John Ringo: Cally's War

“Sunday, what in the hell is your problem?” The older man patted his pockets and finally came up with an empty pouch, sighed, and began digging through his backpack.

“Papa, I fucked up. I fucked up big time. It’s been so long, I just never recognized him.” His skin had gone a strange, sick shade of gray.

“Recognized who? Run it back to start, I’m not tracking it.” He found a fresh pouch and absentmindedly cut himself a plug, turning and regarding his teammate with a patient expression.

“I should have known it was a setup. We would have known, if I’d been on the ball. Oh my God, did I ever fuck up.”

“Son, if you don’t start from the beginning, I’m gonna have to hurt you. Come on, take a deep breath and tell me about it.”

“The beginning. Okay. Sarah, display the hologram of Lieutenant Joshua Pryce from our initial briefing.” The AID obediently put the requested image in the air in front of them.

“So?” O’Neal’s hands motioned for more.

“So I know the sonofabitch. Served with him in ACS forty-some years ago. It’s just, after forty years… We were both in the Triple-Nickle with Mike Junior. He was the S-2 of the battalion in Rabun. If I had recognized him, we wouldn’t have lost Cally.”

Papa O’Neal was silent for a few seconds.

“That’s a big one.” He was silent for a long moment. “But after forty years… Besides, if you had recognized him, we wouldn’t have pulled Jay out into the open. Then we would have lost no telling how many other people, possibly the whole ball game, with whoever else Jay gave up,” he reminded quietly. “So, who the hell is he, really? Obviously a juv, of course.”

“He’s Major General James Stewart, now. He just took command of the Third MP Brigade. He’s the bastard who caught her, and he’s the bastard who’s in charge of whatever they’re doing to her. And Mike is a fucking father to him!”

O’Neal stared coldly into the distance for a few minutes, jaw working. He took a long breath and released it slowly.

“That’s mostly right. Don’t tell me you don’t know by now that the Darhel are in charge of whatever they’re doing to her. Stewart is probably just now experiencing for the very first time how very closely they’re pulling his strings. I mean, he has to have known it. But knowing it and experiencing it are two different things.” He spat into his cup, tilting his head a bit as if something had just occurred to him.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Sunday. You may have just handed us the break that’s gonna get her out of there. Just… give me a few minutes, okay? And I mean that, no more beating yourself up.” As the older man walked aft and began to pace, Tommy could actually hear him begin to hum tunelessly.

James Stewart had long since numbed out to the additional indignities being visited on Sinda. He supposed the numbness was composed of equal parts shock, rage, and the necessity of keeping a poker face if he was ever to get the opportunity of avenging Sinda. He wouldn’t call her “Mahri” — that was the name they were using. Sinda wasn’t her name, but it was what she had called herself to him, and that was the best he had.

He had seen some indescribably horrible things as an ACS trooper, things done by Posleen to humans, things done by humans to Posleen. In the gang, he thought he had seen some pretty horrible things done to humans by humans. A few murders, anyway.

But he had never seen anything like this done by a group of humans to another human being. He had thought he was hardened to anything. He was wrong. Still, without the ability to click on and move his mind to that cold, efficient place that built a temporary barrier against the horror, he probably would be in a cell now, or shot — well, shot again — and no use to anybody.

The Fleet chief, Yi, was currently giving an end-of-day report on the status of the prisoner. The list of injuries — smashed and “merely” broken bones, cuts, bruises, and burns replayed vivid images in his head. The first thing they had done, of course, had been to finish gang-raping her after resorting to the simple expedient of an improvised gag. It rendered her incapable of providing information, but the bastards had apparently decided it would have been bad form to let her win that psychological battle. And in a total bastard kind of way, he could see their point. He was still going to kill every last one of them, but he could see why they did it.

The hardest thing he’d done in years, next to calling the MPs on her in the first place, was leaving at the end of the day to go home, looking perfectly normal. He had watched them turn out the lights and run the gravity down to zero for the night, leaving her strapped down and injected with Galactic Decameth — the C part in Provigil-C, minus the Provigil. And then he’d had to turn and wheel himself out the door, trailed by his own medic, who looked like a saint next to Fleet’s pet monster.

In the small room, Tommy sat on the bed, waiting, a white container the size of a cigar box in his hands, open at one end. A clean AID was clipped to his belt. It looked just like any other AID. Tonight, that was its most important job. He wore gray silks with the insignia and unit identification of long ago. If any of the surviving members of the triple nickel ACS saw him, it would look to them like they were seeing a ghost. He had gone back to his original hair and eye color, and he had never needed as much facial alteration as Cally or Papa, anyway. Oh, he was different — but not that different unless he wanted to be. And, of course, his frame was pretty hard to camouflage.

Out of the two vacant rooms on the hall with the quarters formerly occupied by lowly Lieutenant Pryce, and now occupied by a general the system had not yet had the opportunity to reassign, he and Papa had chosen the one closest to the transit car. Not that it mattered. One was as good as the other. A very small sticky camera sat in the slight shadow cast by the door jamb.

Papa O’Neal was in the chair, watching the hall on the screen of his PDA. He was actually watching a fast-forward of the past five minutes, since the camera only squealed its encrypted transmission when pinged, and they didn’t need particularly high resolution.

“Fuck.”

“What?” Tommy’s eyes locked with the older man’s.

“He’s in a wheelchair and has someone with him. Looks like a medic.” He patted his pockets absently before frowning and rubbing his chin.

“Uh… if Cally did that to him, he may not be all that sympathetic.” Tommy looked over his shoulder and winced slightly. “He doesn’t look so good.”

“If you’ve got a better card to play, I’d be glad to hear it,” he said, setting the PDA down on the desk for a second to get up and pace. “We may not be able to get to him tonight.”

“He never did like doctors much,” Tommy mused. “He might kick him out. I don’t see any reason not to give it at least until midnight.”

“Agreed.” He stopped pacing and sat down, tapping a foot in uncharacteristic nervousness.

As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait long at all, as the medic left and disappeared through the transit car doors almost immediately.

“Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

“Never would have guessed that he doesn’t like doctors. Let’s go.” The red-haired man pocketed his PDA and left without looking back.

“Right. This is gonna be so weird.” Tommy rubbed his hands on his silks and cleared his throat, following him out. This was the first time in twenty-five years that he was going to have to go see an old friend who was sure he was dead. Don’t overthink it. Just do it.