exactly zero luck getting any of our bugs inside BSC, and their security's even tighter on the Board of Directors' side. We were lucky we picked up in time to catch him and ‘Sojourner' making the drop, but we could spend years trying to get a handle on everything he's ‘up to' right this minute. And by the time we had it, he'd be years along in making even more trouble for us!”
“Maybe we could convince him to tell us about it himself,” Manischewitz suggested softly.
“Lots of luck!” Ardmore snorted again, even harder. “I've tried to get info out of one of those Survey Corps bastards before. They're tough, they're better immunized against interrogation drugs than the frigging Solarian Navy, and every one of them has a suicide switch. Even if Upstairs let us grab him, and even if we could do it without that emergency beacon implanted in his shoulder bringing the local cops and the SBI—or the damned BSC—down on top of us, we'd never get anything out of him.”
“You see?” Manischewitz' smile was not a pleasant thing to see. “That's why I'm in charge. You think in such direct, simple, brutal terms, Giuseppe. Assuming I can convince Upstairs to go along with us, I have a much more subtle idea in mind.” His smile turned even colder. “One Captain Benton-Ramirez y Chou won't like one little bit.”
* * *
“Lord that's a sick weapon,” Alfred Harrington said, looking at the neural disruptor on the laboratory worktable. He felt a surge of remembered nausea, and he was actually a little surprised his hand didn't shake when he reached out to touch it.
“It is that,” Penelope Mwo-chi agreed. She stood a couple of meters back from the table, arms folded in front of her, and her face was grim.
“I've never understood why anyone would develop the damned thing in the first place, Doctor,” Alfred admitted. He turned it over and noted with a feeling of relief that there was no powerpack. “It's effective enough against unarmored opponents as a close-quarters weapon, but battle armor stops it dead, and over seventy-five or a hundred meters, it starts losing effectiveness fast even against unarmored targets. By the time you get to a hundred and fifty, you might as well be shining a flashlight at someone!”
“Agreed.” Mwo-chi cocked her head. “That's right, you did say you'd seen what one of these did. Can I ask where?”
“I . . . can't say,” Alfred replied. He looked up at her. “Sorry. I can't talk about it.”
“I see.” Mwo-chi considered him for a moment, and her nostrils flared. “I'll hazard a guess, though,” she said. “I'll bet you it wasn't in the hands of any regular military force, was it?”
“No. No, it wasn't.” Alfred frowned, and Mwo-chi chuckled harshly.
“Of course not, and not just because it's outlawed by the Deneb Accords, either. Like you just said, it's not very effective at any kind of range. At close range, sure. Anybody it doesn't kill outright will certainly be incapacitated and—what's that term you uniformed people use? ‘Combat ineffective,' isn't it?”
“Yes.” Alfred's voice was flat, and Mwo-chi shook her head quickly.
“That wasn't a slam at you, Alfred,” she said almost gently. “Or at any of your people. But however lethal it may be at close range against unarmored opponents, it's a lot less . . . flexible than an old-fashioned chemical-powered assault rifle, far less a pulse rifle or a tribarrel.”
“The crew-served version's got more range,” Alfred said grimly. “I've seen one of them take somebody down at three hundred meters. But you're right—by the time you can get that kind of range out of it, you're talking about something half again the size of a heavy tribarrel that'll kill a battle-armored infantryman at ten times that range, with an energy signature a blind man couldn't miss. That's why I've never been able to figure out why anyone persevered with its development long enough to turn it into even a practical close-range weapon.”
“That's because it wasn't originally developed as a weapon at all.” Mwo-chi's voice was as grim as Alfred's had been. He looked back up from the neural disruptor in surprise, and she shook her head. “It was developed from something called a neural whip . . . on Mesa.” Alfred's eyes narrowed, and she nodded. “By Manpower. I've got one of the damned things around here, and I'll show you my notes on its development history later, but basically they wanted an effective discipline tool, and