Sister Time-ARC

by John Ringo

  "Think he's likely to be too good?" The captain scratched the end of his nose, looking sidelong at his childhood friend.

  "Your guess is as good as mine. In case anybody didn't get the memo, remind them that their opsec has to be flawless until we have a much better idea of what we can get away with." The major lit a cigar and blew a stream of smoke towards the sky, "Wouldn't do for him to twig and us lose all this free training. Wouldn't do at all."

  "I'll take care of it. Not like I should need to, but I'll make sure. Doesn't do to tempt Mr. Murphy," Jack said. "Okay, now what do you think of our new Command Sergeant Major?"

  "Well, they obviously know each other from way back. I think he's sharp, he's going to be the Colonel's eyes and ears. He's going to be around more we need to be twice as careful around him," the captain said. "The good news is, he seems like kind of a blow-hard, you know? Think a thought, say a thought. Subtle ain't his middle name. So we should be okay with him." He nodded to the XO and broke into an easy lope, leaving Kelly to his cigar and his thoughts.

  Like most DAG personnel, Quinn didn't live in the barracks. Unlike most of them, one of the privileges of rank he indulged in was keeping a couple of fresh uniforms in his office and taking advantage of the small cubicle shower at the end of the line of stalls in the head down the hall. Before cleaning up, he took out his PDA and phoned the master sergeant who was Bravo's senior NCO.

  "Harrison, go through and remind everybody one more time that with a new CO this is absolutely not the time to get sloppy about anything. It's probably overkill, but be sure they understand. I'd hate to have to put everybody on corn and soybeans for a week." The captain said the last in a joking tone, but it was the most serious part of the message, telling the NCO that Bane Sidhe OPSEC was what he most wanted his people to be careful about.

  "Hooah, sir," Harrison acknowledged.

  Security taken care of, Quinn headed for the shower. Wouldn't do to be all sweaty and stuff when the new CO arrived.

  Friday 10/15/54

  It was a brilliant, cold, windy fall day. The kind of day at the coast where you didn't dare step outside without a pair of sunglasses to protect your eyes from the bright reflections of the sun and the grit in the air. Cally had accompanied Shari on an island-only shopping trip that was really an excuse to wander around the store and buy a pound or so of Ashley Privett's best fudge. Most of the things they needed themselves were either already back at home, or were on a list for Cally to pick up on the weekend trip to Charleston she had announced that morning at breakfast, telling the kids that no, they couldn't come this time. It was a mommy trip. She felt a little guilty that Shari assumed that, going alone, she was going to confession—but only a little. She really was going to take at least a little time to shop for stuff to wear at the family reunion next week like she'd said. She'd just probably shop, well, quickly.

  Another purpose of this morning's trip to, as Shari put it, "beautiful metropolitan Edisto" was to let them discreetly gawk at the changes in the store. On the island, frequently you had to make your own excitement. Cally waved and smiled at Karen Lee, the wife and co-conspirator of an active Bane Sidhe agent. Karen's family were local for a few years to give the authorities time to forget about them before they went back out to a new posting with fresh, young identities. Karen was a quiet person, who seemed to find the Clan O'Neal personalities on the island a bit overwhelming at times.

  True to type, and probably for the best, Grandpa had handled the negotiation with the Bane Sidhe over the code key sale. She looked around at the changed store, impressed. Papa O'Neal could get things done in a hurry when he decided he was On A Mission.

  With so many fedcreds at stake, they had been remarkably easy going about the sales commission. As soon as the keys were flown into Charleston, Cally had made delivery to Michelle. The payment, in cash and small denominations, had come in the kind of briefcase that made her feel like the holodramas' stereotypical drug dealer. She'd paid out their commission to Grandpa, who had come back home with a trailer full of trade goods for the store. Charleston being a main port, his large purchases hadn't caused so much as a raised eyebrow. Similar large cash buys of available light consumer goods were routine there.

  Post-war, areas around the world where unusual things could grow or be mined had been rapidly recolonized, leading to the rebirth of the coastal or river-based city-state. Off-planet migration being the poor man's route to rejuv, that interesting development looked like it might even last awhile. The population to rebuild genuine nations just wasn't there. The city states' greatest need, besides essential trade goods, was for the basic end-user products and small comforts the residents couldn't make for themselves—which was rather like the O'Neals on Edisto, now that she thought about it.

  Island finances being what they were, the end result of all this was Grandpa becoming a silent partner in the store. Before, Ashley had had to make the store look full, or at least not empty, by spreading the off-island goods out at the front of the shelves, interspersed among locally made home crafts. Now, the shelves were actually full, and with manufactured goods and things that weren't merely regional. There were frozen turkeys and canned cranberry sauce to be had for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Mike and Duncan Sunday—who of course still thought their last name was Thompson—were happily applying an olive drab coat of paint to the store's exterior walls, no doubt for exchange credits to apply to the purchase of some of the goodies inside.

  Shari was flipping through a fashion magazine on the rack that Ashley had for some reason installed at the back of the store, cooing shamelessly over the fall runway photoshoot from Chicago. Tommy had hacked them a back door into the online version of the same magazine, but there was just something about holding the glossy pages in your hands. Cally was keeping half an eye on the clothes on the pages and half an eye on Morgan and Sinda, who were nudging and whispering to each other near a batch of toys. None of the toys looked breakable, at least. Sinda was eying a doll in a lacy blue and white dress with equal measures of childhood greed and love.

  A quiet, irritated buzzing from the front of the store escalated in volume to two clearly audible and irate female voices.

  ". . . just because I had to punish your kid over that disgusting frog mess . . ." Yep, Pam again. She was starting to get shrill.

  "Nobody gets credit in my shop. . . . and if you didn't spend all your money on that trash you read, you'd be able . . ." Whups, Ashley already biting her words out like that. Not good. Cally walked over to Morgan and Sinda and grabbed their unresisting hands, leading them back towards Shari, who hadn't even looked up from her magazine. She absently gathered her great-grandchildren in with one arm while Karen edged slightly behind her.

  Cally walked around her small collection of people, assassin-turned-mom securing a ready exit by moving a dolly of soft drink cases so that instead of blocking the back door it was blocking one of the aisles.

  ". . . know a book if it bit you on the . . . and you just know they'll all be gone by the time . . ." Pam was shrieking now. Pretty soon she'd be fainting and making a great show of looking all over her body for her inhaler.

  ". . . into my shop, driving off my paying customers . . ." If Ashley didn't watch it, she was going to lose her voice again. Probably for days this time. Cally nudged a box of something out of the way with her foot. Shari still hadn't looked up from her magazine, lifting her arm from around the children to turn the page, returning it to pat Sinda on the shoulder. Karen just looked frozen in shock.

  Another voice joined the first two, querulous as another woman started to complain about the inequity of ever-rising prices for people on a fixed income.

  "Time to go." Cally scooped the magazine out of Shari's hands and dropped it back on the rack. "You know with Louise joining in they'll be lucky to get it over without coming to blows." She put her hands behind her charges and made gentle shooing motions as she ushered them out the back door, moving Karen along with the group. Emerging into
the sunlight seemed to shake Karen out of her daze a little.

  "Are they always like that?" she asked in disbelief.

  "Nope," Cally answered, "sometimes they're worse. Welcome to family politics 101."

  They walked around the side of the building towards the front. Shari waved to Mike and Duncan, who hadn't missed a beat, spreading paint onto the freshly-bleached boards with smooth, even strokes. "There they go again." Mike rolled his eyes and scratched his nose, leaving a smear of green paint.

  In front of the store, they paused near the small group of older children who were gathering from across the street to observe the entertainment. A coconut came bouncing out the door at speed. Cally sighed and handed her purse to Shari.

  "Welp, the imports have started flying. Better go in and save Grandpa's stock." She disappeared through the door, emerging a moment later holding onto a short, red-faced woman with dark, frizzy hair, glasses askew on her face. The woman was cursing fluently but cut her one attempt at a struggle short when Cally subtly tightened her hold on the joint lock and took her to the ground. She looked down at the sputtering woman.

  "That's it for you, Pam. You're banned from Ashley's shop for a month," she said.

  "I don't have to answer to you, bitch. I'm not even Clan O'Neal!" The woman glared up at the blond juggernaut looming over her, but didn't try to get up.

  "Sundays are the same difference. And if you can't be trusted to be discreet in front of the children, I'll take it straight to Grandpa." The assassin's eyes were flashing now.

  The woman paled and stood up, dusting herself off. "No! Uh, you don't need to do that. I'm going. Look, I'm going." She edged down the street back towards the neighborhood holding the small house where she and her kids lived. "But you're still a bitch. Always throwing your weight around . . ." The woman said the last under her breath, but she didn't say it until she was a good twenty meters from Cally.

  Cally stood her ground for a moment then sighed and appeared to deflate. Well, appeared to deflate in that she no longer looked twelve feet tall and made of ice. She walked back over to the kids and picked Sinda up, bouncing and nuzzling her until the tears no longer threatened to spill over from the little girl's eyes. "It's okay, Mommy's not mad at you. Mommy's not mad at anybody. It's okay, it's alright . . ."

  "Yeah, definitely time to go home," Shari nodded. "Karen, why don't you come home with us for a cup of tea and put your feet up. You look like you need it."

  "Okay. Okay, I will." She looked at her watch. "The babysitter doesn't expect me back for an hour and a half, anyway."

  "Y'all go ahead. I'll just get the fudge and catch up with you," Cally said. "What do you think, chocolate mint or rocky road?"

  "Go for the rocky road while she's still got the marshmallows and almonds," Shari said, already walking off towards the truck with the children.

  By the time she got back with the fudge, Shari already had everyone in the truck. Cally climbed in the back with Karen, leaving the girls in the front seat.

  "Why didn't you sit up front? The girls could've rode back here," she asked the smaller woman.

  "After all that I needed the fresh air. Besides, Morgan called shotgun." Karen shrugged. "Can I ask you about one thing?"

  "Sure."

  "How did the Sundays end up being in Clan O'Neal?"

  "Hell if I know," Cally said.

  "Huh? That doesn't make sense."

  "Exactly." The blond grinned at her quieter friend. "It's an inexplicable, alien, Indowy thing that pretty much none of us understand." The truck was bouncing across the island road by now and she settled herself more comfortably in the bed of the truck to tell the story.

  "See, when Tommy and Wendy first joined the Bane Sidhe, Grandpa invited them to come live down here and bring the kids. We had plenty of space, and we pretty much needed the help and the company, anyway. Shari and Wendy are friends from way back in the war. And me too, sort of. So anyway, some time after that, and we haven't been able to pinpoint when, the Indowy started referring to the Sundays as O'Neals. And we all thought it was weird, so Grandpa sat down with Aelool and got him to explain five times, and he still didn't understand it. You've met Grandpa, you know how stubborn he can be when he doesn't understand something. In the end, he quit because Aelool started to get really anxious and upset. Turns out he thought Grandpa was trying to disown the Sundays, which would have been an unthinkable dishonor by Indowy standards." At Karen's puzzled look Cally paused and thought for a minute. "Okay, like for humans if you recruited some soldiers to do a job, and the mission started to go sour, and you just walked off and left them but for no good reason but you didn't have to, see?" When the other woman grimaced she nodded and went on. "So finally Grandpa got him convinced that it was all a misunderstanding and he'd certainly never meant to sound like he was trying to disown the Sundays. And the upshot was that Tommy and Wendy didn't mind, and Grandpa grumbled a bit around the house for the form of the thing but he didn't really mind, either, and the Sundays are O'Neals."

  "So the Sundays are O'Neals and nobody knows why."

  "Yup. Nobody Human, anyway. Oh, apparently something about what Grandpa did or didn't do or something made them think he meant to adopt the Sundays, and over some length of time occasionally an Indowy would ask Grandpa a strange question that didn't seem related to anything and Grandpa would just answer it without thinking about it much, and we never knew if they asked Tommy anything they thought was significant. Not anything Tommy could remember, anyway. But yep, there it is. It's an Indowy thing. Aliens. Go figure."

  Friday 10/15/54

  The man in the hotel bed had dark hair and recognizably Asian features, but it would have been impossible, even for someone from Fleet, to place exactly what part of Asia his ancestors had originally been from. The typical response would be, and had been, to shrug and assume his parents had been of mixed extraction before the war and that, in all the chaos and global upheaval of that time—upheaval that the world had never seen the like of before that horrible catastrophe—the records and even family legends had simply gotten lost, as they had for so many. Nobody would have guessed that the "Asian" man had begun life as a Latino gang leader named Manuel, and finished it, after a fashion, as an Anglo Fleet Strike General named James Stewart. Nobody but the stacked blond in the sheer red pegnoir crossing the floor towards him from the suite's bathroom. With the silvery highlights caught in the glow of the lamplight, the room otherwise darkened by the heavy drapes drawn across the windows, she looked like a fourteen-year-old boy's wet dream of a Scandinavian goddess. He rolled up onto one elbow to watch her better, brushing a stray wisp of hair back from her cheek as she climbed into his bed.

  "I never really thought I'd end up in a marriage that would feel so much like an affair," he said, not for the first time. For either of them.

  "I know," she said, kissing his cheek and trailing her kisses back up around his ear. "I'm glad you could make it down for the weekend."

  "God, I missed you, Cally." Stewart turned his face into her kisses and took her in his arms, giving himself up to the moment of having his beautiful wife in his bed again, no matter for how short a time.

  Later, he tried to keep his damned eyes from misting up as they watched the latest home holos she'd brought him of the daughters he'd never been able to meet, who had and would grow up believing their father dead. Somehow, Cally always arranged it so that she could be in the holos with the girls. He wondered if she suspected how many lonely hours he spent, late at night, playing over those bits and scraps of the lives of his family, again and again, until he could see them behind his eyes as he dreamed. Many of the dreams were not pleasant. They were, in fact, about what you'd expect. On the whole, those were less painful than the happier dreams that put him in the holos with Cally and Morgan and Sinda, only to wake up alone in bed in the perpetually recycled air of the moon, with the metallic tang of machinery at the back of his throat. He'd thought about getting a dog, but it was hell getting them thro
ugh quarantine, and getting a puppy from a licensed breeder was expensive. He'd do it when he got back though. It was no substitute, but at this point . . . He shook his head and reminded himself of his oft-repeated resolution on these visits, never to leave in his head until the visit was actually over. The time was too precious to be eaten up with regrets. He felt a deep sympathy with Mike O'Neal in bearing his curse. He was often thankful that, even though unlike Mike he knew he was in hell, at least he could look forward to the occasional weekend pass in heaven.

  They were about fifteen minutes into the latest pack of holos—she must have hidden cameras all over the place, because she always brought hours of them, even though they only watched a few together—when dinner arrived from the seafood place across the street. Yes, the room would smell like fish afterwards until the filter in the air unit cleared it all out, but one thing he had learned about Cally over the seven years of stolen moments that comprised their marriage was that the woman loved seafood more than any three other people. He had decided to try some bizarre local dish called shrimp and grits at her behest, but spent most of his time feeding her strips of calamari just to feel her lips close over his fingers as she took each tidbit. The shrimp dish certainly wasn't bad, but he had never understood why anglos from this part of the US had to call polenta something as undignified as "grits." His own colleagues in Noble Lion Tong tolerated his unusual fondness for Italian cuisine with a certain degree of amusement. Mostly, he'd learned to cook it for himself, although it did occasionally require him to import some unusual ingredients from Earth. She was right. He did like the shrimp dish. With the polenta.