The Ramal Extraction

by Steve Perry

  This kind of forging made for a strong and pliable metal, and the temper gave it a hardness that would take and hold a razor-sharp edge. The handle was fat and round in cross section, longer than the blade, a deep, rich red of stabilized maple-wood burl that was both functional and attractive. The guard was a sculpted oval, the same steel as the blade. The knife felt good in his hand, it was easy to manipulate, perfectly balanced, and exactly the knife he wanted for close encounters of the deadly kind.

  “You’re probably wondering why it’s so stubby,” Wink said. “And why I wouldn’t use something shaped more like a scalpel.”

  If that was what he was wondering, Singh didn’t say anything.

  “Scalpels are designed to cut and leave as little tissue damage as possible. This thing can reach all the major arteries on humans and most other intelligent species, and the thick blade leaves a big channel for bleeding out. Shorter is easier to carry, less likely to break, and, like medicine, you want to use the minimum amount necessary to do the job. The best knife is the one you have, not the one at home in a drawer.”

  Singh touched the handle of his resheathed blade and smiled.

  “Sure, if you are in uniform, but what if you have to go to somewhere that won’t allow a visibly strapped knife? Hard to hide something as long as your foot under a thin tunic. This, I can stick into a back pocket or under a shirttail, though I usually wear it in a leather sheath. Rare-earth magnets hold the knife securely, and there’s a safety strap if I feel like tumbling.

  “Of course, if you are in a duel with another knife fighter, bigger is better, unless you are nose to nose, but if you can stab him in the back, that’s a lot smarter and safer.

  “This knife fits my hand exactly as I want it to. It lets me put the point, edge, or the butt where I need it to go.”

  “The butt?”

  “Sometimes you want somebody down and out but not dead. Saves wear and tear on your hands.”

  Singh nodded. “Ah.”

  “I’m not telling you to get rid of your knife,” Wink said. “I’m saying you would be better served with the ability to use more than one size or shape. Sometimes shorter is better. We’ll work with that.”

  “I bet you tell that to all the women you are with,” Gunny said.

  “Well, which is better, Gunny—to touch the bottom of the well or the sides?”

  “Both,” she said.

  Wink laughed. To Singh, he said, “Suppose that you lose your knife. Or that it breaks. Then what do you do?”

  “We have been trained in bare hand-to-hand fighting.”

  Wink nodded. “Which among us do you think you might best defeat that way?”

  Singh looked around. “I do not wish to offer any insult,” he finally said.

  Wink said, “Oh, we’re hard to insult, don’t worry about it. Who?”

  “Captain Demonde.”

  Gunny’s laugh was the loudest, but not the only one, and there were a few choice comments from the others, too.

  “You wound me, son,” Gramps said. He put his right hand over his heart.

  More laughter.

  When it died down, Wink said, “Why’d you pick him?”

  “He is the oldest and least fit-looking. I would expect him to be slower, to have less stamina.”

  “Reasonable criteria. Jo and Kay would eat you alive, no contest. Gunny is harder than a bag of rocks and death on two legs, armed or bare; and I’m something of an exercise fanatic myself, plus I know all the best spots to hit you.

  “Okay, show us something. Spar with Gramps a little, demo us what your system can do. No blood or broken bones or anything, just a few friendly taps or throws.”

  Singh nodded. He stepped out onto the practice floor and started to unstrap his knife belt.

  Gramps pulled a dart pistol, tapped a control with his thumb, and shot Singh in the thigh.

  “Ow—!”

  Gramps pointed the pistol’s barrel at the ceiling and blew imaginary smoke from the muzzle. “Just a stinger, no juice in it,” he said. “But if it had been venom, you’d be deader’n last year’s news.”

  “You cheated!”

  “Hell yes, I did. I learned a long time ago, better you learn to fight smarter, not harder.”

  “If you had not had the pistol—”

  “Then I’d have used some other tool. Knife, stick, a chair, whatever. Fighting fair gets you killed unless the other guy also fights fair and you are better than him and lucky. First rule: Don’t do it.

  “But just to keep the demo going ...”

  Gramps tossed his pistol to Gunny, who snatched it one-handed from the air without looking at it.

  He stepped up closer to Singh, stopping a couple meters away. “Okay, let’s see what you got.”

  Singh said, “Wait. Why would you be loading only stingers in your pistol?”

  Gramps looked at the others, then back at Singh. He smiled. “Because I knew you’d pick me for the demo.”

  “How?”

  “Because I would have picked me, too. So would everybody else here.”

  Singh shifted his feet into a front stance and raised his arms, fists loosely doubled.

  “Twenty years ago, I’d have already decked you while you settled into that dueling stance. But I’m a little slower than I used to be.”

  “A little slower?” Gunny said.

  He turned his head away from Singh to look at her. “That’s a good thing, Chocolatte. Don’t want anything going off prematurely, do I?”

  Singh, probably thinking Gramps was distracted, charged—

  He leaped, fired a fast one-two punch at Gramps’s face—

  Only Gramps sidestepped, stuck his foot out, and caught Singh’s ankle, turning the charge into a fall—

  Singh turned the fall into a half-assed roll, but by the time he’d come back to his feet, Gramps was right there, and he kicked the back of Singh’s left knee. The kid collapsed on that side, and Gramps threw his arm around Singh’s neck into a carotid hold. He squeezed—

  One...

  Singh struggled, pulled on Gramps’s forearm with both hands, a mistake. He tried to poke Gramps in the eye with his fingers extended, but Gramps had his head turned away.

  Two...

  Singh squirmed, twisted, tried to get out of the hold—

  Three...

  Singh’s body started to sag. He gave a last effort to turn his head to the side—

  Four…

  Singh’s eyes rolled up—

  Five...

  Gramps let him down easy onto the floor and stepped back a couple of meters.

  The blood made its way back into Singh’s brain. He opened his eyes. Frowned. Sat up.

  Gramps said, “You were right. I’m the least among us when it comes to fighting, slower and older. But why I am still here is that I know that, and compensate for it.

  “Old and treacherous beats young and strong every time.”

  “I will remember.”

  “Good. Let me show you how you could have gotten out of that carotid hold ...”

  ~ * ~

  TWENTY-NINE

  There was beating the bushes, then there was beating the bush...

  It had been a good day. He’d shown the kid Singh that he wasn’t so old he couldn’t keep up.

  And he’d shown a good-looking woman the same thing. In a different way ...

  Gramps watched Lareece pad across the thick rug, admiring her bare and firm ass. Particularly attractive in the natural moonlight shining through the cleared ceiling panels.

  If the optics were good enough, maybe somebody monitoring a spysat overflying twenty thousand klicks up was enjoying the view, too ...

  A thing of beauty is a joy forever, he thought. And what is more beautiful than a statuesque naked woman with whom you have just made mad, passionate love?

  She opened the bar’s chiller. “You want any more of this champagne?”

  “I’m good.”

  “For an old soldier who plays p
olitical smashball, yeah, you are pretty good.”

  He chuckled.

  She topped her flute off with sparkling gold. The bubbles were tiny, and that was supposed to mean it was good stuff. Given it had cost him 120 noodle a bottle, he didn’t need to measure the size of the bubbles to know that. He could charge the two bottles to the expense account, but probably he wouldn’t. Nobody needed to know what he was drinking and how much it cost, and it was definitely worth it.

  She returned the bottle to the chiller and headed back to the bed.

  If the view was great from behind, it was every bit as good from the front. She was forty, fit, and in this light, could easily pass for twenty-five. Carpet matched the drapes, too.

  She set her flute on the bedside table and slid across the red silk sheet to sit cross-legged next to him. “Well, that was fun. Want to go again?”

  “Sure. You lean back, let me unlimber my magic tongue—”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think I could manage another one of those right now. I had something a little harder in mind.”

  “My age, you have to learn how to do it smarter, not harder.”

  She laughed. “Well. I do have something else for you, though.”

  “Do tell.”

  “It’s more in the realm of business.”

  “What a shame.”

  She shook her head. “You know, you have this patter down pretty well. Lots of practice, I expect.”

  “Well, actually, I’m more of a natural. Would you believe I was a virgin when I met you?” He kept a straight face as he said it.

  That cracked her up.

  When she was done laughing, she said, “That was wonderful. I haven’t had so much fun in years. Um. Okay, here’s what I found out. There is a fabric company in a small village, Dera, at the north end of the Rajaja Forest, near the border with Pahal. They make Surakarta Batik, a high-end material, used mostly in ceremonial dress clothing—robes, sarongs, capes. The owner of the weavery is a high-caste rich woman named Udiva.

  “On the day the Rajah’s daughter was kidnapped and the news got out, the Ramali stock market dropped 350 points. Lot of people lost a lot of money, but Udiva sold short and made more than ten million on the overnight turnaround on half a dozen different stocks.”

  Gramps nodded. “And this was unusual?”

  “Very. Udiva’s portfolio is conservative, mostly bonds, and she leaves it to her broker; however, on that day, she personally handled the transactions, buying and selling things she had never dabbled in before.”

  “Insider trading?”

  “Had to be. The stocks that went down? She shorted them no more than a few hours before the drop. As nearly as I can tell, nobody in the country made as much on the market that day as she did. Somehow, I missed it before, but it checks out.”

  “Well, well. Somebody told her the market was going to take a nosedive—and that had to be somebody who knew why it was going to drop.”

  “That’s what I would bet. Listen, I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to go about your business—save how it concerns our activities right here in this bed—but you might want to have a word with Fem Udiva.”

  “Gotta love smart women,” he said.

  “Talk is cheap, old man.”

  “Yeah it is. Lie back and be amazed, young woman.”

  ~ * ~

  THIRTY

  “This is what the manor looks like,” Formentara said.

  The image on the projection had a scale across the bottom of the image.

  “Crap, it’s a monster.”

  “Yes. Fifteen thousand square meters in the main house,” Formentara said. “Thirty-six sleeping chambers, each with its own toilet and shower. Living, dining, recreation, kitchens, you could house a small army there. Four hoppers, twenty small ground vehicles. Staff of forty domestics housed in the servants’ quarters, plus eighteen live-in guards, all the bells and whistles a rich woman’s castle needs. Spends a million-plus a year on upkeep.

  “Udiva lives and loves large,” Formentara continued. “She has parties that sometimes turn into weeklong orgies, and she’s the largest consumer of dopesmoke and exotic liquor in that part of the country.”

  “How do we get to talk to her?” Gunny asked. “Ah’m guessing we don’t just kick in the door?”

  “Nope,” Cutter said. “Her guards are first-class pros, and the place is wired tight enough to detect a mosquito fart. Plus she’s got the local police and military ready to hop when she says ‘Jump.’ We maybe could set it up that way, but it would take a while.

  “However, as it happens, Fem Udiva is having one of her bashes in a few days. The Rajah has a standing invitation. If he were to show up with some new attendants ...”

  Jo said, “Why spend time and energy trying to crack a locked door if somebody will stand there and hold it open for you?”

  “Exactly,” Cutter said. “We get in, have a chat, find out what we need to know, go on about our business, everybody is happy.”

  “You think this rich woman will just tell us who gave her the tip?” That from Kay.

  “If we ask properly, she will,” Wink said. He held up a small medical case. “Dr. Feelgood can always find a way.”

  ~ * ~

  Unlike the foray into TotalMart, this would be a stealth operation. Done right, nobody would even realize what they had done—Wink had enough chem to find out what he wanted, then to make the subject forget he’d asked.

  There were only two of them going in—Wink, because he had the medical skills, and Jo, because she was the best equipped to stand guard while he asked questions.

  “Scanners will pick up anything we try to take in,” Wink said. “And if they have half a brain among them, they’ll know that Jo is augmented to the toenails. I see that as a problem.”

  “Except that they won’t look,” Cutter said. “It would be considered insulting to the Rajah to ask him or his entourage to pass through a scan field. And even if they do a surreptitious peek? Wink is listed as the Rajah’s personal medic, thus his having medical supplies is expected, and Jo is going as a ‘security consultant.’ Even though they don’t much hold with augmentation, nobody is going to begrudge the Rajah an augmented bodyguard, especially after the recent assassination attempt.”

  “So this is going to be as easy as that? Waltz right in, comer the woman, find out what she knows, and leave?”

  “Sure. Even if you get caught, the Rajah has but to snap his fingers, and all will be forgiven. What? My people wandered into a place off-limits to visitors? My apologies.

  “No matter what they might think, they will grin and bear it; he’s the Rajah.”

  ~ * ~

  Jo stood by the bedchamber’s door, listening for company. Wink had shined his not-inconsiderable charm at Udiva, who was an attractive, Rubenesque woman of sixty or so. Her outfit of fine green-and-orange static-held silks had probably cost as much as Jo made in six months.

  The room smelled of roses, almost overpoweringly so, even with her olfactories damped way down.

  Wink had taken Udiva down a path different than she’d expected. She’d thought Wink was interested in quick and dirty sex—right up until he slapped a derm on her neck and put her into a chemical fog.

  With her augmented hearing, Jo could follow the conversation as she listened for anybody who might wander down the hall.

  “Who told you the market was going to fall just before the reports of the Rajah’s daughter’s kidnapping broke?”

  “Rama Jadak,” she said.

  Just like that. Son of a bitch. Gramps was right, Jo thought.

  “You sure? Directly?”

  “No, via com. The message was encrypted, but I have had dealings with Rama over the years. He is the power behind the Rajah Jadak; to do serious business in Pahal, you deal with Rama, everyone knows that.”

  “Could it have been somebody using his voice?”

  “The com had his ID number.”

  Wink glanced over at Jo. “That enough?
”

  “Get the ID sig.”

  Wink turned back to Udiva. Asked her for the number, which she gave him.

  Jo said, “Let’s go.”

  “Hold on.”