John Ringo: Honor of the Clan

While she personally felt no end of satisfaction at any misfortune for Epetar, Michelle O’Neal was frankly appalled that she had somehow gotten herself in up to her neck in the intriguers’ whole umpty-jillion times cursed conspiracy. She was still in her first century, so she was rather young, but this was the most frustrating thing she could remember happening to her in her entire life — other than the war. And the situation showed no signs of moving in any direction she could use to extricate herself. It just did not stop. Like now.

“You are too tactful to say it, respected one, but I did share quite heavily in the making of this unfortunate situation.” She was angry at the way the other Indowy clans had been prepared to throw her to the wolves. After all, hers was a major branch of Clan O’Neal, in several respects, and had always dealt honorably and met obligations, and more, with everyone. A little more consideration in how they handled the split situation and her workforce should not have been too much to expect. Of course they would have had to pull out if the split remained, but she should not have had to beg for them to allow time for her to move replacement workers in.

“You can keep them moving for now. This debacle has the potential to wipe out almost the entirety of my clan. Assessing the level of risk for this type of intrigue,” she loaded the word with distaste, “is not my field. I will be consulting an expert for that assessment, and will inform you promptly if the risk is unacceptable.”

Michelle was not blind to the irony that the person at the core of the Bane Sidhe split would be the person with the decision power over whether to put it together again. Cally simply had a talent for finding her way directly into the middle of turmoil. Michelle hid a grimace, reflecting that her sister probably could be used as a compass for trouble. She’d been that way since they were kids. You’d think that the little brat would learn. The mentat briefly wondered if there was an associated sub-quantum level interaction that could be isolated, before dismissing the idea as ridiculous and returning her attention to her guest.

“I would not ask it if I had any other choice,” Roolnai replied. His voice carried overtones that he regretted becoming so beholden to the O’Neals almost as much as he regretted the present emergency. “We are assured at the highest level that the location called Base One is secure. For the time being.”

“The instability of the situation is such that we are all having to make difficult choices between bad alternatives,” Michelle said grimly. “As now, for me. Communicating promptly for this is going to drop my efficiency by more than one percent for the two weeks afterwards. And I do insist on making my consultation face to face. No intermediaries for this.”

With his responsibilities, Roolnai would know exactly how massive a resource drain that was.

“If I divert three adepts, plus equipment, to your use for that period, will it help enough?” The Indowy looked concerned.

Michelle nodded, “It is enough to keep my schedule from slipping.” Which it was. Barely. And yet, pulling high level Sohon technicians out of their existing projects and reallocating them was highly inefficient. As her sister would put it, it was not chump change. Not having to foot the entire bill made the situation better than it could have been.

“We will do what we can,” she told him. “If you will excuse me now, I am going to have very little time to spare. Your people will take some time to reach their jump point out. I will make my consultation before then and let you know.”

“Thanks, Candy,” Michael O’Neal, Senior, said grumpily.

Papa reflected that it was damned embarrassing to have a machine remind you of something you really shouldn’t have forgotten.

“Aw, Boss. I can’t rub those shoulders for you, but what the hell? Why not let me dance for you again. You know you like it,” she husked. Candy’s AI emulation was set high enough that he did have to worry about occasional crashes. She had a lower crash rate than some other overlays, even though the holographic dance algorithms took up a fair bit of her space. He’d renamed her, of course. The thing about Candy was she knew better than to misbehave when Shari was around — or any of the gaggle of hens in his very large family. Shari knew all about her, but they had a tacit don’t ask, don’t tell agreement on internet porn, which covered Candy. Covered more of her than her get-up of beads and feathers tied together with minuscule scraps of suede.

Candy was modeled on a stripper he’d known when he was stationed in Florida. Her coal-black hair fell to mid-thigh, the perfect prop to her schtick as an Indian princess. She had all the right curves in all the right places, face raised above mere prettiness by great big doe eyes. Tan was in, nobody thought twice about skin cancer. Never a tan line on her.

His PDA’s animations didn’t even remotely approach a stripper’s natural jiggles, but it did tend to break up the boredom.

“Maybe later, sweetheart. That message is important.”

He’d forgotten to tell anybody what to do with Snake Mosovich and his people before he left. Hell, he hadn’t told anybody but Shari that they had Snake and his people for keeps. Oops.

It was plain obvious that sixty troops could not stay on Edisto Island. Even if they’d been one hundred percent certain it was safe to expand the facilities, they couldn’t feed ’em. They had enough trouble keeping family supplied, and the Bane Sidhe transients were always in need of a certain amount of charity, damn the skinflints. Papa silently admitted that the O’Neals had a lot to do with the organization’s financial fortunes over the past seven years, good and bad. The money from the last mission hadn’t so much fixed things as kept them limping along.

Before the Galactics returned, the Bane Sidhe on Earth had been a core of adherents with fragments of knowledge in their brains. Many had been monks bound to silence, the organization itself being one of the reasons such vows were so encouraged over the centuries. Operating costs had been zilch.

After the return, the Indowy Bane Sidhe had largely funded human operations. Not completely, but mostly. Although Indowy lived in debt from childhood to grave, tiny bits of cash from a lot of people added up fast. With the split, the O’Neal Bane Sidhe had had two choices: shut down active operations, or find funding. Shutting down was surrender to the Darhel vision of humanity as scarce, and enslaved — so the O’Neals’ funds were stretched by the transients. If the O’Neals hadn’t had a good tax-free trade going by moonlight, they wouldn’t be making it.

They sure as hell couldn’t keep DAG secret in the U.S. and they didn’t have the resources to maintain them. But sometimes when you had two problems they solved themselves.

“Okay, Candy. Send this back through all that encryption and signal hiding crap we do, and double encrypt,” he said.

John Earl Bill Stuart, otherwise known as “Johnny,” had learned to find his Darhel boss’s office intimidating. When he first got promoted, started dealing directly with the Tir and all, he had felt a certain smartass superiority to some furry guy who looked like an overgrown fox, working in the middle of a a big city with no idea what the real world was like out there where average folks shot and killed any stray Posleen that happened to show up. The furry alien engendered a certain contempt, despite the over-dramatic hooded cloak and the rows of sharp teeth. Hell, Johnny had seen sharp teeth before. What had mattered to him was that this fox couldn’t kill a rabbit to save its life — well, without losing its life by going into some kind of permanent, fatal, biological drug trip. Johnny didn’t think much of people who did drugs, either, and these guys had their drugs built right in.