John Ringo - Cally's War

“Captain, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He swept a hand across in a gesture indicating the desk, which was stacked at least six inches deep in paper all the way across, and that was only in the valleys between the piles. Cally restrained herself from goggling with an effort. “Welcome to Titan Base. Your office is just outside and to the left. You should be basically familiar with what we do now, and I’ve taken the liberty of having the corporal bring in file cabinets and folders and such. I have a few things to discuss with the lieutenant, but I think the best way to do that is for us to get out of the way while you take charge and organize some sort of filing system. I don’t care how you handle it so long as you can explain it simply and we can both find any of this stuff at need. We should be gone at least a couple of hours, plenty of time for you to get me a desk surface I can see.” He looked at her expectantly.

“Yes, sir,” she answered crisply.

“Great, honey. Take care of that, and you and I will be on our way to getting along just fine.” He winked at her, of all things, and turned to the lieutenant. “Lieutenant, I understand aides de camp for general officers are authorized to wear two gold braid loops over the shoulder. A good officer always pays precise attention to presenting himself with the right appearance, understood?”

“Yes, sir. No excuse, sir.” If anything, his already perfect attention position got a little straighter.

“At ease. Let’s get out of here and leave Sinda to it, then.” He paused, looking her up and down slowly on the way out the door. “Fine attention to detail, Captain Makepeace. Good job.” Then they were gone.

Cally stared at the door as it slid closed behind them, fighting the impulse to laugh in disbelief. And I had been going over ploys to get the man out of his office and me free rein to run a search. She turned the personality overlay off and the AI up to eight on the PDA.

“Something’s about to kill us, isn’t it, Captain?” it said.

“Listen to the surroundings, buckley. If someone other than me approaches within six meters of the door, beep once, medium volume.”

“Okay. Not that it’ll do any good.”

She put the PDA down in the middle of the desk and snorted as a small stack of paper fell, scattering itself across the floor. She made quick work of searching the desk drawers. It was especially quick because there was nothing to find. A few legal pads and ball point pens that she dissected without finding anything useful about them, then reassembled and replaced them. That done, she put the PDA back in order and got to work sorting and organizing the mountain of paper, which she would have needed to search through, anyway.

In the end, she wasn’t finished in the two hours it took Beed to get back to the office. Pryce was not with him.

“Well, you made good progress, Captain.” He moved around behind her and stood just a little too close to where she was bending over the desk to pick up yet another sheaf of papers. The maneuver coincidentally drew the gray fabric against her buttocks, giving him an excellent view of the contours of her behind.

“Do you mind if I ask you to work late? We usually do knock off around five but… if you’d like, I’ll buy you dinner. Since I’m asking you to work late.” He was almost breathing on her neck.

She stood and turned, bringing the papers in close and looking up at him. He was definitely in her personal space.

“Why bless your heart, sir, you don’t have to do that.” Her blue eyes widened ingenuously.

“Of course I don’t, Captain. Still, it would give you a chance to brief me about where you’re putting everything. I’d take it as a personal favor if you would, Sinda. You don’t mind if I call you Sinda, do you?” His smile was charming. He was quite good at it, the charm thing. She could appreciate that.

“Not at all, sir.” She smiled, “And dinner would be just fine.”

He took her to a rather elaborate Cantonese place down on the Corridor. Cally tried not to gawk like a tourist. Not too much, anyway. Calling it the corridor was something of a misnomer. Actually, the main commercial zone in Titan Base was a ground plate floor-to-dome stack of corridors, with spaces cut through the layers so you could stand at the railing on one level and look all the way up and all the way down. It was one of the few places that it was possible to visually appreciate the immenseness of the base. Okay, so it wasn’t so big compared to the holograms she’d seen of Indowy skyscrapers, but she was actually here , and Titan felt so real. She supposed it was probably the presence of so much Earthtech. Well, there was a lot of assimilated Galtech, too, but when it came from human labor in Earth companies, it didn’t really seem to count.

According to Beed, the Corridor bisected the base from east to west — directions had been assigned based on the moon’s axis of rotation, there being no geomagnetic activity to speak of. To the north, the Fleet Strike MP’s supervised their own quadrant, the spares, fabrication, and galactic races’ quadrant, and the Corridor itself. To the south, Fleet’s SP’s supervised their own quadrant, the colonist, transient, and civilians’ quadrant, and the passenger shuttle port. To someone without an appreciation of the Darhel’s ultra-Machiavellian tendencies it might seem strange that Fleet Strike was in charge of guarding spares and supplies mostly used by Fleet. To Cally, it was just one more example of things being made more complex to make them easier to manipulate.

The restaurant had obviously spent a fair bit on the décor to impart an Eastern feel, covering the Galplas walls in red and gold wallpaper that carried a dragon motif. The glow paint of the sign had been adjusted in a reasonable imitation of neon and proclaimed the name of the establishment, in English, “The Golden Dragon.” It appeared to be one of the more upscale of the places catering to officers, well-heeled businessmen and the occasional colonist willing and able to blow some hard currency on one good meal out on the outbound leg of the trip.

Still, it wasn’t even nearly full on a Monday evening, and they were quickly shown to a table in a corner, lit by a small globe that flickered almost, but not quite, like candlelight. Beside the plates there was a folded cloth napkin, a fork, and a pair of plastic chopsticks. She ordered the sweet and sour chicken and an egg roll. The place had a carefully cultivated ambience, but looked very touristy to her experienced eyes. Best to pick something hard to screw up.

“Conservative tastes?” he asked, after ordering the phoenix and dragon.

“Why, did I choose something I shouldn’t have, sir?” She looked down and to the side, embarrassed. “I just thought it looked interesting. Would you think I was too… well, rural, if I admitted that I could count my visits to a restaurant like this on the fingers of one hand?”

“No, Captain — Sinda — sweet and sour chicken is fine.” He smiled, almost gently. “I sometimes forget how young some of our officers are.” Her hand was resting on the table and he reached across and stroked the back of it. She licked her lips, nervously, left hand brushing a stray wisp of hair out of her face.

“Young, but very much a grown woman. From what I’ve seen so far, you’re a fine young officer, Sinda,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.” She turned trusting cornflower blue eyes on him, and smiled. Searching his office didn’t turn up what I needed. Maybe searching the general will. Besides, it’s a good excuse for ditching some of these excess hormones. Play the near-innocent? Probably best.