The Ramal Extraction

by Steve Perry

  So the money to come halfway across the known galaxy to fiddle with Rel must have been pretty attractive.

  Zhe put in a call to a professor zhe knew at TAU on Earth, and waited for the SSC to make the FTL links.

  SSC was an expensive way to do research. The units cost a small fortune, they didn’t always make the connections right, and they dropped coms frequently. Charges for bandwidth were spendy, even if piggybacked on a larger carrier. Cutter didn’t like them to use the things much; even with scrambled and encrypted stuff, the pipes were easy to break into, and while you surely didn’t want anybody knowing what you were talking about, sometimes you didn’t want them to know you were talking at all.

  Zhe needed, however, to find out about this kid.

  And somebody on the team needed to find out something that gave them more to go on PDQ. The longer a kidnapping ran, the more likely it was the victim wouldn’t come back alive.

  Zhe waited for the SSC. Come on, you piece of GU shit, connect the call!

  ~ * ~

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cutter called the meeting for 1300, and when they all got there, he laid out his take first. “Okay, we have been cycling our drives too long on this, too much time having meetings. Intel keeps getting more complex but less useful. This sucker is obviously a big enough conspiracy that we should be able to locate a thread to unravel. Find it and pull it, and if you have to get proactive, remember we have immunity. The digits are flashing, time is running out.

  “All right, what new do we have?”

  Formentara said, “A professor at TAU confirmed basics on Gee, and I’ve got a tracer on the money put into his account when he was on Vesta. We are talking half a million noodle, way more than it’s worth to fiddle with a few augs, even on Rel. It came from here, but all I’ve got is a transfer number.”

  “The Rajah’s carte blanche will get us into the banking system here—Gramps?”

  “I’m on it. But I wouldn’t bet on their leaving a pointer.”

  “Let’s look at the rest of it. Theories?”

  Jo said, “I go back to stuff we knew before. It doesn’t look like Indira’s kidnapping was for the money. Whoever is behind this seems to have plenty of that. Plus enough influence to drag millionaires into it, who also don’t need the noodle. Something else going on.”

  Cutter said, “So it could be personal or political. Somebody wants to put the screws to the Rajah? Somebody he pissed off, maybe.”

  “Perhaps they seek to achieve serious strategical or tactical advantages for something,” Kay added.

  “The Thakore next door?” Gunny said.

  “I don’t see his gain,” Cutter said. “Rama stomping into his house and kicking the shit out of him, and his treasury looted? I’m guessing that was him telling us as much on that com, and he didn’t sound like somebody quick to shoot himself in the foot. Got to look at the classics: money, love, hate, power. If money is out, that leaves us the others.”

  Gramps said, “Given the players we know about, I’m starting to like Rama for it.”

  “Your reasoning?”

  “He’s already de facto running his own country. If he’s got an excuse to invade Balaji and more or less screw it over, that’s more power. He’s making a lot of irate noise, but that could be a diversion. He’s got the wherewithal to pull it off—money, men, connections.”

  Cutter looked around the room. That thought had crossed his mind, too.

  “So you figure he starts a war, gets reparations from Balaji when he either wins or agrees to call it off, then miraculously finds Indira and rescues her?”

  “Which cements his relationship with his prospective father-in-law all to hell and gone,” Gunny said. “Win-win-win. Money, power, the bride, the hero of the day. Even if she doesn’t make it, he can lay the blame on somebody, he’s got two out of three.”

  Gramps nodded.

  Kay whickered.

  “What?” Jo said.

  “One who searches for the definition ‘devious’ can find it listed under ‘human.’”

  “Can’t really argue with that,” Gunny said.

  “So what now?” Wink said.

  “Go back to the bushes and beat them harder. See what runs out. I’m going to the range to vent some steam.”

  “Ooh, ooh, can Ah go, too?”

  Cutter grinned. “If you are feeling masochistic.”

  ~ * ~

  The range was up and running.

  “You ready?”

  Gunny smiled. “You need to ask?”

  When they played, it was augs off, no help from chemistry or nanos.

  If Cutter and Gunny were side by side, and each had a single target already there, she beat him every time: Nobody was as fast out of the holster as Gunny, nor were they as accurate, certainly not in CFI.

  But with unexpected attackers?

  Cutter’s advantage, every time.

  It had to do with his ability to read a scenario and instantly apply tactics—choosing which targets to shoot and in which order, when beset with choices.

  It wasn’t a skill he could claim to have learned but something innate. He had always been able to do it reflexively, without thinking: If six soldiers came round the comer and started blasting, Cutter’s choices of how to move and the sequence of which one to plink first, second, third, and so on, gave him an edge. It wasn’t as if he was unbeatable, but once action commenced, he could sometimes shoot where he knew an opponent was going to be before they went there. Like leading a bird on the wing, only in these cases, sometimes he would shoot to the sides or even behind a target, and that target would somehow step into the round.

  That was freakish. He didn’t know anybody else personally who could do it, though he had heard about some who were able.

  He didn’t even know how he did it.

  He’d done research, and unless there was some kind of psionic precog power at work, the only thing that made sense was neurological lead time; he was somehow bypassing that half-second delay in human brains between intent and action; he was skipping some part of the Readiness Potential or the Conscious Wish, and arriving directly at the Act a little ahead of schedule. It was as if his gun hand knew before his brain did.

  He couldn’t do it elsewhere, but in combat scenarios, he could.

  It was most useful. A half second ahead was a big deal when death zipped through the air on bullets or darts.

  He didn’t think it was something that could be easily learned, if at all, which was good—if Gunny could develop that, she’d be unbeatable.

  She tried, but so far, hadn’t managed it.

  So when it was a simple dueling tree, he expected Gunny to plug it first. His goal there was to improve his own time when it came to pure speed. He was on the downhill slope, though, and, unless he tweaked his augs, was going to keep getting slower.

  Sometimes he could get within a quarter second, and in a shoot-out, that would probably result in ai-uchi, mutual slaying. But if Gunny moved first, he couldn’t catch up. She liked to practice against a simulacrum with a gun already pointed at her. With a normal reaction time programmed, she could sometimes beat them. Even when the opponent’s laser painted her first, she could take him with her much of the time. She liked to say she might be goin’ to hell, but whoever shot her was gonna be holding the gate for her when she got there ...

  “The range is hot,” Gunny said.

  Cutter blew out a quick breath ...

  The computer popped up a single attacker for each of them, armed with a knife and charging.

  Cutter drew, but he heard the thwip! of Gunny’s dart gun before he squeezed the trigger of his own darter.

  Point to Gunny.

  The next scenario was a falling ball the size of a man’s head, dropping from six meters high at one gee.

  Gunny hit it four meters up.

  Cutter hit it two meters above the ground.

  The third scenario was two shooters each, left and right.

  Gunny tap
ped the first and swung to tap the second.

  Cutter was a half second behind her.

  “Ah do believe that is three for three. Maybe you need to take a rest?”

  “Not over yet. And I am immune to your trash talk.”

  She laughed.

  The next scenario was four soldiers in basic armor, which left gaps and unprotected spots where a dart would work.

  Gunny was fast, and she was dead-on. She potted all of them, one-two-three-four! but—

  She was aiming at the places where the armor didn’t cover them, and it took a bit longer to line up. He was on autopilot, shooting at where he somehow knew those spots would be before the soldiers got there.

  She was right behind him, not more than three-tenths of a second, but he was done first.

  “Damn! Ah still don’t see how the fuck you can do that.”

  “Me, neither.”

  As long as there were more than three targets, he beat her. When the generator gave them fewer, it was Gunny’s point.

  After twenty minutes and thirty scenarios, they were tied, and down to the final match, the Chinese Army Drill.

  In this, a plethora of opponents sprang up, charging and screaming and shooting, and it was a no-win scenario. You couldn’t defeat the oncoming horde, so the contest was to see how many you could take down before they wounded you to a point where shooting back would be impossible. The computer knew, and while players bitched that they were tougher than the machine thought, by the time it shut things down, the theoretical wounds would invariably have proven fatal. And the computer’s scanner knew if you got hit in the head or spine, and that was an instant game-over.

  The pistols held thirty darts, so that was the upper limit—a reload would take way too long.

  Cutter’s personal best was eighteen, and that was the record anywhere, as far as he knew. There were a couple of old army buddies who claimed they knew somebody who had done twenty, but no verified records of it to be found. Pure speed wouldn’t let you get more than that because you’d get hosed first unless you dodged enough to get missed. Not enough just to shoot, you had to avoid getting shot too hard, and the incoming tags were impossible to avoid for long.

  “Ready?”

  “Ah am.”

  “Go—!”

  The army materialized, forty, sixty, eighty, filling the scenario into the distance—

  Cutter fired, ducked, fired, leaned left, fired, fired, again, again—

  He lost track of how many darts he sent downrange.

  He heard Gunny’s game-over beep and was aware that her scenario had dimmed and frozen, but he kept shooting—

  His own gallery went dim, and his game-over beep sounded.

  “Ah will be gawddamned. It just ain’t fair!”

  Cutter grinned. The blinking scores told the tale. Gunny, who was the best pure shooter he had ever been around, had tagged fifteen attackers before they took her out.

  He got nineteen.

  “My lucky day,” he said.

  “Luck, hell. Once, twice, three times, yeah. Setting a new record every other time you come to the fucking range? That ain’t luck. That’s magic!”

  Maybe it was. He’d take it...

  “You can use your augs next time,” he said.

  “Piss on you! Ah don’t need your pity!”

  He laughed. “I’m going back to work now. Our boy Singh is dropping by.”

  ~ * ~

  Singh, looking none the worse for his earlier adventure with CFI, stood at attention in front of the colonel’s desk.

  Cutter looked up at him from his chair. “You sure about this?”

  “Sah, yes, sah.”

  “Why?”

  “I may speak freely, sah?”

  Cutter grinned. “Say on.”

  “My Rajah’s Army’s training is as good as any on our world; a man who is steeped in it is the equal of any solider trained elsewhere on the planet and better than most.”

  “But... ?”

  “It is no offer of disrespect to my Rajah to say that your unit is better and more experienced than any to be found locally, and I include the XTJC in that assessment.”

  “Got that last part right. Continue.”

  “My father taught me that a smart man learns everything he can about his chosen trade and by so doing, and with good luck, may thus live to become a wise and, perhaps someday, old man. It is better to have knowledge and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

  Cutter nodded.

  “A smart man would learn from the best teachers. On this world, in the ways of war, that would be you, sah.”

  “The Rajah might not be inclined to let us have you again.”

  “I am certain that he will if you ask, sah.”

  Cutter shook his head. “You got balls, kid. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Singh grinned.

  ~ * ~

  Singh was eager, though Wink thought he probably didn’t have a clue what he was getting into.

  “Do you like your knife?”

  Singh looked at Wink as if he had grown a second head. “Like it? My chhuri? It is part of me. May as well ask me if I like my hand.”

  Wink grinned. The people here were members of a knife culture—at least in the military and police; they all carried those forearm-length slightly curved knives Singh had just named chhuri. The rank and file had plain-looking ones in Kydex or leather sheaths mounted on their belts; the high-ranked sported bejeweled versions.

  Wink said, “Are there prohibitions regarding your knife? May I examine it?”

  “No prohibitions, it is a working tool. Of course you may.”

  Singh pulled the knife from its scabbard with a whisper of steel on the formed plastic. Singh did a little twirl using two fingers and positioned the handle toward him.

  Wink took the knife.

  It was about thirty-five centimeters long, nearly two-thirds of that blade, with the cutting edge on a slightly convex curve, just under two fingers wide, tapering to a sharp point, like a scimitar. The handle was a rich, chocolate, chatoyant wood, half-round, bonded and riveted to a full tang, butt slightly knobbed. The handle was polished but bore slight nicks and dents; the blade was a polished steel without maker marks. It felt like an old weapon.

  “This chhuri was made by my great-uncle for my grandfather. It was blooded by my grandfather when he served in the Army, at the Siege of Kapil. My father carried it when he was in the Rajah’s Rangers, though he never needed to use it in war. I am given to understand that he once fought a man who insulted my mother and opened him from neck to crotch though he survived. My father gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday, as is customary in our family. If I have sons or daughters, it will pass to the eldest when they are of age.”

  “A fine weapon,” Wink said. He did a spin, reversed his grip, and offered it back to Singh, who raised an eyebrow at the manipulation. “You have skill with a knife even though you are a medic?”

  Wink grinned. “I’m a surgeon. Before they let us play with the lasers and plasmas, we learned how to handle steel and obsidian and sapphire scalpels. You know the worst person to get into a knife fight with? A surgeon.”

  “Or a butcher,” Gunny put in.

  “There’s a difference?” Gramps said.

  “Fuck you both very much.” He turned back to Singh. “Though I have to admit, they have a point. Knowing where to cut is almost as important as having the wherewithal to make the cut. And the tool is vital, as well. Surgeons and butchers both have that.”

  Casually, Wink reached behind his right hip and came out with his belt knife.

  Singh took a reflexive step backward.

  The knife, from a Terran master bladesmith named Pippin, was a spear-point design he and the maker had collaborated upon. The blade was short, wide, and thick—only ten centimeters long, but nearly three centimeters wide, and a full six millimeters thick. It was single-edged, made from random damascus, composed of four different kinds of tool steel: three l
ayers of this, four of that, three each of these, then folded and hammered five times, until there were 416 layers. The metal had been acid-etched to showcase the folded pattern, making the steel a dark gray, almost black.