by John Ringo
Rose and David were in front. In the back it was just him with Sheely and Karen. Karen was cool for a girl. She saw him put it on the seat, but shrugged instead of saying anything. She didn't look too sure about how her mom was acting, either. He kept Sheely distracted from what otherwise might have become a tempting toy by making faces at her until she laughed. He kept her busy as they went out from town and onto park land, which had grown up wild but you had to go through to get to the parking lots.
The rain made the road slippery so when the car passing them hit them in the side, it knocked them into the canal. The water wasn't deep, but there was really no way to get clear of the car before the men with guns came for them.
"So about all we've got now is running the DNA, pulling the winner in and squeezing him like a zit."
"Picturesque, Cally, but yeah, that's basically it."
They were so used to food made of varying combinations of corn, soy, eggs, and cheese now that they didn't even bitch, and it was a strangely silent crew who sat and picked at their morning meal. What was there to say? Each of them wanted to explode outward in violent rage at the bastards who murdered the Maise family, but the rage was focused in a circle of frustration. Did they have somebody inside who'd burned the safe house?
They knew the coals of rage would grow to white fury as consciousness returned and they absorbed more detail throughout the day. Right now, however, it was oh-five-thirty-something and they were, despite not having been able to actually sleep, groggy with morning.
For now, they sat and glumly shoveled in their morning fuel, an action that they interrupted, almost relief, to dive as one for their buzzing, beeping, or vibrating buckleys.
"O'Reilly's office?" Harrison asked unnecessarily as all four of them were moving in the same direction like fingers on the same hand.
Cally's anger was a palpable thing, like half-molten rock that had taken up residence inside her gut and was fast building its twin in her brain. She was allowing the feelings free rein now on the theory that getting them out of her system would help when it came time to lock everything down and take care of business. She knew that was just an excuse. Things like this didn't get out of your system. To complicate things, she was, and knew she was, having a mother bear response to the murder of the children until she looked out on the world through a red mist, needing someone to kill. Letting the emotion run away inside her like this was not good, but for once it just wasn't responding to her attempts to exercise training and lock it down anyway.
She looked at the cold professionalism on the face of the rest of the team and felt ashamed for her weakness, not knowing that every one of them was looking at her the same way. While she was unable to imprison her feelings in icy compartmentalization, her face had responded to muscle memory and training, forming a mask of stone except for a tiny, almost imperceptible tic at the corner of her lower lip.
Aware of everything, deviating for nothing, the team stalked upward through the Sub-Urb-style base, a wolf pack, albeit a pack with an acute sense of the emotional hole where their missing member should be.
The sense of oneness disintegrated abruptly as they entered their superior's office and beheld the spectacle that was unfolding live on HV, with the gruesome gleefulness only those in the news business can display when provided with especially lurid fodder.
Cally sank into one of the chairs around the tank, others of which were already occupied by the priest and the Indowy Aelool. Without speech or thought, the two Schmidts split right and left, taking station on opposite sides of the room, while Tommy moved to stand behind Nathan's left elbow.
"One of ours?" she asked, ashen.
"Niece," O'Reilly said shortly.
The reporter stood outside the police tape, saying they couldn't show some of the images they had taken on HV, and asking parents to send the children out of the room for the ones they were willing to show—after coming back from a commercial break, of course. Cally reflected on how much she did not give a shit about stupid breath mints at the moment.
"They got the mother, too." The priest was wooden, the Indowy inscrutable.
"Let me guess. One of ours was close to his sister," Tommy said.
"One of the DAGgers. His twin."
"The evidence from the scene would inevitably 'disappear,' " O'Reilly said. "So we'll get there first. I'm sending you a list of possibles to fill out your team. Pick a cyber and get ready to do a collection run for tonight. You'll take the equipment to preserve it, you'll take as long as it takes to shake the bastards—who are no doubt drawing us exactly for the purpose of locating more of our network and this base. I think if they had us here, we'd already have gotten a visit. Get as open as you have to without leaving anyone behind. Concealment would be nice, but is a low second to recovery and egress."
He looked at the tank in disgust and loathing. "Turn it off," he said. "Don't watch this excrement. Go sort through your options, my recommendations are there. Get prepped for a busy night."
"She's cherry as hell," George grumped as they viewed the holo of the eleventh candidate and looked over her profile.
"Yeah, but she's cute. Her other quals are good, but don't underestimate cute. You can dress it down as needed, but making someone inherently prettier is hard. It's an unfair world. Our job is to make it even more unfair—for the enemy." Cally pushed her hair back behind her ear. It didn't cooperate. The bitch of shorter hair was that it fell into her face easier than when it was long, and damned if she was going to go around in barrettes like a prepubescent schoolgirl.
"She looks . . . sweet," Tommy said dubiously.
"She's not. Look at her aggressor record," she said. Cally had been to the same school the candidate had just graduated from. It didn't make her biased, as far as she could see, but it did mean she had a much clearer idea of how to translate the candidate's training record and evaluations into a big picture of actual performance. In this case, one of the final tests of a senior's temperament came when they were assigned to act as enemies and opponents in the training exercises of junior high and underclassman girls. A student who couldn't be thoroughly vicious to trainees, in the right way, and without breaking them, would have bad marks for aggressive-mindedness, and might even have been rolled back a year to see if maturation could train it out. Usually not.
This girl, on the other hand, not only had top marks in that area, but the graders had included notes on some particularly evil twists the young lady had devised for her hapless victims. All constituting good training, of course. Cally liked her instantly.
"Whew. Nasty. And a decent athlete, for a non-upgrade." George nodded.
"She's in," Tommy echoed.
"Works for me," Harrison said. "She's mostly cyber support, in case anyone had forgotten. She's solid. I'll take creativity over rote grades any day."
"Amy Sands it is. For now." Cally nodded, adding her blessing to the girl who would sub into Papa's slot. The girl's golden brown hair and rosy cheeks just radiated midwestern wholesomeness. The kind of girl next door that nobody actually got to live next door to. They should be so lucky.
"Are you through sealing her fate?" her buckley asked.
"What's up?"
"There's a courier from Edisto. Non-urgent, he said. Wouldn't hear of interrupting you, he said. It's not my fault that everything's going to fall apart from the late message. I told him I'd put him through, but no . . ."
"Shut up, buckley. Where the hell is he?"
"In the cafeteria when he called me, having a beer with a few of the guys from DAG," the machine told her. "I'm sure by now he's told them half the secrets of the whole island, and the latest gossip, too. But no, it wasn't urgent, he said."
"A few beers with . . . wait, is this the same courier?" Tommy asked sharply. He didn't wait for an answer, but began striding down the hall at a fast walk.
Given his height, Cally had to jog to keep up. "Is who the same courier?" she asked.
"I don't understand the question. Same
courier as what?" the buckley asked.
"Oh, you wouldn't know." The big man shook his head. "The guy who brought the message about the Maises was . . . loquacious. Even without alcohol. I don't know what he's carrying, but beer, other guys, and mister diarrhea mouth doesn't sound like a good combination."
"Why wasn't he benched?" Cally asked sharply.
"Hadn't gotten to it yet. Mosovich and Mueller knew, so they would have taken care of it, it's just . . ." He trailed off, shrugging.
"He's carrying a girl," buckley volunteered helpfully. "Well, not carrying her carrying her. He brought one with him."
It had that worried tone it got when it couldn't think of any specific disaster to predict. Cally resisted the bizarre urge to reassure it.
The gentleman in question looked up expectantly as they entered the cafeteria, which was otherwise mostly empty, she noticed gratefully.
The four other men pulled up around the table were unfamiliar to Cally, but her practiced eye would have made them for military, even if she hadn't otherwise known. If there had been any doubt, it would have been cleared up when the eyes of one of them widened and he set down the beer, sitting sharply to attention, followed a split second later by the others. The courier remained in a slump with a grin of "I've got a secret" on his fat face.
"Ma'am, about the Maises—"
"I take it you've heard the news," Cally said. She walked over to the courier and yanked him up by his collar until he was dangling off the ground. One hand slipped in to his front pocket and pulled out two data cubes. She tossed them to Tommy, then looked the dangling courier in the eye. "Do you know who I am? Given that you've apparently blabbed and gossiped your way across half the country?"
"Gurk?"
"I'll take that for a yes," she hissed, holding up a hand like a knife. "Right now I'm looking for someone to kill. I'd prefer five people who killed one of our dependent families. Barring that, anyone will do. What I don't need is couriers going around delivering unsolicited information and making my life harder than it already was. What I'm contemplating, somewhat seriously, is just driving this up into your chest and ripping out your still beating heart. Do I make my point?"
"Gurk?"
"Go to your quarters, do not communicate, do not leave, I'll deal with you later." Cally dropped him unceremoniously and watched him scurry out of the cafeteria. "Do you know who I am?" she asked without turning to look at the foursome.
"Yes, ma'am," one of them answered.
"If your friends are wallowing in ignorance, they are now allowed access to that compartment," Cally said coldly. "To answer your interrupted question, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are riding. The Darhel have apparently declared open warfare on Clan O'Neal. Which gives us our hunting license."
"Oo-rah," one of the DAG murmured.
"You'll be given target lists as soon as they're prepared," Cally said, still looking towards the entrance. "But you'll have to pass on the really juicy ones."
"Why?" one of the soldiers challenged.
"Because they are mine," Cally purred.
Chapter Thirteen
Pinky allowed himself to be introduced to the new lady, Lish. She looked like it was her first time here at Bane Sidhe base—he'd learned this whole place was a headquarters for a whole underground resistance to Darhel oppression. Underground both ways, like a Sub-Urb and like spies. He also figured he'd better get to like it here. Since they had to tell him, they might not let him leave until he was an adult. He hadn't bothered to ask. If they said anything except that he had to stay, was he gonna believe them? Eyes open, mouth closed. First rule of spying. Besides, the blonde lady had said she was going to kill the people that killed Mom and Joey. And Jenny, he reminded himself.
Cally. That was her name. When she promised, her eyes had looked like some of the other guys in his dad's unit sometimes did. He believed her.
Lish, the new lady, was nothing like Cally. For one thing, he'd bet she was really as young as she looked. For another, she didn't seem very smart. The big thing, though, was that if Cally ever looked as uncomfortable as Lish looked right now, Pinky would bet a dollar she'd be faking it.
It seemed like it was just Mrs. Mueller's day to get stuck with new people. He shrugged it away and ran off to play with Davey and Pat.
"All set," Amy Sands was clearly thrilled with her first professional assignment, as well she might be. There was no more prestigious operational team than the one that held both senior O'Neals, three if you counted Tommy Sunday, and not just because they were damned good. It was the other way around. The other Bane Sidhe respected the O'Neals so much because so many of them were so good.
Tommy moved in to check her work, the task being both necessary and in the way of a final technical interview. A row of buckleys sat on the battered desk in front of them, each lined up, after many obfuscatory hops through the network, to make very sincere, urgent police calls in a short period of time.
He had handled the hack into the police computers himself, as there was more risk of getting caught. The run had yielded a list of forensic evidence collected and where it all was presently.
While the Organization didn't have anyone inside this particular station—had few people inside any stations—they did have extensive records on who could be bribed where. These days, the list was long as hell, and they might have done better to compile a list of who couldn't be bribed. The right payoffs were already in the right hands, plans in place to deal gently with any honest officers who couldn't be avoided along the way.
Throughout the O'Neal Bane Sidhe, other teams were preparing for other missions in their areas of specialty. Cleaning teams did a phenomenal job of forensics work when there was a call for it, as now. Professionals thoroughly schooled to leave no evidence at a scene were adept at finding bits others had missed.
This was probably the nicest of the offices available to operations, which meant it was usually booked solid by office staff and other chair warmers in the hierarchy. Some things never changed. The proximity to the holidays had made for a rare vacancy. The non-field staff hadn't been recalled, which had kept it that way. The chairs were all in good repair, and the walls had been tuned as a project by one of the Sohon kids with decent taste.
"Don't get used to such palatial surroundings, Amy. This is the first time I've gotten the good office in a couple of years, and it'll probably be that long before we luck out again."
"Got it." She grinned at him. "Everything okay?"
"Sweet. Some of the wrinkles in the data hops are creative and clever. I wouldn't have thought of dynamically routing through machines for sale on auction sites. Excellent," he said. "Byron, get me Cally."
"Easier said than done, boss; she is one hot lady. Should I be jealous? Connecting. . . ."
"All set?" he heard Cally ask him, the 2-D of her on the small screen showing a damp face, her hair in a towel in that wrap thing women did.
"A-ffirmative," Tommy confirmed. "And Papa's gonna have a run for his money when he comes back. Miss Sands here is one hot-shit electron mechanic."
"Amy," the sweet soprano corrected from the background.
"Yeah, well, anyway, Amy passes with flying colors, we're good to go on our end," he said.
"Roger that. Golden on our end, too. Chill or rack out or whatever, meet in room twenty-eight delta foxtrot at eighteen hundred. Got it?" Cally asked.
"Check. Twenty-eight delta foxtrot, eighteen hundred. Later, I'm out."
"So what do I do between now and eighteen hundred? Oh, and Sands is okay, too." Amy grinned at him again. "Just please no 'miss'—it makes me feel like James Bond's Moneypenny."
"Right. Sorry, Sands. Do whatever you want, within common sense. I'm probably going to be playing Diess Challenge."
"I haven't played it yet. Is it any good?" she asked, more avidly than he would have expected. "I've heard mixed reviews."
"It's got a few rendering bugs in places, and don't PvP on the Galactic side unless you're prepared
to lose. There are some God King exploits that totally screw Galactics. There's supposed to be a patch coming, but . . ." he began automatically, then paused. "I'd rate it a four out of five."
"She shoots, she scores," Amy said, popping to her feet and grinning. "See you at eighteen hundred, boss-man."
George Schmidt's own mother wouldn't have recognized him—black hair, dark brown contact lenses, skin tone bronzed to a level his own fair complexion would never support. His features had been altered by the tried-and-true contoured cheekbone pads. The make-up department had subtly altered lips, eyes, brow line, ears and nose with expert application of a long-wearing, highly localized astringent. Among other tricks, they had even managed to give him a mild, temporary case of acne. Juvs tended to be immune, as did anyone who could afford and paid for the vaccine. Acne was a near guaranteed way to camouflage a juv for a short stint. It would be gone by morning.
In this case, they had designed the acne and other facial changes to both put him squarely in the college student age bracket, as well as feed false data to any facial geometry analysis tools.
Cally and Sands had undergone similar treatments. It saved the trouble and risk of having to hack out too much police security holo. Body changes were thermal. Costuming had pulled out all the stops. Local police systems tended to be difficult to fool. That didn't mean it couldn't be done, it just made the cover process more expensive than the Bane Sidhe usually liked to shell out these days. Cost was not a factor on tonight's missions, for their team or anyone else's.
The car they had brought for insertion was a typical anonymous beige of the kind currently in vogue among the feds, down to the detail of being between three to five years old—and having interior cop car construction, complete to the back seat and valid government tags.
Cally looked George over thoroughly before looking at his brother. "Will we do?" she asked.
"Flawless," Harrison said. "Oops, bro, you've got a string." He reached down and clipped a hanging thread from the bottom of his smaller sibling's T-shirt.
