Cally's War lota-6

by John Ringo

  “Thank you, sir.” She turned trusting cornflower blue eyes on him, and smiled. Searching his office didn’t turn up what I needed. Maybe searching the general will. Besides, it’s a good excuse for ditching some of these excess hormones. Play the near-innocent? Probably best.

  * * *

  Tuesday, June 4

  The next morning at work she passed Pryce at the coffee machine early on, but after he walked back over towards CID she didn’t see him again that morning. General Beed, however, was very much in evidence. Her first duty of the morning was, he told her, to use her PDA to access his e-mail account and print out his correspondence, sorting it into categories for his review. She had to bite her lip to keep from pointing out that if he had an AID or a PDA he could have it sorted, ranked by importance, and in routine cases, answered — all just for the asking. Then, after he had sorted through the correspondence and noted what he wanted done with it all, she retrieved the stack from his out box and took it over to CID to run it through an only slightly improved version of a prewar photocopier, with one copy going to his incoming correspondence file before any of it could be answered or otherwise acted upon.

  The man was positively a dinosaur, and several times when he spoke to her she had to avoid gritting her teeth as she smiled.

  She did brace him about one issue, though. Whoever was making the coffee ought to be shot.

  “Sir, have you noticed anything… er… strange about the coffee?” she began.

  “It’s grown locally in hydroponics, Makepeace. Something about the air — you’ll get used to it.” He shrugged, humming slightly as he plowed through some reports from the Fleet Strike Detention Center.

  The prison was on base, but its dome was entirely separate. Escape was possible, of course. It had even been done. Several times. Apparently the biggest inconvenience to Fleet Strike was sending a crew out in suits to retrieve the bodies. Cally wasn’t sure she could blame the prisoners. Freezing in unbreathable smog was probably a more comfortable death than an accident doing zero gee work in orbit, which was the usual ultimate fate of any prisoners who didn’t have very limited sentences. And prisoners with minor problems didn’t usually get shipped all the way to Titan Base.

  After dealing with his correspondence, which was a matter of dictating what she thought the answers should be based on notes scribbled in the margins, printing the responses out, running them by Beed for changes, and then yet another printed version by him for approval before sending them out, there was yet another mound of paper in his outbox. She noticed he made a couple of excuses to come to her office, ostensibly to check on some bit of work she was doing. From the way he stood too close behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder as he bent over behind her to deliver comments that were always plausible but never strictly necessary, it was clear the general had more than work on his mind. His profile had said he was married, a fact he had neglected to mention and which was conveniently unobvious since he didn’t wear a ring. However, it also mentioned that his wife was an unrejuved forty-seven. The wife had accompanied him out to Titan Base, but Cally could well believe that the poor woman was slowing down.

  A bit after eleven-thirty he came in and made a great show of opening file drawers and browsing through the files.

  “Good work getting things organized, Sinda. Now that you’ve got a system set up, it should be a lot easier to find things when I need them.” He looked at the watch on his wrist and back at her. “It’s about lunch time. Why don’t we go grab a sandwich and you can brief me on the new filing system over lunch?”

  “Certainly, sir. When would you like to leave?”

  “I was thinking now, Captain.” He smiled disarmingly at her. “I don’t know about you, but my stomach is starting to growl.”

  “Bless your heart, sir, we can’t have that. Give me just a moment to print out a list of files and I’ll be ready to go.” She offered him a smile that was open, friendly, and oblivious, turning back to her PDA and speaking to it softly. “There. We can pick it up from the printer in CID on our way out.”

  He stood back from the door a bit, clearly waiting for her to precede him out the door, gently — and unnecessarily — guiding her through with a hand on the small of her back. A hand he was careful to remove before they came around the corner and into the general reception area.

  He waited while she got the printout from down the hall. As they left, Anders seemed to be very absorbed in the holographic display of whatever form she was working on.

  * * *

  The lunch rush had barely started, so they had a short wait for a car to the Corridor.

  “Isn’t there a cafeteria or anywhere to eat in Fleet Strike’s quadrant, sir?” Cally tilted her head at him curiously.

  “There’s the mess hall, the officers’ club, and a snack bar in the rec room for the enlisted men. Food at the officers’ club is pretty decent, but it’s a little… crowded. Not the best place for a working lunch,” he said.

  The grill where he took her was on one of the upper levels. The booths were constructed with high Galplas walls that had been adjusted to reflect in shades and patterns of a rosy brown that resembled cherry wood. From the relative hush and the slightly hollow sound when the waiter introduced himself and dropped off their menus, she could tell the place used electronic sound damping. Low level. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the edge of a small disk adhered behind the napkin holder.

  He ordered a Reuben, she ordered an almond chicken salad on pita bread.

  “So, you were going to give me an overview of the filing system,” he invited, beckoning with a hand.

  “Yes, sir. It’s separated first into the headquarters material, CID, and the various units by unit. Within all that, it’s alphabetical by subject.”

  “Can I see the list?” He didn’t wait, but reached out for the paper, brushing her hand with his not quite accidentally along the way. His eyes were fixed on hers, watching for her reaction. She allowed a mischievous twinkle into her eye.

  He didn’t actually turn her on, but he didn’t much turn her off, either. Ah well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d needed to use sex on a mission, and it wouldn’t be the last. And he was more likely to be a mediocre lay than an actually bad one. Most men were.

  * * *

  The weekly State of the War briefing was late in the afternoon. It was always scheduled close to the change between first and second shifts so that the senior brass of both services, no matter what shift, could arrange to attend.

  This got the general out of the office and Cally managed to stack up enough work for herself to justify staying late. She had a good chance of getting enough unobserved access to some of the areas over in CID to do a physical search. CID worked normally. The general’s bizarre obsession with paper apparently didn’t apply to things that didn’t have to go through his hands, so she had been able to do a fair bit of her searching through the computers her first night. As the general’s secretary, she had enough access to get her in the door, and then it was only a matter of expanding on it and covering her tracks. She hadn’t found anything of interest, and was hoping that a physical search might turn up data cubes of material not stored directly in the systems.

  After first shift, headquarters did have a pair of MPs posted out at the base car terminus to monitor comings and goings and keep out the unauthorized, but Anders and the CID agents generally left at or soon after seventeen hundred. She waited until seventeen-forty-five before deliberately misfiling a file the general had mentioned at lunch and heading for the water cooler, which was conveniently over in CID.

  CID was a hallway of six offices flanking a conference room. The walls between the doors were bare except for the name plates and lock panels. The office beside the conference room had the water cooler and Beed’s paper equipment. As she walked past the closed doors, she was able to observe the door panels of each office, and listen for voices inside. From the closed doors and the silence, it was pretty likely that the agent
s had gone for the day.

  She got a drink from the cooler, listening for another moment before stepping out and gingerly opening Agent Carlucci’s office door. The agents’ doors were locked, of course, but since the general could ask for a file at any time, she was on the list of people with override access.

  Carlucci’s office had a desk of heavy plastic. Most nonstructural things were, since the raw materials for organics were abundant locally and didn’t have to be shipped up from Earth or other Sol system real estate. His I-love-me wall was refreshingly sparse, with his certificate of graduation from the investigators course, and a plaque commemorating ten years of service in CID. His desk had an old-fashioned photo of his wife and not much else. There was a braided ficus tree on the floor, and a Boston fern in a pot on a stand of heavy plastic painted to look like wrought iron. Other than a pair of hand grippers, three packaged protein bars, and a couple of five-pound dumbbells, his desk contained nothing but dust, which she was careful not to disturb.

  On to Baker’s office. Baker’s office was much like Carlucci’s, different plants, no photo. He had a framed print of a Monet on his wall. He also had an unlabeled cube in his desk. She read it into active memory. It looked like music files, but she’d have to go over them with a fine toothed comb this evening, anyway, to check for hidden data. It wouldn’t be the first time important data had been stored beneath or within something innocuous for extra security.

  Li was fairly new and hadn’t put anything in his office except some tropical-looking tree with big shiny leaves. It wasn’t even dusty. Someone had probably cleaned it out before he arrived and he just hadn’t been there long enough for a new layer to form. She was bent over the bottom drawer and was just closing it back when she heard a sound in the hall. It gave her enough warning that she didn’t jump when the door slid open, just looked up and calmly closed the empty drawer. It was Pryce, and despite the second or so advance warning she felt her breathing quicken and her palms start to sweat.

  “C — can I help you with anything, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Maybe. Have you seen the Leave File?” She wiped her hands on the side of her silks as she stood back up. “It has the markup draft of the revision to the brigade leave and sick call policies and procedures.”

  “Oh, that.” He frowned for a minute. “Sanchez had it this afternoon, ma’am.”

  “He brought it back, I remember that, and I thought I filed it. And now I can’t find it and I just know I would be so embarrassed if the general, bless his heart, asked for it in the morning and I had to go look for it then.” She frowned thoughtfully.

  “Could Sanchez have thought of a comment he forgot and borrowed it again, maybe, ma’am?”

  “Maybe. We can take a quick look.” So Pryce was with her as she searched Sanchez office, and she didn’t dare copy the three cubes he had in his top desk drawer.

  “No luck, huh?” he asked

  “I’m afraid not.” She straightened and walked past him out the door. He must have lost his balance as he turned behind her, because he stumbled up against her again, steadying himself with one hand on one side of the small of her back and the other on her arm, just below the shoulder. She knew right where his hands had been, because the skin there tingled even after he caught his balance and removed them.

  “M — ma’am I am so sorry.” His eyes were downcast. He was obviously embarrassed as hell. “I guess I’m not the most coordinated person in the world.”

  “Bless your heart, Pryce, nobody’s perfect.” She smiled sympathetically. “You’ve been to Titan before. You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a decent place to get a pizza somewhere on this giant snowball, would you?” Did I just ask him out? Yep. Why the hell am I attracted to this consummate klutz? I probably ought to speed things up with the general before I totally lose it. You have a job to do, Cally. Wake the hell up and do it, instead of fucking around with cute lieutenants.

  “I know just the place, ma’am. I could give you directions, but it doesn’t have a big sign. You have to pay extra for that, and I guess Lin feels he doesn’t need it. Most of his business is delivery, anyway. If you don’t mind company, I haven’t eaten either…”

  “Uh, that would be just fine, Pryce.” After all, I have to eat, anyway. It has nothing to do with those deep, dark eyes of his. Nothing at all.

  * * *

  The Little Venice Pizzeria was a small place located in the lower level. Stewart estimated that perhaps half the square footage was devoted to kitchen space. The small dining room was a bit busier than usual, but they didn’t have to wait long for a table. While the busboy was cleaning their table, he used the mix of prints and reinterpreted holos of old Venice as inspiration for small talk. Flower boxes of lush vines, hung on the walls all the way around the dining room, gave the place a more dirtside feel than anywhere else she could’ve been on Titan. Tony Bennett was playing in the background. Stewart saw her notice the plastic roses on the tables and smiled slightly.

  “Not exactly the place for a business dinner, Lieutenant.”

  “Were we going to discuss work, ma’am? They do a damn fine pizza here. I don’t know if you’re hungry or not, but I’m starved. Split a large?”

  “That sounds good. Is it just me, or does it not smell as… smoggy… in here as it does out there?” she asked.

  “It’s not just you. Lin installed extra filters, and the extra plants help a lot. He said the pollution was inhibiting his yeast, whatever that means. So, ma’am, what do you like on your pizzas?”

  “Everything, with extra cheese.” Makepeace grinned like a little kid.

  “Um… ma’am, how about everything except for anchovies?” He walked up to the counter and looked back at her, raising an eyebrow.

  “Deal.”

  “One large garbage pizza, extra cheese, hold the cat food.” He looked at the petite brunette behind the counter curiously. “Hi, Suzannu, good to see you again. Where’s Lin?”

  “His wife is sick, so I take over for a few days until she gets better. Gotcha, one catless garbage, extra cheese. It will be up in about fifteen minutes. You want drinks with that?” She set two empty cups on the counter. “Sorry I don’t have time to talk. I am run off my feet trying to handle all this by myself, just myself and Jon, and we are so busy.”

  As he half expected, when he got out his ID and swiped it through the machine, Makepeace tried to pay, but he didn’t let her, and she didn’t go to the point of actually making it an order. He’d probably have to let her buy next time. What? Waitaminute — next time? She is a third of your age, you idiot, and a ditz to boot. She is a complication you do not need on this job. Now after the job — she’ll still be a third your age and a ditz, but… she’s over the age of consent and, hey, brains aren’t everything. Damn she’s got big tits.

  They got their drinks and sat, after a moment of confusion as each went for the seat facing towards the door. He let her have it. She was a captain, his cover was a lieutenant. Having his back to the door bugged the crap out of him, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “So, why did you join Fleet Strike, Pryce?”

  “Get out of the Sub-Urbs, get rejuv, get off-planet, see the universe, kill Posties. What’s not to like, ma’am?”

  “Bless your heart, Pryce, we’re going to have a long evening if you spend the whole time ma’am-ing me. In private you can drop the ma’am’s and just call me Makepeace, all right?”

  “Okay. So why did you join?” He inhaled about the top third of his drink.

  “Get off the farm. Get rejuv. See more of at least some world without having to be a colonist. If I didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife on Earth, I sure didn’t want to be one on some other Godforsaken planet. There just wasn’t much for me back home. My brother’s going to work the farm, and I could either have had three little kids by now and be working my butt off as a farm wife where I grew up, or I could be here. I picked here. And if they ended up shipping me off to kill Posties, well, they’re the reason
I never got to meet my maternal grandmother, so I pretty much figure our family owes them.”

  “The rejuv was a selling point for me, but I also almost didn’t join because of it. They don’t like juvs much in my old neighborhood,” he said.

  “Maybe by the time we get out in fifty years the prejudice won’t be so bad. Or the drugs’ll be more available and there won’t be a reason for hard feelings.” She plucked at the edge of the table.

  “Optimist,” he smiled teasingly and she grinned back and in that moment she looked so beautiful he stopped breathing for a moment just looking at her.

  When he finally inhaled it was sudden, and then her eyes were caught in his, both looking, and somehow neither of them were smiling anymore. Suzannu broke the moment by calling out his name and sliding a pizza tray on the counter. He took the chance to tear his eyes away and go get the food.

  Watching Sinda eat a piece of pizza was fascinating. She picked it up with one hand and supported the pizza slice with two fingers of the other hand under the tip. He was sure she was going to dump a load of the toppings in her lap, but she didn’t. She bit into it delicately, closing her eyes to savor the first bite.

  “Mmmm. That’s good.” She opened her eyes to take another bite and Stewart realized that not only was he staring, he also hadn’t gotten himself a piece and was letting the pizza get cold. He pulled a slice onto his plate and attacked it with a knife and fork. Yes, it would be in character to pick up the whole piece and have some of it drop in his lap, but it would also make an embarrassing blotch on his silks and he didn’t want to look quite that bad in front of Sinda.

  You’re too old for her, idiot, he told himself, but he didn’t commit any embarrassing feats of clumsiness during the meal.

  “So, Pryce, what do you do for the general. I mean, aside from briefing new arrivals on the history of the command.”

  “And passing canapés?” He grinned.