The Ramal Extraction (6 page)

Whatever he might have said to that, Dodd cut him off: “That’s it. We’re done. Let’s go.”

She nodded at Jo. “Captain.”

“Lieutenant.”

They headed back to the roller, loaded in, and drove off.

Gunny drifted over from behind a stack of water barrels. “Been a while since Ah got to shoot any GU Army guys. Too bad he didn’t pull that Hauser. Time he got that tank out the holster, we could have been back in the FCV having a beer. If that old fart Gramps hasn’t drunk it all up.”

“What, you think I’m deaf in here?” came Gramps’s vox from the com.

“Why not? You blind. Let’s not even go down the road to ‘stupid.’”

He laughed.

Gunny said, “But that looie isn’t stupid, is she, Cap? She knew who you were, unless she has some way of seeing how many augs you have on board.”

Jo nodded. “Yeah. They did their homework. But as long as they stay out of our hair? No problem.”

“You think they will? Stay out of our hair?” Gunny said.

She sighed. “Do they ever?”

Cutter was still setting up his field office in the still-drying ferrofoam structure. Great stuff, ferrofoam. Put up a plastic mesh frame, spray it on, it hardened to a stonelike solidity in an hour. Three or four centimeters of it would stop most small-arms missiles. First thirty or forty minutes, it was pliable, easy to shape or cut. It had a harsh chemical stink until it dried, smelled like hot gun lube. A halfway decent engineer could make it into anything you needed for field ops. Unless you double-walled it, it wasn’t that good for insulation once it set, but that’s what heaters and coolers were for. It was cheap and easy to transport, and you could break it down with a chemical spray when you were done, leaving nothing but a little goo that didn’t even harm the environment all that much.

If he had any money, he’d invest in the company that made it. Beat the alternatives all to hell and gone.

Gramps stuck his head in the door. “Colonel, we got an incoming call from the kidnappers.” Before he could ask, Gramps said, “Rajah’s security hasn’t reported it to us, but we have a tap on his pipe.”

That was SOP. “Let’s hear it.”

Gramps waved a finger at his handheld.

“We have your daughter. If you wish to see her alive again, you will follow our instructions. We know about your mercenaries, and if you speak of this to them, the girl dies. We will call you again soon. Sorry about the songbird.”

The voice was synthesized, a voxbot, probably generated from text.

“I don’t suppose we got a backwalk?”

“Nossir, it’s planetweb, bounced from all over the world. They ain’t entirely foolish.”

Cutter nodded. “So they are testing to see if the Rajah is going to tell us.”

“Be my guess. Have to wonder why he’d bother hiring us if he isn’t, but you know how the clients get.”

He knew. Once the threats began, there were families that swallowed and rethought their decisions to hire recovery forces.

Gramps said, “The bit about the bird is to let us know for sure they were in the garden.”

“Yes. Or had access to the security recording.”

His com buzzed. Cutter held up one hand to caution Gramps to be quiet.

“Cutter.”

The call was on speaker: “Colonel, it is Rama here. The kidnappers have contacted us. The Rajah would like to see you when it is convenient.”

Gramps raised an eyebrow.

“On my way. Out.”

Once the connection was cut, Gramps said, “Well, I guess that answers that.”

“So it would seem. I’ll go and have a chat with him.”

Nearly an a hour after Rags left, Gunny drifted over to the op center and nodded at Gramps. “So, the colonel’s gone to see the Rajah about the kidnapper’s message?”

“Christus, this place is full of spies! How’d you know that?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Soldiers’ grapevine, Gramps, you know how it works.”

“Sure, I was there when it was invented, wasn’t I?”

“You said it, not me.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Can’t hang a woman for what she’s thinking.”

“Good thing.”

“Anything new and interesting?”

“Funny you should ask. Want to see a vid?”

“Not if it’s porn. That’s mostly what you look at, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “It
is
porn, sort of. But you’ll like it. Trust me.”

He waved his hand over the viewer. The holographic projection lit.

“Hot off our spyweb, came in a few minutes after Rags left. It’s a recording from one of our birdshit cams. In an area called Rat’s Nest, that’s a bad section of town, just east of the Rajah’s compound.”

The view was from about four meters high. The alley was empty, save for some boxes stacked near one of the garbage intakes. The manhole-sized cover on the intake was up, the lid propped in place by what looked like a short mop. The buildings bordering the alley looked like thetic-stone overlay, probably slapped onto local wood.

After a few seconds,
Kluth
fem ambled into the shot.

Gunny looked at Gramps, then back at the image. Birdshit cams, so-called because of how they were deployed, angle-dropped from small robotic flappers to stick on contact, were sharp enough to gather fairly clean intel. One of the first things CFI did when it landed on a new planet was deploy “birds” to sow cams. They were motion-detecting and tracking, and this one autofocused on Kay, centering her in the view.

“You know how Kay likes to go and get the lay of the land,” Gramps said.

Gunny nodded.

Two seconds later, a large human arrived from behind Kay. He had a shaved head and a thick beard.

“Why, look at that, it’s that ole boy Ganesh. Oh, my.”

Gramps nodded.

There was no audio, and that was too bad—Gunny would love to hear what the Anandan was saying.

Kay inclined her head to the left, then the right, and the angle was such that they could see she didn’t seem to be speaking, only listening.

Kay shrugged, a gesture that meant more or less what it would done by a human.

She turned, as if to leave.

The Rajah’s security man whipped his knife out and chopped down, as if trying to split Kay’s head—

Ho—!

Kay blurred, moving too fast for Gunny to follow her moves—

—Ganesh toppled like his bones had suddenly dissolved.

“Holy shit,” Gunny said.

Kay turned and walked off. Ganesh lay unmoving on the alley floor.

“He dead?”

“Wishful thinking. Watch it again in slomo.” He waved his hand, wiggled a finger a couple of times. “One-third speed.”

This time, when the knife came out, Gunny could see that Kay had anticipated his attack and was already in motion. She jinked to the outside of Ganesh’s arm, blocked the downward cut with her right hand, shoved his arm down, then smashed the side of his head with her left-palm heel. She slid a hair to her left, shot a strike to his throat with her right hand, catching him with a V between her thumb and other fingers. Then she stepped in, smacked his ribs with a left elbow, her right knee thudded into his groin, and she followed up with a right elbow to his nose.

Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap!

Gunny looked at the timer inset.

Just about a second from the time the knife appeared. Impressive, as always, watching Kay move.

But was what
more
interesting?

“No claws,” Gunny said.

“Yep. You know that’s considered major contempt for an opponent on her world.”

“Yeah. Cub play.”

“I just downloaded the local medic’s report. Fool-boy Ganesh there has a concussion, a broken hyoid, two cracked ribs, a badly bruised testicle, and a broken nose. I’d guess he’ll be taking a few days off.”

“And he’s lucky that’s all he’s got. You think he’ll try her again?”

“Would you?”

“Ah’d never have tried her in the first place. Ah wouldn’t want to risk shooting her from across the room.”

“Me, neither.”

“Probably wouldn’t hurt for us to keep an eye on ole Ganesh if we are still around when he gets back up to snuff.”

“Yes.” He shook his head.

“What?”

“That expression. ‘Up to snuff.’ What does that mean?”

She smiled. “Well, you know me, Ah’m just a poor ignorant gunnery sergeant trying to get by, not any kind of his-tori-an, but Ah do believe it has to do with an ancient stimulant made from powdered tobacco that was inhaled nasally. The sudden influx of nicotine into the mucosa caused a sharpening of one’s thoughts and feelings, thus the phrase originally meant that. Over time, it came to mean ‘meeting a required standard.’”

He looked at her as if she’d turned into a big spider.

“Who the fuck are you? What have you done with Gunny?”

She laughed. Had to give a man who could make her laugh points for that. “Thanks for the show.”

“My pleasure. Make you hot?”

“It purely did. Too bad there aren’t any men around to take advantage of it.”

“Get the fuck out of my office.”

She laughed.

Cutter sat across from Ramal and his perhaps-future son-in-law. He noticed that the head of security wasn’t there.

“Where is Ganesh?”

“He had an accident,” Rama said. He waved one hand, dismissing it. “Not important. We know who sent the message.”

Cutter said, “Was there more to it than what you played for me?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see how you know who sent it. I didn’t hear any identification. Were you able to source it?”

Rama said, “There is no need! The tone of the words identify him as if he had spoken his name aloud!”

Cutter nodded. “I see. Maybe you could explain?”

Rama looked at Ramal. The older man offered a slight nod.

The younger man said. “The land that abuts My Most Honored Rajah Ramal’s kingdom of New Mumbai to the east is Balaji, ruled by the Thakore Ilmay Luzor, a vile and despicable man begat by thieves and murderers and desecrators. His line has for a century frothed and foamed like mad
freaux
kits, yapping and trying to nip at the heels of his betters. He is a backstabber, a scoundrel without principles, an eater of scat who would stab himself if he could but bleed on our shirts by the deed.”

Cutter kept his face impassive. “I see.”

“It is the phrase ‘Sorry about the bird’ that reveals him. It is exactly the kind of thing he would say. My beloved Indira is assaulted, kidnapped, spirited away, and this piece of filth apologizes for killing a songbird! It could be none other!”

Rama paused, appeared to gather himself a little, tamping down his anger. “The thakoredom has harried us—and I include my own father’s realm of Pahal in this, for we are bordered to Luzor’s territory to the north—for many years. Small insults, stings, disputes over the demarcator through the Inland Sea—never quite worthy of full-scale retaliation, but constant and irritating. This time, he has crossed too far the line. This time, he will pay with his blood in the dust!”

Cutter said nothing, but if there was going to be a war, he wanted to renegotiate their contract if they were going to stick around and be part of it. Kidnapping was one thing; war rates were much steeper.

“We could crush him,” the Rajah said. “Our combined
armies outnumber his by three or four to one; however, a precipitous attack might cause the death of my daughter. We would win, but I and Rama would lose.” He paused a moment. “And war is expensive.”

Cutter almost grinned but held it. The old man had orbited the local sun a few times.

“Perhaps, a smaller incursion,” the Rajah said. “A surgical strike that cuts through to where my daughter is…” He paused. “Once we locate her.”

Rama said, “Now that we know who is responsible, my agents will find her. And once she is recovered, we will deal with Luzor once and for all.”

Cutter said, “With the proper intel, we can make such a foray.”

He sensed that the meeting was done. He nodded and stood. Rama also came to his feet. Rama said, “Honored Rajah, I will go immediately to harry my spies to greater action.”

The Rajah waved one hand toward the door as he, too, stood.

Rama headed out. Cutter made to follow him.

“Colonel, bide a moment, if you would?”