Sully’s hands flew for his throat; the gin bottle exploded against the floor, the fumes so strong they made Jake’s eyes water. Choking, Sully staggered back, banged against a shelf and then collapsed in a hail of tin cans. He writhed, big feet running a path to nowhere, mouth open and gaping the way a fish does when it suffocates on a dock.

Jake stood over Sully for an instant, then dropped to his haunches. “Go to sleep, Sully,” he said, then palmed the back of the big man’s head in his left hand and grabbed the angle of Sully’s jaw with his right. He gave Sully’s head and neck a quick twist. There was a crackle like egg shells crushed underfoot, and Sully went limp.

It was over and done in less than fifteen seconds, but Jake lingered a few seconds more. He’d made Sully’s end as painless as possible, yet there was a little piece of him—so tiny that its voice was reed-thin—that felt a queer pang of remorse. “I am sorry,” he said, and thought that maybe, wherever Sully was, Sully knew.

A tinny buzz from his finger watch, and Jake saw he had an hour left before the first of the assistants arrived to prepare the evening meal. Working quickly, he keyed in the combination to the meat locker, palmed it open. The locker sighed open; a ball of chilled air that smelled vaguely of blood and fresh fat rolled out. There were two long rows of meat—sides of beef and pork—hanging in opaque plastic bags. Hooking his hands in the big man’s armpits, Jake heaved back on his heels. Sully’s body hesitated, then hissed over the storeroom floor, trailing a slick of gin. Sully’s eyes were still open but turning glassy, and his tongue lolled at the corner of his mouth. His neck was folded nearly in two, Sully’s ear touching his right shoulder.

It took Jake ten minutes to truss Sully’s arms and legs to his beefy torso; another five to jockey him into position, lay him on an empty plastic bag and skewer his flesh at the hollow of Sully’s clavicle with a meat hook. The hook was thick as Sully’s wrist and solid steel; Jake was sweating by the time he’d forced the hook through skin, bone and meat. A rivulet of blood dribbled slowly from the puncture wounds, but Jake knew that without a heart to pump, the oozing would let up soon and cork the holes with purple-jellied clots.

Then Jake zipped up the bag, attached the hook to a vacant eye on a rail of sides of beef and hoisted Sully’s body until the bag was even with its fellows. He surveyed his work with a critical eye, then nodded. It would take them time to miss Sully, even longer to find him because… Jake pried open the magnetic combination pad and eased out its memory chip. Then he swung the heavy door to and grinned as the lock clicked. There. Now they’d have to use a laser torch, and even then they might not find the body for days because refrigeration would cut down on the stink, and by the time Sully’s body bloated with rot, Jake would be long gone.

And in fact—Jonathan popped out his other eye—Jake was gone already.

A few hours later, safely ensconced in his brother’s private DropShip and hurtling toward the pirate jump point, Jonathan had time to think.

First off, his relationship with Fusilli had netted unimaginable rewards. Bhatia had been correct in bringing Fusilli under his wing; the young man was quite reliable and a font of knowledge. After all, what was a little invasion plan between fellow double agents, especially when Jonathan knew all the right passwords and Fusilli’d never laid eyes on him? If Fusilli was right—and he usually was—Sakamoto’s first wave would have overwhelmed the border worlds. By now, Shimonita, the most distant, ought to be sewn up; Albalii, Piedmont, Chichibu all gone days before, Republic forces trampled and their resources scavenged. The force from Kurhah would have deployed in two fronts, one to Shinonoi and the other, more massive front, hurtling for Halstead Station, where The Republic’s forces, squaring off with Sadachbia right across the border, would be most heavily fortified. And then the second wave would begin, but that’s where things got, in Jake-speak, about as reliable as a one-eyed dog in a meat locker.

And where was Sakamoto? Thinking, Jonathan sucked on his lower teeth. Yes, the good warlord might just want to be in on the fight for Biham, but the same could be said of Ancha. Ancha was a good place to start, anyway, with or without Sakamoto. Because Crawford’s there, yes, and the disconsolate little Chinn, too.

Sighing, Jonathan allowed his body to sag into a plush custom-made acceleration couch—another luxury Marcus’ money bought—and nearly groaned with pleasure as the automatic sensors set to work kneading his sore muscles. Ancha, it is.

As he drifted into sleep, Jonathan’s last thought was that Andre Crawford would be very happy to see him—would, indeed, be waking up to an unpleasant fact any day now. And if Crawford wasn’t quite awake just yet? Well—Jonathan’s lips curled in a dreamy smile—that would happen, and very soon.

22

Red Sands, Devil’s Lot, Klathandu IV

Benjamin Military District, Draconis Combine

29 May 3135

Another gust of wind sandblasted his stinging cheeks, and Tai-i Sagi figured another couple of days of these godforsaken sandstorms and he’d never have to worry about shaving again. He screwed a pair of digital binoculars to his goggles. Not that there was anything to see. He’d said so to the radar tech. Said the tech must have sand for brains. Oh, yeah, sure, they’d seen what looked like a JumpShip flicker in at the nadir jump point—but that was six days ago. Count ’em, days. Six.

Sagi let the binoculars fall to his chest, the neck strap trying to tug free, jouncing and bouncing in the wind. Here he was, virtually marooned in the armpit of the Inner Sphere, him and his trusty band of Unproductives. Okay, correction, his infantry and some equally miserable flyboys… not that he gave a shit one way or the other. When the HPGs went on the fritz, the first thought through Sagi’s mind was, Yeah, baby, bring it on, I wanna kill me a mess of Blues. But noooo. He was bait. Bait! What a laugh. By the time those eggheads in strategic command decide this Katana character’s not gonna bite, the fraccing war will be over, and all I’ll get is a skin peel.

The sand was only one problem. The company, another. Sagi threw a narrow look at the shujin standing to his right. The master sergeant was a head shorter and compact, with a well-muscled torso; a sliver of tattoo was just visible below the soldier’s right cuff.

“This… is… pointless!” Sagi had to scream even to hear himself.

The wind snatched away the shujin’s reply. “What?” Sagi cupped a hand to his ear. “What?”

“I said, anyone brave enough to come, unannounced, is likely to regard this storm as a golden opportunity. It hides their approach, and we cannot launch an intercept.”

Sagi was about to point out that, yeah, maybe yakuza did numb-nuts things like fly blind in a sandstorm, but he was damned tired waiting around for something to happen… and then something did.

At first, he wasn’t sure if what he’d heard was just the cry of a fresh gale, a high, grating whine that reminded Sagi of those pneumatic drills dentists used. Then, out of the coppery murk, the ghostly outlines of a fighter coalesced; a Lucifer, its thrusters spurting controlled bursts that bathed the sand clouds orange. Blown to a near standstill, the Lucifer seemed to hang above the sand a brief second and then the craft touched down with a decrescendo engine-whine. Sagi glimpsed a hazy emblem just below the cockpit: a near-copy of the Kurita dragon, but with four diamonds—three black, and one white.