The Ramal Extraction (27 page)

The building was plain, some kind of prefab panel, no markings on the door to identify it. It was a one-story light-industrial unit in a row of others just like it, save for small signs and a couple of personal touches, different-color doors, like that.

A few people came and went.

Formentara looked at Kay. “This is the place. Shall we?”

“Stay behind me,” Kay said.

“Glad to.”

Kay stepped into the motion detector’s range. The door slid open. Kay hurried through. Her dart pistol appeared in her hand as if by magic.

Formentara strolled in much slower, hir own weapon still tucked under hir tunic. Kay was eminently more capable of dealing with resistance, was there any, and if it was formidable enough to defeat an armed Vastalimi, chances that Formentara would offer much of an additional challenge were slim and snowball.

The anteroom was empty. The door leading to the next room was open and Kay was already through it. “Hold,” Kay said.

Formentara arrived and saw a tall, redheaded human male in a zentai skinsuit, covered neck to toes—face open—in a thin, green material. Guy had muscles on his muscles, and the smoke-thin material revealed that he was hung like a pornoproj star, too.

He seemed full of nervous energy, bordering twitchy.

He was next to a console, stopped now, but obviously working on the lit board. No patient, so he was doing b.g.

There were no signs of weapons, and no place he could hide an external one under that outfit.

“My God, it
is
you. Formentara! I’m honored.” He gave her a military bow.

“Do I know you?”

“I wouldn’t think so. We’ve never met, and my work is still in the budding stage. But of course any augmentor worth his own piss knows who
you
are.” He waved at the console. “I’m Gee.”

He pronounced it with the soft-gee sound, like the karate suit.

“Well, M. Gee, I would like to discuss your work in the realm of alien augmentation, if you have a few moments.”

“You saw my Rel?”

“And the traps you left in him.”

Gee smiled. “I didn’t believe them when they said you were here, but just in case, I added the second. Any local augmentor on this dirt ball would have been flummoxed by the first, but if you were looking at the Rel? I knew you’d blow past that like it was nothing.”

“And you also knew I wouldn’t expect anybody here to be good enough to hide the second.”

He gave hir another slow nod of acknowledgment. “Indeed. Did it work?”

Zhe was tempted to tell him it hadn’t, but one rewarded skill with honesty. “It did.”

He grinned widely. “Ah. My greatest accomplishment. Thank you.”

“His augmentation was not detectable by a Vastalimi at close range. I would consider that a greater accomplishment.”

“I am honored.”

Formentara shook hir head. “You have promise. I have some questions about the Rel. I need to know how one came to such a place that he would seek out an augmentation. And how you just happened to be here when he needed it.”

“Coincidence?” he said.

Zhe smiled. “Oh, no, I don’t think an augmentor of your caliber, the only one on the planet capable of rigging an undetectable-scent cross-species meld, just
happened
to be here. Somebody hired you. I need to know who and why
and what else you have been up to. And why the Rel needed to die.”

It hardly seemed possible, but his smile increased yet again. “I would like nothing better than to sit and talk about it with you, believe me. But I am bound by ND confidentiality agreements.”

Kay said, “
He
reeks of hormones, some real, some artificial.”

Formentara nodded. She couldn’t smell them, but she knew the signs, it was in his every gesture.

“He’s wired, big-time. Surely has a biozapper,” zhe said. “Stay back.”

Gee laughed. “Of course, you would see me for what I am.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-four.”

Zhe nodded. Gee was an aug-hog, an addict, running too many systems, barely in balance, and burning himself up. Addicts thought they could manage that, especially programmers, and of course, they couldn’t. Gee could put himself under and run his own robotics, but it was a fool’s game. Robots could be finely tuned, but even the best AIs didn’t have intuition. They could be masters of the craft but not artists. Without that, it was not a matter of “if,” but “when” the crash would happen. Might be months, years even, but he’d never live to see fifty.

“I can tune you,” zhe said.

Zhe saw him consider it. He knew what his eventual fate would be. And if he was half as knowledgeable as he pretended, he knew what that offer meant. Even a onetime tune could self-replicate enough so it would probably add six or eight years to his longevity, as long as he didn’t add more systems.

“You would do that?”

“We can help each other.”

Ten seconds passed. “Once I’m under, you could change your mind.”

“You’d have my word going in.”

He nodded, almost to himself. “And to be under the probes of the great Formentara? Another signal honor. But—no. I can’t.”

“Listen—” zhe began.

He charged Kay, moving much faster than a normal man could possibly move—

Kay saw the human in green coming at her, raising one hand to point his finger at her, and she knew he was too fast for her to step out of his way—

She collapsed, let her muscles go limp, and dropped to the floor as the bioelectric bolt crackled from the man’s finger at her, singeing the fur on her left shoulder as she fell—

He was moving too fast to stop as he leaped for her, hands open to grab—

Formentara yelled, “Contact shocker!” but it was too late, Kay was already on her back and she thrust her right foot up hard in a kick at his crotch even as he flew over her—

The jolt of electricity surged through her bare foot from the contact even as she felt his testicles mash under her heel—

Kay blew out a hard breath and entered
spokoj
. She might be injured from the electric jolt, but she’d have to deal with that later. Now she needed the ability to
move
and
spokoj
-mind wiped away the pain that would hinder her—

She came up as Gee landed and turned to make another run—

She was ahead of him. She leaped, claws extended—

He tried to twist
and
step out of the way, and trying both at once was too slow—

She caught him across the chest with her right hand; the claws sliced through the green fabric and his pectoral
muscles, opening four gashes from his left shoulder to his right side—

She caught his frown as he triggered his own pain dampers—

She was on him, but his bioelectric charge was depleted—

She felt a tingle, no more as she shoved him and swept his lead foot—

He fell onto his back and she dropped—

Formentara, yelling: “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him—!”

At the last instant, she retracted her claws and hit him with a palm to the forehead, banged the back of his head against the floor, hard—

She saw the whites of his eyes roll up as he lost consciousness…

Kay said, “I might break one of those restraints. Three should be sufficient to hold him.”

Formentara said, “Maybe. Or he could overload his Golgi stretch-reflex and snap half the bones in his body with the force of his contractions. Get loose, or kill himself, neither of which we want.”

Kay had glued the claw wounds on his chest shut and helped Formentara strap him to the augmentation table. He was coming around, blinking, disoriented.

“Can you get him to tell us what we want?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll be able to shunt stuff back and forth enough so he’ll talk.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Gee said. He managed a weak smile.

“You could have a dozen traps in you,” zhe said. “Now that I know what I’m dealing with, I’ll be able to find and disarm them all.”

“I don’t doubt it. But you won’t get that far. See you on the other side, hey?”

Zhe reached for a control, but it was too late. His eyes
bulged, and the whites went red with hemorrhages. He exhaled, a death rattle, and was gone.

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit,
shit
!”

Kay looked at hir.

“He had a demand-explosive charge in his skull! A biobomb powerful enough to cook his fucking brain! Shit!”

Kay stared at the body.

Well. This could not be counted a major victory.

When the hopper landed, and they picked up Formentara and Kay, Jo caught the grim expression of Formentara’s face. “That bad?”

“Don’t fucking ask.”

Kay said, “We captured him. He suicided before we could question him extensively.”

“Before we got a fucking thing,” Formentara said.

“Not precisely so,” Kay said.

Zhe looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Consider what we did learn. Gee worked for somebody well-off. He was hired offworld and transported here, at what was probably no small cost, and he was willing to kill us and risk death, and when that failed, kill himself before he would give us the information we sought.”

Gunny said, “Yeah, so?”

Jo said, “So even if he was making a shitload of money for the work, what would possess a man to kill himself rather than just roll over on whoever hired him? What’s worse than dying?”

They considered that for a moment.

“And why an augmented Rel?” Gunny said.

Nobody had an answer for that one.

“We’ll see how much we can backwalk the late M. Gee,” Formentara said. “I have contacts who will know.”

“Might not need to know,” Gramps said. “We have the store manager.”

In the backseat, Sid sat staring at the ceiling, grinning stupidly.

Formentara said, “I’ll want to scan him. Make sure
he
’s not carrying a death pill, because they have been dropping like fucking autumn leaves around me.”

Jo nodded. After Booterik, she had considered that, which was why they decided to make sure Sid was stoned enough he couldn’t trigger a suicide if he was so inclined.

Wink said, “I’ll make sure he stays under deep enough so he won’t do anything foolish even if he is rigged.”

“The disruption at TotalMart is done, and they are screaming loud and repeatedly to every authority on the planet,” Gramps said.

Jo picked it up: “If Sid is innocent, he’ll be turned loose, and the Rajah will fix whatever needs to be fixed. TotalMart isn’t going to shut down a store making that much for the corporate coffers, and if they want to do more business here, the Rajah can stop it.

“If he is guilty, TotalMart will cut him loose in a nanosecond to keep the Rajah’s goodwill.”

“Nice to know how money works, isn’t it?” Gramps said. “All about the bottom line.”

Formentara scanned M. Sid and determined that he was free of aug and mechanical traps. Zhe stomped off to make some calls about the late M. Gee.

Wink ran his diagnostics and confirmed there weren’t any poisons set to release inside the store manager. He
fiddled with the inflow of neurochem and put Sid into a more blissful state that made him receptive to questions.

Jo took the lead, with Wink standing by; Gramps, Gunny, Kay, and Cutter were in the next room watching through a one-way glass.