by Steve Perry
If it isn’t drugs? Then he must be mentally deranged.
“I find your tone disturbing.”
“Do you?” Again the smile.
Kay relaxed her stance slightly, bent her knees a little, sank a hair lower. Enough to be able to move a little faster. Because if it wasn’t drugs, and if he wasn’t mentally off the beam, then Booterik here had a weapon of some kind close to hand and the belief that he could get it and use it before she got to him. Which was hardly sane by their standards, but still.
Hidden in the chair?
Interesting. She had heard about Rel who had overcome the prey response and offered a challenge to a Vastalimi. She’d never run into one herself, and that was because they were few and far between, and those who had tried it only did so the once since they were surely no longer among the living, having gone down that path. If not killed instantly, then soon afterward.
She let it percolate, to see what would happen. “Do you know how Zeth came by this misinformation?”
“As it happens, I do. But I don’t think I shall tell you.”
Kay took a step toward him—
The Rel came out of the chair, impossibly fast, faster than she had ever seen one move, faster than it should be possible. As he did, a knife appeared in his hand, snatched from a hiding place in his chair. He came straight at her, the knife leading, and he shoved it toward her belly, intending to skewer her—
He was faster than any Rel she had ever seen, but that didn’t mean he was faster than she was. Nor was he trained. He was depending on his speed, his lines were all open, save for the knife, and his attack was out of balance—
—when the blade’s point was two centimeters from her belly and the Rel’s attack fully committed, Kay pivoted. The blade tickled her hair below the navel. The Rel might have tried to slash inwardly, but she dropped low and slammed her elbow into his arm as she pivoted, felt the bone break just above his wrist, then she threw her body into his, knocking him sideways and sprawling.
He hit the wall, bounced off, somehow kept to his feet.
Don’t kill him—!
The Rel recovered, the knife fallen from his limp hand, and he came at her again, arms extended, face contorted, his sad, dull, grinding teeth bared in a poor imitation of a snarl.
She kept her claws sheathed, snapped her right hand out in a straight punch, and hit him on the nose. The force of his charge and the hit straightened him out, stopped him, and knocked him unconscious. She danced to her left, and he fell and slid past her on his back.
She triggered her com. “We are going to need to transport an unconscious Rel out of here and back to the base for a medical examination,” she said.
“Why?” Jo asked.
“He attacked me, and I had to put him down.”
“A Rel attacked you? What, is he stoned or crazy?”
“I cannot say for certain. But perhaps we should determine his reason.”
~ * ~
Wink knew Rel physiology well enough to offer standard medical treatment, of course. Every alien species had its own quirks, and he was far from an extee specialist, but he could do lumps and bumps and sniffles and wheezes. He’d trained at enough hospitals to have run into most of the alien species who interacted with humans.
It didn’t take more than a minute into his exam before he realized what he was dealing with, and it was beyond his ability to get into it.
“Wow,” he said.
“What?” That from Jo, who was the only other person in the room.
“We need to get Formentara in here.”
Jo looked at him. “Why would—? Really?”
“Yeah. Our friend Booterik here is wired.”
“A Rel on augs? I never heard of such a thing.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I’ll get Jar.”
“Formentara is gonna be as happy as a Malay monkey on mushrooms.”
~ * ~
Jo stepped out as Formentara came in. Outside the exam room, Kay stood, waiting.
“Your Rel is augmented.”
Kay nodded. “Yes.”
“You knew?”
“It seems a reasonable assumption. I did not detect hormone or somatic drug odors from him, so the augmentation is unusual. His demeanor was most un-Rel-like. His speed beyond that of a normal Rel. Augmentation would allow for that. From our short conversation, I got the impression his brother was no longer among the living. This one will have answers we need.”
“Formentara will figure out what’s what, then we can ask your Rel about it. It would seem to be connected to Indira’s kidnapping.”
“So it would seem—”
“Shit! Shit—!” Formentara yelled.
Jo and Kay blew through the door, Jo’s pistol out and Kay’s claws ready.
The Rel on the table jittered like a spider on a hot griddle. Wink frantically waved control-jive at his computer diagnostics, and Formentara did likewise to hir gear.
As they watched, the jitters stopped, and the Rel lay suddenly still.
“He’s arrested,” Wink said. “I’m going to pump adrenaline directly into his—”
“Don’t bother,” Formentara said. “His EEG is flat. He’s not coming back. Shit! I missed it!”
Jo said, “Missed what?”
“The second burner, dammit!”
Jo and Kay exchanged glances.
Formentara said, “He’s running a myotonic speed rig, custom augware, adjusted to Rel physiology—got a suppressor, too, so that’s why Kay couldn’t smell him.
“He has a brainburner implant, a high-voltage capacitor, set for query-discharge. If somebody opens his aug for inspection and doesn’t shut the CNS implant down, it zaps his limbics.
“First thing I did was close it. But there’s a second burner, wrapped around his cortex. A neural net. It fried him before I realized it was there. Stupid!”
Wink said, “Nobody would have caught that, it doesn’t show, it’s completely biological, there’s nothing to detect—”
“I should have caught it! Some asshead slipped it past me! And I tell you what, whoever did it is not from around here. This was done by somebody who knew what the fuck they were doing, and it is recent. Days old, no more.”
Jo had never seen hir so angry. She said, “Well, well. This is another whole ugly jar of worms, isn’t it? A Rel on aug, and with enough suicide in him to be doubly sure nobody could poke around in his head. Why?”
~ * ~
TWENTY-ONE
Cutter looked at his team. He was getting tired of having these meetings. “It seems that we keep getting more questions than answers.”
Nobody spoke to that.
“And it also seems apparent that there is more going on here than a simple kidnapping for money.”
“Figure out what, that probably gives us the ‘who,’” Gramps said.
“Go back to your contacts,” Cutter said. “Look for connections. Get some useful intel that doesn’t lead us into a dead end or a trap. Do it quickly.”
They all nodded at that.
~ * ~
Gunny took less care with her clothes than she had the first time she’d gone into Lakshmi’s Lair. Stavo Parjanya had already seen what was under them, so she didn’t need to get his attention that way.
“Hey. My favorite corporate warrior.”
“And my favorite bouncer. Well. On this world.”
“You wound me, fem.”
They grinned at each other.
“Here to, ah, pump me for more information?” he asked.
“Think you can produce any more?”
“Oh, yeah, or die trying. I’m off in fifteen minutes.”
“I know.”
Again, the smiles.
~ * ~
The woman had a lovely comvox: “So, smashball soldier, what can I do for you this time?”
Gramps stood outside, in the hard shade of the main building, watching a distant thunderstorm flash heat lightning. Too far away to hear the thunder. He
said, “I thought I might buy you dinner and ask a few more questions.”
“When?”
“At your convenience, Lareece.”
“Tonight is good for me. Say ... 1500 or so?”
“That would be good. How about Krishna’s Song?”
“Here only a few days, and you already know the best restaurant in town. But it will be impossible to get reservations on such short notice.”
“Already have them.”
“Ah. A confident man. I like that. But what would you have done if I’d had other plans?”
“Eaten there alone,” he said. “Who could replace you?”
She laughed. “And a flatterer as well. Fifteen it is.”
~ * ~
“Dr. Tomas Wink,” came Vanyu’s voice over the com.
“It is I. How’s the one-and-a-half coming?”
“It’s getting there. I’m doing a session tomorrow, maybe. Forecast says there’s a chance of weather.”
“What kind of feeblet lets a little rain stop her from diving? Easier to see the water’s surface that way.”
She laughed. “A little rain doesn’t bother me. It’s the lightning and gale-force wind I worry about.”
He knew. There were players who would risk electrical storms, divers rarely got cooked, but more than a few had been blown over land in wind-heavy storms, which made for a really hard entry. Part of the risk.
“You going to be there?”
“I was thinking I might.”
“Weather probably won’t start until afternoon. We could get in a few dives if we get there early.”
“What’s early?”
“How about 0600?”
“I suppose I can cut my beauty sleep a little short. See you then.”
She laughed again.
~ * ~
Formentara met the augmentor she had dealt with before. The place was a small autocafe, run entirely by dins, invisible rails guiding them back and forth among the table. She sipped at maté as he arrived and sat.
He was more than eager to talk to hir. He practically ran into the place.
“I need more information.”
“Anything.”
“I believe there is a high-level augmentor working on this world.”
“Yeah, and I’m looking at hir.”
“Other than myself. This person would be keeping a low profile, and perhaps doing some experimental work.”
“Experimental how?”
“Possibly working on Rel.”
“Rel? Rel don’t do augs, everybody knows that.”
“Assume for a moment that everybody is wrong. Who would have that ability?”
“Nobody local, I can assure you of that.”
“Are there serious players who might not be local?”
“None I know about.”
“Can you find out?”
“I can try. What’s in it for me?”
“Have you heard about Rampant Systems newest Erector Set?”
“Of course. Supposed to be the best dickware ever made, infinitely adjustable, costs a fortune, raise wood on a dead man. But it’s embargoed here. We can’t get it.”
“If you knew the augmentor who created it you could.”
He stared at hir. “Really? No shit? That’s yours?”
Zhe smiled.
~ * ~
“More tea?” the Rajah asked.
“Sure,” Cutter said.
The Rajah didn’t have to lift an eyebrow, a server was there and pouring two seconds later.
This was a different room than he’d visited before, the walls of some dark, spalled wood with a thick coat of wax covering them. The ceiling was draped with cream-colored silk sheets and had some kind of indirect lighting that made the sheets glow warmly. The couch upon which he sat was a full-form biomechanical, the surface clone-suede, that adjusted itself perfectly to his contours. There was a faint tang of cedar to the air, from burning incense stuck in a large rectangular container of fine white sand near the door. The sand’s surface was raked into parallel lines, like a zen stone garden. The effect was most serene.
Cutter wasn’t much of a tea-drinker, but it was a popular beverage in some circles, and he’d learned to appreciate the taste. The local brew, whatever it was, had an astringent, slightly bitter tang, with flowery overtones and something like ginger under those. A little kick, too. He sipped at it. “It’s very good.”
“Thank you. Our cha-master is most adept.”
Cutter nodded.
“How may I help you, Colonel?”
“If your son-in-law-to-be invades your next-door neighbor and cranks up a shooting war with the Thakore, what will you do?”
The Rajah sipped at his tea, paused to enjoy the flavor a moment. “I would have little choice, I am afraid. New Mumbai and Pahal are allies, we have a long-standing mutual defense pact. My enemies are theirs; their enemies, mine. And he is to be my son-in-law. I could do nothing else but support him.”
“So if one of you decides to go to war, the other has no say in the matter?”
“Not precisely. This is one of the reasons that Rama has not yet stormed into Balaji. I can hold him off for a time on the pretext of preparing my forces, but since his stated purpose is to recover my daughter, it would be unwise of me to refuse to honor our pact—on many levels.”
Cutter was careful how he phrased his next question: “What of Rama’s father?”
There was another pause as Ramal sipped his tea. “Rajah Jadak, who is a distant cousin, is a likable man. He smiles a lot, he is beloved, but his mind is not the sharpest, nor most nimble, and his ambition long banked and essentially cold. He is not a strong ruler. Rama does as he will, and Jadak does not stand in his way.”
Cutter thought about following that up, but waited a moment, since it seemed the Rajah was not finished. He was right:
“Rama is well aware that I could not allow my daughter to wed, nor remain married to, a patricide, so Jadak’s life is safe enough. Should he die prematurely, I would see to it that the cause should be found, and if not natural, such would greatly stress Rama’s and our own relations. So I expect that Jadak will live out his normal span, waving at his subjects, attending dress functions, blessing babies, and so on. Rama is already the power in Pahal, he does not need the title to make it so. He is ambitious but pragmatic.
“At least he has been so far.”
“Noted. I have another question, the nature of which you might find offensive.”
“I engaged you to recover my kidnapped daughter. Any question that will aid in that is acceptable.”
“All right. Who will benefit most from a war with Balaji?”
“Other than munitions makers and funeral-pyre builders?”
Cutter offered a small, wry smile, to acknowledge what they both knew about combat.
“It would depend on how the war went. Pahal and New Mumbai’s armies combined outnumber Balaji’s by more than three to one. The Thakore has the home advantage, but we are equally well equipped and trained. It would be a matter of time before our victory. Afterward, there are always reparations. War is expensive, but more so for the loser. Eventually, both Pahal and my country would make a profit.”
Cutter knew that the loser paid the majority of a war’s cost, assuming there was anything left of him to generate revenue.
The Rajah zeroed in on Cutter’s drift: “Have you valid reason to suspect Rama’s motives are anything less than honorable?”
“No, sir, I can’t say that. But the question has been raised as to whether or not the Thakore of Balaji is in fact responsible for your daughter’s absence. And going to war on that suspicion alone without evidence seems, well—”
“Foolish?”
Cutter shrugged. “At the very least, it seems precipitous. If the Thakore has her, and if he doesn’t kill her the second the first Pahali soldier steps across his border, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of troops from all three countries are apt to be wounded or killed, based on
Rama’s belief that she’s there. If she dies as a result of Rama’s action, or if she isn’t even there ... ?”
“Either would be a tragedy,” the Rajah said. “More so if we were wrong.”
