Cally's War

Cally looked up brightly as Tommy came in with her supper, giving him a big smile. The contents of the big bag of cosmetics and toiletries and other girl stuff that he’d put together before the extraction, knowing in advance that she’d need those old-fashioned tools of feminine camouflage, but not which ones and how much, were strewn out across her bunk. She had a look of slightly guilty pleasure, like a kid caught opening the Christmas presents a day early. She swept them back into the bag as if they didn’t really mean a thing, but her eyes were bright and misty.

“Hey, hero. You guys got me out of the spot from hell,” she said. “Oh, and thanks for the stuff.”

“Yep. We did at that. Papa’ll be in in a little while. The crew naturally don’t know you two are related, and he got his arm twisted into a game of spades.” He saw her face. “No, really. It would have looked conspicuous as hell if he’d run off here. They think you’re my girlfriend.”

“What?” She looked dangerous, standing and folding her bunk up into the wall and taking down and unfolding the stool that stowed securely in a rack under the bunk.

“Whoa! Hang on! It wasn’t my idea — and Papa would have felt just too weird even pretending to the crew to be hot over his own granddaughter.” He set the tray down on her fold-down table and folded the guest stool down from the wall, holding up his hands placatingly as he sat.

“He’s pretended to be my date before.” There was a slight note of outrage. “I mean, okay, ick, but he has!”

“For a day here or an evening there, but you have to have noticed it’s… a tough role for him,” he finished tactfully.

“Okay, okay. I guess I just miss him after all that. They were real amateurs at the whole torture thing, it’s just I was so sure I wasn’t going to get out of there alive.” She shuddered.

“And you finally had something to live for?” he prompted.

“He helped. He had to have been sympathetic. Are — when are we going to get him out?” There was a glitter to her eyes he hadn’t seen before. Her cheeks were flushed, too.

“Oh, yeah. Special delivery.” He grinned and handed her a message cube.

“Is that from — why didn’t you? Nevermind.” She looked around frantically for her PDA, then remembered. “Buckley. I lost buckley.”

Tommy was surprised to hear a note of real grief in her voice. People weren’t supposed to get attached to the personalities of their PDAs the way they did to real AIDs. Then again, almost everyone he knew used a personality overlay. He didn’t know anybody who’d used the base personality as much as she had. Maybe he grew on you after awhile.

“Here, use my AID,” he offered. “Sarah, help her, okay?” Since clean AIDs were somewhat less persnickety than the originals, he could trust her to behave.

“Thanks.” She stuck the cube in the reader slot and it immediately displayed. Oh my God, they’ve got him in a wheelchair? Fleet Strike medicine’s better than that. Oh. This must have been made yesterday. Yeah, I guess if they’ve got him up and around instead of sleeping through regen he would have to be taking it easy. That bastard Beed.

“Cally, my love. Your name suits you. If you’re seeing this, we made it. We got you out. Good. If so, I hope to be joining you soon. Without a prisoner, I’m only here long enough to promote the XO and then it’s back to Earth for me. Tommy and your grandfather have told me how this whole thing works. As soon as I’ve got my affairs wrapped up they’ll be bringing me in, sooner rather than later. At some point the Darhel will wonder, even if Fleet Strike won’t, whether I slipped you a suicide pill. So I’ll see you soon, love — and I hope that you’ll be looking forward to that as much as I will. Tell Tommy it’s okay if he talks about me. Vaya con Dios, Cally.” The hologram disappeared.

“We’ll be staying in orbit another two or three days so we can take information about his intended travel plans back with us,” Tommy said.

“Good. You know him? From where? You didn’t say anything in the pre-mission briefing,” she said.

“Cally, I’m sorry. I fucked up. I knew him forty years ago in ACS and when I heard ‘lieutenant,’ I just didn’t make the connection. Not until we saw the CO change after you were captured.” He tensed for the storm he just knew was coming.

“Okay. What was he like back then?” she asked.

“What?” Okay? I fucked up and got her captured and tortured and her answer is “okay”? Damn, she is in love. “Oh. Well, first, his name wasn’t always James Stewart. That really is his name now, and was back then, but his mother named him Manuel…”