John Ringo - Cally's War

When she stirred in the morning and snuggled against his side, fondling him with one of those too-skilled hands, he had to repress a shudder as he smiled and pushed her hair back from her face. Amazing that you can’t tell by looking. No marks, nothing,

“I bet you could do some really nice things to me with your mouth, you know, down there,” he said.

“Mmm. Sure could.” She smiled sleepily and eased her way down his chest.

He twined his hands in her hair and tried to pretend, just for a few moments more, that there really was a “Pamela.” Afterwards, he took a deep breath and pushed her off him, standing up and grabbing his pants off the chair next to the bed. He might be young, but he was old enough not to say to any woman what he had to say to her without at least a little protection.

“So, how old are you, really?” he asked coldly.

She pulled the sheet up to wipe her lip as she appraised him. “How old do you want me to be?”

“Remember I told you last night about my grandmother, just died of cancer.” He had turned and was facing out the window, his voice conversational. “The Galactics could have saved her, but they wouldn’t.”

“I know.” Her face softened with sympathy. “That must be terrible.”

“Yeah, well, at least she died with her soul. You ever met a juv?” Here it comes, let her have it. “ The Galactics can save your body all day long, but you sign your soul away for it, don’t you, Juv? Oh, I’m sorry, Pamela. ”

“You didn’t seem to have any complaints last night.” Her eyes were icy, her tone flat.

“Remember my bike, that we rode here from the pub?” He smiled stiffly. “Brand-new Honda-Davidson 2047. I could have gotten a 2046, fully refurbed, for about half the price. I just don’t much like refurbs. You juvs sell your soul away off-planet, and then, every once in awhile, when you notice something’s missing you come back slumming and try to suck the soul out of some poor schmuck who’s willing to be your toy for awhile. You suck real well, Pamela , but I just don’t like refurbs. Please be gone when I get out of the shower, but don’t hurry, I’m sure I’ll be scrubbing for awhile.”

“By the way,” she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, letting her cold, dead eyes slide up over his body, very slowly, “your ‘soul’ needs practice.”

“Yours has had too much.” He tossed the last word over his shoulder as he closed the bathroom door, “what’s left of it.”

At her apartment, Cally switched her Pamela clothes for Justine’s shabby-chic clothes and changed Pamela’s tan and touch of dark roots for Justine’s pallor and low-lights, and the pink polish for none, took the 9:30 bus down to Market Street, and entered a small and otherwise empty café. She ordered toast and coffee from a seat at the counter. The waiter, a kid in his late teens, set a cup of coffee with three sugar cubes in front of her, along with her toast. Two of the cubes were slightly whiter than the third. While the waiter was occupied at the cash register, she palmed those two and dropped the third in her coffee. She spread a thin layer of the orange marmalade Justine preferred onto her toast. As she was drinking her coffee, the waiter came back by and asked her if he could get her anything.

She shook her head slightly.

“You’re in awfully early this morning,” he said.

“He wasn’t a morning person.” She shrugged. Just a pathetic little puppy, and all he knew to be afraid of was that I might kick him in the balls, of all things. He was right. I am too old for him.

He suppressed a grin as he walked over to the small sink and resumed doing the dishes from the small Sunday morning rush.

Back at home, Cally rinsed the thin outer layer of sugar off of each cube, dried them off, and inserted the first one into the cube reader slot of her PDA. A hologram lit up above it with an image, surprisingly, of Father O’Reilly.

“Miss O’Neal, you are seeing me instead of your usual mission profiler because this mission is a bit special. We have reason to believe that the Bane Sidhe have been penetrated at a very high level. As a result, all knowledge of this mission on the headquarters end has been confined to three people, including myself. Your mission is to find and plug the leak by any means that you in your personal judgment deem necessary. You will use your usual backup team for this mission. Because of the highly sensitive nature of this mission the briefings of your fellow team members will be limited to those details necessary to insert you into your cover position. You are not authorized to expand on that briefing material until the on-base briefing, which will happen no earlier than the Thursday before insertion is made, and will require any team members briefed in to remain in secure circumstances until insertion. Your team members’ insertions to back you up are significantly less complicated than your own. You will review them and make any setup changes you deem necessary in the two weeks between today and your insertion date. Any time not necessary to your preparations you are authorized and instructed to charge as some of your extensive backlog of vacation time. Cally, if you don’t take at least a week of that as vacation I will personally guarantee that you will be benched for at least a month. You are an excellent agent, one of our best, but even the best need some down time. We would prefer that you take it voluntarily, of course.”

The hologram flickered and was replaced by a revolving still hologram of an officer whose collar stars belied his apparent age of thirty. “The officer you see now is one General Bernhard Beed, of the Fleet Strike Security Directorate. Ostensibly, Beed’s office handles the Third MP Brigade and criminal investigations functions of Titan Base. With two of his battalions forward deployed, you’ll notice he’s potentially got time for extra duties. We have information that indicates our leak may be using a non-Bane Sidhe member of one of the tongs on Titan Base as a cutout. We believe that in reality Beed has been detailed to head developing counterintelligence and operations against our organization. We therefore believe that Beed’s office is the best place to begin looking for the identity of our leak.” The display flickered and now the still was of a young woman of roughly Cally’s own height and build, in Fleet Strike gray silks. Well, my build if you ignore that she’s a pudgette. The slab is going to have to do one hell of a boob job. But her thighs… can’t tell if that’s muscle or fat in what she’s wearing. Maybe muscle. Her waist and stomach look okay, thank God. My eyes are fine, but the hair — it’ll be the first time I’ve had to go lighter than my natural color in a long time.

“Your cover, Captain Sinda Makepeace, is slated to transfer from the office of Fleet Strike Bureau of Personnel in Chicago to Titan Base as General Beed’s new administrative assistant. We have been able to verify that no one assigned to Beed’s office has ever met Miss Makepeace face to face.” The hologram flickered and was replaced with a dark-haired young officer who was probably shaving every day now. “This is the general’s aide, Lieutenant Joshua Pryce. On Sunday, May 26, Miss Makepeace is scheduled to take the 08:15 shuttle from Chicago to Titan Base. You will have approximately one hour between when Miss Makepeace passes through port security and the shuttle begins boarding to make the switch. You will report in person for appropriate physical adjustments no less than forty-eight hours before the switch to allow time for your system to stabilize. Cally, Titan Base is an extremely hazardous area of operations. I have to warn you that if you or any member of your team are caught, chances of our being able to mount a successful extraction are very poor. We need this information, Cally. Get it, and get out. All files on this cube will be automatically erased in five seconds.”