Steel Rain (29 page)

Machiko considers what she knows, what she suspects. She considers Gordon Ito and his Special Administration. She considers the interest expressed by Ito's deputy regarding Neurocomp and what that might imply. She considers the many uncertainties that remain, but she says, "The violence against Nagato Combine appears to be the work of terrorists."

"You have definite indications."

This does not seem to be a question. It seems to be a statement that Honjowara
-sama
wants confirmed. The gaze he directs toward her seems particularly strong.

"Yes, Chairman-Mma," Machiko says. "That is correct."

"How would you characterize the progress you are making?"

It has been little more than three days since the bombing at clan headquarters, a few hours more than that since the assassins' attacks. In that time, Machiko has followed leads and taken captives and conducted interrogations. She has pursued her enemy across the plex and gained much valuable information. She cannot say where or when she will find her enemy, but this is not what the Chairman asked. "We are making swift progress, Chairman
-sama
," she says. "Very swift."

Honjowara
-sama
looks to the union leaders. They appear much impressed. Several appear to grow uneasy beneath Machiko's roving gaze and direct their attention elsewhere.

"Our Serpents are swift, and very determined," Honjowara
-sama
says, making a rare use of the slang term for the Guard. "Do not be concerned about the violence directed against us. These criminals do not know the danger they face. They will soon be brought to justice!"

The union leaders do not seem to doubt it.

The meeting soon ends. Honjowara
-sama
moves to another room like a western-style sitting room with sofas and armchairs around a large marble hearth. The GSG detail at the door pass through a number of persons in twos and threes, minor union officials and union members and members of their families, all here to spend a few minutes with the Chairman of Nagato Combine. Honjowara
-sama
speaks casually and shows several of the children great favor, inquiring about their schools and relations with their parents.

Each guest receives a small gift. A union photog and persons from the Nagato Office of Corporate Affairs take digipics and trideo to commemorate the occasion. A Security Service officer with cybercams for eyes watches from nearby.

Then comes the main event.

They ride an elevator to the hotel's main floor. They take a passage guarded by every form of security personnel to the very edge of the satin-draped stage facing the hotel's Grand Ballroom. Then comes the duty that cannot be avoided.

Machiko is commanded by Honjowara
-sama
to stop and wait at the edge of the stage, to remain with the entire body detail as Honjowara
-sama
walks alone toward Durkin-san and the podium at the front-center of the stage.

Each passing moment is a nightmare of expectation. From
the moment that Honjowara
-sama
first steps onto the stage,
pandemonium erupts. The entire assemblage of people crowded among the rows and rows of tables filling the ballroom comes to its feet, applauding, exclaiming, filling the hall with the uproar of their voices. A barrage of machine-gun fire could erupt and Machiko would not hear it until too late.

GSG stand in a line before the stage, and also wait behind the lush hangings crossing the rear of the stage, but none accompany Honjowara
-sama
to where he is most exposed.

Machiko breathes deeply. She battles to settle her spirit, but knows this battle will not be won till Honjowara
-sama
retires from the stage. She is little assured by the thought that the gathering reacts with immense favor to the Chairman's appearance.

It is no surprise that the people filling the ballroom react as they do. It is no coincidence that the Transport Mechanics and Load Handlers' Free Trade Union chooses the Chrysanthemum Palace for its annual meeting, or that the Chairman honors the gathering by appearing on the dais. The Chairman's own personal funds assisted Durkin-san's hard-fought climb to the presidency.
Kobun
of the Honjowara-gumi stood guard at union meetings and defended local election committees when ruthless criminal elements allied with the Maf sought to maintain the oppressive iron grip of their control over the union membership.

These people have elected a president of their own choosing, but they know well who is primarily responsible for the influence and power they now possess.

"
Hon
-
go!
Hon
-
go!
Hon
-
go
!" they chant. What they mean is "the main word." He who speaks the words of truth, words that matter.

And now Honjowara
-sama
arrives at the center of the stage. He lifts one hand high, index finger extended and roars into the mikes on the podium, "
Number
one!
"

The assembly goes wild. Shouting, screaming. Pounding fists on tables and feet against floor till the ballroom resounds with thunder.

"
Number
one!
Number
one!
"

The outcry goes on for five minutes or more. When some measure of order finally seems about to descend, Honjowara
-sama
says into the mikes, "We have only now begun."

Another thunderous outburst arises.

But when Honjowara
-sama
thrusts both his hands palm-out to the assembly, the uproar quickly settles into quiet.

"Under the leadership of your president!" Honjowara
-sama
says in a powerful voice, "you have taken many steps
toward securing a prosperous future for yourselves and for your families! Know that the bond between Nagato Combine and your leadership remains strong! That your president works tirelessly to guarantee you the benefits you profoundly deserve!"

The tumultuous ovation that arises now drowns out

Honjowara
-sama
's voice. It becomes deafening as Honjowara
-sama
draws Durkin-san to his side, both men thrusting fisted hands toward the soaring ceiling of the ballroom, index fingers erect.

"
NUMBER
ONE
!" the pair bellow into the mikes.

"
Spellcasting
!" shouts into Machiko's ears.

It is her worst nightmare come true.

She does not look into the astral to determine what is happening. To gaze into the astral is to open oneself to attack from the astral. Rather, Machiko accepts the word of those of the Guard who are responsible for watching the astral, and she blurts, into her commlink, "
Green
wave
green
wave
green
wave
. . . ! "

She propels herself across the stage. The details waiting in the wings of the stage are already in motion. Those nearest her are barely a step behind her.

As she moves toward Honjowara
-sama
at center-stage, a trio of naga, Ujitaro's Awakened serpents, sluice across the stage in front of her feet.

And then she sees it, far above the ballroom floor, out over the center of the floor, something forming, coalescing out of the empty air, an enormous globe of brimstone red, now flaring with sparks and tendrils of the fire and expanding by the moment as if to incinerate the entire ballroom.

Honjowara
-sama
hesitates, lifting his gaze to the globe. As the tumultuous acclamation of the crowd begins filling with cries of horror, Honjowara
-sama's
expression grows adamant with defiance.

Machiko bruises past Durkin-san and drives herself bodily into Honjowara
-sama
's flank. Others strike her, thrust against her. For a moment, Honjowara
-sama
seems like the immovable boulder half immersed in a churning sea; then they are moving around him like an inexorable wave, forcing
him toward the side of the stage, lifting him right from the
floor and forming a bullet-shaped barricade that batters past anyone in their path.

The crackling, flaming globe seems only to grow larger. A shrill wind arises. Lightning tears at the stage, the podium. Peals of horror and fear peak into screams of agony.

A deafening discharge erupts, like detonating artillery.

Machiko feels the blast vibrating through the floor. She feels the shock wave shoving at her shoulders. She feels its heat and smells its acrid smoke and hears the shrieks of its victims. But she can do nothing about that. Duty keeps her driving ahead, carrying Honjowara
-sama
along, through the wings of the stage, down corridors and stairways, finally to the sub-levels of the hotel, the expansive parking complex. Here waits a convoy: GSG and SDF troopers, weapons ready; armored sedans and security vans and armored limousines, engines running. Once Honjowara
-sama
has been installed in a swift and highly maneuverable Toyota Elite, Machiko orders an abrupt halt so that she may access the situation.

She will not rush the Chairman into the streets and into a potential ambush. The magical attack could be pure subterfuge.

Even the priority channel on her commlink is overwhelmed with traffic. Many long moments pass before she can contact the hotel command center. A first report suggests that the hotel's Grand Ballroom is burning, that the main level of the hotel is filling with smoke. Another indicates that the fury of the magic attack has incited a panic, that security personnel at the hotel exits are being overwhelmed, in one case trampled, by hundreds of terrified fleeing people.

"Find the mage!" Machiko shouts into her commlink. "The mage!
Find
the
mage
!"

Like hunting a minnow in a flood.

She orders the convoy to roll.

3
0

Honjowara
-sama
is brought safely to the Brooklyn headquarters of the Yoshida
-kai
. From there, Machiko arranges for him to be conveyed by limo and helicopter to his estate in the eastern reaches of Suffolk County. The attack at the Chrysanthemum Palace Hotel must be considered an attack against the Chairman, and Machiko will take no chances. She assigns both Ryokai and Gongoro to Honjowara
-sama
body detail and to take command of the GSG at the estate.

Then, she commandeers a car and returns to the Chrysanthemum Palace Hotel.

The streets leading to the complex are clogged with emergency vehicles and blocked by Winter Systems police. Machiko abandons the car and jogs the final blocks to the hotel and casino complex. The scene she encounters there is apocalyptic.

The fire is already extinguished. Damage to the Grand Ballroom is merely superficial. The main level of the hotel is hazy with smoke, but the true damage may only be measured in terms of persons killed or injured.

They lie everywhere, the dead, the wounded moaning for help, crying for loved ones, screaming with the anguish of broken bones and shattered joints, along every corridor connecting with the Grand Ballroom, across the main lobby, heaped atop one another about the two main entrances. Medics and paramedics move frantically from one victim to the next, all but overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the fallen.

Machiko comes upon a man recording all with a portacam. So great is her frustration, so intense her horror over what has happened, that she seizes the camera, smashes it on the floor, and then, sword drawn, sends the man running for the nearest exit.

In a lounge on the mezzanine, she finds Ujitaro lying slumped on a sofa, surrounded by his coiling naga, and watched over by a small crowd of GSG. "We found him unconscious after the attack," informs the senior one of the group, one of the Guard's few other woman members. "He says he is merely exhausted. I thought to move him away from the smoke and confusion. I also summoned the thaumaturgic medical unit. They will be arriving shortly."

Mages are no less likely than physical adepts to suffer irreparable harm at the hands of doctors, and so the Kissena Park Medical Center, a subsidiary of People's Health Centers of New York, which is itself a subsidiary of Nagato Corp, maintains a special team specifically for the treatment of persons who are magically active.

Likely, the same personnel who first attended Sukayo will attend Ujitaro—attend him with the utmost care.

Machiko crouches beside the mage. He appears disheveled and battered, as if recently subjected to a beating. A purplish welt dives from the right side of his forehead into the wild disarray of his hair. A smear that could be dried blood stains his chin. His voice is like a raspy grunt. "What do you want?"

Quietly, Machiko says, "When we spoke of the mage who sent the old man with the bomb to Honjowara
-sama
's headquarters, you said you would know this mage by his work." Ujitaro nods. "It was the same one today."

"You did not detect his presence before he attacked?" Ujitaro's look turns acid. "Initiates mask their auras."

"Why did you not attack?"

"I battled his magic. Or you would all be cinders!" Compassion yearns to make some statement, Machiko's heart feels moved to sympathy, but duty must take precedence now. There is only duty and death. They must all be prepared to hurl themselves selflessly at an irrational death.

Machiko rides an elevator to the security command center. She finds the deputy director for hotel security in the middle of a ferocious tirade, a tirade that abruptly halts as the man's eyes meet her own.