Niko’s face twitched before stiffening. “I’ve made up my mind.”
“Niko,” Ru hissed in distress, looking at him wide-eyed. “Don’t you think you’re taking this too far? You’ve made the point that you’re not happy. Da is giving you an out. Don’t you care what our parents think?”
Niko glanced at his younger brother with a sorrowful expression. “You’re eighteen, Ru. You have your own life and you’re going to college. You don’t need me around.” As he turned back to Hilo, his voice dropped and trembled with resentment, but he kept his chin raised and his jade aura smoldered with resolve. “As for what my parents think, I wouldn’t know what that is. My father was murdered in a clan war and never even knew I existed. You executed my mother as a traitor, and I have nothing of her, not even photos. What am I supposed to really believe about either of them?” Niko turned away for a second, swiping angrily at his face. “What do you think, Uncle? Do you think my parents would want this for me, or would they tell me to walk away while I still can?”
A spasm seized Hilo’s heart. He put out a hand; it closed hard on the back of a chair. For one gut-wrenching second, because of some slight thing in Niko’s posture or voice, or some subtle aspect of his jade aura, it seemed to Hilo as if the young man he thought of as his eldest son was gone, and his brother, Lan, stood in the dining room in Niko’s place. Lan, at his most resolutely principled, at one time the only man Hilo would obey. Then the moment was over, leaving behind only the piercing ache of confusion and regret.
“Your father knew what it meant to be a Green Bone.” Hilo’s voice was strained beyond his own recognition. “He would never walk away. He gave everything to lead the clan, including his life.”
“And because of that, I never met him. Why should I follow his example?” Niko’s face was blotchy with emotion. He wheeled away from the dining room and walked toward the front door.
“If you do this,” Hilo called to Niko’s back, “if you walk through that door and break your mother’s heart, don’t bother coming back.”
Jaya and Ru exchanged openmouthed looks of mounting alarm. “Da . . .” Jaya began. She fell silent.
For a moment, Niko hesitated, as if restrained by an invisible tether. He took the next step firmly, as if pulling himself out of quicksand. Then the next step, and the next. The door closed behind him, cutting him from sight, but for several drawn-out minutes, Hilo could Perceive the silent pain in his nephew’s turbulent aura as it receded from the house.
_______
Jim Sunto was in his office, on a morning phone call with two human resources managers from the War Department, when a violent commotion broke out at the gates to GSI’s compound. At first he thought the noise was from a training exercise. Then he heard the guards screaming, “Stop! Stop or we’ll open fire!” and he didn’t even need his jade abilities to sense their alarm.
Sunto dropped the phone and raced out of his office, drawing his sidearm. Bursting out the front doors of the building, he took in the scene in an instant. The chain-link fence behind the security guard box was standing open; the rolling gate had been torn off its sliding mechanism and lay askew. Two men in GSI uniforms were lying on the ground—still moving, thank God—and four others were in an armed standoff, shouting, two of them with R5 rifles, the other two aiming Corta 9 mm pistols.
Kaul Hiloshudon, flanked by four of his Green Bone warriors, strode through the breached fence and advanced toward the building with the heedless implacability of a demon. The nearest GSI guard fired twice at Kaul’s chest. Sunto could’ve told the man he wasn’t going to hit a skilled Green Bone with a small-caliber weapon from a hundred meters away. With an irritated snarl, Kaul Deflected the rounds, and with a lethal rustle, his Fists drew their own weapons—Ankev 600 handguns and carbon steel moon blades.
“Hold fire!” Sunto roared at his men. He ran ahead of them, waving his arms. “Hold your fucking fire, Seer damnit!” Switching to Kekonese, he shouted at the intruders, “Kaul, for fuck’s sake, do you want a bloodbath? Tell your men to stand down!”
Kaul stopped and fixed Sunto with a terrifying glare. Jade gleamed across his collarbone, enough to equip a platoon. “You piss-drinking sack of shit. You recruited my own son!”
“I did nothing of the sort. He came up to me at one of our information sessions.” Moving slowly, Sunto holstered his Corta and held his hands open. “Lower your weapons,” he said in Espenian to the GSI guards.