Cally's War lota-6

by John Ringo

  “Something we have in common. We were kids, but not kids, you know?” He was looking into her soul like that again.

  “Yeah, I do. Boy, this is a heavy conversation.” She pulled the top off of her shrimp and inhaled as the steam escaped. “This smells yummy.”

  “Want some rice? I only brought steamed. I don’t like the way the fried rice in these things reheats. The bits of egg are always rubbery.” He offered her a box.

  “Good choice. The steamed is much better. Thanks. That smells good, too.” She gestured towards the box he’d just opened.

  “Wanna bite? Trade you?” He speared a bite of food on his fork and extended it for her, cupping a hand under it in case the sauce dripped. His hand was warm against her chin as she savored the bite.

  Watching him eat a bite of shrimp off of her fork drew her attention right to his mouth, of course, and she had no idea how long she’d been staring when he finally snapped out of it and reached his fork back into his heater box. She just knew that her second bit of food was noticeably cooler than her first. But she wasn’t really all that hungry, anyway. She’d eaten less than half the food when she pushed it away. Sometime during the meal she’d rolled her chair over closer to his, but she could feel the heat of his thigh against hers and close somehow just wasn’t close enough.

  Obviously he thought so, too, because no sooner had he pushed his own food away, also half-eaten, than she found herself pulled into his lap with a hand cupped around her breast. Tantalizingly, too damned far down under her breast. She twisted slightly at the waist, arching into it as the movement drew his fingers across her nipple.

  Naturally, the movement also shifted her hips, which made him shift and she could feel his erection hard against her leg and suddenly she couldn’t stand it. But when she tried to move to straddle him, he wouldn’t let go, rubbing a nipple between a thumb and forefinger as he nibbled on the upper rim of her ear and her hands clenched, nails driving into his shoulders. It felt like every nerve ending she had was alive and singing with heat. Suddenly she couldn’t have sat still if her life depended on it. How can he be so clumsy on his feet and so… aw, hell, who cares!

  Conscious thought didn’t resurface until he came and she found herself collapsed across his chest on the floor, and realized there was a bit of a cramp in one of her quads. She couldn’t even have guessed how many orgasms had ripped through her while her brain had been on hold. All she knew as she eased off of him and to the side was that her muscles had turned to jelly. She let her head rest on his shoulder, the utter relaxation of his muscles contrasting sharply with the tension of a few minutes before. She traced her index finger through his chest hair, licking the gloss of sweat off her fingertip. It tasted of salt and something indefinable that she couldn’t have described, she only knew she was starting to crave it like a drug. But… later… after she’d rested a little bit. Or maybe a lot.

  Amazingly, it turned out that silks could wrinkle after all.

  * * *

  Friday, June 14

  Friday was always the easiest day to get out of bed, for obvious reasons. In her case, there was the extra bonus that Beed would find it impossible to get away from his wife for the entire weekend. Still, there was an extra bounce in her step, despite the slight sore muscle twinges in strange places, as she detoured by Claibourne’s Coffee on her way in to work.

  One of the interesting features of base living was the excellent job they’d done of matching the lighting to normal human circadian rhythms. The unvarying quality of the light had been one of the design problems in the early Sub-Urbs that had since been blamed for a lot of the social problems they suffered during and immediately after the Postie war. The better areas of most of them had by now been retrofitted with adjustable glow paint, programmed on an optimum circadian scale. In Titan’s case, limited retrofitting had been needed, since the need for an artificial day had been obvious in the first place. At least, that had been the explanation. For whatever reason, it was interesting to see the Corridor in daylight and actually stand and remind herself that the lighting was not natural sunlight diffused through some skylight. It was a very good imitation. The plants certainly seemed to like it well enough. On this floor, the Galplas had been textured to look like an old brick sidewalk, and the rough earthen pink clashed lightly with the terra cotta planters. Honey bees buzzed around the flowers blooming in assorted hanging baskets, and the faux-neon signs in the night-business windows were dark. The place looked so different in the daytime it almost made her homesick, pointing up the alien chemical smell and the dryness of the air, so different from Charleston’s muggy salt.

  She didn’t show it, but it jolted her sense of cover slightly to notice the dress shop next door had a red scarf around the neck of the mannequin in the window. However late she got away from the general tonight, she’d have to make time for a meet with Granpa. Not that she had a lot to tell him other than what hadn’t worked. And that she had confirmed that Beed had an extra project, probably their leak. Maybe he has something on the tong angle.

  A latte and a bag of cherries later, she was back in the transit car up to the office. For some reason the cherries and plums on Titan Base were considerably better than most of its other hydroponic produce — possibly because hydroponics were in the bottom level of Fleet’s quadrant. After her first encounter with base-grown coffee, she had avoided the office coffee in all but her direst needs for caffeine. She had asked Carlucci about it once. Apparently, as Beed said, you got used to it. The old hands didn’t seem to taste the difference anymore. She was going to have to start drinking the awful stuff. Sinda Makepeace would be getting the process of acclimation over and done with, and her own persistence in drinking the imported Terran coffee was a potential break in cover. Unprofessional.

  At the office, she poured herself a cup from the coffee maker in the copy room, suppressing a grin as she passed the collating table. She grimaced at the foul liquid in the cup and proceeded to drown it in sugar and creamer powder, reminding herself that she had in fact done worse things for the cause.

  Pryce did better than she thought he would at acting normally when he said good morning. One of the worries that had gnawed at her brain as she settled into sleep last night had been that he might turn out to be a really rotten liar. He was okay. Maybe she could find some opportunity to get together with him this weekend. She had been tentatively turning over a plan in her head for a couple of days now, and the chemistry between the two of them was good enough that it just might work. If she could play to his desire for variety by using different places throughout the office as props for sex, it was just possible that she could either get him to take her into the areas she couldn’t otherwise reach or that she could somehow swipe his ID card and spoof the biometrics.

  She flipped through the morning traffic on her PDA while trying to mull the relative advantage of forcing the coffee down a sip at a time, or waiting and chugging it when nobody was looking. Hell, nobody was looking now, and it was probably marginally less awful hot. A moment later she regarded the empty cup with satisfaction, trying not to wince at the slightly sour aftertaste.

  The awards report had come through from first battalion on Dar Ent. Dammit, whose Cheerios did Simkowicz piss in? Lost records my ass.

  “Buckley, send a full and complete copy of the Simkowicz 201 file to Personnel, copied to Payroll, with a full and complete copy of his career pay records. Code it as coming from General Beed. State that the general urgently desires that this matter be cleared up by no later than sixteen hundred today, and that if this is not possible, to please reply immediately indicating the specific reasons for the delay and the specific individuals responsible. Copy the entire mess to General Franklin’s AID. Shoot the AID, Lisa, a private memo explaining that she can use her judgment about whether to show it to her boss if the name doesn’t finally light a fire under those assholes. Four months behind my ass.”

  A few minutes later, as she walked back down the hall to get Be
ed’s morning printouts, Pryce was coming the other way, headed back to his office from somewhere. She didn’t stop, but passed him just a little too close, turning so that her breast brushed his arm as he walked past. There was a spring in her step as she bounced down the hall for the stupid paper. Suddenly, she felt like whistling.

  * * *

  Stewart ducked into his office, squashing the simultaneous desires to curse and grin. He also needed to think about something else for a minute to return his silks to a presentable state. Unfortunately, it looked like Sinda might not turn out to be a very good liar. That was careless. Not surprising, really. She was a bit of a ditz. Not that she didn’t make up for it in her own way. She was warm, and had a great work ethic, and he shook his head as he realized he’d been staring at the same spot on his office wall for who knew how long. The point was that she was a ditz. But a fun one. And he really needed to think of, say, the steps in the process of fitting a new ACS suit to a troop. It had been long enough ago that it required just the right amount of concentration to remember the steps — that is, a lot.

  Finally, he was ready to go talk to that slimy sonofabitch excuse for a general officer. Think lieutenant. Fresh-faced, eager, klutzy Lieutenant Pryce, first lieutenant as proof that God really does have a sense of humor. He tripped over the threshold on his way out the door, just for practice, and noticed that Sinda not only could see his door from her desk, but was actually watching him, with a rather dazed expression on her face. Boy, why you are getting hung up on a complete, incredible, total ditz, I do not know. This simple lieutenant role must be going to your brain. Okay, so it’s not my brain I’m thinking with. Whup! ”… after the boot area is fitted, the suit nannites must be induced to begin the undergelling process…”

  He walked into the general’s office, stumbling slightly over his feet and grinning internally at Beed’s slight flush of frustrated anger. He came to attention in front of the desk as the door slid shut behind him.

  “Our source has been in contact again. He’s offering more information for sale,” the general said.

  “Who are they sending to meet him?” As if I didn’t know.

  “He’s here. I can’t meet him tonight. You’ll have to make the meet. Here’s the address. Memorize it.” He extended a sheet of paper and waited while Stewart stared at the paper for a few moments, taking it back and tucking it into his desk.

  “Do not fuck this up, Lieutenant,” Beed said grimly.

  Yeah, like you have a real excuse for slacking, asshole. If Mister Jones is on Titan, I wonder who else is on Titan? This is the first indication we’ve gotten that our strategy might actually be working. God, I look forward to relieving this bastard. For Sinda’s sake if nothing else.

  “Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?”

  “Make sure you come back with something good, Pryce. I don’t need to tell you that right now we’ve got jack squat on this mission, and that does not look good. A good OER on a mission like this could be a great asset to the career of a young officer. Dismissed.”

  You prick. “Yes, sir.” Pryce saluted, executing a wobbly about face and leaving before his façade cracked. Maintaining cover was getting to be harder than he had expected.

  * * *

  Friday, June 14, evening

  The sake bar served a certain class of Fleet junior officers. While the establishment was on the no-go list for Fleet Strike personnel, other than MPs in the line of duty, Stewart’s task tonight fully justified the civilian clothing he was wearing, and his military haircut was common among freighter weenies, anyway. While walking in two or three hours later would pretty much have guaranteed a brawl, it was still early enough that Fleet’s finest were firmly absorbed with drinking and trying their luck at some of the multiplayer game consoles scattered around the place.

  Stewart generally avoided the lousy beer, made worse by being microbrewed on the premises from local hydroponically grown hops. The anime, at least, was first class. While the large… eyes… on cartoon women were not nearly as much fun as the real thing — he quashed the strong impulse to fantasize painful and violent ends for Beed — anyway, the art was nice to look at.

  The balding but fit civilian sitting by the bar over a bowl of what was probably miso soup was not so nice to look at. Frankly, he felt a gut level distaste for traitors in general, whenever he let himself think about it. But dealing with unsavory people went with the territory in intel, and he couldn’t really afford the luxury of that distaste right now. Like any soldier, Stewart could summon a certain grudging respect for an honest opponent or even enemy. People who were traitors to their own cause, though, just tended to arouse a certain visceral distaste that he had to squash with a vengeance as he crossed the bar to meet the other man.

  “Mr. Smith, how nice to see you again,” the other man said.

  “Mr. Jones. You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” Stewart observed.

  “I could say the same thing of you,” the traitor said.

  “If you knew where my home was, I suppose you could.” He pulled up a barstool, smiling easily even though the thought of drinking with this worm was enough to turn his stomach.

  “So, what have you got to trade, Mr. Jones? Are you still dancing around with the penny ante game, or are you ready to move up to something more rewarding? And, if you don’t mind my saying so, this is a bit of a change of scene for you, isn’t it?” Prod him a bit and see what he comes out with.

  “I travel. This time I don’t just want cash. You said you’d pay more for more. Well, we’ll see if you meant that.” There was a thin film of sweat on the guy’s upper lip. Maybe he was nervous?

  “Keep talking.” Don’t give him anything to grab onto, make him reach for a response.

  “I want a diversion. You want part of our organization. I see a mutual opportunity here. You assist me in placing some evidence, I give you the person it will point to. You might want the rest of the team, in case you have to be kind of rough on your new toys. But that would be where the money part comes in.” The undertone of desperation in his voice was palpable.

  Good God, we’ve hit the motherlode. Okay, now the hard question. Why?

  “And what, exactly, would this placing of evidence consist of?” he asked.

  “The usual and obvious. Put some banking transactions together and tuck away some luxury goods in the right places. When you pick him up, it’ll look like he was feeding you information all along and he went in out of the cold.” The traitor’s grin was a particularly nasty one.

  “You know, the object of this game is usually to get the information without the other guy knowing you’ve got it.” He just couldn’t help being a little sarcastic. Try as he might, having to deal with someone capable of betraying his friends for money just really got under his skin.

  “If you can. I’ve got news for you. They know they’ve got a leak. So you’re not losing anything that isn’t already lost. They don’t even have to know you have him. Make it look like he went out on a colonist ship.” Baldy obviously was starting to feel the net closing in.

  Okay, they’d only buy this fool’s “diversion” if they’re really stupid, and to penetrate us like they have, stupid they’re not. On the other hand, if he actually is giving us insiders, it doesn’t matter. And I got my answer. His people are closing in on him and he’s covering his butt. If that’s the price, I can deal with that. What do I have to pay him per guy? Three million U.S. dollars per team member?

  “I think we can do that. We’ll plant the evidence as directed and pay you one million dollars U.S., each, for this guy and every member of his team we capture,” he said.

  “Do I look stupid? Five million U.S., each, and it’s for every person whose identity I give you. If you want to shoot them instead of reeling them in, or if you screw it up, that’s your problem.” The traitor obviously had an ego the size of Cleveland.

  It took some minor haggling, but they finally settled at two and a half, half on delivery of the nam
es, half on confirmation that the name went with a real person credibly identified as an organization operative, with standard mutual security precautions. A light price, for what I’m getting.

  “So, Mr. Jones, just as a good faith gesture as I go set all this in motion, you said you’re giving us a team. I’m sure you’ll understand I have to have something for the people I report to before they’re going to let me have that kind of money. This team you’re giving us, does it have some sort of internal call name?”

  “Hector.”

  * * *

  Saturday, June 15, 03:30

  Michael O’Neal, Sr., had never gotten used to waiting. Oh, he’d learned to simulate perfectly still patience very early in life, or he wouldn’t have survived. It didn’t mean he had to like it. And he didn’t. His granddaughter wasn’t exactly late, since there was no set time for their meet and in the field, with her cover, there could be all sorts of reasons why she couldn’t get away early, or maybe at all.

  Which made waiting even more of a pain in the ass.

  He had trained Cally in battlefield survival, and general survival in hostile environments, since the age of eight. As a little girl in the Posleen war, she’d been more solid than many grown men, first killing the assassin who’d come to kill them if he couldn’t be recruited, then taking her place beside Team Conyers to fight off the Posties as they’d come up the Gap.

  He spat carefully into the spare cup the barmaid had so thoughtfully provided.

  After the war, she’d had the first-rate training in her specialty provided in a private parochial environment by the Bane Sidhe’s cadre of killer nuns. Her skills had been honed to a fine art. She was, arguably, the best living assassin on Earth or off it — with the possible exception of himself. Although he didn’t have her… natural advantages.