He made a phone call to his enemy: Aben Sorogun, the Horn of the Mountain. Aben had become Horn after the retirement of Nau Suenzen four years ago. Juen had only seen the man in person a few times at public events, although he possessed a great deal more information gathered by No Peak spies. “Aben-jen,” Juen said when he reached the other Horn, “I assume you know about that Espenian company’s ship off Euman Island that’s an affront to all Green Bones. My Pillar wants it gone, and I suspect yours does as well. My name isn’t Kaul, and yours isn’t Ayt, so personally, I don’t see why we shouldn’t work together on this, even if nothing else changes between our clans.”
Aben agreed, which was good news because Juen’s plan was rather expensive, and might’ve raised attention from the Mountain unless they were involved. Six weeks after meeting with the Kauls in the Twice Lucky, Juen was standing on a beach in the middle of the night with two rigid inflatable boats, sourced from navy surplus thanks to No Peak’s connections in the national military. Eight Green Bones—four from No Peak, four from the Mountain—were outfitted in diving gear. There were plenty of strong swimmers among the clan’s Fists and Fingers, but not many with actual diving experience. Standing in one of the boats, Aben Soro commented wryly, “I don’t know about Kaul Du Academy, but marine sabotage wasn’t taught at Wie Lon Temple School. Maybe I should talk to the grandmaster.”
In person, Aben was surprisingly amicable, not anything like the grizzled veteran Nau Suen or the calmly brutal Gont Asch. Perhaps Ayt Mada had decided the Mountain needed a younger, more likable face in the clan’s leadership. Aben wore his jade as a heavy green chain around his neck and seemed like the sort of man who watched sports and owned large dogs, who could be friendly with everyone but exuded a down-to-earth toughness that was not to be fucked with. They were both acting pleasant and cooperating in this one manner, but Juen was not about to forget that elsewhere—in Lukang, and across the ocean in Resville—their respective forces were busy trying to destroy each other, and it was entirely possible that under different circumstances, one of them would kill the other.
Tonight, however, they shared an objective. Instead of launching from Euman Island, where they might be spotted by the Espenian military, they’d chosen the upper part of Kekon’s main cove, a twohour drive north from Janloon on a deserted stretch of shoreline. This far from the city, there was no light pollution and the clear sky was ink black and strewn with stars. The Green Bones in the two boats sped toward the foreign mining ship, bouncing rhythmically across gentle swells for ninety minutes before coming up on either side of the slow-moving vessel under cover of darkness.
Juen had found out everything he could about the ship beforehand. It was still being tested and not yet fully operational, so only a small crew was in place. Remote-controlled machines were sent to gather samples from the seafloor, which were evaluated for potential jade concentrations before an expensive, specialized crawler was deployed to dredge the area. The crawler was connected to the ship by an enormous hose that sucked up sediment and transported it to the equipment that extracted the gems. It was impressive, cuttingedge technology. Juen had to grudgingly admire the Espenians; when motivated by greed, they were truly ingenious.
They cut the engines. Divers from both sides went overboard with quiet splashes. Working with the sort of speed only Green Bones can muster, they magnetically attached limpet mines to the underside of the ship. In the silently bobbing boat, Juen kept his Perception trained above, but he didn’t sense alertness or alarm from any approaching crew members. Every few minutes, he swung his Perception back toward Aben, more out of instinctive caution around an enemy Green Bone than any real fear of betrayal. They were out here together precisely so that neither side could take advantage.
Within thirty minutes, all the divers had returned to the boats and they were speeding back the way they had come. They would be long gone when the timed charges went off. The explosions would not be large enough to kill the people onboard—dead foreigners were best avoided—but they would destroy the rudder, propellor, and crawler hose, and tear holes into the ship’s hull, hopefully damaging the equipment on board as well.
Ideally, that would be the end of the Anorco corporation’s expensive foray into jade mining, but Juen thought it likely the ship would be repaired and they would have to destroy it again, perhaps several times before the venture was written off as too costly. The Espenians were sure to complain angrily to the Royal Council about the damage to private property, and the Kekonese government would smugly and rightfully deny any knowledge or involvement in the sabotage. Without another source of jade, and with Kekon still the linchpin of the ROE’s regional defense strategy against Ygutan, complaining was all the foreigners could do.