So sleep now, Tai-shu Toranaga, while you can. I am the nightmare you haven’t even dreamt yet.
All the rest—the ones who would stand in my way—are gone . . . well, all except two. (I regret Crawford, a little, though the bomb wasn’t my fault. Crawford, I actually liked. He was a man who understood expedience.) These last two, they think they’re safe. Doddering old fools. They think they’ve found sanctuary. Perhaps they live in that mist of age and encroaching senility that many mistake for peace. Well, they will not know peace much longer, and for them, there is no sanctuary. I’m certain that when Bhatia learns of it, he’ll appreciate the gesture because it reinforces one of the first lessons I learned so very long ago from my oldest master: No witnesses.
Like dear old Marcus was. Oh, I’d pay good money to see Michi’s face when he finally figures out the codes and discovers those little tokens of my esteem. To tell the truth, though, I’m a little disappointed. Michi’s not nearly as imaginative or resourceful as I remember. You’d expect better from a trained investigator and, certainly, when we worked together, he was the most perceptive of the bunch, always the first to see the connections. That part of his cover story is, at least, no lie—though his name isn’t Michi, either. Or Fraser. Ah, but what’s in a name? Well, I’ll tell you.
Richard: meaning rich or bountiful. Or Bounty.
Thereon, derived from Theron, meaning . . . Hunter.
You do the math.
Yet he and I are of a kind, kindred spirits down deep, that green armor the egg from which we’ve hatched. Only he’s quite distressed. He wants to crawl back inside.
Not me. I don’t need a shell anymore. I don’t have to hide. Oh, I lurk in the shadows. I’m at home in the dark. I’m the flicker you see out of the corner of your eye. Turn your head, try to look at me—I’m gone.
But I have changed. Utterly. Completely. Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. A process begun when Katana’s kami poured into my body, in the instant I cried out for her soul. In a way, I’ve been born and in the birthing, willed Katana back to life.
I am the alpha and the omega: the beginning and the end. I am like Zeus from whom Athena sprung, fully formed. No, that’s not right. I am a god. I am.
And perhaps, very soon, skin to hot blood, pounding heart to feverish desire, Katana shall know passion, that fiery ecstasy that only I can give. Soon, perhaps. Soon.
Because the Bounty Hunter is dead. And I am here, Katana. I am here.
About the Author
Ilsa J. Bick is a writer as well as a recovering psychiatrist. She is the author of prize-winning stories and novellas, including tales set in the Classic BattleTech universe (Battle-corps. com), including “Memories of Fire and Ice at the Edge of the World,” “Break-Away” (the first installment of the Proliferation Anthology), and her most recent work, The Gauntlet, Books I and II, set in the weeks before the Steiner-Davion wedding.
Other work has appeared in SCIFICTION, Challenging Destiny, Talebones, Beyond the Last Star, Subterranean (with coauthor Tobias Buckell), Paradox, Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits, and Star Trek: Voyager: Distant Shores, among many others. She has several Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers e-books to her credit; her next SCE e-book, Ghost, is forthcoming. Her first published novel, Star Trek: The Lost Era: Well of Souls, cracked the 2003 Barnes & Noble Bestseller List.
She is the author of Daughter of the Dragon and Blood Avatar, a MechWarrior murder mystery. Dragon Rising marks her third outing in the MWDA universe.
When she isn’t working, she frets about when she’ll find time to work again which, her long-suffering husband points out, is counterproductive. (Clearly, he’s learned a thing or two, hanging around a shrink.) Then she usually has a martini—Belvedere, straight up, very dry, three olives—lies down, and waits for the feeling to go away.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE 1
2
3
4
5
7
8
PART TWO 9
10
11
12
13
PART THREE 14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
PART FOUR 26
27
28
29
30
32
33
34
35
36
PART FIVE 37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
PART SIX 49
50
51
52
53
54
55
57
58
PART SEVEN 59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
EPILOGUE 68
69
70
71
72
73
74
About the Author