considered a scandal in some quarters. Though each sibko was descended from a particular Bloodname’s originator, and its members entitled to compete for that Name, it seldom happened that two sibkin succeeded. And Hazen was a name of special reverence: it sprang from Elizabeth Hazen, keeper of Turkina herself, the Jade Falcon who gave the Clan her name.
“And I killed none of my opponents in the Trials,” Aleks said, “whereas you left none alive.”
She refused to be baited. Instead she smiled dazzlingly. “Of course.”
“The official line,” said Aleks, “as concocted behind the scenes by none other than our esteemeddesant commander Bec Malthus, is that our shared triumph proves the superiority of the Clan breeding scheme—as perfected by Jade Falcon, of course.” He chuckled. “Of course, within Clan Jade Falcon, if you say ‘behind the scenes,’ you have justsaid Bec Malthus.”
She frowned, drew a knee up under her chin. “Does that not bother you, then, that overall command has devolved upon a known intriguer?”
“Perhaps that is what we need.”
She looked at him with something near outrage. “But was it not to avoid such corruptions that Aleksandr Kerensky led us out of the Inner Sphere in the first place, centuries ago?”
He shrugged. “Indeed. And all honor to the Kerenskys and their vision. Yet whether we like it or not, change has been forced on us—was forced on us decades before our sibko was ever turned out of its artificial wombs. Even before Bec Malthus was born. Besides—”
He sat up. “This wholedesant upon which we’ve staked the future of the Clan—of all humanity—is nothing but a grand deception, is it not? And you and I are the ones who dreamed it up.”
She nodded judiciously. “That is true,” she said and smiled.
“Which is why it cannot fail.” She reached for him again.
3
Skilled Workers’ Housing Bloc Madlock, Shionoha Draconis Combine
4 March 3134
“Take him down!” the policechu-sa in the swept-tail helmet barked. Bulky in black assault armor highlighted in the weird gleam of orangish sunlight filtering through amber waves of smog, his Friendly Persuaders special tactical squad approached the mid-level skilled-workers’ housing with their
machine-pistols pushed out before them like insect proboscises.
Because their quarry was a responsible member of a skilled craft—computer network administration—he was privileged to live in his very own one-bedroom apartment, in a two-story bloc of a mere dozen. Granted, itself only one of dozens of such blocs lined up like domino ramparts in the residential district of Madlock, on the planet Shionoha, a world positioned near the tip of an arrowhead of space between theLyranCommonwealth and The Republic. Yet privilege it was.
And here was how the dog repaid the Dragon’s generosity: a subtle virus that had infected the navigation system of the JumpShipDan-no-Ura, stationed in planetary orbit for servicing, which would have caused it to attempt spontaneously to abort transition from hyperspace at the conclusion of its next jump. The police colonel did not understand the ramifications of it; they were the bailiwick of the pointy-head mob, who themselves disagreed on the precise outcome, so he gathered. Apparently, it would either cause the great ship to tear itself apart, or simply maroon it eternally in hyperspace. In either case depriving the Dragon of itself, its DropShips, and the thousands of Sons of the Dragon and their expensive equipment the great ship carried. Internal audit by the Internal Security Force of the system planetside had led right to this man: one Jinro Noguchi.
Thechu-sa, who was himself in denial over the number ofgaijin in his own family woodpile, shook his head to think of the perfidy of one whose roots lay in the Land Where the Sun Is Born. One might expect such behavior from those who sprang from lesser breeds. But a truenihonjin ?
Thus he had not hesitated to give the order to use whatever force was necessary to apprehend the traitor. Even if it meant annihilating the apartment bloc and all its occupants. It was their Confucian duty to scout assiduously for signs of deviance in their neighbors and report them to the appropriate authorities, anyway. Any damage collaterally visited upon them by thechu-sa ’s tactics was nothing more than due deserts. Indeed, it was possible some of them were guilty of more than simple negligence of civic duty: the miscreant’s personal computer had contained an extensive list of coconspirators within the technical division, encrypted but using a logarithm ISF had quickly cracked.
The corruption ran deep and wide. The entirety of planetary computer services would have to be exhaustively screened if not purged. It would take months or years.
And the invasion preparing to stage from here into Prefecture I of The Republic of the Sphere would have to be indefinitely postponed.
Moving in brief rushes, half the team covered with their weapons while the others darted toward the door of the second-floor unit. Frightened faces appeared in windows, oval or dark, then vanished as the cohort of men in body armor with candy-striped greaves and armpieces surrounding thechu-sa swung their automatic shotguns to bear on them. To discourage snipers, of course, in case the rot had spread further than even the security forces feared. But mainly because it was notappropriate that mere civilians should gawk at the actions of the Civilian Guidance Corps as if they were some action-entertainment holovid. Thechu-sa knew in his well-developedhara —the center of him, what the vulgar would call a potbelly—that it was allowing citizens who, however skilled, were still but lowly workers to give themselves airs that had caused all this trouble.
He was more than a Friendly Persuader. That went without saying: sealing a security breach of such magnitude was far too crucial to be left to a mere flatfoot civilian cop, however exalted his rank. The chu-sa was himself an officer of the Internal Security Force, nominally undercover.
In the wake of the Blakist Jihad’s devastation, some worlds had bonded together for mutual defense in
de facto prefectures, quite without regard for their Great House allegiances. Shionoha had formed such an alliance, scandalously with Rasalhague Dominion traitors and Lyran planets. Launching an invasion of The Republic from here would go far toward purging that taint: it could not happen too quickly, so far as thechu-sa was concerned.
The squad reached the target apartment. The men arrayed themselves on both sides of the door and the window to its left, several crouching down and duck-walking below the level of the sill to avoid being glimpsed through drawn but flimsy white curtains, or casting betraying shadows. Thechu-i in charge of the tac assault team gestured peremptorily with a Nambu handgun gripped in a black-gloved hand. His gunsho —sergeant—shook out a meter-long pentaglycerine X-charge, peeled away the plastic strips from the adhesive on its inner surface and pressed it carefully and quietly against the door. The lieutenant looked down at his colonel.
Thechu-sa drew his katana, raised it over his head and hacked down. Instantly two men standing nearby fired stubby grenade launchers at the apartment window. As they smashed through and exploded with the dazzling flash and deafening report of stun grenades, thechu-i by the door touched off his door knocker with a sharp crack of shaped-charge detonation.
Thechu-i andgunsho pivoted swiftly around the suddenly vacant doorjamb and into the apartment. The rest of the squad vanished inside by twos, spreading out within to secure the premises. Thechu-sa smiled. The traitor would never escape.
A yellow-white flash within the apartment froze the expression on his face like a blast of liquid nitrogen. The last two men into the unit were flash-silhouetted for an instant. Then they were hurtling back out, one over the metal railing, onethrough it, propelled and engulfed by a rapidly expanding front of white smoke and vivid orange fire, visibly coming apart like insects plucked apart by a giant’s fingers.
Thechu-sa ’s retinue made love to the pavement. Thechu-sa himself stood upright, sword angled down, staring in dumb incomprehension as thechu-i’s severed arm, still clutching its Nambu, bounced on the gummy black surface within two meters of him. Its ragged stump bled not blood but smutty gray smoke.
Several blocks away, a man on a motorcycle glanced over his shoulder to see, through extreme-angled wraparound sunglasses, a globe of black smoke roll up into Madlock’s dingy afternoon sky. Given the frequency of
