“Hi, yourself,” he said, and the huskiness in his voice had nothing to do with screams. He sat back a bit, lifting the back of her hand to touch his cheek, and shook his head. “Had me worried there, Alley.”
“Me, too.” Her lips trembled again for just a moment as they shaped a smile, then her eyes narrowed. “It was Manpower, wasn't it?”
“Yes.” Jacques lowered her hand from his cheek, holding it on the edge of her hospital bed in both of his, and cleared his throat.
“Yes,” he repeated, “it was.”
“What did they want?”
“Information. They wanted me to turn over the identities of all of our people working out of the embassies and consulates in Silesia.” Jacques' mouth twisted. “I'm sure they'd have gotten around to asking for more, eventually, but that was ‘all' they asked for the first time around.”
Allison's eyes widened. She'd guessed it had to be something like that, but surely Manpower must have realized Jacques couldn't—wouldn't—have given them that sort of information, no matter what they did to her. It would have destroyed him not to, but he would have known even better than she what Manpower would have done with that information, how many other lives it would have cost. And as she looked into his eyes, she saw the confirmation—saw his own anguished knowledge that he couldn't have done it even to save her.
“It wouldn't have mattered,” she told him now, freeing her hand from his to stroke the side of his face. “It wouldn't have, Jacques.” She shook her head, her eyes dark. “They were going to kill me anyway in the end.”
“I know,” he whispered, closing his eyes and turning his head to press his cheek more firmly against her palm. “I knew it from the beginning. Part of it was who we are, and part of it was to send a message.” He managed a brief, quirky smile. “Apparently they were even more upset with me over something that happened on Old Earth than I thought they were.” He inhaled deeply. “I always knew what I do could splash on the people I care about—even on you, Alley—but I never really believed it. Not until now.”
“That's because what you do is so much worth doing,” she told him. “And while we're kicking ourselves, I probably should've been just a bit more careful myself.”
“Well,” he said grimly, “I think I can assure you that Manpower's never going to come close to you again, Alley.”
There was something hard, frightening, about his eyes, and Allison felt her eyebrows rise in question. He saw it, and laughed harshly.
“We got one of them alive—found him tied up with tape in a utility shed, I believe—and we've . . . spoken to him at some length. And because we have, we know who planned and authorized the entire operation. The person who actually planned it is already dead; some time in the next few T-months, the people—plural—who authorized it will also be dead. In at least two cases, that's going to require an operation on Mesa itself, so we'll probably start there—take out the hardest targets first—and then pick the others off later. But trust me, Alley. Manpower will get our message loud and clear.”
“I don't want anybody to risk—” she began, thinking of the enormous dangers of mounting any sort of operation on Mesa, whose security services were among the most efficient—and brutal—in the explored galaxy. What had happened to her was bad enough already; if men and women of the BSC were killed “avenging her,” it would be even worse.
“It doesn't matter what you want, Alley.” Allison looked into Jacques's eyes and knew that flat, hard voice belonged not to her brother, but to Captain Benton-Ramirez y Chou, Biological Survey Corps. “And this isn't about getting even for what they did to you. Oh, there's some of that involved, don't think for a minute there isn't! But this whole thing started when they tried to assassinate Aurèle Fairmount-Solbakken on Old Earth. Our reaction there was purely defensive, but then they escalated, went after the Corps right here on Beowulf, and did it in a way guaranteed to underscore the fact that they were escalating. We don't like that, and we're going to make it very clear to them that it was a really, really bad idea. The sort of idea that gets the people who approve it dead, no matter how long it takes or how hard they are