by John Ringo
“It’s heavy enough. Not big, but dense. Michelle says it’s about a hundred kilos. I’d assume the Indowy use a grav platform to move it.”
“We can’t screw with gravity without sending most of the instrumentation in the place haywire. Not with the organization’s equipment in the shape it’s in — not to mention the added bulk. So even for the enhanced, it’s going to be awkward. Okay,” he said.
“Fine. Book it. Let me know when your interview is.” She turned and walked across the gym to the door at the far end, dodging a pickup basketball game on the way.
He watched her butt as she went. He had no complaints with the rest of her figure, it was just that cute buns were his thing. Having a lot of basis for comparison, he could say with authority that Cally O’Neal’s ass was one of the finer ones he’d seen. Definitely worth watching. When she turned to look back, just short of the door, he pretended great interest in the game on the court.
Friday 11/19/54
The Darhel Tir Dol Ron was having a quiet day. A day, in fact, so quiet that his only occupation was playing one of a number of human games he’d been given as a gift from the human Johnny Stuart, and loaded onto his AID. Darhel did not have this practice of gifts. Nor did they participate in the elaborate economy of favors practiced among the other Galactic races, holding that any exchange that didn’t specify contractual terms and store them in an impeccably reliable third party database to be primitive and uncivilized — not to mention being far too short of maneuvering room about the “spirit” of the deal. He neither knew, nor cared, if the human expected a return favor or not. If he did, his stupidity was not the Tir’s problem.
This game was simplistic to the point of mindlessness, but there was something compelling about the turning and falling shapes, and the click of virtual buttons necessary to cause them to lock into place cleanly. Watching the blocky, multicolored shapes fall was almost a meditative experience, until the fall rate got too fast and the falling distance too short for even Darhel reaction times.
“Your Tir, I have a page incoming from the Gistar Group’s planetary factor, on Titan Base.” The mellifluous voice which could so daze other species had no effect on him, other than being a pleasant choice for his AID. It would have been pleasant, that is, if it hadn’t startled him, causing him to miss a shape and lose his game. He uttered a muffled curse and heaved his well-fleshed bulk up from the cushions. The sedentary years on Earth had taken a certain toll and he resolved, for the umpteenth time, to visit the gym more often. And to spend more time off this damned backwater of a planet.
“Display the call,” he grumbled, stilling his face and body language as the AID phased the holo in. There was no technical reason it couldn’t have displayed a sharp image immediately, it had just learned he liked the effect.
“Yes?” he demanded of the other group’s underling. This underling, of course, sometimes had to be treated as if he spoke for the Gistar Tir because, effectively, he did.
“One of our mines on your planet was attacked and taken over by hostiles. Yesterday, by Earth time. We’ve traced the attackers to Group Epetar, although they certainly didn’t intend us to discover their actions this soon. How are you going to fix it?” The other Darhel’s ears were pricked forward aggressively.
“Why do you believe your attackers were from Epetar? How are you even sure you’ve been attacked, or that the attackers even hold your facility?” the Tir of Earth asked.
“We don’t merely believe it. We know it. They are apparently unaware of an AID still recording in the mining office. Visual data is severely degraded, as the AID appears to have fallen behind an object. An enhanced thermal holostream is the best we have. I’ve dumped the take and the feed to your AID for verification. Again, I demand your immediate action.” A human observing the Gistar factor would have been strongly reminded of an angry pit bull.
“I do not, I will not, allow this kind of rish on one of my worlds. Earth is an obnoxious pain in the gort, but it will not become the site of a group vendetta. You will take absolutely no direct action on this world. Is that clear?” Dol Ron was breathing deeply now, but his bulging veins gave his eyes a distinct purple cast, nonetheless.
“Fulfill your responsibilities competently and I won’t have to.”
The communications lag inherent in even the best communication did nothing to diminish the impact of Ann Gol’s clear anger. Earth’s Tir hid a wince at how much this call would be costing him, as the party in contractual jeopardy.
“Listen and do not speak, while I make the arrangements to correct this unfortunate incident.” The Darhel Tir Dol Ron’s breathing was returning to normal as the attack of one group on another, on his ground, became just another business problem to be solved. He quietly directed his AID to contact the human general Horace Veltman.
“SOG, this is Veltman,” the general said. Unnecessarily, because it was obviously him answering his own damn AID.
“General Horace Veltman. There is a mine in Africa that has been attacked by terrorists and pirates. I will send you a file. It is a matter of some urgency that you correct the problem immediately. Contact me when you have retaken the mine to make arrangements for its return to its proper leaseholders. There will be no problems with your recovery of this property. Unnecessary damage to the facility in the process is unacceptable. Do you understand?” He always included the last with humans, having found that they could botch the simplest of jobs if he did not.
“Understood.” The general had learned quickly never to interrupt a Darhel, and that the Tir did not like chatter from humans. Military habits lent a certain efficiency to radio communications to start with, but the general had found that exercising self-discipline with the Darhel was the safest way to collect his supplemental pay. “I’ll put our Direct Action Group on it immediately,” he added.
“Don’t tell me how, just do it.” The Tir gestured to his AID to cut the connection, then turned to Ann Gol. “Send me the contact for your local recovery team. This problem will be solved as quickly as is humanly possible.”
The Gistar representative twitched an ear in annoyance. “That is not necessarily satisfactory. Resolution had better be very prompt.”
Gistar cut the connection and Dol Ron relaxed some of the tension in his muscles. Earth’s Tir stuck his AID to his robe. A session at the gym would help relieve his tension. That, and then a soothing massage by his Indowy body servants.
“AID, update me once a day on the humans’ progress on the problem.” One had to watch humans very closely. The barbaric species wasn’t so much stupid as prone to doing the unexpected in highly inconvenient ways. Annoying. Perhaps he should go straight to the massage.
Jake “The Snake” Mosovich was in the gym getting his Friday workout on the weight pile. As usual, he had conveniently forgotten his AID back at the HQ and had his buckley sitting on the floor under the bench. DAG’s private gym was outfitted with just about every workout machine that had ever been invented for toning and tightening the human body. Atlantic Company’s master sergeant took a proprietary interest in the equipment and helping the men use every bit of it in ways that minimized unnecessary injury and maximized results. Gym PT was an enhancement, not a simulation of combat conditions. Mosovich agreed wholeheartedly that there was no excuse for overtraining injuries in the gym. In the field, okay, shit happened. In the gym, there was just no purpose to doing it wrong and getting an avoidable injury.
He was taking a pull at his water bottle between sets when the buckley started playing the famous opening riff from Eric Clapton’s version of “Crossroads.” He leaned over and grabbed it, trying not to notice an ache in his deltoids as he sat back up. “Mosovich here,” he answered.
“Jake, how can I help you properly if I’m in your desk?” his AID’s softly voiced complaint had a definite edge of snippiness just underneath the velvet.
“Oh, sorry, Mary. What’s come up?” he asked. He had named his AID Mary in what some might think was a nod to
the Blessed Virgin, or a pun. In fact, she was named after Bloody Mary of horror movie fame, as a constant reminder to himself of what she was and who she really worked for.
“You obviously remembered to take the drag queen,” she sniped, referring to the buckley’s Suzie Q persona being a personality overlay on top of the characteristically morose, and male, base buckley personality.
“Now, Mary, you know the PDA doesn’t have a real AI and I couldn’t possibly do without you. Can I help it if the thing just happened to be stashed in my gym bag when I ran out the door? I was in such a hurry. I sure am lucky you were smart enough to try calling the PDA.” He didn’t know whether the AIDs were susceptible to flattery on any existential level, or even if they had an existential level. He did know it made his AID easier to live with.
Jake had one frustrated AID. He knew what her problem was. The thing’s fundamental nature was to seduce the user into psychological dependency so he’d carry it everywhere. AIDs recorded everything, and periodically uploaded the whole take into some master Darhel data bank somewhere. They were masters of emotional manipulation, alternately being helpful, supportive, and occasionally very snippy when their user did something they were programmed to disapprove of. Leaving the AID behind tended to be one of the things that pissed them off the most. His AID was noticeably torn between seducing him into compliance with her — no, its program, and punishing him for not going along. Today was obviously going to be one of its snippier days.
“You were going to tell me why you called?” he prompted, since she was clearly not going to break the long silence.
“You have a memo from General Pennington. It’s marked ‘warning order.’ I told him I didn’t know where you were but I’d have you call him back as soon as I found you,” she said sweetly.
He groaned inwardly. She could be such a cold bitch on her bad days. “Dump it to my PDA, and no tricks with the file format!”
“Fine. You can call him back on that thing then!”
“Fine.”
She — it — cut the connection and he looked for the file for a couple of minutes before turning up the AI emulation level on his buckley. “Suzie, please pull up and display or play the most recently transmitted file.”
“Are you sure you want me to do that, boss? I have half a terabyte of files that were dumped to my system in the past two minutes. Well, dumped to my enhanced system storage through an index.”
“Great. Just great. I want you to find a particular file. It’s a warning order memo from General Pennington and it could be text, audio, audio-vid, or even full holo.”
“Found it. It’s a compressed holographic file.”
“Compressed? What’s the rest of all that data?”
“Um… It appears to be a complete set of maintenance manuals for the waste reclamation systems on an RZ-400 class freighter.”
“That figures.” He sighed. “Any idea how you get a divorce from an AID?”
“No… But I’d be happy to find that out for you. Would you like me to search the database of Galactic law and precedent?”
“No! Don’t start that search! Just play the memo.”
The white-haired young-old man appeared only from the shoulders up, automatically oriented to face him. “Colonel, I need you to call me back ASAP. We have received a mission for DAG, hooah?” Beside his head, a mostly flat map of the northeast rift zone of Africa appeared, obsolete political borders outlined on it for convenience, with a blinking red dot on it roughly halfway down Ethiopia.
“The Darhel Gistar Group has leased a mining concession to extract tantalum and niobium in the old Oromo area of the rift. The Awasa mine has been taken over by terrorist raiders, of unknown affiliations. The mine is being held by these hostiles, and is believed to be being looted at this time, hooah? DAG’s mission is to proceed to the former Ethiopia as expeditiously as tactically feasible and retake the mine, holding it until Gistar replacement personnel and their private security detachment have been reinstated and firmly reestablished. Rules of engagement for these hostiles will be optimized for maximum speed and efficiency, and for maximum protection of the security of DAG personnel and surviving Indowy labor forces. Prisoners for interrogation are not, say again, are not a desired objective. You will, of course, be authorized to take and secure surrendered prisoners, where practical, as colonization volunteers for off-planet, privatized security details. Seems it would be right up their alley, anyway, hooah. Get me some preliminary time on target options and call me back by ten hundred hours, Sierra time.”
Great. That left him about half an hour to get with Mueller and run some sims. He was also going to need his AID, if she would behave. He considered ways to butter her up before grabbing a dry towel and his gym bag from the locker room on his way out the door. No time to shower and change here. First thing was to get back and take her out of his drawer. If he picked her up as soon as possible and started carrying her around immediately, she’d want to take the opportunity to prove her usefulness. It had certainly worked before. Besides, he was good and warmed up and wouldn’t feel the cold on the short jog back to the HQ. Not much, anyway. He groaned as he stepped outdoors into the icy wind. Full sprint. Definitely go for the full sprint. Thank God it was dry.
Sergeant George Mauldin looked a lot like his dad. He was bit on the short side and the constant training at DAG kept him solidly muscled. Standing still, he tended to look awkward, with arms too long for his body. The grace with which he moved, a combination of his mother’s influence and lifelong martial arts training, belied his gawky appearance. His hair was a light, muddy-apricot color. He hadn’t entirely escaped Papa O’Neal’s red hair, but Shari’s blondness had muted the shade. He kept it cut in an old-fashioned high and tight style, so there wasn’t as much of it to see except in good light. What really gave him away was the fair, ruddy skin. Very red, when he’d been working out — which was most of the time, including now.
About an hour into the day’s weight program, he was outside the gym cooling off with a sports drink and an energy bar. Even in the cool of November on Lake Michigan, most of the members of DAG used the outdoors as a quick way to drop some of the excess heat built up during the day’s training.
He wasn’t surprised to see the colonel step outside in his workout shorts, despite the cold. After all, the colonel was a juv, more than capable of keeping up, and trained as hard as any of his officers or men. What surprised him was watching Colonel Mosovich take off at a hard sprint for the headquarters building, towel around his neck and gym bag in his hand. Colonels didn’t do that, not in George’s limited experience. Something was up.
George was something of a fan of gadgets. Around his neck with the dog tags he carried a miniature PDA that would take a low-emulation buckley with a minimal overlay. About the size of one of the dog tags, it naturally was voice access only. He picked it up and addressed it, “Carrie, call Major Kelly for me.”
Chapter Sixteen
The fountain plashed softly in one corner of Michelle’s office. The breeze today smelled of apple blossoms and rain. The ceiling gave the impression of clouds moving in an overcast sky. In another corner, a sohon tank stood, containing its mass of nannite jelly and some as yet ill-defined parts and bits, whose purpose and final assembly pattern were indecipherable to any of the few dozen Indowy who came and went in her private space. She knew what her apprentice must be thinking: that whatever it was, it must be very important and delicate indeed to merit the personal attentions of a Michon Mentat. The apprentice, like the dozens of others on her personal work crew outside, would ask no questions. If he needed to know something, she would tell him. Besides, they knew that there was every likelihood that anything a mentat took on personally was a matter for those whose wisdom exceeded their own. An apprentice’s teaching emphasized that if he did not involve himself in matters that did not concern him, he could make no embarrassing or damaging mistakes.
Michelle O’Neal’s Indowy apprentice was twitching with e
xcitement, despite years of Sohon discipline, and despite having shown the self-discipline to earn the position of primary apprentice on her work crew. She ignored it as understandable in one just entering his sixth decade — not considering that she herself was close to the same age. For one thing, he had just been entrusted with the great secret of the existence of rapid transit this morning — a secret only a handful of masters held. For another, he was going to travel by that almost miraculous method himself, this very day. For a third, this important job, if he completed it with wisdom, was to be the final test of his ability to function in the journeyman post he would hold provisionally until the assignment was complete. It was a great honor, and the apprentice — journeyman, she corrected herself — was not presently operating a tank. She could allow him some high spirits on his big day.
“It’s important that you understand both your job and the reasons for it. The Darhel Epetar Group has done something very unwise. Unwise to the point that the appropriate people have decided upon the appropriate responses. The Darhel Gistar Group is neither particularly wise nor particularly unwise, but happens to have a ship conveniently positioned in the Dulain area — never mind how. A group of humans, also neither particularly wise nor particularly virtuous, happens to have been set in motion by others to assemble the rudiments of a cargo with no planned shipping. That is, if a ship suddenly becomes available to carry it, they can appear to have merely scraped a cargo together on short notice, without any prior plan. The Epetar ship will be late to drop off its cargo of humans and pick up a mixed cargo of uninitialized Sohon headsets and tools. The Epetar ship will have defaulted on its shipping contract — ordinarily a matter of simple fines. In this case the Rontogh factor will have rebooked the cargo onto the conveniently available, and timely, Gistar vessel. The Epetar ship will not want to depart with empty cargo holds. They will book the cargo ‘hastily assembled’ by the humans.” She faced the journeyman with quiet, serene eyes. If she had any personal feelings about this matter, they didn’t show.