Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings) (44 page)

Nost shook his head.  “A couple of shuttles have come in that are registered to his companies, but the landing bays are inside the complex itself.  We don’t know who is in there.”

Gelan tried not to think of his Imdiko in the hands of a man who had been responsible for hundreds, perhaps thousands of deaths.  “They must have figured out he was the one who fingered Benor.”

Utta gave him yet another hectic, apologetic look.  “I doubt they’re sure of it, or he’d have been executed rather than abducted.  Or maybe they’re hoping to find out how much the rest of us know.”

Nost said, “The question is, if we announce ourselves at their front door, will they let him live in hopes of using him as a hostage?  Or will they kill him outright because they have nothing to lose?”

Wynhod’s growl filled the room, and several of the enforcers and snipers eased away from the livid Nobek.  Gelan gripped his clanmate’s shoulder, though he felt animal with hatred too.

When Wynhod’s snarl quieted, Gelan told them, “I think they’ll go with the hostage scenario.  Benor has a lot of funds in other systems outside of the Empire.  If he can get out of here and go underground, he’ll be fine.”

“We don’t allow hostage takers to go free for any reason!”  Wynhod’s shoulder shook beneath Gelan’s hand.  “When Benor figures that out, it’s over for Krijero.”

“As long as he thinks he’s got a chance, we can stall with negotiations.”

Wynhod’s feral-bright gaze searched his Dramok’s face.  “You’d better be sure of that.  This is Krijero’s life we’re talking about.”

Utta weighed in.  “Benor thinks he’s a god.  He surrounds himself with people who feed his ego.  He won’t believe he can’t get away with this.” 

Nost looked at the schematics he had displayed of the warehouse complex.  He ground his teeth in frustration.  “If there was just some way of getting in without setting off those alarms.  Everything but the very top of the mountain is covered though, and there’s no access there.”

Wynhod suddenly went still next to Gelan.  The Dramok looked at his partner to see his eyes brighten with interest.  “A blanket system, you said?”

“Right.”

“So besides the top, there would be gaps between the security sensor wall and the mountain in places where there are crevices.  Are there any with a downward path that would get us close to an access point?”

Nost brought up the scan information.  Almost immediately, Gelan saw a slender line breach in the defensive grid.  It was a thin area between two vertical ridges, no more than a slight gap that went right to a crack within the mountainside.  It was on the very same level that Krijero’s com transmitted from.

“Does that break in the rock go all the way into the interior?” Wynhod asked.

Nost barked an order at the computer and it showed a heat signature emitting from the point in question.  On a night as cold as this, it was a dead giveaway.  Gelan hardly dared to breathe in hope.

One of the snipers in the room snorted in disbelief.  “You’d have to be able to defy gravity to get in that way.”

The tremble in Wynhod’s voice betrayed his emotions.  “Enlarge break in field and heat signature, fifty percent.”

The vid zoomed in on the area, and a jolt of excitement ran through Gelan.  He and Wynhod had climbed shit like that before.

“Difficult, but not impossible,” he announced. 

Wynhod nodded.  “I just need my gear.”

“
Our
gear.  I’m going in with you.”

Utta held up his hands.  “Hold on.  You two can really climb down and get in there?”

Gelan was in a hurry to move now that he saw a possibility of pulling Krijero out alive.  “Sir, if you’ll surround the place and use negotiations to distract Benor or whoever is holding Krijero, we could do it.”

Wynhod added, “I’m a Class 8 mountain climber, and Gelan is Class 6.  It’s completely possible we could sneak in.”

Nost stared at the vid, concern clearly written all over his face.  “I don’t know, Utta.  There are some awfully narrow passages here and here.”  He pointed out the trickier spots.  “They’ll only have inches to spare without setting off the system.”

Gelan fairly danced in his need to get his gear and descend that mountain.  “If we don’t, Benor could get away.  Krijero could die.”

Wynhod was adamant.  “We can do this.”

Nost and Utta looked at each other.  Seconds slipped by, precious seconds that brought Gelan closer to losing the Imdiko he would gladly die for.

Nost blew out a breath.  He told Utta, “That place is a fortress.  It’s the only way in.  It’s almost certainly Dr. Krijero’s only chance.”

Utta scowled, but his shoulders drooped in defeat.  “All right.  You two get your gear.  The rest of us, hostage negotiation protocols.  Sniper and enforcer captains, ready your teams.”

Everyone hurried out, though they made way for Gelan and Wynhod to race past them to get to their shuttle. 

* * * *

Krijero curled in a ball, moaning in the most pain he’d felt in his entire life.  Every inch of his body hurt in some way or another.  Throbbing, burning, screaming pain all over.  They’d been beating and cutting him for hours now.  The worst of it was knowing they were nowhere near done with him.

Dramok Benor sat in a hover chair several feet away.  He wore the charming smile from the still pic Krijero had committed to memory.  So professional.  So reasonable with his demands.  His friendly, sensible manner never wavered as he asked questions and had his men torture Krijero.

Enforcer Panow was one of those men, along with half a dozen other Nobeks.  Investigator Dexel stood next to Benor, his wide face smirking right now, though he did have a tendency to wince when Krijero screamed.  The Imdiko guessed he hurt the traitor cop’s ears.  He wished he could take some pleasure in causing any of them discomfort, but he was too far gone in his own misery.

They were in a large storage room where firearms components filled the racks of shelving.  It was bitterly cold in the room, so cold that Krijero kept expecting to see vapor from his whimpering breaths.  Or maybe he was going into shock.  No one else seemed to be cold. 

They’d pounded his face so hard that one eye had swollen shut.  The Nobeks in charge of his torture had left the other eye alone so that he could still see.  When Krijero could get past the pain to think, he surmised he’d been given that questionable mercy so he could watch the next round of hell coming.  That and look at Benor’s charming, reasonable face as the man asked unanswerable questions.

Benor leaned forward.  “Dr. Krijero, I really am not pleased with your lack of cooperation.  This could all end if you’d just give me the information I need.  Who led you to me as the man behind Frenzy?”

Krijero shuddered.  He knew that sometimes madness could be cloaked in the most sane of personalities, but Benor was not crazy.  He simply didn’t care about anyone but himself.  All that mattered to Dramok Benor was Dramok Benor, and he had no problem erasing people and things that got in the way of what he wanted.  Krijero had most definitely gotten in the way, and he knew he wouldn’t leave alive.

After the last round of cutting and beating, Krijero’s breaths sobbed in and out.  He lay absolutely still, begging the vicious pain filling his body to ease.  They’d given him a drug that sensitized his body to hyper-awareness, making every nerve ending more responsive to stimuli.  No wonder the men who’d been involved in Delir and Frenzy often chose to take themselves out rather than be killed by Benor’s people.  Krijero didn’t think his sanity could take much more of the torture.

When he didn’t answer Benor’s question, the Dramok shook his head in seeming disappointment.  He acted very much the CEO dealing with a lapsed manager.  “Last chance before we continue on, Doctor.  You have cost me a great deal of revenue, not to mention sleep.  I know you’ve talked to someone within my organization.”

“No,” Krijero finally managed to say.  Just that one word was monumental effort.

“Don’t lie to me, Imdiko.  Panow placed a tap on your computer when we discovered you were the psych who helped with the Delir case.  Your recent searches have focused specifically on my dealings.”

His computer had been tapped?  Krijero blinked.  That would make some sense.  The criminal psychology department wasn’t regarded as high-risk as Investigations or Undercover Ops.  Getting a frequency dump from his computer would have been easy compared to getting past the firewalls of Gelan or Wynhod’s.

Benor’s smile was unshakeable.  “It’s easy enough to figure out.  That you decided to take a close look at me means someone talked to you.  Not enough to give you hard evidence about my undertakings, but enough to have law enforcement in other territories become suspicious.  I don’t like that.  Disloyalty is my pet peeve, as I’m sure you’ve figured out, and I need to know who the person is that set you on me.”

All Krijero cared about at this point was delaying another round of fresh pain.  It would come, but postponing it had just become his greatest goal in life.  He gasped out, “No one told me about you.  I just followed the clues.  If you traced my research, you know I looked at two other arms manufacturers first.  I got to you through process of elimination.”

Benor scowled, the first crack in his impervious attitude.  “My standing in the community has been unassailable.  You should have discounted me immediately.”

The man did have one massive flaw.  He was a megalomaniac, Krijero realized.  He thought he was untouchable.  That Krijero would have dared to decide otherwise, without any proof, was beyond his understanding.

Benor’s professional demeanor returned.  “You’re a criminal psychologist, not an investigator.  Someone told you something.  Name names and I’ll let you go.”

Benor would never let him go.  But a part of Krijero that had already folded from the pain begged to believe he could be released from this hell.  To give Benor anything, just for a chance at ending the torment.

Krijero said, “The only man who ever spoke a word was Nobek Latwik over ten years ago.  But he didn’t know your name!”

Benor snorted.  “No, those dimwitted gang members were kept in the dark.”  Reasonable smile.  “Imdiko, don’t try to be a hero.  Talk.”

Krijero broke.  He sobbed helplessly, knowing what was coming, knowing there was no way to avoid what would happen next.  More agony was seconds away, about to be added to a battered, bleeding body that already screamed.

“I’ve answered truthfully.  You’re going to kill me anyway, so just get it over with,” he wept. 

Benor sighed and nodded to the Nobeks.  Six of them spread Krijero out over the floor and held him down, making him scream just from the pressure of their hands on his tormented flesh.  None of them reacted.  Damn if they didn’t look bored, in fact.  Just another day at the office for these guys, Krijero supposed.

Panow kneeled next to him and nodded to the man pinning the Imdiko’s wrist to the floor.  The Nobek held Krijero’s hand up.

Panow broke all the fingers of that hand with slow and casual ease.  Shrieking pain barreled up Krijero’s arm and he shrieked with it, the high-pitched cries rebounding through the room.  His stomach heaved, but he’d already vomited everything early on.  He had nothing left.

From a million miles away, he thought he heard Benor say, “That will do for now.”  They released Krijero once more, the stoic-faced Nobeks drawing back far enough so that Benor could watch him writhe and squall in helpless anguish.

It was an eternity before Krijero’s misery ebbed enough for Benor to address him again.  The Dramok smiled.  “It’s true, Doctor.  I am going to have you killed.  Right now, the only thing you have to bargain for is a merciful end and your friends’ lives.  What were those names again, Dexel?”

“Gelan and Wynhod.”

No.
  The threat knit Krijero’s fragmented mind back together.  He even managed to get past enough of the pain to raise his head and shoulders off the floor to confront Benor.  “Leave them alone.  They don’t know any of this.  I went to Utta myself.  Gelan wouldn’t believe me when I told him Frenzy was based out of this territory!”

Dexel snorted.  “Nice try.  The three of you are so thick you’re practically joined at the hip.”

Benor nodded.  “I agree.  I think we’ll have to pick them up next.  Perhaps the Nobek will talk when we show them this one’s carved, broken body and start doing the same to his Dramok.” 

Benor gave Krijero that disappointed, almost sad look again.  “It’s too bad you didn’t want to help.  It would have saved us both a lot of trouble.”  He looked up at his Nobek thugs.  “Make sure you’re creative and get it to last as long as possible.  We want the coroner to report he suffered the majority of the damage before he died.  He’ll be an example to the other territory police.”

The Nobeks nodded.  They grabbed Krijero once again and spread his agonized body wide.  He screamed at the fresh waves of pain.

“Break it all?  Then cut and gut?” someone asked.

Another casual tone.  “Works for me.” 

Panow stood over Krijero with a plasma rifle, butt end down.  He smashed it down on Krijero’s forearm.  It was as if an explosion went off in the Imdiko’s arm.  Agony demolished all sense, leaving Krijero screaming until he nearly passed out from lack of oxygen.