“You are not a citizen of the Confederation,” the leader said as if dismissing the claim.

Did a hint of Bannson’s anger show? “I know that an appropriate gift to the State can secure citizenship in the Confederation.” He never sat a meeting without having done his homework. “The average payment is, I think, quite low. But in The Republic of the Sphere, citizenship costs more and is held cheaply. I would rather see value for my efforts.”

No way to tell what the wily Capellan was thinking. Daoshen had perfect control, letting slip only that which he meant to. Bannson would do well to remember that.

Daoshen slithered up to his full height. He stood at the edge of his dais, weaving back and forth just enough to curl the incense smoke around him. With crimson robes swirled tightly around his cadaverously thin body, and the wide mantle resting on his shoulders, he reminded Bannson of a red cobra. And its dance could be so very hypnotic.

“You are an ambitious man,” Daoshen finally said. “We have spoken enough this day. Perhaps it would be best for both of us to think on our positions.”

Bannson never saw Daoshen again.

He spoke with interviewers, but refused to give up further information without mutual assurances from the Confederation. Military officers invited him to meals and meetings, working out different theories about how the Confederation Armed Forces and his commercial empire might best work together. At one point the Leader of Warrior House Imarra took Bannson to a remote facility hidden deep inside a mountain. There, the corporate magnate was allowed to walk along rank after rank of mothballed BattleMechs. Atlas. Men Shen. Tsi Tsang. New designs and classical configurations—enough to instantly outfit a full combat regiment. More than one hundred machines, ready to march. It had been some time since any Inner Sphere state had seen the like.

It was meant to impress, and it did. How many such caches did Daoshen have at his disposal? Bannson was never told.

He was treated cordially, and shown more entertainments. Eventually, the Maskirovka came with his papers for leaving Sian. Bannson was left to guess that he’d asked for more than Chancellor Liao was willing to pay. Or that plans had fallen through some other way.

It wasn’t until he was back within Republic space that he remembered Daoshen’s last words, and how they might be read in a completely different—and threatening—manner.

Why had Daoshen allowed him to leave Sian? The more he considered it, the more certain he became that Daoshen Liao had planned the CEO’s death before ever inviting him to the Confederation capital. Yet something stayed his hand. That glimpse behind Bannson’s public face?

Maybe.

“So what’s he offering?” Ivan asked. Big, yes. Ferocious, certainly. But the man was not stupid. Bannson did not tolerate ignorance, especially in those closest to him.

“He’s offering the world,” Bannson said cryptically, and meaning it quite literally. But which? There were perhaps a dozen worlds within one jump of Capellan space. Where would Daoshen strike first? Where would he eventually install Bannson as one of his nobles?

Bannson felt confident in his own long game. Sooner or later, the businessman gathered in what he felt owed. But if Daoshen was extending his hand a second time, could Bannson afford to turn his back on the erratic leader? Liao was coming, make no mistake. Wasn’t it good policy to keep his options open?

“I have a better question,” Jones finally said. Her rough-edged voice shattered Bannson’s train of thought. She tossed off the last of her drink. “Why do we care?”

Bannson wasn’t ready to share his reasons with anyone else. “Perhaps it is a case of accepting the inevitable,” he offered his agent. Sometimes that led to the most profitable business arrangements. And in the meantime, he still had assets in play, didn’t he?

DropShip Burning Petals

Above Liao

Prefecture V, The Republic

20 May 3134

The DropShip corridor was narrow, dusty warm and dimly lit—a seldom used translateral passage squeezed in as an afterthought between officers’ country and a power relay station. A short jump down half a flight of steep metal steps, remember to duck under the ventilation ductwork, and through an airlock quality hatch that opened onto the DropShip’s lower weather deck. A shortcut, if you knew your way around a converted Seeker–class vessel.

Major Ritter Michaelson, late of The Republic’s vaunted Tenth Hastati Sentinels, would know.

Michaelson wore dress blacks with enough salad on his left breast to back up his claim as one of The Republic’s elite soldiers. He pulled his service cap low so that the bill partially hid his contact-tinted eyes. Michaelson didn’t want to speak with anyone—he should have remained in his cabin. But the opportunity, forever his failing, was too great.

The weather deck, a holdover term from when naval vessels had sailed Terran oceans, was one of the Seeker’s three observation platforms. It opened onto ten meters of the curved outside hull where armor had been replaced with thick ferroglass. Ten centimeters separated Michaelson from the oblivion of space. With no atmosphere to fog his vision, the stars stood out in sharp, cruel splendor. He had the deck to himself because the ship was so close to planetfall. That was the way he wanted to come home, back to the word of Liao. Alone and repentant.

He got half of his wish.

The DropShip had started a port-side roll when a crewmember making his rounds slid down a vertical ladder with hands and feet clasped expertly to the outside rail. “Sir,” he said, spying Ritter Michaelson. Then, “Major. The Cap’n has sounded our atmospheric alarm. All passengers—”

He turned, letting the spacer see the ruined side of his face. Always a showstopper. “Should be webbed into their beds for landing,” Michaelson finished. He read the other man’s rank and name off his shipboard dungarees. “Petty Officer Samuels. I know. But I needed to see.”

Michaelson turned back to the ferroglass wall. Only four decks above the DropShip’s massive engines, he felt their deep, powerful thrum seeping up from the deckplates and warming the bottoms of his feet. He watched, waiting to see what the enlisted man would do, waiting for…

Liao.

The world rolled in from the left-hand side of the massive window, blotting out the stars like some great, shadowed curtain. Burning Petals fell into the darkside, though a dark green crescent brightened the rim of the planet where tinted sunlight bent just enough to reach around. Reflected light off of Elias’ Promise, the planet’s moon, allowed him to barely register the outlines of Nánlù and Beilù, the southern and northern continents, though right now they appeared more eastern and western given the DropShip’s equatorial approach angle.

“How long away?” the crewman asked, over his initial shock.

How long had it been since he’d set foot on his homeworld? In which life? “Several years.”

“They say Liao is one of the worlds—m’be a dozen or so—that if you know their history, you know most of the important events of the entire Inner Sphere.”