John Ringo: Sister Time

Shari’s kids had stayed at a Bane Sidhe safehouse back in Knoxville that summer. Cally hadn’t blamed her one bit for keeping them out of it. They hadn’t been trained for any of this. She had. Well, she’d lived with Granpa during the war, which had amounted to the same thing. By the time they’d finished clearing the island, putting up the cinderblock and earth-berm-reinforced guardshack had been nothing. Guarding the bridge for the three days it had taken Granpa and Shari to bring back the big truck of building materials from Knoxville had been interesting. Before they left, she had helped Granpa and Shari load up the rotting but still identifiable Postie heads in the back of the pickup. Another nasty job.

Granpa had helped her run the line of tripwires connected to alarms back and forth across the bridge. It was still a day and a half before she could convince herself to take the time to sleep. In the end, only one of the moronic, leaderless feral normals had happened along and actually tried to cross the bridge. Then had come the icky task of chopping it into pieces she could carry and dropping them over the side of the bridge and down into the water. She pitied the aquatic scavengers that had to dine on the thing, but she could hardly leave it on the bridge to rot and attract more. And then she’d had to wrap the head and keep it so they could take it in for the bounty later. She’d made sure it was downwind.

After Shari and Granpa got back, having brought Billy to ride high sentry and help out, they’d reviewed the island looking for the best place to build. On a plot on the landward side, next to a big bay, Shari had found an old bit of street sign that had somehow survived the scavenging. It had said “Jungl” on the only bit that was left. Granpa had laughed and said that was home for him. The name had stuck, and even all these years later everybody still called it Papa’s Jungle House. When they didn’t call it Mama’s house. Cally still couldn’t figure out quite how it had happened, but over the decades Shari had somehow become honorary mother or grandmother to the whole island, whether the kids or grandkids or — hell, the relationships were all too confusing — were hers, or not.

When she was out and about, Cally could still see what she regarded as the O’Neal touch in the layout of the island. Everything was downplayed to any potential observer on land, sea or overhead. Trees and brush and dunes broke up vertical outlines and while planted fields were impossible to hide, a whole lot could be done with roofs and netting. Between irregular overhangs and creative use of vegetation, most roofs couldn’t be distinguished from the air. Hiding, of course, wasn’t the point. Obfuscation was enough. With so many people moving into the Lost Zones, the purpose was to make the O’Neal compound seem just one more group of poor but independent bounty-hunters.

The houses of O’Neals and Sundays were not showplace houses, designed to be artistic, designed to be seen. Rather, they were designed to fade into the background. Shrubbery and vegetation around the houses wasn’t planted to artistically enhance, but to blur straight lines and obscure. A prewar Green would have loved it. All so artistic. All so earthy. All so… deadly.

Cally savored the smell of the salt on the brisk fall air as she walked across the road from the parking lot to pick up the kids. The olive drab pack on her back, brought along for the groceries, helped block the wind. She’d worn her shooting glasses to keep the fine, blowing sand out of her eyes. The school was only about a klick from the house, and right across from the small building that served as a local barter market and grocery store. She wouldn’t even have driven if there hadn’t been the trash to haul. Ashley Privett, Wendy and Tommy’s oldest, had made a good business out of selling baked goods when she’d first arrived on the island some years ago, and over time had evolved into a sort of barter grocer, keeping track of what came in from whom and selling on consignment.

After the BS split, Cally had figured out a way to stretch her shrunken salary by using half her personal baggage allowance on each trip between home and base carrying something abundant one place and scarce in the other. Consequently, her pack was about half full with jars of soy sauce, corn syrup, four quart jars of moonshine, and some bagged popcorn. Bringing corn to the low country would have been like bringing sand to the beach except for the relative difference in price, and that the Indiana popcorn popped a lot better. She’d gone out with two pounds each of roasted coffee beans, baking chocolate, cane sugar, homemade cigars, a pack of vanilla beans, three bottles of rum, and a bolt’s worth each of indigo denim and unbleached shirt-weight oxford cloth. Her market for stone-ground hominy grits had gone out in the first year, after one of the women on the cleaning crew on Base had figured out how to make it herself. It had been a niche market, anyway. Besides, cloth was better. There was always a market for blue jeans. She supposed she was technically a smuggler, among other things. Not like it mattered. Assassin, smuggler, thief, but not a drunk — it’s kind of hard to become an alcoholic when your blood nannites break it down before you ever feel the effects. Not a brawler — well, mostly. Not a rapist — she’d heard it was technically possible, but it wasn’t to her tastes or her needs, even if she had been celibate for months now. Dammit.

That was the worst thing about getting back on the team. Her six-monthly regular courier slot to the moon would be given to someone else on light duty, and she’d have to find some other way to arrange time with James. Okay, Stewart. And of course she couldn’t explain why she wanted to keep the courier route. She couldn’t even ask to keep it. She’d been lucky to get it in the first place. James had been on Earth for conferences twice since Morgan was born. Unfortunately for her love life, she was probably going to have to wait until he could get down here again. Anything less wasn’t an option. In forty or so years’ work for the Bane Sidhe, she’d had enough casual sex to last multiple lifetimes. She’d denied it often enough, even to herself, but she’d been looking for “the real thing.” Having found it, she was hardly going to settle for less. Oh, if the fate of humankind was at stake, she wasn’t going to be a prude, but she’d also determined to say no to plans that involved her as a honey trap if it was just a matter of getting information faster or cheaper. Sure, sometime faster or cheaper might mean life was on the line. But more frequently than not, it wasn’t. Motherhood was an excuse for saying no. It sometimes meant they weren’t happy with her, but under the circumstances, she could live with that.

Still, it was good that Granpa owned the island free and clear. Before the split, her pay had been enough to keep a footloose single girl in beer and skittles, but hadn’t been anything to write home about. Since the split, if she hadn’t moved back home, she’d be struggling to make ends meet for herself, let alone the girls. It frustrated James that he couldn’t help, of course. But in her business, having more money than you ought was dangerous. Bosses were understandably paranoid about who else might be paying their covert operatives, and for what. Fortunately, since the smuggling was almost a public service to the organization, it was honest income. Enough for a bit extra for Christmas and birthdays, anyway. Saving the world was great for warm and fuzzy feelings, but the pay sucked.

She kicked at the sand and a bit of some scrubby creeping plant with one foot, frowning as the sand in her sneaker reminded her of the hole she had worn through the sole. Still, living in the next thing to paradise was a nice compensation on its own, thanks to Granpa. And if paradise was gritty and placid and boring, those were what made a good place to raise kids. Even if the Bane Sidhe had made her into a thief. At least every mission she went out on to steal something was one mission where she probably could manage not to kill anybody. That was something, wasn’t it?