by John Ringo
The intern jumped. A scrubber was another name for a common interrogation drug that had the side effect of memory loss of several days prior. Cally could see the consequences of forgetting his past forty-eight hours, and that must be a wrench in this case.
"Sorry, son," she said, turning to the doctor. "I know you would, anyway, but please put him on retroactive leave, not charged to him, and generally do all you can to blunt the consequences." She looked back at the young man. "Before he gives it to you, in these kinds of cases it's common to debrief you of any important information or appointments you may have to or want to compensate for."
The kid relaxed immediately, and with her wealth of life experience, Cally suspected the concern was a girl. Bummer. She suppressed a smile.
"I'll let you know anything I can as soon as I get it," she promised the surgeon. "And now I have to go."
Cally was in a new room from the one she usually had at base. Her old one was bigger, with a connecting door, and hence had been assigned out to one of the dependent families. She'd been too busy to do more than get the number from her buckley, although of course somebody had carted up her steamer trunk of on-base clothes and gear.
The room smelled dusty, although it had clearly been cleaned and vacuumed, since the marks were still on the carpeting. This had probably just made the dust worse, and she sneezed as she walked in and flipped on the light. She hadn't expected voice activation in these quarters.
The bedspread was whole, but grayed out as if a newer one had long been traded out someplace else, and the furniture style was late-period Bane Sidhe dinged up. No holoprojection center to play cubes. That was not really a big deal, as her buckley was fully loaded and had the capability to project a cube point seven five meters on a side rather than the usual ten centimeters. The only thing that sucked about it was buckley had this annoying habit of talking during the holo, and her efforts to shut him up had spotty results, at best.
Right now, she didn't have any need for a holo, because her sister was standing in the middle of the room.
"Hi. How are you?" Cally asked her, because she certainly couldn't tell from the mentat's placid exterior, immaculate if dull brown robe, not a hair out of place in the bun on her head, except that said bun was now held in place by a pair of red and gold enameled chopsticks. "Nice do," she nodded towards the hair. On Michelle, anything colorful or personal was a major fashion statement.
"You really like them? They were a pres—" She sighed. "Busy. Very busy, which is why I have not spoken to you until now about matters I really wish I could have given you all possible time to prepare for. I truly had no idea how widespread and general the pogroms against the Indowy Bane Sidhe were. It appears that many Darhel drew the same conclusion at once. The number of refugees coming to Earth is much larger than I had originally believed."
"How much larger?" Cally asked. "We haven't got unlimited resources."
"Several thousand," Michelle said. "Up to and including major clan leaders."
"Michelle," Cally said angrily. "We can't support that. We especially can't support that given that those same Indowy cut us off not two months ago! We get support from them, not the other way around!"
"Your purpose is not support," Michelle said. "They are coming here because they are being hunted by humans. Your job is to keep them alive until we can calm the Darhel enough to reintegrate them or find some other place to put them. And it's not really up for discussion. I don't like being caught in your intrigues, but if you're going to catch me up in them at least give me credit for sense. The credits associated with this action are going to put the Clan in a very comfortable position. Not agreeing to protect them would cause a final disavowal of the Clan and quite probably give the Darhel the information as trade. There really is no choice in the matter. I must go."
With that she, as usual, vanished. The hoity-toity mentat-fuck.
Cally sank down onto the bed, dumbfounded.
"You are sooo screwed," her buckley said cheerfully.
"Yeah, buckley, this time I agree with you."
"Awww. You're no fun." It shut up on its own and Cally was sure it was pouting.
"We're getting what?" Father O'Reilly's face alternately purpled and turned ashen. "Callista, get the Indowy Aelool. Tell him it's urgent." He looked up at Cally again. "And it is urgent. The only irreplaceable thing in the universe is time."
"You say she couldn't tell you more about the number of refugees than 'several thousand'?" he asked.
"No sir." Cally sat without being invited because the shock was still hitting her and she decided she really, really needed to.
"And all you got was an order to take care of them somehow and negotiating power to do it. The latter isn't small, mind you, it's just a question of whether it can be done." He rubbed his hand worriedly as if fingering a rosary around his neck. "We can't buy that much food, let alone move it around, but we're going to have to get in motion what we can do, and now." He looked at Cally helplessly. "All our evacuation plans postulate temporary dispersion to hiding, and then exfiltrating by dribs and drabs into various rogue city states, in the hope of rebuilding somehow, and we don't know how. Can Clan O'Neal help at all?"
As he asked this, the small Indowy clan head entered the office, ears nearly flat with concern. "Your AID said you sounded very worried."
To those who knew how to read Indowy expressions, and by now Cally was an expert, "very worried" was an understatement. One she agreed with.
"First off, let me make quite clear that any help Clan O'Neal gives in any way in anything remotely touching on this whole problem does not constitute adopting or taking responsibility for anyone." She fixed Aelool with a stern stare. "Your customs aren't ours. Aliens are alien. Got it. You get it that there will be no misunderstandings here. Anybody who's not our responsibility and in our Clan right now does not become our responsibility by any of this. By 'any of this' I mean any event we say is associated with this. Are we all absolutely clear on that?" She looked at the priest, and then back to Aelool.
"Yes, absolutely," Aelool said.
Father O'Reilly nodded. Cally O'Neal angry was a formidable thing. "Crystal," he said.
She thought about the other DAGgers on base. Some of the Indowy might be very useful to have at some point, even if it did entail responsibility. She'd better be clear on that, too. "Also, that does not completely rule out us adopting any person or persons at a later date, but if we do, it will be a specific invitation and by that I mean what we say is a specific invitation. You will respect that our alien minds are alien to you as well. Get it?"
She waited for both to respond in the affirmative before continuing.
"Good. Now that that's straight, Edisto Island is overloaded with the number of DAGger families we can handle without anyone noticing from satellite or air. That is, if they're looking, and we have to presume they will be."
Nathan O'Reilly sunk his head in his hands, drawing them down his face as he absorbed the grim truth.
"I understand the need to evacuate. If we make this place Grand Central station, it will be found. Especially given our little war with the Tir's people right now," she said.
"The only other large, covert organization I know of who has the resources to help at all are the Tong, and they may not take the job, and even if they do, they don't come cheap," she said. "Especially when they know you're desperate."
"If it is a matter of debt—" Aelool began.
"The Tong aren't like the Darhel. They will not hold your debt at interest, or at least not for long. They couldn't care less about politically controlling you, they just want money and power. Their own kind of power, not the Darhel's. They want sufficient power and control to support and further their efforts to make money," Cally told him. His expression was so bewildered that she thought she'd better at least sort of explain.
"It's what they do," she said. It was all the explanation she had without going into a lot of what would be xenopsych to the Indowy, and s
he wasn't even sure it was possible for him to get his head around the concept, because all they had experience of in business was the Darhel.
"They are going to insist on being paid regular payments, sufficiently large to pay off the debt in a set period of time. No, don't relax. Think human lifespan without rejuv. I am almost certain they will not take a debt schedule that takes more than thirty years to pay off completely."
The alien looked shocked and even a little offended, and Cally couldn't help thinking "welcome to the real world." Even the Indowy Aelool tended to assume it was humanity's job to understand the minds of the Galactics and adjust to them, rather than each Galactic race having an equal need to understand humans. They looked down on what they thought of as vicious, primitive omnivores, and then got surprised whenever it came back to bite them in the ass. Despite the gravity of the situation, Cally couldn't help but take small satisfaction in that.
"I might could negotiate something," she said. "I don't know what, I don't know how much, and I don't even know if. Michelle was right about one thing, though. Our vital interests are at stake here. I know I've got negotiating power for the refugees. Do I have it for you?" She looked at O'Reilly and Aelool in turn, ensuring their agreement. Her buckley was recording nonverbal gestures of assent, anyway. She didn't strictly need them to say it out loud as long as they were clear.
"Fine. It's easier if I send a courier to fetch my husband, if possible, since I need to be here probably more than he needs to be wherever he is. I happen to know he's on Earth indefinitely, anyway. It's business. Potentially big business. Even if he doesn't get a deal, the Tong will be content with him trying." She brushed at her hair nervously with one hand. "No, on second thought, I'll meet him partway. Like you said, time's irreplaceable. It's quicker and easier if we don't have to take him through a bunch of special rigamarole to get him in here." She waved her hand, indicating the base.
"Is anyone sorry I'm married, now?" she asked sweetly, not waiting for a reply as she left.
James Stewart, aka Yan Kato, reflected on how much trouble he'd be in if his employers knew he'd given his wife this extensive a list of their network of safe meeting places. A business organization like the Tong ran on negotiations and deals. Each organization to its nature: the Bane Sidhe needed safe houses; the Tong needed privacy for business. Of course, he'd be in lethal trouble if they knew he had a wife, and who she was. However, in this case, it was going to make them a buttload of money.
This meeting place was especially well camouflaged, because while it was a restaurant, one ordinarily did not associate the Tong with places like Harry's Barbecue Palace in West Bumfuck Indiana, even if one knew the owner's wife was Chinese. At nineteen hundred, it was pitch dark outside except for a couple of parking lot lights and the great big pink neon sign on the roof outside, announcing the name of the place to any of the locals too braindead to remember it or, more optimistically, to stray travelers coming in off the interstate.
Pine trestle tables had a thick coating of some kind of clear varnish. Stewart supposed they could afford real pine because it was the quickest growing, lowest grade of wood there was. Ceiling fans churned slowly above, despite the season, to circulate the patrons' after-dinner smokes. A cheap plastic carnation sat in an equally cheap vase beside a steel napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers, barbecue sauce and ketchup. He really loathed this shit, but he wasn't going to criticize his wife's choice of restaurant. He'd just order a cheeseburger and be done with it. He looked at the menu and winced at the prices for real meat.
His wife walked in the fire exit of the meeting room, all five foot ten of luscious. He really hated it that their belated honeymoon had been cut short, but acknowledged wryly that the miracle was that it wasn't cut short sooner. He had seen pictures of her before, but the only Cally he had ever known wore the body of one Captain Sinda Makepeace for a cover role seven and a half years ago. If, probably when, Cally got her real body back, it would be a major change for him to adjust to. The original Cally was also quite beautiful, not that he was biased. It would just be like she was in a new, different body to him, while it would be going back to the same original one for her. The original had smaller tits, among other things, but he really looked forward to exploring all the differences himself, whenever.
Part of him was regretful for what he was about to do to her. Part of him had that competitive buzz that he mentally slapped himself for, but that was there regardless. The sad truth was, his wife totally sucked at business, and whoever sent her out to negotiate a major deal had to be a fucking moron. However, she had already told him that she was negotiating for a bunch of Indowy clans, not even for the O'Neals, so he had zero conflict of interest in taking them for all he could wring out of her. Which would be a lot.
The truth, which she couldn't possibly know, was that he had already made the beginnings and inquiries of expanding the Tong's new shipping venture completely on their side. It became very profitable to smuggle from various unreclaimed parts of the world when truly competent people were available for hire to kill Posleen, rather than the usual crop of low-grade mercenaries. One of the hitches in the plan had been lack of available labor that could be spared from the network, disappeared from where it was, and relocated to the new ventures. Indowy worked like little green labor machines, and if the Bane Sidhe were evacuating their base, they'd be evacuating their admittedly few Sohon tanks, tools, and other necessaries, which would then also become available for hire. Hey, any covert GalTech production availability was priceless. He mentally rubbed his hands together.
Then there was the slab. Dear God let her be naïve enough to undervalue the use of the slab. He was, alas, confident that his prayers would be answered. He suppressed a grin and slapped himself again. Then again, a man was supposed to enjoy taking advantage of his wife. Boy was she gonna be pissed when she caught him. He was pretty sure he would survive this. Pretty sure. He'd just explain that it hadn't been her money, what a good job it did of setting his employers' minds to rest about his loyalty, and how much less likely the Tong was to kill him when they eventually found out about the marriage. That's it. Present it as a when. It was close enough to true, anyway. Yeah, he was pretty sure.
There was a reason he watched her stock picks and portfolio very carefully. It wasn't that she was dumb. Far from it. She just had no idea of the economic value of things beyond casual consumer purchases and light, backpack-level smuggling. And, poor girl, she trusted him.
"Good evening, Mr. Yan," Michelle said as she slid into the booth with Cally.
"Oh . . . shit."
Chapter Twenty
"She's here," Cally's buckley said, reading from the sticky camera dot Cally had posted above the door jam outside.
Cally had elected to meet Sands in her quarters. For a one-on-one briefing, there was no point reserving or otherwise taking up a room, and in here she could offer some coffee from her own black-market stock. The place was shabby, but it wasn't like any of them were used to better.
Despite the bobble on Mr. Casanova, Cally still really liked the younger girl. She was devious, evil, and nasty—while looking so harmless. Those were traits the older assassin could respect. She was also a damned talented cyber and had been working the problem of the dependent murders to track down the people who most needed to be dead. Initially.
She was as impatient for this appointment as she was every day. Every day one of the cybers—Sands, Tommy, or someone else if necessary—briefed her in on where the investigation was. She couldn't have claimed this privilege as lead of a field team—not unless tasked with the particular mission. Need to know applied. As acting clan head of Clan O'Neal, Cally had a "need to know" for just about anything she damned well pleased, and was using it liberally. It felt like abusing the privilege, but it wasn't. The additional responsibilities sat poorly on her shoulders, but they were hers nonetheless, and she really did need to know this shit. Besides, even though the official hierarchy had standards for defining o
perational need to know, Granpa would normally have been available to sort through the crap and—on his own authority—brief her in on anything likely to be tasked in their direction well in advance.
Gaming out the possibilities helped get the team a head start on operational planning. In her professional opinion, this had saved the lives of one or more of her people at least twice.
"Thanks, buckley." Cally was opening the door to her quarters before Sands even knocked.
This usually spooked people a little, but Amy just glanced over the door and nodded infinitesimally. Yep. The girl definitely had the makings of a professional. Sands' poker face, however, needed work. Cally wouldn't have expected the girl to do anything so, well, girly, as bubble with excitement, but she was.
"We got him," Amy said without preamble.
"Which one? And what kind of 'got'?" Cally asked.
Sands walked over and pulled out the chair from the small desk, turning it around to sit down while her team leader perched on the edge of the bed.
"The Maise puker surfaced arrested for DUI in Akron," the cyber said.
The scumbag in question had earned his sobriquet by leaving his lunch on the floor while taking part in the massacre of the Maise family. The killers had wiped it up, but you couldn't get all that stuff out without a cleaner team or someone equally thorough. His DNA was, of course, all through the residue. They had found his identity fairly quickly with a simple hack and database search, but that said nothing about where he was.
His arrest in Akron, however, had resulted in the police taking a sample and running it against the federal identity protection system, which ostensibly existed to protect people from consumer fraud but was a far better example of the state of things in the post-war United States. The search of the database and resultant match had triggered a nice little bit of code that alerted the Bane Sidhe cyberpunks who had been seeking him. The puker was now in a known location, and wasn't going anywhere until someone bailed him out, which couldn't happen until after he was arraigned. This left a narrow window to move on the man and scoop him up. The priority was to take this one alive. The puker was a valuable property, under the theory that anybody so soft as to puke out his guts during a hit was a complete amateur and would crack like an egg. Sure, the puker would die, but only after he'd given them everybody else involved.
