Cally's War

by John Ringo

  "Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?"

  "Make sure you come back with something good, Pryce. I don't need to tell you that right now we've got jack squat on this mission, and that does not look good. A good OER on a mission like this could be a great asset to the career of a young officer. Dismissed."

  You prick. "Yes, sir." Pryce saluted, executing a wobbly about face and leaving before his façade cracked. Maintaining cover was getting to be harder than he had expected.

  * * *

  Friday, June 14, evening

  The sake bar served a certain class of Fleet junior officers. While the establishment was on the no-go list for Fleet Strike personnel, other than MPs in the line of duty, Stewart's task tonight fully justified the civilian clothing he was wearing, and his military haircut was common among freighter weenies, anyway. While walking in two or three hours later would pretty much have guaranteed a brawl, it was still early enough that Fleet's finest were firmly absorbed with drinking and trying their luck at some of the multiplayer game consoles scattered around the place.

  Stewart generally avoided the lousy beer, made worse by being microbrewed on the premises from local hydroponically grown hops. The anime, at least, was first class. While the large . . . eyes . . . on cartoon women were not nearly as much fun as the real thing—he quashed the strong impulse to fantasize painful and violent ends for Beed—anyway, the art was nice to look at.

  The balding but fit civilian sitting by the bar over a bowl of what was probably miso soup was not so nice to look at. Frankly, he felt a gut level distaste for traitors in general, whenever he let himself think about it. But dealing with unsavory people went with the territory in intel, and he couldn't really afford the luxury of that distaste right now. Like any soldier, Stewart could summon a certain grudging respect for an honest opponent or even enemy. People who were traitors to their own cause, though, just tended to arouse a certain visceral distaste that he had to squash with a vengeance as he crossed the bar to meet the other man.

  "Mr. Smith, how nice to see you again," the other man said.

  "Mr. Jones. You're a long way from home, aren't you?" Stewart observed.

  "I could say the same thing of you," the traitor said.

  "If you knew where my home was, I suppose you could." He pulled up a barstool, smiling easily even though the thought of drinking with this worm was enough to turn his stomach.

  "So, what have you got to trade, Mr. Jones? Are you still dancing around with the penny ante game, or are you ready to move up to something more rewarding? And, if you don't mind my saying so, this is a bit of a change of scene for you, isn't it?" Prod him a bit and see what he comes out with.

  "I travel. This time I don't just want cash. You said you'd pay more for more. Well, we'll see if you meant that." There was a thin film of sweat on the guy's upper lip. Maybe he was nervous?

  "Keep talking." Don't give him anything to grab onto, make him reach for a response.

  "I want a diversion. You want part of our organization. I see a mutual opportunity here. You assist me in placing some evidence, I give you the person it will point to. You might want the rest of the team, in case you have to be kind of rough on your new toys. But that would be where the money part comes in." The undertone of desperation in his voice was palpable.

  Good God, we've hit the motherlode. Okay, now the hard question. Why?

  "And what, exactly, would this placing of evidence consist of?" he asked.

  "The usual and obvious. Put some banking transactions together and tuck away some luxury goods in the right places. When you pick him up, it'll look like he was feeding you information all along and he went in out of the cold." The traitor's grin was a particularly nasty one.

  "You know, the object of this game is usually to get the information without the other guy knowing you've got it." He just couldn't help being a little sarcastic. Try as he might, having to deal with someone capable of betraying his friends for money just really got under his skin.

  "If you can. I've got news for you. They know they've got a leak. So you're not losing anything that isn't already lost. They don't even have to know you have him. Make it look like he went out on a colonist ship." Baldy obviously was starting to feel the net closing in.

  Okay, they'd only buy this fool's "diversion" if they're really stupid, and to penetrate us like they have, stupid they're not. On the other hand, if he actually is giving us insiders, it doesn't matter. And I got my answer. His people are closing in on him and he's covering his butt. If that's the price, I can deal with that. What do I have to pay him per guy? Three million U.S. dollars per team member?

  "I think we can do that. We'll plant the evidence as directed and pay you one million dollars U.S., each, for this guy and every member of his team we capture," he said.

  "Do I look stupid? Five million U.S., each, and it's for every person whose identity I give you. If you want to shoot them instead of reeling them in, or if you screw it up, that's your problem." The traitor obviously had an ego the size of Cleveland.

  It took some minor haggling, but they finally settled at two and a half, half on delivery of the names, half on confirmation that the name went with a real person credibly identified as an organization operative, with standard mutual security precautions. A light price, for what I'm getting.

  "So, Mr. Jones, just as a good faith gesture as I go set all this in motion, you said you're giving us a team. I'm sure you'll understand I have to have something for the people I report to before they're going to let me have that kind of money. This team you're giving us, does it have some sort of internal call name?"

  "Hector."

  * * *

  Saturday, June 15, 03:30

  Michael O'Neal, Sr., had never gotten used to waiting. Oh, he'd learned to simulate perfectly still patience very early in life, or he wouldn't have survived. It didn't mean he had to like it. And he didn't. His granddaughter wasn't exactly late, since there was no set time for their meet and in the field, with her cover, there could be all sorts of reasons why she couldn't get away early, or maybe at all.

  Which made waiting even more of a pain in the ass.

  He had trained Cally in battlefield survival, and general survival in hostile environments, since the age of eight. As a little girl in the Posleen war, she'd been more solid than many grown men, first killing the assassin who'd come to kill them if he couldn't be recruited, then taking her place beside Team Conyers to fight off the Posties as they'd come up the Gap.

  He spat carefully into the spare cup the barmaid had so thoughtfully provided.

  After the war, she'd had the first-rate training in her specialty provided in a private parochial environment by the Bane Sidhe's cadre of killer nuns. Her skills had been honed to a fine art. She was, arguably, the best living assassin on Earth or off it—with the possible exception of himself. Although he didn't have her . . . natural advantages.

  So, all that being true, why, when she was out in the field, did he always feel like a nervous father whose daughter was out on her first date?

  He stifled the impulse to stand and pace, strangling and dismembering it for good measure. Cally was long past her first date. That was something of the problem. You could teach a girl how to reliably hit an eight inch circle from a thousand yards, you could teach her how to run and recognize booby traps, you could teach her nine different ways to kill a man quietly in the dark, but you couldn't teach her how to cope with the stresses of the job. That was something each assassin had to learn for herself, or himself.

  Cally had always been a natural. He remembered the first time he'd put a pistol in that kid's hand. She couldn't hit the side of a barn, of course, but after she'd fired her first magazine downrange and the slide locked back, she'd turned and looked at him. She'd been a skinny kid, the blond hair tangled and stringy practically every time she shook her head. And there had been a smudge of soot on the side of her nose where she'd scratched. The earmuffs had been big and bright green on the side
s of her head, and the safety glasses tended to slip down the bridge of her nose, but the grin she'd given him had lit up her whole face. And as time went on it became clear that besides enthusiasm she had two other crucial traits. Her eyesight was unusually sharp, and her hands exceptionally steady. He'd taken care to protect both—the first from eye strain in bad light, and the second from vices like caffeine. There were vices more workable in budding warriors.

  And, of course, she'd been stubborn. Couldn't imagine where she'd gotten that from. He chuckled, spitting again into the spare cup. And the way she'd taken out the kneecap of that rotten punk who'd tried—

  The door slid open and there, finally, was his baby granddaughter—but what in the hell was she wearing? The one-piece black leather-looking jumpsuit would have suited her cover tonight as a good-time girl just fine—if she had had her own measurements. As it was, the zipper of the black tank-style top half could barely be tugged halfway up without her busting out of it. And in his opinion, that was still an imminent danger. It made him want to get up and throw a blanket around her.

  "Hey, sweet thing, what can I order for you to drink?" He spat again as she sauntered in, straddling a chair and leaning her arms across its back as the door slid closed behind her. There was a noticeable bounce in her step that he didn't think was the role. Whores weren't bouncy. At best they were blasé.

  "Black Bush, water back. Life's too short to drink cheap booze," she said. The toe of one foot tapped rapidly at the floor, as if she couldn't quite sit still, even though it was late and she must have been tired.

  "You're chipper," he said. Life's too short? Cally hadn't thought life was too short for anything in a very long time. Something's up.

  "Progress report?" He took a sound damper out and set it on the table, turning it on. "I've already swept."

  "I haven't found jack. I did confirm that a clandestine operation is being run out of the office. Probably the clandestine operation, but that's all I've got. Getting the general into bed wasn't a problem. Probably would have been a problem if I hadn't, in fact. He's that type. I've searched everything I've got access to and I'm working on the aide de camp, who has access to the places I don't," she said.

  Was it just his imagination that her voice had gotten a bit husky there at the end? Oh, crap, what now?

  "So, tell me more about this aide." He spat, considering. "You're planning to get access to the rest of the brigade headquarters space how?"

  "Oh, that's easy." She bounced, blue eyes twinkling mischievously at him. "When those are the only places left in the office that we haven't done it, somehow I think he'll be . . . receptive to suggestion." The way she licked her lips reminded him of the cat that ate the canary.

  "You're not supposed to mix business with pleasure." Oh shit.

  "You're the one who wanted me to get a boyfriend." She shrugged, examining the nails of one hand minutely.

  "I hesitate to say this, Granddaughter, but don't get in too deep." Fuck. She's not going to listen. Too late.

  "Oh, I won't. I'll let Pryce do that. Really, Granpa, I'm not twelve. Could you order that drink? I wasn't kidding about enjoying something good. Might as well, I'm already here." She changed the subject, turning the chair and settling back into it so she could lean back and relax for a few minutes.

  He grunted noncommittally, turning off the damper and stepping over to the console by the door to punch the drinks in. When he sat back down and she pulled her chair over and snuggled up against him, draping his arm around her shoulder for the benefit of whoever delivered their drinks, he had a few tough moments as he reminded his body that while this very well-built and nubile young woman did not look like his granddaughter, she in fact was his granddaughter. Now, if only this Pryce young man had not been met on a mission, he'd be welcoming the guy with open arms. Well, okay, if he measured up. Still, they were trained for extractions, and it wasn't as if Fleet Strike actually needed all those lieutenants. On second thought, strike that. Any man worth his salt could be counted on to react poorly to being kidnapped. Well, maybe. The bait was considerable.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Titan Base, Saturday, June 15, 10:00

  Fleet Strike was different from the old United States armed services in many respects. The fondness of the organization's senior officers for the game of golf was not one of those differences. During the design phase of Titan Base, a bright and ambitious young life support engineer had noticed a way to fulfill a design requirement for hardy, nonfood perennials while simultaneously scoring a vast number of brownie points with senior staff. Hence, the entire lowermost deck of the Fleet Strike and Spares and Fabrications quadrants was very high-ceilinged and devoted to a lush lawn of specially bred grasses and turf. Getting the Indowy to sign off on the absolute necessity of the ceiling configuration had required the importation of a small herd of miniature horses from Kentucky. For some reason, getting all the signatures for the transport of the livestock had gone amazingly easily. The fans for computer randomized wind patterns had been more difficult, but still possible. After all, what was the use of generating so much oxygen if you didn't have the ability to mix it with the rest of the station air?

  Cally watched with carefully disguised amusement this morning as Beed cursed the headwind as he approached the tee for the third hole. Golf was a challenging game for her, especially in this environment. Upgraded muscle density, still there under the surface mods for Sinda, and her own inherent spatial awareness and finely honed martial training combined to make her easily one of the top three golfers on Titan Base.

  Sinda Makepeace had nothing in her record to indicate that she'd ever even visited a golf course, much less played the game.

  Beed needed flattering, convincing him that he was teaching her to golf.

  The upshot was that on the golf course her acting challenge was more exacting than usual as she had to constantly evaluate precisely how lousy she needed to be.

  The odd part was that a couple of times this morning she'd gotten the bizarre impression that Pryce was also holding back to avoid beating the general. She smiled fondly. Get a really great lay or two from the guy and all of a sudden I'm imagining all sorts of new virtues for him.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw him trip over the strap of the golf bag and barely catch himself by the edge of the cart. Next she'd be envisioning him as the world's next great orator. Geez.

  "All right, Sinda, dear, your turn." Beed leered at her as she smiled back brightly, wondering how even a cover role had allowed her to see him even temporarily as less than the worm he obviously was. "Did you notice how I was still for a moment after making my swing? That's called 'follow through,' and it's important in this game."

  She nodded, hands clasped in front of herself, listening carefully, eyes bright, cheerful, earnest, and empty. She watched Beed smile indulgently without a spark of recognition on her own part, reaching out and blithely selecting a putter, smiling gratefully at Beed when he traded her for a better club.

  "Pay attention, dear. Club selection is very important," he said.

  With her upgraded hearing, she could hear Pryce gritting his teeth as Beed wrapped his arms around her to guide her swing. She hoped Beed couldn't hear it, even though it sounded loud to her against the background of the golf course, unusually empty this morning and silent except for the distant whir of the fans. The freshly cut grass was sweet in her nostrils and she could feel Beed's erection against her buttocks as he adjusted her grip on the club. Hell, there goes my afternoon. Not that I didn't expect as much. Unfortunately, the general has an average juv libido. Horny as hell all the damned time. Too bad the BS would be pissed if I killed the bastard. Okay, so he's a human life and I wouldn't kill him for no damned reason, but I swear if he keeps getting on my nerves I might succumb to the temptation to . . . bruise him a bit . . . on my way out. Slimy paper-obsessed son of a bitch. Against some personality traits, looks just aren't enough. Well, hell, I knew it was part of the job when I took it.
I have to admit I have done worse. The poor bastard can't help it that he suffers by comparison.

  She sighted carefully down the course and made the very slight adjustments that would send the ball straight into a sand trap.

  "Look how hard I hit it! Wow!" She jumped up and down in excitement, generating a range of mesmerizing jiggles for the two men. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Pryce swallow, hard, and suppressed a grin.

  "Is that good?" She cocked her head to one side and beamed at the hapless general.

  * * *

  Titan Base, Saturday, June 15, afternoon

  "An intercepted signal has come in that meets your specified criteria for your attention, your Tir." The voice of the AID was melodious, like all Darhel voices, but had an indefinable extra intensity to it. The hair on the Tir's back lifted slightly as his ears relaxed outward, just a bit, in unconscious response.

  "Play it," he said, shifting a bit towards the Indowy body servant who was scratching a troublesome itch behind his right ear, but not enough to disengage from the other servant who was currently working out some tension cramps in his shoulder muscles. There were, of course, no true windows in these quarters, although they were quite spacious, with simulated windows displaying vistas from any of several dozen worlds. The gravity and lighting, being artificial anyway, were pleasantly adjusted to homeworld's conditions. He pressed the pads of his bare feet into the deep pile appreciatively. For temporary quarters, the suite maintained in the human-free sector of Titan Base was quite adequate.

  "Memo to Lieutenant General Peter Vanderberg, OFSI, Chicago, from First Lieutenant Joshua Pryce, assigned as aide de camp to Brigadier General Bernard Beed, 3rd MP Brigade, commanding. Subject: Hartford. Message: Have the opportunity to accelerate acquisition of essential project supplies. Supply source is code named Hector by the supply depot. Contact information follows. As these particular supplies are in your area of operation, suggest your people pursue local acquisition. Have taken the liberty of paying a deposit on the supplies to Mr. Jones, balance pending on acquisition. Negotiated price is well within assigned budget for this project. Memo ends. There is a file attached that appears to be a list of four names, several aliases, DNA code samples, and several locations and times per name."