even a hint of a chance of IDing us before we dump the body and get off-world again—we're going to be so damned dead a DNA sniffer couldn't find us, and I don't like it when somebody on an op this risky gets his head too far up his arse because he's looking for personal payback. So what is it with you and this guy?”
“I don't like him, all right?” Ardmore said after a moment. “He and his family have been busting our chops for centuries now, and I don't like it. I don't like that smug, superior attitude of his—like he's so much smarter and better than any of the rest of us—either. He's being a pain in our arse, and he's gonna be a bigger one if we don't do something about it, and I'm not going to pretend it won't be especially satisfying to squash any Benton-Ramirez y Chou—and especially this one—like a bug.”
“No, it's more than that.” Manischewitz settled into one of the apartment's chairs, his eyes hard. “You've got a personal reason to want this particular guy's balls, and I want to know what it is. Now, Giuseppe.”
Ardmore glared at him, but Manischewitz only leaned back, waiting. He didn't object to a little personal motivation if it could help get the job done, but too much motivation—or motivation that was too personal—was a good way to screw the pooch. And any unfortunate little failures here on Beowulf were likely to have fatal consequences for the people involved in them.
“All right,” Ardmore said finally, with a scowl. “Three years ago, in New Denver, I had a little . . . run in with the frigging BSC.”
“In New Denver?” Manischewitz' eyes narrowed. “The New Denver? On Old Earth?”
“No, the one in Andromeda! Of course the one on Old Earth!”
“What the hell were you doing on Old Earth?!”
Manischewitz was shaken. He and Ardmore had worked together on several occasions over the last ten or fifteen T-years before they'd been more or less permanently teamed a couple of years earlier, but never in the Sol System. For that matter, their employers normally went far, far out of their way to avoid staging the sort of operations he got handed on the mother world. Genetic slavery thrived in the underbelly of the League, hidden in the sewers of corruption that most soft, protected Core Worlders never saw or knew about, and Manpower took pains to avoid anything that might cause it to intrude into the light where they might see it.
“If Upstairs had wanted you to know about it, they probably would've told you about it, don't you think?” Ardmore shot back. Then he shook his head. “Look, you want to know why it's personal with Benton-Ramirez y Chou? I'll tell you! We were in New Denver to take out Fairmont-Solbakken.”
“You were going to assassinate Aurèle Fairmont-Solbakken?” Manischewitz demanded. This just kept getting worse and worse! Aurèle Fairmont-Solbakken was the senior member of the Beowulf delegation to the Solarian League's Assembly.
“Of course,” Ardmore said impatiently. “The Beowulfers had just gotten the bureaucrats to sign off on permanently stationing a Frontier Fleet detachment in Lytton, and somebody Upstairs was pissed off as hell about it.”
Manischewitz had to think for a moment before he could place the Lytton System, then he remembered. It was a small, dirt poor, nominally independent star system within a few light years of the Sasebo System . . . one terminus of the Erewhon Junction. Had—?
“Are you saying they were trying to set up a base in Lytton?”
“Of course they were!” Ardmore snorted. “The Erewhonese are skittish as hell where anything about the slave trade's concerned. Probably has something to do with being stuck off in a corner close to the Havenites and the Manties. Hell, for all I know they've got ‘principles'! All I know is that Upstairs figured that a quiet little cargo transfer point in Lytton would let them take advantage of the Erewhonese Junction without having any . . . product on board when they went through Erewhonese Customs. They could head out through hyper, drop off a cargo at some out of the way spot like Silesia, head home by way of the Manticore Junction clean as a whistle, come through from Erewhon, pick up a fresh cargo at Lytton, and deliver it to a whole sector's worth of customers far enough out from the Core that nobody was going to ask any questions. Then turn around and head back the other