“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?”
Prescott-Chatwell was the law which specifically prohibited the BSC, which was not a domestic police agency, from mounting ops in the Beowulf System, and violation of it was punishable by up to thirty T-years in prison. It could be waived under special cirumstances, but that required a signoff at the level of the Planetary Board of Directors. Getting that sort of signoff was a time-consuming business, and time, unfortunately, was something Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou didn't have a lot of.
Now Hamilton-Mitsotakis looked into Allison's brother's eyes for a long, still heartbeat or two and then smiled slowly.
“Problem? Why should I have a problem? As far as I'm concerned, given the information these bastards want you to hand over, this is obviously a direct attack on the BSC. As such, it's clearly my responsibility to respond immediately in order to contain the damage. There'll be plenty of time to sort out any minor jurisdictional issues once the immediate threat's been contained.”
There was a moment of silence, then he shook himself.
“So if we can't track them, what do we do?” he asked.
“All I can think of for right now is to play for time, Sir,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou admitted flatly. “I think they're going to want a physical drop, because they'll be too afraid of what I might piggyback onto an electronic transfer. I doubt they'll be foolish enough to arrange the delivery anywhere near their actual base, but