Hayden knocked on the door quietly, half hoping no one would
answer. Her hopes were dashed by the
appearance of Takeda, who looked like she hadn’t slept the previous night. Her hand was bandaged and it looked like she
was missing the tip of one of her fingers.
Her lips turned into a scowl. “What
do you want?”
“I came to apologize for yesterday.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“With my words…”
“Words aren’t enough.”
“What would you have of me?”
“Come inside, to the kitchen. Take your boots off.” Hayden followed her, setting her boots on the
small mat by the door.
“Okay…what next?”
“Put your hand on the counter.” She reluctantly complied. Takeda pulled a knife from the butcher’s
block and held it in front of Hayden’s face.
“I gave up the tip of my pinky for the shame of losing Koruku to your
companions last night. Are you willing
to do the same to make peace?”
“Takeda Macalister, put that down right now.” Hayden’s head turned slowly. Koruku was standing in the doorway of the
kitchen. He was wearing a pair of simple
blue shorts and had a heavy layer of padding around his ribs.
“Macalister?”
“Takeda, put the knife down.”
“She offered restitution, Koruku.”
“She is not Yakuza, she will not provide restitution in this
fashion. I said drop the knife, now.” The
Knife came down blade first into the cutting board next to Hayden’s hand. “There will be no blood shed for this, now or
ever, do you understand Takeda?”
“Hai…” She said slowly, her body shaking with anger. She
walked
past him towards the door of the small house.
“Takeda…I love you, now calm your mind. There are no hard feelings between us.”
“I failed Father…”
“Did you recover me?”
“Yes…”
“Was I hurt to the point I could never recover?”
“No…”
“Then you fulfilled your duty, and you have offered
restitution as Father would have demanded.
Your honor is clean." She nodded slowly and stepped outside. Hayden still stood there in shock.
“Your sister?”
“We share a father, but have different mothers, and I take all
of my features from my mother.”
“I would never have guessed.”
“Sit with me, if you like, I will tell you a story, and
hopefully you can understand.” He smiled
and led her into a room she hadn’t been in before. It was a traditional office with a large desk
and several comfortable chairs. He
offered her one of the seats and sat opposite her.
“My grandfather was a powerful Kumicho of one of the largest
Yakuza clans on Luthien. He had many
sons, but he favored Ryu above them all.
Ryu could do no wrong in his father’s eyes and eventually his father got
him the thing he had wanted more than anything else, a foreign woman to serve
as his personal courtesan.”
He coughed gently and continued the story. “Ryu took this woman into his house until
grandfather arranged a marriage with a mid-ranked noble member of the Kurita
family. Ryu kept her in comfort and
wealth and loved her profoundly even when he went home to his noble born
wife. Eventually, the Kurita woman bore
him children and he was happy, but he kept visiting his woman on the side.”
“One day, the woman surprised Ryu with the news that she too
was pregnant, and soon he would have another son. Ryu’s elation at this news was tempered with
his father’s rage. How could he get the foreign
whore pregnant? What was he thinking, he
had a family and responsibilities to see to.
Grandfather would never recognize his bastard son. When he broke the news to his pregnant
mistress, she bore it with pride, and thanked him for everything he had done for
her.”
“She refused to see him again, and he did not know it then,
but that would be the last time her would see her alive. After her child was born, with the same red
hair and green eyes, she took her own life, to expunge her son’s dishonor, and
the hope that the boy’s father would take care of him. It moved grandfather to the point where he
relented, and allowed the boy to live with his father.”
He smiled softly, and a tear ran down his cheek. “That happy time would not last, because the
boy looked so much like his deceased mother that every time the father saw him
it shattered his heart. When the boy was
four, he sent him to a monastery, to study with the monks. Many hard trials would face the boy in the
future, and he met them as he came into the world, alone.”
“I would see my father once in a while, on rare holidays,
but I knew my presence caused him such pain that I eventually stopped receiving
him. It hurt met deeply to do so, but it
was better for both of us. Eventually,
my grandfather, a wise old man at this point, called me to him and we spoke of
many things. While I had been refused a
place in family’s business, I was given a position in the Order of Five
Pillars, where I could find a way to serve the Dragon. He was much kinder at that age than I remembered
him when I was younger.”
“I continued my studies and became a well respected member
of the Order, though I did not have the heart for the more unseemly aspects of
the organization as your friend alluded to last night. Eventually, my father came to me. He had a son whom he favored above all others
and wanted to give that son everything he could. That son, my brother Jinjiro, wanted to be a
warrior in the DCMS.
"I drilled the
tenets of Bushido into my brother harder than any student I have had. He was accepted into the academy and I was
honored by the clan. My extended family
does not acknowledge me as their own blood, but I am useful to them in my own
way.
After my brother’s acceptance, my
father gave me my sister, Takeda, to serve as my aide. She was equally outcast, but she was still a
member of the family.”
“We have been working together ever since, and I think my
desire to travel and see other places is that Luthien has always been a
shattered home for me. It was never my
home, and truly I do not know what a home feels like, not here, in my
heart. That’s part of why I love
Rasalhague so much. My brothers and
sisters in the order took me in and made me truly feel like one of them. The people of Rasalhague never judged me for
the way I looked, and I always felt more at home with them than I o with my own
people.”
Hayden felt the tears running freely down her cheeks. “I’m sorry…”
“Why? If my life hadn’t
followed that sequence of events, then I would not have been here to meet you.”
“How can you see things that way?”
“Because that is what I believe in my heart. I have spent my life studying the Dao…and it
gives me the strength to go from one day to the next.”
“I am sorry for what my friends did to you.”
“As I told your man Percival last night, everything is
forgiven. Life is too short for grudges
or animosity.”
“I spoke with Percival last night, and we are willing to
entertain the idea of transporting you and your sister into Rasalhague, if we
end up heading that way.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, if we end up heading that way.”
“Shall we eat breakfast, and discuss the terms of such a
travel arrangement?”
“I think I would like that a great deal.”
Meanwhile
“You want to tell me what’s going on with you and Hayden?” Carter asked his friend.
“There’s nothing going on, I just don’t trust the guy she’s
seeing.”
“Why?”
“You know I’m from the Draconis March, right?”
“Yeah, Le Blanc, right?”
“Yeah, and you know how many times Le Blanc has been raised
by the Combine? Two hundred and sixteen raids, invasions, or just
opportunities to get out and stretch their legs at our expense.”
“What? That can’t be
right.”
“You come from Terra, which hasn’t been invaded in the last
two hundred and fifty years. You don’t
know what it’s like out here in the rest of the galaxy.”
“That’s not fair, Mason.”
“I remember my grandfather telling me the story of when the
First Prince came to Le Blanc. It was
something his grandfather had told him.
He came and he told us that we had worked hard, we fought, bled, and
died in the war to turn back the invaders.
He was transferring the Kentares PDZ to Le Blanc, because of what the
Combine had done to Kentares.”
“What’s a PDZ?”
“Polymorphus Defense Zone.
It’s a regional grouping of planets that all operate under the same
military organizational structure and are grouped together for deployment and
response. “ Mason answered him.
“I know that…the Combine is a sore spot for a lot of people
in the Federated Suns, especially the Draconis March, but you shouldn’t hold
that against Koruku and Hayden.”
“I don’t hold it against Hayden, but Koruku, that’s another
story. Something in my gut says don’t
trust the guy. I don’t know what it is,
but my gut is not usually wrong.”
“I hope this doesn’t screw up the unit.”
“Why should it? This
is a passing thing. We’re leaving in
three days and then w’re probably going to get killed by either Comstar or the Clans.”
“Comtar isn’t trying to to kill us. There has to be a rogue agent in the mix,
that has to be the problem. If Julian
would just let me talk to my mom, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”
“The mom that missed your graduation?”
“She tried, but she was halfway across the Inner Sphere
overseeing a technical upgrade in the FRR at the time. She sent cookies though.”
“That’s true, they were pretty good cookies too.”
Elsewhere
“So this is the mission control station where I help the
field officers coordinate their operations.”
“You are not a combat rated warrior, then?” She asked him quietly.
“I am a field certified mechwarrior, yes. However it has been quite some time since I have
taken the field in a battlemech. How
about you?”
“I regularly participate in field exercises with others and
retain my warrior status, yes.”
“You are not quite what I expected, I must admit.” He smiled.
“You would prefer that I spoke without contractions,
quiaff? Perhaps challenged you to a
trial of possession for use of the showers?”
“I have heard stories of how your people are, from those
with first hand experience, and you are…delightfully subtle.”
“Just because I do not broadcast who and what I am at the
top of my lungs every chance I get do not assume that I am incapable of reminding
you.”
“I would never make such an assumption, though I do have
questions if you have the time and willingness to answer them.”
“Possible, but we need to get ready for the supplies.”
“What supplies?”
“How does that expression go…It’s Christmas and everyone has
been good this year?”
“I’m afraid I’ve never heard that expression before,
Heather.”
“I prefer Boxing Day, personally. Not a Christian, but I appreciate the
holdover from the Star League, Percival.”
“Boxing Day, a woman after my own heart.”
“Careful, Percival, If I didn’t know better I might think
you were flirting.”
“It’s a good thing you know better then.”
“You are sort of cute, I would not mind sleeping with you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think not, we should keep our relationship mostly
professional.”
“How professional?”
“Expressed in what measure?”
She replied.
“Percentage?”
“90% I think.”
“That’s a lot of room for unprofessional behavior.”
“I will try to hold it against you.” She smirked at him. “You and your merry band of warriors have
impressed a few of my superiors.”
“Have we now? In what
capacity?”
“Your exemplary ability to encounter hardship and manage to
come out alive. You have had some shining
moments of dumb luck that baffle even the best of my colleagues.”
“Well, if we had our choice of dumb luck or bad luck, I choose
dumb luck every time.”
“Your insertion into the Falcon HQ was particularly inspired.”
“Thank you.”
“You are also lucky that the Falcons bid away most of their
transport assets to get here.”
“What?”
“As part of the invasion planning, the clans trialed
against each other for the honor of retaking the Inner Sphere.”
“They fought against each other?”
“Yes, to see who was most capable, and who could do it while
spending the least amount of resources.”
“The least amount of resources?”
“The homeworlds were settled on worlds at the threshold of
survivability. Without the terraforming technology
of the Star League, they would not have been survivable at all.”
“Surely you must have found better choices for worlds than
those?”
“I am sure that they did, but the founder believed that in
order to be the best we could be, we had to be reforged. Hard worlds breed hard people. We would have to be hard to survive the worlds
we lived on, so that someday we could come back and save you from yourselves.”
“That is fascinating…”
“If you behave I may tell you some more about the home
worlds. Do you want to see the presents
Buddha sent you?”
“Buddha?”
“The cipher I use for the one who sent this to you. We all have one for him.”
“Him?”
“Indeed. The first
time I met him I was in awe. I thought
he was dead, we all did. He explained the
mission to us, showed us how he saw the Inner Sphere and helped find places to
do our jobs.”
“And what precisely are your jobs?”
“The simplest explanation I can give you is that we are
trying to understand your society so that we can build a bridge in the gaps between
it and our society.”
“Is your society really that different from ours?”
“In many ways, and by orders of magnitude.”
“Can we ever bridge the gap?”
“That is the hope, that someday we see each other through a
similar enough lens that we can look at the shared culture we all have and
celebrate our differences rather than use them as points of contention.”
“I attended a lecture by a visiting professor at NAIS who
had a similar world view.”
“I know.”
“How could you know?”
“I was in the crowd.”
She took a sip of her coffee.
“What are you two up to?”
Julian walked into the Ops Center.
“Well, I was just showing Heather around Ops.”
“Indeed, and I was getting ready to throw him down on this
table and make with the sex.”
“Noted…after you’re finished with that Percival, I would
like a word.” Julian turned back around
and left. Percival turned his eyes to
her.
“What? I wasn’t
serious about making with the sex, this table doesn’t look comfortable.”
“Highly inappropriate, Heather.”
“True, but the expression on his face was priceless.”
“Heather, we have to keep some semblance of a command
structure, and that involves rising above the temptation to antagonize our
comrades.”
“You mean like the three…what was that term you used…ah yes,
‘muppets’ did when they kidnapped the monk the Captain is seeing?”
“We set the example for others to follow.”
“In the future I will endeavor to not make such obviously
false sexual statements towards you or any of the other crew.”
“That is appreciated, now let’s examine this supply cache,
shall we?”
“As you like, Percival.”
Elsewhere
“These people have all lost their fucking minds.” Julian
pushed the door to the mess open.
“So what would you describe as the nature of the bug that’s
crawled up your ass today, Julian?” Sebastian
was quietly heating up a frozen meal in the microwave and had a cold beer
sitting on his table.
“You have all the comforts of this tropical paradise that
the Captain insisted we need to come see.
What could you possibly need with a TV dinner?”
“Look, I realize that you are neck deep in a giant ball of
your own sneaky spy stuff bullshit, but you need to dial it back a notch or
two.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look, we’re all in the middle of a pressure cooker, and if
you keep going the way you’re going, it’s going to turn out way worse than
anything that almost happened with the Falcons, and we had some real shitty
days with the Falcons.”
“They don’t seem to give a shit about Operational Security!”
“Listen to these words real carefully, because it’s not
something I want to have to repeat again.
They Are Not Spies. They’re
barely adults. Did you fuck up anything
on your first mission?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Mhmm, and was your first mission anything as completely
nuts as ‘oh by the way, we think Comstar is working with the enemy and we need
you to go find proof?’ That’s what I thought”
“That doesn’t mean that they can’t learn how to follow basic
tradecraft.”
“Julian they have never learned basic tradecraft. They aren’t spies. They’re mechwarriors, and mercenaries on top
of that. Are they good at thinking on
their feet? Sure, but they’re not SpecOps troopers. We got lucky at the Castle Brian, and boy howdy
do I prefer to be that kind of lucky compared to some of the other shit we’ve
gone through. But you have to remember
that they’re not you, and the more you try to squeeze them into following your
orders, the more they are going to push back. I for one would hate to be in the middle of
nowhere when one of them snaps and loses their tempers because you decided to
make an issue of it.”
“So what should I do?”
“Ease up on the expectations and be grateful they are competent
soldiers. You can generally control the
flow of information in a direction you
like. If you see an issue coming up,
discuss it with them like an adult, and point out the concerns you have. I know that there are things about this
mission that I don’t need to know, and I am completely cool with that. I’ve been through this before.”
“Percival knows things he’s not telling me.”
“Well that’s a fucking tragedy, a coworker who’s keeping
things from you? What could that possibly
feel like?”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“What, he has his own mission parameters that drive his actions
and decisions. He has his own masters to
answer to. That doesn’t mean he’s not
our ally, nor does it mean he isn’t our friend.”
“What about the monk?”
“Watch him like a fucking hawk for the next three days and
then he’s out of our lives. You need to
relax just a little bit or this is going to be a very long, grueling mission that
no one wants to be on.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“It’s possible.”
“Unlikely, but possible.”
He smiled at his friend.
“You should probably apologize to Hayden.”
“Yeah..i probably should.”
“You know anything about Percival’s new assistant?”
“I think her name is Heather. She told me she and Percival were about to
have the sex on the table in Ops.”
“Why, that table is awful.”
“I think she was kidding.”
“Is she single?”
“Really?”
“What? You have us on
this mission without any regards to our social needs.”
“I was more concerned about your actual living needs.”
“A life without social interaction isn’t worth living,
friend.” He pulled up his communicator when
it started chirping. “This is Sebastian?”
“Sebastian, could you come down to the Cargo bay?” Percival asked him quickly.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“You’ll want to see this.”
“Can I bring my dinner?”
“A man must eat, Sebastian.”
“See you in a few, Percival.
Oh, hey I had a question.”
“Go ahead?”
“Is your assistant single?”
“Sebastian…”
“If you’re already speaking for her not a problem, but hey, I’m
just asking the question.”
“She’s here in the cargo bay with me, why don’t you come ask
her yourself?”
“On my way.”
Sebastian grabbed the cooked meal and his beer and headed that way. Julian shook his head and went back to his
quarters. A fleet of delivery vehicles
were bringing a massive pile of cargo pods of dozens of different shapes and
sizes. “What the fuck?”
“New Supplies for the mission.” Percival said with his usual
smugness.
“Where did these come from?”
“NAIS labs, mostly. Some of the others came from a few
alternative sources.” Percival answered
the question. Heather came around the
corner of the cargo bay, carrying a tablet with the shipping manifest over to
Percival. Her eye met Sebastian’s for
the first time and her face hardened.
She whispered something to Percival and he shook his head. “He did what?” Percival’s face went pale.
“What? What did I do?” Sebastian smiled easily.
She shoved the tablet into Percival’s chest and stormed off
angrily.
“No, seriously, what the fuck did I do?”
“Not you, your brother, Simon.”
“What about Simon?”
“After our withdrawal from Anywhere, it seems your brother
used the remaining artillery assets of the 2nd NIC to strike the
planetary capital. Several civilian
targets were damaged during that attack, including a hospital. Her sister was undergoing treatment at the
facility and was killed in the strike.”
"What...no, Simon would never do that. This has to be a trick.”
“Everything we’ve seen about the clans indicates that they
are not the type to angle for that kind of a ploy. We do have someone you could ask about it.”
“What? Who?”
“According to records, Mason Sokar and Mackenzie Sokolov
were both part of the Falcon response unit that hunted down what was left of
the 2nd. You could always ask
him what happened.”
“Should I try and talk to Heather?”
“I think that would be a poor choice. She was very close to her sister.”
“You know where Mason is?”
“Last I checked he was headed back to the race track he visited
the day before yesterday.”
“Thanks Percival.”
“So I guess I will unpack all this kit by myself then?”
“The Boss gave us the week off, sorry Percival.” Sebastian
headed down the ramp and took off into the city. Percival spent the next few hours bringing
the cargo pods into the hold. Sebastian
went to go find Mason. Julian wrote a
letter to his daughter. Carter spent the rest of the day at the water
park. Hayden…well that’s a more
complicated moment.
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