Honor of the Clan lota-10

by John Ringo

  The entire process of clearing the upper floor of the house had taken less than thirty seconds.

  In the kitchen, he and Kerry watched the top of the stairs while Landrum and Schmidt made the descent to the basement, returning momentarily with the civilian man and the boy. Pinky, Tramp reminded himself. This wasn’t just any civilian child. This was the son of one of the guys in his unit.

  “They killed Jenny,” the boy said, face pinched with fear and fatigue. The safe house — and wasn’t that a sick joke — guy didn’t look so hot either, and no wonder.

  Tramp raised an eyebrow at Landrum, who was again firmly seated in “professional” mode.

  “Kid next door. Thought it was him.” He nodded at the small boy.

  A little surprising, but if the body was messy, obviously possible.

  “We’re out of here.” Schmidt said. “You two with me. Just keep your mouths shut and walk with me, ignore my talking, get in the car that pulls up.”

  The civilians with their team lead, Kerry, Michaels, and Landrum proceeded along their own exit paths, keeping alert for any attempt on the survivors between house and cars. Tramp hated this exit plan. It left the survivors too out in the open, the brief passage down the driveway being an eternity if a competent shot was watching the house. He’d been overruled. Broad daylight; suburbia. Sometimes mission requirements put you in a sub-optimal situation.

  He was still relieved when the car with the two Schmidts and the civilians got off, while equally apprehensive about the exposure of the car.

  As he and Kerry pulled into the post-extraction rendezvous, he was damned glad to see the car with the dependent had made it, and reflected that compared to the more open work of DAG, this resistance shit sucked. But they got the surviving dependent out, and the safe house dude, which was a win to take home.

  Boarding the van to make the final leg of the trip back to base, Kerry caught his eye. Both men were thinking the same thing. Fucked up resistance ROEs or not, they wanted in on the op when these Bane Sidhe found the bastards that did the wife and other son.

  They were real good guys. Finding Maise’s wife and older son in large pools of congealed blood, finding the “message” symbol left on the wall — George didn’t know if they recognized it as a mafia symbol or not. It didn’t matter. They all knew who’d really sent it. The third body turned out to be that of a little girl from next door. He didn’t envy the clean-up crew’s job in dealing with that. A “disappearance” of a child was often worse than having the police find the body. Ten to one, the crew would have her buried in a shallow grave somewhere and get the police an anonymous tip. Some time after that, after business had been taken care of, the family would probably get a cryptic notification hinting at the destruction of the perpetrators. Nothing was without risk. In this case, the kid had gotten caught in the crossfire of their war. That it was all of humanity’s war would mean nothing to Jenny Sorenson’s parents. Arranging for them to get the body back, along with a small sense of justice, was the least the organization could do. The Sorensons would probably interpret the justice notification as coming from a rival organized crime faction. The Bane Sidhe would do their best to subtly encourage that assumption.

  “I’d like the things in the trunk if at all possible. Family mementos,” Andreotti said.

  The assassin kept a neutral face and told the middle-aged man that he’d inform the clean-up crew. The crew would know to go over every damned thing in the box and catalog it, tagging any suspect items for restriction to base. “Family mementos” of one sort or another gave nightmares to internal security staff as they managed a highly multigenerational conspiracy. The pre-recontact human Bane Sidhe numbers had been small. Mostly, it was a very few interconnected families who tended to have multigenerational relationships with certain factions in certain organizations — as, say, the sub-faction in the Society of Jesus. Contrary to the broadest and longest standing conspiracy theories, the generations of Bane Sidhe sleepers had rarely been Freemasons.

  It wasn’t the best room for interviewing a kid, Schmidt reflected. It was your standard boring, windowless, institution-green, Galplas room, with four battered, chewing-gum colored, folding chairs and not much else. One for him, one for Saunders, one for Pinky Maise, and one for the grief counselor who was supposed to make a kid who’d just lost his mother and brother feel “comfortable.” While George allowed that the pretty young thing — pretty juv thing, really — could make him more comfortable any time, he doubted Anne Veldtman was doing much for the kid.

  The impression was confirmed when the kid looked at her and said, politely, “Ma’am, you’ve been really nice and everything, but would it be okay if I just talked to these guys by myself?” The five-year-old had a small child’s gravity that would have been cute under other circumstances.

  George reminded himself of Caspar Andreotti’s debrief indicating that this kid was anything but cute, and would not only resent being treated like the little kid he was, but would also be likely to hide his intelligence behind a juvenile facade if thus treated. With the result that they could miss some critical data.

  Veldtman started to object, but went quietly when Saunders jerked his head towards the door. That was one thing about a disciplined organization. You didn’t tend to get many people who would let sentiment override orders. Orneriness, yes. Sentiment, no. This was Saunders’ show. George was only along for the ride as a second check to make sure nothing of operational value was missed.

  After she left, Pinky focused his intent gaze on George. “You’re one of the guys who got us out. Thanks,” he said. “You look kinda like a kid, but you’re not.”

  The subtext was subtle as a sledgehammer. The Maise kid was asserting that he, also, was much less a kid than he looked. George didn’t know about that, but he glanced at Saunders and gave a slight shrug. In his limited experience of children, they reacted better to adults who didn’t patronize them.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “Okay, Maise,” Saunders was a pretty good interrogator, and opened by addressing the kid the way he would an adult in the military subculture. “Andreotti tells us there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, so I’m gonna treat you just like anybody else. That work for you?”

  “Yeah,” Pinky said.

  “Okay, tell me about today from the time you got up to the time the team came and got you. Try not to leave anything out, but don’t worry too much. I’ll be asking you a lot of questions after to pull out all the details. Get it? Go,” Saunders gestured to the kid — Maise, George corrected himself — to begin.

  “At least five attackers,” Pinkie said, looking into the distance. His eyes tracked back and forth as if he was reseeing the entire incident. “Basement, four. Three male, one female. Weapons: Nine-millimeter semi-automatics. Silenced…”

  It was a hell of a thing for a kid to go through. But it slowly crept in on George that they weren’t dealing with a kid. Pinkie was more like a forty-year-old stuck in a five-year-old’s body. One with a surprising memory for detail regarding the assassins, to the point that the Maise assured them he would be able to recognize their voices if he heard them again.

  Given the kid’s presence of mind and memory for detail, Schmidt believed him. By the time the five-year-old got through with his account, George found he had almost no questions. “Can you think of anything else?” just sounded… childish.

  Nathan O’Reilly raised an eyebrow at Dr. Vitapetroni, the head of the Bane Sidhe psych department, who had joined the organization’s director in his office to watch live holo of the interrogation. “Well?” he asked.

  “Don’t put him through the ordeal of hypnosis. I can’t get much, if anything, else out of him than that interrogation did. The child has a remarkably detailed memory. I don’t want him to feel like we’re questioning his sanity, and people often do feel exactly that. I don’t want to risk corrupting his memories with artifacts accidentally induced during the hypnotic process. There’s
no upside.” The psychiatrist shrugged.

  “All right. Then the next problem is where to put him for the night. I want to limit his outside contact without appearing to do so until we have this situation under much better control. Could he stay with me? Any problem putting him on my couch? Or do you want to put him up? I don’t recommend young Schmidt there. The child is obviously itching to pummel him with questions, and I’d rather not send a five-year-old’s head farther into the ideas of dishing out murder and mayhem than it already is.”

  “Given the personality type, the emotional age, and the formative experience, I think that’s a forlorn hope,” Vitapetroni said.

  “Probably. But not tonight. So, does he crash on your couch, mine, or do you have some other suggestion of someplace secure to put him up?” O’Reilly stood, taking his mug along by habit. He always put it in the office dishwasher himself, rather than leaving it to some assistant to come in and clean up after him.

  “He could go with Cap Andreotti.”

  “Andreotti has enough to deal with tonight on his own. I presume you will be seeing him soon in your professional capacity.” The priest paused in the break room, downing a cupful of tap water before dispensing with the mug.

  “First thing in the morning,” the doctor assured him.

  Chapter Ten

  “I’m sorry to isolate you from people your own age tonight, Pinky, but unfortunately I’d like to keep what happened out of general circulation until we’ve had more chance to respond to it,” the priest said.

  Pinky figured the guy for a juv. Older looking people deferred to him, and he didn’t have that happy look around the eyes like young-for-real grown-ups. No, happy wasn’t the word. Optimistic. That was one thing Pinky had noticed early about the world. The much older adults were much less enthusiastic about whatever was going to happen next in life than the younger adults. Since the older ones probably had a much better idea of what was really going on, this told him a lot about the world.

  He looked around O’Reilly’s living room. Holo tank, a well-stuffed couch that looked comfortable even though the arms were torn up like a cat scratched them a lot. He didn’t smell a litter box, so maybe the couch used to belong to somebody else. Three of the walls were a nice orange-pink, and the fourth was a green lighter than army stuff — a green that wasn’t ugly. There was a sink and microwave, and some shelves with food on them. It was all really clean, everything put away. He obviously didn’t have kids. Probably he was a Catholic priest. Pinky had heard they didn’t get married.

  He noticed a little ball with some feathers attached in a corner, barely sticking out from under the couch. Okay, so there was a cat.

  “Are you Catholic?” he asked. Then, without pause, “Oh, and thanks. I don’t really want to be around other kids tonight. They ask questions. I don’t wanna talk about it. I mean, except to other spies. I figure you’ll kill the people that did it. Are you a spy? And can you keep that lady off of me? She means well, but she’s bugging me.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of questions.” O’Reilly sat down on the arm of a chair and looked at him seriously. Pinky could sense that this man was not going to talk to him like a little kid.

  “First, yes, I’m Catholic. I’m a Jesuit—” He held up a finger as Pinky started to ask what that was. “If Miss Veldtman’s attention is upsetting you, you don’t have to be around her. As for whether I’m a spy or not, it depends on what you mean. Spying is a part of what we do here, but I don’t go out into the field. I run the place.”

  “I thought so,” the child said with a nod. “Everybody seems to listen to you, and it’s like you expect them to and never even think that maybe they won’t.”

  “I certainly hope they do. I’d be very bad at my job if they didn’t,” O’Reilly said.

  “Okay. I’m real tired. Can I go to bed now? I guess I get to sleep on the couch. That’s cool. And it’s okay if your cat sleeps out here some of the time. You don’t have to keep him in your room or something. Cats don’t like being boxed up.”

  “Her,” the priest corrected automatically, blinking a couple of times, obviously surprised that Pinky had noticed something so obvious as a cat.

  “Okay, her. Sorry. You must keep a really clean litter box, because I can’t smell it at all.”

  “It’s automatic.”

  Pinky decided to think about whether he needed to play dumb in front of these people or not.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” O’Reilly said.

  “Huh?”

  “The expression on your face just went from what’s obviously normal, for you, to a — and this is a professional statement as, yes, a spy — marginal copy of a typical five-year-old. I’m sorry if I did something to put you off, but I really wish you wouldn’t pretend. It’ll make my job a lot easier if you don’t. And I’m rather good at spotting it when people do.”

  Then it was Pinky’s turn to be surprised.

  In his bedroom, after the child was off to sleep, Nathan O’Reilly composed a message to go out immediately by courier. He hated to call her back in from vacation and recovery, but he needed Cally O’Neal, and Tommy Sunday as well, back yesterday.

  DAG was already pent-up, under-used and frustrated. Now someone was openly hunting their families.

  The word “disaster” didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Friday, January 1, 2055

  It had taken half a century, but Tommy Sunday had finally forgiven the game of football for its history with his father. Or vice versa. His father had been a linebacker before the war and before he had, presumably, been eaten by the Posleen in the scout landings at Fredericksburg. To say they had not gotten along would be putting it mildly. A huge man, like his father, Tommy had had absolutely no affinity for playing football. Computers, yes. Football, no. He had grudgingly participated in track, at his father’s insistence, as the condition of his pursuing his own interests.

  The Posleen had eaten his biological father but in time Tommy had found a new one, one who really understood him. His “old man” was, and would always be, Iron Mike O’Neal of the 555th — Papa O’Neal’s son who fought on, killing Posleen on world after world under Fleet Strike’s Darhel masters. The biggest tragedy of the war, in Sunday’s opinion, was the cold military necessity that Mike remain ignorant of the survival of his daughter, his father, his grandchildren, and the legion of half-siblings, nieces, nephews, and more who now served with distinction in the battle for humanity’s future.

  His psych called it “tranference.” Since Iron Mike was more a dad to him than his own father had ever been, it was, once again, okay to sit and watch football.

  Ohio State versus Wisconsin was going to be one hell of a match-up. Football wasn’t his favorite sport, not by far, but the small consolation prize from the return of satellites to Earth’s skies was the availability of college bowl games over Christmas. The run of available bowl games was still compressed, the selection of teams was still compressed, and it was all in holo now. Other than that, bowl games were still bowl games, and sitcoms, unfortunately, were still sitcoms.

  Rising to its ambitions, as well as the total destruction of the competition, Milwaukee still made the best beer in the world. Demand for some top-end product had improved the selection, though. There were brands that had come well beyond the old — ah, hell, the immigration of talented German beer-mistresses, recipes, yeasts and all, at the beginning of the Postie War had done wonders for Milwaukee.

  Mueller laughed at something on the sitcom and looked at him and Mosovich, shame-faced.

  “What? It was funny,” he said. “Only good line in the whole damn thing, but that one was pretty funny.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Mosovich had a grin playing around the edges of his mouth. “The fool could just ask her if she’s cheating. Most women can’t lie worth shit, contrary to reputation.” He chuckled. “Not if you’ve baselined them.”

  “You would use interrogation techniques on a girlfriend?” Tommy clapped a hand to his
heart. “I am shocked, shocked!” He opened his beer and hit the chill button on the next one before considering.

  “Don’t try it on Cally,” he warned. “She’ll use you baselining her to baseline you, and then mess with your head by showing you a completely different pattern from now until doomsday. No hesitations, nothing.”

  “Operator for decades. Got it,” Jake said. “ ‘We are spies of Borg. Resistance is futile. You’re already assimilated.’ ”

  The three men cheered when the pre-game show broke into the sitcom before the latter’s completion. The first run of commercials sent Tommy into the kitchen to refill the beer nuts and make microwave popcorn. One of the few uses of paper in modern times was the packaging of black-market popcorn up in Indiana. Cheaper than the legal stuff, it was still expensive enough that most people popped theirs the old way. Wendy’s hobby made it one of the little luxuries they could afford without rubbing their relative wealth in people’s faces. She and he both were fanatic about that, if only because “extra” money tended to attract family who needed help. With a whole island of family? No thanks.

  She’d also laid on the stuff for turkey and ham sandwiches, but it was too early for that.

  Commercials over, the pre-game show was a traditional time to shoot the shit. This was the primary reason for these two guys, in particular, sharing his den for the game today. Yeah, maybe he ought to be doing the officer-enlisted divide, but right now he considered it secondary to getting his new command together. He was making a point of keeping the handful of ships, his “Navy,” and his logistics support “tail” separate from DAG. A clear chain of command, and clear separations between his branches, was the only way to run this railroad. His new logistics and naval COs were guys he’d known perrsonally for years and were not his sons or grandsons. Jake Mosovich and David Mueller were unknown quantities. Not to mention the fact that despite his own background, either one had twice his experience.