Cally's War

by John Ringo

  "Now remember, to access the transmitter, you need to go to your photopak icon, open it, select help, then transmitting a photo. The application will let you transmit anything on your PDA or in the cube slot," he said.

  She helped him clean up the scene quickly, getting the now nameless woman squared away under the trash. She had to work carefully to avoid further mussing the uniform. The wet patch would look bad enough until it dried. And it felt clammy. Ick. It probably won't even be dry by the time we get up to the ship. I'm definitely going to need to stop in my quarters and change before I do anything else.

  "See you on Titan." She gripped his hand quickly and was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  Cally left the women's room and walked past Gra—the other cleaner, wishing him a nice day. The purple vinyl seats and purple and oatmeal carpet of the departure lounge showed the influence of a decorating fad that had been current seven years ago. Makepeace had left the laptop next to her seat. Her eyes scanned the lounge for a few seconds. There it was, next to the clumsy bald man, bless his heart. He was looking at her, and she tugged her right ear gently before looking away, dropping the hand.

  As she walked, her left hand came up and brushed at the side of her hair, as if she wasn't used to wearing it up. The seat had empty seats on either side, even though the lounge was starting to fill up with outbound passengers. She sat down and opened up her laptop. Getting into that now while she had a few minutes was the first thing. The clumsy bald guy got up and walked away.

  Booting it showed her it had an old operating system. Good. First thing to try is to see if it'll boot from the cube reader. She powered it down and back up with a test cube. Nice. It didn't fry it. Time to go for the cracker cube.

  As she was rebooting again a guy came up and stopped by the chair next to hers, clearing his throat nervously. Not now, you loser. I am not in the mood for pick up attempts. Aha! Right to the cracker cube window.

  "I—Is this seat taken?" he asked.

  "Unless you can lick your own eyebrows, it is," she snapped, using the cube utilities to reset the laptop's password and file permissions.

  To her great annoyance, he settled into the seat anyway and she had just turned her head to tell the pushy jerk off when he interrupted her.

  "How do you think I do my hair?" he said.

  Her mouth hung open for a minute before she snapped it shut, returning his salute a little dazedly. He was a slight man with straight dark hair. A lock of it looked like it would tend to fall down into his forehead. He had warm brown eyes you could fall right into, and he was way too young. But what really surprised her about him was that he was the kid shown in her briefings as General Beed's aide. She kept the recognition out of her eyes with an effort.

  "I'm sorry I was so crabby. I guess I'm a little nervous. Can we try that again? I'm Sinda Makepeace." She offered her hand.

  "Joshua Pryce. Is this your first time off Earth, ma'am?" His hand was warm and dry.

  She realized abruptly that he still had her hand and that she was staring. She snatched her hand back, flushing. A blush? Me? What the hell is that all about? I haven't blushed in years.

  "Uh . . . why yes, it is. My assignment's on Titan Base. I suppose I'm a little uncertain about flying in space. You know, all that space around you and no air to breathe." She shuddered. "It kinda gives me the willies."

  "Your name sounds familiar." His forehead wrinkled and he flipped open his PDA, pulling up a list. "Did you say your name was Sinda Makepeace, Captain?"

  "Why, yes, I did," she smiled, tilting her head at him curiously.

  "I thought I'd seen the name before. We've got the same boss on Titan. I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up working in the same office, ma'am." He pulled his eyes away from hers. For a second there it had seemed almost like he was staring into her soul.

  "Oh, you're working for General Beed, too?" she asked, smiling brightly.

  "Yes, ma'am." He looked at her earnestly, "Would—would it make you feel less nervous if I arranged to sit next to you on the flight up to the ship, ma'am?"

  "The company would be very pleasant, Lieutenant Pryce." She stretched slightly, straightening her back. Like those, do you? Dammit, girl, behave!

  * * *

  Sunday morning, May 26

  The nature of Federation space travel was that most of the travel time between stars was spent in normal space, "sublight" to laymen, reaching the ley-lines or paths between stars where access to hyperspatial regions was much easier. While it was possible to access hyperspace from anywhere, it was much more power-intensive, maximum speed was less, and exit point was somewhat random. That would allow in-system jumps, but the potential for losses in a crowded environment like the vicinity of Titan Base was prohibitive. The upshot was that where it would take only about six months to get from Earth to one of the inhabited planets in a relatively nearby system, travel in-system to Titan Base took a good eight days, or more, by Federation courier ship. It was their good fortune that presently Earth and Saturn were on the same side of the Sun. At maximum separation, it was nearly a month's voyage because of the need to detour around the Sun.

  The Galactic Federation tried to keep enough ships in transit between Earth and Titan that there was a minimum of one flight a week. This was not out of any particular love for Earth or humans. On the contrary, humans, being the only carnivorous sophonts in the Federation, were generally regarded as useful barbarians. Their usefulness consisted primarily in their ability to throw the Posleen off of conquered bits of real estate that the Galactics wanted back. The frequency of the ships was more to ensure that Fleet and Fleet Strike could move critical personnel around as needed between larger troop shipments than anything else.

  Fleet discouraged carry-on luggage on the shuttle. They preferred for anything that could shift around to be secured with the checked baggage. When Cally boarded with Sinda's purse and laptop, the pilot at the door, a Fleet captain in black, gave her a rather cold look. Whether at the state of her uniform or at the not one but two loose articles she didn't know. She responded with a sunny smile that shined out of her eyes, whispering over her shoulder to the lieutenant once they were past.

  "Bless his heart, the captain looks as if he could have used another cup of coffee this morning," she said.

  "Yes, ma'am." Pryce tripped, whether over an uneven place in the floor or his own feet she wasn't sure, but as he landed against her and used her shoulder to straighten himself, she got a whiff of clean male scent underlain with a hint of rut. Her nostrils flared as he apologized profusely. She told herself to ignore the slight clench of her belly.

  He's a baby. Remember the last one? The last thing you need on this mission is to give yourself away as a juv. Makepeace is not a juv. I'm twenty-three. Still, hands off the baby—no matter how good he smells.

  The interior of the shuttle greatly resembled that of a small airliner, with the exception that the seat belts were more functional—five point restraints rather than the airlines' pro-forma lap belts. Also, there was actual webbing overhead to strap in the few loose articles as needed, rather than overhead baggage compartments. The seats looked similar, although they were built to support the body for an hour or two, rather than a long flight. They did not recline, to the great relief of long-legged passengers. They did, however, have footrests at a convenient height to support Indowy personnel when the shuttle was used to transport them. Where first class would have been in an airliner, the shuttle had a few seats configured for Darhel physiques. The seat configuration and lighting was subtly different from that in the human section.

  "Are there going to be Darhel on the shuttle flight up?" she asked the lieutenant.

  "No. Why do you ask?" He looked over at her.

  "Oh, I guess I'm just skinning my ignorance since it's my first time off-planet. I saw the three Indowy in the back and thought if this was a mixed flight . . ." She trailed off.

  "Oh. Well, there are a lot fewer Darhel than there are Indowy, ma'
am. I've never seen them travel with humans. The Darhel, I mean. I've only seen one once, you know. And, well, with all the robes you couldn't really see much," he said.

  * * *

  Sunday, May 26, noon

  If she expects the trip out to be one long parade of card games and movies, she'll find out she's mistaken. General James Stewart grinned at his reflection in the mirror of his shipboard quarters as he straightened the unfamiliar lieutenant's insignia on his collar. Makepeace was definitely easy on the eyes. Probably had a problem with backaches, but it sure was in a good cause. Way too young—the only hardship working with her was going to be keeping his hands off. That shouldn't be too tough, though. She was hardly going to be interested in a klutzy fuck-up lieutenant like Pryce.

  Shit. Makepeace is easy on the eyes. And Beed is a slimy bastard. Pete would never have done this on purpose. If Vanderberg did have anything to do with this I'm gonna kill his ass. Nah. Pete wouldn't do anything like that. He'd have been more likely to transfer her out if he'd known. Damn.

  There were twenty-four hours of transmission time, along multiple frequencies, aboard ship—more than enough time for huge chunks of compressed and encrypted data to be transmitted, complete with error-checking, each day. Sure, there was a little over an hour of transmission lag, but that really only mattered with conversations, or their text equivalents.

  What that meant in practice was that when they had reported aboard, the cube with the day's work on it had made it to his quarters before his luggage.

  The uniform of the day onboard ship was silks, and they didn't wrinkle easily, so he didn't actually need to change. He did want to give the captain long enough to get into a fresh set of silks, though. When he'd arrived in the departure lounge she'd needed a change of uniform, but a lieutenant wouldn't have thought it was politic to ask why, or to even notice, so he hadn't.

  He spent what he thought would be an appropriate wait sorting through the morning's files. Beed was not letting the grass grow under his feet, obviously. The past ten years of Titan's criminal cases had been forwarded for "background material," along with a large body of statistical data on the military and civilian personnel living on Titan and an annotated base map, including the carefully recorded observations of the CID personnel they were replacing—good parts of town, bad parts of town, the pimps, the pushers, where the working girls hung out, which gambling operations were where, which businesses were connected to which tong. The annotations read like an encyclopedia of general vice. It was so useful he had to doubt it was Beed's idea.

  He used the intercom to buzz through to her quarters.

  "What can I do for you, Lieutenant Pryce?" she came back, voice only.

  "Captain M-Makepeace? I was wondering if you could spare some time to meet with me? I've picked up the daily cube of our work for the general and I was wondering when we could get started. I know you haven't actually reported in yet, but the general, he doesn't believe in idle hands," he offered apologetically.

  "Well bless his heart, I was afraid I going to be stuck with old movies and monopoly. Is there someplace on this ship with a desk, or are we going to have to work here?" she asked.

  He had to give her points for accepting the extra work gracefully. He thought about trying to work in the mess hall, but it would mean they couldn't start until after the second shift of breakfast, and had to break for both shifts of lunch. Then he thought about trying to work with Captain Sinda Makepeace in her quarters, in a cube not much bigger than six feet on a side with no place to sit but her bunk, for a whole week. There were times when doing the right thing approached the painful.

  "I think it'll have to be the mess hall between mealtimes, ma'am," he said.

  "Fine by me. Are you headed over there now?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "All right, I'll see you there in a few minutes." She pressed the button to disconnect the call.

  * * *

  One of the improvements in modern Federation courier ships over earlier designs was that most areas of the ship were able to sense which species was passing through a given area and adjust the lighting accordingly. The walls reflected each version of the lighting in a shade that at least was acceptable to the inhabitants. For humans this amounted to a muddy brown that had no distressing overtones. Still, the drabness of the walls tended to make the gray silks look washed out, and the institutional pale green of the human-only mess hall walls was a bit of a relief. Except on Earth itself, of course, all eating areas for humans were human-only by common aesthetic decree of the other Galactic races.

  She had beaten him here. Her quarters were closer. Stewart saw that she had already gotten halfway through a cup of coffee. He came to attention and saluted smartly, then ruined the effect by sideswiping a table with his thigh and bending over it, wincing slightly before straightening up.

  Makepeace hesitated disbelievingly in the act of returning his salute. He offered an apologetic grin.

  "Guess I haven't gotten my space legs, yet, ma'am."

  "That's all right, Lieutenant. Why don't you get yourself a cup of coffee and we can start going over that cube the general sent us," she said, smiling.

  "Can I get you a refill, ma'am?" he asked.

  Her eyes widened in alarm, doubtless envisioning a lapful of hot coffee.

  "Uh, no! I mean, I'm just fine as I am, Lieutenant, thank you."

  You certainly are, Captain, you certainly are. Maybe could spare a bit off the thighs, but otherwise just fine. Stewart walked past her to the coffee machine, stifling a grin.

  After he got his coffee, as he sat down and pulled out his PDA, he glanced at her eyes before looking away somewhere over her left shoulder.

  "Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

  "What's on your mind, Lieutenant?" She leaned forward, crossing her hands one over the other, and focused on him with an earnest, listening expression.

  "Ma'am, how much did they tell you about this job?"

  "Very little, Lieutenant. Any scuttlebutt you could offer would be very helpful, if you've got any."

  "Your background is clerking in personnel, right ma'am?" When she nodded, he went on, "Well, what kind of things does a clerk in personnel do?"

  "Well, I'm not sure why you want to know, but mostly I matched square pegs to square holes. Checked position requirements to make sure they were correct and not tweaked to make someone's buddy a fit for a job. Well, not very much, anyway," she amended. "Mostly I ran searches for positions and optimization programs and then checked behind the computers to make sure their recommendations made sense. The human factor in the loop, you know?"

  "Well, ma'am, this position may be a bit . . . different . . . from what you were expecting."

  "Well, I wasn't expecting anything in particular. Different how, Lieutenant Pryce?"

  His words would have triggered red flags in the minds of almost any experienced officer in Fleet Strike. If a red flag had gone up in Makepeace's mind, the earnest and slightly puzzled blue eyes gave no sign of it. She leaned slightly farther forward, and, if anything, the impression of careful, attentive listening increased.

  "Ma'am, do you remember in college taking an elective course, taught by computer, in the history of legal administration?"

  "Okay, what about it?"

  The expression in the blue eyes was still blank. Stewart was starting to feel like he had stepped into the twilight zone.

  "Ma'am, General Beed likes paper."

  "Well, okay. It's not very usual, but people collect some very strange things. What, does he display the collection in his office or something? I'll make a point to admire it. Thank you for—"

  "Sorry to interrupt, ma'am, but that's not what I meant. He doesn't collect paper, he insists on working with it."

  "I'm not sure I understand." She tilted her head to the side and waited for him to elaborate.

  "Ma'am, the general does not use an AID, he does not use a computer, the only electronic devices in his office I'm sure he uses are t
he lighting and the life support. Oh, and the coffee machine," he added.

  "Paper?" she whispered, the light of understanding dawning in her eyes at last. "Well, that's . . . special." She paused, obviously lost in thought. Stewart was beginning to suspect she could get very lost indeed.

  "How does he ever get any work done?" she asked.

  "Ma'am, Fleet Strike promoted you to captain and sent you here because you're the closest thing to a legal secretary it had. In this case, you were the closest thing to a square peg it had for this square hole. I'm afraid that means this position may be a bit different from what you're used to, ma'am," he said. He carefully didn't state that the promotion had probably been something in the way of a consolation prize from a fellow personnel officer who had winced at the obviously shitty job he was forced to stick her with. Promotions weren't supposed to be given out like that, but the bean counters tended to stick together.

  She brushed her left hand over her hair, smoothing it unnecessarily.

  "Lieutenant Pryce, a good Fleet Strike officer goes where she's sent and does what she is ordered to do." She shrugged, "I guess I'll have to brush up on paper."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Thank you for the scuttlebutt, Pryce." She smiled warmly at him and Stewart was suddenly glad he was seated on the opposite side of a table. "Now, about that work you mentioned. Hadn't we best get started?"

  Okay, she's stacked and her face and hair aren't bad. Beautiful wouldn't be too strong a word. But for God's sake, man, you're not seventeen! Definitely a good idea not to work in her quarters. Constant seven-foot separation would be about right. Unfortunately, that suggested the kind of work he was beginning to think he'd like to do in her quarters, including a remarkably vivid mental image of her naked breasts in his hands— He cut the thought off and handed her the copy he'd made of the original cube. A spark of static jumped between their hands and he inhaled sharply. She was a hopeless ditz, but obviously there was some chemistry there in addition to the normal reaction of any healthy, straight young man to a woman built like she was. Not that he was young. But his body obviously thought it was. It was going to be a long week.