“It’s corporal,” the man snapped.
“Oh. I apology. I didn’t—”
“Your name,” the soldier said brusquely.
“Watanabe,” said Yamashita cheerfully, handing the man his forged papers. “Kiichi Watanabe.”
The soldier took a couple steps back before he glanced down at the papers. Smart.
Yamashita was careful not to glance at the gate as the soldier examined his papers. Instead he looked up at Big Smoker, the immense cinder cone that loomed over the horizon. A wisp of gray smoke curled away from the volcano’s summit. Yamashita sensed the mountain’s anger, smelled it in the sulfurous stink that soured the perfume of a late spring day, tasted it in the fine grit carried on the wind.
It was an evil portent.
Ukawa would’ve said this was a stupid stunt. But then Ukawa was dead, killed when a Lyran tank’s PPC bolt blasted through the bulkhead of his APC, turning everyone inside into a fine red paste.
Most of Yamashita’s comrades were dead. The rest were gone: the last DCMS unit on the planet had been evacuated the week before, leaving Altais to the Lyran Commonwealth. Yamashita was stranded on an enemy-held world. The smart thing would’ve been to go to ground.
Yamashita was never one for doing the smart thing.
He glanced at the corporal. The soldier was dressed in well-worn fatigues, the patch on his right shoulder marking him as a member of the Eighth Donegal Guard. Yamashita noted other things about that uniform: the astringent smell of Altaisian mud, a scorch mark on his left boot, a faded brick-colored stain over the right arm.
This guard was a combat soldier, one who’d survived this long by being careful and smart. He wasn’t going to stop now just because his officers had stuck him in front of a gate.
This was going to be hard.
“OK,” said the soldier, handing the papers back, “what’s your business here?”
“I’m here to see the Port Commissioner.”
The soldier studied “Kiichi Watanabe” for a moment. Yamashita’s hair was slicked back and he wore a dark suit jacket with long sleeves, a garment obviously too hot for the day. “Watanabe” looked like a shady businessman.
Which was not so far from the truth, after all.
“Is he expecting you?” the soldier finally asked.
The question was a trap, an invitation to lie.
Yamashita played his only card. “No. But I guarantee he’ll want to see me.”
The soldier’s eyes flickered to the sack resting on the ground. “What’s in there?” He bent down.
“A gift for the Commissioner. Four bottles of New Ross Private Reserves, the finest wine on Altais.”
“Four bottles?” asked the soldier, obviously noticing the fifth bottle in the sack.
“Hai, four.” Yamashita smiled gently. “Each worth a couple hundred C-bills.”
The soldier’s gaze flickered back to the guard shack. Perhaps he wondered if there was enough to share with his comrade. The soldier pulled a bottle from the sack and held it up. Sunlight filtered through the ruby-colored wine. “I’ll need to verify your identity.”
“Of course,” said Yamashita easily.
He’d make it through a fingerprint analysis or a retinal scan, but there were other checks, more basic checks, and if the soldier realized Yamashita was a soldier of the Draconis Combine, he would meet a sudden and violent end.
If he was lucky.
This thought didn’t trouble Yamashita overmuch. He had learned to live with the reality of his death as one learns to live with the weather. Some days it rained and some days it did not and since you could never tell beforehand which it would be, the wise man was always prepared for both.
Besides, there were secrets to be learned, if one had sharp eyes.
After patting down Yamashita, the soldier pulled an optical scanner from his belt. “Hold still.” He brought the device up to Yamashita’s left eye, pressed a button, and studied the readout. “Kiichi Watanabe,” he said softly.
The soldier stared at him for a long moment with those hard eyes. Yamashita tensed, waiting for the order to strip to his waist or roll up his sleeves.
Instead, the soldier turned and bellowed, “Comstock.”
A Lyran PFC stepped out of the guard shack. “Aye, Bernie?”
“Take this gentlemen,” he glanced at Yamashita, “to the Commissioner’s office. If he gives you any trouble—” The soldier didn’t finish, instead flashing a tight little smile.
A cruel smile.
Neither Yamashita nor the PFC had to ask what that smile meant.
• • •
It was a long walk from the front gate to the Commissioner’s office and Yamashita spent every bit of it watching and listening.
A LoaderMech painted heavy-equipment yellow bent down to pull shipping containers off a line of parked trucks, setting each of them down on the ferrocrete deck hard enough to produce a long, hollow gong. Longshoremen in hardhats scrambled to unload the containers while bored soldiers looked on.
Most of the containers were marked “Willas” or “New Ross,” meaning they had come from one of the planet’s spaceports.
But not all of them.
Yamashita watched the longshoreman unload a series of trucks marked with the seal of the Lyran Commonwealth.
Working quickly, longshoremen unbolted the shipping container from the first truck. An overhead crane riding on rails fifteen meters above the port’s deck centered itself over the container. Riggers moved in and attached wire cables to the lift points. Then the crane hoisted away, lifting the container smoothly into the air. When it set the box down again, more workers pried it open.
Yamashita caught a glimpse of what was inside as he and the PFC walked by.
A rack of short-range missiles
It was the same drill with the next three LC-marked boxes.
But not number five.
The fifth container was moved to a different spot altogether. As a special military shipment it wouldn’t pass through customs.
Yamashita would’ve bet quite a lot that container number five didn’t hold short-range missiles.
• • •
The office was a long, narrow room with one wall fashioned entirely from ferroglass so the Commissioner could look out over the port. Yamashita was careful to take a chair facing away from the window, even though he was itching to watch the port’s activity.
Because he
