Sister Time-ARC

by John Ringo

  "At great personal sacrifice, I will sit in back. Cally, you drive," Grandpa said.

  "Works for me. Hi, Boopsie." George said, opening the passenger side door. It would be bad form to vault the hood and slam her feet in his face. Really, it would.

  Schmidt Two's air photos, the jerk, showed a rutted track from the abandoned farmstead to the river, and a crossing point that had once been Jefferson Davis Boulevard.

  She got a good look from the side as they drove up, upgraded vision outlining the details for her as sharply as if she'd peered through binoculars. It wasn't much of a bridge. The Horses had built out the post-demolition remnants of the pre-war structure in the sturdy, functional, clumsy style of Posleen engineering, but never completed it. A ramshackle conglomeration of timbers, patches of salvaged Galtech cargo webbing, and what looked like steel runway planking bridged the central gap of about twenty meters. Cally was about to throttle George over his constant click-clicking of the camera as they drove. She knew the value of good footage, but my God, the man was obsessive. She parked the hummer on the bank and walked out onto the bridge, toeing the material in the gap experimentally. Personally, she wouldn't drive a bicycle across that mess. But she'd walk it, with a belayman.

  "Netting bridge gonna work, Harrison?" she asked.

  "You bet." He stooped down and fingered the old Posleen surfacing. "This stuff will make a good bond with adhesive."

  "Fine, get the netting. Harrison, Grandpa, secure this end. I'll make the crossing." She looked at Harrison and waited for his nod before jogging back behind the vehicle. After some rummaging through the other supplies she found rope, harness, and pack, carrying them around front and tying off to the front bumper. The lines for the pulley hooked onto her belt, to unwind as she went.

  "What, all of a sudden you don't trust me not to drop you?" Tommy asked.

  "You're not belaying me. George is. The process will go faster if you help the others set up on this side." The too-handsome mechanical specialist was working with Grandpa to assemble the strips that would become the improvised bridge's base plates. Flat on one side and blessed with a plethora of hooks on the other, the plates could be secured on soft ground with long spikes, affixed to a solid surface, or stabilized in place in any of several other ways. A properly secured set of base plates with several layers of the special netting could create a bridge strong enough to support a small tank in an unbelievably short time. "Properly secured" was always the kicker.

  In this case, the bridge so constructed would be roughly double the width of their humvee, once they snapped together the axles of enough rolls of bridge netting. The bridging had taken up virtually all the cargo space in the humvee, even though the material was as thin as cardboard and flexible enough to roll very tightly. They had had to carry so much of it because there was no way to tell how much bridging they'd need. At that, George had insisted on carrying more wedged into nooks and crannies in the plane. Cally and Grandpa had surreptitiously rolled their eyes. There was paranoia, and then there was paranoia. Schmidt Two had changed since the loss of his wife and team. Among other things, for the first few years he'd been fanatically punctual. Some quirks stayed, others tapered off. Everyone knew what he was going through. Besides, assassins were always strange birds in one way or another. As long as it didn't get in the way of the mission, they tolerated it where possible, and were glad of it when it did support the mission. George had gone from a seat of the pants improviser to an excellent go-to-hell guy, with an almost prescient tactical awareness.

  "Your faith in my competence is touching," the smaller man said.

  The slight assassin probably weighed less than she did. He'd know how to brace himself, but no way was she going to let him see how much it freaked her out to step onto the rickety bridge. It would have been just as bad if her belayman had decent body mass. Really, it would. If she told herself that often enough, maybe she could stop the cold sweat she felt prickling on her upper lip. She tried to pretend to be someone who wasn't afraid of heights, but slipping into character was, for this, pretty damned hard.

  "No offense. Just don't drop me." She checked her rigging and backed out onto the dilapidated mess, watching over her shoulder and testing her footing as she went. Halfway over, when it was holding up better than expected, she sped up, dancing lightly backwards with only a few muffled curses when her foot slipped through a gap in the webbing. Damned if she was going to show how petrified she was. The adrenaline from her slip drove her heart straight up into her throat. She couldn't help getting a glimpse of the water, so dizzyingly far down. Two missions in a row where she had to be way up in the—she really didn't want to think about it. She yanked her foot loose and planted it on a thicker strip of webbing, her knuckles whitening on the rope in her hands.

  "Hey, watch it! Where are we gonna be if you throw a shoe?" George called.

  "You're making me sound like a horse."

  "Whatever. We should have brought you an extra pair of shoes," he said.

  "Well, I'm over here now, so relax. I'm not going to drop a sneaker in the river. Even though I did wrench my ankle for real, just a bit. But hell, if I get a little swelling or something, it just adds realism." She gave up trying to look casual and backed the rest of the way carefully, watching her footing. She had to resist collapsing on the bridge in relief when she got to solid ground again. More solid, anyway. Still far too high, but she wasn't going to think about that.

  "You got by with it. Just hook up the pulley," he called.

  Oooh, he's pissing me off. "Fine." She brushed the dust and dirt off part of a Postie section in the bridge, more or less in the middle, and opened the backpack. The available section of bridge looked much better for adhesive than trying to drill holes. She sprayed down the clean section of bridge and shoved the back plate of the pulley against it, counting to sixty before unclipping the lines from her waist. The pulley lines were ingenious. Strong sections of line clipped together at intervals to make the length of the loop easy to adjust, but the clips were narrow enough not to make the line jump out of the groove in the wheel. She clipped them in place and rested, elbows pressed in to her sides, tapping her fingers together nervously. Why did they have to build bridges so high? It wasn't as if there was anything wrong with being down close to the water.

  It took a few minutes for them to package up the bridging base plates for her side, and attach the package to the pulley so that it wouldn't snag too bad on the way over, then about as much time for her to get it all loose on her side. Setting the roll of bridging to unwind smoothly around its axle as she pulled it across was even more awkward. The procedure certainly gave her bridge base plating enough time for the adhesive to set up before she had to cut the net to fit. Working backward with a boxcutter variant of a boma blade, she eased the mesh of the ultra-strong netting over the hooks on the plate and secured it. The plates themselves were now as firmly affixed to the Posleen section of bridge as if the whole assembly had been cast from Galplas.

  Finished, she noticed an infinitesimal tug at her waist. Cally looked up to see that the annoying man had untied her rapelling rope from the humvee, unrolled a substantial length, and was tying it to one of the ancient steel supports whose remnants stood, twisted and torn, on the Human section of the old bridge.

  He waved some coils of slack at her and called out, "Pull your end back and tie it off. If we have to dismantle the bridge in a hurry, somebody might need it. We've got more rope, we don't need to take this one."

  Damn but he was lucky she wasn't close enough to slap him. She sighed and tied the thing off, grumbling. Just like him to put her in a corner where she had to leave her lucky rope. She couldn't say anything about it without looking stupid.

  She didn't look at him as she got into the hummer behind Grandpa, who probably would get to drive for the rest of the insertion. Her right front side tingled with the urge to pop George upside the head. If he hadn't been so good at his job, she'd really be regretting asking him now. Sh
e hadn't been this pissed in she didn't know how long.

  The first section of bridge had moved them across to what was technically an island. The roadway forward was intact up until the small branch that separated them from the mainland. Whatever improvised bridge had spanned that gap had suffered some sort of misfortune. The postie work was ragged at the edges and wisps of what must have once been another improvised connection hung from both ends over the gap. Naturally, Grandpa's drysuit and fins had shifted to the bottom of the pile. Normally, with her natural buoyancy, Cally would have gotten stuck with swimming the gap. She'd gotten to beg off from the task this time since it kept them from having to wait while she redid her hair. Another O'Neal was the logical choice since they swam so much at home. Grandpa got the job—he wouldn't be seen by anyone after insertion. That didn't mean he had to like it. Even through a good suit, the water was damned cold and he let them hear about it, drawing a good-natured "quit whining" from Tommy. Still, once he made it across and up to the other side of the gap, setup was routine.

  Vehicle finally across, they fired up some self-heating breakfast packs and a pot of coffee. A hot breakfast was nice for the others, but necessary for Papa O'Neal, who was still shivering after he'd gotten back into his BDUs and snivel gear. The temperature was dropping so fast Cally was feeling the chill even through her sweats. She ignored George as he tied off another rope. The problem with over complicating mission fail-safes was that the more you did, the more likely it was that something would go horribly wrong when you couldn't keep track of all the balls you had in the air. It was a delicate balance. She preferred to keep things simpler and fly by the seat of her pants when she had to.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tommy Sunday looked at how badly Papa O'Neal was shivering and was very glad the older man was driving, up near those front heater vents. He might be metabolically an early twenty-something, but that didn't make him immune to hypothermia. The man's next task would be crawling up the back side of a hill on the cold ground, moving slowly enough under his ghillie suit not to get any body heat from exertion. George's real-world experience, like Cally's, was more urban. Papa was a better man in the woods, and was the logical man for the task. He needed to get his core body temperature back up, get thoroughly dried out. His hair was still dark with water from his swim, and that just wouldn't do.

  The cyber initiated a pre-set program with his, clean, AID to track their progress and jimmy with the cameras accordingly. The AID would tell him if something unexpected came up, but adding static didn't take much babysitting. He pocketed it, climbing into the back of the car after the unbelievably stacked blond. Damn, it was a good thing women couldn't read guys' thoughts. He'd be walking around with bright red hand prints on his face all the time. She turned to stow something in her gym bag behind the seat and one of her tits pressed against his arm. Not that it had anywhere else to go. Determinedly, he thought about cleaning out the cat box when he got home. They were Wendy's cats, but it was his week. Sand didn't do nearly as good a job as pre-war clay litter had.

  Thanks to his wife's hobby of buying and reselling antiques, frequently after a little research and restoration, and the war-pay investments of his they had converted into anonymous accounts before they "died," the Sundays weren't hurting for money. Too many other people were, O'Neal, Bane Sidhe, and strangers. He and Wendy had learned how old money used to feel, back in the northeast before the war. If you were comfortable, you didn't show it. Envy was a dangerous thing, and attracted parasites besides. He didn't mean the first generation O'Neals. He would've gladly helped Cally or Papa, but they wouldn't take it. The Bane Sidhe, though, would have pressured them to strip their assets as surely as fourteenth century monks had latched onto anyone around their own bailiwick with land or cash. All in a good cause, of course.

  It was a good cause. But he and his risking their lives in it was plenty, especially given the lack of results and the lack of down chain loyalty the Indowy had shown towards the operatives and sleepers. Sure, the O'Neal Bane Sidhe was better for the reduction in Indowy control, but not that much better. Father O'Reilly was a good man, but with the vow of poverty and never having married, the needs of families with kids and grandkids to care for sometimes slipped by him. He and Wendy lived almost as frugal a lifestyle as anyone, but he was damned if he'd give up resources they needed whenever one of the young men hadn't come home, and would need again. The kids still needed shoes, and schooling, and braces on their teeth. They needed time with a mom that wasn't worn out from working herself into an early grave. He didn't at all regret working to bring the Darhel down, but the years had nurtured in him a certain bitter wariness about the Organization. They didn't mean to be callous bastards. They meant well, bigtime. They were necessary allies. But the Sundays and O'Neals always made sure they could take care of their own, because for sure nobody else would.

  This train of thought always made him grumpy, but at least it had kept him from embarrassing himself until his "clan sister"—who sure as hell wasn't his sister—quit wiggling around. Barely. Friend. of. my wife. Down, boy. Besides being a damned dangerous woman to piss off. Don't be stupid, man. Breathe.

  He stared out the window as they bounced their way over the river and through the woods, threading whatever path they could through the trees, using the top of the hill where the building was as a rough guide. Most of the way, the old roads had kept out enough tree growth to let the truck through. Sometimes they had to go off and find their way around fallen trees, old telephone poles or other debris. Fortunately, the ground was hard enough that the truck didn't leave obvious fresh ruts. Not ones that would last very long, anyway. It sent creepers up his spine and left a lump in his stomach to be in Fredericksburg again. It did every time he came back to the place that had once been a thriving town. It had been the most horrible handful of days in his life. Bar none. He'd been scared shitless a lot of times through the war. He would've been a moron not to be. Nothing compared to Fredericksburg.

  He lost his dad, his friends, everything. In a single day. Worse was knowing they had been eaten, butchered under the boma blades of the stupid but unstoppable hordes of ravenous tyrannosaur-like centaurs as they swarmed over his hometown like a plague of locusts. They weren't his worst nightmare. They were worse than that. He'd been in the local militia, like all the boys and men. Not that it had helped Fredericksburg, which had the misfortune to be the site of one of the first scout landings in the war. Already a proficient sniper from his pre-war marksmanship hobby, he had taken up a position knowing—flat out knowing—that he would not survive the day, but determined to kill as many Posleen as he could before they got him, too.

  Somehow, he had ended up with Wendy and handed her one of his spare rifles. Not that he had really expected her to do much with it, not really. She had just deserved the chance to try. What stuck in his mind most from the day was the stench as the smoke from the various explosions on the outside of town blew in on the wind. Faint at first, by the time the Horses came in the carrion reek rising from the streets and blowing into their faces had been overwhelming. At the time, the adrenaline had been pumping so hard, with him so focused trying to stay in the zone to make every shot count, he hadn't noticed much. It only came back to him in memory, later. Maybe the memory was enhanced by the smell of the battlefields after, before he was chosen for Iron Mike's Fleet Strike ACS. One of the best unsung advantages to fighting in a combat suit was the way you didn't smell the Posleen.

  The yellow scales of the carnosaurs had been covered all over the front, that and all six limbs, with orange smears of mixed Human and Posleen blood. More blood had leaked into the gutters as they marched down the street in their usual bunched up mass. All that was the yellow of the hermaphroditic cannibals' own ichor. Human corpses from the hell of the scout wave's landing had long since been consumed or passed back to ranks in the rear for processing. He hadn't noticed at the time, his scope inadvertently swept over the gutter between the horde and the street drain
as he came down from recoil to line up his next target. It was only afterwards that every detail of the day stood out starkly in his memory.

  When Wendy got hit in the back of the leg, getting her down to the vaults under the city, quick, had been the only thing to do. They still didn't think they'd live, not really. She had known about the vaults as a town history buff. His plan before he ended up with her had been to move from one firing position to another before ultimately dying in place. With her, he had a responsibility to at least pretend with her that his plan was going to do them some good. Then she got injured and it had been easier to contemplate dying himself than it was for him to leave a beautiful girl, his unrequited high school crush up until The Day, to die on that roof with him. Then under Fredericksburg, one thing had led to another and he and Wendy had ended up making love. At the time, they were both too much in shock for it to feel like a strange thing to do. Since then, he'd gotten used to the horniness inevitably evoked by the near death experience of battle. Some wit, he didn't know who, had once said that the most exhilerating experience in the world was to be shot at—and missed. It was.