“Well, I didn’t like the one they chose.” Jonathan folded his arms and dropped into a cross-legged squat, like a sultan on a flying carpet. “Little Luthien. Sounded like a troll living under a bridge.”
“But Kappa? Why not just take out an advertisement? Better yet, why not send the ISF an itinerary?”
“Marcus, Marcus,” Jonathan sighed, wagging his head from side to side as if his brother were a dull little boy who just didn’t get it. “Don’t you understand? It’s only an advertisement for the prepared mind. I wanted the ISF to sit up and take notice.”
“Oh, they noticed all right. Sent an agent out to assassinate you.”
“My point, exactly: Three little agents, all in a row, one on Northwind, one on Procyon,” said Jonathan, ticking the planets off on his fingers, “and the last on Devil’s Rock, all in a nice straight line leading right into Prefecture VII. Let the ISF and Bhatia spin their rotors a bit, maybe send a few agents to Castor or Connaught. It’s immaterial, really, so long as they’re looking in one direction while I go another. Anyway, things are going quite well. Getting rid of the Bounty Hunter was inspired, if I do say so myself. What better way to infiltrate Katana’s camp than by assuming the identity of a man no one’s ever seen face-to-face?”
Marcus wasn’t ready to let go of things quite so easily. “I’m not sure I’d call Devil’s Rock working out well. That agent got too close.”
“I let him get close. It was fun watching him watching me. Besides, I wanted to try out my new toys.” Jonathan paddled over to where Marcus still hung, fuming. “Stop fretting, Marcus. You worry too much.”
“Because there’s a lot to worry about.”
“No, there isn’t. Everything’s under control.”
Marcus didn’t answer because things weren’t under control anymore, and Marcus knew it. Oh, it wasn’t that he worried they’d be caught. Jonathan was good, very good. The problem was… Marcus wasn’t sure he could control Jonathan.
Their objective was clear: Katana Tormark must die. But would Jonathan do the job? Marcus stared into Jonathan’s eyes, gray as storm clouds and hard as flint, and saw something he didn’t like. There was an odd gleam, as if Jonathan really was Kappa : not the code name he’d taken but the actual monster, a creature from ancient Japanese mythology; a chimera of monkey, frog, turtle and human. According to legend, a kappa drew strength from water set in a bowl-like depression atop its head. The ancient Japanese had been so terrified of kappas that they’d developed the ritual bow—a way of getting a kappa to tip its water and lose its powers.
And kappas were arrogant, sometimes fatally so. Kappa no kawa nagare, the saying went: Even a kappa can drown.
But Marcus didn’t say any of this. There were things you didn’t say to Jonathan, not when you caught that glint of something else beneath his skin and behind his eyes—not if you wanted to continue to enjoy what was left of your life.
So Marcus said the only thing he could. “You know best. Where to next?”
Jonathan’s lips peeled back: not quite a grin and just short of a snarl. “Junction. And after that? Whichever way the wind—and Katana—blows.”
Well, now. Marcus might be a problem.
It was nearly midnight ship’s time, a time when Jonathan did some of his best thinking. So, as he peeled out of his clothes, he decided it was high time to do some heavy-duty thinking right now—about Marcus.
Naked now, cool air drawing sensual fingers along his skin, Jonathan hovered over his bed, inspecting his toys. He always stripped when he took inventory. He couldn’t explain it, but handling certain pieces made him, well, warm and tingly all over. His hungry eyes roved over makeup, syringes of silicon to change his features, contacts for his eyes, and his lovely, wonderful weapons: detonators, flechettes, an assortment of pistols, the ever-popular needler, frangible explosives.
But his eyes settled upon the Bounty Hunter’s gravity knives. Jonathan’s long, slim fingers trailed over the cool metal of the weapons’ shafts, and a frisson of pleasure shivered up his back and made his skin sprout gooseflesh. On an impulse, he strapped on the knives, cinching the leather straps tight. There was a full-length mirror opposite his bed, and now he pirouetted in midair, turning slowly on an invisible dais, his black mane of shoulder-length hair undulating like sea fans, the muscles of his arms and legs smooth as water-worn boulders beneath skin tawny from the sun. His body was a tool he kept in peak condition.
Gravity knives were simple in theory. Deploying the blade required a quick extension of the wrist, which depressed a hidden spring. Jonathan flicked both wrists. There was a metallic snick then a whisper of metal against metal as the knives extended. He admired the effect in the mirror, the way the razor-sharp blades caught the light.
Wonderful gadgets, and the armor! He inspected the bright, neon green suit spread on his bed: helmet, segmented chest plates, bulky vambraces with their arcane shape, gauntlets, upper leg armor and cylindrical boots. Relics, every article already a piece of history when, over a century ago, Michi Noketsuna appeared on Deber City and nearly killed heir-apparent Theodore Kurita. Michi was dead now, of course, but the Bounty Hunter had existed before him, and lived on after: a moniker assumed by anyone with a grudge and the gumption to assassinate his predecessor. So who, exactly, had this incarnation of the Hunter, this Michi Fraser, if that was really the man’s name, been? Well, water under the bridge, or down the river: the secret had died with the man. A pity he’d never find out now, but Jonathan had his own accounts to balance in the universe’s Grand Cosmic Ledger: with one Katana Tormark to be exact. Only, lately, setting his sights just on Katana was feeling somehow, well, limiting, and Jonathan didn’t like limits.
He retracted the blades, tucked and rolled to a computer. Riffling through an assortment of data crystals, he popped one into his holovid and pressed <play>. The machine hummed…
Sounds. A door opening, closing. The whimpering of an animal, a dog perhaps, muffled by cloth. A faint ripping sound—and then quick, breathless moans.
Spellbound, Jonathan listened as the woman’s cries became wave upon wave of screams, then shrieks, then gabbled pleas for mercy and God—and then for death that couldn’t come quickly enough. How good it was, the terror in their eyes and then the way they heaved and bucked as he strangled the life out of them, or slowly carved out small chunks of meat while Shu watched… Jonathan shivered again with a growing excitement that sent heat licking into his loins. He’d told Shu: The trick was to make the women last so the pleasure could go on and on, like pulling a fly’s wings and legs off, one at a time.
Would Katana Tormark scream? Would she beg? He liked to think that she wouldn’t at first because then, well, he’d make her. Then he’d be like a god.
Jonathan listened, his skin prickling with pleasure, his lungs pulling in air in huge, sobbing pants, and then he thought: No, no, not like a god because… I am God.
3
Orange Flight, 5th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 276th Tactical Fighter Wing
Ogawa City, Tsukude
Prefecture I, Republic of the Sphere
28 November 3134
Two undeniable facts: The universe could kill a guy a thousand ways to Sunday, and what the universe couldn’t do, the Dracs were pleased as punch to finish.
Now, his onboard sensors shrilled a warning about five milliseconds before Lieutenant Adrian Penn’s Lucifer hit another pocket of turbulence. Oh, yeah, baby, bring it on; peg that old fun meter one more time. Penn’s altitude dropped, and his stomach balled in his throat. Penn wrestled his bird, angled off fifty degrees, and then let out a slow exhalation when he felt the fighter lift.