John Ringo - Cally's War

“Well, damn, they’ll let anybody in here now.” Jay set his tray down and hooked an empty chair over with an ankle.

“Blade man! Long time no see,” George grinned, offering a hand to the other man.

“Blade man?” Tommy asked. “Do I want to know?”

“Oh, back in high school, Jay here was unbeatable at Boma Warrior. Never figured out how he did it, but our junior year, it was probably the coolest game in the library.” George topped a bit of the tofu steak with some of the hot corn relish on the side.

“I knew a guy who worked on that. You know on the sixth level where you go around a corner and get swarmed by a pack of carnivorous mini-lops? I put him up to that.” Tommy shook some Tabasco on his taco, took a bite, and added a few more shakes.

“That was you? That was wicked cool, but every once in a while one of those mothers would have a switchblade and be just impossible to kill…” Schmidt pushed at a stray bit of tofu with his fork. “Man, I can’t wait to get back out in the field.”

“What, I never figured you for being as eager as all that?” Jay chuckled disbelievingly.

“Not that, Jay. You have to admit the food’s better. As to the other, somebody has to do the dirty work. The cops don’t take out the damn Elves’ trash. So, cosmic janitor, that’s me.” He grinned easily. “You don’t have a problem with Sherry marrying blue-collar, do you, old man?” He quirked an eyebrow at Martin, looking out through the hair that had fallen across his eyes again.

“Be a bit late if I did. And a little less on the ‘old,’ if you don’t mind.” Levon took a big bite out of his cheeseburger, manfully ignoring the almost complete lack of beef in the fried patty.

“By the way, ’scuse me if I’m treading on sensitive territory, here, but what’s the deal with Cally? The rumor mill has been unreal,” George asked, looking at Tommy.

“I dunno, man. You probably know more than I do. All they told us was to grab our gear and haul ass to catch the shuttle.” He shook his head slightly. “I haven’t seen her, and Papa O’Neal said not to ask. And he was wearing his ‘don’t fuck with me’ look.”

“Oh, he’ll get it all worked out somehow. I mean, she’s an O’Neal, you know?” Jay grinned, and if it was just a hair too tight, well, they were all worried about their teammate. And not just because she was maybe the best shooter in the business.

Tommy looked away from his teammate and caught Martin’s eye. He took a deep breath.

“What I did hear is that you might know a lot about it, but weren’t saying, Levon,” he said.

“Yeah, I do, but I wish I didn’t. Look, I like Cally. I respect her. I would have her on my team any day of the week. But the past couple of years… I don’t know, maybe she’s just working too hard. It’s not like we haven’t all seen something like this coming.” He shook his head.

“Excuse me? Something like what?” Tommy’s voice had a definite edge to it.

“Sunday, don’t go all big brother on me. The least I can do for her is give her the dignity of letting her tell you herself. I owe her that much, and so do you,” he said.

“So you’re pretty sure she’s gonna be back on active and everything in a couple of days?” Jay asked casually around a bite of his enchilada.

Martin was silent for a long moment.

“If she’s not, then you can ask me,” he said.

Tommy dove to the side as the guy in the gray suit aimed at him and emptied the magazine of his pistol. He had time to pull the pin and toss a grenade — he was out of ammo — before the rapidly falling health indicator showed him he was hit and bleeding out. He got the other guy, but it had been in the “dead man’s ten seconds.” Still, the computer credited him with the kill, and, even more important, the ambush had happened just like it was supposed to after his hacking mistake earlier had resulted in detection. The holographic projection of the game faded out.

“You’re dead, man.” He felt Jay’s hand clap him on the back.

“Nice shades. And I’m supposed to be.” At six foot eight and three hundred pounds, Tommy Sunday was not a small man. Still, other than his size, he looked fairly typical for a juv in his first century. That is, he looked twenty, despite the fact that he now had grown grandchildren to baby-sit his and Wendy’s small children.

“Play testing another training scenario?” Jay’s grin was affable as he tossed himself into a chair beside his teammate and kicked his feet up on the table next to the larger man’s.

“Yep. And after the royal fuck-up I made hacking a system earlier, well, there was a small theoretical chance I could survive, but it should have fried my ass. As it did,” Tommy sighed.

“Ah, the sacrifices you make for quality control.” Papa O’Neal snagged a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the coffee pot, pulled a small pouch out of his pocket, and got himself a fresh plug of tobacco.

“I’ve already played it through for real. And several times multiplayer interactive. Now I’m trying to see if I can break it.” The former ACS trooper shrugged and closed the game, popping a fresh cube into the reader slot as Cally came in to begin their briefing. The brown curls didn’t faze him. He’d seen her with every hair color and style known to man over the years. He did wonder if the brown curls were coming or going, though.

“Okay, folks, this is your basic counterintelligence mission. We have every reason to believe Fleet Strike is aware of us and that our security has been penetrated. They have a man inside. Which is why your briefing was eleventh hour and neither you nor I will have any unmonitored communications, nor will any of us discuss this mission outside this room or with anyone except each other. The number of people in the Bane Sidhe hierarchy who know the actual nature of this mission has been kept to an absolute minimum. We are to find the identity of the leak, and plug it.” She reached down and pushed a button on the screen of her PDA, bringing up a hologram of a man in his apparent early thirties, in a Fleet Strike general’s uniform — which meant he was probably a fair bit into his second century.

“This is General Bernhard Beed. General Beed has been tasked with, basically, finding out everything he can about us. He is setting up his headquarters on Titan Base to coordinate the intelligence they develop. The office is covered as criminal investigations and military policing for Titan Base.” She touched the screen again and the hologram changed, revealing a young goddess in a captain’s uniform.

“And my cover, Sinda Makepeace.”

Fuck, she is stacked as all hell. And look at those power-lifter thighs. I think I’m just as glad Wendy will not see Cally in this cover.

“Captain Makepeace is presently on Earth and due to board a shuttle for passage to Titan from Chicago O’Hare this Sunday at 0815. The preliminary plan is to make the switch at the airport. I go on the slab in an hour.” She tossed each of them a cube.

“Here’s the rest of what the higher ups gave me and what I’ve been able to develop. Tommy and Jay, I need you to get a complete profile on everyone in that office, including voice and motion samples for Makepeace. Granpa, I need you to review the airport and Titan Base, plan the switch, plan the extraction after I get the data. Your cover is as crew on an in-system freighter taking manufactured goods for the shops in the business district. The local tong will cover you because you’ll be taking an unofficial cargo of partial doses of rejuv drugs. Apparently, there’s a worthwhile supply of troops willing to pay just about anything to take a little wear and tear off a dependant or two. They will, of course, pay you for the drugs — they’re just getting a particularly good deal. They don’t know why you want to be in the vicinity of Titan Base, and they don’t want to know.” She noticed their eyes were still fixed on the hologram and touched the screen of the PDA again, watching them blinking as the image vanished.