by John Ringo
She laughed, and as her head tilted her hair caught the light. He looked her in the eyes. Restraining the urge to talk to Makepeace’s really spectacular chest was always an exercise in willpower.
“I coordinate the weekly reports of the agents, and the Tuesday and Thursday special reports on our major investigation,” he said.
“Is that the organized crime one?”
“Yep, the tongs.” He nodded.
“I read the background material, but it didn’t explain why you don’t just go in and shut them all down.” Her head was tilted to the side, curiously.
“It’s been tried. About twenty years ago.” As he spoke, she leaned forward, hands clasped on the table, listening intently. “Suddenly Fleet Strike’s traveling arrangements got very uncomfortable and late at the worst possible times, and there were problems with the chow aboard ship, and environmental conditions in the troop quarters were always going on the fritz. So the General of Fleet Strike talked to the General of Fleet and the upshot was that we treat the tongs as legitimate civic organizations and only arrest and prosecute individual members we can catch in actual crimes.”
“Okay.” She nodded, but he suspected from the slightly glazed look in her eyes that she still didn’t understand.
“So what did they do about all the problems in Fleet?” she asked.
“Fleet fixed them,” he answered slowly.
She nodded again, and it was all he could do to keep a straight face.
If this had been a normal date, or a date at all, he might have reached across the table to hold her hand after they finished eating, and they might have gotten refills on their drinks and sat and talked for awhile after they finished eating. As it was, she said she had some shopping to do and he said he had some things he needed to take care of back at his quarters, and they went their separate ways.
On the transit car back to his quarters his mind kept replaying flashes of silver-blond hair, Sinda laughing at one of his jokes, the way her mouth pouted up when she took a sip of her drink. The ride seemed to take no time at all.
Chapter Twelve
Cally opened the door to her quarters and took her packages inside. It was only her second day and the institutional green and gray were boring her to tears. She tossed a large red shawl over the ugly gray plastic nightstand that came with the room and put the cut glass vase she’d bought on the table, filling it with yellow silk roses. She used tacky clay to stick a couple of posters of unicorns and pegasuses — or was it pegasi — on the walls. Strange obsession, but she’d had covers with more obnoxious ones. At least the pictures were colorful. She’d even managed to find one that wasn’t in pastels.
What is that obnoxious beeping? She looked at her PDA, but it was fine. She looked around the room for a source of the beeping, finally localizing it to the shawl-covered end table and the top drawer in it. Oh. It’s the phone. Who the hell wouldn’t just page my PDA? It’s registered in the directory… oh. Paper-boy.
She lifted the phone out of the drawer and looked at the red light blinking on it in time with the beeping. She had to look at the thing’s buttons for a moment before she found the play message button. There was no message, and she had to experiment with more buttons before she found the combination that would get the phone to display the number of the last caller. She read it off to her PDA and told it to call the number, waiting for an answer.
“Hello, Beed residence. May I help you?” a woman’s voice answered.
“Um… yes, I guess you can. Is the general in? I’m his secretary and he may be trying to reach me.”
“Oh, is this Captain Makepeace? Hang on and I’ll get him.”
Cally waited, sitting down on the bed and splitting the PDA screen so she could use the bottom half as a remote. The cube from last night still had a bunch of movies she hadn’t seen yet. It had been in the original Makepeace’s purse when they made the switch, so she supposed it reflected her taste in movies pretty well. She started it to get the advertising tease out of the way, turning the volume to mute. She still had a few seconds wait before the general finally answered. Most people in this day and age took their PDA with them everywhere. Well, unless they had an AID. Knowing Beed, he had probably been whole rooms away from whatever he was using to call her. Cally imagined a big, black, rotary dial phone sitting on a table somewhere and suppressed laughter as he started speaking.
“Hello, Captain?” It certainly sounded like the general.
“Yes, sir. You were trying to reach me?”
“Ah… yes. I was trying to get a little of the red tape squared away and realized I need the Lee file. Unfortunately, I’m expecting another call and really can’t step away right now. I know it’s an imposition, but could you possibly take a moment and drop by the office and bring it around? I haven’t caught you at a bad time, have I?”
“No, sir, not at all. I’d be glad to get that file for you,” she fibbed.
“Good, good. I was just afraid I might have caught you at a bad time because you were out when I called before. Thought you might have had plans.” His voice had a hint of a question in it.
“Yes, sir. I just got in from dinner, sir.”
“Trifle late, isn’t it?” He seemed to be waiting for some sort of explanation.
“Yes, sir. I worked a little late getting things in order, sir, and then I had some shopping to do.”
“Ah. Okay. Well, if you’ll just nip by the office and bring that file over, Captain. Thank you.” There was an audible click as he ended the call.
She glared at the phone for a minute. Is he for real? And of course he just assumes I know where he lives. It’s not like he couldn’t have called my PDA and reached me right off. The real Sinda Makepeace may have gotten the better end of this deal. And I know better than to slip out of character, even in private, dammit.
It was actually no trouble to find the general’s quarters. The base directory had no problem with telling his secretary where he lived.
It also didn’t take very long to get there, since it was a Tuesday night and in the middle of a shift. Transit car traffic was minimal, and the MPs on duty at the transit station that serviced brigade headquarters were surprised to see anyone coming in so late, but passed her through after a quick look at her ID.
Moments later, she tucked the file into a manila envelope, passed the MPs on the way out and caught a transit car three levels down.
The corridor that housed Fleet Strike general officers was not institutional green. Nor were the doors battleship gray. The cream walls and Wedgwood blue doors were set off by a strip of wallpaper across the top of the walls that had been designed to convey the impression of crown molding. The charcoal gray carpeting was thick and gave softly under her feet. In all, it reminded her of images she’d seen in movies of the sort of prewar hotel that catered to business travelers who were on a budget but did not want to feel they were staying in some cheap dive.
Suite G one-oh-three was about fifty meters from the transit car doors. It had the standard electronic lock and a little glowing button in a brass plate cast in curlicues that might have been stylized leaves.
“Captain Sinda Makepeace to see General Beed, please,” she announced clearly to the door. Nothing happened. She waited, and then announced herself again. Still nothing. He couldn’t. They wouldn’t have… What the hell, I’ll try it. She pushed the button and immediately heard a ringing tone from inside the apartment. They must have actually drilled through the Galplas to install that damned thing.
As the door slid open, she caught a distinct whiff of men’s cologne. Beed was just inside the doorway, but he didn’t move to take the envelope from her.
“Ah, good. You have it. If it won’t be too much trouble, why don’t you come in. I may need you for a couple of things. That’s not a problem, is it?”
“No, sir. Of course there’s no problem, sir.” She stepped inside the door and it closed behind her. It may have been phrased like a request, but she knew an order when
she heard one. Besides, he was a safe way to get rid of some excess hormones while furthering her mission. A good deal all around.
“I didn’t really need the file.” He met her eyes and held them as he took the envelope from her and tossed it onto a small table just inside the door.
“I didn’t really think you did, sir.”
“Quit sirring me, Sinda. In public, yes, but… Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Only if it’s not local, thanks. If the air does that to coffee beans, I’d hate to think what it would do to a poor, defenseless grape.”
“It’s up from Earth. A nice California chardonnay. You’ll like it.” He led her out of the foyer into the living room. On the coffee table was an ice bucket and a chilled bottle of the wine, with two glasses. He uncorked and poured it smoothly, handing her a glass and saluting her with his own. He was right. It was crisp and cool.
“Excuse me for asking, but where is Mrs. Beed this evening? And if I don’t call you ‘sir,’ what do I call you?”
“My friends call me Bernie. And Mrs. Beed has her movie night with some of the other wives. They grab a drink together afterwards. She won’t cross the threshold before oh-one-hundred at the earliest.”
“I — I haven’t done this much.” She took a largish gulp of her wine and dropped her eyes.
He set his glass down, taking hers and setting it beside the other, then stepped forward until he was nearly touching her. He cupped her face in his hands and bent to kiss her lingeringly.
“I think I’m going to enjoy walking you through it,” he said.
His breath tasted like peppermint and his mustache tickled her lip as she ran her hands up his chest to twine her arms around his neck. His hands were playing with her breasts and her breathing started to quicken and she pressed closer, up against him.
Then his hands were at the seal of her silks, parting the front of them to show the white lace of her bra. One hand slid around to the small of her back, pressing her closer still, while the other kneaded her breast. She arched against him, clutching her fingers in his hair as he traced a line of kisses along her jaw, down her neck, across her collarbone as she clutched at his back. Okay, this isn’t going to be so bad. Umm… mmm… good spot.
“Not here,” he murmured against her skin. She let him take her hand and lead her back down a hall to a bedroom. It smelled faintly dusty, like a guest room, and everything in it was too neat and too perfect. And too feminine. A master bedroom for a couple would never have a pink flowered bedspread. She tilted her head up to kiss him again while he slid the silks off her shoulders, freeing her hands to grab his hips. She wiggled slightly and her uniform slid down to pool at her feet. She fumbled a bit with the catch on his uniform before getting the pressure seal open, so she could slide her hands in and press them flat against the heat of his back.
She moved with him as he eased her back onto the bed, lying on top of her, but considerately holding his weight on his hands and toes. As they kissed, she helped him get his uniform out of the way as he slid a hand under her to unclasp her bra. After it was out of the way, he sat back for a moment to look. Men always liked to look. She gave him a smile and reached out to pull him back down. His chest was smooth and hairless, as was his jaw line, and she wondered for a second whether he used depilatory foam on it, before deciding that she didn’t care. A good lay was just what the doctor ordered, and so far this looked like it was going to turn out to be a good lay.
* * *
Afterwards, she helped him change the sheets and remake the bed. She thought it would be a dead giveaway, but when he took out the clean set of sheets, they were identical to the ones that had just come off.
“Won’t your wife notice the extra sheets in the wash?”
“Not a chance. I’ll have them clean and put away in no time. I don’t completely shun modern technology, Sinda.”
He seemed a bit uncomfortable as the afterglow wore off. Edgy, as if he didn’t quite know what to say to her. She made her excuses and left. No use trying for pillow talk with him in that mood. Maybe next time. She had gotten at least part of what she came for. That was something. Tea and sympathy at the office, make him comfortable. Meanwhile, she had that cube to scan on the off chance that something worthwhile was buried on it. The problem was that the general could be working with anybody, so everything had to be checked.
And, of course, she had to check in. In the old days of humans versus humans, an in-person meeting was the most dangerous thing there was for an active agent. The Bane Sidhe’s experience knew better. The expertise of the Darhel at electronic wizardry had led them to conclude thousands of years before that face-to-face meetings were the best security there was. While it was possible that human electronic information warfare would surpass the Darhel’s in time, it hadn’t to date. As a result, critical information was sent electronically or over the airwaves only when there was absolutely no other alternative.
She was getting used to the transit cars now and didn’t have any trouble finding one going in her direction and taking it back to the Corridor.
On the second level from the bottom, on the Fleet and Engineering side, was a sports bar that attracted a solid mix of everything on Titan but colonists, tourists, and nonhumans. It was popular with its clientele because the drinks were relatively cheap, the food filling, and the games on the tank were as close to live as it was possible to get, being tight-beamed up as part of the normal Earth-to-Titan bandwidth. A perceptive client would have noted that people tended to drink more when the drinks were cheap, that drunk people tended to gamble unwisely, and that the establishment provided very convenient access to the house bookie should anyone wish to make a friendly wager on the game.
The sign above Charlie’s was a work of art. Instead of glow paint that looked like neon, it was an actual neon light. Well, neon or one of those other gases. Anyway, it was a big curvy tube of glass instead of glow paint. Like a lot of establishments on the corridor, the bar had double doors to reduce the mixing of too much station air with the air inside. In the case of Charlie’s, this was more to keep the pollution in than out. It was one of the few places on base you could smoke tobacco without either carrying around a filter to clean up after yourself or paying an extra air-scrubbing tax. The proprietor, whose name bore no resemblance to “Charlie,” believed, correctly, that the distinctive bar smell held many nostalgic associations for the class of patrons he wished to attract, and tended to drive away prudes, tourists, and colonists — all of whom would be bad for business in his particular niche.
The briefing materials from the Bane Sidhe had warned Cally what to expect when they chose this particular bar for any necessary in-person meetings, but it was almost impossible to describe the reality, as she found when she stepped through the double doors and into the fog of intermingled stale and fresh tobacco and cheap beer — with almost no undertones of Titan’s particular mix of swamp gas. It was the first place she’d been since the shuttle port in Chicago that actually smelled like anywhere on Earth. She felt a sharp prickling at the back of her eyes as she took a deep breath. The smoke must be irritating them.
The bar wasn’t packed, but it had a healthy crowd for a weeknight. She wove her way through the tables and the clouds of smoke to get to the bar. She had read that at one point Charlie’s had tried a holotank, but forced to choose between holos and tobacco, it had been no contest. Consequently, the tables were all grouped in easy view of large high-definition flatscreens. It wasn’t the flatscreen above the bar that caught her attention, though. The thing that really made her glad she came, regardless of the mission, was the sign, posted next to the impressive array of bottles behind the bar, that said, “Proudly Serving 100% Imported Jamaican Coffee.”
“Coffee, please. With a shot of crème de cacao.” She put some cash on the counter and left a tip out of her change, turning slightly to watch the screen. Baseball. Indianapolis versus Topeka. The Braves were down by two. She didn’t look around the bar. It w
ould have been bad tradecraft, and she had scanned the room thoroughly as she came in. He wasn’t here yet. When he arrived, he’d let her know.
The score was unchanged, but McKenzie had just allowed a double with a runner already on, and she was on her second coffee, when a redheaded man approached the bar and ordered a shot of Kentucky bourbon, and a spare cup. After downing the shot, he tucked a wad of chewing tobacco from a small pouch in his jaw, and looked up at the screen, rubbing his jaw for a second before spitting in the cup. He looked back up at the screen and muttered something that would have been difficult for anyone without enhanced hearing to weed out from the general noise of the bar.
“I told him their bullpen was weak,” he said.
Cally waited until she saw his eyes skim over and past her, fixing intently on someone off to her left for a moment, as if he had found who he was looking for. She finished her drink and got down from the barstool. Contact had been made, the full team was in place. As she wove back through the tables on her way out a particularly large spacer intercepted her with an outthrust arm, sweeping her into his lap as she let out a shriek.
“Hey, baby, I got something you’re just gonna love!” he leered.
Cally delivered a ringing slap that rocked his head to the other side, leaving a bright red handprint on the side of his face. The other hand slipped a cube into his pocket as she pushed herself out of his lap and stalked off towards the door, the picture of feminine indignation. There were rough chuckles from the mostly male assemblage as the large and apparently very drunk spacer rubbed his cheek in bewilderment.
“What’d I do?!” he protested to the air.
* * *
Wednesday, June 5
Wednesday morning the coffee at the office tasted even worse, since she had had something recent to compare it to. And General Beed was apparently not the kind to be contented with a little roll in the hay now and again. When they were alone, he insisted on touching her, grabbing bits here and there. It wasn’t that she was against a little mutual sex here and there in a fuck buddy sense, but good God, had the man no notion of personal space? Apparently not. She smiled at the annoying beast when he came around now and then and generally took it in stride. Honestly, the man was worse than a lonely cat!
