by John Ringo
“Come out, unarmed, with your hands up. You will not be assaulted, arrested, or detained. You do not need to die for this employer today, but you will die, within minutes, if you continue to resist.” There was another pause, probably to see if the security weenies were moving. Not fast enough, apparently. She did hear a couple of clatters as some arms dropped.
“We have an entire, armed, counterterror unit of elite soldiers,” he continued. “Well-armed soldiers with unlimited ammunition. You have low ammunition, light armament, low numbers, and no training. Surrender now, and come out. You will not be harmed. You will be released. We do not want to kill you, but make no mistake that we will. Your time is up. Surrender now,” the naggingly familiar voice said.
There were more clatters as the closest former guards apparently decided that this was a damned fine offer and walked towards the door, hesitantly glancing in the direction of their surviving enemies as if wondering if they would be shot as soon as they broke cover.
When the first two made it out the door alive and unharmed, the rest started to form up in an orderly queue, more used to standing in lines than fighting, anyway.
That was, at least, what started to happen before Cally suddenly found herself unable to move. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw the security guards frozen in place, as if someone had taken a still holo and they were all trapped in it.
Alone in the center of the room, a short man in an expensive suit stood glaring around as if deciding who or what to deal with first. The human mentat Erick Winchon had come home.
He wasn’t alone for more than an eyeblink, as Michelle O’Neal, brown mentat robe stiff as the skirt of a porcelain doll, stood in the center of the room as well, glaring at him.
“So. You are truly insane after all. Do you think the rest of the Wise can or will tolerate your reckless and haphazard direct intervention, running around like a little tin god? How long before larger and larger sections of the Milky Way would become your play toy? How long before simple boredom drove you to take everything down in your own, individual calamity?” Her sister’s stress on the word individual was so soft it was almost indiscernible.
“Oh, like you haven’t intervened wherever and whenever you pleased. Killing a Darhel. Congratulations. I thought in you the legendary O’Neal barbarism had skipped a generation.”
“I did not kill Pardal. I have not intervened directly once. Not until this moment when your own recklessness made it worth everything to the rest of the Wise that someone stop you. That I stop you.”
“Piffle. Technicalities. You are so sure you are better than every other sentient in this galaxy that I suspect you even starch your panties. Had tea with the Aldenata yet, have we?”
“I do not—” Michelle began. “This is pointless. You will stop. You will proceed, with me as escort, to Barwhon, where you will submit to the designees of Tchpth planners for safe, serene contemplation and study where you will be neither a threat to yourself nor anyone else. I will return and clean up your mess.”
“And you get the goodies and to use my research to become the Epetar Group’s fair-haired girl, write your reputation in Galactic history, and take credit for civilizing humanity. I do not think so.”
“Why would you agree to this, this intrigue in the first place? Research was proceeding. Do not tell me you had insufficient work of your own to do?”
“For one, it was considerably less interesting work.” Erick sneered. “Boring, frankly. For two, I do not drag my feet, and humanity needs civilization desperately.”
“The primary responsibility of a researcher is caution.”
“Again, piffle. Humanity pollutes the whole of Galactic civilization with its violence. There is not time.”
“You do like that word, do you not?” she rolled her eyes. “You dare to speak of humanity’s violence in the face of the unspeakable violence you have engaged in here?”
“You did not kill Pardal — though you drove him into lintatai, or ordered it. I have not committed violence against humans. The same principle applies as always. One protects civilization by turning barbarism against barbarism. The firebreak theory. Here, barbarians have done violence to barbarians. No more, no less. They would have been doing it somewhere, sooner or later. They were simply doing it here.”
“If I needed any more proof that you are insane, I would have it with that incredibly convoluted excuse for philosophical reasoning. I did not drive Pardal into lintatai, nor did I make the decision that permitted the possibility.”
“Oh, what a world of delicious wiggle room that careful statement leaves. You were involved, I am sure.”
“I was not completely uninvolved,” she conceded.
Cally could see his facial expressions, but not her sister’s, and was genuinely frightened by the manic glee that attended Michelle’s admission. If anything she had heard about mentats was true, she had never wanted to be around an unhinged one. This guy was so unhinged his door wasn’t on the same block.
“However, my tangential involvement was in no way my own instigation.” Michelle spoke calmly, but Michelle always spoke calmly. It was sort of irritating. Erick’s delighted skepticism wasn’t making the assassin feel any better.
“I was not consulted, I was required,” she insisted.
“Whatever excuse allows you to sleep at night, Miss Starch,” he said. “He tried to kill you, you got there first. And apparently managed the incomparable feat of not only securing sanction from our ‘pacifist’ peers, but persuading them that it was all their idea, and you their oh-so-reluctant puppet. I will give you points for style, at least. You finally surpass your famously barbaric sire in the art of murder.” He giggled and bowed, the gesture spoiled by the uninterrupted fit of humor.
Cally hadn’t heard a mentat laugh before — didn’t know they could. She could do without hearing it again. Winchon’s giggle could have curdled milk.
“If you knew Pardal was trying to kill me, how do you rationalize helping him do it, I wonder?”
“My dear colleague, I would have forever applauded your self-sacrifice in the advancement of civilization. The death of one of the Wise is always poignant.” He sighed, a hand clasped to his heart. “I have, alas, tired of your charmingly self-righteous and cautious company, Human Mentat Michelle O’Neal. Good-bye,” he said.
Cally felt the hair on the back of her neck try to crawl up her scalp line. Apparently they were through with the talking.
The mentats were locked into perfect stillness, standing apart yet swathed together in sheets of silver light and shadow. Seemingly random portions of the building alternately shook and cracked. In one corner, the ceiling crumbled as an I-beam curled, stretching and deforming like hot taffy. The massive weight of the building above it creaked threateningly. The destruction slowly stilled and froze, air sparkling with an alien haze that strained against some undreamt-of aether, unmoving, stalemated. As if by mutual consent, the buzzing tension stilled, as both took precious moments for deeper breath. They stood, panting, somehow managing to glare at each other and remain preternaturally impassive at the same time.
You have hired the worst sort of barbarians to do your violence, Michelle thought.
Do not be melodramatic, Erick replied. They are all barbarians. My hirelings are killing sophonts for money; so are yours. There is no difference. Barbarians are mutually expendable.
So we come, yet again, to our mutual philosophical debate, Michelle thought. You have never understood that in humans who are not damaged, the embryonic basis of clan loyalty is nature, not nurture. They thus have an inherent value. If you do not find some clan loyalty in an Earth human, you have a defective one.
What clan loy — He stared, as if for the first time, at the frozen Earther combatants. Oh, good grief. The attackers are your clan, either by birth or adoption. And the Darhel thought you were dangerous before. It is the perfect cosmic joke. Fine, you were right, I was wrong. But how truly hilarious!
“Okay, holy fu
ck,” Cally said, looking out from under the stairwell.
The two combatants had stopped for the moment. The stasis had broken as soon as they started their titanic battle and Cally had tried to get a shot in on Erick. But the round had been absorbed into the swirl of power around the two and never hit.
“Bit of a pickle,” Mosovich admitted. “Do we know each other?”
“I think we met once when I was a kid,” Cally said. “I looked different. Full body sculpt. Cally O’Neal.”
“Oh, I remember you,” Mosovich said. “Pleasure to finally meet you again. I’d mention that I heard from very good sources that you were dead, but…”
“Long story.”
“Perhaps another time,” Mosovich said, raising his arms over his head as the two mentats raised their hands.
This time the power was confined to a small space between the two mentats. A small very strange space. Tremendous heat was burning off of it but every time Cally tried to look into the spot her eyes basically tried to crawl out of her head. She stopped and looked at the combatants instead, noticing for the first time that the weird distortion around them was gone.
“I wonder…” Cally said, raising the Desert Eagle and assuming a careful shooting stance.
Michelle caught the power she was driving before it could do much more than blast the boxes on the far wall. And Erick, whose body burned to ash in a moment.
But the splash of blood on the ground was evidence of why he had suddenly failed.
“What did you do?” Michelle shouted, looking over at her sister.
“I dunno,” Cally said, standing up. “Saved your life? Killed a monster?”
“I cannot understand why you did that!”
“What part of horrible mass murderer of innocent people did you miss? Besides the target part, that is.”
“I never hired you to kill him. You do not kill the Wise!”
“Just did,” Cally noted. “My only regret is that you burned him to ash. I’d hoped to pull out his skull and shrink his head. I figured it would make a hell of mantelpiece.”
“Can it, Cally,” Papa O’Neal said, crawling out from under a desk. “Let me point out that Michelle has a point. There are only a few mentats in existence. The termination of one is going to be big news. Which means big trouble. The flip side is, other Granddaughter, that he was a mass murdering psychopath with enough power, by your own statements, to wipe out multiple worlds. So I have little regret for her actions. The alternatives don’t bear thinking.”
“I do not believe he was that kind of threat,” Michelle said. “The differences were philosophical…”
“So were the differences between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,” Papa O’Neal said. “Millions of people died — all those proxy wars add up. You probably need to get your nose out of the ivory tower and take a good look at history instead of physics. Most wars in the last century have been about philosophical differences.”
“I can, however, present his death in terms of threat, and the heat of the moment,” Michelle admitted. “For the sake of the O’Neals, Grandfather, you need to be very careful whom our people kill. Please pardon my presumption.”
“Your ‘Wise’ need to understand that someone who gives the orders for henchmen to round up and kill human beings in horrible ways no longer has a credible claim to being a navel-gazing pacifist,” Papa O’Neal said definitely. “The O’Neal Bane Sidhe don’t make it a habit to clean up every problem in the galaxy. Not enough days in the week. But we can make an exception. Do you read me, Granddaughter?”
“I… read you, Clan Leader,” Michelle said. “I will make that point quite plainly to the mentats. And I’m sure that the Indowy masters, when they are apprised of Erick’s full actions, will make it even more plain. The issue should never arise again. In any case, you have accomplished the purposes for which I hired your team. Thank you. Now, I need to take the device back to Adenast and construct a credible story for how it got there.” She raised her hand…
And Cally reached out like a cobra and caught it.
“Oh, no you don’t…” she said, raising the Desert Eagle.
When Cally caught Michelle’s hand, Papa O’Neal knew they were all in for it. The storm clouds were just hanging in the air. Well, it was probably best to let them get it out of their systems. It had been a real long time coming. He put his head in his hands and turned away, wiping the sweat from his face. He could smell the rust of blood, too, but that was nothing new. Their voices were so close in pitch that he could only sort out what was being said by accent and content.
“That is a priceless archeological artifact! You will not damage it.”
“That is a fucking abomination against free will!”
“Free will is an illusion you place far too much—”
“The hell you say! Yours may be an illusion, but mine’s working just fine.”
“This device requires close study. But it needs to be at the hands of the Wise.”
“Nobody’s wise enough for that.”
“And you in your own vast wisdom are wise enough to decide that for the whole galaxy and all of its posterity?”
“When you guys came to me to do your dirty work? You’re darn tootin’. This ain’t exactly rocket science, Michelle.”
“No, it is ancient Aldenata science and was developed for a very wise—”
“Bullshit! You think you know it all don’t you? The Indowy didn’t make you like this; You’ve ALWAYS been this way! I remember how you use to try to boss me around like you were a little tin god when you were a KID… !”
Papa O’Neal shook his head. That tore it. They were going nuclear. Nothing could stop them from saying it now. Best to just pour it all out. Wait till they wore down then take… steps. He looked around, eyes lighting on a couple of mop buckets and a faucet. Nobody else was moving. Not “frozen in stasis,” just watching the argument and waiting for Cally to get blasted. Which was good. He guessed the problem was mostly gonna fall in his lap. He spat resignedly and headed for the buckets.
“I just knew you would do this. Don’t think that just because the Wise used you to—”
“Damn right they used me. They use people a lot, if you hadn’t noticed. Then kid themselves that their hands are oh so much cleaner than—”
“Do not think they do this casually!”
“Don’t think I do!”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, fuck you too!”
“And this is the response of the self-proclaimed wisest person in the galaxy.”
“Just because I say it in plain English and do it mysel—”
“Oh, that is such garbage! You are so arrogant! You, Cally O’Neal, decide who lives and who dies. Or you decide who is wise enough to decide, which is much the same thing. You—”
“Don’t you? That’s exactly what you do. You learn what’s basically glorified engineering and you suddenly think your shit doesn’t stink. Free clue, Sister, you aren’t any wiser than the rest of us! And neither are the goddam Crabs. Technological advantage doesn’t give them the right to play God.”
“Your ‘God’ is just a delusional excuse for your own arrogance!”
“Oh, don’t even go there, you so don’t want to go there.”
“You say ‘God,’ but what you mean is a handful of relative babies mouthing their own interpretations of the ravings of luna—”
“Father O’Reilly has more wisdom in his little finger than—”
“Your Father O’Reilly is a petty, deluded, clanless, juvenile intriguer who—”
“You take that back!”
Papa O’Neal was back now, one of the buckets to the brim and sloshing. He’d been nice enough to empty it and at least get them more-or-less clean water. The shoving had started, and they weren’t bothering to get to their feet so much. Hadn’t gotten to hair pulling yet. Probably a good thing. Some things, he just couldn’t watch. He was pretty sure neither one had enough presence of mind left to hurt the oth
er even if they’d a mind to. Not even Michelle. When it was time to put a stop to it, his ears would tell him well enough. They were sisters, all right.
“What is your answer; a few humans get to choose for everybody?”
“You’re human, in case you’ve forgotten, you bitch.”
“Do you think I forget that ever, for even an instant? You people send me off to live among—”
“Oh, like being in a war and about to be eaten was such a piece of cake! And the Bane Sidhe aren’t just a few hum—”
“One, you small-scale intriguers are not the Bane Sidhe. Two, the Bane Sidhe is what you Earth-raised would call the bastard step-child, bottom of the barrel, most foolish bunch of eccentric losers in the Gal—”
“Oh, I’m so sorry you’re in the family with all us losers and what the hell does that say about you, asshole?”
“You kicked me out of the family! Mom and Dad kicked me out of the family but you—”
“Oh, my God! I get left behind to get eaten; Daddy drops a fucking nuke on my ass… Oh, I forgot, before we even get to the serious stuff, I have to kill some asshole your peaceful Galactic Darhel sent to scrag an eight-year-old! Poor old you! The Bane Sidhe were there! Where the hell were your precious Gal—”
“I was in exile! I was the useless one, sent off like a spare tire! Just because I have been able to make something of myself, you cannot stand — And you are just one person! The galaxy has to stop because you are in danger? While billions—”
“Billions more than would have died without your murdering fucking civilized Dar—”
“Always with the Darhel! The Darhel are barely half a step more civilized than your Bane Sidhe! You think they are so powerful when really—”
“Powerful enough to kill billions of human beings! You’re so fucking ashamed of being human that—”
