Sakamoto made an impatient gesture, shooing her away. “I have other resources.” And to Mori: “Get word to Kobayashi, Ame and Endo. They are to be on Benjamin within the next two months, understood?”

Who? Worridge frowned, and she was about to ask when Mori said, “I anticipated that, my Tai-shu, and took the liberty of dispatching messages a day ago.”

Okay, Worridge was impressed: Mori was a suck-up and clairvoyant. For his part, Sakamoto squinted at Mori, waited a beat, said, “Did you now?”

Then, before Worridge had time to blink, Sakamoto reared back. There was a blinding flash, a high-pitched whistle as air cleaved in two. Mori stood there for a brief instant, a bemused expression on his face. And then a bright red ribbon leaked through an invisible seam and dribbled down to soak the collar of his uniform. Mori’s head lolled as if his neck had turned to gelatin and then plopped to the deck, face-first. The sound was indescribable, really, but it reminded Worridge of when she was ten and dropped a watermelon on the porch, and the watermelon had burst.

Mori’s body didn’t follow right away. Instead, bright, apple-red blood arced to the deck, sounding like water against a ceramic basin. Mori’s body wasn’t exactly stiff, or limp, but his hands jerked up in a sort of surprise, like the hands of a marionette whose puppeteer’s twitched the wrong string. And then Mori, who was definitely lessi now, toppled like a felled tree.

In the complete and absolute silence that followed—save for computers chittering away—Sakamoto inspected his sword. The blade was clean; he’d struck that quickly. Then he resheathed his katana, the metal rasping into its scabbard, and casually uncorked his decanter. Wine glugged into Sakamoto’s goblet and Worridge caught the faint squeal of the decanter’s stopper as Sakamoto re-corked it.

Sakamoto lifted his glass to Worridge in a toast. “A person who anticipates you has already succeeded you in his mind, Worridge, and actions follow hard upon thought. Please remember, Tai-sho : There is only room for one tai- shu.”

Then he threw back his drink and exhaled with satisfaction. “And Worridge—get someone to clean up this mess.”

Imperial City, Luthien

24 December 3134

The gardens were cool; the sky a brilliant pink that faded to purple as the sun’s light refracted against the skin of the world, and at his feet was a sea of white stone. Bhatia’s eyes traveled over the carefully etched lines that curled and eddied around an island of rock, a hillock of moss. The center of the stone sea was an absolute masterstroke: a spiral twining to a single, absent point, like an endless pinwheel.

And that is the Combine, the unseen pivot about which the universe turns. Bhatia considered that it might also be an apt metaphor for what the best coordinators were: the null space at the center of a wheel. Only Vincent Kurita, that Peacock, was simply null.

And Sakamoto was wrong about one thing. The ISF hadn’t lost its teeth, but with the HPG outage it might as well have lost its eyes and ears. Couriered messages still trickled in, but often the information was outdated and useless. Bhatia grunted. That they’d found out about the Capellans was a stroke of luck, a piece of information that crossed his desk from a reliable source long embedded on Liao, though that source had gone silent—a disturbing turn that had Bhatia wondering if the Capellans had managed to penetrate far enough to conquer Liao.

And there was also Katana Tormark, that little witch! Bhatia felt a sudden headache thump to life behind his eyes. Oh, just thinking about her set his teeth on edge! A father, once the pride of O5P, turned Republican sympathizer, and then a planetary governor, no less! Thank heaven he’d the foresight to embed an agent into her command, no thanks to the Peacock. That idiot had blathered on about letting others fight and blah, blah, blah. Oh, it was galling : the offspring of a discredited, dishonored man laying bare the Combine’s weakness!

Find yourself a high pedestal, little girl, because it will hurt that much more when you fall.

Sakamoto was the key. Yes, Toranaga was cunning and might still be useful, and hadn’t there been something in Toranaga’s eyes as he’d turned to go? Bhatia thought. Yes, for a fraction of a second, he and Toranaga had exchanged significant glances, and it was as if the warlord had shot some invisible message, reminding Bhatia that… what? There was yet this other card that might be played?

Perhaps. Bhatia shook his mind free of Toranaga. For the moment, if any warlord stood a chance of reclaiming Combine worlds while eliminating the tiresome Tormark, it was Sakamoto. True, Sakamoto was a drunk and a bully, and Bhatia found the idea of Sakamoto’s wagging tongue minus its mouth supremely pleasing. But Sakamoto was still an asset, and if he could be played? Then the Peacock would have two choices; total disavowal, or an unconditional sanction. In the first case, Sakamoto would die, and Bhatia wouldn’t necessarily weep. In the second, though, the Peacock would take credit and that was good for the Combine.

But I will have to play this just right: let Sakamoto start his little invasion and then bide my time, choose the precisely correct moment to tell the Peacock.

And if Kurita wanted Sakamoto’s head? No matter: Sakamoto was merely the tool Bhatia needed to pick the lock of the treasure chest that was House Kurita, and Combine honor. And who knew? There might be an unexpected bonus or two; perhaps the bitch would stand against Sakamoto, and if she did… A shiver of unexpected delight rippled along Bhatia’s skin and made the hairs stand on end. Squashed underfoot like a bug. He laughed silently, like a dog, and ran his palms along his thighs.

His right trouser pocket crackled, and his good humor evaporated like mist on a hot morning. A report he’d already read, and didn’t like. Pulling out the paper, he reread the message, taking his time, letting the words brand themselves on his brain.

Kappa. The word leapt from the page. Every time he came to it, his mind tripped, as if he’d stubbed a mental toe against a rock. Kappa was—had been–a Son of the Dragon, a member of a cadre of elite agents: the legendary Subhash Indrahar’s eyes and ears and teeth. A powerful mystic and utterly ruthless, Indrahar had been the greatest ISF director in Combine history as well as a personal friend to Takashi Kurita and mentor to Takashi’s son, Theodore. Yet Indrahar’s power hadn’t been his Sons. The agents had died in the Jihad, and their records had disappeared. Bhatia had resurrected the Sons—the idea of such a useful inner circle was too brilliant to ignore—but development of the group was slow and expensive.

But now here was Kappa, and without his knowledge of the Sons, Bhatia still mightn’t have made the connection. A serial killer on an obscure little world, what of it? But there was that very odd victim—a man whose body hadn’t been mutilated—followed by a tape from the killer calling himself Kappa : a creature from ancient myth… and one of the most brilliantly eccentric and lethal deep-cover agents Indrahar ever created. As if he wanted to catch my attention. But he can’t be the same man. He’d be nearly a hundred. Kappa’s heir, perhaps? And why surface now?

He didn’t know. But ISF Director Ramadeep Bhatia shivered all the same, even though it wasn’t cold.