and strained his eyes against the darkness for the tell-tale flash of a Combine fighter's plasma drive. There was nothing nearby, so all he had to worry about was the starship's anti-meteor defenses.

Radar was useless in the carefully cultivated environment of confusion they had sown, and so he selected his target tracking system to laser designation and rangefinding. The Monolith's JumpSail made for an easy and happily reflective target.

The range-to-target indicator ticked off the kilometers to the Monolith on his HUD. He made fine course adjustments to put his weapons to bear on the JumpShip's delicate tracery of cables and stays for the massive JumpSail. It went against convention to attack an enemy's JumpShips for fear of damaging the irreplacable jumpcores, but there was nothing that said you couldn't attack other parts of the ship. Hikaru Gosunkugi was playing a dangerous political game with his decision to go ahead with this unprecedented attack, and Hellcat Lead respected him for having the balls to do it.

The Monolith grew in size on his HUD as he screamed straight at the massive silvery JumpSail. Bolts of particle beam fire began spitting from the starship's point defense turrets at him. Because of the chaff and the powerful jamming equipment carried by the GunShips, the JumpShip's gunners were without their radars, and the wildly fired bolts streamed around him harmlessly.

He took little notice of the incoming fire, knowing that his ship's armor was good for a few hits, and needing all his concentration focused on his shooting. He was trying to hit a difficult target while moving at high relative velocity. His finger caressed the weapon trigger on his control stick, and invisible pulses of laser light rippled out into the darkness.

The beams splashed into the deployment booms for the Monolith's JumpSail, tearing them apart in brilliant flashes of flame and jagged metal. The massive disk of the sail trembled from the shock, and he could see starlight through the rents made by the shrapnel from the booms. A smile lit across his face at the results of his strike, and he altered course to get one more good blow in.

He barely felt the shock of puncturing the paper-thin material of the JumpSail as his aerofighter blasted through it. His drives flared behind him, adding destructive heat to the damage caused by his collision. A quick look over his shoulder allowed him the pleasure of seeing his squadron mates finishing the job he had started. The ragged JumpSail was cut away from the Monolith, and it streamered debris as it collapsed into a crumpled mass of mylar and photoelectric mesh.

The sight of Combine ships meeting similar fates around him felt good. In minutes the League Navy would render the Combine forces helpless and impotent, something the Army had been unable to do since the fall of the Star League. They would remember this battle for all time.

Tatewaki Kuno watched the Tactical Display grimly as the League's fighters buzzed around his mighty fleet like angry wasps. Reports filtered in over the laser-comm net of JumpShips suffering damage to their sails, though for some reason the mongrel League pilots had refrained from targeting his ships directly. He wondered at the motivation of the League commander that would have him commit such a cowardly and disgraceful act, and yet not have the courage to commit to a more final attack.

What he did know about the attack was that his fleet's radar-blind point defenses were next to useless in stopping the fighters, and the enemy's GunShips had taken little damage. The few Combine fighters airborne at the time of the attack were badly outnumbered and ended up getting mauled.

"Conn, Sensory; Contact Victor-Five-Golf bearing zero-zero-five plus one-six, range nine hundred kilometers."

Tatewaki watched as the designated target, a League Union Class GunShip, was highlighted in the display. The mighty Imperator had thrown its full weight into the battle, and though its point defense weapons were of little effect against the fighters, the tremendously powerful gun-directing radars of its anti-ship weapons were more than a match against the jamming of the slower and less agile GunShips.

"Sensory, Conn; aye. Fire Control, match bearing rate and shoot."

Imperator's forward mounted Naval Lasers belched forth billion-joule beams of light that arced across the empty void of space between battleship and League GunShip, immolating an aerofighter unlucky enough to blunder into the barrage, and striking the intended target dead-on. The lasers lanced into the GunShip's armor, sending coruscating motes of flame into the darkness before piercing the spacecraft through and through. The GunShip exploded moments later, boiling off men and machinery into a rapidly expanding sphere of million-degree plasma.

Tatewaki Kuno watched them die over one of the telescope monitors and nodded with detached satisfaction.

"Conn, Sensory; Contact Victor-Five-Golf destroyed. Recommend course change to one-five-nine azimuth four-four, to bear on new target Victor-Two-Golf."

"Sensory, Conn; aye. Helm, come left to course one-five-nine azimuth four-four."

"Come left to course one-five-nine azimuth four-four, Helm; aye. Officer of the Deck, Helm answers the ordered maneuver."

"Very well, Helm."

Imperator pitched up and rolled against the fiery battlefield of the Jump Point to bring its heavy weapons to bear on the next target. The enemy GunShip realized too late that the Imperator had selected it for death, and fired its own drives in response, trying desperately to clear the battleship's forward fire arcs before it joined its sister ship in oblivion. Tatewaki watched the drama over the telescope monitor and tried not to laugh at the hapless GunShip.

"Officer of the Deck, passing one-six-nine azimuth four-four; ten degrees from ordered course."

"Very well, Helm. Fire Control, ready primary batteries for vertical salvo; Gun Mounts Two and Four."

"Fire Control; aye. Officer of the Deck, Gun Mounts Two and Four are ready in all respects. Target Motion Analysis is green. Gunlaying Synchronization is green."

"Very well, Fire Control."

Tatewaki grinned. His ship was about to annihilate another hated foe.

"Officer of the Deck, Helm answers steady course one-five-nine azimuth four-four."

"Very well, Helm. Fire Control, match bearing rate and shoot."

"Fire Control; aye."

Tatewaki watched the monitor, eagerly awaiting the flash of light that would signal another fatal blow from his mighty warship's guns. The League GunShip made one final evasive maneuver, but one that could not free it from the reach of the Imperator's forward mounts in time.

At that moment the second wave of the Furinkan Combine fleet winked into existence at the Jump Point. They were the civilian-contracted cargo ships, and operating under a schedule that had not been modified in the wake of Kodachi's hasty mutiny. Which put them in-system twenty minutes too soon.

The GunShip suddenly found itself occupying the same space-time coordinates as the arriving Merchant Class JumpShip - an event which heralded an explosion of light and heat unparalleled by anything that had preceded it during the battle. The warp and woof of reality recoiled violently, distorting space and time around the blast and drawing out Tatewaki's scream of outrage and disbelief into a minute-long drone of muted horror.

The JumpShip had been carrying his precious converted DropShips. The ones modified into mobile charging stations. The ones that would reduce his fleet's transit time between Capra and Capella.

The Imperator's bridge displays crashed into snow and static, cutting out the mad skirling of Admiral Morag's beloved bagpipes and replacing it with complete pandemonium. Lights went out and alarms chirped for attention as the starship felt the space-time backlash of the collision. The well-ordered operation of the ship fell into disarray. Even worse, the unexpected spatial displacement of the ship had caused their fragile laser-comm network to lose track of the other ships in the fleet. Now they had no communications whatsoever.

Tatewaki Kuno picked himself off the deck and swore dark oaths of blood, fire, and vengeance upon his enemies. He would personally crucify the Gosunkugi responsible for this; right down to driving the nails in with his own two hands.

Hellcat Lead narrowly avoided death as the Merchant Class JumpShip burst apart into a nimbus of chromatic fire. His instruments and controls had an instant seizure, forcing him into dead-stick flight while his computers attempted to reboot from their hardened backups. A piece of debris from the explosion sizzled past his canopy, missing it by scant centimeters.

He had never experienced anything like this before; nor had anyone else in living memory. More JumpShips winked into existence around the battle zone, though none with such immediately catastrophic events as that first unfortunate starship. Instead he watched helplessly as friendly fighters blundered into the lumbering giants, and hoped fervently that one wouldn't materialize in front of him.

It was time to call off the attack, he realized. The odds of dying had just reached the point of diminishing returns against what damage they could hope to inflict by staying. There was no way to signal his comrades in the chaos. He would have to trust in their own common sense.

His Hellcat rebooted, and the controls came alive in his hands. It took several moments for his astrogation system to take the necessary star sightings to fix his position, and then he punched in the course for the rendezvous. A handful of fighters were already peeling away from the fiery jump point as he did so, which filled him with hope.

As the aerofighter's plasma drives pushed him for home, he watched the Furinkan Combine fleet burn in his aft-mounted telescope. What they had started, the merchant ships had finished. JumpSail debris littered space around the jump point, and several starships were burning from collisions with the clumsy merchanters.

The Furinkan Combine fleet wasn't going anywhere for awhile.

FCJS Imperator

at the Capra System Zenith Jump Point,

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

11 March 3025

"FIRE-FIRE-FIRE! FIRE IN ATMOSPHERE CONTROL MACHINERY ROOM TWO! CASUALTY ASSISTANCE TEAM AFT - LAY TO ACMR#2!"

Tatewaki Kuno watched angrily as his crew struggled to regain control of his battleship. Debris from the exploding Merchant Class JumpShip had struck Imperator at several points along the 'midships hull, piercing the armor and damaging critical equipment. Fires had broken out throughout the ship, including the Executive Bridge, and the pall of smoke hung over the emergency-lit compartment.

Several ships in his fleet had suffered collisions, if not from direct contact with an arriving starship, then with debris from other encounters. At least one of his troopships was destroyed. The entire complement was feared dead, as the habitat was laid open to space from bow to jumpcore. Other ships faced damage of varying severity.

The urgency of the situation had left them with no control over the battle, letting the League raiders escape practically unchallenged. If they had come to destroy his fleet instead of cripple it, there would have been no stopping them.

"Status report," he demanded of his Operations Officer. His voice was pinched and tinny through the pressure suit helmet's external speaker. The burning electronics had introduced poisonous compounds to the atmosphere, and until the fires aboard his ship were extinguished, there could be no attempt to scrub the air.

Kyle was tight-lipped in his reply.

"The ship's hull integrity remains sound," he began. "There appears to be no damage to the jumpcore, and personnel casualties are low. No fatalities have been reported. Engineering reports that primary power will be restored to all decks within twenty minutes, and that there remain sufficient reserves in the ship's batteries to last another two hours under the current electrical load.

"Furthermore, it appears that most of our fleet vessels have either lost their JumpSails entirely, or else suffered sufficient damage to them or their supporting systems as to render them useless. Capra has no indigenous recharge support facility to capture, and our mobile charging stations were destroyed in the Jump mishap. We are forced to rely on our ships' powerplants to recharge our jump batteries, and that will take upwards of ten days - depending on the ship."

Kuno took this in stride. At least his precious Star League battleship had survived intact.

"I expect a full inquiry into this debacle," he menaced. "Seize any merchanter found liable for damage caused by his ship. Execute the Captain and take possession of the ship with a prize crew where you deem it appropriate."

"It shall be done, m'lord."

Tatewaki now turned to the matter that burned brightest within him.

"What of the League?"

"We are unable to track them at this time, though we have verified through visual sightings and with what little of our laser-comm network that we have remaining with other fleet vessels, that they have withdrawn from the battle."

"And of our pursuit?"

Kyle took his time in responding.

"Our fighters became engaged from the moment they launched. There were heavy casualties... Our GunShips were not prepared for an engagement, and they were unable to launch before the League withdrew."

He could see his prince begin to flush with heat.

"We are, however, about to launch a scouting force to regain contact with the League ships, that we might execute a counterattack against their carriers."

Tatewaki cooled slightly.

"Very well, Captain. I expect our retribution to be swift and sure."

"Of course, your Highness."

Tatewaki looked away for a moment, apparently deep in contemplation.

"It appears that our strike against Capella will have to wait," he said at length. The statement pained him considerably. "The scoundrels have chosen to target our means of recharging our jump batteries for the trip to Capella, and they have succeeded beyond our worst nightmares. We need time to lick our wounds and reorganize our fleet, and we must find those League carriers lest we suffer another attack."

"Yes, my lord," Kyle agreed.

"I am concerned about the League's ability to ambush us so effectively," Tatewaki went on. "They could not have had such a force prepared against us by mere chance. Our raid of this system was small, and was not likely to provoke such a reaction. We shall have to look into this."

"Consider it done, your Highness."

"One more thing," Kuno said to him. "Before I depart with the landing force for Capra, I want to know where my cursed sister's ships went. Is it possible that they have somehow materialized at this system's nadir point?"

Kyle considered this.

"It is possible," he conceded. "But given the spatial arrangements of Proteus and Capra, arriving at the nadir point instead of the zenith point would prove risky to them."

"But not as risky as facing her brother's mighty fleet when they followed them through hyperspace," Tatewaki noted.

"I see your point, Highness," Kyle conceded. "I shall dispatch a reconnaissance-in-force to the system's nadir point to investigate."

Kyle left him to make the necessary arrangements. Tatewaki's pride still stung at this defeat, and his capable adjutant could go a long way towards restoring it. Until the League fleet could be located and destroyed, his primary concern now lay with his sister, and her vow of revenge against his beloved Akane.

Akane, fairest of the Inner Sphere, and his most treasured prize above all else in the universe. If Nabiki was to be believed, and he had little doubt of it, then Akane was somewhere on the planet Capra. She was also with that bride-thief and scoundrel, Ranma Saotome.

Saotome would die, and Akane would finally become his, but there was little time, and his sister had a strong lead. He could not afford the luxury of careful planning; his domination of the planet had to be swift and absolute, and his forces strong enough at every point to resist any black deed of treason perpetrated by Kodachi. She had dug her own grave this time. Not even Father could excuse this act of treachery and sedition. She had to be brought to heel.

She would be brought to heel.

Hikaru Gosunkugi could barely contain his excitement upon receiving news of his attack. The Furinkan Combine had been dealt a crushing blow to their planned attack on Capella, and the League of Five Nails had done it. Surely this would be the achievement that would keep his meddling parents satisfied with his command and out of his hair.

He considered the prospect of sending some sort of message to Kuno to gloat. The Combine prince was easy to provoke, and careless when he was wroth, which might allow the League forces to get in another good blow, perhaps even destroy them entirely. On the other hand, his own position was weak. His fleet orbited out of sight around one of the inner planets of the system, and the jump points he needed to escape were a good three days transit using the weak plasma drives of his JumpShips. Aggravating Kuno could mean an all-out hunt for his fleet, and the enraged prince might well feel justified in reducing the League Navy to dust.

It would be best if he did his gloating while safely out of reach, he decided. What his next move would be was not as clear to him.

Escape seemed the best option, as the nadir jump point was currently uncontrolled by Combine forces. It would be a perilous three days to the jump point, however, and the risk of discovery was great. He might even have to fight his way there.

His concern for the inhabitants of the Capra system was negligible. Capra was a minor planet with moderate resources but little water, which along with its proximity to frequent Combine and Confederation raids hardly made it worth defending. The mercenary unit defending it was of course expendable. He hadn't even bothered to warn the garrison that the Combine had arrived, lest some spy leak news of his surprise attack in time to warn Kuno.

He had to think of the long term picture. Kuno was bloodied, but far from beaten, and he would eventually Jump to Capella. It was vital that the Confederation resist his attack, and hopefully the League of Five Nails had bought them some time to prepare. Hikaru found it somewhat ironic that he was the savior of the Nerima Confederation, but in doing so he was preserving Akane Tendo for himself.

Perhaps he could come up with a strategic alliance with Duke Tendo in light of his noble sacrifice and his timely warning of Kuno's attack. With the League's resources, the Confederation's tough, battle-hardened fighters, and possibly even the wealth of the Federated Shiratori backing them, they could drive the Furinkan Combine into retreat! It was a heady prospect, especially so since Akane Tendo's hand in marriage would be part and parcel of the deal.

He was also eager to shed himself of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth's undue influence on League affairs. An alliance would be just the thing to do that. He didn't trust the inscrutable Amazons any farther than he could throw them, and being a forty-five kilo weakling, that wasn't very far.

The Grand Duke would be just as wary of him as Hikaru was of the Commonwealth, but at least a shared enemy and his acts of good faith would do something to alleviate that. The question then became one of which Tendo to approach. Should he deal directly with the Grand Duke, or should he use Nabiki?

The middle daughter had clearly lost some of her cachet in the wake of her failed bid to sell the Confederation to Kuno. Rumor and hearsay put her on the outs with her father, but she remained within easy reach of the castle. Would she still be willing to back the Combine even if she knew a League-Confederation-Federated Shiratori Alliance was a possibility?

Hikaru guessed that she wouldn't. Nabiki was an opportunist, and though she had been sideswiped by her father over the Surrender Summit, she knew which way the wind blew. If he could convince her of the viability of such an alliance, she would surely throw in with him. The next question became one of her current value to such an alliance.

He did not know the extent of her falling out with the Grand Duke, but Soun was the sort of sentimental sap who would probably fall all over himself to make up with his disaffected daughter. If she laid it on thick enough, and Hikaru knew that she could, the Grand Duke might well come around to an alliance against the Combine. It would help the cause knowing that Soun believed the Combine was responsible for the attempt to kidnap Akane.

Hikaru's musings were interrupted by his aide.

"What is it?" he demanded. He did not like interruptions.

"My lord, we have detected a sizable Furinkan Combine force leaving the jump point."

This concerned Hikaru greatly. Was Kuno already on the hunt for him?

"What is the nature of this force?"

"A planetary invasion force, apparently," the aide declared. "Though Intelligence is at a loss to explain its size. The force is far too large for dealing with the expected garrison."

"After the surprise we gave Kuno at the jump point, I wouldn't take anything for granted, myself," Hikaru returned. "How big are we talking; a battalion, a regiment?"

"A full battlemech division," his aide said flatly. "Plus divisional assets and air support."

Hikaru was floored.

"A... DIVISION? Of battlemechs?"

The aide showed him long-range telescope images that clearly depicted a swarm of Union and Overlord Class DropShips, as well as infantry and equipment transports, and Leopard CV fighter carriers.

"What the hell is going on?" Hikaru wondered. "This is more than just a little healthy paranoia on Kuno's part." He thought for a moment in silence. "Even if he wanted to annihilate the colony out of spite, he wouldn't need all that force..."

An idea occured to him, the only thing that made sense.

"Unless there was something very important on Capra that he needed..."

"My lord?"

He grabbed his aide roughly by his tunic, a gesture that would have been comical in other circumstances when considering that the man out-massed Hikaru by forty kilograms. "Tell my cousin that he has command of the fleet. Then get my generals front and center in my briefing room. There isn't any time for explanations."

"A-At once, my lord!"

The aide scrambled to comply, leaving him with his thoughts once again. He had decided to leave the system, having inflicted what damage he could. This breaking news had changed that. He needed to find out what was up with Capra, and why it had suddenly become so important to Kuno. He knew in the pit of his stomach that it would mean going there personally.

He would need some firepower on his side, but he did not have the 'mechs or the troops necessary to face an entire division in a head-on battle. That was fine by him, he didn't like those kinds of fights anyway. In the doctrine of warfare espoused by such masters as Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, a general was foolish to fight a battle like that. A true genius struck at what the ancient Prussian called 'the centers of gravity' of his enemies.

The Combine fleet's JumpSails had been one such target, destroying Kuno's ability to launch a surprise attack on Capella, and allowing the Confederation time to reinforce. Now he must find Kuno's new center of gravity, and hit it hard with what little force he had to bear.

And most importantly, he had to find out what the Blue Thunder wanted so badly on Capra.

The outskirts of Capra City,

Planet Capra, Capra System

the League of Five Nails

14 March 3025

After three days of carefully scouting their surroundings, Genma Saotome was finally ready to come into the only city of any significance on the planet Capra. The six-wheeled all terrain truck carrying him, Ranma, Akane, and Doctor Tofu, pulled up the gentle slope of the wadi and started off for the highway that would take them into town.

Happousai watched them go. He could think of two good reasons to stay away from the city, at least for now, and about a dozen lovely looking reasons to stay with the ship. One of them walked in front of him even as he contemplated this, and earned a wolf-whistle for her troubles.

Yes, he had to hand it to Genma for his taste in crew. They were quite the young and beautiful complement, and it pained him to think that they spurned his every advance. No matter, he thought happily. There would always be another chance.

He faced yet another conflict of interest. His obligation to spy for Cologne was technically met. He had discovered what was going on in the Tendo household, and had dutifully reported it. An Amazon sex-kitten was waiting for him as soon as he could return to Jusenkyo to collect.

It was a thrilling idea, but staying with Genma's motley crew promised even greater rewards.

What he had considered to be a half-baked scheme to find the lost planet of Ryuugenzawa was starting to come together as a possibility if nothing else. Enough of a possibility to stay on with the expedition for a while longer, anyway. If Genma was actually right (for once) they could all stand to become the richest, most powerful men and women in the Inner Sphere.

He really had little desire for the power that would come with the discovery. Money, on the other hand, could at least rent happiness if it couldn't actually buy it outright. His disciple Soun was better suited to power than him, and would always be beholden to his old master. Genma was a chump, always was and always would be, and needed his son Ranma to ensure his future comforts. In fact, Ranma was probably the best thing to ever come out of Genma Saotome.

Ranma could be a problem. The boy would never submit to him - it was clear that he had his mother's stubborness. He could have made a real man out of Genma if not for Nodoka. With the boy in line for Soun's throne (an absolutely devious move on Genma's part, he admitted, and wondered if he had actually been smart enough to come up with it on his own) he would be in a position to push him aside - maybe even banish him from the Confederation. There was no doubt that the little punk would do it. If that happened, then his share of the wealth and glory was lost.

He'd have to come up with a workable solution concerning Ranma.

Such was his dilemma. Skip out on Genma at the first opportunity, and get what was coming to him from Cologne, or stick around and hope the fool was right - only to have to deal with his thankless son. After a moment's thoughtful contemplation, a third option entered his mind.

He started after the girl he had whistled at with lust in his eyes.

Capra City was an uninspiring sprawl of concrete and asphalt - a blight on the surrounding high desert plateau. Few structures reached over three stories tall, and most were single level dwellings and dismal half-deserted strip malls. The only significant landmarks were the Governor's Mansion, Fort Dettmering, and the Starport on the opposite side of the city.

The city was struggling, as it had been fighting a slowly losing battle against total collapse for the last two hundred years. Copper and iron mining had been - and still was - the primary industry, and during the Star League the system had been prosperous. The fall of the Star League and the subsequently savage First Succession War had brought about the near-destruction of the industries that required Capra's raw materials, which depressed prices. The scarcity of independent freight haulers had raised the cost of shipping so high that almost no profit could be had from what was produced.

Most of the mines had closed in the last hundred years. The few mines remaining in operation were heavily subsidized by the League of Five Nails as strategic resources, but these were low output operations and were really little more than 'pilot lights' - keeping the mine open and available in case production was urgently needed later. A few wildcat operations looking for gold and other rare metals were tiny affairs, rarely successful, and largely unregulated.

The people were a tough and bitter lot, worn and weathered by hardship as much as by the frequent sandstorms. They were trapped on this planet, with no opportunities, and no way outside of death to escape. If they noted Genma, Ranma, Akane, and Doctor Tofu as offworlders, they did not show any signs of caring about it.

Ranma had seen worlds like this before. Too often, in his opinion. It made him appreciate his star-hopping life, for he had an escape these people would never have.

For Akane, the poverty was an abstract brought to sudden and dismal life. She knew there were worlds like Capra within the Confederation, and that the same economic forces which choked the life out of this world's people also strangled her own. It was one more reason for her to hold out hope for the existence of Ryuugenzawa. If advanced Star League technology could be recovered, the Confederation's industry could be revitalized, and everyone's standard of living would improve.

The six-wheeled open-topped truck that carried them into the city from the desert was dirty and battered in appearance to blend in with the squalid surroundings. Their clothes reflected the dingy grime of wildcat prospectors. Genma had ordered no showers for anyone coming into town with them. Water was scarce on Capra outside of the city, and a little funk was important for maintaining their cover.

It did not take them long to reach the hospitality district. It was wedged between the Starport and Fort Dettmering. Strip clubs, saloons, a two-screen movie theater, and a casino were the featured entertainment, while a handful of run-down hotels handled the lodging. A diner and a few food kiosks took care of the eats. None of the establishments seemed particularly busy in the middle of the day.

"Ranma, pull over by that hotel," Genma said, consulting his notebooks.

"Is this the place?" Ranma asked his father.

"Looks like it," Genma grunted.

The Lucky Prospector Hotel was as dirty and run down as the rest of the city. It was a two level structure of pre-fabricated concrete and cheap masonry. Had lumber been available in any quantity on the planet, its construction would have been even cheaper. It had only twenty units, based on a quick visual inspection, and Ranma wondered how the owners expected to find enough occupancy to fill even that many rooms. A sign in the office window advertised hourly rates for the benefit of troops from the nearby garrison.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Akane asked.

Genma held up a room key. The magnetically encoded card was old and frayed at the corners, but the hotel's logo was still evident on the worn surface.

"Our Scout stayed here once. His journal states that he planted the fifth key on Capra, and it's possible that he left a clue for himself in his room. He had a bad memory it seems, and wrote things down constantly so he wouldn't lose the information."

"That key can't possibly still be good," Akane observed. "And besides, it doesn't have a room number printed on it."

Genma shrugged. "No one said this would be easy."

Ranma parked the truck in the deserted parking lot across the street from the hotel. A few kids in their early teens eyed them hungrily from a concrete drainage culvert nearby. From the size of the culvert, Capra City was apparently subject to some tremendous, if infrequent, rain storms. He wondered what the seasons were like here, and whether the dry climate was a fairly recent occurance or a normal one from when the planet was first colonized.

"What's the deal, Pop?" he asked his father.

"You and Akane go into the office and check the register if you can. The Doctor and I will wait out here and keep an eye on the truck." His chin turned towards the teens briefly to emphasize his point.

"Whatever," Ranma sighed. "Come on, Akane."

The two stepped out of the truck. Only Akane was armed, as she was in the habit of carrying a dagger and a small pistol concealed on her person in the field.

"Why is it that whenever you have to go somewhere, I get stuck with tagging along?" Akane asked him as they crossed the street.

"Who's making you go along?" Ranma countered. "Pop might be running the show, but you're an aristocrat. What's he going to do to you for not listening to him?"

She huffed indignantly in reply. This was not what she wanted to hear from him.

"Well?" Ranma pressed.

"I'm trying to do what my father wants, Ranma. Okay?"

"Now who's making you? My dad or yours?"

They reached the office door.

"Drop it, Ranma," she told him curtly as she opened the door.

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

The clerk was watching television behind the front desk. The program was a rerun, imported from a nearby system with the resources and the idle wealth necessary to produce its own shows. It wasn't particularly enjoyable the fifth time around, but it was apparently better than nothing.

He looked up at them with bloodshot eyes.

"Hourly rate is ten marks," he told them in a bored tone of voice. This was an oft-repeated spiel, and it showed in his delivery. "Clean sheets are five more, and you put 'em on the bed yourselves. No smoking in the room. If you want to use the telephone; it's a ten mark deposit, calls are a quarter each, and the balance is refundable at check-out. Your time starts when I hand you the key, and it's full price for the next hour if you're even a minute late."

He waited for them to either hand him some money or leave.

"Hourly rate?" Akane asked, realizing what was implied by the statement and not liking it one bit.

"I can give you a three mark discount if you're done in half an hour," the clerk replied. He sized up Ranma with a glance. "That shouldn't be a problem."

"Now wait a minute!" Akane protested. "That's not what we -"

"-We won't need a phone," Ranma interrupted. He flipped the clerk a ten mark coin, and earned an angry look from Akane in the process.

The clerk examined the coin for a moment. "Let me code your room key. Sign the register over there." He pointed to a bound ledger with yellowed pages.

This was what Ranma was hoping for. The place didn't look like it would have a computer to handle registration, and that way they'd be able to flip through the pages for a sign of the Scout.

"Ranma...!" Akane hissed. "Are you going to let him get away with that?"

"Get away with what?" he whispered in reply. "Who cares what he thinks? It's not like I'd do anything like that with you anyway..."

He heard her knuckles popping in her clenched fist and waited for her to try and strike. Instead she stood there and fumed.

He found the entry near the beginning of the book. It was four years old; obviously not everyone who worked at the hotel was as scrupulous about maintaining the register as this guy. The name 'Chance G. King' was a common nom de plume for the Scout, and the handwriting was familiar. He had taken Room 210.

"Excuse me," Ranma said to the clerk.

"What is it?" the clerk asked. "Change your mind about the phone?"

"Not exactly. I was wondering if I could get Room 210."

The clerk eyed the two of them.

"What for?"

Ranma turned to Akane and held his breath. Then he grabbed her around the shoulder and pulled her close. She was too surprised by this to offer an immediate protest. "It, ah, it has a certain sentimental attachment to us, if you understand my, um, meaning."

Akane turned crimson.

The clerk gave them a knowing wink.

"I understand. No problem." He went back to coding their room key.

"...Raaannnmaaa..."

He looked down at her elbow, which was currently digging its way into his floating ribs, and let her go.

The clerk looked up from his desk and handed them a plastic card similar to the one Genma now kept.

"Enjoy," he told them, and returned to his television program.

Ranma could not leave the office fast enough. Nor could Akane.

"What's the big idea!?" she demanded once they were safely outside.

"Whaddya mean?" Ranma growled. "We're trying not to act suspicious here. What else would a guy who works in a hotel with hourly rates expect from us?"

"I'm not like that," she spat.

"Who says you are?" Ranma returned. "Heck, I'm surprised a chick like you would even know what went on in places like this."

She elbowed him in the ribs again as they crossed the street.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Ever had a boyfriend?" he challenged.

The question struck her harder than she thought it would, and she flushed even redder. From the smug look on Ranma's face it was clear that he knew the answer without her even saying anything in reply. "O-Oh yeah?" she stammered. "How about you? Have you ever had a girlfriend, Ranma, or did you learn everything you know from a sticky magazine?"

Not it was Ranma's turn to flinch. Fortunately for him, they were now close enough to the truck for Genma to address them on the matter of what they had learned in the office.

"Well, boy?" he asked them.

"He was here all right," Ranma replied, grateful for the reprieve from Akane's question. "I saw his name in the register." He held up the room key. "I got the same room as him."

"Good work, Ranma," Genma grunted. "Now let's go see what he left for us." The teens had moved on as dusty police car gave them the once-over while Ranma and Akane were inside, and he put the truck in gear, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't come back any time soon.

Governor's Mansion,

Capra City, Planet Capra,

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

14 March 3025

"Governor Argust?"

League Governor Model Argust looked up from his desk to his secretary. A worried expression clouded her otherwise pretty face.

"What is it, June?" he asked.

"An ambassador from the Jusenkyo Commonwealth is here to see you, sir."

Argust flinched reflexively. What on earth was an Amazon doing on his planet unannounced? He thumbed through the morning reports for an answer, and found it: the JCDS Jade Lotus had arrived at dawn carrying the Ambassador plus a complement of troops - including battlemechs.

Why the hell hadn't the Port Authority alerted him to this? Even a phone call would do!

"Send her in," he said evenly. "And call down to the cooks for some refreshments."

"I already have, sir," she replied.

Argust managed a brief smile. At least someone on his staff was on the ball today.

June stepped back through the door. Several of the Joketsuzoku entered shortly thereafter. The leader was tall and imperious, with short blonde hair and piercing hawk's eyes. She was draped in a russet cloak of exceptional fullness in the shoulders, and flanked by a fierce purple-haired young woman and an equally dangerous-looking man in white robes.

Argust rose to greet them, coming from behind his desk and offering a greasy smile.

"Welcome to Capra, your Excellency!" he said to Kima.

Kima gave him a respectful bow in return. "Governor."

Argust did not mince any more words. Though Capra was a backwater system, people did not rise to the rank of League Governor without some personal merit, and Argust's manner for getting to the point of things was duly noted by the Gosunkugis.

"Forgive my curiosity, but what brings you to this world?"

"We are in pursuit of several fugitives," Kima replied curtly. "We have every reason to believe that they can be found here."

"Fugitives?"

"Correct, Governor," she affirmed. She produced several flimsies and offered them to him. "Two mechwarriors named Hibiki and Tarou - known to be part of the planetary garrison, and two spies named Saotome."

Argust studied them. Hibiki and Tarou he recognized immediately, as he had recently decorated them for their valor in defeating the Combine raid. The two Saotomes were a mystery. The fact that they were named as spies, and obviously had some connection to Hibiki and Tarou, concerned him greatly.

"Spies, you say?"

"Yes, Governor. We wish to take them into custody and return them to the Commonwealth for a trial. The Commonwealth is offering a substantial reward for their capture. A reward I am prepared to disburse on the spot, should they be taken."

"Understandable," the governor grunted, thinking of what he could do with the reward money. "But why do you want the two mechwarriors?"

"They are deserters and possible accomplices to the spies."

Argust looked down at the flimsies on Hibiki and Tarou. They had served the planet well in the raid, but if they were connected to the two spies, they could just as well be moles of some sort for the Combine - the raid being an effective, if costly, way of establishing their bona fides in order to set them up to inflict greater treachery later.

The possibility of such a thing was enough to sour them to him at once. The fact that they were accused of desertion would prove sufficient to have them released from the garrison and taken into custody. It wouldn't take all that much convincing, he mused. Especially when he seized their battlemechs in the name of the League, and shared some of the proceeds of their sale with the garrison commander.

"Yes, I see," Argust said to her at length. "There shouldn't be any problems with that. I'll phone the garrison at once."

Kima inclined her head respectfully to the governor.

"And the two Saotomes?" she asked him.

"I will arrange to have the local authorities notified about them," he said to her. "If they're in the city, they won't escape custody for long."

Kima was not eager to let bumbling local police handle the two Saotomes. They seemed a very capable pair, and would likely escape any attempts to arrest them.

"If I may, Governor?"

"Yes? What is it?"

"I would like your permission to take my non-battlemech forces into the city and its environs in order to conduct the search personally. These two are extremely dangerous, and I wouldn't want to see your police officers facing such an unusual threat."

Argust frowned. He did not like the idea of the Commonwealth showing the flag in this manner. At the same time he was eager for a share of the reward money. League Governors served six year terms, and needed to amass significant fortunes during their tenures in order to pay the bribes and other graft necessary to advance them higher in their careers. Argust wanted a better star system after Capra, much better, and money was the key to getting it.

"I can't permit you to openly patrol the streets of Capra," he began. "It wouldn't look good to my superiors, and would hurt the morale of the police." He saw Kima's tiny frown. "However, I would be happy to extend special passes to, say, a dozen of your troops to enjoy liberty. Given the rough-and-tumble nature of the city, they would naturally be permitted to carry sidearms outside the starport quarantine zone."

He gave her a wink.

"If they should happen to stumble across the spies, then it would be only natural for them to do their duty without interference from the police. If the police should find them first, then I will see to it that they are turned over to you personally. Of course, there is the small matter of the reward..."

Kima inclined her head to him with a smile.

"You shall have it, Governor, with my complements, whether my troops find them, or yours."

"Splendid. Shall we have lunch?"

Kima nodded. "It would be our pleasure, Governor."

Ryouga Hibiki and Pansuto Tarou walked their battlemechs into the covered hangar with the rest of their lance. The Lieutenant was in a pissy mood after the patrol, and they were eager to debrief and get the hell off the base for awhile. They had found a hole-in-the-wall Japanese restaurant in town that featured good cheap food and a karaoke machine with a frighteningly large, if dated, collection of material.

Naturally, they were more interested in the food than the karaoke.

"Okay, One-Red Lance," the Lieutenant barked over the tac-net. "Debrief is in fifteen minutes. Be there."

Ryouga grit his teeth and shut down his BattleMaster without bothering to acknowledge the order. He knew Tarou was probably following suit. Monster-boy had mellowed out a bit in the last few days, and the respite was doing wonders for their strained relationship. A couple beef-bowls and some beer couldn't hurt.

He raised the clear arymid-polymer armored canopy and stepped out onto the gantry. A tech's apprentice was there to take his cooling vest and his helmet for him. Tarou was doing the same across the hangar.

The hangar was hot and stifling, and little better than the cockpit of his BattleMaster during a battle. He looked up, and noted that the oversized ceiling fans were apparently on the blink again.

He absolutely could not get off this rock too soon.

Tarou joined him a moment later, which was good, as he often missed the way to the briefing room otherwise.

"I heard some news this morning," Tarou grunted, his bishonen face suddenly dark with malice.

"Yeah?" Ryouga replied.

"I didn't want to mention it during the patrol in case that asshole lieutenant of ours listened in," Tarou went on. "There is a Jusenkyo Commonwealth DropShip at the starport."

Ryouga's blood went cold.

"When?"

"This morning," Tarou responded. "Supposedly there's a diplomat on board, and she went to see the Governor right before we went out on patrol."

This did not sound good at all.

"You don't suppose it's us they came here for, do you?"

Tarou favored him with a look he reserved for the utterly stupid, which, in his opinion, was most of humanity. Ryouga was used to the look, and paid it no mind.

"Why else would the goddamned Joketsuzoku be here?" he growled.

Ryouga's face darkened. Curse their terrible luck for not being able to run far enough from the Amazons!

"What are our options?" he asked, as much to himself as Tarou.

"There aren't any ships we can get out on, even if we had the money. So... We can desert and run off into the wasteland until we starve. Or we can go quietly back to Lightoller for more experiments."

Ryouga nodded glumly

"That's what I was afraid of."

As they approached the briefing room they were met by a squad of infantry led by one of the unit's full-time military police officers.

"Mechwarriors Hibiki and Tarou?" the MP asked them. It was a formality, as it was impossible to remain anonymous for long in a small mercenary unit.

The two stopped in their tracks.

"Mechwarriors Hibiki and Tarou, I have orders to escort you to the Governor's Mansion. Come with me, please."

The squad of blazer-equipped infantry made it clear that the MP was not going to take 'no' for an answer.

"We're screwed," Ryouga muttered to himself. Barely contained rage lit across Tarou's face as they submitted to their escorts.

Hikaru Gosunkugi watched the tactical displays as his DropShip force approached the planet Capra unobserved. Owing to their long preparation and assembly time, they had lost their advantage of being closer to the planet than the Combine forces, and now they were almost six hours behind. They were also outnumbered three to one in battlemechs. His only chance for success lay in surprise, but first he would have to see what it was that Kuno was so interested in. The planet's moon would offer a sanctuary for his forces until he could gather that vital intelligence, and then he would strike.

Capra continued to remain unaware of the approaching Furinkan Combine invasion force, and Hikaru had given specific orders not to warn them. Since the garrison could not hope to defeat such a large army, it was better if Kuno won an easy victory and became overconfident. It would also mean that he would accomplish whatever it was that he had come to the planet to do, and that would make it easier for Hikaru to find out what it was in time to interdict him.

There were reports of other DropShips reaching the planet first, but their identities were unknown. Hikaru was of the mind that they were Combine scouts and pathfinders. An invasion force as large as Kuno's was bound to get bolluxed up in the drop without significant ground support.

The Lucky Prospector Hotel, Room 210

Capra City, Planet Capra,

Capra System, the League of Five Nails

14 March 3025

The room's interior matched its exterior; which was old and dingy. The furniture was spare, and showed its age with little grace. A musty smell of stale tobacco, sour beer, sweat, and semen-soiled sheets lingered defiantly in the wake of the industrial-strength deoderizer spray someone had generously applied to the room.

The room was fairly clean, except for the bedsheets and a few forbidden cigarette butts. The brand was a familiar one to Ranma. Though he did not smoke, he had known plenty of people who did. They had been manufactured in the Federated Shiratori. The mercs who garrisoned the planet had been there recently, as the League's tepid trade relations with 'Goddess-Empress' Azusa made imports unlikely.

Akane was clearly uncomfortable with the room, and she stood near the door wringing her hands.

"Everyone take a corner," Genma told them. "Leave nothing unsearched. Pull out the drawers, look under the table and chairs, under the bed, behind the lamps. In the closet, too."

"What exactly are we looking for, Mister Saotome?" Doctor Tofu asked. He wasn't entirely clear about the matter.

"Hopefully, the fifth key," Genma replied. "But it could be anything small and easily concealable for a long time without being discovered. If you find something out of the ordinary, let me know."

They began the search, punctuated by the sounds of moving furniture and the occasional groan of disgust when Akane found used condoms. After twenty minutes of this, they had trashed the room and come up with nothing.

"Maybe he didn't leave anything," Tofu observed.

"And maybe it got discovered and thrown away," Ranma added.

Genma bit his lip and tried not to let his discouragement show.

"Everyone switch places and look again," he told them. "Someone might pick up on something that another might have missed."

"There ain't nothin' here, Pop," Ranma groused.

Genma nearly busted a vein in his forehead. "GODDAMMIT, BOY, YOU'LL DO AS I SAY!"

Ranma shrank back from his father. Cowed for the moment, he began to search. Akane helped him with the drawers, unwilling to cross in front of Genma to take a new area.

Again, they turned up nothing.

Genma would still not admit defeat.

"We're going to have to assume that he was a bit more resourceful in hiding it," he declared.

"Or else there ain't nothing here," Ranma muttered quietly.

"Don't piss me off, boy," Genma warned his son.

Ranma looked up at him with fire in his eyes. "As soon as we get outta town, I'm gonna kick your fat ass, old man."

Genma was nonplussed. "The sooner you find that key, the sooner you'll get your chance."

Ranma blew out his breath in a huff and started for the bathroom. Tofu had made short work of the area, and his thoroughness told him that wherever that stupid key was, it was not in there.

The door to the bathroom hung ajar as he stepped up to the doctor.Tofu offered him a weak smile and a shrug. His reluctance to leave Nerima (read: Kasumi), and accompany the mission team, seemed justified in light of his current duties.

Ranma looked at the door again. Something he had learned from a half-forgotten man in the spy business came back to him, and he began to tap at the door while listening close.

"What is it, Ranma?" Tofu asked him.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "Maybe nothing."

The door was a hollow core type, as were most interior doors in the Inner Sphere. There was no obvious sign of something being concealed within, as the paint was uniformly worn and faded.

He leaned on the sink to ensure that it would take his weight, and then jumped up onto it. The height allowed him to observe the top of the door, and a heavy lining of lint and dirt that blanketed it. He brushed away the sticky grey-green fuzz and cried out in surprise.

"Sonuvabitch!"

"What?" Genma and Akane chorused.

"All that shit you put me through in surveillance training paid off, old man," Ranma replied. He looked down at Akane. "Let me borrow your knife."

She gave him a puzzled look.

"What for?"

"There's something I have to pry up."

Reluctantly, she handed him her dagger. It was of a simple design, making up in the exotic inlaid-wood hilt what it lacked in other ornamentation. He admired it for a moment before stabbing the tip into the top of the door.

"Be careful with that!" Akane protested. "It was a birthday present!"

Ranma replied by popping out a stubby cylinder of wood and cork. Attached to the end of the cork was a hook, and on the hook was a strand of fishing wire. He carefully pulled the wire out of the hollow core door.

"Now normally this would be the kind of thing you'd do if you wanted to plant a bug in a room," he said to her as he withdrew the wire. "It's not the kind of place your average joe would look to find one, and even if he does, all he'll usually do is sweep his hand over the top of the door. If the bug was hidden by a pro, the planter will even supply the dust that will convince the sweeper that there's nothing wrong with the door."

He finished withdrawing the wire. Suspended from the wire was a small jewelry box, the kind you would expect to find containing an engagement ring.

"This has to be it," he said, happy that he had not withdrawn a listening device.

"Open the box," Akane said excitedly.

Ranma cut the wire loops off the box with her dagger and then opened the box. A brief gleam of light reflected off whatever was in the box, and shone on the wall opposite Ranma.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Is it the fifth key?" Genma added.

"Tell us, Ranma," Tofu pleaded.

Ranma, his face tight with dismay, showed them a small metal plaque. Alphanumerics were punched into the metal, and it was spotted with caked-on dirt and a blue-green verdigris.

"It ain't the fifth key," he said to them. "It looks like a serial number plate for a vehicle or something."

"Let me see it!" Genma demanded. Ranma jumped down from the sink and handed it to him. His face told them that Ranma had called it exactly. "The boy's right," he said to everyone.

"It has to be from the Scout," Akane said. "Who else would do such a thing?"

"I agree," Genma replied. "But what this means, I don't yet know."

"It's probably a clue as to the location of the key," Tofu remarked. "All we have to do is figure out which vehicle it came from, and that will be where it is."

"Either that or we'll find another clue telling us to look somewhere else," Ranma noted. "You don't know this guy works. He had us on a damn scavenger hunt trying to find number four."

"There wasn't anything else tucked inside the door?" Genma asked his son.

"Didn't look like it."

"Then let's go. With luck there will be an official database the public can look at for vehicle ID. If not, well, it won't be the first time Ranma and I have done a little B&E."

"B&E?" Akane asked innocently.

"Breaking and Entering," Ranma supplied for her. He looked at his father for a moment. "Getting in is easy. The trick is not getting caught."

They didn't bother to put the place back the way they had found it. If the clerk actually called the police about it, there was no way to trace their identity. They had paid cash, and registered under a phony name. The clerk hadn't even bothered to ask for ID.

Ranma slipped the room key into the door slot as Genma wheeled the truck around the corner. He caught up with them a moment later, and they started for the center of town and the government buildings to follow up on their clue.

"Breaking and entering?" Akane asked him quietly when he was settled into the truck. "You're a couple of thieves?"

Ranma winced.

"More or less," he replied uneasily. "Pop says it comes with being a Scout, but it's just another way to pay the bills." His eyes flicked to the front seat where his father was driving. "We went to find the Jusenkyo Labs not just to confirm the documents we had on Ryuugenzawa, but so Pop could find something of value that he could sell."

"So you had nothing to do with it," she replied, her tone making it clear that she wasn't convinced.

"Well..." Ranma hedged. "It wasn't my idea, but..."

"But you help him do it anyway," she finished for him.

Shame fell over him.

"Basically, yeah."

Akane thought about this for a moment.

"I understand if you have to bend a few laws to get us to Ryuugenzawa, Ranma," she said at length. "But there won't be any more stealing for your own gain, okay? As the representative of the Grand Duke, I won't permit it. It isn't right, and I won't permit it."

"Fine with me," Ranma returned. Since when was Akane so high and mighty about being Duke Tendo's daughter?

"That also means that you don't let your father do it, either," she went on. "We have enough funding to take care of us on this expedition for some time, so there isn't any need for stealing."

He nodded slowly.

"Fine by me."

Colonel Princess Kodachi Kuno had taken refuge from the hot afternoon sun in the shadow of her black Marauder, where her manservant and loyal ninja Sasuke had placed her folding chair. He now served her a cold drink as she awaited news from her spies from the safe distance of a hundred kilometers from the city. The wind was gritty and warm, and she was glad that the thick lower legs of her battlemech screened her. Despite the shade, she sweltered in the heat. Black vinyl apparel simply wasn't suited to the desert.

The only reason she had not charged into the city and burned it to the ground was that she wanted to confirm that Akane was there. While it would be amusing to destroy the pathetic town, she was playing against the clock, and could not afford to waste time and effort with diversions. Her brother was coming for her.

"Tell me, Sasuke. What news of my brother?"

The ninja pursed his lips in reflection before answering.

"We have reports from our picket in orbit that he is approaching with a sizable force." He paused to let her contemplate that. "Approximately three regiments of battlemechs."

"A full division?" Kodachi asked, chuckling. "My, my. You don't suppose my dear brother is upset with me, do you, Sasuke?"

He bowed respectfully for her.

"That goes without saying, Mistress."

"Of course," she said, disregarding the remark with a flick of her hand. "Though I don't suppose his humiliating defeat at the jump point has anything to do with this, hmmm?"

"Quite likely," the ninja agreed.

News of the League's attack on the Combine Fleet had finally reached Kodachi's forces as they cleared the blocking effect of the Capra primary. It was enough to bring her out of the depths of her nervous collapse, and for that she considered sending Hikaru Gosunkugi a dozen black roses through her agents in gratitude. He had given her almost eight hours of respite from her brother with his attack, and her fleet's aggressive burn for Capra had extended that margin by over a day.

The surprise attack was clearly his work, and she admired him for his underhandedness. Of course, had she planned the attack, she would not have worried about convention and struck right for the enemy's jumpcores. He was obviously playing by a different set of rules.

She considered Hikaru a moment and pondered what his next move would be. The League Heir was the unknown factor at work, as Tachi's intentions were transparent to her. If he was smart, and he was usually smart, he would see how badly outnumbered he was, and quit while he was ahead.

"Why do you suppose the League of Five Nails is here, Sasuke?" she asked idly.

"Mistress?"

"Come now, Sasuke. The League has a large force in the system, and since we have received no word from our agents of an attack against the Confederation in the works, they were apparently lying in wait for my brother."

Sasuke noted this.

"Agreed, Mistress."

She narrowed her eyes at him. He was supposed to offer up possibilities that would stimulate a conversation, for she loved climbing inside the minds of her adversaries. "You are no fun whatsoever, Sasuke. I don't see why I bother with you sometimes."

Sasuke said nothing, as no reply was expected. Or welcome, for that matter.

Kodachi took a sip of her drink. Her full and sensuous lips took the plastic straw in a way that an observer would have found to be quite provocative. There was no conscious intent in this, it was merely the way she was. Sasuke remained silent and unmoved as she set the drink down to reveal a smudge of deep red lipstick upon the tip of the straw.

"Have your men determined why those witches from the Commonwealth are here?" she asked him. The sight of the Jade Lotus berthed at the Starport had given her some pause. Though she enjoyed the same numerical superiority over the Amazons as her brother enjoyed over her, she was reluctant to pick unnecessary fights. Particularly when she would need all her strength at hand in case she was unable to seize the Tendo girl before he arrived.

"We have learned that they came searching for two deserters," the ninja replied. "With the cooperation of the planet's governor, they have been taken into custody."

"Deserters?" Kodachi asked. "They must be very important if the Commonwealth dispatches an entire company of battlemechs to find and capture them. I should think a simple bounty would be sufficient."

"There is a bounty posted for them, Mistress," Sasuke confirmed. "A significant one, even for mechwarriors, though not nearly the bounty offered for you by the Nerima Confederation."

Kodachi smiled at this.

"Ah, Sasuke, you are ever the flatterer. There will never be a bounty offered that is higher than mine, even if I have to kill the Grand Duke himself to ensure it." She smiled again, her eyes crackling with malice. "Oh yes, once I have his youngest daughter in my clutches, there will certainly be no higher bounty in the Inner Sphere than the one offered for me."

She settled back into her folding chair and took another drink, well pleased with the thought.

"So why haven't they departed yet?" she asked after a moment of warm reflection. The Joketsuzoku continued to linger in the back of her mind like a tiny splinter that was just out of reach.

"They only just arrived," he replied, though she knew that already. "Perhaps they wish to let the crew have liberty."

"Here?" Kodachi snorted. "Those elitist Joketsuzoku witches would turn their noses up at this forsaken desert in the blink of an eye. There must be a reason, Sasuke, and I expect you to find out what it is."

Sasuke bowed for her. "Of course, Mistress."

Several moments of windy silence passed between them.

"Sasuke?"

"Mistress?"

"Do you remember our little conversation several days ago?"

It was not apparent that he did, or at least that he did not wish to remember it.

"Mistress?" he asked innocently.

"I asked you if you had come up with an excuse to save you from my brother's wrath," she supplied for him.

"Yes, Mistress," he replied. "I do remember that."

His following silence proved irksome to her.

"And...?" she asked tersely.

He remained silent, which was exactly what she expected from him.

"You may go now, Sasuke," she told him curtly.

"At once, Mistress." He bowed deep enough to brush his hooded head in the sandy dirt, and backed away from her to the command tent.

You play a dangerous game as well, Sasuke, she reflected darkly. Though you must know that, to have survived for as long as you have.

"I'm very sorry," the clerk said, not sounding very sorry at all. "But those records are not available to the public."

"I see," Genma said gravely. "Thank you for your time."

Ranma, Akane, and Doctor Tofu looked up from their seats. When he had left the small too-warm office, they drifted out after him.

"What did you notice about the place, Ranma?" Genma asked when they were outside the League Government Building.

"There's a motion sensor in the lobby," the pig-tailed mechwarrior replied. "It gives good coverage, but it looks pretty old, and might not be functional. The doors have the standard magnetic clips, and the same with the windows." He pointed to the doorway. "The arming box there has a tumbler key lock and a number pad. The master panel is just on the other side of the door, and only has a number pad."

"Good work, boy," Genma replied. "Where do you suppose the alarms go?"

Ranma thought a moment. "Good question. I didn't see any annunciators around, same with lights, so I assume it's a silent alarm that goes to the Police station. There's a phone number written in pen on the wall above the master panel - probably so the custodial staff can call in case they set the alarms off by accident."

"Are the alarms conducted by radio or by land-line?" Genma asked.

"Dunno," Ranma replied. "I'd say land-line just so there's no chance of interference causing a bunch of false alarms. They'd probably go through the phone trunk with the rest of the lines."

Genma nodded.

"The odds of them calling someone out if we cut the line?"

Ranma thought a moment. It had been awhile since his father had put him on the spot like this, and with Akane standing next to him, it was embarrassing to show off how much he knew about burglary.

"They'd probably send out a repairman before they sent out a cop," he decided. "It's not like they keep any money on hand, and there really isn't all that much to steal. I'd say forty-five minutes to an hour before he shows up if we do it late at night."

"Plenty of time to do what we need," Genma decided. "Let's get us all something to eat, and then we'll wait for dark."

Special Prisoner Holding Block

Capra City Jail,

14 March 3025

Kima did not appreciate Governor Argust's insistance that the two mechwarriors be held in the city jail instead of being taken aboard the Jade Lotus. He had given fine legal reasons for it, of course, such as the need to protect them from wrongful accusations, the completion of the necessary extradition paperwork, the need to get a judge to approve it (a rubber stamp affair considering the Governor's power) - but what it really came down to was money. The reward money, specifically. Argust was not going to cough up the two until he got his hands on the gelt.

What she had told him about the money was true. She was in a position to disburse the reward money upon capture, but the actual authority to do so was not hers. She cursed the rotten meddling of Council Elder Peony, the Commonwealth Comptroller, and holder of the purse strings for this operation. She was notoriously distrustful of the military caste, and was not going to release a large sum of gold bullion to the control of a mere Agent - even one acting in the capacity of Commonwealth Ambassador.

Not as long as there existed the means to communicate with the home world, anyway, and her JumpShip had the HPG array to make that possible. Kima's request to pay the governor for his cooperation was now three hours old. It had taken six minutes via a risky tightbeam radio message out to the starship, and from there it had to proceed along the Commonwealth HPG relay chain to Jusenkyo. If Elder Peony was taking a nap, or having lunch, or any other excuse she could think of when the message finally reached her, she would ignore it until she felt like responding.

The answer would be yes. Cologne would not stand for it any other way, but Peony and Cologne had never had much affinity for each other, and this was just another skirmish in their decades-long personal war. What it meant to Kima was a reply no sooner than the following morning. No sooner, being the operative words...

She did consider the idea of simply ignoring her orders and disbursing the money right away, but the odds of Peony having her own spies aboard the ship were high. The Elder would not pass up the chance to have her arrested for it, even if it ruined the operation, simply to tweak Cologne's nose.

She cursed her rotten luck as well. She had a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she could not guess the reason why. It was as if a pall of unrecognized doom hung over the place, palpable, but unidentified.

The jail had little in the way of comforts, even for its keepers, and she decided to return to the DropShip. Shampoo would be put in charge of the two prisoners until morning. She had decided that it would be a good idea to keep Shampoo and Mousse apart for awhile, owing to the peculiar way they had been acting around each other. It had not been hostile, but strained, and Kima did not need any more internecine squabbles ruining her operation.

Ryouga Hibiki sat upon the hard cement pallet that made up his bed and thought about fate. After he and Tarou had been positively identified by the Commonwealth Ambassador (whatever that meant), they had been taken to the city jail. Apparently no one had thought that he and Tarou would be there long, as they had not furnished him with a mattress, or toilet paper for the cell's toilet, or anything to eat.

He had been here for six hours now, and he was hungry, sore, and bored. Tarou had remained silent in the cell next to him, leaving him with no one to talk to. There weren't even any guards about, and no one answered his shouts for attention.

The last time he had spoken to anyone was with the Ambassador, Kima. It was mostly a one-way conversation. All she really cared about was what he knew about two guys named Saotome. Ryouga didn't recognize the men in the photos she had provided for him, and he hadn't heard the name in years. When their usefulness as informants was gone, he and Tarou were packed away to the jail.

The way he saw it, he and Tarou were going back to Lightoller for more experiments. Perhaps fatal ones, if the Joketsuzoku feared their secret lab was no longer a secret. His BattleMaster and Tarou's Hunchback, both 'mechs that had been in their respective families for generations, would surely be commandeered by their ex-unit. They were effectively Dispossessed.

A tear of rage welled at the corner of his eye. What kind of cruel universe was it that would do this to them? It would be better, kinder, to simply execute them on Capra and get it over with. Instead they suffered the shame of being dishonored before their comrades, of being Dispossessed of their mechwarrior birthright, and condemned to spend weeks, months, even years of torment in a laboratory before being quietly dispatched, forgotten by the rest of the Inner Sphere.

Ryouga was given to fits of depression, and now he was fully in its grip. Despair washed over him, waves of hopelessness that could not be fought through, only suffered. He would not cry, he was strong enough for that, but he could not help himself.

He remembered the decision he had made some time ago, the one about commiting suicide rather than joining the ranks of the Dispossessed. It warmed him somewhat, to think that he would cheat the Joketsuzoku of their test subject once again, that he would not help them in their Frankensteinian work, and deny them their revenge.

It would be a difficult thing to do in his cell. He had no linen to fashion into a noose. There was nothing sharp he could use to slash open his wrists or throat. He wanted to die here, before they could take him away, and deny the damn Governor, who had once decorated him for valor and now sold him down the river, his forty pieces of silver.

He wanted some measure of dignity in his death, but the only way out it seemed would be to strip off his clothes and use them for the noose. It was possible; a properly motivated person could hang himself from the sink drain if nothing else. The top crosspiece of the cell bars was even better suited to the idea.

Shampoo found the Capra City Jail to be a dreary place, lacking any sort of humanizing qualities. Even the most spartan Commonwealth barracks was rich in the culture of the Joketsuzoku, and filled with the proud fighting spirit of its troops. This place was a barren and lifeless Golgatha, a drain on the spirit, even to its keepers.

She was locked through the doors to the Special Holding Cells without a word from the police guard, though she could feel the hungry eyes upon her. Kima was right to restrict most of the DropShip's crew to the starport quarantine zone. The younger girls, the techs and other non-combatants, could find themselves preyed upon by the locals, and Joketsuzoku honor would demand swift and bloody retribution for any harm done. It would be a foreign relations disaster.

There were four holding cells against the opposite wall. Each was small, designed for a single occupant. A chair and a small table with a telephone were set aside for her long vigil. She hadn't brought anything to do, which was foolish, but it couldn't be helped. Shampoo did not have much in the way of hobbies. There was cooking, but she did little of that while on a mission.

One of the two deserters was sitting quietly on the floor of his cell. He was the taller of the two, she remembered, the one with the face (and especially eyes) that was handsome to the point of being pretty. Despite his bishonen beauty, his countenance was darkened with malice, and she sensed that this was one that would bear close attention when he was being moved.

The other one was stripped to the waist when she stepped through the rust-streaked steel door, with a sheepish expression on his face like he had just been caught doing something he shouldn't. Hibiki, she remembered from the brief. She had only seen him in the flesh one other time, during the confusing battle inside the Labs that had ended with all of them taking dives into Jusenkyo Pools. He was ruggedly handsome, and his shirtless chest was deeply muscled like a swimmer or a gymnast; all tone and definition with little of the ostentatious bulk she despised in men. She wondered if he recognized her.

If he did recognize her, he did not show it. Instead he looked at his shirt as if deciding whether or not he should put it back on. He looked at her once again and slipped the shirt back over his head.

Shampoo did not understand what he was doing. The cells were in the basement a level below the parking garage, and as a result were cool and dry. It was not the type of climate a man would find uncomfortable enough to remove his shirt.

"You there," she called to him. "What you doing?" It galled her to think how she must have sounded to him then.

Ryouga did not reply.

"Answer!" she barked at him. She hated this, communicating in a language that was not her own. "Or it go bad for you when we take away..."

His face almost cracked into a smile of bitter irony at her threat. He had to know what was in store for him once he was out of the League's jurisdiction.

Shampoo decided to let it drop. There was no intimidating a man who knew that he had nothing to lose. Ryouga went back to sitting on the hard cement pallet.

She deserved much better than this, she decided. She was a mechwarrior, and a good one. She should have been out patrolling the city for a sign of the two Saotomes, not babysitting two deserters who were clearly not going anywhere until it was time to move them.

Had she angered Kima in some way, and was this dreary assignment her punishment? Was this the result of some special instruction from her great-grandmother, designed to keep her out of trouble until the incident on Lightoller blew over? Council Elder Peony was not the only enemy her great-grandmother had on the Council, and none of them would pass up the chance to see her disgraced as a way of hurting Cologne. She did not know what it had cost her great-grandmother to secure for her this opportunity for redemption, and she decided that she would rather not find out.

Her watch would be over in four hours. Until then, she had nothing to do but think. She needed to think about her future, and about how she was going to take back control of it from the hands of her enemies. It was a startling thought, that she had enemies within the highest echelons of her clan, merely by dint of her blood. Until that moment she had always basked in the warm glow of fellowship and family, that the Joketsuzoku were a clan united in a common struggle, and that she was a welcome part of that struggle.

The truth was painful to her, and the realization of that truth came with a second realization that she still had a lot of growing up to do. In many eyes she was a spoiled little girl with privilege and power that she had not earned. She now understood that she would have to make them accept her for what she was, and not for whose child she was.

Furinkan Combine DropShip Oda Nobunaga,

approaching Capra parking orbit,

Planet Capra, Capra System,

The League of Five Nails

March 15 3025

"We'll be established in orbit within the hour, your Highness."

General Prince Tatewaki Kuno nodded brusquely at the report from his DropShip Commander. Such matters were for pilots, astrogators, and other computer types. His concerns were far more pressing, the concerns of a warrior.

The location of his sister for one thing. Capra City was currently in the darkness of night, and long-range telescopes gave no indication that any sort of battle was in progress below. He was well accustomed to Kodachi's tactics, and even if she had dispatched the planet's defenders, she would order the city burned. Such a fire would still be visible to thermal sensors many hours after the flames were gone.

Instead there was only the faint infrared glow of a small city shedding its stored heat for the day. Signal Intelligence detected no radio or microwave transmissions indicating that anything was amiss. Kodachi remained silent, hidden, and likely coiled to strike.

That knowledge did not deter him from his mission. He would hit the city in force, with two full regiments of battlemechs, plus supporting infantry, air, armored cavalry, and mobile artillery. If his serpentine sister dared to strike at his heels, he would have a force more than double her own on hand to crush her. Such a force would also keep the cursed Saotomes from escaping with his bride, and he had given his commanders explicit orders to minimize collateral damage within the city to prevent her from coming to harm.

He expected a counter-attack by the League, and maintained his third regiment of battlemechs, the seasoned 9th Sword of Thunder, in orbit as reserves. Any landings by League reinforcements would face a vertical envelopment by the 9th that would annihilate them before they left their drop zones. If by chance the Gosunkugi cur who commanded the League's forces in the system decided to leave Capra to the Combine, the 9th could be dispatched to investigate the minor settlements scattered across the planet for signs of Kodachi and the Saotomes.

His setbacks would be put well behind him, he decided. Kodachi would be exiled - if she did not choose to die first. Akane would be safe in his custody. The damnable Ranma Saotome would be so much charred grease on the sole of his boot!

"Signal the Division," he ordered one of the Overlord Class DropShip's communication staff. "Order them to prepare for combat drop at their assigned zones. Sound General Quarters and begin the countdown as soon as all units have responded!"

"At once, your Highness!"

Tatewaki Kuno turned and left the DropShip Bridge for the Mech Bays, and his personal battlemech. As he stepped through the airtight door and into the short passageway to the personnel elevators, a bosun's whistle shrilled over the ship's circuit 1MC intercom speakers.

"GENERAL QUARTERS GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLESTATIONS! SET CONDITION ALFA THROUGHOUT THE SHIP! NOW GENERAL QUARTERS!"

Tatewaki strode purposefully into the elevator as the crew scrambled to their battlestations. He would see to this victory personally. His would be the last laugh over his sister.

Capra City, Near the Government Buildings

15 March 3025

Ranma and Genma Saotome, their faces blacked out with greasepaint and dressed in dark thermal-dampened and lint-free bodysuits, stood in the shadows near the League Government Buildings and waited. The exotic chameleon suits worn by assassins would have been better for the job, but they were very rare and expensive, and required more maintenance than theSaotomes were able to provide.

The warm glow of the nearby Governor's Mansion was going to pose a problem, as it illuminated the place they needed to be. They did not expect the place to be so lively so late at night.

"It makes sense," Genma realized ruefully. "Everyone must sleep for the afternoon because of the heat."

"Too late for that now," Ranma replied. "Are we gonna do this or what?"

"We might as well," Genma admitted. "Daylight is just too risky."

"Right."

The telephone trunk terminated from the building inside a small service closet that opened to the outside. A simple tumbler-lock barred their access, and was made short work of. Ranma stepped inside while Genma kept watch from the shelter of a low adobe-brick wall.

Ranma lit his flashlight and looked over the rows of telephone terminals before him. As he suspected, most of the fiber-optic modules were no longer functional, and had been subsequently bypassed with much less sophisticated electrical units that could be built and maintained on Capra. That made his job a lot easier.

What also made his job easy was the fact that some thoughful tech had posted a listing of the terminals on a sheet of laminated paper now yellowed and stiff with age. It was legible, and told him exactly where to look.

He pulled out a set of probes and plugged them into the test terminal. Donning a small headset, he listened to the sound of an analog modem sending data on the fire and security system over the line. This particular modem was busy transmitting a constant 'rest' signal, and would continue to do so until an alarm was tripped and the identifying data packets sent.

The pocket oscilloscope he carried would be worth its weight in gold on a planet like Capra, and he put it to good use. The 'rest' signal was analyzed and projected on the small LCD display. It took only two minutes to set his portable signal generator to the proper pulse amplitude and frequency.

He was lucky that the modern fiber-optic systems no longer worked. You could tap into them, but it took time and was tricky to do on the fly, especially with a system that was designed to sound a loss of communications alarm if the signal dropped out or was altered by a poorly filtered tap. If they had been functional, he would have had little choice except to start cutting and pray they had enough time to get in and do what they had to do before a technician came out to investigate.

As he jumpered out the input from the security system to the modem and replaced it with his own phony 'rest' signal, he regretted ever learning how to do it. This was not something a mechwarrior did. He was a fighter, not a tech or a spy. Scouting was something they did to pay the bills, and now that they had battlemechs again, it was a career they could give up.

It disturbed him to think that he now considered Akane's opinion in the matter when making these decisions. Even if she didn't approve of his methods, he was ultimately doing this for her and the Confederation. The least she could do was recognize that, and be more appreciative about it!

He checked the signal again and made certain that nothing was wrong. There was no loopback from the controlling station to acknowledge any alarms. Everything looked good.

Ranma turned off his flashlight and stepped back outside. Genma gave him a questioning look, which he answered with a 'thumbs up.'

"Let's do it," Genma said to him.

They had to go through a window to get inside, as the front doors were only two meters from the street. Once inside, Ranma noted that the security master panel near the door was tripped into alarm. If the signal tap didn't work, they could expect company.

"We need to hustle," he told his father, who knew it just as well as him.

The computer was running in standby mode, with its access timed out. Genma tapped a few proprietary commands into the terminal and pulled up a keystroke log. After several moments of scanning he noted what looked to be the clerk's user ID and password, and entered them into the system. They were in.

"What's the ID number, boy?" he whispered to Ranma.

Ranma pulled out the nameplate and read the numbers to him.

Genma entered them into the system and began a search. It took only a few moments before spitting out a response.

"Paydirt," Genma grunted. "That nameplate goes to an earthmover owned by the ANAMAX Corporation Red Butte Mine Division. The vehicle tag is Alfa X-ray Whiskey Romeo Five Five Eight, and has been expired for eight years."

Ranma scribbled the tag number down on a notepad and replaced both pad and nameplate in his pocket.

"Red Butte Mine?" he asked. "That name sounds familiar."

"It should," Genma replied as he shut down the computer. "It's a mine not far from where the Palomino is hidden."

"Oh yeah..." Ranma said quietly. "That's the abandoned copper mine Akane and I checked out the first day here."

"Fate's with us, my boy," Genma said as they pulled themselves through the window. "We'll head back to the ship at daybreak, and on the way we'll stop by the mine."

"Sounds good to me."

"What's taking them so long?" Akane asked worriedly. She and Doctor Tofu sat at the table in the small double-occupancy motel room they had secured for the night, and waited for the return of Ranma and Genma.

Tofu gave her a reassuring look. "It hasn't been that long," he told her.

"It's been an hour. How long does it take to break in, get what they need, and get out?"

Tofu had no answer for this, as burglary was far out of his ken.

"Be patient," he advised her.

"I'm doing the best I can," she returned.

Tofu noted the concern she had, and guessed at the cause.

"Ranma will be fine," he said to her. "Don't worry."

Akane was taken aback by this.

"Who says I'm worried about Ranma?"

Tofu smiled. "Oh, I'm sorry, Akane. I should have known you'd be more concerned about Mister Saotome."

"What?" she cried, not believing that she was hearing this from Doctor Tofu! "I'm worried that they'll get caught and then the whole expedition to Ryuugenzawa will be ruined!"

Tofu agreed that this was a potential risk. "If that happens, then we'll return to the ship and get the battlemechs," he told her. "I can take Mister Saotome's Griffin, and with your Warhammer and Happousai's Locust, we should be able to bust them out of jail."

He smiled to let her know that he wasn't all that serious. It was ridiculous to think that three 'mechs, one of them a Locust, could take on the entire garrison and defeat them, but Akane appreciated his effort to reassure her.

"Thanks for trying, Doctor Tofu."

"I'm a doctor," he replied. "It's my business to make people feel better. Now, do you want to admit that you're worried about Ranma, or not?"

Her face clouded. "I'm not worried about Ranma."

"I don't believe that for a second."

"I do!" she cried. "He's a total jerk. He's rude, obnoxious, arrogant; I could go on and on about him. I still can't believe my father went along with this stupid engagement!"

"Is that what this is about?" Tofu asked pointedly. "You're mad at Ranma because your father engaged you to him?"

Akane froze. It was true that she wasn't happy with her father for what he had done. Was she really taking it out on Ranma for something that was between herself and Dad?

She couldn't help but think about another conversation she and Doctor Tofu had. He had accused her of holding Nabiki responsible for the surrender summit, when the truth was that surrender was not possible without her father's approval.

"That's not it," she said quietly, though she wasn't sure that was entirely true.

Tofu nodded sagely.

"Then it's his so-called 'curse' that has you so upset with him," he declared.

She looked up from the table where they sat.

"I admit that Ranma's 'curse' makes me a little uneasy sometimes," she said in a small voice that was barely audible over the sound of the room's drop-in air conditioner. "But that isn't the reason. I told you the reasons why I don't like Ranma."

"And those were all good reasons," Tofu conceded. "If you take them alone." He reached across the table and touched Akane's hand, making her shiver with excitement. She may have told herself that there was no chance for happiness with the handsome doctor, but in that moment she was lost in the fantasy that this expedition would bring them closer together than ever before.

"But what you're telling me," he went on, and her fantasy of love with him came crashing down around her. "...is that Ranma never does anything thoughtful, kind, or considerate for you. Akane, I know that isn't true."

She remembered the flying lessons Ranma had given her over the last three days, his admonition to her before they entered Capra's atmosphere to be careful, the fact that he had been ready to die for her in the garden.

"I suppose you're right," she said. "But that doesn't make the rotten stuff he says or does any easier to bear."

Tofu took off his glasses and wiped them with a cloth.

"Maybe so, but I think you can do yourself a favor and be more honest about your feelings."

He left her in silence with that, a silence that lasted only a few moments before Ranma stepped through the door of the motel room. He had a stupid grin plastered all over his blacked out face, his large eyes and white teeth making him look rather like the Cheshire Cat.

"In and out," he told them, but he was looking at Akane. "No sweat."

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Tofu asked.

"Enough to continue the search," Genma answered. "I say we get some sleep and leave the city at first light. We're all tired, and could use some rest."

"Back to the ship?" Akane asked. "What about the key?"

"We'll make a detour to an abandoned mine along the way and pick it up," Genma told her. "Then we'll lift for the trip back to the jump point."

"Pretty easy, huh, Akane?" Ranma said, clearly pleased with how things were going.

Akane looked closely at him, and he was ridiculous in black-face. It was all she could do to keep from laughing.

"Whatever you say, Ranma."

Commonwealth Mechwarrior Mousse saw the motel ahead of them and directed the driver to stop. The woman did so, though she clearly chafed at the idea of being ordered around by a man. Mousse was used to the thinly-veiled animosity he received from Joketsuzoku women, and paid it no mind.

Kima had sent him out with a detachment of troops in the middle of his sleep cycle because of a phone call she had received from the Governor. Apparently the local police had received a tip about the Saotomes from the night clerk of the motel they were now approaching. Because of the sternly worded warning regarding the dangers of apprehending the two, the police had requested that the Commonwealth deal with the matter directly, with them providing back-up.

That was fine by Mousse. He didn't need the locals getting in the way. If Kima had not specifically instructed him to comply with the demands of the police, he would take the captured spies directly back to the DropShip. Naturally, the police had insisted on detaining them with the two deserters until the matter of the reward money was settled.

The room where the spies were supposed to be found was dark. It was rather late, and they were likely asleep. He wasn't going to leave anything to chance. They had a spare key from the motel clerk, and he and his detachment would enter quietly and take them down before they knew what hit them.

Two policemen covered the door of the room, while another two watched the window. There was no other way out of the place. Mousse sent six of his squad to the door. The SWAT trooper closest to the door slid the key into the lock and slowly turned the handle. After that, he edged the door open ever so slightly, as a second SWAT trooper tossed in a handful of flash-bangs.

The reports were deafening, and smoke filled the small room. His troops stormed in behind the blasts, armed with stun-sticks and pepper spray. They were not in the habit of using less-than-lethal weapons, but Mousse had faith in their discipline.

His faith was rewarded with the excited shouts of the Police as the spies were dragged half-conscious and in manacles and leg-irons from the room. Oddly enough, there were four people inside, one of them a woman, and Mousse hoped like hell that they hadn't hit the wrong room. He stepped up to the young man with the pig-tail and compared his face to the photograph Kima had provided him, and the one that had begun circulating through town since sundown.

"Ranma Saotome," he said to the dazed mechwarrior. "You are under arrest."

Headquarters, Black Rose Terror Regiment

50 kilometers east of Capra City

Planet Capra, Capra System

The League of Five Nails

15 March 3025

The Black Rose of the Furinkan Combine mounted her black Marauder, her eyes shining with delight at the news she had just received. The horrible Tendo girl had just been arrested by the local police, with the help of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth! It was delicious, for she would be able to seize the Tendo girl at the same time as she killed a few Amazon witches!

The 75-ton war machine roared to life at her command, its sensors twitching in the darkness. It would be almost an hour before they would reach the city from their current position, which would put their arrival just before daylight. It was perfect. Dawn would bring light in the form of charged particles and beams of coherent death.

Her dear brother was also on the way, which made her decision to move fifty klicks closer to the town early that evening a wise one indeed. Her headlong rush for Capra City would be a race against time, but made the experience all the sweeter in the knowledge that Tachi would watch Akane Tendo slip through his fingers.

"Full advance!" she ordered her battlemechs. "Let nothing stop you from victory - not the League of Five Nails, nor the Commonwealth, and especially not my brother!"

Her troops cheered over the tac-net, a full regiment of them, loyal to her unto the death. It did not concern them that they might face fellow Combine mechwarriors in battle. The Black Rose commanded, and they obeyed.

Special Prisoner Holding Block

Capra City Jail,

15 March 3025

Kima could not believe her eyes. Not only had they captured the two Saotomes, but also Akane Tendo! Being as intimately familiar with Akane's face as Kima was, she could never forget it. Akane wore her hair short now, which made Kima wonder whether her Jusenkyo body had any more value to her superiors in the Commonwealth. It would be too much trouble to have it cut and styled every time she needed to change.

There were other matters. The two Saotomes had to be interrogated for their knowledge of Ryuugenzawa, but after that they were as good as dead in the hands of Shampoo. What was she supposed to do with Akane and the Tendo

family's personal physician?

Killing them was a dangerous idea. If word leaked out that they had died at the hands of the Commonwealth, it would bring severe repercussions, not the least of which was Tatewaki Kuno's undying wrath. Kima had no doubt that the word would get out sooner or later.

Leaving them on Capra was also questionable. If their identities were revealed to the League, then Hikaru Gosunkugi would not hesitate to take Akane hostage. While some good could come of it, she doubted that the Elders would approve. It was not her place to make the Commonwealth's policy, only to enforce it.

That meant that she had to take them all with her, back to Jusenkyo. It seemed like the best choice under the circumstances. Akane and the doctor could be released as a gesture of goodwill between the Commonwealth and the Confederation. It was regrettable that the Saotomes would have to die, given the recent engagement of the young mechwarrior to Akane, but the Commonwealth had ample proof of their espionage activities to justify the deed.

"Is everything to your specifications?" Governor Argust asked her, meaning: "Are these the ones you're looking for - so I can get my money?"

"Everything is fine," Kima returned.

Argust rubbed his palms together. "Excellent. Any word yet from your Government?"

Kima sighed. "Not yet, Governor. It will probably be several more hours at the earliest."

"Then you won't object if we continue to hold them here?"

She visualized her dagger protruding hilt deep from between his eyes.

"No, Governor. Not at all."

Argust nodded his head with satisfaction.

"Wonderful. I shall be retiring for the evening, your Excellency. Do let me know when you hear from Jusenkyo."

Kima was only too glad to see him go. "Certainly, Governor."

"Do you remember when I said this was easy?" Ranma asked Akane as they stood by the bars of their cell. Genma shared a cell with his son, and Akane and Doctor Tofu were confined to the cell next to them.

Akane nodded slowly, still feeling the effects of the stun grenades and the ringing they had left in her ears.

"Um-hmmm..."

Ranma rubbed at his neck. "I'm sorry I said it."

He looked out at the bars to see the Commonwealth Ambassador from the summit on Nerima sizing him up. She wasn't the only one. Shampoo was with her, standing next to an angry looking man in long white robes. The man he vaguely remembered through the painful haze of their capture as the one who arrested them.

How in the hell had the Commonwealth known to come here to look for us? he thought angrily. More to the point, who was the traitor who tipped the damn Amazons off? He recognized the other two in the cells. They were both part of the Jusenkyo Lab's security, if he remembered correctly. Why were THEY here, and locked up with him and the others?

These were questions that demanded answers, but only when they were free of their jail.

Shampoo approached the bars. She was every bit as dangerous looking as he remembered her. It was only by accident that she had fallen into one of the Jusenkyo Pools, but the look in her eyes told him that she blamed him exclusively for what had happened.

"Shampoo thought she kill you on Lightoller," the Amazon told him, her violet eyes crackled with fury at the thought. "I no make same mistake twice."

"Kill?" Akane cried in protest. "I understand what Ranma did was against your laws, but doesn't he at least get a trial?"

Shampoo narrowed her eyes at Akane.

"You no understand how Amazon Law work," she told her curtly. "You shut mouth now."

Akane stepped back, stunned by Shampoo's retort. She tried to speak, but her anger kept her from forming any words.

"Don't sweat it, Akane," Ranma said evenly. He could not see her in her cell, but knew full well what lay behind her silence. "If Shampoo wants a piece of me, it'll be her funeral, not mine."

Shampoo was incensed. "No make Shampoo laugh! I rip out heart."

He returned her stare of challenge. She might have been a pretty good fighter, but he wasn't going to back down.

"I guess we'll find out, huh?"

She gave him a contemptuous look and returned to her place by the far wall. Kima took her leave of the holding cells, and Mousse trailed after at a respectful distance.

That left Shampoo to watch over them with her big feline eyes.

Ryouga watched the confrontation in silence. It made no sense, but somehow the four who were locked up with himself and Tarou were also wanted by the Commonwealth. What had they done? Who were they? The two Saotomes were vaguely familiar looking, and the one his age was even named Ranma, but if they were the ones he remembered, he had last seen them almost seven years ago.

There was only one way to find out.

"Ranma...?" he asked quietly.

There was a long pause, and he was about to ask again when Ranma replied.

"Yeah? Who's this?"

"Nevermind that," he returned. "I have a question for you."

Another pause.

"Go ahead. I ain't got nothin' but time."

"You wouldn't happen to remember the Hsien Junior Military Training Academy on the planet Tamegonit, would you?"

"Vaguely. It's been awhile," Ranma replied, wondering who the hell it was that knew so much about his childhood wanderings. "So what?"

Ryouga felt himself tense at the news. The very Ranma Saotome who had humiliated him day after day at the training academy, the one who had run out on their duel seven long years ago, was in jail with him. The bars that kept him a prisoner were the same bars that kept Ranma Saotome alive.

Still, he had to know...

"It's me, Ranma," he told him. "It's Ryouga Hibiki."

"Ryouga Hibiki?" he heard a young woman's voice ask. "Do you know this person, Ranma?"

"The name sounds sort of familiar," Ranma replied.

"Don't you remember me?!" Ryouga barked, earning a hard look from Shampoo.

"Well... Like I said, the name sounds familiar. Did you say the Hsien Academy?"

Ryouga was livid. He had burned with shame for three years after that fateful day. Ranma had dropped out of the Academy, and rumor had it that he had left the system with his father, leaving Ryouga with no way to get his revenge.

"You mean you don't remember our man to man duel!?"

"Duel...?"

"You don't remember something like a duel?" the girl's voice asked. "This Ryouga fellow sounds awfully serious about it."

There followed the sound of a foot tapping the cement floor.

"Gimme a second, I'm working on it... A duel... A duel... A guy named Ryouga... Me in a duel with a guy named Ryouga... Me in a duel with a guy named Ryouga at the Hsien Academy..."

"Do you remember or don't you?!" Ryouga demanded.

"I said gimme a second!" Ranma shot back. "Hey, Pop, do you remember anything like what he's talking about?"

"I hardly think it's very important given our current predicament, boy," a gruff voice replied.

Time passed as Shampoo looked on with some amusement.

"Well?" Ryouga asked, beyond anger and into despair. Had he devoted what were supposed to be some the best years of his life to hopeless plans for revenge - when his bitter enemy had thought so little of their duel that he didn't even remember it?

"Sorry man, it ain't ringing any bells," Ranma finally answered him. "I got in lots of fights when I was twelve."

Ryouga knocked his forehead against the bars in misery. It was true. All those dark years of Junior High spent in shame and humiliation for nothing. The bastard didn't even remember him.

"Forget about it," he said sullenly, knowing that Ranma already had.

"Maybe if you gave me a hint or two," Ranma responded. "Like why we were having a duel."

Ryouga's expression perked up. "We were duelling because of the way you humiliated me in the cafeteria."

"Hmmmmm..." Ranma wondered aloud. "Nope. You gotta be more specific than that."

"You always stole my bread!" Ryouga thundered.

"Bread?" Ranma and Akane chorused.

"Yeah, bread!" Ryouga repeated. Looking back on those days, it did seem like a stupid thing to fight about, but somehow fate had seen fit to allow him this one chance to settle a seven-year-old score, and he was too angry to let it go.

"Oh yeah!" Ranma suddenly chirped. "Now I remember!"

Ryouga's heart leaped. At last!

"You guys fought a duel over bread?" the girl's voice asked in disbelief. "What kind of school did you go to, Ranma?"

"It was nuts, Akane," Ranma replied wearily. "The place was totally competitive. Grades, 'mech training, small arms, sports, even lunch. They used to call out the lunch specials at the counter, and it was first come, first served. I saw a lot of kids get trampled over junk like algae bread!"

"I was one of them!" Ryouga cried indignantly.

"So tell me, Ryouga," Ranma asked him. "Why are you so mad at me for a duel that you didn't even show up for?"

"You lie!"

"I ain't lying. I waited at that stupid practice field for three days waiting for you, without food or sleep, and you never showed!"

"Three days?" the girl, Akane, cried.

Ryouga was livid. Those cruel days of childhood had returned to him. "Yeah, and by the fourth day, you had run away!"

There was a long moment of silence between them.

"Hey, Ryouga?"

"What is it, Ranma!?" he snarled.

"Just why exactly did it take you four days to get to a field that was right outside our dorm rooms?"

Damn him!

"You got an answer for me?" Ranma pressed.

Shampoo stood from her chair. "Yes, this what Shampoo also want to know," she said to him with a toothy grin.

Ryouga gripped the bars tight enough to feel the friction heat burning his hands.

"It's because he has the universe's worst sense of direction," Pansuto Tarou said sardonically from his cell. It had been the most he had said since his incarceration.

"You shut up, Monster-boy!" Ryouga barked. He could almost feel Tarou's smug grin leveled at him through the cement wall that separated them.

"Well I know that," Ranma answered the unknown man in the cell next to Ryouga. "I just wanted to hear it from him." He raised his voice a notch. "It takes a real man to admit he's wrong, huh, Ryouga?"

Ryouga's simmer had become a full boil. The bars of his cell began to creak in their concrete foundations.

"Damn you, Ranma!"

"You're still pissed about the bread after all these years?" the pig-tailed mechwarrior asked him. "Tell you what; if we ever get out of here, I swear I'll make it up to you. You can have any kind of bread you want. Name it, and it's yours!"

"Save breath, Ranma," Shampoo interjected. "Only place you going is Hell of Being Ripped to Pieces!"

"What!?" Akane asked the Amazon.

"Chinese have many Hells," Shampoo supplied for her with a wry smile.

Ryouga couldn't believe Ranma had such gall.

"This isn't about bread!" he cried angrily. "This is about years of anguish and humiliation! Of enduring soul-crushing shame! I was never the same after Hsien Academy!"

"Ryouga, take my advice," Ranma offered in a soothing voice. "Get some professional help, man. Really. You're blowing a head gasket about something that happened when we were both kids, when right now we're both in this lousy jail, waiting to get shipped out to meet our doom at the hands of our worst enemies. I mean, prioritize, man!"

The eastern outskirts of Capra City,

thirty minutes before sunrise

15 March 3025

Kodachi's lead elements had taken up positions around the city's handful of main traffic arteries. There would be no escaping while her spearhead companies drove straight for the center of town and the police headquarters. Her third battalion was set to attack the starport and the fort.

She turned her battlemech to either side of her. Set up on a low ridge, one of the few places near the city that could be called high ground, were her Fire Lances. Archers, Crusaders, Catapults, and Trebuchets prepared to deliver a blistering volley of long range missiles. The barrage would throw the city into chaos and at the same time would create a path of destruction for her spearhead to follow to the center of town.

Her adjutant appeared on her commo display.

"All companies report in-position at their preliminary jumping off points, Highness."

"Very well," she said, her voice dripping with anticipation. She flipped over to the tac-net frequencies. "Fire Lances, commence fire! Fire at will!"

The ridge lit up as bright as the sun. Hundreds of angry yellow and orange darts of flame leaped skyward from the battlemechs, the first of many missile volleys. The giant war machines were silhouetted against the flames, as were the rows of ammunition carriers that would allow them to keep up a continuous bombardment.

Kodachi watched the first volley fall into the city near the edge of town. Brilliant fireballs erupted at the impact points, and the concussions shook even her Marauder from a distance of nearly five hundred meters from the blasts. In the distance she could see her other bombardment group pounding the starport and the fort.

"Good morning, everyone!" she sang out to the city on her Marauder's external speakers. The second wave was already falling as she called for her troops to advance. "The Black Rose has come for you, little dears!"

With her Marauder in the lead, Kodachi's headquarters company began stomping towards the flames. Her thermal sensors could not distinguish through the fire the images of survivors fleeing in a dazed panic, but she knew they were out there. Structures weakened by the missiles collapsed on top of them, the failures caused by the tremors of so many battlemechs moving towards the city, adding to the terror she sowed.

It was terribly funny to behold, and she laughed with reckless abandon at their misfortune.

Kima was not even out of the parking garage when the first missiles began to explode. There were luminous trails of smoke in the sky, leading back to two distinct points of origin. The booming reports spoke of many battlemechs in the pre-dawn darkness beyond the city, a realization that nearly sent her into a panic.

She turned to Mousse.

"Get to the Jade Lotus!" she ordered him. "Order them to prepare for emergency lift-off if they haven't already started when you get there. Then take command of the battlemech company and move them out to positions that will defend the ship until we can leave."

"What about Shampoo?" he cried. There was no way he was going to let them leave her behind.

"Send the truck back for us!" she told him, and leaped clear as they rounded a corner to take them to the starport. She wasn't going to lose her prisoners, the Governor's money be damned!

Governor Argust was just stepping out of his car when Kodachi's missile barrage hit. At first he did not realize the magnitude of what was taking place, and his initial impression was that some horrible accident had just occurred at the fort's armory.

Moments later, when the alert sirens began howling throughout the city, he realized that he was terribly, terribly wrong.

"Those Joketsuzoku whores!" he cursed. "They're taking the prisoners without paying my reward!"

He rushed into the mansion to phone the garrison commander.

"Shhhhhh!" Ranma hissed. "You hear that?"

"Hear what, Ranma?" Akane asked nervously.

"It sounded like explosions," he replied.

Shampoo perked up her ears and began to hear them as well.

"I think you right," she said quietly.

"What's going on?" Doctor Tofu asked.

"Beats me," Genma replied. The only mechwarrior left on the DropShip was Happousai, and he didn't see his master taking on the entire city for their sakes, even if he knew they were in trouble.

"I hear sirens," Ryouga added. "The city is under attack! It must be the Combine!"

Akane felt suddenly cold. Kuno...

Ranma rattled the bars for Shampoo's attention.

"Hey, let us out!" he cried.

Shampoo shot him a dirty look. "You rot," she told him. "Shampoo no care if you die down here in basement."

Kima sprang through the door a moment later, a guard falling dead through the threshold behind her. His throat was slashed open, and she brandished a bloody dagger as well as the keys to the cells.

"What's going on?" Shampoo asked her.

"The city is under attack," Kima replied. "We don't know who's out there yet, but they have a very large force. It's probably the Combine."

"What about the prisoners?"

Kima held up the keys.

"We're taking them with us just as soon as the truck returns from the starport."

"Hey!" Ranma cried louder. "Let us out!"

Kima leaped to the bars with surprising speed. "Quiet!" she barked at him. "You'll do as I say, or I'll gut you and leave you for the Combine."

He stepped back, nonplussed by her threat.

"Whatever, lady."

The Jade Lotus was wreathed in flames when Mousse reached the starport tarmac. Starport Emergency teams scrambled through the smoke and fire, fighting several nearby blazes to keep them from detonating the sizable reservoir of liquid hydrogen in the tank farm. More missiles rained down from the sky to the south, and missiles arced across the city from the east. The wail of the alert sirens added to the infernal din.

The Union Class DropShip had suffered only a few hits. Its armor was proof against much more damage, but if they didn't get off the ground immediately there was no telling how long their luck would last. He could see the ship's crew working to cast off their support umbilicals and the gantry for lift-off. At least he could concentrate on the Company.

He sent the truck back to the jail on the run, leaping out as Kima had done. There was little time to do what needed to be done.

A soldier stood her ground at the combat personnel hatch. He ignored her challenge and pushed her aside, his male effrontery too appalling to even resist.

He clambered up the ladder to the 'Mech Bays. The rest of the Company was already prepping for action, allowing him a moment to strip out of his robes and into his cooling vest. His white and grey Crusader stood at brisk attention in its padded drop cocoon, and he took the ladder rungs up the legs and torso two at a time. The rumble of the Jade Lotus' massive plasma drive warming up for lift-off reassured him.

Once mounted and powered up, he addressed the rest of the unit. This was the moment he had been waiting for ever since his release from General Herb. This was his chance to prove himself to Shampoo, and to all the other women. He would not be denied recognition. He would not be denied this chance to shine before Shampoo.

"Fire and Command Lances will disperse and take up defensive positions within range of the DropShip's weapons," he commanded. On a side display he could see the Fire Lance Commander - his superior officer prior to Kima's sudden brevet - frowning and about to protest orders not only from a man, but from a subordinate. He did not give her the chance. "You have your orders, Lieutenant," he roared. "As I have them from Commander Kima. Carry out those orders, or find yourself replaced by someone who will!"

Cowed by this surprising show of force from the usually silent and submissive Mousse, she saluted and turned her Lance, minus his Crusader, forth through the heavy armored doors of the DropShip. The Command Lance followed suit.

He turned to the Recon Lance, which was short by Shampoo's Panther.

"The rest of you follow me into the city," he told them. "We have to protect Shampoo and the Commander until they can return to the ship."

Tatewaki Kuno sat within the confines of his Thunderbolt's cockpit, listening to the chatter of his troops over the tac-net. They were in the final descent towards Capra's atmosphere. Within thirty minutes they would be setting down at their drop zones.

Because of the magnitude of the drop, he had recognized the need for pathfinders to go ahead of his main force to mark and prepare the drop zones. This was no simple raid, but a dedicated planetary invasion, and he could not spare any time lost trying to reorganize on his drop zones.

"My lord Prince," his G-2 Intelligence Officer called over his command channel.

"Speak, man!" he replied impatiently.

"Our Pathfinder Battalion reports heavy fighting in the city," he began. "Preliminary reports indicate BRTR forces in regimental strength are responsible. The Drop Zones are not compromised at this time."

"My sister!" Tatewaki cried angrily. The Black Rose Terror Regiment was running loose! "She must know where my beloved is!"

He punched up his Divisional Operations Officer, Colonel Singh.

"Singh," he spat over the radio. "Dispatch six squadrons of aerospace support to the city. They must smite my sister's traitorous legions with all haste!"

"Forgive me, Highness," Singh replied. "But six squadrons represents a sizable portion of our descent cover."

"Speak not to thy liege as if he were a dolt, Singh, or thy rank and station are forfeit! Six Squadrons!"

Singh paled.

"At once, my Prince!"

Tatewaki clenched his fists in an impotent fury. The descent orbit could not be altered without significant scattering of his forces, which would be suicidal in light of Kodachi's strength. All he could do was wait, hope that the rest of his staff weren't as timid as Colonel Singh, and pray to the gods of battle that he would be in time to stop his sister.

In keeping with the technological dark age of the Inner Sphere, the fuze of a Long Range Missile is a simple mechanism, reliable and cheaply mass-produced by unskilled labor. Two spinning flyweights linked to springs hold a striker away from a percussion cap acting as the detonator. As the missile flies through its ballistic arc to the target, the spin imparted by the rifled launch tube acts as a stabilizer and sets the flyweights in motion. When the missile hits something, the force of the impact overcomes the spring tension, driving the striker into the percussion cap, and starting the explosive train of detonator, booster charge, and finally, the bursting charge.

This process takes less than a tenth of a second, and ends the lives of the three people who happen to be sleeping in the apartment of the four-story building where the missile hits.

Spearhead Element,

The Black Rose Terror Regiment

Approaching the Heart of Capra City

15 March 3025

Kodachi spared little time for the apartment building that collapsed into a roiling cloud of smoke, dust, and flames before her Marauder. The Bombardment Group to her rear was doing an admirable job of walking its fire just ahead of her advance, ensuring that little remained standing in her path, and that no ambush could be sprung that would slow her down.

Their rate of fire was slowing down though, she noted, as individual 'mechs walked back to the rear of the advance to reload their launchers. Soon their effectiveness as a massed artillery force would be at an end. It was important that they continue to cover the advance all the way to the Police Headquarters.

If necessary, she could call off the attack on the starport and pull those 'mechs into a reserve for the main thrust, but it would take them some time to change positions. She decided to pull them back now rather than later.

As she was giving the order, the sight of a battlemech moving through the smoke and fire beyond caught her eye. Her Marauder's Dalban HiRez tracking system locked on to the war machine, a garrison Shadow Hawk that had somehow slipped away from the attack on the fort, and past her Recon Lance.

The others in her Command Lance had not noticed the Shadow Hawk, which now knelt behind a pile of rubble and took aim with its medium laser and Armstrong 90mm autocannon to shoot across a ruined plaza at her Support Lance.

Kodachi put a burning but still erect building between her and the Shadow Hawk as it prepared for its ambush. She waited until it fired, which did not take long, and then charged around the building towards it. The Shadow Hawk was busy ducking the return fire from its targets, and did not notice her Marauder coming up on its left flank.

She squeezed both weapon triggers, and twin beams of laser fire slashed into the Shadow Hawk's arm and torso just before both PPC bolts struck. The 55-ton battlemech reeled with the impact of the bolts, and staggered to its feet still wreathed in static lightning.

Kodachi felt the heat bloom of her full barrage moments later. It was an exciting sensation, full of fury and bloodlust, and not a little personal risk. The Marauder tensed to spring at the Shadow Hawk in reaction to her cry of delight, heat pouring from its glowing radiators. The Support Lance held its fire as they realized their mistress had taken the enemy 'mech to task.

The mercenary battlemech stumbled backwards as she charged at it. It was a foolish thing for a Marauder pilot to charge an enemy who was already at close range, as the main armament of Particle Projection Cannons had minimum range targeting difficulties that would leave only its medium lasers and dorsal-mounted General Motors Whirlwind autocannon as effective weapons. Kodachi did not concern herself with tactical convention this time, nor had she ever.

The autocannon hammered over her head at the Shadow Hawk, bright green tracers slamming into the aligned crystal steel and bursting with strobes of white flame and brilliant motes of melted armor. Kodachi kept her thumb clamped down on the autocannon trigger, hosing shell after shell of rapid fire into the 'mech and laughing maniacally over the external speakers.

The rookie Shadow Hawk pilot flailed its arms up in defense against her continous burst. Shells ripped the limbs to pieces, and strands of myomer bundle musculature under tension began to snap and whip around the battlemech in bright pink filaments. The forearm mounted medium laser exploded an instant later into a violet cloud of gas as shells detonated the pulse-capacitors.

Kodachi watched the Shadow Hawk fly apart piece by piece under the buzzsaw roar of her autocannon assault. The Ammunition Remaining indicator flashed in her HUD the dwindling reserves of shells as they were expended into the unfortunate battlemech. When the counter at last read '000,' the gun went silent, and the shattered Shadow Hawk fell back into a nearby building, trailing streamers of grey gunsmoke.

Satisfied with her first kill of the day, Kodachi stomped on towards the Police Headquarters.

Mousse angrily swatted aside a garrison Whitworth, leaving the fallen 'mech for the rest of the Recon Lance to finish off. The mercenary garrison's cohesion had been thrown into total collapse from the start, with individual 'mechs running helter skelter, and firing at anything that moved. More than once Mousse had seen a battlemech exterminate its own battalion's infantry or armor in the confusion.

His path across the wide boulevard from the starport to the city center was open, but the advancing missile bombardment would make crossing the road a dicey proposition. The thunder of particle beams and autocannon fire told him that the invaders were well into the city.

His lancemates stood the best chance, as they were small and fast. His own Crusader, 65 tons of armor and heavy missile launchers, was not as fortunate. Cursing his luck, he threw the battlemech forward, knowing that while the other Commonwealth 'mechs could get across the killing field quickly, without him they would be unable to fight off the Combine heavy 'mechs on the other side.

He kept the mech's arms crossed on high to protect his vulnerable cockpit. Missiles and autocannon shells screamed down at him, bursting against his armor and peppering the surrounding buildings with shrapnel. Any glass left intact by this point was now shattered, scattering brilliant shards across the pavement, and crunching under metalshod heel.

The barrage slowed halfway across, allowing him to take cover against an office building and catch his bearings. The two Stingers and the Valkyrie of his Recon Lance had survived as expected, and crept down a sheltering alleyway towards the government buildings. Mousse watched them break from cover to dash across another wide boulevard, only to run into a withering barrage of laser, autocannon, and Short Range Missile fire.

The first Stinger had made it across safely, but the second was cut down in seconds and tumbled to the pavement engulfed in flames. The Valkyrie was driven back into cover - minus a left arm. Twin jets of silver plasma fountained from the 20-ton Stinger's back, the sign of a breached reactor vessel. The pilot within was probably dead, if not from a direct hit to the cockpit, then from the heat and searing radiation from the breached fusion reactor.

Mousse could not see their attackers, but the shuddering pavement told him they were heavies. If he didn't take action, the rest of his lance would be slaughtered. His Crusader peeled off the cheap facing of a building, and crashed through to the other side.

The Zeus and the Dragon on the other side of the building were taken by surprise by his brutal flanking manuever. Mousse triggered his hip-mounted SRM racks point blank at the Zeus, striking the mech low on the torso and right arm with thunderous effect. His forearm mounted lasers and twin machineguns blazed forth streams of lead and light, tearing apart the exposed arm and setting off the reloaded Long Range Missile launcher.

The explosion blew the battlemech's arm clean off at the elbow, and sent Mousse flying back through the ruined building. He fought his controls, trying to stand up before he was immolated by the Dragon. The shots did not come.

The Dragon was occupied with the surviving Stinger and Valkyrie, who took well-aimed shots with their lasers from the cover of the surrounding buildings. Mousse lurched his Crusader upright through the twisted debris of the structure, and launched another volley of twelve Short Range Missiles at the Zeus's flayed open right torso to finish it off.

He was rewarded with the sight of the assault 'mech shivering with his missile hits and tumbling down to crater the pavement. The Dragon, now caught in a crossfire, began backing up - while laying down a suppressing barrage of autocannon fire. Beyond the Dragon, Mousse could see not one but two Warhammers struggling for a shot through the melee with their particle cannons.

Discretion was the better part of valor, Mousse agreed, but these heavies were keeping him from Shampoo. He stomped on his foot pedals, goosing his reactor to full combat power. The myomer bundles in his legs groaned with the strain as he sprinted for the retreating Dragon.

Autocannon shells spanged off his armor, gouging shallow craters in the polished white surface. He ignored the barrage, running for a low-tackle at the 60-ton Combine 'mech, and slamming full force into the squat torso. Steel screamed and sparks fountained from the impact as his Crusader seized the Dragon up into its arms and, carried along by his tremendous momentum, threw the battlemech backwards at the Warhammers.

The two Combine 'mechs flailed in desperation at the flying Dragon, trying to deflect it away from them, but to no avail. One Warhammer was hurled to the pavement, while the other one lost its left PPC arm at the shoulder and was knocked off balance. Mousse followed through with his charge, SRMs blowtorching off his hip racks and slamming home into the maimed Warhammer's center torso. His lasers slashed deep into Combine armor, and his machineguns' ceaseless chattering dug ragged swaths into the battlemech.

The Combine mechwarrior switched to his gunclusters in a panic, hosing laser and machinegun fire into the Commonwealth Crusader's midsection. Mousse watched as angry red damage lights flicked on in his cockpit and sirens wailed. His fury swelled within him.

"I WILL NOT LOSE SHAMPOO!" he cried over the tac-net.

The Crusader's massive fist slammed into the Warhammer's polished visor, splintering the armor, and rocking the battlemech back. Mousse launched a second punch, a wild haymaker that crashed through the ragged torso armor and threw up a flurry of orange sparks. The violent effect of his blows drove him into a berserker rage, and he slammed fist after metal-shod fist into the stricken Warhammer until his battlemech's arms were slick with grease and spilled hydraulic fluids up to the elbow actuators. The Warhammer, driven to its knees by the ferocity of his blows, fell forward with a tooth-jarring crash into the shattered street.

Regaining some of his composure, his breathing heavy and deep as a winded quarter-horse, Mousse turned his Crusader around to face his surviving lance mates. Bright red fluids dripped from the scored metal fists and arms to pool at the Crusader's feet. The once pristine white and grey finish was ragged and scorched, and spattered with more of the red hydraulic fluid. The Crusader's visor glowed hellishly in the firelight as he addressed them.

"Form up on me," he said coldly.

The Stinger and Valkyrie pilots complied. By their cautious advance it was clear that they held fear for him deep within their hearts. Never even in their worst battles had they borne witness to such mechanized savagery.

They did not notice the other Warhammer rise slowly to its knees from where the Dragon had felled it - until it was too late.

A direct hit from a particle cannon lanced through the upper left torso and shoulder of Mousse's Crusader. The hit itself was superficial, but through the ragged tear in the armor and structure spilled dozens of Long Range Missiles. The solid-fueled projectiles clattered to the pavement behind the 'mech and began to explode.

The missile explosions came as fast as firecrackers, though their fifty kilo RDX warheads were far more destructive. Gouts of flame and smoke spurted skywards, obscuring the Crusader from sight in a firestorm.

Capra City Jail

Special Prisoner Holding Cells

15 March 3025

"What's taking them so long?" Kima asked aloud. The sounds of explosions and weapon fire were much louder now, and punctuated with the rhythmic vibrations of battlemech feet.

"Should I take a look?" Shampoo asked.

Kima thought about it. Shampoo was a formidable fighter, but armed only with her dagger and her mace-like bon bori. It would take but one well-placed shot with a rifle to end Shampoo's life, and that would leave only her.

"No. Stay here," she ordered the mechwarrior. "I'll need you close at hand when we move the prisoners."

Shampoo nodded in reply. The one called Tarou had been eyeing them closely since Kima's return. It was the look of someone who wanted desperately to kill you, sizing you up for the chance.

The sound of footsteps down the hall brought them both to rapt attention. Was it warriors from the Jade Lotus, or was it the enemy?

The term 'enemy' had broadened significantly in light of the attack. Argust had sent his personal goon-squad down to the jail to take the prisoners to the mansion. Their bodies were presently cooling off to ambient temperature in a far corner of the holding area. Apparently the League Governor thought the attack on the city was something of an elaborate doublecross on their part, and the Commonwealth was no longer welcome.

It was a stupid notion, and reflected only the Governor's own mendacity, but it was too late for apologies.

Kima stood ready with a 10mm submachinegun plucked out of the still-warm hand of one of the League goons. The fully automatic weapon was murderously effective in a tight and narrow space like the hallway leading to the holding area, as several policemen had discovered too late. The rest of the cops had either fled the building or cowered somewhere on the floors above.

"Who's there?" Kima demanded of the approaching footsteps. As the query was in the Joketsuzoku's own particular dialect of Chinese, it was not likely that an imposter could understand it, much less give a convincing reply.

"Your loyal driver, honored Commander," the young female voice responded.

Relief was bright on Kima's face. "We're down here, Joyful Cloud!" She turned to Shampoo. "Release the prisoners and form them up in a line. Take a machinegun before you do it, and shoot anyone who doesn't cooperate in the slightest."

Shampoo saluted and pawed over the dead goons for a machinegun and several magazines of ammunition. Once armed, she threw the keys to Ryouga.

"Open cell and come out," she ordered him. "Then hand keys to next cell. Keep hands on top of head, and no make Shampoo angry, or you fall dead." She jerked the charging handle on her weapon, chambering a round, to emphasize this point.

Ryouga did as he was told.

Tarou came out next. His eyes gleamed spitefully at Shampoo, but he remained at a distance from her, with his hands planted on the top of his head, playing the good little boy.

Akane and Doctor Tofu followed, as did Ranma and Genma. They remained silent and still under Shampoo's gun.

Ryouga looked once at Ranma and then turned his eyes away. Only as he looked away did he see the sympathetic look from Akane. By the gods, she was so beautiful, he thought to himself. Only an angel could have been so pure and lovely.

Another thought crossed his mind. What was someone as perfect as her doing in the company of the cursed Saotomes? Especially Ranma!

"Move out!" Kima ordered them suddenly. "Shampoo, cover them from the rear."

They began to file out one at a time through the door, slowing only enough to step over the shredded bodies of the two dead police in the hall. Joyful Cloud and Kima waited for them at the end of the hall, Kima's machinegun in front and Shampoo's weapon behind keeping them honest.

The sounds of battle were amplified in the brick and cement parking garage. The Commonwealth truck, its windshield crazed by shrapnel, and several bullet holes prominent in the sides, waited for them with the engine running.

"In the back," Kima ordered her prisoners. Ranma lowered the tailgate and jumped in back. He looked from side to side for a chance to bolt, but with both Kima and Shampoo armed and wary, did not like his chances.

Tarou was the last to board. He gave Shampoo a dirty look as he did so, and she contemplated shooting him down as an example to the rest of them.

"Shampoo, you ride in back and cover the prisoners. Don't hesistate to shoot if you have to," Kima ordered. She slapped the dash of the truck. "Let's go!"

Shampoo climbed in back with the others, her machinegun aimed directly at Tarou's chest. If anything happened, she wanted him dead first no matter what, and then she'd deal with the others as necessary.

Joyful Cloud put the truck in gear, and climbed up the exit ramp to the street level. A spray of heavy machinegun fire greeted them as they cleared the ramp, the shells shattering the windshield and ripping apart the hood. The truck lurched to an abrupt halt before a giant black battlemech.

"OH-HO-HO-HO-HO-HO!" Kodachi Kuno cackled her trademark laughter over her external speakers. The Black Rose's Marauder towered over the truck, its cloven hoofed feet blocking the road left and right. The Warhammer that fired the machinegun burst stood close by with the rest of the company.

Kima wiped blood out of her eyes and brushed the fragments of broken glass off her face. She looked to her left and saw that Joyful Cloud was dead. A single 20mm machinegun round had caved in her entire face with the force of the impact, and exploded out the back of her neck to pass through the cab of the truck behind her. There was surprisingly little of her blood in the cab. Kima's first instinct was to shoot back at their assailants, but her submachinegun was useless against a Marauder.

"Going somewhere, my dears?" Kodachi asked them over the speakers with another laugh. "I think not."

She opened the hatch on her Marauder, and slipped lithely through to stand upon the smooth black armored deck. The sky was beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn, making her a dark and slender silhouette.

"Step away from the truck," she commanded them over the speakers through the microphone in her helmet. "My men won't hesitate to kill you if you refuse me."

Ranma was the first to appear.

"What do you want from us?" he demanded. "We ain't done nothing." He looked around to size up the situation. Twelve heavy battlemechs did not make for good odds.

"Who dares presume to question the Black Rose of the Furinkan Combine?" she replied haughtily.

"Ranma Saotome dares," he called back.

Kodachi found herself smiling in spite of his impertinence.

"THE Ranma Saotome?" she asked him in a sacharrine voice. "The fiance of Akane Tendo?" She chuckled loudly at this. "What absolutely splendid news! Why, I travelled all this way just to meet Akane Tendo face to face."

"Way to go, Ranma," Akane growled at him from the truck. Ranma paled at his mistake.

"Who?" Ranma asked Kodachi lamely. "That Ranma Saotome? You made a mistake, lady. It's all a big misunderstanding. I never heard of Akane Tendo before."

"Nice try," Kodachi said tersely. "But I'm afraid I don't believe you. In fact I have it on very good authority that Akane Tendo is being held in this jail." She motioned for the Warhammer which stood next to her Marauder. "I'm offering just three seconds for everyone to back away from that truck before I have it stepped on."

The giant battlemech stomped closer to the truck.

"Three..." Kodachi intoned. "Two..."

Shampoo jumped out first, followed by the rest. Kima stepped out of the shattered cab, her machinegun loose in her hand.

"Excellent," Kodachi purred. "I can see that you're all smarter than you look." She looked down at them. There were two Joketsuzoku, their uniforms and their weapons made it clear who they were. The rest were a token assortment of fools. Finally, her eyes fell upon Akane Tendo. Her hair was much shorter than it used to be, but she wasn't going to be so easily fooled by her nemesis.

"So, Akane Tendo, I presume?" she called to them from above, her finger pointing squarely at the Confederation Heir.

Akane looked up slowly at Kodachi.

"I'm right here," she replied scornfully.

Kodachi chuckled to herself. This was delicious! "I had hoped to have had the opportunity of killing you in battle," she began. "To make up for my defeat at Port Said. Then I planned on killing you here and now..."

"No way, lady!" Ranma shouted, jumping in front of Akane. "I ain't gonna let ya!"

"Ranma, you idiot!" she cried, and pushed him away. "I can face her myself!"

"How sweet!" the Black Rose gushed. "Futile, but terribly sweet. As I was saying, that was my plan..." Distant explosions now sounded from the south. "But unfortunately, my dear brother has made that option untenable. In fact, we'll all have to run along to my DropShips before he can catch us."

She narrowed her eyes at them.

"Correction. Akane Tendo and I will have to run along now. The rest of you can die where you stand."

"Hey! Waitaminute!" Ranma cried. "Don't we get a last request or something?" It was a desperate stalling tactic, but they were fresh out of options.

Kodachi laughed. "Now why on earth would I want to do that? The lives of peasants mean nothing to me."

"How about last words?"

She regarded him for a moment. His poor breeding was plainly evident, but he was insanely brave and, she realized, devilishly handsome. It would be a pity to kill him, but she did have a reputation to uphold.

"Such as?" she asked him sardonically.

Ranma looked slowly from side to side, taking in the eyes of his companions. There was fear and apprehension there, but also a grim determination.

"Well, for one thing..." he began. Then he thrust his finger to the sky. "EVERYONE: SCATTER!"

Ranma grabbed Akane on the run, followed closely by Genma and Doctor Tofu. Kima fired a burst of machinegun rounds at Kodachi, then dove for cover. Ryouga sprinted in the opposite direction as Ranma and the others, while Tarou decked Shampoo with a surprise left hook.

Kodachi cringed as Kima's burst spanged around her. She felt a bullet ricochet through her cooling vest, and ice cold water doused her legs. A moment later the shrill of fusion scramjets filled her ears with dread.

The 7th Heavy Attack Squadron of the famed Blue Thunder Regiment screamed overhead at low altitude. Bombs fell from wing-mounted hardpoints into the midst of the Black Rose's personal guards. Massive explosions shook the ground and filled the air with the whine of shrapnel. Mortally wounded battlemechs toppled to the pavement, or careened drunkenly through wrecked buildings. As quickly as they had appeared, the fighters were gone.

Ranma and Akane tumbled in each other's arms as the concussions flung them through the air to land in the short stiff grass of the city's only park. Chunks of pavement rained down around them as they lay moaning on the ground, Ranma shielding her with his body.

"W-What?" Akane asked through a haze of pain.

"Airstrike," Ranma supplied for her. He saw his father and Doctor Tofu pull themselves upright several meters away. Beyond them he could see that the fighters' bombs had largely overshot the target, killing only three of the Black Rose's guards, but shaking them up enough to permit escape. The survivors were busy scanning the sky for another attack. He could not see what had happened to the Black Rose.

Akane pushed herself up, and he moved off of her.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"I saw 'em circling overhead at high altitude," Ranma replied. "I figured there was no way they could pass up a fat target like a company of 'mechs all bunched up in one place."

"Come on, boy," Genma called to them. "We have to get out of here."

"No shit," Ranma spat. "Any bright ideas on how we do that?"

"I don't think they took the truck when they arrested us," Genma answered his son. "We parked it across the street, remember?"

"Yeah. I guess it's worth a shot."

Akane spied Ryouga wandering in a daze through the smoke and fire of the destroyed Police Headquarters. Kodachi's black Marauder loomed motionless over him.

"Ryouga!" she called to him.

He looked up as if hearing voices in his head.

"Ryouga!" she cried again.

He turned and spotted them, puzzlement clear on his bloodied face.

"What's the big idea?" Ranma asked her.

"We can't just leave him here," she retorted.

Ranma shook his head. He didn't really have anything against his one-time rival. "I guess not."

Ryouga started their way. He had a nasty cut on his scalp that dripped blood down the left side of his face. Doctor Tofu met him halfway to look at the wound, but without any medical supplies, there was little he could do.

"What is it?" Ryouga asked her.

"You're coming with us," Akane said to him.

Ryouga's heart leaped.

"R-Really? You w-want me t-to...?"

"Of course!" Akane said with a grin. "We can't leave you to the Black Rose or those Amazons."

"Speaking of which," Ranma interrupted. "Why don't we talk about this somewhere else? Before the Black Rose or those crazy Amazons come after us again."

Ryouga shook his head. "I have to get my battlemech," he told them. "I can't leave it behind."

"Great. Where and what is it?" Ranma asked, wondering not only if they would have enough time to get it, but whether or not they would be able to squeeze it into the Palomino. The Leopard Class was famous for its ability to surpass its load limit and still make it into orbit, but there was only so much it could do.

"It's at the fort," Ryouga said, pointing in the wrong direction. Ranma steered him towards the south, and the pillars of smoke and flame that rose from the heaviest fighting.

"You mean over there?" Ranma asked. "In the middle of Hell?"

"I won't leave it behind," Ryouga snarled. "That BattleMaster has been in the Hibiki Family for over a hundred years!"

"BattleMaster?" Ranma gaped. No wonder Ryouga was so reluctant to give it up. Not only was the 85-ton battlemech one of the most fearsome in the Inner Sphere, it was also one of the rarest. "Why didn't you say so sooner?"

Ryouga's face darkened. "You wouldn't give me a chance!"

Ranma patted him on the shoulder. "Don't sweat it, Ryouga. Let's go." He turned to his father. "Pop, me and Ryouga are gonna go get his 'mech."

Genma didn't look very thrilled by this, but grudgingly assented.

"Don't take too long, boy," he told him. "We'll wait for you on the west side of town near the highway."

Ranma nodded. The west side of Capra City was about the only part that hadn't been flattened by the Black Rose's Terror Regiment.

"Gotcha. Come on, Ryouga!"

Ranma started off down the ruined street with Ryouga following close behind. Their eyes darted furtively between the fallen Black Rose battlemechs, which remained motionless. Their pilots were either dead or stunned from the bombing attack. The others were still watching the sky, and paid no attention to the two mechwarriors as they darted between piles of rubble.

Akane watched the two of them go. The jerk had been so excited about Ryouga's BattleMaster that he hadn't even bothered to say good-bye.

Ranma and Ryouga passed by the wrecked Joketsuzoku truck. Joyful Cloud sat still and dead within the cab. Kima and Shampoo were nowhere to be seen, and neither was Tarou.

The Black Rose was also nowhere to be found, though her Marauder stood silent and motionless above them. Ranma didn't think it was too much to ask that she had been killed in the bombing attack. Talk about a scary chick. Anyone who attacked a planet just to settle a score was some kind of sicko.

"So how'd you end up in a dump like this?" he whispered to Ryouga as they turned from the street that led to the Police Headquarters and started for the fort. The city echoed with weapon fire and explosions, some distant, others unsettlingly close.

"It's a long story," Ryouga replied.

"I'll bet."

A stray missile dropped to the street close enough to feel the heat from the blast. The two dove for the cover of a parked car in case more missiles fell. Two Combine Slayers screamed overhead a moment later, their heavy autocannons hammering some unknown target, and then they climbed almost vertical for the morning sky.

"Why are you helping me, Ranma?" Ryouga asked as they waited for the fighting to pass.

"I always wanted to see a BattleMaster," the pig-tailed mechwarrior replied. "I've never seen one up close."

Ryouga grunted. "Now tell me why you're really helping me."

"Oh come on, Ryouga, it's obvious. We both know about your direction sense."

Ryouga lowered his eyes. "There is that..."

"Plus I've always wanted to see a BattleMaster up close," Ranma added. "That part was true."

Ryouga stood, and started down the street at a run.

"Then come on, Ranma."

"It would help if you started running in the right direction, dork!" Ranma retorted. "You're heading back the way we came!"

Ryouga froze in place, shame burning upon his face as brightly as the flames of the city.

Ranma laughed at him. "Gotcha! You were going the right way all along."

The fanged mercenary strongly considered beating Ranma senseless and leaving him in the street.

Kima shook herself back to alertness with the sound of the bombs still ringing in her ears. She had taken cover underneath the truck when the fighter-bombers struck, and had been spared the carnage delivered to the Black Rose's guards. She could not see Shampoo - or anyone else for that matter.

The pavement beneath her was wet with antifreeze from the truck's shattered radiator, and with blood that dripped through the jagged hole in the back of the cab where Joyful Cloud sat. She pulled herself free of the truck's undercarriage and groped for her submachinegun.

A foot came down on her hand, crushing it against the hard cold metal of the weapon. She yelped in pain, forgetting herself as one of the great Joketsuzoku.

She looked up to see Pansuto Tarou grinning down at her.

"You won't be needing that," he told her.

His bishonen features were smeared with blood and smoke from the bombs. How he had survived, she did not know. She did know that it was a very bad thing for her that he had.

"It's everyone for themselves," Kima told him. He put a little more weight down on her hand. "There's no need to continue this," she said between clenched teeth. "Just go! I don't care if I ever see you again!"

Tarou eased up on the pressure, though not enough to let her hand free.

"I have a problem," he told her.

"Maybe I can help?" Kima asked.

"You can."

Tarou lifted his foot to strike her across the nose. Kima's head rocked to the side, blood streaming freely from what was now a broken and rapidly swelling nose.

"You see, my problem is with all of you goddamned Amazons," he explained to her. His foot in her stomach accentuated the point he was trying to make. "You ruined my life with your Jusenkyo experiments!"

Kima coughed violently, not knowing if the sticky blood that smeared her hands was from her nose, or from deep inside her.

Tarou pushed her down to the pavement with his foot.

"You turned me into a monster."

She looked up at him through the swirling motes of pain that swam before her eyes.

"I'm not to blame for what happened to you," she croaked.

"Aren't you?" Tarou accused. He kicked her down again. "You're all to blame for this. If you had left those damn pools alone, none of this would have happened to me!"

Satisfied that Kima wasn't going anywhere for the moment, he stalked over to the corner of the street, and the fire hydrant that stood there on the concrete sidewalk.

"It took me awhile to come to grips with what I am," he told her. "I can see now that what you've given me is more of a gift than a curse, but damn you for not giving me a choice!"

He lashed out with a vicious kick that ripped the hydrant from the flange it was bolted to underneath the concrete. Water geysered into the air and drenched him into his monstrous Jusenkyo body. He stood under the spray for some time, lost in rapture.

Kima was too horrified and too hurt to do anything but stare at the thing Tarou had become.

His hellish eyes opened and fixed upon her. He started towards her, his soggy fur dripping water in puddles behind him. The eerie tentacles across his back whipped and swayed menacingly in the hot breeze. The water from the ruptured hydrant began to stream towards her as he approached.

She expected him to say something, but his monster form was incapable of making any sounds other than guttural grunts and howls. She groped once again for the submachinegun. If she didn't kill him now, she wouldn't live to see the next sunrise. She caught the weapon up in her hand and sprang with desperate energy to her feet.

Her gorgeous white wings unfurled behind her as the cloak fell away. She leaped for the air, leveling the weapon at Tarou's face as one of his grossly long ape-arms grabbed her by the throat.

She squeezed the trigger, eager to watch his hideous face explode in a spray of blood and bone, and heard only the hollow sound of the firing pin falling on an empty chamber.

Tarou's laughless eyes blinked twice in surprise at this fateful turn of fortune, and then he began to crush her throat. He increased his grip slowly, so that she could have some sense of appreciation for her impending death. Kima thrashed in his monstrous grip, her legs flailing and the spent machinegun battering his arm to no effect.

Finally, he felt the cervical bones in her neck give way with a sickening crunch, and she went suddenly limp, as if turned off by a switch. He regarded her for a moment, and found that her wings and her bird-of-prey countenance were beautiful to behold.

With a grunt of satisfaction he tossed her aside. Her limp body, still hanging on to the grey fringes of life, fell into the streaming water from the broken hydrant. The Jusenkyo Effect worked its impossible magic one final time upon her, and Kima died not as a Joketsuzoku, but as Akane Tendo's doppleganger.

It was only then that Pansuto Tarou felt any twinge of regret for what he had done, for it became clear that she had been as much of a pawn and a victim of Joketsuzoku ambition as himself.

He turned his attention back to the burning city. The Black Rose's guards fired wildly into the morning sky as Combine fighters darted to and fro overhead. The Black Rose herself was obviously a casualty, as her Marauder remained motionless in the midst of the onslaught.

The purple-haired Shampoo was nowhere in sight, he realized. Perhaps she had been blown to bits in the airstrike. There wasn't time to confirm this however, as he had to get to the fort to reclaim his Hunchback. Once mounted, he'd kill the rest of the Amazons on Capra.

Nerima Confederation DropShip Palomino

40 kilometers west of Capra City

Planet Capra, Capra System

The League of Five Nails

15 March 3025

Tatewaki Kuno had chosen the area near the Palomino for his drop zones, a fact that was noticed immediately by the stalwart crew of the Confederation DropShip. Combine Pathfinders roamed the surrounding desert with their luminescent panels and marking strobes, but had avoided the depression of the wadi for obvious reasons. They needed a broad stretch of flat ground to land so many ships.

Happousai listened to the sounds of aerospace fighters racing overhead from the highest inhabited point on the Palomino, a dorsal hatch through the pressure hull aft of the flight deck. The camouflage tarps fluttered in the rising pre-dawn breeze over his head, restricting his view of the sky. From the number of fighters he heard, there was no doubt about the size of the approaching force.

The cover of darkness would spare them from observation, but darkness was going away in under twenty minutes. After that, there was no hope of remaining undetected for long. The tarps and the wadi were meant to conceal from a distance, not right under your nose.

What had that fool Genma done now? he wondered idly.

He considered taking his Locust out to investigate the situation more closely. There was definitely fighting in the city, and who knew what had landed close by. It didn't look like a good idea, but he was feeling restless.

He dropped down through the hatch and confronted the DropShip Captain.

"I'm going to go take a look-see," he told the Confederation officer.

"Be careful," the Captain admonished.

Happousai cackled.

"Careful is my middle name," he retorted. "But for your sakes, I'd have those scrumptious little girl pilots of yours ready to fly on a moment's notice. You might need to make a fast getaway."

"We will not leave Lady Akane behind," the Captain protested.

Happousai regarded him for a moment.

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

His Locust powered up. That long-haired fox, Akari, had really put the fire back into his battlemech. Then again, that hot tamale in tech's overalls could probably put the fire back into a lot of things... He'd have to thank her in his own special way when he returned.

The 'Mech Bay door opened, and he stepped out into the wadi. There was little room to maneuver between the DropShip and the sides of the wadi, and he had to take his time getting clear.

Once he was clear, he ran at a full tilt up the slope and onto the expanse of desert pavement the Combine had chosen for its Drop Zones. The winking of landing strobes was distant, barely on the horizon. That was a relief. At least they wouldn't have any Combine DropShips landing next door.

Brilliant lances of plasma fire from descent engines lit up the desert as the first DropShips set down. He counted at least three Overlords, plus a swarm of Union and lesser ships. That kind of firepower was reserved for major campaigns, not a jerkwater planet like Capra.

He tried to scratch his head in contemplation, forgetting about the neurohelmet that rested upon his aged head.

What in blazes was going on?

There was only one way to find out.

The Locust stomped towards the Drop Zone. It didn't take long for the speedy chicken-walker to reach the Combine pickets. He did the smart thing and held his fire, trusting to the initial confusion of the drop and the efforts at forming up units to keep the pickets from realizing that something was wrong and sounding the alert.

He slowed down to a reasonable pace and tromped past the pickets while flashing his running lights twice in salute. The Pathfinders in their all-terrain jeep gave hesitant waves and watched him go. Suckers...

He was deep within Combine lines now, and though he drew looks from some of the troops he passed, the fact that he was not shooting, and that no one was shooting at him, was enough to convince them that nothing was wrong.

There was no doubt about the forces. They were Furinkan Combine troops. The large green and brown pineapples stenciled upon the surfaces of DropShips, battlemechs, and vehicles made that clear. He spied several ships with the distinctive logo of the Blue Thunder Regiment, and started towards them.

So, he thought to himself. Tatewaki Kuno is here. There was only one reason why that pompous buffoon would even bother with a planet like Capra, and that fact meant that Happousai wasn't the only spy within the Tendo household.

It intrigued him, but as two Centurions were now challenging him over the radio, he had other problems. There was no sense in continuing the charade, so he kicked his throttle fully open and made a dash for the open desert. Long Range Missiles pelted around him as he weaved between DropShips and other transports. Nearby battlemechs began to turn in his direction with surprise as the alert went up.

Tatewaki Kuno walked his Thunderbolt clear of the Oda Nobunaga. The sky was getting brighter, and promised good hunting weather. His troops were forming up around him, and there were already encouraging reports from the aerospace fighters that engaged his sister's forces in the city.

It was then that he saw the Locust ducking and weaving around his ships with over a company of 'mechs in pursuit. Frowning, he switched over to the Guard channel and was stricken by the cacophony of shouts and curses from the Locust's pursuers.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded over the commo. How had one of his enemies penetrated his lines so effortlessly?

"Gang way!" a wizened voice cackled in reply. The Locust was running straight for him.

Tatewaki Kuno seethed with anger, and drew his Thunderbolt's katana.

"Hold, villain!" he called to the charging Locust. "Dost thou not realize that thy foe is none other than the future First Lord of the Star League; the mighty heir to the immortal samurai traditions of Musashi and Tokugawa? It is I, the great Prince Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine!"

"I don't care if you're Jean Harlow doing a striptease in a feather boa!" Happousai shot back. "Move it or lose it!"

The Locust leaped into the air, its long legs stretched out fore and aft like an olympic sprinter. Tatewaki raised his katana in defense, but not in time to stop Happousai. The Locust planted one of its bird-like feet firmly atop the Thunderbolt's cockpit and vaulted over the 65-ton 'mech. Tatewaki toppled over to crater the hard desert pavement of the ground below.

His troops scrambled to pull the battlemech upright, as others watched the Locust bound for freedom unopposed. Tatewaki Kuno shrugged off his minions, and watched angrily through his telescopic bifocal unit as the cursed foe escaped. His Thunderbolt's head bore the distinctive mark of the Locust's foot in chipped paint and creased armor.

"Fools!" he berated his men. "Why art thou not in pursuit?!"

His troops scrambled to comply, leaving him burning with a shame that only the capture of his sister and the rescue of the lovely Akane Tendo could assuage.

Fort Dettmering had taken a heavy pounding from the missiles and cannon shells of the Black Rose Regiment. The battlemech hangar itself was scored with over a hundred hits, and Ryouga feared the worst. He and Ranma picked their way through a massive hole blasted through the outer wall. The razor wire had been neatly cleared by the explosion, and coiled angrily in a tangled mass of steel to either side of them.

"I hope there's something left," Ranma muttered to him as they passed by the shredded bodies of the mercenary garrison's infantry. A Phoenix Hawk lay smashed through the barracks building, its rear center torso burned and blackened by what looked to be multiple particle beam hits. The footprints of other battlemechs were everywhere on the parade ground, as were bits of armor, and severed limbs from several different machines. An entire corner of the far retaining wall was gone, the edges smooth and glassy, and a column of steam rose from the center of what was apparently a fatal reactor crash-out.

The fighting had moved on from the fort, it seemed. With Combine fighters hunting for Kodachi's troops (exactly why this was happening, Ranma had no clue), the Black Rose Regiment was withdrawing from the city. Even the nearby starport was now quiet, though black smoke obscured most of it from view.

"I have to see for myself," Ryouga replied. These people who lay dead around them had been his comrades, even for only a short time, and anger swelled within him, crying out for revenge.

The hangar was as still and quiet as the rest of the fort. If there was anyone left alive, they were doing a good job of remaining unnoticed. Ranma noted that chunks of concrete and brick facing trickled down the sides of the mammoth building. An entire side could come down at any moment.

"Let's make this quick," he said nervously.

They had to force open a personnel door - it had hung up on its bent frame - to get inside. The 'Mech Bay doors all required electrical power that no longer seemed to be present. It was a quick walk through a hallway before they entered the interior of the hangar.

Ryouga's BattleMaster and Tarou's Hunchback stood apparently unharmed within their revetments. They were dusted with plaster and bits of cement, but it was clear that for all of the exterior damage, the interior had not been breached. Pale emergency lights cast long shadows around them.

"Whoa..." Ranma said in awe for the BattleMaster. While not the heaviest 'mech ever built, it was one of the tallest. Only the four-legged Goliath and the massive 100-ton Atlas were taller.

"It's still here," Ryouga gushed with relief. "Come on, we don't have time to gawk."

The BattleMaster had two seats. One was for the mechwarrior, the other, which sat above and behind the pilot, was for an observer of some sort or a field commander. Ryouga dusted off his neurohelmet and put it on. Ranma took his place in the upper seat, noting that the controls for the two aft-mounted medium lasers were available if Ryouga was otherwise occupied.

As Ryouga powered up, he spied Tarou scrambling up the gantry for his hunchback in his monster form. On the one hand he was glad that Tarou had survived, but on the other hand he didn't like the idea of Monster-boy coming with them. He watched in silence as the Hunchback powered up.

"Hey, isn't that the other guy's 'mech?" Ranma asked him. He had been studying the laser controls, and had not seen Tarou in his monster form.

"Yeah," Ryouga replied. "Lucky him, he made it."

"Well, let's go get him. Two 'mechs have a better chance of fighting their way out of here than one."

There, Ryouga thought. Ranma said it first. It's not on my head.

"Okay."

The BattleMaster waved its arm to the Hunchback, and Tarou, now human thanks to a flask of hot water he kept in his cockpit's food server, appeared on the display.

"What is it?" he asked tersely.

"Good to see you too," Ryouga returned. "We've got a way off this planet. Are you with us?"

Tarou paused. It was clear that he had other ideas in mind.

"Yes," he told them. "But first I need to go to the starport."

"Huh?" Ranma interjected. "There's no time for that. You heard Kodachi, her psycho brother is on the way. We've gotta bag ass now while the getting is good!"

"Then leave me," Tarou grunted.

Ryouga started the BattleMaster out of the revetment. He had no desire to argue with that statement.

"Okay, man," Ranma said, stunned by this refusal. "If you hurry though, you might still be able to catch us. We'll be taking the road heading west out of town. Look for us there."

"Don't wait for me," Tarou told him grimly.

Ryouga walked the BattleMaster to the only Mech Bay door that wasn't closed. It was blasted open from the outside. Piecing the battle together, he realized that the rest of the company had been able to clear the hangar, and that the ground crew must have shut the doors just before power was lost.

He crunched through the twisted debris that blocked his path. The giant battlemech snapped steel girders across its stout torso like twigs. Ranma felt a little jealous. His LAM was pretty cool, but did not compare to the sheer power of a BattleMaster.

Tarou's Hunchback followed behind them, peeling off for the starport as they turned west and toward the center of town. The firing was more distant now. It was clear that the Black Rose Terror Regiment was in full retreat from Tatewaki Kuno's forces.

They stomped along ruined boulevards, taking cover from the occasional Air Lance that streaked overhead looking for targets. Ryouga wisely held his fire, not wanting to draw attention to himself. As he crouched his BattleMaster behind a burned out building, he saw his favorite Japanese hole-in-the-wall below. A missile strike had gutted it, and he wondered if the couple who owned the place were all right. Perhaps the gods had been kind and spared them - while destroying the karaoke machine.

They skirted the government buildings rather than face the Black Rose's guards. This brought them into the open, and a pair of Hellcats dove on them from above. Lasers burned around them, melting streaks in the blacktop at their feet.

"Heads up, Ryouga!" Ranma called.

"I see them."

The BattleMaster raised its hand-held Donal PPC and fired. The four torso mounted medium lasers the Battlemaster carried in front were well suited towards anti-aircraft purposes, and began blazing streams of white-hot light at the two fighters. As they passed overhead, Ranma got into the act with the rear-firing lasers, finishing a Hellcat that Ryouga had crippled. The fighter tumbled towards the ground trailing smoke to crash in a huge fireball of plasma. An olive colored parachute above told them that the pilot had managed to eject.

"Got him!" Ranma crowed.

"I got him first!" Ryouga growled.

"No time to argue! Here comes the other one!"

The surviving Hellcat looped around for another attack. Its lasers burned into their formidable torso armor, scoring it with black streaks, but not penetrating. Ryouga let go with another burst of PPC and laser fire that blew out the nose and sent the Hellcat flying apart in midair.

The flaming debris rained down around them, and Ryouga started the BattleMaster off at a trot before any more fighters could investigate. They were too easy to spot from above in broad daylight, even with the copious amount of smoke that was in the air.

"Hey, not bad!" Ranma said with a grin. "We aren't a bad team."

Ryouga frowned.

"We are not a team," he insisted.

It was Ranma's turn to frown. "Jeez... Calm down, Ryouga. You'll live longer."

Ryouga didn't take the bait. Silence filled the cockpit, and Ranma returned to watching their back. As they cleared the open area without further attack, Ranma spied a curious sight in the rear-mounted gun cameras.

The Black Rose's guard was on the move at the extreme limits of his lasers. In the center of the retreating column was a Black Rose Victor that shouldered a weighty burden - that of a certain black Marauder. The mech's limbs hung limply over the Victor's shoulders, and its cloven-hoofed feet dragged on the broken pavement.

It was an oddly touching sight, and Ranma let them go without so much as a potshot at Kodachi. She deserved to die for wanting to have them all killed, and the Inner Sphere would definitely be a better place without her. It would be easy to squeeze off at least two double laser blasts into the Marauder's cockpit before her guards got wise to them, but Ranma simply couldn't bring himself to shoot.

He decided not to mention it to Ryouga.

Capra City Center

Ten minutes after sunrise

15 March 3025

Shampoo awoke to great pain. She pulled herself upright, feeling the swelling in her jaw and spitting out blobs of clotted blood. She was not looking her usual best. She remembered being knocked unconscious by a blow from Pansuto Tarou. After that she had no idea what had happened. Somehow she had ended up at the bottom of the parking garage ramp.

Kodachi's 'mechs were gone when she cautiously scaled the ramp. The sun was low on the horizon, and the sounds of fighters screaming overhead made her wary of exposing herself to their potential fire. The truck was still there, and Joyful Cloud, all of sixteen years old, was still dead within.

She searched about for some sign of Kima, and shuddered when she saw the dead body of Akane Tendo lying in a pool of water in the street. The water main pressure had subsided in the interim of her period of unconsciousness, and merely gurgled from the fractured flange.

Looking closer at the body, she nearly fainted. Akane was dressed in Kima's uniform, and several white feathers floated on the breeze about her still form. Even stranger, Akane had long blue-black hair...

Oh gods, Shampoo thought, her throat clenching tight in horror.

Kima...

She now understood the significance of her mission to Lightoller, of the body she had watched the two lab attendents stow in the ship's morgue. Kima had been exposed to the Jusenkyo Effect, in a pool that somehow made its victims take on the appearance of the Tendo girl. She remembered Gaido once telling her about how some of the pools had no 'assignments.' They must have found a way to give them one.

Horror gave way to sorrow, and then to anger. From the massive bruise marks on Kima's throat, she had been throttled to death rather than shot or stabbed. Taking care to avoid the water that would affect her own Jusenkyo transformation, she gingerly lifted Kima's body out of the puddle. Her head hung at a grotesque angle, and made a terrible grinding noise as it did so. Her neck had not just been snapped, it had been crushed.

The only people she could imagine having the brute strength capable of doing such a thing were Ryouga Hibiki and, in his suspected Jusenkyo form, Pansuto Tarou. She put her money on Tarou. That bastard could not hope to fathom the pain that he would suffer at her hands before the end.

She took Kima's body in a fireman's carry and started for the starport. If the gods were kind, the Jade Lotus would still be there, waiting for her.

The way was hard. Kima's dead weight would not have posed a problem to Shampoo had she been healthy, but her muscles ached and her body trembled with the pain of her fall down the ramp.

There was little fighting now. Except for the occasional air attack, most of it was distant and to the east.

She picked her way over the ruins of a mangled Dragon and came upon a terrible vista of destruction. A Warhammer, missing a PPC arm and looking as if it had been smashed down with a club, lay splayed and silent beyond the Dragon. A second Warhammer was charred and blackened. The pavement around the 'mech was completely gone, replaced with a jagged crater that exposed power and sewage lines below.

Beyond the second Warhammer was a Crusader. She could tell by the few spots of unblemished white paint on the legs that it had belonged to Mousse. It was wracked with a dozen grievous wounds, the paint blistered and cracked by an intense heat. A jagged scar ran along the left shoulder, exposing the reloading mechanism for the LRM rack.

She felt her knees go weak, and she set Kima's body down before she dropped her. Even Mousse was dead. There was no hope.

Shampoo sunk down to her knees and wept. It was not like her to feel so emotional in a time of crisis, but the pain and the hardship had come too hard and too fast. She tried to will the tears away, that she was a Joketsuzoku of the finest blood, and that she was stronger than that.

It didn't help. Her weakness in the face of adversity only made her cry harder. Kima was dead. Mousse was dead. Little Joyful Cloud, a girl on her first mission for the clan, dead without a chance to even defend herself. The rest of her clanswomen were probably dead as well. What difference did it make if she died too?

"Shampoo?"

She turned, startled, at the sound of the voice.

Mousse stood some distance from her. His bare chest was cut and bruised, and his trouser legs soaked with blood. He limped towards her, his long hair trailing over his shoulder in the hot desert breeze. She could see that his glasses were shattered, with one lens actually falling out in pieces as he moved.

"Mousse?" she called to him. She wasn't sure if she was seeing some apparition instead of the young mechwarrior.

"It's me, Shampoo," he replied. "Are you hurt? I can't see you very well."

She looked down at Kima. Dead Kima with the face of Akane Tendo.

"I'll be all right," she said softly to him. "But Kima is dead."

"Commander Kima?" Mousse cried in disbelief. He tried adjusting his glasses, which only made the other lens fall out.

Shampoo stood up. The wind carried with it the stench of cordite and death, and she flinched at the smell.

"What happened here?" she asked him after a moment's disgust.

Mousse tried to smile.

"I came to save you," he replied sadly. "I guess I ran into a little more trouble than I could handle."

She took a quick inventory. A Dragon and two Warhammers. Then she saw the Combine Zeus that lay shattered through the side of a building, and the half-melted ruin of her sister Recon Lance pilot's Stinger. Three heavies and one assault 'mech, all wiped out at the cost of a Crusader and a Stinger.

"You destroyed all these battlemechs?"

Mousse nodded, his sad blue eyes shining with grief that way she had seen them before she left Lightoller. "It wasn't enough... I failed you. I failed Commander Kima."

There would be no convincing him otherwise, so she changed the subject.

"What about the rest of the company?"

Mousse shook his head. "I don't know. The rest of the Recon Lance must have thought I died in the explosions. I saw them heading back to the DropShip before I blacked out. I sent the Fire and Command Lances to defend the Jade Lotus until we could return, but I don't know if there even is a ship left to come home to."

"We have to find out," she replied. Her courage had returned to her because of him. "I don't hear any fighting from the starport, so that means only one of two things."

She picked up Kima's body once more. "We have nothing to lose by trying, Mousse."

Mousse managed to smile. "I'll follow you anywhere, Shampoo."

Pansuto Tarou could see the wary forms of Commonwealth battlemechs moving through the smoke. They had fought a hard battle against Combine skirmishers from the Black Rose Terror Regiment, and endured a punishing bombardment that included aerospace fighters. Though they had been victorious, they were hurting.

A single Hunchback in pristine condition could do a lot of damage.

He checked his ammunition status. His primary weapon was a monstrous Tomodzuru Type 20, a short-barrelled 210mm autocannon designed to smash armor and fortifications at close range. He carried just ten shells for it, but those ten shells could tear ten wounded battlemechs to pieces. Just one shell in a vital place would blast the DropShip's plasma drive to smithereens, stranding the Amazons on the planet and leaving them to their fate at the hands of the Combine.

He pondered this for a moment, judging whether it was worthy of his hunger for revenge against the Joketsuzoku to let Tatewaki Kuno do all the dirty work.

Tarou decided it was not. He carefully sighted in on his first target optically, not daring to use his radar and give them any warning before the shot came. When he judged the range and set his weapon, he breathed a curse for them and squeezed the trigger.

The massive autocannon belched a cloud of black smoke, launching over one hundred kilos of discarding sabot tungsten-carbide penetrator dart downrange. The fin-stabilized dart was a meter long and 100mm in diameter, and traveling at just under three kilometers per second. It smashed into the target Wolverine's chest, puncturing the damaged armor and sending a rolling shockwave through it that spalled off the aligned crystal steel in huge shards. It penetrated further, deep into the 'mech's internal structure, snapping through supports, severing control cables, and puncturing the Wolverine's pectoral myomers before punching cleanly through the reactor vessel.

The dart managed to overpenetrate through the rear armor and continue downrange for fifty meters before ricocheting off the battered hull of the Jade Lotus. This went unnoticed, however, as the Wolverine suddenly

exploded into a blindingly bright ball of silver fusion plasma.

Even before the hot ball of ionized gas could expand into nothingness and fade away, the Commonwealth 'mechs and the DropShip itself began unloading a merciless fire in Tarou's direction. Wildly aimed laser and particle beam fire slashed through his armor and annihilated his covering pile of rubble. The beams came with murderous intensity, forcing him back in shock.

He fired again, taking a Jenner's leg off at the hip and spinning the 'mech to the tarmac. Despite this loss, the Commonwealth fought back with savage intensity. Their beams cut deeply into his left arm and torso, melting the myomer bundles and exploding the elbow actuator.

Tarou had not expected such a massive and single-minded response, and particularly not from the DropShip's weapons. He swore at them through his crazed visor display and retreated at a run. His Hunchback had taken enough damage in mere seconds to make him reconsider another attack.

His vengeance was not a suicidal drive within him, but something focused and purposeful. There was nothing to be gained by dying in this manner. Another chance to punish the Joketsuzoku would come, and he would be ready for it.

Now it was time to take up the foolish Ranma Saotome on his offer of escape.

Pink watched the mercenary Hunchback flee, biting her lip in barely-contained wrath. She wanted to pursue, but her place was close to the DropShip, protecting it until Kima could return. The loss of her battle-sister Pekoe and her Wolverine would go unavenged.

Her twin sister Link broke cover, having obviously lost a similar battle with her conscience. The Dervish leaped over a gutted quonset hut, its jump jets flaring bright blue against the smoke.

Pink threw her own Dervish into action, its jump jets roaring at maximum output. She watched her own battlemech clear her sister's to set down just in front of Link.

"Stop!" she ordered her sister. The Fire Lance commander had been one of the fallen, and she had taken command of the company. Her Dervish's paddle-like hands thrust out to restrain the renegade 'mech.

Link's anguished face appeared on her display.

"Pekoe's death, unavenged, stains our honor! Let me kill that League backbiter!"

The jab pierced, for it echoed her own feelings of shame and remorse.

"No, sister. Our orders are clear. You stain your own honor to put your desires before the good of the clan."

Link swore, and signed off. Her Dervish returned to its position.

Pink, now acting commander of the company, decided she was too young for the job. When would Kima return?

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted the truck with his father and Akane waiting for them near the highway entrance. Most of the fighting had left the city as Kuno's Blue Thunder Regiment pursued the fleeing Black Rose. They had their chance to slip away.

"Pull over next to them, Ryouga," he called to the fanged mechwarrior.

"What do I look like, a taxi?" Ryouga called over his shoulder.

The BattleMaster came to a halt next to the truck, and Ranma released the canopy to clamber down the side of the massive war machine. He leaped the last five meters to the ground and landed in the bed of the truck.

"Ranma!" Doctor Tofu said happily. "We were getting worried."

"Ah, it was no big deal," Ranma returned. He looked at his father. "I see the truck was still there."

"Bloody amateurs," Genma grunted. "Are you ready to go?"

"One second." He picked Akane up out of the shotgun seat and set her in the bed of the truck. "Akane, go up and keep Ryouga company."

"What's the big idea?!" she said angrily. "If you wanted to sit there, you could have just asked."

"Fine!" he cried. Women! "Akane, would you PLEASE go up and keep Ryouga company? I need to talk to Pop, and there isn't time to sit here and discuss this."

She looked him over. Why had she even bothered to worry about him?

"As a matter of fact, I'd love to talk to Ryouga. Unlike SOME people I could mention, Ryouga seems like a sweet, polite, and considerate man who would never treat his fiancee like trash!"

She slapped him hard across the face in conclusion.

He watched her climb up the side of the BattleMaster, rubbing the blazing red palm print on his cheek as he did so.

"You ready, boy?" Genma asked.

Ranma plopped down in the shotgun seat sullenly.

"Yeah, whatever. The sooner we're out of here, the better."

Genma put the truck in gear. "You know, son... You'll get more flies with honey than with vinegar."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ranma groused, still rubbing his cheek. "And what do I want flies for anyway?"

Genma shook his head. In spite of Ranma's surliness and his unrealistic sense of values, he was rather proud of the way he had raised him to be a man. Except for the part concerning women. "Never mind."

"H-Hello, Akane," Ryouga said shyly as she threw her leg over the side of the cockpit and climbed into the rear seat of the BattleMaster.

"Hi, Ryouga," she returned. Her smile seemed a little forced.

He lowered the canopy and sealed it. The battlemech began walking as he focused his attention on where he was going. Displays to the side of the cockpit began to indicate his agitated mental state.

"Um, Akane?" he asked at length.

"What is it, Ryouga?"

"It's, ah, it's none of my business, but I couldn't help but notice you and Ranma getting into a fight down there in the truck."

"No surprise there," she replied. "The jerk always starts something."

Ryouga nodded, then offered a silent prayer.

"So there's, um... There's nothing between you then?"

Akane did not notice the sudden hopeful tone in Ryouga's voice, as she was deeply involved with an internal inventory of her feelings for Ranma.

"He's my fiance," she said, deciding that the term for him was the only way she could describe him without opening herself to questions that she wasn't prepared to ask.

Ryouga's heart sank. Fiance!

"Oh."

"It wasn't our idea," she said, wondering what rock he had been hiding under for the last month and a half. Then she realized that the rock he had been hiding under was the same rock that they strode across at sixty-five kilometers per hour. "It was our fathers who decided."

A ray of hope began to shine once again within him.

"So it isn't like you love each other then," he observed.

Akane didn't answer, and in the silence that followed he decided not to ask again.

Finally, Akane looked up from her seat.

"Ryouga, it just occured to me that you don't even know who I am."

"Uh, what's there to know?" he asked.

She took a deep breath and decided to spill it. Ryouga seemed like a guy who could be trusted with her secret.

"I'm the daughter of Grand Duke Soun Tendo of the Nerima Confederation. You deserve to know at least that much if you're coming with us."

Ryouga was floored.

"You're the Heir to the Confederation?"

"Umm-hmmm."

"Here? In my battlemech?"

"Yep."

He didn't know what to say. Should he bow? Could he bow, given that he was strapped to his ejector seat, and tied in with various cables and cooling hoses? Why hadn't he remembered to clean the cockpit? There was trash and dust everywhere!

She could see his distress at this.

"Don't worry, silly! Just call me Akane, okay? We're supposed to be traveling incognito on this expedition anyway."

"Uh. Okay." He was trying to keep his heart from exploding with delight at being called 'silly' by her. She liked him! She had to like him!

Jusenkyo Commonwealth DropShip Jade Lotus

Capra City Starport, Capra City

Forty-five minutes after sunrise

15 March 3025

Pink didn't know whether to be relieved or horrified by what she saw below. Shampoo and Mousse were staggering from the ruins of the city, and Shampoo carried a limp Kima over her shoulders.

She adjusted her telescopic zoom to get a better look, and gasped.

The woman Shampoo carried was dressed in Commander Kima's ornately embroidered Commonwealth Ambassador's uniform cheongsam, but it was not her. Whoever she was, she was obviously dead. Where was the commander?

Mousse apparently had not died in battle, in contradiction of the testimony of the two survivors of the Recon lance that had accompanied him. She wondered how much of their haste to abandon Mousse was because he was a male who did not know his place among the clan rather than the amount of damage his 'mech had suffered in combat.

She ordered the DropShip to send medics out to assist them. Then she flicked her mic over to the external speakers.

"Where is Commander Kima?" she asked fearfully.

Shampoo looked up to face her young cousin. Tears made her violet eyes shine in the early morning light.

"Commander Kima is dead. There are no Joketsuzoku left in the city. I am taking command of the mission. Order the surviving members of the company to return to the Jade Lotus and prepare for emergency liftoff."

What Pink had feared was true. Kima was dead, and the mission had failed miserably.

She had her orders, and though there might be some question of Shampoo's fitness for command, at least someone was taking charge. She ordered the battered survivors of her company to withdraw by lance and board the DropShip.

Pink was the last to come aboard. Her battle-scarred Dervish was craned into its protective cocoon by the noisy hangar gantry, leaving her with one final look at the starport before the 'Mech Bay door closed and locked shut. They had fought an incredible holding action, but had lost several of their comrades doing it.

It was a bittersweet feeling when the Jade Lotus' main drive fired, forcing mechwarrior and crew alike down into their seats with five gees of acceleration. They were leaving Capra, a world Pink hoped she would never visit again - even as a conquerer. They would have to sustain this punishing climb long after they had left Capra's gravity well if they wanted to escape the swarms of Combine fighters that might rush up in pursuit. Their only chance lay in their vast reserves of reaction mass fuel, allowing them to sustain high levels of thrust for far longer than any fighter.

Tatewaki Kuno took the situation report from his 5th Sword of Thunder Regiment's Operations Officer from inside his Thunderbolt. The 5th had turned a Black Rose counterattack, and pursued them all the way to their drop zones - before running into a concentrated barrage of fire from Kodachi's well-trained armored cavalry units. The attack had stalled, allowing more than a battalion of her 'mech forces and some mixed units to escape. Those DropShips were being pursued, but it took away from his available close air support.

The escape of those renegades was infuriating to him. Who knew if they had Akane Tendo in their clutches? He had to trust to the gods of battle and the opinions of his Intelligence staff that she wasn't.

Meanwhile, his company of battlemechs continued to pursue the cursed Locust that had infiltrated his Drop Zones. The damnable mechwarrior had dogged his advance towards the city with pathological determination, approaching, firing at them, and then leading them on a merry chase before escaping from sight. He had lost several reconnaissance 'mechs in the process of running him down, and he knew that this foe was formidable.

His own Blue Thunder Regiment had better news to give, if ill-timed. They had routed his sister's forces in the city after heavy fighting, and one of his Air Lances had reported sighting her personal guards. They were even now in pursuit, while he was an hour or better from the city. It would be up to his troops to deal with her until he could arrive.

He wondered what she would do if she was cornered - which, with his regiment circling the ruins of the city in a cordon of steel, was about to happen. Would she fight?

Though she was his flesh and blood, he vowed that he or his forces would shoot her down if she did. Her bloody rampage across the Inner Sphere had run unchecked for too long, and it was time to end it. He would be First Lord of a united Star League, and it would not do to have old wounds by her hand festering in the new era of glory and enlightenment he had planned.

If she surrendered, it would be in the knowledge that Father would intervene on her behalf - as he had done many times before. Tatewaki knew that he must tread softly in this regard. Kodachi must be sequestered out of the public eye, and above all, Father must not know of it. Once he had her in custody he would send her to the Periphery. She was too dangerous any closer to him.

"My lord Prince," his Mifune Toshiro Company Commander called to him over the tac-net. "We have isolated the renegade guard forces of Princess Kodachi at map reference Lima-One-XRay by Mike-Five-Oscar."

"Doth my sister make claim to have the fair Akane Tendo in her clutches? ...Is there no appeal for pardon and safe passage?"

"No, my lord Prince," the Battlemech Captain replied. "Princess Kodachi has not answered our calls for surrender."

Tatewaki wondered at this. Surely she would not hesitate to play the lovely Akane Tendo off as hostage for safe passage to her ships? It seemed that the gods smiled upon him indeed, for she did not have Akane Tendo! He did not entertain thoughts that she might have already dispatched his fair goddess, for such was unthinkable to him.

"Excellent work, man!" Tatewaki exclaimed. He keyed his command channel mic. "Alert Miyamoto Musashi and Wakayama Tomisaburo Companies to converge on point Lima-One-XRay by Mike-Five-Oscar. Make haste with thee!"

He called up the map reference on a secondary display, complete with the latest intelligence data, and studied it.

The designated area was a ruined high school and a dense residential district, according to his photo reconnaissance. Rubble from the buildings had piled up into veritable drifts of debris, forming a narrow lane that screened them from direct flanking attacks. A jump-capable 'mech could top the debris for a shot at them, or to escape the defile, but the rubble was unstable, and any footholds tenuous. His forces had bottled up his sister within, and more and more Blue Thunder 'mechs arrived with each moment to reinforce the positions.

He had her!

It was now simply a matter of how she would submit. Would she fight, or would she surrender?

His presence could not guarantee one result or another, and he was too far away from the action to make a difference. They might be able to keep her bottled up without incident until he could reach the city, but she might well try to fight her way out first. He had the feeling that if she were going to surrender, it would have to be to him, and him alone.

"Company, come about right," he ordered his personal guard. "To the city, and a curse upon that infernal Locust which snaps at our heels!"

He walked his Thunderbolt to the southern end of the defile, and headed west towards the city.

Happousai frowned. That dunderhead Kuno was running the other way, back to the city, and opposite the direction that Genma and his motley crew would be taking to return to the ship. That is, IF they were returning to the ship. There had been no word from them since they left the previous day.

His game of hit and run was getting tiresome, and for little apparent result. If the mission was already compromised, there was nothing he could do about it. The hard part would be convincing that stubborn DropShip pilot to leave. He didn't put much faith in being able to do that.

As much as it pained him, he realized that he would have to make a run through the city to see if he could find them. It was possible that they were holed up somewhere until the fighting was over. Actually, given Genma's penchant for self-preservation, it was likely they were in hiding.

If he was going to do it, he might as well have some fun in the process.

He throttled up to maximum, and the Locust stretched out its long legs across the expanse of desert. A ridge of sandstone in the distance marked the steady downward grade beyond, to the valley where the city lay, and he'd really make good time then. The line of Kuno's battlemechs were an obstacle to his progress, though not a very effective one.

They were watching for him, which he was expecting, and a full lance stopped and turned to face him. He cut across at an angle to them, keeping out of range from their array of medium lasers - the mainstay of a 'mech's armament. Long Range Missiles flared up at him, as did a few beams of blue and yellow light from heavy lasers.

The beams sizzled around the Locust, utterly failing to connect, and the first volleys of missile fire exploded impotently at his heels. The Combine 'mechs began to move now, realizing that he was in a position to outflank them if they didn't.

He watched them through his canopy as he continued his headlong charge forward and to the right of their positions. When he judged the moment had come, he cut his turn sharply to the left, and pivoted on the springy sand with a remarkable agility. The abrupt turn threw off the range estimates of the Combine 'mechs, and their next missile volleys fell long.

The Locust skittered across the sandy ground past the left anchor 'mech of the Fire Lance. Happousai held his fire, knowing that a medium laser and a pair of SRM twin-racks wasn't much against an Archer. The heavy missile 'mech tried catching him with its own laser array, but the beams crazed only the empty air around him.

He was in the middle of the company now, and quickly spied his target. He cut right once again, avoiding a salvo of Short Range Missiles that threw enough sand and smoke into the air to obscure any further attempts to spot and destroy him before he could accomplish his objective. Mass confusion reigned as the remainder of the Combine 'mechs halted their advance to deal with him.

The Locust sprang into the air once again, landing upon the Thunderbolt of the ineffable Tatewaki Kuno, would-be First Lord of the Star League. The heavy battlemech once again toppled over into the sand, and Happousai sailed on to dart away unscathed. Fellow Blue Thunder Regiment pilots swore that they heard a cackling sound emanating from the Locust's external speakers as it dashed off towards the sandstone ridge.

Tatewaki Kuno noted the fine grains of sand displayed in his visor while suspended nearly upside-down in his ejector seat straps. The local equivalent of an ant lion angrily burrowed itself out of the sand before his cockpit, and sprayed the visor with an obscenely green fluid. Tatewaki sighed to himself, wondering if General Kerensky had ever faced such ignominious circumstances on his path to victory against Amaris the Usurper.

"Hey, Pop, we've got company ahead," Ranma called to his father.

Genma squinted at the rough sandstone ridge. There was movement, but whatever it was, it was well camouflaged to the local color scheme.

"Better prepare the welcoming commitee," he told his son.

"Gotcha."

Ranma reached behind him into the bed of the open-topped truck. Concealed beneath a few ratty old blankets was a plastic crate. Doctor Tofu helped him pull the blankets off, allowing him to draw a shoulder-launched SRM twin-rack from within.

He made a quick check of the weapon's batteries, and pulled the safety ring from the trigger mechanism before propping the launcher into position on his shoulder. The boresight glowed green in his eye, and the targeting sensor's chin rest vibrated a soft high-pitched tone through his jawbone to his eardrums.

"One persuasive argument, ready to go."

They could now see that it was a Locust, moving fast through the canyon cut into the sandstone ridge for the highway. It was headed straight for them.

Ryouga's BattleMaster flashed its running lights twice, letting them know that he had seen the Locust as well. Ranma did not expect the small chicken-walker to put up a fight. The smart thing for it to do would be to run like hell.

The SRM launcher's chin-rest began to warble in his ears as the sensor fixed on the heat pouring out of the Locust's radiators. The tone became steady and low when he was in range to shoot.

"Say the word, Pop," he said to his father. The missiles wouldn't stop the battlemech in one salvo, but were enough to give any light 'mech pause before deciding to attack.

"Hold your fire, Ranma," Genma replied. "It's the Master's Locust."

Ranma's finger tensed ever so slightly on the trigger before he lowered the weapon.

"Whatever you say." He turned to instruct Ryouga not to shoot. "Hey Ryouga! Don't shoot, okay?"

Ryouga Hibiki zoomed in on the approaching Locust with his telescopic unit. Ranma was waving his arms below and yelling something, but it was difficult to hear him over the sounds of both 'mech and truck moving along the broken pavement.

"What's Ranma saying?" Akane asked. She held half of a headset up to her ear that was tied into the external microphones.

"I think he's telling us not to shoot," Ryouga replied. "Do you know this Locust pilot?"

Akane put the headset down. "Unfortunately, yes, I do know Master Happousai."

Ryouga made a noise that sounded rather like being strangled.

"D-Did you just say: H-Hap-Hap-Happousai?"

"Why, do you know him?" she asked innocently.

Ryouga clenched down on his controls.

"THAT RAT BASTARD!!!"

The BattleMaster fired a blast from its Donal PPC. The bolt of charged particle fury leaped across the empty space that separated the two bitterest of enemies with a deafening thunderclap. Ranma fell down in surprise and shock in the truck bed below.

"Ryouga!?" Akane cried in surprise. "I thought you just said Ranma told us not to fire?"

"That... That... Oooooo," Ryouga snarled, oblivious to Akane's cries. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU NOW, HAPPOUSAI!!!"

Happousai felt the bolt slam into his Locust's right torso, instantly annihilating the armor and blasting deep inside the 'mech. Damage lights flicked on, and a litany of computer warnings filled his headset. The Locust careened out of control for a moment as he rubbed at the spots in his vision caused by the blinding particle beam.

"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. Then he finally recognized the BattleMaster that trailed behind Genma's truck. Ryouga's hate-filled voice rang in his ears over the radio a moment later, confirming his dire suspicions.

"Idiots!" he called to them, putting his 'mech into a full evasive zig-zag run away from them. "Here I am, trying to warn you about Kuno, and THIS is how you repay me!"

"What the hell is going on back there?" Genma demanded.

"That's what I'd like to know!" Ranma replied. "Ryouga's blown a fuse or something!"

They watched the Locust run away to the south, trailing smoke and sparks from the particle cannon hit. More bolts of lightning followed the 'mech as Ryouga's BattleMaster lurched off the highway in pursuit.

"Still, I wouldn't lose any sleep over the Master's death," Genma observed.

"Me neither," Ranma agreed. "But this ain't the time or place for it." He picked up their small field radio set and turned it on. They had been under a strict policy of radio silence thus far, but this ugly situation demanded immediate clarification. "Hey, Akane! Would you mind talking some sense into that lame-brained idiot up there? I told you guys not to shoot at the Locust!"

"I'm trying, Ranma, but he won't listen!" she responded. He could hear Ryouga's growling curses in the background.

"Keep trying!" Ranma said lamely. There was nothing else he could say.

"Ryouga!" Akane cried at the top of her lungs. "Stop shooting this instant! Do you hear me?!"

Ryouga abruptly let off on the weapon trigger. He turned around as if coming out of a trance.

"Did you say something, Akane?"

She gave him a flustered look. "I've only been yelling at you for the past minute. What's with you, Ryouga? Ranma told you not to shoot."

Ryouga brought the BattleMaster to a halt, and watched the smoking Locust flee out of range.

"I'm sorry, Akane," he said to her softly. "I don't know what came over me. When I realized that it was Happousai I just..." his voice trailed off, and he looked at his trigger finger as if for the first time.

Her expression softened into pity. "I don't blame you for not liking Happousai," she said to him consolingly. "No one else does, but since he is the Master of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts, we just have to tolerate him, okay?"

Ryouga looked down at his lap in shame.

"For you, Akane."

"Hmmm?" she asked in puzzlement.

"For you, I will try to control my temper. It won't be easy. Because of Happousai, I've looked into the abyss of Hell itself, and that abyss has looked back at me ever since."

He started the BattleMaster up again to rejoin the truck on the highway, leaving Akane hushed and still with wonder over just what Happousai had done to the poor dear.