Now that he was back in atmosphere, he unsealed the softsuit and peeled it off in a couple of seconds. His hand reached down to his hip holster and removed his CP-2520. The revolver-like frame of the charge chamber shined a soft blue light until he slid the indicator door to a close. Ahead of him, the sound of gunfire drew his attention and he moved on, staying to cover as he did and waiting to get a shot.
He found the gun battle well underway. The familiar signatures of Vidia's xaser, Brigitte's plasma blaster, and Piper's own charged particle pistol were lighting up the hall from behind a dormant anti-grav crate hauler, answered by the familiar roar of League mag-carbines. Good job! He felt a jolt of pride in his crew getting into position in time.
Through the dull light, Henry could notice some of the figures in cover ahead, including one bearing a body. One was further ahead of the others, creeping closer to his people, but the others were still in cover.
To maintain the element of surprise, he kept his footfalls restrained, moving forward quietly until he was confident of his aim. He lifted the gun and pointed to the second man in cover, the one not holding anyone. His finger stroked the trigger.
Blue light erupted from the muzzle of his gun, zipping across the distance at the speed of a lightning bolt and catching his target unaware. The figure crumbled to the ground with a cry. Another male voice shouted, "Shooter from behind! He got Wallace!"
The lead figure moved ahead, a quick little dash before he could be targeted. Henry tried to get a bead on him but missed. He was forced back into cover by the second man's carbine fire. He looked back out in time to see an object sail from the lead figure's hand. "Grenade!" he shouted, his eyes widening with horror as it sailed on to where his crew were in cover.
He could barely make out Piper as she rose from behind the crate hauler. Her arm shot forward, and the grenade sailed from her outstretched hand, flying back toward its owner.
But it wouldn't make it all the way back. It lit up the hall, a burst of energy keyed to disrupting the neural systems of sapient beings, and he watched Piper collapse before she could get back to cover.
The kidnappers took their moment. The lead one got off from the floor and fired his carbine at the anti-grav hauler, keeping Vidia and the others pinned down, while the second man followed him, firing his weapon toward Henry. Henry tried to squeeze off shots, but his pistol didn't have the same rate of fire, and remaining in the open to squeeze off an accurate shot was nearly suicide. "Vidia! Brigitte!"
"Piper's down! Brig got hit partially! Ya okay, Captain?!"
"I am! Keep after them!" Henry slipped out of cover long enough to take a shot and lunge forward. He hit the ground just as more auto-carbine fire filled the air above him with magnetically-propelled slugs. Ahead, the violet light of Vidia's xaser lit up the hall, but their foes kept going.
Henry tried to nail the rear figure with a shot at his legs, but the man was moving too quickly, and the shot missed. He turned and sprayed fire at Henry again, forcing him to keep his head down, while his partner did the same to Vidia. Henry stood up to follow and barely got another couple of meters before he had to hit the deck again. "Ts'shrish, we need backup! They've got League mag-carbines, we've only got sidearms!" If only Yanik wasn't hurt…
"My security team from Arm 2 is almost through the manual tube. They'll be with you within five minutes."
"I'm not sure we have five minutes!"
As it soon proved, they only had three.
The two men arrived at a dock entrance. It slid open, in defiance of the lockdown, and they slipped in. As it closed, Vidia and Henry got up and rushed for it. But even as they started, Henry could see they wouldn't make it. The dock door slammed to a close before they could reach it. Henry immediately hit the control panel to open the door, but it beeped a refusal. "They're in the dock! I can't open the door!" he called into the link, his voice growing frantic. They're going to do it. They're going to get away with Linh, just as Kepper escaped with Tia.
I'm going to fail again. Just like on the Laffey.
"They've locked out remote control of the dock door," Mavik said. "We're attempting to override…"
Even as Mavik spoke, Henry heard an unexpected noise: dampened gunfire, coming from inside the dock. He couldn't quite make out the type of weapon, but it sounded like pulse rifles.
The firefight within didn't last long. Within ten seconds, all shooting ceased. Silence came from within. While Vidia held a weapon ready, Henry tried again to override the door, but it refused to budge.
Mavik's security team came up behind him. The leader, a Tal'mayan of pale blue skin, raised her hand and revealed a metal key of sorts. She pushed it into a port on the dock control panel and twisted.
The door slid open. Inside were the two kidnappers, Linh, and over half a dozen armored men carrying pulse rifles.
CDF pulse rifles.
The security team moved in and the armed men lowered their weapons. "We're friendlies!" one of them called out. "Hold your fire!"
Vidia and Henry exchanged a look. The voice was familiar.
"Don't shoot!" Linh cried out, while one of the armored men cut loose her bonds. "They saved me!"
This was good enough for Mavik's people, who lowered their own weapons. "Are you all right, Chief Khánh?" the Tal'mayan asked.
"I am." She nodded to the team.
Henry's eyes fixed on the leader of the group, who slung his rifle over his shoulder. The man reached for his helmet and removed it, pulling it over his head and the wheat-colored, slightly gray hair underneath. His mouth went dry and he was at a loss for words.
"Nice to see you again, Jim," said Felix Rothbard, his best friend and the man who spied on him for CDF Intelligence. "I think we need to talk."
"About what?"
"About Tia. Hestia." Felix's eyes hardened. "And what's really going on here."
12
The room was more mock warehouse than research lab. Stacks of boxes of various sizes were along the walls. Armed Rigault guards were at the door and white-coated figures ringed the area, observing scanner machines or just watching quietly as Tia moved about.
Tia's observations were all she had. Against her will, her body moved around the room. Her muscles in her legs and back shifted as she was made to pick up boxes of varying weight, just to move them or carry them across the room. Her muscles ached with strain and sweat formed on her skin, but she couldn't even complain. Her vocal cords refused to work. Nothing, in fact, would work. She could only use her senses passively, leaving her mind trapped inside of her brain. She wanted to scream, to do something of her own volition, but she couldn't. Her body wasn't her own.
A scientist stepped forward and handed her a broom. She tried to throw it back, but her body didn't respond. She felt her arms move as if of their own accord. Her hands gripped the broom. Her legs shifted to turn her body. Her arms moved again, brushing the broom over the floor repeatedly.
The pattern felt like it lasted for hours, although it was only minutes. Sweep, move, sweep, move, over and over, and she couldn't stop it.
She wanted to scream at her tormentors, but she couldn't. She wanted to cry out something, but again, she couldn't. She was utterly helpless. Trapped.
The sweeping stopped. She was made to prop the broom against the wall and move to the center of the room. There, her spine and limbs straightened to ram-rod stillness. Her muscles ached from the strictness of it. But she could not order them to relax.
Is this all I'll be? The despairing thought came to her. Just a puppet for them? A toy to test their device on? The horror of the thought grew with her conviction of how true it was. This was what Rigault and the corps had planned for her, a punishment beyond the indignities and horror Uncle Guillaume and her other surviving comrades endured after their capture. Hang me! String me up in the street, make people throw rocks at me! It's better than this!
She used to fear those ends. But now they seemed merciful. At least it was evidence she was a perso
n. The scientists treated her like a device. A machine. No, a doll, a little meat puppet for them to toy with.
The ache in her body grew. She felt torn between fury at what they were doing and despair at her fate. A part of her chipped at her defiant resolution from before, ready to beg to be freed. To end this nightmare. This shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't be possible!
Her body relaxed. A flicker of hope rose within her that they were done, that her body would be hers again.
The lead scientist, the one who oversaw the implant procedure, stepped into her line of sight. "How do you feel, Miss Nguyen?" he asked politely.
It was the politeness that drew the snarl to Tia's face and voice. "I'm a human being, not a damned puppet!" The rage in her voice was catharsis for the experience she had just endured. "What kind of monster are you to do something like this?! To steal someone's body, to make them move and work and ache against their will! How would you like it if someone put this thing into you?!"
"Well, that's precisely what will happen," he said matter-of-factly.
Tia stared in surprise. "What?"
"When my testing is complete, when we know the technology will work to the extent I plan for it, I will have the neural control implant placed on my spine as well," he said in a neutral tone, as if explaining a fact of the weather. "Everyone will have one, in the end. Everyone."
Tia stared in incomprehension at him. Despite her desperate need to control her own body again, her voice seemed to fail her. She finally spoke with a hoarseness brought on by her shock. "Why? Why would you do something that… that monstrous?"
"It will create a better galaxy, Miss Nguyen," he answered. "A galaxy of peace and prosperity, without suffering, without conflict. It will be literally unthinkable for us." He clapped her on the shoulder. "You should feel honored at playing such a role."
"Honored?! Honored at what?! At being a guinea pig for the mega-corps?!" Tia's voice grew so violent, the armed guards tensed. She barely resisted the temptation to punch her tormentor, only managing it with the knowledge (and fear) that he could turn the implant back on and render her helpless again. "So they've dropped all the pretenses now, and you're fine with that?! Fine with making us all slaves to capitalists so they can have more profits?!"
To that, her tormentor actually laughed. "You don't know who I am at all. You're so set upon your limited vision that you don't comprehend anything beyond it."
"Comprehend nothing, I know what you are! Another corporate bully, stamping your feet on my people's backs!"
"I am not with any of your megacorps," he answered. "I do not answer to them."
"Really?" Tia laughed scornfully. "Then who is your boss, if it's not Rigault?"
He started to answer, but a tone went off in his pocket. He brought out a link and checked it. "This session has come to an end," he said. "We'll continue testing later. Guards, please escort Miss Nguyen back to her cell." He accepted a tablet from an assisting scientist and ran his fingers over it. Tia felt the tightness in her throat return, telling her that he'd blocked her from speaking again. Her legs went into motion, moving her toward the guards. One led her out of the door and the other followed her through it. They emerged into the sterile halls of the lab area and began the walk back toward the cells.
Tia strained against the motion of her own body, but as before, it was for nothing. She couldn't even show her frustration on her face.
* * *
The Hestian Business Council. To some in Neutral Space, it represented the pinnacle of cooperation between private interests, for good or for ill. Corporations of great interstellar scope, cooperating to protect their mutual interests on a planet rich in valuable minerals and rare elements.
To others, it was a sign of corporate overreach. Corporations banding together to dominate a world with the force of economic and military might.
To Hestians, they were the font of oppression, the mechanism by which Hestians were compelled to work and die as serfs to the HBC's member corporations.
And to Antoine Rigault, sitting upon the Council as his family company's representative… they were a means to an end.
He sat at his place on the right side of the table, behind the nameplate for Rigault Heavy Industries. To his left, at the head of the table, sat the high-browed, narrow-faced Hans Bohlen, Chairman of the HBC and representative of the Trifid Commercial Trust. His employers were based on the Objectivist-founded colony of Galt, in Rand City, where they ran Neutral Space's second-most powerful interstellar bank behind the Interstellar Bank of Galt itself. The Trust still exceeded the Bank's actual assets, if not its economic influence, by providing its financial services for everyone, ranging from the lowest slum-dwelling service worker of Rand City to the government of the Tal'mayan Federated Union, Neutral Space's only interstellar government of note. He maintained an austere air and often acted the part of the honest intermediary between the Council's members.
Across from Rigault sat Evelyn Cooper of New Cornwall. The stout New Cornish woman was the representative of Whalen-Scobrook Electronics, a megacorp that employed Hestian labor (and that of other worlds they had holdings on) to provide high-end electronics to companies and buyers across Neutral Space, even in the Terran Coalition itself. Antoine considered her a stubborn, annoying woman, quite set in her ways, but she at least shared his dislike of Hestians.
To Rigault's right was the elderly form of Huang Lu Meng, the representative of New Guangdong Power and Electric and the most senior member of the Council, thus the most conservative. NGP&E was the unique member of the council, as it was a state-owned megacorp, responsible for powering the manufacturing economy of New Guangdong. Their interests in Hestia were mostly in Hestia's deposits of minerals needed for the conducting alloys to construct and maintain their banks of solar-powered microwave transmission stations. These stations provided their home system and other contracted systems with a source of power independent of fusion or other fuel-based sources. They further maintained a commanding interest in the helium-3 mining and refinery operations over the two gas giants of Hestia's solar system.
These four companies, including Rigault, represented the oldest members of the Council. Three more great mega-corporations of Neutral Space sat with them. Jean-Bertrand Jardeau of Cruesot Mechanical Fabrication, Sasuke Yamaguchi of Fubuki Aerospace Limited, and Carlos Ortega of Salazar Mining filled out the other seats. The three of them had their own mining concerns on the planet, either for internal company use in off-world factories or for sale on the interstellar market.
It was, all things told, an awe-inspiring display of corporate power in Neutral Space. All seven companies were among the top ten wealthiest corporations in Neutral Space. Indeed, they occupied the upper nine spots with the Interstellar Bank of Galt, with only one other company not part of their number.
That last company was the initial focus of the meeting. Bohlen spoke with his usual clipped German-accented English to report the situation. "It did not take much persuasion to have the Hestian government's Ministry of Production deny Lou Shipping's attempt to purchase the Haiphong Yards. While the company's offer was twenty-five percent above the market value, Minister Balland recognized our argument that granting that company an economic toehold on Hestia could lead to destabilizing social influences."
Antoine didn't bother to hide the snicker at Bohlen's droll delivery. None of his family wanted to see Francois "Frank" Lou get any kind of influence on his homeworld. A native-born Hestian on the Business Council was a recipe for social unrest, at the very least.
"We are perhaps being a little dogmatic about the matter," said Jardeau. The Nouveaux Champagne native spoke his English with a thicker accent than Antoine's own. "Lou's an excellent businessman and his conglomerate has immense prestige in the transport industry. Consolidating our influence in the rest of Neutral Space would come more easily with his fleets."
"If you invite that jumped-up little man into our councils, you invite the Hestians to become even more resti
ve," Antoine growled. "He is everything they wish they could be."
"But he is not a socialist," Ortega pointed out. "He has as much to lose as we do if the radicals ever succeed."
"Ambitious Hestians are dangerous to our power, it's as simple as that," Cooper noted. She nodded to Antoine. "That's why we've barred Lou from all of his attempts to join the Business Council. That way lies revolution, either socialist or nationalist, and we can allow neither."
The other representatives, recognizing that Huang and Bohlen were in agreement, acquiesced.
"Speaking of socialists." Bohlen nodded to Antoine. "My congratulations to the security forces on the arrest of Tia Nguyen. Our doubts about your new policies have so far proven in error."
"I do not like the rumors I hear of how you achieved this," Huang said disdainfully. "Our people report Allentown Station was threatened with the loss of their dome on the matter."
"I'm quite certain that has been reported, but my operatives are picked for being careful operators," Antoine said. "Whatever is claimed about their methods, they would do nothing to jeopardize our reputation. I am seeing to that personally."
"Allentown's a small fry anyway," Cooper chortled. "And owned by competitors. They wouldn't be missed."
"What would be missed are all of the contracts we stand to lose should we be found liable for an act of mass murder," Huang reminded Cooper pointedly. His eyes narrowed with displeasure at Antoine. "I applaud our young Rigault's tenacity, but his methods I find concerning."
"He has not done us wrong yet," Bohlen asserted. "The elimination of so many of the remaining radical exiles has ended several ongoing embarrassments for the companies of this body. Their nuisance lawsuits and agitations will cease."
Breach of Trust: Breach of Faith Book Four Page 10
