Cally's War lota-6

by John Ringo

  “I can’t believe you just said that. Team Conyers saved your butt, too, when the Posleen came up the gap. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” God, I sound shrill. I’m never shrill.

  “Sure. It means I think it’s a crappy raw deal that they died so young—”

  “Were killed!” she interrupted.

  “Yeah, that tends to happen in this business, sooner or later. And I can tell you right now that if some bastard or crop of bastards gets me, that I do not want you to kill anyone you are not ordered to kill just because you think you owe me something. You’re more than welcome to make the case that someone who was involved needs to be dead and take the mission if it’s ordered, but I don’t want you to do this again. I don’t think Team Conyers would have wanted it either,” he said.

  “That’s what you want. We’ll never know what they want, because they’re dead, because of a fucking traitor, who is now dead, himself.” It still made her mad as hell.

  “You have to let there be someone higher than you as the judge of who needs to be dead, or the job eats you alive. You have to have a life, or the job eats you alive. You don’t have a life outside of the job, Cally, and that more than concerns me. It grieves me. I have been a professional a long time, I have seen other professionals, I’ve seen this job chew people up and spit them out and unless you get yourself some sort of meaningful life outside of work, and soon, you’re setting that up to be you.” He rubbed his head as if it was starting to ache.

  “Look, can we just eat before the coffee gets too cold?” She tasted it and made a face, stirring corn syrup and cream into it.

  “Sure. Look, I didn’t come here solely to badger you. The mission is on, which means we need our mission brief tomorrow. Now, you can either brief me in now and I’ll do the team brief, or you can get to work on it. You’re no longer confined to quarters, or restricted in your computer usage, obviously,” he said.

  “What, just like that?” She looked at him incredulously.

  “Oh, there will still be some kind of reckoning or resolution or whatever when we get back, but for right now they’ve decided that this mission is too critical to abort and that it’s too late to assign it to someone else.” He took a bite of his sausage.

  “Okay,” she nodded.

  “Okay? Were you trying to get benched, was that what this was about?” He looked mad.

  “You know what it was about, dammit! Don’t psychobabble me, Granpa.” She took a swig of her coffee. Her lip curled slightly, but it was drinkable.

  “I’m not talking about killing Petane. I’m talking about the way you did it — without going up the chain and asking for his situation to be reviewed. Did you want to get benched?” he asked again.

  “Oh, of course not!” She ran her fingers through the brown curls and made a face at them. “Look, the last mission was pretty stressful, and maybe you have a point about the life thing. I’ll think about it, okay? And after we get back, if the bosses don’t shoot me or anything, I’ll take a nice vacation. A real one, where I don’t kill anybody, okay?”

  “And look for a man to date somewhere other than a bar,” he said.

  “Hey, I promised to take a vacation, not settle down with the love of my life and pop out six kids, all right?” She looked at the corn syrup bottle again and shook her head, taking a bite of the bare pancake. Their idea of maple flavoring tended to suck out loud.

  * * *

  Vitapetroni took his lunch tray into the small side room and shut the door. Framed prewar travel prints of famous cities adorned the walls. He sat down with his back to Paris and let his eyes slide across Venice before settling on the young old man on the other side of the table.

  “Lisel, sweep for bugs, please.”

  “My pleasure.” The husky voice emanating from the doctor’s PDA was not exactly what one would expect from a stodgy, respectable medical professional.

  “The only bugs here are me and Mr. O’Neal’s AID, and I’m sure Susan wouldn’t eavesdrop on us,” it said.

  “Susan, don’t listen until I call your name again,” Papa O’Neal ordered.

  “Sure, Mike. What’s say you and I run off to the Bahamas and you make an honest woman of me? Signing off.” Then it was silent.

  “Lisel, shut down, please.” Vitapetroni sat down.

  “Certainly doctor,” she purred. “Goodbye.”

  “You’ve got a Lisel loaded on top of your buckley? Doesn’t that crash a lot?” he asked.

  “I keep the emulation turned way down. I’ve just aliased my common commands so they sound like conversation if you aren’t around me too much. I don’t really trust AI. I know our AIDs and buckleys are clean, it’s just… xenohistory is a hobby of mine, and I can appreciate the Indowy point of view.” He took a bite of his taco, appearing to actually enjoy it.

  “And you haven’t gone back to paper?” O’Neal joked.

  “I said I was mistrustful, not a Luddite.” The doctor took a small bottle of hot sauce out of a pocket and shook some on his food.

  “Habanera sauce is cheating, you know. Okay, Doc, it’s your dime,” he said.

  “Dime? You just dated yourself as a fellow old fart.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “About Cally… and first of all understand I’m talking to you as her team leader, not her grandfather. Confidentiality rules let me talk to one, but not the other.”

  “Yeah, I know the drill. Go ahead and say what you’ve got to say.” He accepted the loan of the bottle and shook some hot sauce into his bowl of chili.

  “I have some concerns I didn’t pass up the chain. She showed physical signs of feeling guilt after this kill.” He swallowed heavily and glanced quickly towards the door. “That could be good or bad, depending on how she deals with it. I think she’s okay for the mission, or I would have said something, but… I want you to keep an eye on her.”

  “That all?” He buttered a corn muffin and looked up with it halfway to his mouth, waiting.

  “Yeah, it is. It probably won’t matter a bit, but if you have to do some shade tree counseling on the spot, well, I thought you should know.” The doctor shook a little pepper onto his creamed corn.

  “So, who do you like in the playoffs? I’m rather partial to Charleston.” Papa O’Neal took a bite of the chili, considered it for a few seconds, then added some more hot sauce.

  “Hometown sentimentality. Their bullpen is weak. Indianapolis will clean their clocks.”

  “Are you kidding? The Braves haven’t won the pennant more than once since the war. My arthritic granny bats better than their lineup.” He grinned.

  * * *

  Wednesday afternoon, May 22

  Growing up in his childhood home of Fredericksburg, Tommy Sunday had liked tacos. Then the Posleen came and Fredericksburg went, and it was off to the Ten Thousand and then to Armored Combat Suits — also known as ACS. The Ten Thousand’s rations had been what they could get, and had been chosen primarily for their nutritional adequacy with taste a poor second consideration. Afterward, in ACS, the suit rations were decent, but just didn’t quite achieve real tacohood.

  Before he and Wendy “died,” they had managed to transfer and hide enough of their FedCreds in discreet investments. That had made real tacos, and a lot of other things, affordable despite the Bane Sidhe not being real generous with the salaries.

  He tried to restrain the twinge of disappointment as he looked down at his plate. These did not exactly live up to his standards of real tacos. The corn tortilla was genuine enough, as were the refried beans, cheese, and veggies. But the beef-flavored textured tofu left quite a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, it was that or chicken, and in Tommy’s expert opinion, the only thing worse than tofu tacos was chicken tacos. And he’d rather eat his meat ration as roast chicken for dinner than have it chopped up in his taco only to face the inevitable tofu tonight. Anyway, he understood. He and Wendy could afford what they could afford because of the exorbitant salaries, by most normal standards, paid to ACS in the Posleen war
and carefully invested by his wife, who had turned out to have quite a knack for buying and selling antiques.

  After the Fredericksburg landing, his then-girlfriend’s old hobby of researching local history had become… untenable. A move to Franklin Sub-Urb and an abortive attempt to contribute to the war effort as a firefighter had followed. Then the Sub-Urb got eaten. After escaping that as well, Wendy’s faith in the stability of any particular town or city had been severely shaken. By the time the war ended and they had married and settled down, she had diverted her love and her skills to the history of objects of a much more portable nature.

  After Fleet returned, organized Posleen resistance had been overwhelmed by strikes from orbit. What had been left was a colossal cleanup job.

  Tommy had been in Bravo Company, 1st of the 555th, under Iron Mike O’Neal — Papa O’Neal’s only son. In the worst of the war, in the most desperate of the battles, Bravo Company had always been where the fire was hottest.

  In the cleanup phase, the suits’ superior mobility and robustness had made the Company a juggernaut that had rolled right over any surviving God King that even attempted to begin rebuilding a technology base.

  So he’d been discharged after five years of global cleanup sweeps to find, surprisingly, that the money he’d been sending home to Wendy since the return of Fleet — as much to keep her out of another Sub-Urb as anything — had not only not been expended, but had been doubled.

  He’d done code for Personality Solutions after the war, when the experience of veterans with the AIDs inspired a fad of ever newer and fancier PDA’s. The salary hadn’t been anything like his ACS pay, but he and Wendy hadn’t exactly been surviving on hotdogs and peanut butter. Until the Cyberpunks recruited him, and then the Bane Sidhe had arranged his and Wendy’s “deaths” and they had come inside.

  Since then they’d augmented his salary with carefully managed investment income. But most inside operatives weren’t so lucky. The medical and dental were unbeatable, but the chow left a lot to be desired. Which brought him back to the lousy tacos.

  Tommy squared his shoulders and looked around the cafeteria for familiar faces, grinning when he saw Martin and Schmidt sitting at an only slightly wobbly round table next to the braided ficus in the corner. He had shared a couple of training classes with Martin in his early years inside, and the two had found they shared a love of chili slaw dogs and an obscure prewar burlesque film. He would have loved to sneak up on the extremely ordinary-looking black man and say something smart, but he wasn’t the least surprised when he only made it halfway.

  “What the hay-el kind of man wears pantyhose to a movie?” The man’s head didn’t turn, but his rich tenor rang out across the room.

  “Hey, Lips, man, you know you love it.” Tommy grinned and took his tray over, setting it down and grabbing a chair from the next table over.

  “You guys aren’t going to do weird things with your elbows, are you?” Schmidt was short. At about five foot seven, with straight blond hair that looked like somebody had piled a double handful of straw on his head, Schmidt’s rejuv let him pass for about fourteen. In some environments, a kid in a jean jacket and ratty backpack was less conspicuous than any adult.

  “Just because you don’t appreciate classic cinema, George…” Levon had turned in his seat and offered his hand as Tommy scooted up to the table. “Hey, Sunday, how the hell are you?”

  “Doin’ all right. Not so unhappy to get out of the house for a week or two,” Tommy admitted.

  “Oh? I thought you and Wendy were the original perpetual newlyweds,” Martin said.

  “Wendy is the love of my life; she’s just always a bit cranky at this stage. She’ll be glad to have me out of her hair for a while, and by the time I get back she’ll be herself again,” he said.

  “Geez, it’s like you two have it down to a science.” Schmidt looked down at the slab of tofu formed in the shape of a T-bone steak. He frowned and grabbed the black pepper, shaking on enough to cover the fake grill marks before slicing off a piece and taking a bite, chewing glumly, “Damn, I can’t wait to get back out into the field.”

  “Well, damn, they’ll let anybody in here now.” Jay set his tray down and hooked an empty chair over with an ankle.

  “Blade man! Long time no see,” George grinned, offering a hand to the other man.

  “Blade man?” Tommy asked. “Do I want to know?”

  “Oh, back in high school, Jay here was unbeatable at Boma Warrior. Never figured out how he did it, but our junior year, it was probably the coolest game in the library.” George topped a bit of the tofu steak with some of the hot corn relish on the side.

  “I knew a guy who worked on that. You know on the sixth level where you go around a corner and get swarmed by a pack of carnivorous mini-lops? I put him up to that.” Tommy shook some Tabasco on his taco, took a bite, and added a few more shakes.

  “That was you? That was wicked cool, but every once in a while one of those mothers would have a switchblade and be just impossible to kill…” Schmidt pushed at a stray bit of tofu with his fork. “Man, I can’t wait to get back out in the field.”

  “What, I never figured you for being as eager as all that?” Jay chuckled disbelievingly.

  “Not that, Jay. You have to admit the food’s better. As to the other, somebody has to do the dirty work. The cops don’t take out the damn Elves’ trash. So, cosmic janitor, that’s me.” He grinned easily. “You don’t have a problem with Sherry marrying blue-collar, do you, old man?” He quirked an eyebrow at Martin, looking out through the hair that had fallen across his eyes again.

  “Be a bit late if I did. And a little less on the ‘old,’ if you don’t mind.” Levon took a big bite out of his cheeseburger, manfully ignoring the almost complete lack of beef in the fried patty.

  “By the way, ’scuse me if I’m treading on sensitive territory, here, but what’s the deal with Cally? The rumor mill has been unreal,” George asked, looking at Tommy.

  “I dunno, man. You probably know more than I do. All they told us was to grab our gear and haul ass to catch the shuttle.” He shook his head slightly. “I haven’t seen her, and Papa O’Neal said not to ask. And he was wearing his ‘don’t fuck with me’ look.”

  “Oh, he’ll get it all worked out somehow. I mean, she’s an O’Neal, you know?” Jay grinned, and if it was just a hair too tight, well, they were all worried about their teammate. And not just because she was maybe the best shooter in the business.

  Tommy looked away from his teammate and caught Martin’s eye. He took a deep breath.

  “What I did hear is that you might know a lot about it, but weren’t saying, Levon,” he said.

  “Yeah, I do, but I wish I didn’t. Look, I like Cally. I respect her. I would have her on my team any day of the week. But the past couple of years… I don’t know, maybe she’s just working too hard. It’s not like we haven’t all seen something like this coming.” He shook his head.

  “Excuse me? Something like what?” Tommy’s voice had a definite edge to it.

  “Sunday, don’t go all big brother on me. The least I can do for her is give her the dignity of letting her tell you herself. I owe her that much, and so do you,” he said.

  “So you’re pretty sure she’s gonna be back on active and everything in a couple of days?” Jay asked casually around a bite of his enchilada.

  Martin was silent for a long moment.

  “If she’s not, then you can ask me,” he said.

  * * *

  Thursday morning, May 23

  Tommy dove to the side as the guy in the gray suit aimed at him and emptied the magazine of his pistol. He had time to pull the pin and toss a grenade — he was out of ammo — before the rapidly falling health indicator showed him he was hit and bleeding out. He got the other guy, but it had been in the “dead man’s ten seconds.” Still, the computer credited him with the kill, and, even more important, the ambush had happened just like it was supposed to after his hacking mista
ke earlier had resulted in detection. The holographic projection of the game faded out.

  “You’re dead, man.” He felt Jay’s hand clap him on the back.

  “Nice shades. And I’m supposed to be.” At six foot eight and three hundred pounds, Tommy Sunday was not a small man. Still, other than his size, he looked fairly typical for a juv in his first century. That is, he looked twenty, despite the fact that he now had grown grandchildren to baby-sit his and Wendy’s small children.

  “Play testing another training scenario?” Jay’s grin was affable as he tossed himself into a chair beside his teammate and kicked his feet up on the table next to the larger man’s.

  “Yep. And after the royal fuck-up I made hacking a system earlier, well, there was a small theoretical chance I could survive, but it should have fried my ass. As it did,” Tommy sighed.

  “Ah, the sacrifices you make for quality control.” Papa O’Neal snagged a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the coffee pot, pulled a small pouch out of his pocket, and got himself a fresh plug of tobacco.

  “I’ve already played it through for real. And several times multiplayer interactive. Now I’m trying to see if I can break it.” The former ACS trooper shrugged and closed the game, popping a fresh cube into the reader slot as Cally came in to begin their briefing. The brown curls didn’t faze him. He’d seen her with every hair color and style known to man over the years. He did wonder if the brown curls were coming or going, though.

  “Okay, folks, this is your basic counterintelligence mission. We have every reason to believe Fleet Strike is aware of us and that our security has been penetrated. They have a man inside. Which is why your briefing was eleventh hour and neither you nor I will have any unmonitored communications, nor will any of us discuss this mission outside this room or with anyone except each other. The number of people in the Bane Sidhe hierarchy who know the actual nature of this mission has been kept to an absolute minimum. We are to find the identity of the leak, and plug it.” She reached down and pushed a button on the screen of her PDA, bringing up a hologram of a man in his apparent early thirties, in a Fleet Strike general’s uniform — which meant he was probably a fair bit into his second century.