Apparently no one cared if Kaneda’s men murdered random spacers for money on a daily basis, because Lord Himura’s only complaint seemed to be their target.
“My lord, there is nothing in my clan’s records to indicate that the Square Deal has any history with the Masu-kai beyond a bit of petty smuggling. Shouldn’t there have been a watch directive, or an aid and assistance order, or something? How are we to know that Captain Sokol is an old associate of the Himura clan if no one tells us?”
Lord Himura scowled. “Your father knew him. Didn’t he ever mention the Black Ace? The smuggler who got your family out of the Third Bastion?”
“Ahem. I, ah, stopped using that name a long time ago, my lord,” the captain said, looking a little embarrassed. “Indeed, I may bear some responsibility for the lapse in records. I had retired from the spacer life for quite some time, as you may recall, and when I acquired the Square Deal I thought it best to obscure any connection to my old operations.”
“Don’t tell me Vicky’s people are still looking for you?” Lord Himura said.
“She was stubborn enough before she became a queen. I don’t think she’s ever going to give up.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Lord Kaneda said.
“Captain Sokol is Queen Victoria’s father,” Lord Yamashida explained. “She’s rather insistent that he give up on his wanderings and retire to help her run Greater Victoria. Her agents have a regrettable habit of attempting to kidnap him when they can find him. I believe there are also some rather wealthy ladies in the Second Bastion who insist he’s their husband-”
“Lies and slander. Smuggle an heiress or two out of Muslim territory during a war, and you never hear the end of it.”
“-and of course the Teldari nomads are still hoping to get revenge for the desecration of their high priestess.”
“They were going to sacrifice her to that robot god of theirs,” he protested. “What was I supposed to do, leave her there to die? If that replicant Dusty pawned off on me had worked to spec they never would have known the difference.”
Naoko was giving the captain an incredulous look now, but everyone else was smiling. I guess that was the idea then? Still, I had no idea what to think about all that. I guess when you’re older than dirt you end up having some history?
Greater Victoria was one of the most powerful colonies in the sector. Why would anyone pass up the chance to be part of the government there? Just so he wouldn’t have to take orders from his daughter… who was really stubborn, and had a big enough ego that she’d named her colony after herself. Okay, maybe I could see that. But what about the rest of it?
I made a note to get Dusty to share stories when I got back to the ship. If he’d been involved in some of the captain’s adventures I was sure he’d be happy to talk.
The oyabun chuckled. “Ah, those were the days. But even so, we can’t have mistakes like this become accepted. The Masu-kai stand by their allies, and there’s also the treasure to consider. Do you realize that this is our only outstanding lead on the location of the Yata no Kagami?”
Kaneda looked horrified.
“That information was not made available to me, my lord,” he said. “I assure you, my men would have acted with the utmost restraint had we known.”
“Such secrets cannot be so widely disseminated,” Lord Yamashida put in smoothly, like this was an old argument. “My department was still verifying our information, in preparation for bringing it to Lord Himura’s attention. How did you learn of it, anyway?”
“The salvage sales were mentioned in last month’s general intelligence update,” Kaneda said, looking like it was physically painful to give up his source.
Yamashida shook his head. “Hence my argument that we should filter that data before providing it to the clans. But that is a discussion for another time.”
I wondered how many points he’d just scored for himself, and whether he’d set this whole thing up somehow just to make Kaneda look bad. Snake.
“We can discuss that at the next policy meeting,” Lord Himura agreed. “Now, Jiro, I’d say your man owes Captain Sokol an apology and the price of repairs. Thankfully no one was killed in the attack, although I understand there were casualties?”
“Alice here was gravely injured in the boarding action,” Captain Sokol agreed.
All eyes turned to me.
“Really? How did a young girl get caught up in something like that?” Lord Himura asked.
I swallowed. Keep it simple, Alice. Don’t make a fool of yourself.
“I was helping out with the passenger management, my lord,” I said. “So I was the first one to find out that the traveling bot salesman we had on board was actually an infiltrator. I was in the best position to keep his bots from doing too much damage while Chief West scrambled the security teams. Then Emla got shot, and I kind of lost it.”
“She exacted retribution from Mr. Desh, and fortunately Emla’s damage turned out to be repairable,” the captain said. “But she spent quite a while in medbay afterwards. What were your injuries, Alice?”
“Um, both kidneys and most of my liver fried, two shattered ribs and a collapsed lung, third degree burns over forty percent of my body and a whole lot of general tissue replacement. It’s a good thing my damage control mods were growing in at that point, or I would have collapsed before he ran out of bots.”
It was kind of funny how unsettled all these tough criminal masterminds looked at my recitation. Like they didn’t send out their inugami to do stuff like that all the time. Was it different when the target was a little girl? Or was it just the fact that I was standing here in front of them, instead of being some faceless statistic?
Yamashida’s expression never changed at all. I’d have to remember that.
“Clan Kaneda regrets this unwarranted attack,” Lord Kaneda said. “We will, of course, make restitution. I understand that the lady’s clan is unknown?”
Surprisingly, it was Akio who answered.
“Federation Intelligence had her marked for observation, but they don’t seem to know anything definite. Her mods are clearly Inner Sphere technology, but the other clues are uncertain at best. Perhaps one of the Second Sunrise clans, or an allied group in one of the Periphery states. Given the travel times involved it will take years to conduct an investigation, and we may never be sure.”
“Then we shall assume that she is the last of her clan,” Lord Kaneda said gravely. “Alice, do you wish to personally chastise the agent responsible for your ordeal?”
Well, that was a surprise.
“No thank you, my lord. I’m confident that I can rely on Clan Kaneda to handle this matter appropriately.”
I wasn’t sure if I was more likely to kill the guy, or just yell at him and let him go. But either way it would offend his clan if I didn’t handle it exactly the way they thought I should, so it was better to let it go.