Beginnings-eARC Read online

  All of which meant he was almost certainly the only person who knew she was in trouble, and he was definitely the only one in a position to take any immediate action.

  And immediate action is what she needs, he thought coldly. I don't know what they're doing to her, but I know it's ugly. She's frightened, she's hurt, she's alone, and for all I know they're going to kill her in the next five minutes.

  Despite his iron self-control, his mind shied like a terrified horse from that thought. He didn't even know her, hadn't exchanged more than a couple of dozen words with her, certainly couldn't claim any relationship with her . . . and the thought of losing her was more frightening than anything he'd ever experienced in his life.

  All right. That just means you're going to have to be at least halfway smart about this, he told himself.

  The taxi waited with the patience of its artificial intelligence while he punched up more maps on his uni-link. The AI didn't mind hovering in one spot all day long as long as the meter kept running, and unlike a human pilot, it had no sense of curiosity to interrupt him with irritating questions.

  He studied the display, orienting himself with the ease of long experience, superimposing the vector of his immaterial homing beacon onto the map.

  They'd left Grendel behind over a hundred kilometers ago, heading out across rolling woodland dotted with the homes of people who preferred the attractions of a more sylvan existence to those of the city, and that told him at least a few things about whoever had kidnapped her.

  Personally, Alfred would have opted for hiding her somewhere in Grendel itself. The city was enormous, with literally millions of people packed into it. Once they'd gotten away clean and gone to ground, which they certainly seemed to have done, they could have hidden for days—weeks—against that teeming background of humanity with very little chance that the authorities would be able to find them, unless they did something stupid to draw attention to themselves. The countryside seemed to offer more hiding places, but as someone who'd grown up in the Sphinx bush, he knew how much of an illusion that actually was. Traffic was easier to spot where there was so much less of it, buildings and encampments stood out sharply, and people had a greater tendency to notice strange air cars or strange people in the neighborhood, as well.

  But the people who'd taken her had chosen the countryside. Unless he wanted to assume this was purely personal, a case of someone kidnapping her and dragging her off to his own home ground which simply happened to be in the country, that meant they wanted space, the ability to see people coming at long distances. It was always possible that “purely personal” was exactly what it was—that burst of terror could easily have come from someone who'd realized she was in the hands of a sadist or a serial killer—but it didn't fit the profile. Her abduction had been too smooth, too professional. The apparent seizure or collapse, the Good Samaritan and the waiting ambulance, all suggested careful planning by a group, not by a deranged individual. They wanted something, either from her or from someone who cared about her, and they intended to get it. Money was the first possibility that came to mind, although getting away with any ransom after the funds had been transferred would be problematical. He had no reason to believe her family was especially wealthy, either, and he took a moment to swear at himself for not having found out more about her. He should have at least found out who she was related to, damn it! But it would have felt too much like voyeurism, a confirmation that he was turning into the sort of obsessive stalker he'd been half-afraid he was becoming. All he knew about her was her last name—Chou—and that was scarcely an uncommon one here on Beowulf!

  It was more likely they wanted something else, anyway, he told himself. Something that wouldn't leave traceable electronic footprints like a funds transfer. Information of some sort? That was certainly possible. Information techs didn't have to be wealthy or important themselves to have access to data that could be literally priceless to the right person. And information handed over on a data chip wouldn't have to pass through any of the galaxy's banking systems to be useful, either. He couldn't rule out a cash ransom, but the more he considered it, the more plausible the information theft motive looked.

  Of course, what they wanted might be simple revenge for something, in which case they might well have—indeed, probably did have—no intention of ever returning her alive.

  A fresh spike of fear threatened his cold detachment at that thought, but he forced it back. He couldn't afford it.

  No. They were professionals, and that meant they probably wouldn't kill her immediately. But they'd brought her out here to make certain no one could get into striking range of their base undetected. They might also be out here because they wanted seclusion, but seclusion could be found in an urban environment, as well, if someone had a deep enough cellar. Most likely, they'd set up a military-style—or what they believed was a military-style—perimeter around their HQ, and that could be very, very bad. It was highly unlikely that anyone who could engineer this so smoothly would delude himself into believing he could have the firepower to stand off what the Beowulfan law enforcement agencies could bring to bear once they knew where he was. So his perimeter defense would be designed to buy time. Time for him to execute whatever bug out plan he was counting on to get his arse out of the frying pan before it fell into the fire. And that bug out plan was just as likely to include killing his captive before he ran for it as it was to include taking her with him.

  All right. The first step was to find her. There was no point thinking about approaches or tactics until he'd managed that much, and at least he was pretty sure he knew how to do it.

  He switched the map to a topological display, considering the terrain with a Marine's eye, and looked along the line between him and her. Distance was much harder to estimate than direction, especially when he had no previous experience with ESP, but there were a couple of places along that line that looked probable. He just had to figure out which one of them she was actually in.

  “Come to a heading of zero-three-five degrees,” he told the AI. “Head in that direction until I tell you to stop.”

  “Of course, sir,” the AI replied cheerfully. “Would you like me to open an entertainment channel for you while we travel?”

  “No,” he said flatly.

  “As you wish, sir. Ajax Cabs of Grendel appreciates your business. I hope you enjoy the flight.”

  * * *

  Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou finished dressing and sealed his tunic with a hand which should have resembled a castanet but didn't. His eyes were bleak, hard, and something entirely too much like panic gibbered just below the surface of his tightly focused thoughts.

  It was Manpower. It had to be, given the information they wanted, and that meant his sister—his twin—was in the hands of people who routinely used rape and torture as “training tools” and couldn't care less how many mutilated bodies they left in their wake. Worse, they were people who had deeply personal, as well as professional, reasons to hate him and, by extension, his family. It was entirely too likely that whoever had hurt Allison to make the point of his helplessness to him had enjoyed doing it. That they would do it again, with or without the intention of driving him to do their bidding. And it was certain that in the end, they would kill her.

  But what did he do about it?

  The first thing he did was to stay as far away from the members of his own team as he possibly could. It was possible Manpower hadn't IDed any of the other members of that team, but it was unlikely. And if they did know the team members, they'd have any of them they'd identified under surveillance. They had to know his natural response would have been to reach out to the people he trusted most in the world to help get Allison back, and the instant they saw any of those people doing anything out of the ordinary, they would assume that was exactly what he'd done. At which point, Allison would almost certainly die.

  But that didn't mean he couldn't contact anyone in the BSC. He'd just have to be insanely careful about who and how.


  He left his apartment, locked the door behind him, and headed for the parking garage. No doubt he was under surveillance at that very moment, but the very information they'd demanded from him gave him a perfectly logical reason to head for the Biological Survey Corps' headquarters at Camp Oswald Avery three hundred kilometers outside Grendel. The sort of detailed information they wanted couldn't be remote accessed without all sorts of challenges and authorizations. From his workstation inside Oswald Avery, over the camp's secure server network, it would be quite another matter.

  But so would his ability to communicate without worrying about any eavesdroppers.

  * * *

  “Damn, I hate it when they pass out that fast,” Giuseppe Ardmore remarked, tossing the neural whip into the air, flipping it end for end and catching it again.

  Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou was still unconscious, drooping in the chair to which she had been strapped, and Ardmore smiled as he watched her breathe. She wasn't blindfolded or hooded, which would have told her brother a great deal about how likely she was ever to leave this room alive. She might not realize that, but she sure as hell knew now that she was in deep, deep shit and sinking fast.

  He caught her hair in his free hand, pulling her head back to study her critically. She was a beautiful bitch, he'd give her that, and maybe before it was all over, he'd have the opportunity to take advantage of that, too. But for now—

  “Do you really think he's going to roll over for us?” he asked, never lifting his hungry eyes from her face.

  Tobin Manischewitz regarded the other man without any particular expression, yet Ardmore's attitude disturbed him. The original concept for the operation had been his, but Ardmore was making it too personal. Manischewitz wasn't going to be a hypocrite and pretend he hadn't known exactly what sort of ugliness his plan entailed, but for him, it was simply the cost of doing business. A man didn't go to work for someone like Manpower if he had much in the way of scruples, and Manischewitz had never claimed he did. He'd always known Ardmore had a vicious streak, as well—it was one of the things which had made him so effective when it came to “wet work”—but it looked like the man had a deeper and uglier vein of sadism to go with it than he'd thought.

  In some ways, that suited Manischewitz just fine. Ms. Benton-Ramirez y Chou wasn't going to survive the operation, no matter what happened, and her brother's love for her was both well known and evident. If anything was going to shake his professionalism, get under his skin and cause him to make mistakes, it would be his burning fear of what would be happening to her. Manischewitz's own estimate was that Benton-Ramirez y Chou would give them what they demanded as long as it wasn't core information about BSC strategies and human intelligence sources. He might hand over the humint names, but that would be a far harder call for him, especially since whatever his emotions told him, the professional part of his brain must know how little chance there was of his ever seeing his sister alive again, whatever he gave up for her. But he'd give them what they asked for as long as he could convince himself that it wouldn't be critical, wouldn't cost the lives of people who'd put those lives on the line for him . . . and as long as he could convince himself there was still a chance of finding his sister and somehow getting her back.

  There wasn't a chance in hell of that, and sooner or later he'd realize it, but in the meantime, letting Ardmore demonstrate what was happening to his sister—or what would happen to her if he failed to cooperate, at least—was the best way to push him off balance and keep him there. For a threat to be credible, however, it must be demonstrated to be real, and he would be more than happy to let Ardmore do the demonstrating.

  Unless, of course, Ardmore's . . . enthusiasm was likely to lead him to kill the girl too soon. Worried or not, Benton-Ramirez y Chou wasn't going to continue committing treason if he wasn't convinced his sister was still alive to suffer if he didn't.

  “I think if he wants to have any chance at all of ever getting her back alive, he'll geek to at least the first couple of demands,” he replied after a moment. “I doubt we'll be able to string him along forever, though. Once he realizes he's not getting her back, he'll pull the plug.” He shrugged. “I'm not sure what he'll do at that point. He could try something really stupid if he thinks he's figured out where she is, but that's not going to happen. Why?”

  “Because I don't think he is,” Ardmore said, and licked his lips slowly, his expression ugly. “I think no matter how hard I work at convincing him to be reasonable, he's not gonna cough up the information more than maybe once. And I'll lay you odds he's not gonna give us accurate info even the first time. I'm looking forward to that.” He released Allison's hair with a flick of his fingers that bounced her head limply, and looked at Manischewitz with eyes that glittered hungrily. “I'm really looking forward to it. 'Cause when he sees what happens to his darling little sister in glorious HD, I think what he's gonna do is put a pulser dart through his own brain.”

  Manischewitz nodded slowly. That was his own estimate of Benton-Ramirez y Chou's ultimate response when he hit the limit of what he could—or would—deliver and realized how agonizingly his sister had died because he had. Still, the Beowulfer was a tough little bastard; it was possible he'd refuse to kill himself and dedicate what remained of his life to the pursuit of vengeance, instead. Manischewitz had taken that possibility into consideration when he planned the op, which was why Benton-Ramirez y Chou was scheduled to die on his final information delivery. A nice, nasty little bomb hidden in the dead drop and remote-detonated would see to that, without anyone ever being stupid enough to take the chance of letting Benton-Ramirez y Chou into range of a live human being.

  “Just don't get carried away,” he told Ardmore. The other man's expression tightened, and Manischewitz shook his head. “He's going to need a little more convincing even after he coughs up the first data dump, so don't worry. You'll get your chance to ‘convince him.' But if we push too hard, too fast on the very first date, he's likely to balk or try something desperate the next time. These things have to be handled properly, Giuseppe. And”—he looked directly into Ardmore's eyes—“if I were you, I'd be careful how much time I spent on camera with her myself. You know what cyber forensics can do with visual data, no matter how carefully we camouflage things.”

  “Don't worry.” Ardmore smiled and stroked the neural whip as if it were some treasured pet. “All he'll see is her and the end of this.” He stroked the whip again. “And I'll make sure he gets a really nice close-up of her eyes.”

  * * *

  “Christ, Jacques!” Colonel Sean Hamilton-Mitsotakis stared at the small, slender man standing in his office. “Allison? Right here in Grendel?”

  “Why not?” Benton-Ramirez y Chou asked harshly. “God never promised me a cloak of invulnerability for my family. I should've remembered that. I should've made her take more precautions! But I didn't, and whatever happens to her is my fault.”

  “Don't be stupid!” Hamilton-Mitsotakis snapped, shaking himself back on balance. “You did warn her, and unlike some of the other members of your family, Allison always had a pretty damned good idea of what you do. And you know as well as I do what kind of escalation this represents. They've never tried something like this right here on Beowulf any more than we've ever mounted an op against one of the Manpower families on Mesa, and you know why.”

  “Well, they've sure as hell changed their operational parameters this time, haven't they, Sir?” Benton-Ramirez y Chou retorted, and Hamilton-Mitsotakis nodded.

  “Yes, they have, and there's going to be hell to pay for it, I promise you that,” he said harshly. Hamilton-Mitsotakis was the CO of the BSC's Special Actions Group. That meant, among other things, that he was the man who assigned assassination targets and planned the operations to carry them out, and Benton-Ramirez y Chou knew all about the folder of high-level Manpower executives and shareholders tucked away in the colonel's files.

  “In the meantime, though,” Hamilton-Mitsotakis continued,
‘we've got to get her back. I assume since you're talking to me that you've got at least something in mind?”

  “Not very damned much,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou admitted bleakly. “They're using her com to make sure I know they've really got her, and because there's no way a trace could lead back to anyone besides Alley. But they've disabled the locator function—trust me, I already checked—and they're bouncing it through at least a couple of hundred intermediaries before they get to me. Not to mention the fact that Allison has the best privacyware on the market.” He grimaced. “In fact, I helped her pick it out. There's no way anyone's tracing that signal, and that means they could be anywhere on the frigging planet. For that matter, they could be off-planet; the delay with all the intermediate relays could be hiding the signal lag.”

  Hamilton-Mitsotakis nodded. Beowulfers took their civil liberties seriously, and the system constitution had established hard, definitive limitations on electronic surveillance from the very beginning of the colony. Citizens had an absolute right to the best privacyware—not just encryption software, but software to disable locator functions and tracking techniques—without government-mandated back doors and workarounds. In general, the colonel approved of that state of affairs, but it could be a pain in the arse for law enforcement . . . or for the Biological Survey Corps on the very rare occasions when it operated on Beowulf itself.

  Which opened another can of worms.

  “I don't suppose you've cleared a waiver of Prescott-Chatwell?” he asked.

  “No, Sir, I haven't.” Benton-Ramirez y Chou looked at him levelly. “Is that going to be a problem?”