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Draconis Combine, Pesht Military District
Kagoshima Prefecture,
SLDS Torin Kerr (Confederate-class DropShip)
The harsh buzzer shocked me awake only seconds before hands clapped a bag over my head. I struggled, half-trapped in the bedding of my bunk as a harsh red warning light flashed, bathing the room in flashes of dark blood between moments of darkness. Air with a harsh chemical tang entered my lungs despite the bag, air coming in a flat mechanical hiss as I realized that the hands were my own.
The buzzer was one of several alarms. Distinct, impossible to ignore sonic assaults that slammed into you, or crawled into your cranial vault, nested in your brain, and began to scream.
Bad sensor. That was my first thought. The second was that some practical joker had decided two days after Christmas was a perfect time to hold a chemical weapon drill but by then I had already ripped open the compact gear locker in the small bunkroom that was 'mine' for as long as my battalion had the ready-alert duty, and was pulling on my combat suit as I eyed the tell-tales by the door.
The environmental systems had not been designated to flake out by the computer that was no doubt over-seeing this particular exercise in sadism, which meant that every room in the barracks had automatically sealed. If anyone was designated as being 'unconscious' or 'injured' this would eventually kill them if normality wasn't restored before their bottled oxy ran out. The environmental computer was programed to be paranoid. If its sensors tripped the computer quarantined all the bunk rooms, the idea being that those people exposed couldn't expose others to the agent-of-choice that the 'bad guys' had decided to introduce to our air mix.
There were stories of a battalion on ready-alert status losing a whole company after their rooms were locked down and then their block lost power. By the time anyone knew something was wrong and went to do something about it they had depleted the available air in their rooms. The armoring in the barracks is too strong to cut through with the bail-out weapons in our gear-lockers, and—admittedly for obvious reasons—was designed to resist people cutting in from outside.
It hadn't happened in my memory. Not to a company, not to a single man, but there were those stories….
If a contact agent had gotten through to my room, I'd have already been dead. All of the telltales said that my room was free of airborne agents as well. But like any component they could fail. It was decidedly unlikely, but the Colonel had gigged Liz for it once and… I left the neurohelm alone as I made the plumbing connections with indecent haste. The collar of the battledress sealed to the mask-bag-like thing over my head. With gloves and boots sealed at wrists and ankles respectively I was stuck inside a walking body-bag. Literally, if an agent was corrosive enough to eat through the suit. I thumbed the door release, and it turned amber. At least some rooms on the company block had been exposed or tagged as such so the computer wouldn't allow any more than one bunkroom door to be open at a time, and nobody could open someone else's.
The seals popped and it was out the door and right, past the rest of the lance. Run, because until I was clear the rest of the Company was locked up solid. Left, straight by the locker-room, through the company common room, then down the short hall with the Captain's and Top's offices on one side and those of the LTs on the other. The light over the stairs was lit, contaminated, but the lift was already standing open just like it was supposed to be.
I hit the touch-contact for the hanger, not wanting to risk the voice-protocols that were occasionally buggy when a person's speech-pattern was altered on account of illness or wearing a CBRN-filter mask. The doors slid closed and the floor seemed to drop out from under me. A moment later my suit puffed up like a balloon as the air was forcibly evacuated. I closed my eyes instinctively—emergency action drills are good at installing that kind of automatic reaction—but the flash of light was still almost blinding and my suit was suddenly hot against my skin.
Air buffeted me as the doors opened a moment before the lift slammed to a stop. I spilled out onto the catwalk and the doors whisked shut again. A right turn and three gantries down my 'Mech's hatch yawned open, engine-start initiated from the moment.
"Greetings, MechWarrior! You have been recruited by the Star League—"
"Seal the damn hatch! Emergency engine start, and cast off umbilicals and docking clamps," I snapped. The first four words being both an order and Black Watch-rigged bypass to the usual safeties that ensure only the appropriate user was taking control of a multi-ton walking engine of death and destruction. "Environmental check?"
"Atmosphere is clean."
And now I had no choice but to accept it because what I could do wearing the bag over my head was limited. I unsnapped the CBRN-filter and ripped the bag off my head. The neurohelm on the shelf over the command frame was a backup unit meant for situations like, well, this, and because it was a chemical-weapon drill I sealed up because that was the kind of thing the Colonel was going to check.
"Weapon status?" I asked, dropping into the command couch and strapping myself into place. Buckles for the ejection chair, survival pack, and parachute were first. Coolant feed, the thick plug that went into the helm in case the wireless capability was disrupted, independent air-feed in case the cabin was compromised, water tube, sanitary tubes, medical leads so that commanders up to the Old Lady could see the status of her troops, the icy contact against the inside of my left elbow for the limited supply of pharmaceuticals I could self-administer and the more varied supplies that commanders could order dispensed… One thing no action vid ever gets right—and recruitment vids make sure they never include—are the sheer number of things you have to plug yourself into. Of course, regular army doesn't have as many as the Royals do, and the Royals don't have as many as the Black Watch. The plumbing connections are one of the leading sources of voluntary drops during selection—and jokes in training—for the Regiment.
"Weapons green, magazines full, sensors nominal. Go for deployment."
A quick check of the hard-wired instrument backups confirmed I was golden. A check out the cockpit canopy showed a few other 'Mechs moving. Too few.
What the hell?
"Launch," I ordered, then, to the bay-controller. "Green-Two-Two, moving."
No response, not good.
"Intel update.
"Category III, Type 7 organophosphate nerve agent precursors were smuggled into barrack primary enviro—"
"Wait," I cut it off. "This is for real? This isn't a drill?" Category III agent was fast-acting and lethal. A gram of a type seven agent, given proper dispersion, would kill every living thing in a kilometer radius. For once the elaborate safety protocols didn't look quite so outrageous for a planetary installation.
"Affirmative. There are wide-spread reports of fighting both on the planetary surface and in near-space regions. Colonel—"
Fuck it. I reached down and snapped the wire guarding a protective cover which I flipped up, pressed the red button and broke about a dozen regulations. A light the color of fresh blood illuminated the words 'MASTER ARM'.
"Green-Two-Two, battle-ready," I reported into the battalion-net. No one else from the Company was up yet.
"Green-Two-Two, Black-Six-Actual, you are reassigned to Blue-Six."
Holy fuck, the Old Lady herself was up? She was supposed to be downtown for the parties over the next week.
"Ma'am, Green—"
"If no other Green element has reported battle-ready Two-Two it is because they are dead."
Double fuck. The skipper might still be alive. She'd gotten emergency leave to visit her brother in the Regimental hospital, but—
"Understood, Actual. Blue-Six, where do you want me?"
"Assembly Point Blue, five-zero-zero meters' south-west, break." Brief pause, and then she continued, "Reconfigure commo to Black-Blue-Three. Blue, reconfigure to lance ops. Green-Two-Two, you are now Blue-Four."
There was maybe a company moving. Normally the Barracks had the alert-duty 'Mech Battalion (64 mechs split between four companies and two command lances) plus supports, and one of the Regimental Command units. Call it another two 'Mech companies plus three or so of non-mech combatants. 80 percent, likely more, of the battalion just gone, plus Command…
Even as I thought this my fingers found the control panel that would reconfigure my lance/company comms, only to find I didn't need to. My Mech had picked up the order from the Old Lady and reconfigured them for me. Three months in Selection. Another six in Training. Six weeks active status and I still wasn't used to that. I was beginning to think I never would be.
"Blue-One to Blue units," said a voice I sort of recognized but couldn't pin a face to, "listen up. It's pretty obvious what's just happened. If not, let me spell it out. Someone, probably FAT MAN, is staging a coup d'état. The standing CAP was bushwhacked by two squadrons of fighters, and someone unleashed a pair of flyer-bombs in the wing's hanger that took out the launch tubes about the same time that the chemical attack went off against the Barracks. Even if any of our pilots survived, they're trapped unless they can dig themselves out."
"Blue Four, on station," I reported. The night was overcast, but three 'Mechs, a Guillotine, another Marauder, and a Black Knight, were silhouetted like grim ghosts against the white snow.
"Right then, let's move out." The 'Knight turned and headed south
"Two."
"Three."
"Four."
"The ready infantry battalion was left alone, either a miss or a premie, and—"
Either overlooked in planning, which was potentially a good thing because maybe whoever was doing this had missed other things, or it was picked up, intercepted, or delayed somehow, all potentially good things but not because of anything our enemies (or we) did.
"—is already mobilizing to secure its objectives. Recall has been sounded for those members of the Regiment on leave, and those on the base are mating up with their gear now. This is the good news.
"The bad news is as follows. Nobody has a fucking clue as to the real situation in Unity City. The worse news is that the 4th Dragoons have left their laager and are coming south.
"The Old Lady has activated Case Thermopylae, and taking personal charge of Task Group Leonidas. We've got something else in store for us."
Thermopylae was one of literally scores of defense plans the Regiment had. Assuming an attack in force from the north at the same time as a crippling attack on the Barracks, the survivors of the alert battalion would move north on a first-unit-available basis rather than reorganize which would be done on the fly. This group (TG Leonidas) would form up at the Gorst Flats and fight a delaying action while the rest of the Regiment got its act together and moved to secure Unity City.
It wasn't quite as bad as it sounded. The Flats were a narrow stretch with a steep drop into even deeper water on one side, and a nearly as steep, densely-forested hill on the other. If the Old Lady got into position first, there was a narrow section with a medium-grade slope down to the north up which the enemy could come up at her with maybe a company or so of 'Mechs at a time.
"That's going to suck, Boss." Different voice, presumably Blue-Two. "Why aren't we—"
"We can't change anything, not against a full regiment without air-cover," Blue-One—what was his name? Major Mac-something—said harshly.
Pain! Searing light fills the cockpit only for a moment before the canopy screen and the front of the neurohelm polarize to block out the light. Even through the double polarization there's an odd strobing effect.
"Impa—"
We're too close for the pseudo-personality to finish its warning before the shockwave bowled my 'Mech's 75-ton chassis through a small forest's-worth of pine trees like a bowling ball sent scything through pins. I hit my head and stars filled my vision—
—as I woke up in my cabin on Torin Kerr.
"How are you?" Thirteen asked.
"Ow," I managed. My head hurt. I was hovering above the bulkhead trapped in a net of bedding and the straps that were supposed to keep me in the bunk during micro-gravity were certainly not attached.
"You cried out," Thirteen said solemnly, wetting a cloth with a bulb of water and pressing it to my head as she gently guided me back down to the surface.
"I hate command-circuits," I muttered. "Don't have a problem jumping. No nausea or anything. I'm one in ten-thousand, or so I'm told. And I always forget and try to sleep. Damn jumps give me nightmares."
"Anything familiar?" she asked. "Dreams may hold portents…or so they say."
"The Coup," I said, getting an arm free at last to thumb on the bunk-light.
"Any changes? Anything stand out?"
I turned away, the bulkhead-mounted light over my bunk flashed in the mirror reminding me of the double-flash of the ground-penetrating nukes taking out Fort Cameron. "No, it was pretty much like I remember it."
"If you take those swords out once more you will need to retie your obi."
I turned away from my reflection in the viewport, thankful for the distraction. Luthien was traveling past (backwards, since we were waiting permission to land), truly the 'black pearl' of the Combine. What I really wanted was to look at something living, something green. Luthien…wasn't. Well, there were parts that were green—any planet is a big place, even one as heavily industrialized, and for as long, as Luthien was—but they were few and far between and mostly lost amongst the grey of industrial plants and the thick smog that replaced clouds.
In contradiction to the warning I resettled the saya of my daisho without retying the obi that held them.
Thirteen shook her head. "Even were technology to have failed entirely, you will not be able to win your way past all the guards of Unity Palace." Her voice was level, but she let me see the exasperation in her expression. I was one of the maybe three or four people she would have let seen that much under the circumstances. She could do inscrutable so well that even other Dracs couldn't read her though she usually didn't bother. There was also a point where inscrutable would crack which was probably why she usually didn't bother. She'd been as blank as a polished granite wall from the moment we passed the Combine's boarders and switched from Steiner (and Davion) jumpers to Dracs, as though the Coordinator would be able to divine her thoughts simply by her being in Combine Space.
"I do not need to defeat them all," I replied. "I merely need to best those that stand between me and my target."
"You will not slay the Coordinator."
"You don't think I can?" I asked.
She shook her head. "You did not listen to me. I didn't say you could not, I said you will not. We know nothing of Takashi, or of his son. But they are no more responsible for the actions—"
"Or inactions."
She glared at me for interrupting her, but only momentarily before acquiescing. "—or the inactions, of Minoru and Jinjiro than you are responsible for whatever quirk of hyperphysics transported us to…this place. Let it go."
"And am I supposed to 'let go' the duty you have asked me to take up?" I asked.
"You disapprove," she said flatly, this time the tone of voice telling me more about how that had hurt her than she allowed on her face.
"I understand your culture and society," I said, "Which means I understand why you think this…course of action is necessary. However, simply because I respect your culture, and even find much in it worthy of emulation, does not mean that I agree with all of its…mores. That is not the same as disapproving."
"That is a very Japanese way of saying you disapprove," she said with a smile.
"I will do my duty," I said with my own brand of inscrutable. None too good probably, I was out of practice.
"Hai, I know," she said soberly.
"I am tired of losing friends."
"The Way of the Warrior is the resolute acceptance of death," she quoted.
"Even Musashi eventually stopped killing people to create art."
"There is truth in this," she admitted. "And you?"
"The majority of my life has been spent killing people and destroying things, or practicing to kill people and destroy things. Perhaps I am growing tired of destroying the works of others."
"This is unlikely to change anytime soon."
"Hai. It is probably a good thing that I am good at it then."
How fucking sad was that?
Draconis Combine, Pesht Military District
Kagoshima Prefecture,
Luthien, Unity Palace
"Tell me, Theodore, what are thinking about the latest twist in the flow of events?"
"I am thinking that the Capellans' have a curse that strikes me as being particularly apt," Theodore Kurita told the Coordinator of Worlds. "'Interesting times' indeed. When Davion's first message arrived, I wondered if the Fox had grown senile."
"Not I," Takashi murmured, "though to use another delightful Cappellan expression, I did wonder if he had taken up 'chasing the dragon'." He smirked slightly, amused at the irony of the phrasing.
"Funny," Theodore said drolly.
"I thought so, therefore it is."
Takashi didn't give his heir a chance to respond. "The Fox has had the first benefit of these new players in the game, but I learned the truth of them first."
"It wasn't hard to determine that their ambassador was en route before General Winters made his HPG broadcast to the Successor Lords. I am…surprised that ComStar let them go through."
"ComStar didn't, intentionally," Takashi said. "Did you read the ISF report?"
"I'd not had a chance. I gave it low priority. I felt they could do little else than summarize other reports of what this SLDF Task Force might have available to it."
"Mostly they did just that," Takashi said. "However, they also looked at the message itself, or rather the technical means used to send it. It took no less than six, perhaps as many as ten, distinct HPG broadcasts encrypted using some form of binary-fractal encoding. They had to specifically reach, and pass through, the Luthien HPG in order for them to reassemble themselves. And to decrypt them required blood."
"A gene-lock? Interesting, and potentially it means that the Clans are unaware of the message's contents, but without knowing the specific technique it is of limited use to us."
"True, but we were discussing my ability to divine what others need revealed to them."
"Indeed," Theodore said dryly.
"One of their members contacted the Tamar Intelligence Section—excuse me, I mean Diplomatic Mission, of course—and allowed the Representative to take a genetic sample. That sample was digitized and sent using a priority HPG transmission to Luthien where it was compared against the inactive files of the DCMS, and those surviving Star League records we have protected over the centuries. We have a cousin on the DropShip that is even now entering our atmosphere."
"Ah," Theodore said. "One who is in a position to route resources to the Combine front, and away from the Commonwealth?"
"Unfortunately, not," Takashi said. He picked up a thin folder from his desk and passed it to Theodore. "The highlights from the archival record. The cousin in question—she is of a cadet house of the Kurita Clan, though one that served ably and well—deserted from the DCMS, inciting nearly a brigade's worth of our best BattleMech pilots and their support personnel to do the same, and against the expressed wishes of Minoru, took up arms with Kerensky against Amaris."
"I find it hard to blame her," Theodore said, not looking up from the file that he was quickly reading.
"Are you passing judgment upon a Coordinator?" Takashi asked.
"I am pointing out that to any other person who had done as he did, would have been presented with the Order of the Wakazashi!" Theodore snapped. "We both of us know what Minoru did, and we both know why he did it. One does not need to consult the Dictum Honorium to know that he placed personal honor above the Honor of the Combine and the Honor to his House. Let us be realists, Father, for by now the DropShip transporting them has landed and we have little enough time. If she has returned to us so quickly, so quickly that she took her leave before this 'General Winters' announcement, then it is only to cut her belly. She can no longer wait to bring honorable conclusion to the task she set herself."
"Hai," Takashi agreed. "In this much your thoughts echo my own."
"Father, I have read some of the SLDF," Theodore said. "Their units were often stationed and deployed together to create greater cohesiveness, familiarity. That she was with this task force means that most likely those troops that deserted with her and survived are also with this task force. If we allow her to perform sepukku, do you think their gaijin leaders will recognize the honor we do her?"
"Likely not," Takashi conceded. "I see where your thoughts lay, Theodore. You believe if we allow her to cleanse her honor they will instead see it as a punishment and so deny us the resources like those that they have clearly already pledged to Davion and Steiner. I too have had this thought and so have made preparations to subvert it for my end. I shall make a gift to these gaijin, one that they will not refuse, and so leave them indebted to me."
"You don't honestly expect them all to relocate to our front?"
"Of course not, Theodore, do not be foolish. I do, however, expect for some of them to so relocate. If they can slow down these foes from beyond the stars, all well and good; but if we can obtain some examples of their technology—working examples, preferably—so much the better."
Kurita no Takamori Muriko presented her splendidly authentic orders for the forty-second time and quietly and (again) successfully resisted the urge to tap her foot. Despite her many reasons to question her father's judgment, his decision to break with tradition and secure her a place in the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery had never been among them. She could follow court protocol with the best of them when she had to. Better, actually, for on that basis alone a cousin had strongly 'encouraged' her to join what passed for a diplomatic corps in the Draconis Combine. Her father, thankfully, had demurred. She could act the part, but both of them had known that she was acting. Sooner or later (probably the second, but it would get to that point eventually) her lack of patience with polite nothings would have spelled her undoing. At least in the DCMS she could, and had, challenged those who were scornful of the presence of a mere woman.
As if any member of House Kurita, no matter how distant, could be a 'mere' anything.
The Otomo's eyes examined the orders while his partner's eyes were fixed on her and her companion. He kept his face politely blank, but even his face controlled into an iron-hard mask didn't hide the disapproval she had seen on far too many faces with even politer blank masks to have missed.
"These orders say nothing about the Gaijin," the first said.
"I am accorded a guardsman, Gunsho," Muriko said icily. "Chu-sa Talbot not only has rank for it, but also has far better command of his tongue, in this language as well as his own, than you do. Or, if you will not accept him as my guard, you will accept him as the personal representative of General Richard Winters, Officer Commanding, Task Force TH-X1138."
"Who?"
"Do you have any idea at all who I am?" Muriko asked. "Or is your ignorance of matters outside the walls of the palace so great that—" she paused as the Otomo sergeant began to raise an arm.
"If you move to strike, Gunsho," Roland said in his softest, most deadly-polite voice, and in English rather than the Japanese that had been spoken thus far, "you will lose your hand at the wrist and then explain to the Dragon why the Tai-sa has blood on her uniform. If you are lucky, perhaps you shall have bled to death before He can deny you seppuku for your discourtesy."
The man's face went white with poorly suppressed rage, and Muriko kept her face politely blank rather than the crusty smirk she really would have preferred. Out of practice or no, and Roland still was one of the best at politely insulting someone, and knowing exactly where the line for that insult was. In this case just over the edge of what should have provoked a personal duel that the Gunsho could not call for. Not to someone the Coordinator had directly requested the presence of, not of her guardsman, and certainly not when that guard had been perfectly correct in stopping him from touching her.
Triply insulting, actually, not only the direct insult, but also in reminding the Gunsho of the duty he had forgotten, and lastly in saving his life. If he had actually struck her…
He would be lucky to only die, Muriko decided. Cousin Minoru would have his family sold as slaves. Jinjiro would have made it hurt.
"Be wise, Gunsho," Muriko said in a silky voice, finally taking pity on the man. Had the man frozen because he was presented with something that he had no idea how to respond to and his training unable to overcome surprise, or had the standards for the guards of the senior branch of her family fallen as far as everything else seemed to have? The first was scarcely comprehendible, and yet the alternative was only almost unthinkable. "The Dragon has threats enough for you to find your death if that is your wish. There is not yet a need to spill blood on the Coordinator's doorstep. Do you not agree?"
"Hai," the man spat.
"Then you will escort us to my cousin," Muriko said. "Now, Sergeant."
"We are responsible for the Coordinator's safety, Tai-sa," the Gunto said. "The Gaij—Lieutenant Colonel—" he spat the rank in English "—is armed."
"As is his right as alumni of the Sun Zhang MechWarrior Academy, where he graduated at the head of his class and received his daisho from the hand of the Coordinator himself!" Muriko said.
"But he is Gaijin!"
"Gunsho, your ability to state the obvious is truly at the pinnacle of excellence!" Muriko replied. She was just as capable of delivering a politely-worded insult, and phrased it as a compliment in subtle challenge to her friend.
The man flushed. "Very well, but you will both have to be scanned for weap…for other weapons as well as listening devices."
"Of course."
The Gunsho flushed again, and spoke briefly into a small com-unit. A short while later a team of four more Otomo appeared, two covering the outsiders while the other two used portable scanning devices to check for weapons, explosives, poisons, and wires. After a minute they put the devices away and nodded to the Gunsho.
"Go-cho," the sergeant said to the corporal leading the detail. "Escort these two to the Coordinator." He passed over the orders and the Go-cho examined them briefly.
His eyes widened and he read them again, more carefully. His head snapped up as he took in the dark grey kimono with its blood-red piping, a roundel with the rank symbols of a Tai-sa rode her left shoulder, while one with the off-white Kurita dragon mon of the 1st Sword of Light Regiment rode her right, though it was defaced with a thin, black diagonal stripe. Twin, black lacquered saya were thrust through her obi, both had the dragon mon of a member of the Kurita clan, and below it, a second mon of a family he didn't recognize. Below each of those was the mon for the Wisdom of the Dragon school with the gold encircling band of an Honor Graduate. The ends of her obi had the embroidered knots of martial artists, four yellow knots of an unarmed school, and the eight red—the highest he'd ever personally seen—of an eighth dan swordmaster. No matter what discipline she followed there were ten ranks above the 'learning' classes—the Combine had long since uniformed that—and never more than a handful of tenth dan, across all the multitudes of schools, were alive at any one time.
The corporal glanced at her escort and his eyes widened again. His kimono was the pure-white that ComStar used, but instead of the usual icons it had the Cameron Star on one breast, encircled by a broad black band, and the other was a yellow star surrounded by nine circles, each with a dot of a different color, the ancient crest of the Terran Hegemony. His obi was likewise embroidered, only six red knots this time, but seven yellow made him one of the five or so most dangerous all-around sword and unarmed combatants he'd met. The black lacquered saya of his katana and wakazashi both had the star and planets of the Terran Hegemony under the defaced Cameron Star, and the gold-band-encircled mon of a Sun Zheng Military Academy Honor Graduate and the gold Kurita dragon mon of a personal presentation by the Coordinator!
He turned back to the woman and bowed. He wasn't aware of any woman serving with the Sword of Light, especially not at so high a rank, but nobody would present themselves like that untruthfully. In fact, there really only was one reason for a member of such a rank to present him—or, apparently, her—self to the Coordinator in a formal kimono instead of dress uniform. Well, there were some other occasions, but those were all public affairs which this was most certainly not.
He bowed deeply. "Of course, my lady," he said, "if you will give my men and me the honor of escorting you?"
"The honor, what honor there is in it, is yours, Corporal," Muriko said gravely, returning the bow, and then Roland offered a bow of his own. A shorter one, but exactly correct. The bow of one man to another for doing his duty, no matter how much he disliked the necessity of it, and that of a guardsman showing respect, but not so much to leave his principal unguarded for even a moment.
The Go-cho formed his men up around the Tai-sa and the Gaijan, and they must have picked up on the same things he had because there was an extra snap to it. Something that he could not put his finger on, but an indescribable something that appeared when they were undertaking something of particular importance. He took his place, and there was an unbroken slap as all six boots hit the flagstone at exactly the same moment.
The path he led them to the Courtyard was indirect, passing by several of the richly decorated chambers and beautifully tended gardens. It was never a wise thing to keep the Coordinator waiting, but he didn't need to see the absent medals for valor and bravery to know that they were there. A reminder of what one was dying for was no small thing. He and his squad pulled open the heavy doors—carefully balanced or nothing short of a 'mech could have opened them—and escorted the two into the Courtyard. The massive rectangle of parade-ground set into the very heart of the Palace of Unity, bordered on all sides by balconies and viewing areas. No doubt more Otomo were hidden out of sight, but for now only two figures stood in the exact center of the stone expanse.
"Arigato Gozaimasu," the Tai-sa said to him gravely. "It was an escort very well done."
"Hai," the Go-cho said stiffly. He hesitated. "Your Second," he said, "we will see him safely out when it is done."
She gave him an impassive look that lasted some seconds, and he began to think he had over-stepped himself, but then she bowed to him and stepped alone towards the center of the Courtyard. Her second also bowed to him, and then followed after her.
The Sword of Light regiments had been the elite BattleMech force in the DCMS. The fifth battalion in each had been staffed by the elite warriors of those already outstanding formations. Those twelve battalions had become brigade-sized Kuronami, the Black Wave that had attached itself to the Legion. In the years we spent hunting down the Fat Man they had accrued a battle record that any unit would have been proud of, a kill-ratio nothing less than outstanding, and been reduced from twelve battalions to only three, with Kurita no Takamori Muriko—Thirteen was a nickname going back to Sun Zhang—commanding.
I knew, better than most, Thirteen's problems with her family. I also knew how her personal honor wouldn't allow her to stand by while Amaris hid behind the shields of her distant cousin and his family, and that the Sword of Light Regiments had just been looking for an excuse. A young captain and distant member of the Kurita family had provided just that excuse. Each of the twelve regiments of the Sword of Light—reduced to five over the last couple centuries—had sent their fifth battalions.
Of course, Minoru couldn't have that. He'd declared them all, and their families, Unproductives. We, or rather the SLDF, had tried—or at least Kerensky said they had, we'd been out of place to do so when the decree was finally issued and never had a chance to check to see if the SLDF had really tried anything—to get their families out with little success. Minoru's decree had touched every member of the Kuronami except for Thirteen. That had pissed more than a few of the officers off, and the rank and file as well. All of them had expected to commit seppuku after we'd finished. They had placed their personal Honor and that of the Combine above that of their Coordinator, and that wasn't something that Minoru could have let go. The Combine even had an award for it. And instead Minoru had taken it from them. They'd been cast into the bottom refuse of the Combine, their families stripped of all their holdings and possessions and kicked out into the streets or sold into slavery; and as for Thirteen, no doubt Minoru had had something particular in mind for her and now he was centuries dead.
Takashi Kurita, Coordinator of Worlds, Supreme Commander of the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery, so on and so forth, was a man of average height whose rich robes failed to hide the effects of advancing age. Just because he was old didn't mean he lacked power. His shoulders were still broad, and if his cheeks were thin and the skin on his face stretched his jaw was still strong.
Theodore Kurita, the Heir, was a tall, lanky man with a decade and a bit more on his personal chronological clock that I had. His eyes flicked over me, then widened slightly as they took in my daisho and obi. He looked back up at me, then flicked his eyes to the side where a straw tatami mat was already laid out, along with rice parchment and calligraphic tools. The question, unspoken but real, was can you do it?
I raised an eyebrow slightly.
Thirteen bowed deeply, as befitting her ultimate liege lord, though I wondered how much of it was just for show rather than the respect the gesture properly implied. I bowed as well, enough to indicate it a gesture of respect for a head of state other than my own, but not enough to put my eyes at the dirt. It was my job to keep her alive long enough to restore her honor and I couldn't very well stop an assassin if I had my eyes pointed at the one place no assassin was coming from.
"You are Miruko Kurita no Takamori," Takashi said, in English and putting Thirteen's given name ahead of her family name. It wasn't a question.
"Hai," said Thirteen.
"You have failed the Dragon," Takashi said.
Which basically meant she now had to gut herself and I had to decapitate her. Pretty much what we knew was going to happen.
"How can a Samurai honorably serve a Lord if the Lord is without honor? How can a Samurai fail a Lord if the Samurai does not serve the Lord?" Thirteen asked.
I didn't blink but… That was not on the script. Takashi recoiled slightly, and Theodore lifted an eyebrow in surprise.
"You dare speak to Me about honor you faithless who—"
"Finish that sentence, Cousin, and there will be more than words between us," Thirteen said coldly, her left hand resting on the saya, the scabbard, of her katana.
"You would dare challenge me to a duel," Takashi said. Which meant, more or less, you wouldn't dare.
"Even the Dragon does not offer careless insult to the whirlwind," Thirteen said. Translation, try me and find out.
"You abandoned your post, and led your comrades in arms to do the same," Theodore said. "That is mutiny."
"I left my post, this is true," Thirteen said. "I left because I could not honorably serve a Master who bowed to a madman. A Coward, who hid behind hostages and made the Dragon dance to his song."
"It was not as you say," Takashi said, but the words came out weak. A protest born of semantics, not substance.
"It was exactly as I say, Cousin," Thirteen practically spat the familial title at him. What the hell was she doing? "Ten thousand years would not be enough time to wash away the stain on the Dragon's honor."
Holy crap, you did not talk to the Coordinator this way. Not even if you were blood-kin. My chances of walking out of here alive even if I didn't do my best to put my blade into him were disappearing fast. But I was pretty sure that if I interfered with whatever the hell she was doing, she'd kill me before either of the here-and-now Kuritas got around to it.
"Amaris told us not to attack or he would kill our cousin and his family, Minoru held back the Dragon's claws. Amaris bid us not send men and material to aid Kerensky, the Minoru stayed the Dragon's wrath. Amaris demanded our assistance, and the Dragon secured his border worlds and provided intelligence that, among other things, allowed the Usurper to destroy the 19th Striker Regiment. Amaris ordered us not to let the Star League Defense Force across our borders, and Minoru did unleash the Dragon's might on those who sought to cast down the Usurper."
I blinked, I couldn't help myself. Everyone knew that Minoru had provided some support to Amaris, denied us basing and travel rights. It was even suspected that someone in the Dracs might have given Amaris a tip that had led to the destruction of one of the 3rd RCT's regiments. But Thirteen was talking as though she'd not only had proof that Coordinator of Worlds himself had deliberately done so, but had provided a great deal more material aid than anyone had ever suspected.
"There were circumstances that you are not aware of," Theodore spoke.
"Circumstances?" she repeated, not even trying to mask scorn and skepticism.
"Enough!" Takashi said. "The Dragon does not have to justify its actions."
"Then depart that I may conclude my business."
"If I order it, you will commit sepukku here."
"Do not insult my intelligence again," Thirteen said coolly. "You have no intention of giving such an order."
"Don't I?" Takashi asked, his voice equally chill.
"You have neither a prepared blade laid out for me, nor a cloth that I might prepare one of my own, nor a substitute for which I might reach and so bid my kaishakunin to strike," Thirteen said. "You have no intention of allowing me to commit seppuku."
"Enough, Father," Theodore said. "Enough," he repeated, turning to Thirteen.
"Coordinator Takiro, on his death-bed, made Minoru swear not to use military force against Amaris and to instead negotiate for the life of his cousin Drago. This knowledge, this shame, the Coordinators have passed on from one to the next for almost three hundred years."
"So he sacrificed the Dragon's honor for his personal honor?" Thirteen asked.
I kept my face impassive but I wanted to whistle softly. It had been a matter of some debate about what hold Amaris' had that had kept Minoru in check. Drago Kurita and his family was open knowledge, but those who had any knowledge at all of the Combine had a hard time believing that simply holding hostage members of the Kurita family would have been enough to stay the Coordinator's hand. I could well imagine them being careful with knowledge like that. Honor was everything to Dracs. If it got out that a Coordinator had put his personal honor ahead of his Family's or that of the Combine, well, it wouldn't be pretty.
"The Honor of a promise made to honor a father's dying wish, it is not a small thing," Takashi said. "What would you have done?"
I managed to keep my face impassive, but it was hard. It was not the sort of question that came naturally to Dracs, not ones in their relative positions. Not from the Coordinator of all people. What were they playing at? There had to be some kind of plan, something thought out. Takashi and Theodore were tip-toeing around the issues of Honor and Duty too carefully for their positions not have been thought out and planned even as Thirteen put on the image of a bull in a porcelain shop.
"What would I have done, Coordinator?" Thirteen repeated as though the answer could not have been more obvious. "I would have done what I did do, and what I am about to do!"
"No, you are not, the Dragon still has need of you, girl," Takashi said.
"What Dragon would that be, Cousin? The one that kowtowed to the Usurper? The one that was first to rip into the corpse of the Star League and rape the Terran Hegemony? The Dragon that slaughtered defenseless women and children? What Honor is there to be had in killing people who cannot offer even a token fight for their lives? The Draconis Combine is not so much larger than that I remember. Its people are not so much more prosperous. In art nor science has it improved as the years would suggest. You want I should serve the Dragon that has spent the last two and a half centuries pissing away its strength?"
She looked at them with a face that was impassive only because it masked too much hurt to ever properly convey. "To you they may be names in history. I remember Uncle Minoru's sixtieth birthday. I had won all of my bouts, and for the first time I was not a freak to him, but a Samurai worthy of serving the Dragon. I remember Drago, he was the first outside of my immediate family to come to a tournament I was in, and when I made fifth dan he presented me with a blade that was ancient even before man escaped from his native gravity well. I remember Grandfather Takiro as a wise ancient man, who was the greatest swordmaster I will ever meet, who didn't hold my sex against me but taught me poetry and calligraphy and that there was more to being Samurai than being good with a blade."
Her voice grew very quiet. "I remember when the Dragon was still feared by those who would be its enemy, and respected by all. Fourteen years after Amaris killed the First Lord we opened the Throne Room of the Star League in Unity City, and found the remains from that day, preserved where they fell at the Usurper's orders. The First Lord gunned down by someone he had foolishly trusted. His wife dead beside him. The bodies of the Blackwatch, still locked in struggle with the Amaris Guards they had killed in their last efforts to save a man who was unworthy of their oaths. Drago and his wife were there. Both had blades they had snuck inside past the Blackwatch. Hers was buried in the eye of a senior sergeant, his groin a mess where she had first emasculated him. Drago had left a trail of eight bodies, stabbed or broken with his bare hands, and the Usurper himself still bore a scar from his knife when he was captured.
"My cousins were not with them that night. Amaris' troops…dishonored them greatly before they died. And Minoru sacrificed the Dragon's Honor over the safety of corpses to the man who had dishonored them.
"When I saw that I knew that the Dragon had reached an end of an age. Amaris is dead. The Terran Hegemony purged of his forces…for whatever good it did. My vows are fulfilled. There is only one thing left for me to do."
"'Death is as light as a feather,'" Theodore said. "'Duty—'"
"'Is heavier than a mountain,' I am quite aware," Thirteen said. "My duty is done. What little I could to cleanse our Family's honor, is done. All that is left is honor."
"There is never an end to Duty."
She glared at him for a moment, then spat a curse. "Very well, let us suppose for a moment that I can set my vows aside. Let us suppose for a moment that I am willing to debase my honor as cavalierly as Minoru set aside the Dragon's. Let us suppose that the Dragon can find one more use for an honorless warrior, because I did set aside my personal honor when I disobeyed Coordinator Minoru and sided with Kerensky against the Usurper no matter that he made a mockery of the Dragon's Honor first. Let us say this can happen. What would you have me do?"
"Historical records say that you had three regiments of the Swords of Light follow you," Theodore said.
"Partially correct. In my time each of the Sword of Light regiments had five battalions. Each gave up their fifth battalion to fight against the Usurper. Minoru decreed those people who followed me, and their families, to be unproductive, and the fifth battalions were formally disbanded. Having consolidated for losses we have three battalions."
"They have access to Star League equipment," Theodore said. "Royal grade or better, if rumors are true, enough to be on parity with the Clans. The Coordinator is willing to issue new decrees."
"Clearly the presence of the…Kuronami is a…sign," Takashi said slowly. I could see were this was going, or at least where they hoped it was going. Somehow I doubted Thirteen would be willing to go along with it. For that matter, the way Takashi remarked about their presence being a sign made me wonder just how 'willing' those decrees actually were.
"Not parity, though the gap is likely much narrower," Thirteen said. "However, we left all of our equipment behind when we left the Combine. We are not thieves. The BattleMechs, DropShips, and all the rest were, are,loaned to us. A regiment of dispossessed MechWarriors and their technical support will not be as great an aid as you might think. Also, too there is the not so small matter that all of us and our families, myself excluded, were declared Unproductive."
"I am Coordinator," Takashi said. "If I say they are no longer Unproductive then it is so. I can return them to their old units, or, if they wish, form a new one for them. The Genealogist can search for any surviving descendants. I understand the DropShip that brought you also brought a small diplomatic team. Would the senior-ranking officer be willing to negotiate for your equipment and other necessary material?"
"I have been authorized to negotiate," I said, in Japanese rather than English. I hadn't agreed with the decision to reveal our background, but that was a decision well above my pay-grade, and at least General Winters was keeping Amanda's and Victor's presence a secret. "Any agreement we reach, however, will need to be confirmed by my superiors."
"Your Japanese is excellent," Takashi said, looking at me for the first time. His face was remarkably impassive as he observed: "and you are an Honor Graduate of Sun Zhang. Your daisho was presented to you personally by the Coordinator."
"Hai."
"But you do not wear the Dragon."
"An exchange program between military academies," I said.
"A successful one, I see."
"Respectfully, this is not the time to discuss such things, Coordinator," I said stiffly.
He stiffened, face impassive but poison in his eyes as he glared at me.
"Father," Theodore said.
Takashi glanced at him briefly before turning back to Thirteen. "Kurita no Takamori Muriko, you have sacrificed your own honor, and the honor of all those who followed you, in order to uphold the Honor of the Draconis Combine and House Kurita. For this you have the thanks of the Coordinator of Worlds. Your place in the Combine is restored to you, as it is to those who left the Combine with you, should you or they wish it. I see no need for you to commit sepukku, though as it is your honor I will not gainsay your request. However, it seems to me that you have given your allegiance to another Master."
He smirked, the Coordinator of Worlds smirked, as he finished, "As a former Lord to a Samurai who has kept faith with him and his House if not he and his House with her, I really must insist that you obtain permission from your new Lord first."
Sudeten
A man in an archaic uniform stopped speaking. After a moment his image flickered and he began to speak once more.
Unlike the first three times they had watched the message, this time someone reached out and touched a control that silenced—but did not stop—the man.
"Well," Galen Cox said at length. "There's a thing."
"That's one way of putting it," Victor agreed.
The others in the room were silent.
"Does this change operational plans?" Galen asked.
"No," Victor said.
"That isn't your call."
"No, Marshal, it's yours," Victor said evenly. "But you characterized it as the best chance for a counter-attack that we've been able to come up with. These…whoever they are haven't hit the Falcons yet and don't appear to be planning to do so."
"He's right, Morgan."
"That doesn't mean I have to like it, Andrew," Morgan Hasek-Davion replied.
"But if it's true…"
"If," Kai agreed. "For all we know it could be a ruse, an attempt to get people inside."
"That isn't how these Clans operate."
"That we've seen so far," Kai disagreed politely. "But there are other explanations."
"As far as we've been able to determine, the same message was delivered to the Head of State of each of the Houses," Victor said.
"And their heirs," Galen added.
"Aye, and in a way that ComStar didn't realize what it was sending," Hasek-Davion interjected. "And gene-locked so only those who were intended to receive it could access it."
"Do we know what they have?" Kai asked.
Victor and Morgan Hasek-Davion traded looks.
"No," Morgan said. "Oh, we saw a lot at Tamar, and nothing."
"Mostly it's a case of knowing they have 'stuff' without knowing what it is they actually have, and how they are set materially," Victor said. "There is a lot of speculation, but very little hard facts."
"They apparently have at least one WarShip," Galen pointed out.
"That they are using as a hospital ship?" Andrew Redburn shook his head. "It's probably an oversized DropShip, or maybe a mobile facility would describe it better, like that station the Dragoons carted around. Individual modules transported by a conventional JumpShip and then rapidly reassembled for use."
"But the size—"
"An overestimation, Hauptmann," Redburn said. "Oh, it's big, and effective. But also nobody knew what they were looking at and got some numbers wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. It won't be the last."
"We do know that ComStar is pissed," Victor said.
"Kommandant…"
"Tell me I'm wrong, General," Victor said. He waited a moment, then nodded. "There was a lot more going on at Tamar than Selwa being himself. And ComStar is being very cagey about why this TH-X1138 felt the need to secure the HPG. And I don't believe for one minute that they released a virus on the planetary datanet. Does anyone here?"
"Another topic for another day," Hasek-Davion said.
"Sir—"
"Did any of your classes discuss gross strategy of the global wars of the early twentieth century?"
"If you have multiple enemies, deal with the ones in front of you first," Victor said. "Also, make sure that they are dealt with."
"There you go. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Let your parents deal with these fellows and ComStar, we've got some birds to pluck."