Cally's War lota-6

by John Ringo

  Fortunately for her, one of the general’s theories of proper leadership was that a leader should be seen, frequently and unpredictably, by the men he commanded. While in practice this worked out to a tendency to micromanage his subordinates and get in their hair instead of letting them get on with the job at hand, Cally had to be somewhat grateful for it because it tended to get him out and about for a few hours each afternoon during which she could finally have a few minutes peace.

  This particular afternoon he had elected to make a visit to the detention facility, which would keep him out of the office for half the afternoon, at least. Pryce had not gone with him, being busy making arrangements for the general’s wife’s birthday party, the sort of social obligation which was one of the strange but true realities of military bureaucracy in the Galactic age.

  And thinking of Pryce, the one absolutely completely good thing about screwing Beed is getting some of those built-up hormones under control so I won’t be tempted to drag anything male behind a bush… or, well, okay, potted miniature tree. So thank God for getting decently laid… or, well, okay, that was a little bit blasphemous… um… whatever. After this mission, I’m definitely hunting down Father O’Reilly and asking him to hear my confession. I’ve… kind of let that slide.

  She was filing the printouts of the morning e-mails, while envisioning creative and artistic ways for Beed to die, when she heard a crash and jumped, whirling to find the lieutenant sitting on the edge of her desk, her stapler lying nearby on the floor. He shrugged apologetically.

  “Good Lord, Pryce! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She clapped a hand to her chest. “You scared the hell out of me.” How the hell did he sneak up on me? Me? Nobody sneaks up on me. It’s just… wrong. I feel okay, I don’t think anything’s wrong… geez, he’s quiet. Well, until he trips over something or knocks something over, anyway.

  “S-sorry, ma’am. I just dropped by to see how you were settling in.” He grinned mischievously. “Well, and to take a break from my canapé passing and preparations thereto.”

  His eyes, and that grin, made her feel like her bones had all suddenly just melted away. She stood there blinking at him for a couple of seconds before managing to get her brain back in gear and move back to her desk.

  “I’m settling in okay, I guess.” She pushed her hair back with a hand. “Are there many canapé situations on Titan?”

  “Some.” He shrugged. The brass have to do something for fun.”

  “That’s a rather irreverent attitude, Pryce.”

  “Yes, ma’am. No excuse, ma’am.” But his eyes twinkled at her, and she smiled.

  “I’d ask you to dinner again tonight, if we weren’t in the same chain of command.” His eyes focused on hers.

  “I’d accept, if we weren’t in the same chain of command,” she met his eyes and looked away, “and if I didn’t think I was likely to have to work late tonight.”

  He reached a finger under her chin and pulled her head around, gently, looking her in the eyes. She met his scrutiny for a moment that seemed to last an hour, or maybe a year.

  “Okay.” He nodded, and somehow she got the feeling that he understood. She didn’t know how he could have, or how she knew, but she knew he did.

  * * *

  General Beed did not request her presence at a working dinner this evening. Nor did he return to the office this afternoon. Instead, he phoned the office — another eccentricity of his, there was an actual phone on her desk, when she had a perfectly capable PDA that actually was with her when she was away from the desk. On the phone, he requested that she grab a bite of dinner and then bring the Leave File with her, and asked if it would be convenient for him to stop by her quarters on his way between meetings to edit and finalize the changes so she could get the document printed and ready for a staff meeting early Thursday morning. She had, of course, agreed. Sure, General darling. You screw me so maybe I can screw you.

  So here she was at Super Burgers with a double deluxe cheeseburger, fries, a double strawberry shake, and a manila envelope, enjoying the fluorescent orange and acid green Galplas décor while she stuffed her food down prior to going to her quarters to try to make some progress on her real job. Oh, joy. He’s not bad looking, and not a bad lay, if he were just a little bit less insensitive.

  The restaurant décor had its intended effect and she finished quickly and left, stuffing the trash through the disposal slot on her way out the door. In the transit car on the way back to her quarters she brought up the room controls on her PDA and adjusted the lights, temperature, and background music to reflect the right mood. Relaxed was good.

  She hadn’t been home long when he arrived. She’d considered ditching her silks in favor of something less comfortable but more tempting, but had decided it was out of character. Which was just as well. She didn’t actually object to Beed, and he was a step above being alone, and she wanted to find out whatever he knew. Still, she was more comfortable meeting him in the ordinary uniform of her cover than something else. Lingerie would have been a tad too personal. Which was odd because usually by now she would have been so subsumed in the role she wouldn’t consciously think of it being a cover.

  As he came in the door, letting it slide closed behind him, she brushed at her hair with one hand in deliberate Sinda-ness. It reminded her of who she was as she shyly, but with increasing eagerness, met his kiss.

  Some few minutes later as she rolled with him through yet another position change she almost had to fight for a straight face. Okay, so it’s acrobatics night. Why do men always do this? It’s always either the first or the second lay, and they always go through the same damn five positions, like they’re trying to demonstrate how cosmopolitan or kinky or educated they are, or whatever. Eyes slightly wide, of course I’ve never done this before. Back into character, roll with it, I’d… really… rather… not… have… to fake it. Um… good spot… okay… that works… let’s be nice and enthusiastic so he knows it works. “Oh… oh god that’s so good! God… please, please, please don’t stop… ah… um… ah…” Okay, he’s… getting… the point. Yeah. That’s… g — . Aaah. Okay. Good. All right, your turn, here we go, yeah, that’s right, you taught me to do that you stud you. Sure you did. Come on, come on… There. Good. Now, question is, are you relaxed enough.

  “Oh, Bernie, thank you. That was so good.” She hugged him gently, kissing his chest and playing across it idly with her fingers while she lay curled on his shoulder.

  “It’s never been like that for me, before. There’s a sense of… I don’t know… authority, maybe. I don’t know, put like that it sounds kind of mundane, and,” she walked her fingers up his chest, “it was wonderful.” She hugged him and gave him a giddy smile, planting another kiss on his chest.

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s — what did you say — mundane at all.” He cupped his hand around her breast, idly playing the nipple through his fingers. “You’re a very intuitive woman, Sinda. It’s one of your charms.”

  “You,” she started kissing her way down his chest, “are flattering me.” She began idly licking and kissing his skin, enough to be distracting, but not enough to actually render him speechless.

  “It doesn’t take any particular intuition to know you’re a general, General.” She traced a circle with her tongue at the crease where his thigh met his hip. “But a little flattery’s okay. I like it. Is it, you know, okay if I do this? You don’t mind, do you? Tell me if, you know, I’m not doing it right.”

  “You’re doing fine, sweetheart. Just let your imagination go. Just… uh… no teeth, okay?”

  “Mmm… no problem.

  “Did I do… that… right?” Her voice was tentative, with a hint of nervous little girl in it, as she snuggled back up against him.

  “Oh, yeah,” he breathed. “You should always trust your intuition, dear, especially in bed. You know, I’m not just any general.” His chest inflated slightly. “Generals are a dime a dozen. I’m in this position because I’ve been entr
usted with a very important project.” He chuckled, stroking her hair. “You’re not a spy, are you?” he teased. “Anyway, I haven’t really told you anything. Just confirmed your intuition.” He kissed the top of her head gently before swinging his legs over the side of her bed.

  “Do you have to go?” She ran a finger down his hip. He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, gently, before setting it back down at her side.

  “I’m afraid so. Clarice gets… querulous… if I’m away overnight.”

  She watched him, apparently fascinated, as he dressed, as he kissed her, as he left. As the door slid shut behind him she flipped on the filter next to her bed and lit a cigarette.

  “Lights out.” She sat with her back propped against the Galplas wall that served in place of a headboard, eyes open, unfocused, as the single orange point threw shadows on the walls.

  * * *

  Thursday, June 6

  Thursday morning, Pryce stopped in to her office while the general was indisposed. Damn this kid. You would think getting laid twice in as many days would have the old hormones down to a dull roar. Nobody should smell this good. It ought to be… I don’t know… illegal or something.

  “What’s on your mind, Pryce?”

  “I’ve just got a minute.” He turned away from her, running a hand through his hair. Not a good idea with Beed’s emphasis on appearance.

  “You’re not… investing too much emotionally in working late… I hope… Dammit, Makepeace, you’re too damn young and I don’t want you to get hurt!”

  “I’m young, Pryce? Hello?”

  He turned back, stumbling a little, and flushed.

  “Okay, yeah, that sounds s-stupid coming from me, but… you’re nice, Captain, and I just hope you’re… careful,” he said.

  “Pryce, I’m okay. And I’m not looking for favors. Look, working late sometimes isn’t that bad, and with, you know… Well, mixed marriages of juv and nonjuv are notorious in the service, aren’t they? Gosh, just look at this mountain of work. But it’s all right. The general, bless his heart, is happy today, and all this,” she waved her hand at the paper and filing cabinets, “is much easier when he’s happy, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, ma’am, Captain.” He picked up the file he’d come in for, and paused on his way out the door. “Probably the best attitude you could take, ma’am.”

  “Pryce?” she ventured.

  “It’s okay, Makepeace. Really.” His eyes were softer, and she had to be content with that.

  * * *

  It was six in the evening, and, at the moment, while collating presentation packets, she was currently considering the entertaining possibility of watching Bernhard Beed nibbled to death by giant carnivorous ants. Giant carnivorous poisonous ants. While staked out on ice. No, ice numbed pain too much. Hot sand? Nails. Nails was good. The insensitive, possessive, obnoxious bastard. He had actually let her sit around doing make-work most of the afternoon, only to call her in at twenty minutes till five and load the copying for this stupid presentation package that mysteriously required very elaborate collating and had to be ready for his review by seven the next morning. Just because he had to go to his wife’s birthday party and couldn’t make time to get a little tonight, the bastard was obviously making sure she was entirely otherwise occupied.

  Acid. Concentrated hydrochloric acid on a slow burn, from the toes up. Son of a bitch. She hadn’t realized she had spoken out loud until she heard the familiar voice behind her.

  “Now, it can’t be that bad,” he said.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be passing canapés?” She didn’t turn around. She really wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up.

  “Well, yeah, but the general sent me over here with three pages to be included in between the pie chart and the bar graph, and he wants me to report back.”

  “Obnoxious possessive sonofabitch is checking up, is he? It’s not enough that I fuck him, the bastard has to have control over my private time, too. Ooohhh!”

  “Gee, Makepeace, I don’t think you should bottle your feelings up like this,” he said.

  She turned and froze in the act as she was about to throw the pile of papers in his face, and something about his deadpan face and single quirked eyebrow broke her up and she lost it, laughing.

  “Okay, okay. I was a little overboard.” She shook her head, holding her side and catching her breath. “No, I wasn’t, but that wasn’t helping.”

  “Hey, you’re allowed to let off steam. In private. But might want to make sure you’re in private, ma’am.”

  “Good point, Pryce.”

  “You know, ma’am, the general obviously sent me because he felt I was ‘safe.’ I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  “Why, bless your heart, Pryce, did you want to stop being safe?”

  “Not tonight. Gotta get back to passing canapés. J-just didn’t like the assumption.”

  “It’s okay, Pryce,” she pouted at him as he walked out the door, “I don’t think you’re safe.”

  * * *

  The convenient thing about this evening, for Beed, was that she was kept both busy and out of the sight of his wife. The convenient thing for her, once she got the copying and collating done, was that, with Pryce gone, she was the only person in the office and she had a perfect excuse for being there. It provided complete and uninterrupted privacy to search the entirety of CID, turning up three cubes of miscellaneous data that might or might not relate to her mission. Cally was beginning to get nervous about that. Okay, sure, she hadn’t expected a big neon sign flashing, “This Way To The Secret Files,” but other than that tiny bit of pillow talk by the general, they were keeping this operation pretty tight. The three agents they had considered most likely to be helping run the operation all seemed to have full-time workloads of regular CID investigations.

  The only really interesting thing she’d found so far was a map in Corporal Anders’ data storage of the areas on this floor assigned to the headquarters of the 3rd. Most of them were areas she had override access for. Some were not. Of course, with the tactic of hiding in plain sight always being a possibility, everything had to be searched. Tedious, but there it was. The collating provided an excuse to go into an area marked storage down the hall. She could always be claiming to look for boxes of an obscure contrivance called “binder clips.”

  By the time she finished getting herself dusty looking through boxes of backup cubes, an old coffee machine, stacks of uniforms and uniform parts, three blank new-in-box PDA’s, a half a box of night-sticks, fairly new-looking full and partial boxes of paper supplies, and, inexplicably, an ancient-looking half-box of blue and silver children’s party hats, her stomach was growling fiercely. The backup cubes, except for the most recent, looked as though they had sat exactly where they were, undisturbed, for quite a long time. She would only waste her time searching them if absolutely nothing else panned out.

  In a way, it was getting annoying going out for every meal. After getting a fried chicken salad and a bowl of gazpacho from a café just off one of the transit car docks on the Corridor, she found an Oriental Market and bought a sackful of sealed self-heating dinners. Lemon chicken, mu shu pork, General Tsu’s, hot and sour soup, sizzling rice soup, egg rolls, spring rolls, duck with plum sauce, California roll with sashimi… Yum.

  These packages were great. The heater was in the bottom of the package; you just pulled the tab and the chemicals mixed in the heater pack and the heat rose through the food. Well, okay, for some specialty foods, like the egg rolls, the food was spiked on metal conductive toothpicks hooked to the bottom of the package. Still, yum, yum, yum. And no having to go out for it. Things being what they were, she’d still probably be taking most meals out. But at least now she would at least sometimes have another option. Microwaveable was quicker, but the self-heaters tasted better. Okay, it was a matter of personal taste. And whether you’d rather throw packages away or scrub out the microwave once a week. Cally wasn’t real big on housework.
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  Thursday, June 6

  Stewart told his AID to shut off the hologram and leaned back, rubbing his eyes. The problem with an investigation like this was that until you caught someone you really couldn’t eliminate anyone. Some were just more likely than others.

  He twirled a ballpoint pen as he thought, a habit revived from his first staff position, way back before the general demise of paper as the medium of military bureaucracy. He stared unseeingly at the matted and framed poster he’d had printed out to break up the unrelieved light green of the office walls. The agents had eyed the print knowingly when he’d hung it, figuring he was opting for paper instead of a window-simulating view screen as a way of brown-nosing the boss.

  In fact, it was a reprint of a poster that had been tacked to the wall of his Aunt Rosita’s apartment in his childhood gang days. With the exception of Beed, everyone else was too young to recognize pre-war Malibu Beach. And Beed was from the wrong part of the country. One of the things he appreciated about Sinda was that no matter what else went over her head, he had several times caught her looking wistfully at his poster and had gotten the ineffable impression that somehow, on some level, she actually got it. Even though there were so many things that he just couldn’t talk to her about, she somehow managed to make him feel… understood.

  Which could maybe explain why he was so hung up over some fluff-headed ditz that he was sitting here woolgathering instead of getting his work done.

  “Diana, turn my monitor back on and give me a keyboard and track spot.” Instantly, a keyboard appeared on his desktop. The red circle projected to the right of the keyboard and the two buttons below it served the function of an old-fashioned mouse. Having learned to type before the war, he could work much faster this way. Fortunately, everything but true AI was well within the reach of a modern PDA, so he didn’t have to worry about Beed twigging to the presence of a real AID and how very much of his daily work activity was being recorded. An aide de camp, naturally, was often at his general’s elbow.