by John Ringo
His request that she arrange an assassination was extremely disturbing, but she could, of course, see his point. Beyond that, she had immense respect for the Tchpth planners. She also had an intimate personal awareness of how humans and Galactics both were apt to react to the power of a mentat in the hands of a human. This gave her, perhaps, a more immediate understanding of how others would react to such an action on her part.
“I grant your point. However, it may, even so, be the lesser risk. I would not mention, but there is a significant favor in question.” The Tchpth’s bouncing took on an agitated air, as her friend clearly wondered if he was asking for too big a repayment of her social debt to him. He would think that. They were, after all, talking about a murder — however justified.
“A most significant favor, and I thank you again for your previous assistance.” She inclined her head, acknowledging how much she owed him. “We are fortunate, as I have a simple solution,” she said. “You speak to the Indowy Aelool, personally. He will accept the advice of wisdom. He will also be able to convey a message to my sister that will both explain the need and confirm that the request is personal among clanmates. Aelool will not recognize the message, but the human Cally O’Neal will. I can assure you that it will address your immediate concerns.”
“I do not wish to know why such a message springs so readily to mind, do I?” the Tchpth danced nervously, one set of five legs, then the other, back and forth. She did not blame him for feeling agitated. “And will the Aelool accept her explanation enough to allow her to do what is necessary?”
“Probably you do not want to know. With Aelool, you will just have to make enough hints at the real matter that when she tells him what the phrase means, he will believe her.” Michelle bit her lip, thinking. “Could you also make a simple delivery for me while you are there? That you bring a delivery from me may help clarify the message,” she offered.
“Of course. At no obligation, as this more than returns the balance of debt. We will incur a certain level of obligation to Clan O’Neal.”
“Tell Aelool I said to turn loose her leash. She will know what it means.” The mentat busied herself examining the finished device critically as she boxed it for delivery. Offloading the errand gave her most of the morning to catch up on her backlog. “Please give me a moment to do a last quality check on the item for my sister. Apropos of nothing, my brother-in-law’s endeavors are developing adequately.” Giving Cally her head would certainly accomplish the Tchpth aims, but with terrible consequences, even if their planners had chosen the lesser damage. The long-term consequences to her own clan would be painful. The Earth-raised among them would, very likely, take this move as justification of their heedless, rash, headlong plunges into actions with insufficient judgment of consequences. The philosophical damage to Clan O’Neal would be laborious to repair. Most laborious. She had so been trying to set a good example. Ripples upon ripples indeed — but her friend was speaking.
“You have given an odd message. Thank you.” The Crab bounced quietly in his corner, inscrutable now that the onus of such an unpleasant deed had returned to him, plainly relieved that the message, so harmless on its face, allowed him to distance himself even farther from any ultimate actions. Regarding James Stewart’s activities, he made no reply.
Nathan O’Reilly suppressed the urge to grumble into his morning coffee. It was an unpleasant surprise that he hadn’t known there was a Tchpth in his base until Aelool walked in the door with him. He hated intelligence failures. Granted, it wouldn’t have been possible for the operatives to give him much notice, but even a little would have been nice. Especially since he was practicing his dart throwing accuracy against a cork board picture of the Tir Dol Ron. He covered his chagrin with the smooth grace bred by many years of organizational and professional politics.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, gathering darts and board, nonchalantly storing them in their proper place. “May I get you a water?” he asked.
Aelool said “please” at the same time as the unknown Tchpth said “no thank you.” His stomach was tied in a tight little knot, because Aelool was carrying the awaited device for the Michelle O’Neal mission.
“Wxlcht, I would like you to meet Nathan O’Reilly, head of the O’Neal Bane Sidhe.” If the Crab was surprised by Aelool’s deferring authority to the Jesuit priest, he gave no indication. “Nathan, my Tchpth friend is named Wxlcht. He is the Speaker of Intrigue. He is here, however, in the capacity of those of his kind far wiser than himself.”
Oh shit, O’Reilly thought, silently apologizing to the Almighty for the vulgarity. What the hell did we get into to have what amounted to the Crab head of Intel in my office, speaking with the authority of the entire Tchpth species. Lord, please be with humanity in this time of trial, he prayed.
“Wxlcht is here to deliver an instruction to me, to be repeated to Miss O’Neal,” the Indowy said.
“The human Cally O’Neal,” the ambassador interrupted.
“Yes. Miss Cally O’Neal,” Aelool accepted the correction.
“May I ask the nature of this message?” The priest continued to pray, silently.
“Four words. ‘Turn loose her leash,’ ” the Crab quoted.
“Are you very sure you want us to relay those exact words to Cally O’Neal. I do not know how she will interpret them, so I cannot guarantee the consequences. At all,” he warned. This was both far better and far worse than he had feared. That was nothing that Nathan himself would ever say to Cally. Ever.
“Yes. Those exact words. You do not know, yet, what they mean. The Tchpth do, and she will.” The planner paused, thinking. “If there is any question in her mind, and if you think it wise, you may tell her I made that delivery after speaking with her sister. And tell her that soon would be good. Very soon.” He indicated the decoy prototype with one limb. “We would not… It is, if there were not grave hazard to… We never otherw… Enough.” He sighed, his body stuttering a bit in its perpetual multilegged tap dance.
“I trust and expect your absolute discretion,” he said. “We do, of course, acknowledge the creation of a debt to the Clan O’Neal. A significant debt.”
Good Lord! Big. Dangerous, big, and either cataclysmic or priceless. He made the only possible answer, “You have my word.”
“And mine,” Aelool added.
“Thank you, and farewell.”
That it did not merely say “goodbye” was another surprise. Ordinarily, any Tchpth would avoid even a simple change of leaving-word as too explicit an expression of well wishes to any “vicious omnivore.” Curioser and curiouser.
After his unusual visitor departed, along with his own Indowy counterpart, Nathan took his AID out of his desk. “Get Cally O’Neal in my office. Now.”
Minutes after Father O’Reilly’s peremptory summons, Cally entered his office. She had not stopped to change out of leotard and leg-warmers, but instead stood before him barefoot, hair in a ponytail and gym towel around her neck. She blotted her still perspiring face and bounced on her toes, clearly feeling her endorphin rush.
“Decoy Aerfon Djigahr in?” she asked.
“Yes, but that’s not why you’re here,” he said.
She stilled. “Nothing bad, I hope?”
“That depends on you. A high-level Crab planner delivered the decoy, in person. He also, after informing us that he was speaking on behalf of the entire Tchpth leadership structure, gave us a message with the strict instructions to quote it to you, verbatim.”
“And?” she prompted, when he paused and was wasting time searching her face, as if she knew a damn thing about it. Unless it was about Stewart. That could be bad.
“Turn loose her leash,” he quoted.
“Excuse me?” She wasn’t quite sure she’d heard what she thought she’d heard. Or, she was, but thought she’d better hear it again, just to make sure.
“Turn loose her leash,” he repeated. “He also said I could tell you he delivered the device here himself. He cert
ainly thought you’d know what he meant. If you don’t, we’re in a very bad position.”
“Oh, I know what he meant. He had to have gotten that” — she pointed at the machine — “from Michelle. Therefore, logically he got the message from her, as well. What I can’t figure out is why the hell the Crabs would order a hit on Pardal.”
“They wha — ?” It was the first time she’d seen O’Reilly slack-jawed.
“At a meeting with Michelle recently, I offered to kill Pardal for her — more to get a rise out of her than anything. If you could have just seen… I meant it, of course, but I knew she’d never bite. Or thought I knew. And I don’t know what the Crabs have riding on this. How close are my sister and this Crab, anyway?”
Nathan picked up his AID. “Tell Aelool I need him again, but phrase it nicely. Then give me an executive summary of Michelle O’Neal’s relationship with the Tchpth Planner Wxlcht.” He had learned early on to ask for executive summaries as the magic words that prevented his AID from talking his ears off.
“Michelle O’Neal and the Tchpth Planner Wxlcht,” it replied immediately. “They are both avid aethal players and partner each other frequently. They communicate often, exchange favors, and are unusually close for members of their respective species. Executive summary material prepared by analysis of organizational files. Would you like me to broaden my search or elaborate on existing material?”
“That’s quite sufficient. Thank you.” It wasn’t necessary to thank an AID, but the priest was wise enough to know that any habit of omission of the basic courtesies would carry over into his relationships with humans and Galactics. He was always polite to his AID.
“So would he do this from friendship and to return a favor? Would he lie about representing his government?” the assassin asked the machine.
“That is not even a remote possibility,” Aelool said as he entered the room, forestalling the AID’s reply. “The Tchpth would never tolerate insanity in a planning position, nor have they had an adult manifestation of insanity in a thousand years, except as a temporary reaction to some drugs. I would have noticed had Wxlcht been drugged, unlikely as that would have been. The message and authority were authentic. What did it mean?”
“Miss O’Neal informs me that the Tchpth government has requested that she kill the Darhel Pardal,” O’Reilly said woodenly.
Aelool slumped to the floor, landing seated. “If this is a human joke, it is in execrable taste.”
“Aelool, I’m really not kidding. Even I am not that dense about interspecies relations,” she said.
“Then you are mistaken,” the literally floored alien stated.
“Anything is possible,” she answered.
“Not this,” he declared.
O’Reilly could see a situation developing and was about to intervene when Cally opened her mouth again.
“I meant, it is possible that I’m interpreting his message wrong, or that he thought it meant something different from what it means to me. This could be a misunderstanding,” she allowed.
“It is. It most certainly is. Please tell me why you have come to this conclusion so that we can sort out the real meaning.” The small creature wasn’t happy with Miss O’Neal. Again.
The priest said nothing, wanting to hear the answer, too.
“When I met Michelle a week or so ago to give her that information she wanted from her Tong contact on the Moon, she said some nasty things about Pardal and I offered to kill him for her. More as a joke than anything.”
“A bad one,” Aelool said.
“Granted,” she nodded. “But then she said that it was a good thing you guys kept me on a tight leash. That’s the only time Michelle and I have ever talked about a leash. Ever. So as ridiculous as it seems, can we at least consider what motives the Tchp — Tphk — Crabs would consider sufficient to order a specific sentient being killed?”
“Tchpth do not kill sophonts. Not even second or third hand,” Aelool reiterated.
“Of course they do!” Cally contradicted. “They sure as hell commissioned humanity to kill off Posleen. In job lots.”
“That was because the Posleen were a threat to all of the Wise and, thereby, to all the sentient life in the galaxy.” Aelool sounded positively testy.
“Don’t get mad at me. I’m not giving the orders. I’m just the poor kid at the sharp end.” Apparently deciding it was an oversight that she had not been invited to sit, or making a subtle Cally-esque point, she walked to the other side of the coffee table from the spot where Aelool was still seated on the floor and planted herself in a chair.
Aelool got up and moved to a chair, himself. As O’Reilly joined them, the Indowy explained, as if to a child, “The whole institution of the Wise was at stake. The whole Path was at stake. Without the Wise to guide others on the Path, the remaining sophonts would eventually destroy themselves and the galaxy with them. The Tchpth very reluctantly deemed using barbaric omnivores to kill barbaric omnivores an absolute necessity.”
Nathan O’Reilly raised a hand. “A moment, Aelool.” He rubbed his forehead pensively. “That Tchpth was as upset as I’ve ever seen one; he said the situation was grave ‘or they wouldn’t’ whatever. He sure didn’t like what he was having to say, and he went to a lot of trouble to let us know it was from their whole government. He clearly didn’t think a misunderstanding would be a possibility, and it was something he couldn’t or wouldn’t come right out and say.”
“Pardal is trying to kill Michelle. She’d be one of your ‘Wise,’ wouldn’t she? How would the Crabs extrapolate events from that? Or could Pardal be into something else that big or that dangerous?”
“Wait.” Aelool held up a green, furry hand for silence — a human gesture — and thought.
After a moment, he looked directly into her eyes — for the first time, ever. “The consequences if you are wrong would be unthinkable.”
Finally, the human leader of the O’Neal Bane Sidhe did intervene. “Plausibly, the highest Tchpth planners could have extrapolated events from the Darhel’s planned murder — don’t equivocate, that’s what it is — of one of the first human mentats to some sort of Galactic threat. I can’t see it, but I can’t understand their physics, either. Aelool, I hate to ask you, but how close is your wisdom to theirs?”
“It is not close.” He cringed. “You asked him if he was very, very sure. On their own heads be it, and I hope the Tchpth can be made to see it that way if she is wrong. All we can wisely do is just exactly what it told us. We turn loose her leash.” He turned to the priest. “My friend, do you still keep the human custom of prayer?”
“Of course,” the Jesuit answered.
“I hope very much that you will never find a better time to practice it. Please excuse me. This is more distressing than any human can imagine.” The little green alien left the room without another word.
“So. How do you plan to kill him, and when?” O’Reilly, having resigned himself to the business at hand, was determined to see it come off successfully.
“Did the Crab say when?” she asked.
“He only said, ‘Soon. Very soon.’ ” O’Reilly had no idea what to make of this. It would take time to sort through the implications. At least, to sort through as many of them as a human could follow.
“Then it has to be tomorrow,” she announced.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Not recently. We can’t reschedule the run for Michelle; there isn’t time. We’d never get another chance before she died. On the other side of that coin, if either target learns the other has been hit, the security walls are going to go way, way up and whichever mission is second will be impossible short of nukes — and maybe not even then. They have to be done as close together as possible.”
“You’re the second inside man at the target. They know your appearance. You have to be there personally or it doesn’t come off. The hit on Pardal also absolutely has to be you, because the Tchpth said so — rather, they said you, so we use you. In
case you’re somehow wrong, as is distinctly possible, our only possible excuse is that they picked the message, and the recipient, after being specifically warned. I also specifically declaimed responsibility for the consequences of delivering such a message to you.”
“I love you, too, Nathan.”
“Cally, that message is something I would never, ever have chosen to say to you on my own. There’s just no telling who or how many would die next.” She looked affronted as hell. “You are very good at your job. Good assassins always need target control in the hands of someone other than themselves. Which, in this case, it still is. If, may the Good Lord and all of the Saints preserve us, you’re right.” And so help him, if she made an inappropriate joke about his appeal to the almighty, he just might kill her.
“Okay. My interview isn’t until late afternoon. So I kill Pardal in the morning, and you have Harrison waiting for me with the car and my interview clothes. I’ll change on the way.”
“It’s damned late to be making radical changes of plans. How are you going to kill him?” he asked. He didn’t add that she might be overreaching in assuming her success and survival. He didn’t need to.
“Don’t know yet,” she shrugged. “Hey, no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is what you pay me for. I’ll shoot you a revised mission plan just as soon as I’ve got it — tonight at the latest. Honest, just relax. Trust me.”
