"And your judgement of him from a yakuza viewpoint?"

"If he were an oyabun,we would own the world. As a police magistrate, he would be death itself."

Omi stood slowly and wheeled the chair back to her brother's desk. "Thank you, Yodama-san, for giving me so much of your time. One more question and I will leave."

"If you feel you must leave ..."

"I must let you get back to your work." Her expression betrayed a trace of fear, but her voice remained calm and even. "You say Victor is loyal to his friends. But what of this alliance my father has made? Will the Davions wait to stab us once we tum our backs?"

Shin exhaled slowly as he considered her question. "Were it up to Victor, no, we would have nothing to fear. That is not to say that I do not trust your father's judgement implicitly. Yet we have all grown up hearing stories of the craftiness of the Fox. I would certainly not want to see the Combine lulled to sleep by any promise of Hanse Davion's for fear we might never waken again."

28

DropShip Barbarossa , Inbound

Alyina, Federated Commonwealth

16 November 3051

Kai Allard stopped halfway through the hatch and turned around. "You needed something, Highness?" Other officers leaving the small briefing room slipped past Kai one by one to eventually leave him alone with Victor. "Close the hatch."

Kai heard the tension in Victor's voice, but knew him well enough to intuit that it was something more personal than business on Victor's mind. "What's the matter?"

Victor looked up at him and blinked his gray eyes. "Sorry, Kai. I must sound like the heat death of the universe is imminent or something." He cracked a smile. "Nothing so terrible, I assure you. I just wanted to speak to you alone in order to pass on some personal information that came with our orders. No one else is getting any personal communications because of our cutting ComStar off ..."

"Got it." Kai sat down on the edge of the conference table. "What's happening?"

Victor dropped into a well-padded chair and put his feet up on the table. "Our parents made it back to New Avalon without incident. My brother Peter went AWOL from his NAIS company during exercises so he could be there when they arrived. He wants to ship out here immediately."

Kai chuckled lightly. "Peter always was a bit headstrong, He's the only cadet who's ever given Firsties more trouble during hazing than they gave him. What made him think he wanted to be out here?"

"I'm not sure." Victor shrugged. "I think he heard that Ragnar Magnusson is younger than he is and I gather his grades have been less than stunning."

"My father said Quint was a bit irked about having to stay at the Sakhara Academy while we were training on Wolf's world." Kai rotated his fist to loosen up his forearm. "I guess Cassandra and Kuan Yin convinced him to stay at the Academy."

"There's more," Victor said gravely. "Intelligence from Sian reports that Romano has put your mother and father under an edict of death. I'm sorry."

"Again?" Kai forced himself to take the threat lightly. "This is at least the tenth report we've had of another assassination plot. All the others that have leaked were dismal failures. The ones we didn't foresee came close, except that the agents always managed to bungle them. The assassins all got picked up coming in-system at St. Ives or Loris."

"Even so, we're tightening security here, just in case Romano's insane enough to go after you."

Kai nodded. "I appreciate the warning, but we'll have to tell the Liao assassin to take a number. After the Clans are through with me, he can do his worst."

"I suppose."

Kai sensed a sudden shift in Victor's mood. "There's something else. Are you still upset at our assignment to Alyina even though the Clans bypassed it in favor of Devin and Pasig?"

"No. I'm certainly not happy about it, but it could be worse. Alyina has some good defensive positions." Victor glanced down at his hands, then back up at Kai. "My father said that various folks in the Draconis March have been reminding him of their loyalty and that they wouldn't ever want to be faced with a choice between staying with the Federated Commonwealth or allying with another state."

"What?" Kai couldn't believe what he heard. "That's treason, isn't it?"

"I suppose. From what I can make out, Liao agents in the

Sarna March have been spreading stories of a torrid romance between Omi Kurita and me. Of course, it eventually got to folks in the Draconis March and they reacted unfavorably, to put it mildly. There has been no incident, mind you, but I don't appreciate their interest in my life."

"Ah." Kai narrowed his eyes. "But you and Omi Kurita didn't seem to be carrying on a big romance. Has something changed that I don't know about?"

"Not unless you want to call a goodbye kiss a big romance." Victor pounded his fist on the table. "I barely know her and now I've got people protesting about a phantom relationship. How dare they?"

Kai got up and began to pace the room. "Victor, don't you realize how many people's future rides on you? You turned twenty-one back in April, and if it hadn't been for our training, you would certainly have been officially invested as the heir to both thrones of the Federated Commonwealth. Hell, your father might even have abdicated in your favor, which some were predicting at the time—war or no war."

"What has that got to do with anything?" Victor demanded angrily.

"It has to do with how others react to your behavior. The people in the Draconis March only feel safe as long as they believe you hate the Dracos as much as they do. They know you and your father keep the Draconis March strong to prevent the Kuritans from trying to take it away. They like that. It reassures them, makes them think you're following in your father's footsteps.

"Now they hear you're romancing Theodore Kurita's daughter." Kai shook his head. "They figure she's bewitched you and that you'll begin to start making excuses for the Dracos. Then poof! They're suddenly Theodore's vassals."

"That's ridiculous."

"To you and me, but not to them." Kai stopped his pacing and leaned his hands down on the conference table. "Look, I trust you to make the right decision, no matter what. If you want to romance anyone—save Kali Liao—I'll back your play. But you've got to start looking at things the way others might interpret them."

Victor sighed and hung his head. "I've been thinking just these kinds of things, too, of late. Even if I don't like the situation, you're right and I must be careful. But, Kai, only you can help me."

"Whatever you need."

"Rumor and damage control mostly. Try to get it out that this 'romance' is merely idle gossip. With you and Galen and my cousin Morgan to back me, who will doubt that I've got my head on straight? Which I do, by the way."

Kai laughed. "I'll agree with that. After all, didn't you find the most interesting woman on Outreach?"

"Our mothers excepted."

"Of course." Kai opened the hatch. "Don't worry, Victor. Before long, we'll all have way too much on our minds to worry about who is romancing whom." He threw his friend a friendly salute. "Later."