James Swallow - Jade Dragon

Ko’s face was a mask of concentration. He drew his focus inward, waiting. Now he lived on a clock from second to second, his mind framed on that face and nothing else. The robot truck rumbled through the security gate of the Yuk Lung tower and rolled down the incline to the lower levels.

“Tze!” Ko burst from the shadows of a concrete stanchion close to the CEO’s idling limo and opened fire, the pistols slamming out shots.

Deer Child reacted instantly, dragging Tze behind him and stepping into the line of the fire. Many of Ko’s bullets went wide, smashing into the walls and skipping off the limo, but a handful of rounds struck the chest of the bodyguard and a single shot fractured the perfect sheen of Deer Child’s porcelain opera mask. The guardian stumbled backwards, bleeding heavily.

One of the Berettas made a high-pitched noise and jammed. Ko let it drop and kept on firing, brass casings glinting as they ejected into the air.

Blue Snake produced a series of throwing knives from concealed wrist holsters and threw them at Ko. The kid was quick enough to dodge one, but not enough to avoid the second. The lightweight stiletto hit Ko in the sternum and threw him to the ground with the force of a freight train. Ko lost the other gun and lay there, wheezing.

Seconds had elapsed. Tze disentangled himself from Deer Child’s twitching form and found the duty security officer; neither he nor his men had got off a shot.

“Sir, I-” he began, his face flushed. Blue Snake had another knife, and she slit the man’s throat with it. Tze walked on to where Ko had fallen. He paused to brush a speck of lint off his suit as Blue Snake hauled the youth off the ground.

Tze examined him. “Ah, the folly of youth.” He leaned closer. “Do you know why no one ever tries to take me out, boy?” He smiled. “Because no one is that stupid. Except you, of course.”

“Go,” Ko managed. “Fuck yourself.” He spat a mouthful of blood and spittle into Tze s face.

The older man carefully wiped it away, and then licked his fingers, smiling. “That fat fool running the 14K… I think perhaps he can earn his way back into my good graces with this little urchin.”

“Sir?” said Blue Snake.

“Take this interloper to the docks and tell Hung I want an example made of him.”

Frankie started as his car rolled to a halt. He saw someone being bundled into a vehicle, bodies under sheets, and blood on the tarmac. “What the hell?”

Tze approached, smiling. “Don’t be concerned, Francis. Just a small security incident. A trespasser.”

He saw a face, just in the instant before the car door slammed, heard a string of gutter swearing. Oh shit. I know that voice. The car thief.

Tze patted him on the shoulder. “Take care of things here, will you? I have some business to attend to in the city.”

Frankie watched them go, the stink of fresh cordite and violence in his nostrils.

The distinctive colourations of Chinese Opera masks have a series of layered significances that go beyond the mere portrayal of a given character. A blue face (such as that seen on Xia Houdun) is indicative of someone possessing the traits of dedication, ferocity and shrewdness; a green face (like Zheng Wun) means the character is reckless, likely prone to sudden violence and a surly nature; figures like Guan Yu (a noted Chinese warrior) bear a red mask, which highlights the soldierly traits of fidelity, valour, heroism and decency; yellow (such as Tu Xingsun) indicates a level-headed person but also someone with the qualities of ferocity and determination; black masks like that of Judge Bao Gong indicate selflessness as well as a coarse, aggressive manner; white (traditionally a colour associated with death in the Far East) marks the villain of the piece, highlighting the sly and the wily, the underhand and treacherous (such as the fiendish Qin Hui); finally, the special colourations of gold and silver are employed only on characters who come from beyond the human realm, such as gods and ghosts. The function of the mask in these plays is not only to provide cultural cues to the audience but also to establish a palette of known archetypes, in stories that form a key part of the myths of the Chinese people. On some level, the masks create an aura of power for the performer wearing them, a way in which they can subsume themselves into the role and tap into the pure strengths of the character.

Excerpt from Painted Faces, Swords and Gods: The Mythology of Chinese Opera by Georgina Golightly

10. Warriors Two

The executive operations suite was decorated in the style of a stately English library, heavy with polished teak and mahogany, rich with deep oxblood leather chairs and brass lamps. Ornate desks lined the walls between subtle privacy dividers. Only the screens seemed out of place, and even those had been disguised in wood mounts similar to portrait frames. The keyboards were hidden in the leather blotters on the surface of the desks, illuminating from below when Frankie took his seat. The other men in the room were subvocalising into hidden microphones, but Frankie disabled the voice circuit and got to work typing.

Under his cuff he had a piece of tissue on which he had scribbled a dozen strings of numbers. Code keys copied from the data spike that Alan had left concealed for him, these were permissions that allowed entry into parts of the Yuk Lung mainframe that would normally be far outside of his sphere of influence. Frankie had not dared to bring the precious needle with him, or even to upload the smallest part of its contents to another computer. He was afraid to contaminate himself with the material, at least until he had a clearer idea of what his brother had been doing with it. It seemed quaintly low-tech of him to actually jot the codes down on a scrap of paper instead of entering them on his PDA.

The files. What he had glimpsed in there made him shiver. Alan appeared to have been making two distinct collections of information. The largest of the two was broad in scope, a collation of details on YLHI’s corporate battle plans, notes on what investments they would be buying and selling in the next year. It held highly secret reports on the performance of the conglomerate’s subdivisions, the sort of data that a rival like Eidolon or NeoGen could easily use against them. The second, smaller file was more eclectic. It consisted mostly of laboratory reports fromYuk Lung’s genetics labs on the mainland, some peculiar transcripts from ancient tablets, metallurgical scans of meteor fragments, even audio samples that sometimes seemed like music, other times like voices. Frankie had almost given up with paging through it until he saw his own name amid an indecipherable block of medical-speak. Alan’s name was there too, along with a couple of other people from their graduating class. The others, he had heard, were dead now. Something about an accident in the wilds, a company team-building exercise that went badly wrong.

What were you doing, brother? Frankie asked the question over and over. The planning files, that was the kind of stuff that a man would assemble if he were thinking about jumping ship. With that information in his hands, Alan could have struck a deal with any of the Big Six Multinats, got them to exfiltrate him from YLHI and set him up somewhere with a new identity and a billionaire lifestyle. But why would he? Yuk Lung had been very good to Alan Lam, so why would he ever turn on them? Frankie was sure that the answer to that question was in the second set of files, if only he could comprehend it.

He entered the codes, licking dry lips. On the screen, pools of information filled, presenting themselves for his examination. If the data on the spike had been the first trickle, then this was the flood. Frankie cast a look around, fearful that he would be seen for what he was doing; but none of the other men paid any attention to him, all of them engaged in their own private infospheres.