Assumption of risk

  "I'll take all the prayer we can get at this point. I need Ryan hobbled, and having Peter winning us friends in the Isle of Skye is one pebble for Ryan's shoe."

  "You may, in fact,, have another."

  "How so?"

  Curaitis' expression lightened, dulling the intensity in his eyes by the merest fraction. "When your sister and Galen Cox diverted to Ginestra to investigate the earthquake disaster, they gained a lot of notoriety by pitching in and working with the relief effort. The scandal vids linked them immediately, of course, but the more legitimate press began to run with the story as well. Katherine praised Galen as the one who suggested they divert, and his service record with you is getting good play. Because he's from the Isle of Skye and Katherine seems taken with him, some anti-Ryan forces have begun to champion Galen as a rival to you. There are also rumors that he befriended Ragnar Magnusson during the time you all trained together on Outreach, which has raised his stock in the eyes of the Rasalhague exiles in Skye."

  Victor pressed his fingers together, unconsciously tapping the index fingers against one another. He didn't know which bit of that news he liked better: Galen being touted as an antidote to Ryan or Galen and his sister becoming linked in the scandal vids. He had expected that to happen—he and Galen had even joked about it when Victor asked his friend to escort Katherine to Arc-Royal. Galen's becoming a thorn in Ryan's side was an unexpected benefit, which Victor liked all the more.

  "Are the stories about Galen and my sister all smoke, or is there fire there?"

  Shadow hooded Curaitis' eyes as the limo descended a ramp beneath the Triad. "They have not slept together, if that's what you mean."

  The prince stiffened for a second as his sense of family honor and any possible breach of it warred with his liking for Galen. "That does not surprise me. Galen is a gentleman and Katherine has a good head on her shoulders." Besides, I wouldn't want to deny them the happiness Omi and I have yet to know. "Frankly, if they do want to bed each other, I don't want to know about it. What I do want to know is whether or not they're interested in each other?"

  For the first time since Victor had met Curaitis, the security agent seemed at a loss. "Ask me if a man is a murderer, Highness, and I can tell you. Ask me if a man would make a good agent—and Cox would—and I can answer that. Don't ask me about affairs of the heart. All I can say is that I've not received any, reports of a romance from the field agents assigned to their security, but those people aren't trained to notice or quantify that sort of thing, either. There have been no public displays of affection in the media coverage, but beyond that I have no way of answering your question."

  Victor smiled, then allowed himself a laugh. "There are few men I would welcome as brothers-in-law, but having one who could be used to undercut Ryan's base of support in Skye, well, that would be special indeed. Let me know if anything does seem to be blossoming there."

  "As you wish, Highness."

  "Oh, and I assume, because of your silence on the matter, that the rumored lead on a payout to the man who killed my mother did not check out?"

  Curaitis shook his head. "Working it backward led to a dead end, and our intelligence assets around Ryan haven't been able to produce any link to it."

  "Dammit! I'd hoped we would finally have the smoking gun and be able to prove he gave the order to have my mother killed." Victor's left hand knotted into a fist. "I can't believe Ryan managed to have her assassinated without making a mistake somewhere along the line."

  "We don't know that he didn't, Highness, we just know we haven't found it yet." The larger man flexed his hands as the hovercar slid into its parking place and slowly settled to the ground beneath the palace. "He is arrogant and believes himself invulnerable. One day he'll slip up somewhere and we'll have him."

  Victor nodded. And then I'll kill him with the same assassin the used to kill my mother. "Very good. Keep me ..." Victor let his voice trail off as Curaitis pressed a hand to his earpiece again. "What is it?"

  Curaitis shook his head. "The student holovideographer checks out clean. We'll release her."

  "No, wait."

  "Highness?"

  I think even Katherine would appreciate the way I'm going to handle this one! Victor smiled confidently. "She wanted images for a school project, correct?"

  Curaitis nodded.

  "Very good. Have your people bring her and her equipment here. Giving her an interview is the least I can do to make up for her inconvenience, isn't it? It should earn me points with the journalistic community and the education lobby." Victor shrugged slightly. "At least I can hope so. You're frowning, what is it?"

  "Arranging the meeting will be simple, but it will mean you have to put off the envoy from Tormano Liao."

  Victor groaned. His father had supported Tormano Liao and his Free Capella movement because that operation had helped to distract Romano Liao's paranoid attention. With Ryan's meddling in the Isle of Skye and the Clan War's devastating effect on the Federated Commonwealth economy, Victor had been forced to cut back on funding to Free Capella. In a compromise to get the Estates General to approve other legislation, he had agreed to put off a new appropriations bill until the second quarter of next year.

  "Just thinking about having Karla Hsing haranguing me about funding cuts is enough to make me want to hand the whole F-C over to Ryan." The prince frowned. "Have someone in Foreign Affairs put her off and suggest that my patience, like my treasury, is not bottomless. As one runs out, so will the other. Diplomatically, of course."

  "Of course."

  "Tormano doesn't realize that he's really just a toothless old war hound, and his growls are not worth what they were in his sister's day." Victor shivered. "I wish Tormano would retire and persuade Kai to take his place. Then Free Capella would have a strong leader and one with whom I could deal."

  "I would say that Tormano would be pleased to have Kai succeed him at the head of Free Capella. It's Kai who seems reluctant."

  "Kai has more sense than most." Victor smiled in recollection of his friend. "So, then, we will have Hsing dealt with, yes?"

  "As you wish, my lord. You're learning well how to play the political game." Curaitis shook his head. "My job is to protect you from harm, but Victor Davion the distant military leader was much easier to safeguard than Prince Victor the politician."

  "There's the rub, Curaitis. My job is to keep the Federated Commonwealth alive. To do that I've got to become a politician as well as a soldier." Victor gave the other man a smile. "But don't worry, we both hate our new jobs."

  Curaitis nodded. "But we'll do them anyway."

  "That we will, Agent Curaitis, that we will."

  3

  DropShip Taizai, Recharging and Transfer Station

  Tetersen, District of Donegal Federated Commonwealth

  24 December 3055

  Zero gravity allowed Kai to grab the rungs of the transit ladder and propel himself along through the docking tube that connected his DropShip Zhanshi with the JumpShip that would be hauling it, the Taizai, and four other DropShips from Tetersen to Colinas and on to Solaris. The JumpShip's movement forward to the charging station had provided the illusion of gravity, but the illusion evaporated when the ship became stationary, its giant sail unfurled to collect solar energy to fuel the hyperdrive. Without gravity, anything not hitched down would float away if inertia could be overcome, and Kai did just that by shooting himself further along into the heart of the JumpShip.

  He passed through a short corridor and entered another docking tube. Grabbing a stanchion, he brought himself down to the deck and used the guide rail to pull himself forward. Doing so cut his transit speed, but the dark-haired young man willingly made that sacrifice. Though he was traveling to the Kurita DropShip at the invitation of a friend, the invitation had been worded formally, requesting his presence not as the Champion of Solaris, but as the Duke-Designate to the throne of the St. Ives Compact.

  Rounding the corner of the docking tube he caught his first glimps
e of the Combine's Internal Security Force troopers guarding the airlock leading into the Taizai. The face of one of them resembled Kai's, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and the yellow skin tones of an ancient Asian ancestry. The other guard also had sharpened eyes, but his darker skin and kinky black hair suggested that he had inherited a strong dose of African blood.

  Kai proceeded down the corridor until he stood two meters or so from them, then tightened his grip on the guide rail to stop himself. Planting his feet on the deck and holding himself down in place through pressure on the rail, Kai carefully executed a deep bow.

  "Konnichi-wa," he said, then straightened slowly. He kept the expression on his face neutral and hid the exertion it took to keep himself planted on the deck.

  Both ISF men, clad in loose-fitting black fatigues, returned the gesture, but then had to hop slightly in order to wrestle themselves back to the decking.

  "Konnichi-wa, Kai-sama," the younger guard said with a nod, earning his darker partner's disapproving glare.

  Kai assumed that the older man's frown was not because of the familiarity of address his partner had used. Allard-Liao was a mouthful, too packed with Ls and Rs to be easy for native Japanese speakers. He actually preferred being addressed by his first name as it reduced some of the anxiety within the Combine community on Solaris. What had even greater significance in this instance was the use of the title of "Kai-sama," which revealed that the two ISF men were on different sides of a current split within the Draconis Combine.

  Solaris, the Game World, attracted MechWarriors from all the star empires of the Inner Sphere. Solaris City, the capital, was divided into five major districts, each one identified with one of the ruling Great Houses of the Inner Sphere. The warriors from the various states tended to live among their own people in their own sectors of the city and to fight in local arenas. Aside from Terra, which boasted a neutrality established and administered by ComStar, Solaris was one of the few worlds in all the vastness of human space where people from different nations could mingle.

  Though most warriors enjoyed a strong following in their native nation through packaging and rebroadcast of fights, those from the Combine were different. The Kurita rulers had never permitted legal distribution of fight holovids, and they treated contraband versions the same way they did forbidden weapons, explosives, or drugs. Even holovids in the possession of private citizens could be confiscated when the individual entered Combine space. To salve a visitor's bruised feelings, he was usually mollified with the fiction that the items would be returned at the time of his departure from Combine space.

  The reasons for such harsh treatment were, Kai decided, justified if viewed from the perspective of the Combine's dominant Japanese culture. It harkened back to the medieval code of bushido, or the way of the warrior. Their mores dictated that all citizens were, ultimately, chattel of the ruling Coordinator and that their every action must be conducted with honor, compassion, and duty to each other, in accordance with the wishes of their masters. Those masters, in turn, drew their power from obedience to the wishes of their own masters and so on until everything led back to the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine.

  The Combine warriors who fought on Solaris were not bold samurai like their homebound brethren, but were ronin. For millennia the masterless ronin had been both revered and castigated within Japanese culture. Like modern Robin Hoods they were admired for their courage, yet at the same time viewed as being honorless because they acknowledged no lord. With the reemergence of bushido in the Combine's culture over the last four centuries, ronin warriors had become more scorned than revered; indeed, any interest in the games on Solaris was officially viewed as something shameful, akin to a taste for pornography in other states.

  "Kai-sama" was a title Kai had been given when he bested the Combine's best fighter, Theodore Gross, on his way to the top. Before the battle, Gross had boasted and postured about his skill and invincibility, while the promoters cast the fight as a contest between a seasoned arena fighter and a bored dilettante who needed to be taught a lesson. No one ever mentioned the fact that Kai was conceding his opponent twenty tons' worth of BattleMech, and when Kai took Gross down within thirty seconds of their first exchange, his quiet commitment to getting the job done immediately won him fans within the Combine.

  And enemies, not the least of whom was Thomas DeLon, the stable owner for whom Gross fought.

  Kai smiled politely. "I have come at the invitation of Kurita Omi-sama."

  The elder man nodded. "We were informed of your coming. This way, my lord."

  Kai followed him, vaguely amused and distracted by the way his starched and pressed tunic and trousers hung stiffly and allowed him to move within them. The guard said nothing as he conducted Kai into the DropShip, but the lack of other people moving through the corridor suggested to Kai that their passage was being monitored and his presence here being kept strictly confidential.

  The invitation had come through normal diplomatic channels, which were anything but direct or overt. Omi's request for his visit had actually been relayed from the Taizai to the ComStar relay station on Tetersen, then sent on to Kai on the Zhangshi by the Ministry of State office of that planet. This made Kai think that keeping his visit secret was not so much for the universe at large, but for the slice of the Combine in the DropShip—which made a certain amount of sense.

  Given that the Combine, by and large, firmly believed that the Solaris games and their devotees were a disreputable lot, permitting Kai to openly visit the ship would have been a dishonor. The fact that Omi was bound for Solaris must have caused no end of inner conflict for those assigned to take her there, because, on the face of it, to be assigned such duty was a disgrace. Yet Kai doubted that she had been given the mission as some form of punishment for a transgression against her father Theodore Kurita, but he also realized he did not know the Coordinator's mind.

  But I do know Omi and she would never burden me with any part of her disgrace. In that single fact Kai took some comfort and had to kill the hint of a smile as the ISF guard pulled up at the mouth of a corridor walled with paper and wood-lattice shoji panels. "You will wait in here for her Highness."

  Kai nodded and stripped off the rubber-soled shoes he had worn in transit. The guard pulled an elasticized pair of shoelets from a small niche in the wall, and handed mem to Kai. The tongue of the shoes was so exaggerated and elongated that it ran up the front of his shin to cap his knee. He pulled the right one on, then fastened the elastic band in place around his knee by fitting the two velcro ends together.

  As he tugged the second shoe into place he noticed two things about them. First was what anyone but people in the Combine would have considered a minor point: the color of the shoelets. The gray matched his eyes and coordinated well with the emerald green of his trousers. The same people watching his arrival and clearing the way must have made sure his shoelets and their color would not embarrass him or his hostess.

  The second thing he noticed was that the front of the shoelet had the hard polymer hooks of the velcro used to secure the strap around his knee. He knew from practical experience that the velcro teeth could bite against bare flesh; the shoelets were not designed primarily as a fashion accessory. These thoughts vanished within a moment, however, exactly the amount of time it took the guard to slide a shoji panel open and wave Kai into the small room beyond.

  If not for the subtle hint of the nearly invisible fuzzy stripes running across the tatami mats on the chamber floor, Kai would have thought himself in a small tea house. Barely three meters square, the room felt cozy the moment he pulled his knees up under his body and floated in. The low ceiling would have hit him in the head had he entered standing up. He gently pushed off it, then cushioned his landing on the mats. Touching down in a kneeling position, he firmly placed his knees and toes against the fuzzy stripes.

  Immediately he bowed to the room's other occupant. "Konnichi-wa, Kurita Omi-sama." Kai touched his head to the mat, then carefully le
vered himself back into a sitting position.

  Omi Kurita smiled at him before she bowed. Tall and slender, long black hair gathered at her neck with a thick red bow, she was dressed in a silk kimono edged at the sleeves, neck, and hem with wide emerald-green ribbon. The gown itself was ivory, with beautiful green herons woven into the silk. A green sash encircled her waist, and Kai had to assume that she had chosen the kimono specifically to harmonize with the clothing he was wearing to their meeting. Her ivory shoelets did not mar its beauty.

  "It is very good to see you again, Kai Allard-Liao." Omi tripped over none of the difficult sounds in Kai's name. "I am honored by your visit."

  "As was I by your invitation." Kai caught a caution in her blue eyes, but could not place it until another panel slid open in the wall facing them. The individual kneeling beyond it kept his eyes downcast and moved with a stiffness that Kai marked as extreme formality. What little we have already said is a breach of etiquette. We are not ourselves in this, but representatives of our nations.

  Kai set himself with his hands resting flat and palm-down on his thighs, mirroring Omi's position, as the third person gently pulled a long, slender casket into the room. The old man, bent as much by age as deference, pressed the mahogany box to the mats and let it settle into place. He fumbled at one of the three brass latches holding the lid shut, but Kai sensed that it was a deliberate mistake instead of a true mis-cue. This surprised him because he caught no horror for the action in the man's whispered "Sumimasen."

  A frown flashed across Kai's face. You are thinking too much like your father, and not enough like your mother. The Asian cultures of China and Japan somewhat united the Combine, the St. Ives Compact, and the Capellan Confederation. Though Kai had been born to Candace Liao, Grand Duchess of the St. Ives Compact and one-time heir to the Celestial Throne of the Capellan Confederation, he had been raised within the confines of the Federated Commonwealth. He understood and took pride in his Asian heritage, but more often defaulted to the less elegant and less subtle logic of occidental philosophy when seeking guidance for his life.