Daughter of The Dragon

Marcus’ mouth tugged into a reluctant grimace—part smile, part frown. Yamata might’ve been a better code-name than Kappa. Yamata was a vengeful god, a serpent with eight heads and as many faces. As was Jonathan: Son of the Dragon, ISF, O5P, or Bounty Hunter, but always a step ahead, weaving his serpentine path, playing faction against faction and leaving each to wonder.

So Marcus should be happy, ecstatic. They had money, and Jonathan had the means, and their goal was in sight. Bringing down the proud Kuritas would be their revenge against the House that had taken away their honor; against their father, by using the training he’d given them to destroy his heritage. And the killing blow for Katana Tormark, the symbol of everything they’d lost.

My legs. Our father. And our poor mother. Oh, I want Katana to suffer, so much she’ll beg for death, and be grateful when it comes. That data crystal I shall listen to and savor for the rest of my life. But if I have to do something about Jonathan…

And there Marcus’ mind stuttered, tripping the way a faulty holovid recycled an image in an endless loop. Finally, a stab of pain that was not in his heart brought him back, and Marcus saw his hand clenched in a tight fist, his nails digging into his palms.

I can’t think of this now. Marcus relaxed, his strong fingers unfurling like the petals of an exotic flower. The shimmering globe of his sweat had shattered into spheres no bigger than a pinprick. Tiny balloons of bright red blood clung to his torn flesh.

Tomorrow, I’ll think about this tomorrow; or maybe in a month, or maybe two. But not now, I don’t have to think about it now.

He flicked his hand, and now his blood was free, rising to mingle with his sweat and drift in a lazy synchrony: the shattered heart of a fractured star.

Conqueror’s Pride, Proserpina

Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

10 May 3135

“Something’s got to be done about that Kat, you mark what I’m saying.” Sully clattered pans together with far more noise than necessary. Three assistants stood in a far corner and quailed. “Her going off half-cocked, no one knows where, and me sitting here, thumb up me arse, and not even so much as a by-your-leave.”

“Cut that infernal racket!” Jake squinted at Sully, his wrinkled visage framed in a scented cloud that smelled of buttery leeks and savory barley. “Land’s sake, yer as twitchy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers. Man can’t hear himself think, much less work; all this commotion and you like to pee your britches.”

Sully began to splutter, but the old man cut him dead with a glare. “None of your lip, you hear?” Jake took aim with a long, wooden spoon. “I ain’t your pappy and don’t cotton none to the job, but you ain’t too old a good ta

Astonishment choked Sully’s face red as a beet, and the big man’s hands bunched. For a split second, the only sound was the bubble of soup. Then Sully sagged, almost visibly deflated. “All right.” Sully jerked his apron from his neck. “I s’pect you’re right. But I’ll be back to start…”

But Jake was already shaking his head. “You got the rest of the afternoon and night off. They’s three of them.” A jab with the spoon at the assistants. “And that’s already three too many. I don’t want to see yer mug agin till tomorrow breakfast.”

Sully didn’t like it, but he did as he was told. Later on, the scene would pass into apocrypha, a story that proved there really had been no one quite like Jake at bringing Sully to heel—and that fact alone should’ve given them pause.

Lunch passed without a hitch. Crockery cleaned and stowed, pots washed and drying on a rack, the kitchen eased into an afternoon lull that habitually went from two to five when di

But Jake did not. Instead, wicker basket hooked over an arm, he ambled to town. The last anyone saw of Jake was his back.

After half a klick of climbing a steady rise toward town, Jake stopped, turned, glanced back the way he’d come. The university campus that housed Katana’s headquarters was out of sight; any sentries couldn’t see him either.

It had taken Jake more than forty minutes to make his way out but less than twenty to backtrack because, for one thing, he ran. He circled into the compound via a twisting, boggy route knitted through a swamp. Access through the swamp was poorly defended because the planet provided its own sentries: blood limpets, shells gaping and patiently waiting in the black ooze for the unwary. The limpets’ preferred food was Proserpina’s dragon iguana; however, more than a few of Proserpina’s early settlers had ended up as between-meal snacks. Jake was not, however, one of them.

In twenty-five minutes, Jake was padding on cat’s feet down a hall in Katana’s private wing. With Katana off-planet, the vaunted Amaterasu security was a little lax. Jake found the conference room with no problem. After all, he’d been there before, delivering food for the Fury’s field commanders—and once even before then. Slipping into the room, Jake cut a beeline for the dragon tapestry. He tweezed a minute transceiver from the center of the dragon’s glittering eye. The tiny listening device had performed very, very well.

Once back in the kitchen, he glanced at a wall-mounted chronometer. It was half past three, more than enough time. The kitchens were arranged in a series of interlocking squares, each co

Then, tugging the bag open, he reached one hand behind his neck, pulled… and peeled off his face. The mask gave grudgingly, with the same kind of sucking sound a boot makes in thick mud. Once free of his face and hair, he reached up with an index finger and popped out his right eye.

Then, something rustled. Something very big moved, then banged into something else and cursed.

Jake froze instantly, blue contact in one hand, his face and scalp in the other, muscles coiled tight as a spring—as Sully James, red-eyed and reeking of juniper, stumbled into view.

Sully hadn’t gone to town. He hadn’t gone to his room. Instead, he’d taken refuge in his favorite thinking spot; a sack of potatoes, behind which he kept a private stash of fine gin, guaranteed to put hair on one’s teeth. Sully had one paw wrapped around the neck of his bottle, the other up in greeting, and a hearty grin on his face that dribbled away as he gawked at Jake, whose face hung in one hand.

“Here now… now, wush… wush?” The words came out mushy, not only because Sully’s tongue wouldn’t cooperate but because Jake was staring: one eye blue, the other a naked, steely gray. “Wush… wush the hell…?”

Tucking his face into a back pocket, Jake sighed. “Oh, Sully,” he said, shaking his head and ambling up to the bigger man, who still stood wreathed in gin fumes. “You know, I really wish you’d gone to town.”

Quick as lightning, Jake’s right hand flashed out, his fingers rigid as spikes. They speared Sully at the hump of the big man’s Adam’s apple, and there was an audible crackle as the cartilage of Sully’s larynx fractured.