Cally's War

Chapter Thirteen

A week later, after having had three liaisons with the general and no more meaningful information, and having thoroughly searched everywhere near the general’s headquarters that she had access to with no luck, Cally had come to the conclusion that it was time to try plan B. The areas she did not have access to had some serious security on the door locks. Not even a custom crafted tools package from Tommy had been enough to let her crack it safely, the one time she’d gotten a solid chance at one of them without an MP in visual range of the door.

She had, however, been able to copy the security permissions file to cube and the report back from Tommy had turned up the interesting information that while she didn’t have access to those areas, as the general’s aide de camp, Pryce did. Which left her organizing the morning e-mail printouts for Beed contemplating the not at all unhappy prospect of plan B. Not at all unhappy.

Of course, stalking Pryce was going to be complicated by Beed’s infernal, possessive, controlling habits, which had gotten worse if anything. Still, she had a few things on her side. Foremost that the general seemed willing to trust his aide around her, while being annoyingly paranoid about other males. Whether it was Pryce’s low rank or that his terrible clumsiness and slight stutter tending to worsen in the general’s presence, the general’s paranoia had a blind spot where the lieutenant was concerned.

And, of course, she intended to make sure that her public behavior continued to foster that blind spot.

“Good morning, sir,” she said cheerily as she bounced into his office and put the stack of printouts in his in tray, scooping up an inch and a half of assorted paper from his out tray.

“Come here a second, Sinda, I need to go over this with you.” He waved her around to his side of the desk, using explaining his proofreading markups to her as a transparent attempt to get her close enough to grope her left breast. She affected excitement, gasping slightly, but honestly! Beed wasn’t bad looking, and he was at least decent in bed, but sometimes he got on her nerves so bad she had to physically restrain herself from throttling the man.

“Yes, sir, I’ll get right on that, sir.”

“Oh, and Sinda,” he sighed, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you tonight, dear. Clarice has planned a dinner party and absolutely insists on my presence.”

“Awww.” She looked regretful. “Well, I’ve got a cube of movies I’ve been meaning to watch and those self-heaters, maybe I’ll just have a quiet night, sir.” She wanted to slap him for the hint of approval she saw in his eyes. She didn’t think any of that had made it past her eyes, but she turned away to make sure, taking the stack of papers with her. It wasn’t really out of character. After all, the real Sinda probably would have been pissed, too.

Later, Pryce came in with a notepad and propped himself on the edge of her desk, knocking off her stapler and a paperclip dispenser.

“I’ll get that on my way out. Did the general tell you about his speech?” he asked.

“Speech?” she echoed.

“Yeah, the dinner tonight is a little more than he may have told you. His wife is trying to organize a Toastmasters on base, along with General Harrison’s wife. Anyway, I’ve got the draft here. I’d appreciate it if you could be my second set of eyes proofing the thing for grammar.”

“Sure.” She reached out and accepted the pad from him. “So, another wild and wacky evening for you, eh?”

“A-actually not. We had booked the back dining room at the officers’ club, but after the kitchen fire last week, well, the smoke damage is awful. So I really had to scramble rebooking it at Cherry Blossoms, and then we were two seats short so Colonel Lee and I made the gracious sacrifice of foregoing the pleasure of the occasion.” He grinned wickedly. “Of course, I’m all broken up about it.”

“I can see that, Pryce.” The corners of her mouth twitched slightly and her eyes danced. “So, no canapés tonight. Why, bless your heart, Pryce, what will you do with the time?”

His eyes snapped to hers, and — and that intent, perceptive look in — his eyes were really dark, and there was a hot, tight feeling in the pit of her stomach. She shifted in her chair slightly, licking her lips. She saw his glance flicker to her chest briefly, and back to hold her eyes, almost as if he hadn’t really intended to look.

“Are you sure you want to go down that road, Captain? I’m no general. And I’m definitely not General Beed.”

“Um… road?” she squeaked. Was that me? Oh, great, Cally, way to sound like a complete idiot.

“Ahem. I mean, I don’t know what your plans are, Pryce, but with all this paperwork, I mean, I have half a dozen transfers alone. And it’ll probably take me all afternoon just to get Simkowicz’s pay situation straightened out. I expect I’ll be here very late tonight.” She could tell she was babbling, but her mouth seemed to be in overdrive, which was in character for Sinda, so that must be why she was doing it. She jumped at the slight shock when his hand touched hers.

“Y-you know, suddenly I just remembered I’ve got loads of paperwork to do, myself.”

Cally had actually squared away most of what needed to be done by the time Beed departed, speech in hand. Of course he had loaded her down with additional assignments at the last minute. He thought. She had been able to anticipate most of it. His pattern for these little extras was to take work that had to be done anyway, but later, and come up with a reason he absolutely had to have it first thing in the morning. If she had actually waited until he told her, at seventeen-thirty, it would have added a good three hours onto her workload. As it was, she had more like half an hour of work left as he swanned out the door, and the relevant files heaped around in an artistic disorder on her desk. Asshole.

Fifteen minutes after eighteen hundred she took a trip to the copier, counting the coworkers still in the office. Anders was on her way out. Carlucci and Sanchez were still at their desks.

As she passed Pryce’s office on the way back, and he lifted his head briefly to meet her eyes, she had to wonder if he was really working or just pretending like she was. Or, like she would be, anyway.

At eighteen-forty-five she was trying not to twiddle her thumbs and went to the copy machine again, noting with satisfaction that the two agents had finally gotten themselves out of the office. Or, at least, she hoped so.

“Buckley,” she whispered, “listen for a minute and tell me if you hear anyone in the office area but me and Pryce.” She was as quiet as she could be, for a few seconds, breathing as shallowly and silently as she could.

“No, Captain. They’re hiding too well for me to hear them. They must be really good. Maybe we’ll die fast.”

“Okay, you can shut up now, buckley. And quit listening.” Okay, so she knew it was just a computer program. She still didn’t want it listening in while she was with Pryce. It would have been just too weird.

“But what if I hear them sneaking up on us?”

“Shut up and quit listening, buckley.”

“Right.”

“You know, they make personality overlays to cover over the depressing bits of the base buckley.” Pryce had come in behind her and she jumped as she spun around to face him.

“Don’t do that! You scared me half to death.” She had clapped a hand to her chest and she froze that way, for a few seconds. His eyes were big, and dark, and for once she knew what they meant when they talked about seeing into someone’s soul. Could he see hers? If he could, would he stay? She realized her mouth was hanging open slightly and shut it, licking her lips nervously as she played the ends of her hair through her fingers.

She walked up very deliberately and pressed herself full length against him. It was almost like touching a live wire. As he pulled her mouth hard against his she could feel the heat of his thighs through her silks. They were hard and tight, and as she rubbed one thigh up the outside of his leg, pressing closer, she was glad for once that Sinda wasn’t perfectly lean. She could feel the muscles of his back under her hands. His mouth tasted cinnamony, like he’d just been chewing gum, and her knees buckled as his tongue and teeth and lips finally turned off the running commentary in her brain as she strained to get as close to him as she could possibly get. Clothes. In the damned way. Patience? What patience. Patience, hell.

Afterwards he winced as he stood up so she could get off the worktable.

“Are you okay?” She blessed providence that there was a box of tissue on the table, well, okay, on the floor now, in here. She shrugged her bra back on and neatened herself up, refastening her silks. Thank God for fabric that didn’t wrinkle, no matter what.

“That bite’s a little tender.” He rubbed a set of red marks on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s not like I noticed at the time. I mean, well, I noticed but it wasn’t… it didn’t… it was okay, really. God, what am I saying? Sinda, thank you. You — you blew my mind. Wow. I — thank you.”

“Mmmm. And thank you. Wow is right. Is it okay if I don’t try to think or anything just now? God that was good.” She had to let go of the hand she was clinging to so he could do up his own silks, but it was all right. He gave it right back.

She did have to let him go for a few minutes as they picked up the packaged ream of paper and assorted other office debris that had landed on the floor, but she did take the opportunity of him bending down to pick up a staple puller to run a hand up the inside of his thigh and give his butt a squeeze. This was… nice. She usually didn’t feel so cuddly after sex. It was kinda cool. As he stood she wrapped her arms around him from behind, rubbing up against him like a cat. God, he smells so good. Rich and hot and… Oh, God, I’d better move away from him. Just get myself frustrated. He won’t be ready to go again for awhile.

“So, do you want to get something eat?” She stepped away, but the effort had her twisting her hands.

“I smuggled in some self-heaters earlier this afternoon. We really can’t be seen out and about,” he said apologetically, looking at her as if he knew how stirred up she still was. “But on the plus side, after we get a little food, get a little energy back, we’ll still be alone.”

His eyes were so deep she was about to melt into a puddle on the ground right where she stood.

“Come on, they’re in my office,” he said.

She pulled her chair in while he got the boxes out of his desk and pulled out the start tabs.

“You know we’re going to have to sneak these boxes right back out again. Beed is possessive, jealous, suspicious—” She stopped as he placed a finger over her lips.

“We are not going to let a certain dark cloud rain all over our evening. So, would you like sweet and sour shrimp, or cashew chicken?” He gestured with the boxes.

“Mmm. I love seafood. Can I have the shrimp?” She licked her lips.

“Sure thing.” He passed one of the heaters over. It still had a couple of minutes before they could pop the top. “That must have been rough growing up. A Wisconsin farm girl with a jones for seafood.”

“Not really. When you don’t have it, you don’t have it. We had more than a lot of people. Better than living shut away from sunlight in some Urb.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, bless your heart, you grew up in a Sub-Urb, didn’t you, Pryce?”

“Yeah. We didn’t have much, but I got by.” His mouth tightened involuntarily.

“I? Not we?” she asked.

“Well, my mom wasn’t around much. Let’s just say I got by with a little help from my friends.” The words held echoes of remembered pain.

“Oh. Did you spend a lot of time in the crèche?” Doesn’t sound like he had a happy childhood at all.

“Something like that. Let’s just say we did a good bit of self-supervision,” he said.

“Sounds like you had to be self-reliant pretty early on.” Something we have in common.

“Sort of. I learned to pick good friends and trust them. And how to deal with people I couldn’t trust at all. What about you? Did you have something where you played with kids, or were you alone a lot, or what?” He took one of her hands.

“There weren’t a lot of other kids. I was a bit of a daddy’s girl. He was my best friend.” Well, Granpa, anyway. After the first landing, he might as well have been my dad.

“Fresh air. Sunshine. It sounds… wholesome. I didn’t do a lot of wholesome growing up,” he said.

“Not as much as you’d think. Daddy was ex-military. Like a lot of people I guess. But it was less wholesome and more… I don’t know… earthy? Practical?” How to explain without explaining, that is the question.

“I envy you that adult guidance. I had to figure out so much by trial and error.” He opened his dinner and the savory and slightly sweet smell of the cashews wafted through the room.

“I envy you good friends your own age. The farm was a bit isolated. In some ways I didn’t get to be a kid.” Not past age eight, anyway.

“Something we have in common. We were kids, but not kids, you know?” He was looking into her soul like that again.

“Yeah, I do. Boy, this is a heavy conversation.” She pulled the top off of her shrimp and inhaled as the steam escaped. “This smells yummy.”

“Want some rice? I only brought steamed. I don’t like the way the fried rice in these things reheats. The bits of egg are always rubbery.” He offered her a box.

“Good choice. The steamed is much better. Thanks. That smells good, too.” She gestured towards the box he’d just opened.

“Wanna bite? Trade you?” He speared a bite of food on his fork and extended it for her, cupping a hand under it in case the sauce dripped. His hand was warm against her chin as she savored the bite.

Watching him eat a bite of shrimp off of her fork drew her attention right to his mouth, of course, and she had no idea how long she’d been staring when he finally snapped out of it and reached his fork back into his heater box. She just knew that her second bit of food was noticeably cooler than her first. But she wasn’t really all that hungry, anyway. She’d eaten less than half the food when she pushed it away. Sometime during the meal she’d rolled her chair over closer to his, but she could feel the heat of his thigh against hers and close somehow just wasn’t close enough.

Obviously he thought so, too, because no sooner had he pushed his own food away, also half-eaten, than she found herself pulled into his lap with a hand cupped around her breast. Tantalizingly, too damned far down under her breast. She twisted slightly at the waist, arching into it as the movement drew his fingers across her nipple.

Naturally, the movement also shifted her hips, which made him shift and she could feel his erection hard against her leg and suddenly she couldn’t stand it. But when she tried to move to straddle him, he wouldn’t let go, rubbing a nipple between a thumb and forefinger as he nibbled on the upper rim of her ear and her hands clenched, nails driving into his shoulders. It felt like every nerve ending she had was alive and singing with heat. Suddenly she couldn’t have sat still if her life depended on it. How can he be so clumsy on his feet and so… aw, hell, who cares!

Conscious thought didn’t resurface until he came and she found herself collapsed across his chest on the floor, and realized there was a bit of a cramp in one of her quads. She couldn’t even have guessed how many orgasms had ripped through her while her brain had been on hold. All she knew as she eased off of him and to the side was that her muscles had turned to jelly. She let her head rest on his shoulder, the utter relaxation of his muscles contrasting sharply with the tension of a few minutes before. She traced her index finger through his chest hair, licking the gloss of sweat off her fingertip. It tasted of salt and something indefinable that she couldn’t have described, she only knew she was starting to crave it like a drug. But… later… after she’d rested a little bit. Or maybe a lot.

Amazingly, it turned out that silks could wrinkle after all.

Friday was always the easiest day to get out of bed, for obvious reasons. In her case, there was the extra bonus that Beed would find it impossible to get away from his wife for the entire weekend. Still, there was an extra bounce in her step, despite the slight sore muscle twinges in strange places, as she detoured by Claibourne’s Coffee on her way in to work.

One of the interesting features of base living was the excellent job they’d done of matching the lighting to normal human circadian rhythms. The unvarying quality of the light had been one of the design problems in the early Sub-Urbs that had since been blamed for a lot of the social problems they suffered during and immediately after the Postie war. The better areas of most of them had by now been retrofitted with adjustable glow paint, programmed on an optimum circadian scale. In Titan’s case, limited retrofitting had been needed, since the need for an artificial day had been obvious in the first place. At least, that had been the explanation. For whatever reason, it was interesting to see the Corridor in daylight and actually stand and remind herself that the lighting was not natural sunlight diffused through some skylight. It was a very good imitation. The plants certainly seemed to like it well enough. On this floor, the Galplas had been textured to look like an old brick sidewalk, and the rough earthen pink clashed lightly with the terra cotta planters. Honey bees buzzed around the flowers blooming in assorted hanging baskets, and the faux-neon signs in the night-business windows were dark. The place looked so different in the daytime it almost made her homesick, pointing up the alien chemical smell and the dryness of the air, so different from Charleston’s muggy salt.

She didn’t show it, but it jolted her sense of cover slightly to notice the dress shop next door had a red scarf around the neck of the mannequin in the window. However late she got away from the general tonight, she’d have to make time for a meet with Granpa. Not that she had a lot to tell him other than what hadn’t worked. And that she had confirmed that Beed had an extra project, probably their leak. Maybe he has something on the tong angle.

A latte and a bag of cherries later, she was back in the transit car up to the office. For some reason the cherries and plums on Titan Base were considerably better than most of its other hydroponic produce — possibly because hydroponics were in the bottom level of Fleet’s quadrant. After her first encounter with base-grown coffee, she had avoided the office coffee in all but her direst needs for caffeine. She had asked Carlucci about it once. Apparently, as Beed said, you got used to it. The old hands didn’t seem to taste the difference anymore. She was going to have to start drinking the awful stuff. Sinda Makepeace would be getting the process of acclimation over and done with, and her own persistence in drinking the imported Terran coffee was a potential break in cover. Unprofessional.

At the office, she poured herself a cup from the coffee maker in the copy room, suppressing a grin as she passed the collating table. She grimaced at the foul liquid in the cup and proceeded to drown it in sugar and creamer powder, reminding herself that she had in fact done worse things for the cause.

Pryce did better than she thought he would at acting normally when he said good morning. One of the worries that had gnawed at her brain as she settled into sleep last night had been that he might turn out to be a really rotten liar. He was okay. Maybe she could find some opportunity to get together with him this weekend. She had been tentatively turning over a plan in her head for a couple of days now, and the chemistry between the two of them was good enough that it just might work. If she could play to his desire for variety by using different places throughout the office as props for sex, it was just possible that she could either get him to take her into the areas she couldn’t otherwise reach or that she could somehow swipe his ID card and spoof the biometrics.

She flipped through the morning traffic on her PDA while trying to mull the relative advantage of forcing the coffee down a sip at a time, or waiting and chugging it when nobody was looking. Hell, nobody was looking now, and it was probably marginally less awful hot. A moment later she regarded the empty cup with satisfaction, trying not to wince at the slightly sour aftertaste.

The awards report had come through from first battalion on Dar Ent. Dammit, whose Cheerios did Simkowicz piss in? Lost records my ass.

“Buckley, send a full and complete copy of the Simkowicz 201 file to Personnel, copied to Payroll, with a full and complete copy of his career pay records. Code it as coming from General Beed. State that the general urgently desires that this matter be cleared up by no later than sixteen hundred today, and that if this is not possible, to please reply immediately indicating the specific reasons for the delay and the specific individuals responsible. Copy the entire mess to General Franklin’s AID. Shoot the AID, Lisa, a private memo explaining that she can use her judgment about whether to show it to her boss if the name doesn’t finally light a fire under those assholes. Four months behind my ass.”

A few minutes later, as she walked back down the hall to get Beed’s morning printouts, Pryce was coming the other way, headed back to his office from somewhere. She didn’t stop, but passed him just a little too close, turning so that her breast brushed his arm as he walked past. There was a spring in her step as she bounced down the hall for the stupid paper. Suddenly, she felt like whistling.

Stewart ducked into his office, squashing the simultaneous desires to curse and grin. He also needed to think about something else for a minute to return his silks to a presentable state. Unfortunately, it looked like Sinda might not turn out to be a very good liar. That was careless. Not surprising, really. She was a bit of a ditz. Not that she didn’t make up for it in her own way. She was warm, and had a great work ethic, and he shook his head as he realized he’d been staring at the same spot on his office wall for who knew how long. The point was that she was a ditz. But a fun one. And he really needed to think of, say, the steps in the process of fitting a new ACS suit to a troop. It had been long enough ago that it required just the right amount of concentration to remember the steps — that is, a lot.

Finally, he was ready to go talk to that slimy sonofabitch excuse for a general officer. Think lieutenant. Fresh-faced, eager, klutzy Lieutenant Pryce, first lieutenant as proof that God really does have a sense of humor. He tripped over the threshold on his way out the door, just for practice, and noticed that Sinda not only could see his door from her desk, but was actually watching him, with a rather dazed expression on her face. Boy, why you are getting hung up on a complete, incredible, total ditz, I do not know. This simple lieutenant role must be going to your brain. Okay, so it’s not my brain I’m thinking with. Whup! ”… after the boot area is fitted, the suit nannites must be induced to begin the undergelling process…”

He walked into the general’s office, stumbling slightly over his feet and grinning internally at Beed’s slight flush of frustrated anger. He came to attention in front of the desk as the door slid shut behind him.

“Our source has been in contact again. He’s offering more information for sale,” the general said.

“Who are they sending to meet him?” As if I didn’t know.

“He’s here. I can’t meet him tonight. You’ll have to make the meet. Here’s the address. Memorize it.” He extended a sheet of paper and waited while Stewart stared at the paper for a few moments, taking it back and tucking it into his desk.

“Do not fuck this up, Lieutenant,” Beed said grimly.

Yeah, like you have a real excuse for slacking, asshole. If Mister Jones is on Titan, I wonder who else is on Titan? This is the first indication we’ve gotten that our strategy might actually be working. God, I look forward to relieving this bastard. For Sinda’s sake if nothing else.

“Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?”

“Make sure you come back with something good, Pryce. I don’t need to tell you that right now we’ve got jack squat on this mission, and that does not look good. A good OER on a mission like this could be a great asset to the career of a young officer. Dismissed.”

You prick. “Yes, sir.” Pryce saluted, executing a wobbly about face and leaving before his façade cracked. Maintaining cover was getting to be harder than he had expected.

The sake bar served a certain class of Fleet junior officers. While the establishment was on the no-go list for Fleet Strike personnel, other than MPs in the line of duty, Stewart’s task tonight fully justified the civilian clothing he was wearing, and his military haircut was common among freighter weenies, anyway. While walking in two or three hours later would pretty much have guaranteed a brawl, it was still early enough that Fleet’s finest were firmly absorbed with drinking and trying their luck at some of the multiplayer game consoles scattered around the place.

Stewart generally avoided the lousy beer, made worse by being microbrewed on the premises from local hydroponically grown hops. The anime, at least, was first class. While the large… eyes… on cartoon women were not nearly as much fun as the real thing — he quashed the strong impulse to fantasize painful and violent ends for Beed — anyway, the art was nice to look at.

The balding but fit civilian sitting by the bar over a bowl of what was probably miso soup was not so nice to look at. Frankly, he felt a gut level distaste for traitors in general, whenever he let himself think about it. But dealing with unsavory people went with the territory in intel, and he couldn’t really afford the luxury of that distaste right now. Like any soldier, Stewart could summon a certain grudging respect for an honest opponent or even enemy. People who were traitors to their own cause, though, just tended to arouse a certain visceral distaste that he had to squash with a vengeance as he crossed the bar to meet the other man.

“Mr. Smith, how nice to see you again,” the other man said.

“Mr. Jones. You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” Stewart observed.

“I could say the same thing of you,” the traitor said.

“If you knew where my home was, I suppose you could.” He pulled up a barstool, smiling easily even though the thought of drinking with this worm was enough to turn his stomach.

“So, what have you got to trade, Mr. Jones? Are you still dancing around with the penny ante game, or are you ready to move up to something more rewarding? And, if you don’t mind my saying so, this is a bit of a change of scene for you, isn’t it?” Prod him a bit and see what he comes out with.

“I travel. This time I don’t just want cash. You said you’d pay more for more. Well, we’ll see if you meant that.” There was a thin film of sweat on the guy’s upper lip. Maybe he was nervous?

“Keep talking.” Don’t give him anything to grab onto, make him reach for a response.

“I want a diversion. You want part of our organization. I see a mutual opportunity here. You assist me in placing some evidence, I give you the person it will point to. You might want the rest of the team, in case you have to be kind of rough on your new toys. But that would be where the money part comes in.” The undertone of desperation in his voice was palpable.

Good God, we’ve hit the motherlode. Okay, now the hard question. Why?

“And what, exactly, would this placing of evidence consist of?” he asked.

“The usual and obvious. Put some banking transactions together and tuck away some luxury goods in the right places. When you pick him up, it’ll look like he was feeding you information all along and he went in out of the cold.” The traitor’s grin was a particularly nasty one.

“You know, the object of this game is usually to get the information without the other guy knowing you’ve got it.” He just couldn’t help being a little sarcastic. Try as he might, having to deal with someone capable of betraying his friends for money just really got under his skin.

“If you can. I’ve got news for you. They know they’ve got a leak. So you’re not losing anything that isn’t already lost. They don’t even have to know you have him. Make it look like he went out on a colonist ship.” Baldy obviously was starting to feel the net closing in.

Okay, they’d only buy this fool’s “diversion” if they’re really stupid, and to penetrate us like they have, stupid they’re not. On the other hand, if he actually is giving us insiders, it doesn’t matter. And I got my answer. His people are closing in on him and he’s covering his butt. If that’s the price, I can deal with that. What do I have to pay him per guy? Three million U.S. dollars per team member?

“I think we can do that. We’ll plant the evidence as directed and pay you one million dollars U.S., each, for this guy and every member of his team we capture,” he said.

“Do I look stupid? Five million U.S., each, and it’s for every person whose identity I give you. If you want to shoot them instead of reeling them in, or if you screw it up, that’s your problem.” The traitor obviously had an ego the size of Cleveland.

It took some minor haggling, but they finally settled at two and a half, half on delivery of the names, half on confirmation that the name went with a real person credibly identified as an organization operative, with standard mutual security precautions. A light price, for what I’m getting.

“So, Mr. Jones, just as a good faith gesture as I go set all this in motion, you said you’re giving us a team. I’m sure you’ll understand I have to have something for the people I report to before they’re going to let me have that kind of money. This team you’re giving us, does it have some sort of internal call name?”

“Hector.”

Michael O’Neal, Sr., had never gotten used to waiting. Oh, he’d learned to simulate perfectly still patience very early in life, or he wouldn’t have survived. It didn’t mean he had to like it. And he didn’t. His granddaughter wasn’t exactly late, since there was no set time for their meet and in the field, with her cover, there could be all sorts of reasons why she couldn’t get away early, or maybe at all.

Which made waiting even more of a pain in the ass.

He had trained Cally in battlefield survival, and general survival in hostile environments, since the age of eight. As a little girl in the Posleen war, she’d been more solid than many grown men, first killing the assassin who’d come to kill them if he couldn’t be recruited, then taking her place beside Team Conyers to fight off the Posties as they’d come up the Gap.

He spat carefully into the spare cup the barmaid had so thoughtfully provided.

After the war, she’d had the first-rate training in her specialty provided in a private parochial environment by the Bane Sidhe’s cadre of killer nuns. Her skills had been honed to a fine art. She was, arguably, the best living assassin on Earth or off it — with the possible exception of himself. Although he didn’t have her… natural advantages.

So, all that being true, why, when she was out in the field, did he always feel like a nervous father whose daughter was out on her first date?

He stifled the impulse to stand and pace, strangling and dismembering it for good measure. Cally was long past her first date. That was something of the problem. You could teach a girl how to reliably hit an eight inch circle from a thousand yards, you could teach her how to run and recognize booby traps, you could teach her nine different ways to kill a man quietly in the dark, but you couldn’t teach her how to cope with the stresses of the job. That was something each assassin had to learn for herself, or himself.

Cally had always been a natural. He remembered the first time he’d put a pistol in that kid’s hand. She couldn’t hit the side of a barn, of course, but after she’d fired her first magazine downrange and the slide locked back, she’d turned and looked at him. She’d been a skinny kid, the blond hair tangled and stringy practically every time she shook her head. And there had been a smudge of soot on the side of her nose where she’d scratched. The earmuffs had been big and bright green on the sides of her head, and the safety glasses tended to slip down the bridge of her nose, but the grin she’d given him had lit up her whole face. And as time went on it became clear that besides enthusiasm she had two other crucial traits. Her eyesight was unusually sharp, and her hands exceptionally steady. He’d taken care to protect both — the first from eye strain in bad light, and the second from vices like caffeine. There were vices more workable in budding warriors.

And, of course, she’d been stubborn. Couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten that from. He chuckled, spitting again into the spare cup. And the way she’d taken out the kneecap of that rotten punk who’d tried—

The door slid open and there, finally, was his baby granddaughter — but what in the hell was she wearing? The one-piece black leather-looking jumpsuit would have suited her cover tonight as a good-time girl just fine — if she had had her own measurements. As it was, the zipper of the black tank-style top half could barely be tugged halfway up without her busting out of it. And in his opinion, that was still an imminent danger. It made him want to get up and throw a blanket around her.

“Hey, sweet thing, what can I order for you to drink?” He spat again as she sauntered in, straddling a chair and leaning her arms across its back as the door slid closed behind her. There was a noticeable bounce in her step that he didn’t think was the role. Whores weren’t bouncy. At best they were blasé.

“Black Bush, water back. Life’s too short to drink cheap booze,” she said. The toe of one foot tapped rapidly at the floor, as if she couldn’t quite sit still, even though it was late and she must have been tired.

“You’re chipper,” he said. Life’s too short? Cally hadn’t thought life was too short for anything in a very long time. Something’s up.

“Progress report?” He took a sound damper out and set it on the table, turning it on. “I’ve already swept.”

“I haven’t found jack. I did confirm that a clandestine operation is being run out of the office. Probably the clandestine operation, but that’s all I’ve got. Getting the general into bed wasn’t a problem. Probably would have been a problem if I hadn’t, in fact. He’s that type. I’ve searched everything I’ve got access to and I’m working on the aide de camp, who has access to the places I don’t,” she said.

Was it just his imagination that her voice had gotten a bit husky there at the end? Oh, crap, what now?

“So, tell me more about this aide.” He spat, considering. “You’re planning to get access to the rest of the brigade headquarters space how?”

“Oh, that’s easy.” She bounced, blue eyes twinkling mischievously at him. “When those are the only places left in the office that we haven’t done it, somehow I think he’ll be… receptive to suggestion.” The way she licked her lips reminded him of the cat that ate the canary.

“You’re not supposed to mix business with pleasure.” Oh shit.

“You’re the one who wanted me to get a boyfriend.” She shrugged, examining the nails of one hand minutely.

“I hesitate to say this, Granddaughter, but don’t get in too deep.” Fuck. She’s not going to listen. Too late.

“Oh, I won’t. I’ll let Pryce do that. Really, Granpa, I’m not twelve. Could you order that drink? I wasn’t kidding about enjoying something good. Might as well, I’m already here.” She changed the subject, turning the chair and settling back into it so she could lean back and relax for a few minutes.

He grunted noncommittally, turning off the damper and stepping over to the console by the door to punch the drinks in. When he sat back down and she pulled her chair over and snuggled up against him, draping his arm around her shoulder for the benefit of whoever delivered their drinks, he had a few tough moments as he reminded his body that while this very well-built and nubile young woman did not look like his granddaughter, she in fact was his granddaughter. Now, if only this Pryce young man had not been met on a mission, he’d be welcoming the guy with open arms. Well, okay, if he measured up. Still, they were trained for extractions, and it wasn’t as if Fleet Strike actually needed all those lieutenants. On second thought, strike that. Any man worth his salt could be counted on to react poorly to being kidnapped. Well, maybe. The bait was considerable.