Sister Time-ARC

by John Ringo

  "I still don't understand why you guys are willing to put down tax revolts and stuff in the territories, free training or no. Sure, the Indowy had kittens whenever we tried to move resistance against the Darhel along a little faster, but most of them are gone now. It seems like the rebels are on the side of the angels to me," the kid said.

  "You haven't been around the operations side of things much, have you?" Wendy broke in. It wasn't a question.

  "Not really, no." The girl turned to the petite blond who was somewhat dwarfed by Cally's height. "Our family's mostly done support services as long as I can remember. You're one of the only people I've met in my life who hasn't run me off with a 'because' and looked at me as if they wondered how reliable I'd be. I'm fine with just knowing I'm helping, and I understand why we compartmentalize information. I just get frustrated sometimes at how few things ever get explained. All the things I thought would be revealed when I got older, well, I guess I'm starting to wonder when I get old enough; when and what that will be." The girl had a slight petulant pout, almost to little to be noticed unless you were looking for such things.

  "Probably not a lot. But I can tell you about the stuff in the territories and DAG in a nutshell. Random rebellion is dangerous. It's unpredictable, it provokes unpredictable responses, and the Indowy have shared enough history with us to make it clear that the last thing in the world you want is to get the Darhel spooked enough to make them unpredictable. That tends to be a Bad Thing." You could hear the capitals as she said it.

  "The Darhel have to be maneuvered, like a chess game. A game that does take lots patience. It's not something that comes easily to most people. But whenever any of their opposition has moved too fast before, well, let's just say there are good reasons not to do that and leave it there, okay? Pretty much the humans who have looked at it closely, to the best of my knowledge, have all come away with the conviction that the Indowy are not being overcautious. Whatever things the split was about, that wasn't one of them." Wendy was carefully looking away from the girl as she said the next bit. "And if you do get, well, close to somebody in operations, get used to having more questions than you've got answers, all the time. Almost all the time, we never ask. Because the quickest way in the world to kill a budding relationship is to make him say over and over again, 'I can't say.' "

  "Oh, I wouldn't do that," the girl protested, pushing her glasses back up on her nose with one finger. "Besides, I've heard they all tell their wives and girlfriends stuff anyway. So I just wouldn't ask. I'd wait to hear."

  "Uh-huh." Cally suppressed a grin. Wendy was getting her 'patient' tone of voice. This one would be a daughter in law when hell froze over. Shari was covering her mouth with one hand, but her eyes were twinkling.

  "Let me tell you a little bit about that," Wendy said. "Yes, they all tell more than they should. And you can kill your husband's career in a heartbeat, or worse, if you ever let the tiniest bit of it slip. What they don't tell you is always lots more than what they do. What they do tell you is designed to reassure you and usually has the exact opposite effect. So you smile when they leave and hug them and pretend to be as reassured as they think you are. Then you wait. And you wait. Knowing that you don't know what they're doing, or when or if they'll be back, with just enough information to paint about a bazillion different disasters in your head. Then when, and if, they do come back, you smile and you rub their shoulders and you patch them up until they go back out to do it all over again. Because you don't want him worrying about anything that might distract him at a crucial time and keep him from coming home, and asking too many questions will worry him, you take what he volunteers and you just don't ask."

  The brunette girl did the first smart thing Cally had seen her do since she came into the kitchen. She shut up.

  Anyway, it was getting time to brave the crowd and handle one of the things on her do-list for the weekend. Cally excused herself and grabbed her jacket, trudging across the parking lot to a dilapidated gym where the guys were playing basketball. The floor was a freshly laid galplas slab. She was surprised the owners had sprung for it, but it might actually have been cheaper than hardwood, if they had lucked into the right supplier. It didn't have the lines painted on it yet, so someone had patiently drawn them on with chalk. The chalk lines showed signs of having been touched up already, and needing fresh touch-ups soon. The hoops were old, having survived the years, though one of the backboards was missing.

  She watched the game for a bit, looking down at the picture she'd called up on the buckley. It had been so long since she'd seen the kid she was looking for, since he'd grown up off the island. Only he wasn't a kid anymore. She finally picked him out, waiting until he rotated out of the game to let someone else in and get some water. She walked over close enough to wave and get his attention, motioning for him to follow her. He pointed to his own chest questioningly, unsure if he was the one she was looking at. When she nodded, he looked her up and down and got a goofy grin, amiably following her out of the gym. Ye gods, he's checking me out. Ick. Okay, he's cute, but ick.

  She kept a bit ahead of him as she led him back to the hotel-like section of the retreat and down the hall to her room, inserting the card key and suppressing her comments as he surreptitiously tried to wipe sweat off with his towel. His t-shirt had dark, damp patches, and she was not looking at his sweat pants.

  Cally heard the hotel room door close behind him.

  "Don't even think about it. I'm your aunt," she said.

  "Aunt Cally?" he squeaked, putting two and two together far faster than she would have expected.

  "Hi." She turned and smiled at him. "I guess I haven't seen you since you were, what, five? How'd you know it was me?"

  "Uh, yeah. About five. I'd say you've changed, but it's obvious, and uh, well, there was kind of a mention . . ." he said, raising his eyebrows as she set a sound damper on the table and flipped it on.

  "I'm really just here to pay allegiance to Mr. Murphy. There is the barest chance that DAG's Atlantic Company could end up dragged into one of our ops if it really goes to hell," she said. "Briefly, because I think your CO is going to want some background, our target is owned and run by a Darhel group. For various reasons, he may get nervous about the time we're getting ourselves inside. Nervous Darhel try to cover their asses, and you guys are kinda notorious right now."

  The young man rolled his eyes, but she continued, "I know, I know. A nervous Darhel might see adding some flashy security to be career insurance, and for various reasons, could set his eyes on you guys and pull some strings."

  "Anyway, if someone tries to drag you guys into a 'black' furball near the Fleet Base around Christmas, avoid it if you can, if you can't, you need to know it'll probably be us on the other side," she finished.

  "Avoid? With Posse Comitatus we don't do domestic shi—stuff. We're authorized to operate in the territories, but there are federal laws against DAG operating in the states. Second, it's kinda hard to 'avoid' being sent on a particular mission. I appreciate the need for a go to hell plan, but this time you may be going beyond benefits versus costs to your OpSec. I don't know what you've been told about DAG, but we really don't operate in the States, no matter what the conspiracy guys say. Even the Darhel don't have that much pull."

  "Yes, they do. Trust us, we've been doing this a loooong time. He can do it." She fixed him with the kind of stare schoolteachers reserve for young boys to make sure he got it. "It's very, very unlikely that he will. And we probably are being too paranoid. But just as Murphy insurance, one guy in your company needs to know, and that gets to be you. Obviously, don't share the information unless it becomes necessary."

  "Okay." He rubbed his chin with one hand before looking back up at her. "Aunt Cally, it's not my ass on the line, but how do you guys decide need to know on an operation? Of course I can and will keep my mouth shut, I'm an O'Neal. Not my business, just curious."

  "Oh, I'm not worried about you running your mouth, Mauldin. If you did, and anythin
g happened to Tommy or Papa, you'd have Momma Wendy and Momma Shari on your ass."

  "Yes, Ma'am, that's a solid guarantee." He swallowed hard. "Of me not running off at the mouth, I mean."

  "As to OpSec, let's just say that Grandpa has very well developed survival instincts," she said.

  "Good point."

  Chapter Nine

  Greenville, South Carolina had been a minor manufacturing powerhouse before the war. Lockheed-Martin, Michelin, Kemet Electronics, and more—all had plants to take advantage of the non-union labor, ready to work. The original textile mills that had been the mainstay of the economy since ante-bellum times had lost ground to the cheaper labor overseas, but the area's job base had continued to grow. Before that, it had been a resort for tidewater aristocrats seeking a break and some fresh scenery back in the wilderness. Now, it was ruins, with good odds that it would not be inhabited again for a long, long time. The entire county had been held back from the bounty farm program as a joint service field training area, administered by SOCOM.

  The damage to the buildings in the various sectors of the city hadn't been done, mostly, by the Posleen. Oh, they would have gotten around to it eventually. But they had been more focused on the land held undeveloped by the country millionaires who, pre-war, had wanted some acreage under their homes. So the buildings had mostly been unmolested by the invaders. The true destruction of Greenville had been wrought, in various stages, by humans. First by the owners themselves, who preferred going scorched earth over leaving their homes to the Posleen. Then, in small part, by those of their neighbors who had a true fondness for explosives—enough to make them wait beyond initial evacuations to mine and booby-trap anything they could get their hands on, regardless of ownership. The artillery had been the next source of damage. Then Fleet. When the troops came sweeping in after the war, the areas targeted by Fleet were flattened. Fleet hadn't screwed around when it, finally, arrived to lift the Siege. Any area with any indication of Posleen build-up had been scorched by plasma and hammered by kinetic energy weapons.

  The areas hit by arty had various building walls still standing. A stairway or corner here or there. Walls of half-underground almost basements.

  The areas Fleet hit were finally getting fully covered with vegetation.

  Those buildings had been rebuilt with the cheapest bulk methods available, where needed, with no regard to aesthetics. Troops needed practice urban combat as well as in different types of field terrain. So various troops worked their trade on the buildings in Greenville's demolition area—cleared and fought through, blew up and smashed and rebuilt, sometimes even the streets, again and again. Live fire urban training, with demo, meant their only opposition would be dummy defenders. But that was for Saturday.

  Tonight was in the blanks and VR section. Mosovich's enhanced night-vision goggles incorporated VR software that interpreted and remapped the scene to look like an old-fashioned black and white movie in full daylight. The goggles had a setting for color, but the machine guesswork involved in colorizing the scene could be disorienting when the machine guessed wrong. Doctrine, which the colonel agreed with, was to keep the color turned off. Field testing had demonstrated, to the satisfaction of the brass, that "black and white at night" gave troops a significant advantage over an opposing force using the colorized setting.

  Tonight, Mosovich was glad for the warmth of his silks. Greenville in October could be cold at night, and tonight was an unseasonable bitch of a freeze. He had had himself declared an initial casualty, along with Mueller, so they could get a good look at the performance of the troops. On top of the observation towers, the wind and the light drizzle stung his face and ears so much they ached. His standard cover was hardly a barrier to the escaping heat. Who would have guessed South Carolina at night would be this cold? He looked over at Mueller, whistling cheerfully in his optional attached hood, mouth exposed only to drink the cup of instant coffee he'd just brewed with water from a heater canteen.

  "Sergeant Major Mueller, you know use of heater canteens on a night mission is strictly against regs. Where's my cup?" Jake felt around for a packet of instant coffee and dumped it in the steel mug he unhooked from his web gear, holding it out for some of the hot water, himself. He suppressed a twinge of guilt about the troops below, who wouldn't be able to use the heater canteens because of the white IR spot the goggles would show to the opposition force. They were moving, and mostly in the buildings, protected from the worst of the wind.

  "Mueller, let's add a little incentive to the mix. Get a detachment from Bravo Team to set up some 'loot' of hot coffee and spare hoods in a few of those buildings."

  "Yes, sir." Dennis Mueller grinned evilly, understanding the confusion it would add to the exercise to have a bunch of random troops running around who were working for neither side.

  The explosions on the demolitions course sent up plumes of dust and smoke through the holes in the roofs. SOCOM's Training Command had set up the courses with dummies and VR hostiles. DAG units not only had to navigate a complicated course involving the location and "demolition" of selected targets, they had to do so under directed and suppressive virtual fire from said hostiles. The course was a fiendishly difficult test of a unit's ability to shoot, move, and communicate in concert with a primary demo mission.

  The observation tower for the demolitions course was set well back from the activity, serving both for simulation and live runs, so that Mosovich had to use the enhanced features of his field goggles more than he would have liked. He was fine with the zoom, but he'd never quite gotten comfortable with shifting the view so that he was looking out from the eyes of one of his officers or men. He wasn't happy using it in combat against humans at all. After Vietnam, Jake had a healthy respect for the wits of the enemy. He considered the use of the "alternate eyes" feature to be a serious breach of radio discipline and a prime example of assuming the enemy was stupid. DAG primarily fought humans. Assuming the enemy would be smart enough to do what he would do had kept him alive more than once before, and he wasn't about to get lazy just because Posleen didn't fight that way. Well, okay, there was that time down in Georgia, but that must have been the Posleen equivalent of military genius, because we've never seen it again. Not that I ever heard of, anyway.

  He turned as Mueller climbed onto the platform, holding his mug out for a cup of strong coffee from the thermos his sergeant major seemed to have grafted onto his web gear for field exercises. He zoomed back in on the action, watched for a minute, and shook his head.

  "You know, you would think that looking at a red-headed troop I should know exactly who the guy is even if I can't see his insignia. What is it with all the redheads?" the colonel said.

  "Yeah, it's funny, but have you noticed we tend to get a lot of two kinds of guys? There's the little red-head guys. Most of 'em are kinda stocky but it's all muscle. Then there's the really big dark-haired guys. It's kinda weird, like the war did something to the gene pool or something." Mueller wrinkled his forehead, taking a big sip of the steaming coffee.

  "Now that you mention it, Top, it is a bit strange. I don't think I can even make a guess at what could cause it. Probably just some bizarre coincidence. Go figure." The use of the traditional nickname, "Top," for the ranking NCO in the command was a mark of respect and appreciation used by everyone, officer or enlisted, to distinguish that NCO from all others. It marked the NCO thus named as the go-to guy for all the thorniest practical problems of service life that someone hadn't been able solved at a lower level. He, as an infinite fount of military wisdom, would exercise near-magical powers to slice through whatever Gordian Knot the Service had provided this time.

  Jake watched his men glide through the course as smoothly as if they'd done it a dozen times. He'd looked it up. The course had been substantially redesigned since the last time they'd been through. Whatever personal problems the previous CO had had, he had left behind a first-rate outfit.

  The service had DD'ed the bastard after JAG caught him banging
a sixteen year old girl, then flushed the unit's senior NCO who, far from reporting it, had been blackmailing the jerk. He'd seen a picture of the girl from Mueller's buckley, and you almost couldn't blame the guy. Almost. Still, a juv at least three decades her senior had one hell of an unfair advantage. Which made the sonofabitch enough of a sleaze that Mosovich wasn't too surprised to hear that shortly after discharge that pair—the guys, not the girl—had gone on a drunken binge, gotten behind the wheel and smashed themselves into whatever hell was reserved for old men who preyed on high school girls.

  There was one thing niggling at him, though. Sure, sometimes good officers could be sleaze-balls. Soldiers weren't by any stretch plaster saints. But everything he'd seen about the guy indicated that he was a grade-A clusterfuck. Both the commander and the sergeant major.

  Usually, when you had a grade-A clusterfuck in charge of a unit, no matter how elite, the unit went to shit. They might get the job done, but they weren't top-drawer.

  DAG had cruised along as if it didn't matter. As if having a commander who was a daily cluster fuck wasn't a problem. Might even have been preferred.