by John Ringo
"Primitive. Abhorrent. But the action was not only arguably necessary to Clan O'Neal's vital interests, it also appeared," she strongly emphasized the word, "appeared so favorably tied to Galactic interests and the safety of the Path itself that even the Tchpth believed those abilities were strictly necessary. Outside precedent, but necessary. I concede that aspects of the outcome were overwhelmingly unfortunate—"
Roolnai's expression of complete revulsion told her she'd better win him over fast or she'd have lost her chance.
"The Tchpth are wiser than all of us. If their wisest, for a time, believed the Path itself was at stake, how can the Clans judge the same decision to be insane in a species all admit is underdeveloped and primitive? How can one judge a species, even a clan, on the action of one member who, under the greatest possible stresses and absent full information, took an action that the Tchpth contemplated?"
The Galactic turned away from her, breathing slowly and carefully, in an action reminiscent of the Darhel breathing exercises. Emotional control was not vital to his continued existence as it was for theirs. That did not negate his need to recover it. After a long moment he turned back to face her.
"We may have acted in excessive haste. May," he emphasized.
"When a breach is not sure, a small favor of keeping families on their current, well-paid contracts while the matter is under consideration is surely not unusual."
"When you were personally in danger, I saw no emotion for yourself—which is only proper. Now, with far more of your clan's interests at stake, emotion leaks through despite yourself. Knowing your professionalism and dedication to the Path, that is no small thing. This is what persuades me. Clan Roolnai will agree to continuing this exchange of favors with Clan O'Neal for the present. I feel confident that Clan Halaani, having an even closer personal tie in the matter, will take a similar view. And, as you say, the Tchpth are wiser than we, and farther along the Path. We will permit time for the reconsideration."
Oh my. Grandfather, I hope you do a very good job, she thought. I cannot believe that my lapse in control was the deciding factor. Even for me, what my sister says holds true: alien minds are alien.
Before he turned to go, Roolnai's face crinkled in amusement. "Some of your workers may not arrive back until tomorrow morning. I understand many have taken the opportunity to do something with their children. I believe that is something our species have in common."
Chapter Two
"General O'Neal," the lieutenant colonel said, saluting as Mike stepped out of the aircar. "Welcome to Fredericksburg Base." The colonel was tall, slim, so racially mixed it was anyone's guess the inputs, and wearing the tabs of an aide to a lieutenant general. Mike vaguely recognized him but that could be said about most of the senior officers in Fleet Strike.
"Thank you," Mike replied, waving a hand at his head.
"General Wesley has you blocked out for an hour starting, well, now, General," the colonel said. "But he said if you're fatigued from your travels . . ."
"I've been sitting on ships for five months," Mike said, gesturing toward the front entrance. "It's not hard work."
"Yes, sir," the colonel said. "It's this—"
"I know where the Chief of Staff's office is, Colonel," Mike said, putting an edge on his tone. "Just go."
"Lieutenant Colonel Timmons looked a bit put out," General Wesley said as Mike grabbed a chair.
"He's so perfectly polished I'm surprised you noticed," Mike said.
"I'm pushing eighty and he's been my aide for five years," Tam said. "I can read him like a book if not the other way around, no matter what he thinks."
"I guess he's used to generals being 'fatigued by their travels,' " Mike said. "Which I am but mostly I want to know why in the hell I was yanked out of command like I'd screwed the Tir Dol Ron's daughter or something. So, with all due respect, if you could get right to the point, whatever it is."
"You're promoted, Lieutenant General," Tam said. "You're getting Eleventh Corps. That's the basic. You need some expansion. Veritable teams of people will fully expand, but that's the basic."
"I don't want Corps," Mike said. "I really really don't want Corps. I don't want Corps, I don't want your job and I don't want FS command or I'd have worked to get any of the three and probably gotten them. We've discussed this."
"Corps is going to be division sized and move as one unit," Tam said. "I said it was only the basics."
Mike set down his AID, which had been displaying the provisional TOE for the new "unified" Eleventh Corps and shrugged.
"You know, you can give me the rank and you can call this a corps but it's more like a full division again," Mike said. "Putting a lieutenant general in charge of this, not to mention major generals in these 'divisions,' is just paying extra salaries. And what's General Michie going to do?"
"He's less than thrilled by the new TOE," Tam said. "And uninterested in roaming around the Blight digging out Posleen. So he'll retire shortly after you assume command. He likes his current job. I felt like a heel when I told him it was going away."
"So . . . why is it going away?" Mike asked. "There's work to be done out there. We need more bodies, not fewer."
"You and I both know that's not true," Tam said. "So don't try to play that line. I'd have kept the numbers up, anyway. I've been keeping them up as much as I can manage. But reality and politics, especially some really goofy stuff, is making it impossible. Some of this you're going to get in your briefings. Some of it's too closely held for those. You ready? Or are you 'fatigued by your travels'?"
"Go," Mike said, pulling out a can of dip and holding it up. "If you don't mind, General, sir?"
"I've known you for fifty years," Tam said, sighing. "If you don't dip, bad things happen. Okay, Item One, which will be covered in some of the briefings. Getting the funding for more suits out of the Darhel has become flat impossible. But not just because they're cheap, which is what the briefings will cover. There's other stuff."
"And the other stuff is . . . ?"
"Remember when General Stewart was killed in the shuttle accident?" Tam asked.
"Seven years or so ago," Mike said. "Time differentials are killer, but about that . . ."
"Well, let's back up a little from there," Tam said, his jaw working. "The question is always what to leave in and what to leave out."
"Start at the beginning . . ." Mike said, frowning. "What does James have to do with not getting funding?"
"The beginning . . ." Tam said. "The problem is, we don't know the beginning."
"If you're talking about the Darhel," Mike said. "I'd go with first contact."
"Which was when?" Tam said, raising an eyebrow. "I'll start with that, though. When it became apparent that the Darhel knew a lot more about us than we knew about them, the U.S. military formed a small group to try to penetrate their information systems and figure out exactly what their background was in regards to humans. And, hell, just stuff about what the Darhel and the other Galactics were. They've always been less than forthcoming about their history and background."
"Hume," Mike said, frowning. "Why does that name stand out? Standard academic type one each. Crazy hair, head in the clouds. I was less than impressed."
"Which was the intent, from the information I've gotten," Tam said. "And it didn't work. He was assassinated along with his top xeno guy about the time you shipped out for Diess."
"Assassinated?" Mike said, frowning. "You sure?"
"There was a lot of that for a while," Tam said. "DoD ended up losing over six teams of investigators over the period of the war."
"To whom?" Mike asked angrily. "That's insane."
"The Darhel tried to pin it on another group, which I'll get to," Tam said. "But it was the Darhel. They really don't like us prying into their background. But then we sort of called a truce. Have you ever heard of the Protocol?"
"Plenty of protocols," Mike said. "But that has a capital on it, doesn't it?"
"Big one," Tam agreed. "I
know you remember when General Taylor was assassinated."
"Clear as day," Mike said. "Despite the fact that I was in the middle of a murthering great battle. And I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but I never bought that it was Free Earth. He told me he'd been investigating the hack during the battle of Daleville and then he's taken out. I put it on Cyber, frankly."
"Backwards, again," Tam said. "Here's the truth as far as anyone can determine without lie detectors. The Darhel arranged the hack. Taylor had come to the same conclusion. The Darhel assassinated him, or rather had him assassinated. Cyber, in retaliation, took out five major Darhel on Earth along with some of the Darhel assassin groups. Cyber was assisted by still another group called the Bane Sidhe. When it was all over the Darhel agreed to not attack human military personnel nor interfere in a direct fashion in military affairs. The Cybers and Bane Sidhe agreed to not assassinate any more Darhel. And we agreed to stop investigating the background of the Federation."
"That is insane!" Mike said.
"More like xenic," Tam said, frowning. "It actually made the Darhel rather happy. We were acting like Darhel."
"That's sort of what I mean," Mike said. "Why the hell are we dealing with these bastards?"
"Oh, it's worse than that," Wes said. "The Darhel worked very hard to make sure we nearly lost the war. They're afraid of us, Mike. Very afraid. And they should be. They can't fight. So they have tried very hard to neuter us militarily just like they neutered the Indowy politically. They've completely coopted the Fleet. Fleet Strike is the only remaining really functional military unit. They can't get rid of us completely. The Posleen remain a threat, even if a much reduced one. They need us to keep making sure they don't reconstruct. But they don't want us to be a real power. Humans in general and Fleet Strike in particular."
"That's why they're cutting back on the ACS," Mike said. "Well, they'd better. Because if I had my druthers I'd wipe them the fuck out. For Daleville if nothing else."
"So would I," Wesley said. "But we can't and you know it. They're the nerve system of the Federation. Take them out and it would become total chaos. So we have to live with them. They don't assassinate our military personnel, including most particularly generals, and humans don't declare open war on the Darhel. At which point that group I mentioned, the Bane Sidhe, become of rather greater importance."
"So who are what are . . . is the Bane Sidhe?" Mike said, tilting his head as he tried to figure out the grammar.
"The Bane Sidhe is an underground group of rebels against the Darhel," Wes said. "That's the simple answer. They are mostly among the Indowy . . ."
"Wait," Mike said, giggling. "Indowy rebels? What do they do, send pointed memos?"
"They penetrate the Darhel for information," Wes said, his face blank. "Very, very thoroughly."
"Oh," Mike said, suddenly serious. "And they pass that information to . . . ?"
"Mostly they just seem to collect it like misers," Wes said with a sigh. "Look, we don't know a lot about the Bane Sidhe. They also have a very serious counterintelligence capability. But this is what we know and suspect. First of all, there's the name. Does it sound familiar?"
"It doesn't sound Indowy or Darhel," Mike said. "Or Crab for that matter."
"It's not, it's Gaelic," Wes said. "It translates as Killer of Elves. The Darhel Killers in other words."
"Why Gaelic?" Mike asked. "I take it that's the name for the human component."
"No," Wes said. "It is the name of the overall group, which existed prior to this contact."
"So there was prior contact," Mike said, nodding. "That was pretty evident but . . ."
"But now we get back around to why the Bane Sidhe matter to Fleet Strike," Tam said. "First of all, they're a rebel group against the Federation as it's currently constituted. As I pointed out, much as we may both hate the Darhel, taking them out is out of the question absent creating something to replace them and having it in place beforehand. Otherwise we're faced by a widespread civil war. Which would give the Posleen time to recover and then, depending on how long the war took and what replaced the Federation, we'd be back in a hole. Given the weapons that could be used in such a war, Earth might not survive. I don't want that sort of war. Not now. Not absent some way to make sure it doesn't go insane."
"And they do?" Mike asked.
"We're not sure what their goals and aims are except taking out the Darhel," Wesley said. "But recently there have been several developments. The first is that we finally turned a human Bane Sidhe and got some serious information about their internal structure. At least on the human side. We were . . . somewhat surprised to find that their main human component is called the Clan O'Neal," he added with a smile.
"O'Neal?" Mike said. "Why?"
"The agent never explained. Just that their main combat component, which was broken down into several teams, used that as its name. For that matter, there was a Team Papa, Team Cally, etc."
"Bastards," Mike said, his face hard. "How fucking dare they?"
In many ways the loss of his wife, father and daughter in the war was as fresh today as it had been sixty years ago.
"I believe it's intended as a compliment," Tam said, carefully.
"I don't give a shit," Mike said. "Pisses me off. I take it you're getting to why we care about these guys. Besides that they're pissing me off."
"General Stewart was the investigation commander . . ." General Wesley said.
"Did those bastards kill Stewart?" Mike asked angrily.
"We're told no," Tam said. "Can I get more than a half sentence out, please?"
"Go," Mike said.
"Yes, sir," Wesley said, smiling.
"Sorry, General," Mike said, nodding. "Please continue, sir."
"General Stewart was the commander of the investigation. But he wanted more than the mole who was fairly low level. So he set up a trap. He let information leak out that a) we had a mole and b) the information on who the mole was was in a particular Fleet Strike office. Then General Stewart took a position as an aide in the office and eventually caught the agent the Bane Sidhe sent in to try to find the information. Well, caught the agent just after they sent out the information."
"So we lost the mole," Mike said.
"We lost the mole," Wesley agreed. "But we'd captured one of their top agents with far more information. She was, in fact, the Team Leader for Team Cally."
"Bitch," Mike said, shaking his head.
"As you say," Wesley said. "Female, twenties . . . Maybe."
"Maybe?" Mike said.
"Maybe twenties, maybe older than us," Tam said. "Her level of bioengineering was just unreal. Most of the investigators couldn't figure out how her body could work. All of her surface genetics, right down to intestinal epithelials, were those of the Fleet Strike captain she'd replaced."
"What happened to the captain?" Mike asked.
"Turned up afterwards alive and unharmed," Tam said. "But about the agent. Never found out a real name. DNA was so screwed around it was impossible to tell what was originally hers. Muscular enhancements, neural enhancements including to the brain. Rejuv but not standard. Something different. Resistant to every interrogation drug, resistant to pretty much every drug up to and including alcohol, LSD, morphine . . ."
"Christ," Mike said, frowning. "Where did she get all those enhancements?"
"Wouldn't we like to know," Tam said, smiling thinly. "But Fleet took over the interrogation. And then they lost her."
"Killed trying to escape?" Mike asked, his face tight.
"More like escaped," Tam said, shaking his head. "Oh, first reported as having died during interrogation. One gets the impression the interrogation was rather hostile and physical. But then it was 'probable successful escape.' Shortly afterwards, General Stewart died in a shuttle accident."
"And you say it's not these Bane Sidhe bastards?" Mike asked with a snort.
"We were informed that they had nothing to do with it," Tam said. "After the incident with th
e agent we became officially aware of the Bane Sidhe. And with official awareness we could open up the sort of back-channels that always exist between intelligence groups. They are insistent that they had nothing to do with General Stewart's death. Then there's the other kicker."
"Don't leave me waiting," Mike said.
"From our perspective, prior to this incident, the Protocol is that we don't investigate pre-war contact between the Darhel and humans and the Darhel stop killing off our investigation teams. It wasn't until we established a back-channel to the Bane Sidhe that we found out about the other side, that if the Darhel kill military personnel the Bane Sidhe start killing Darhel again."
"So are they on our side or what?" Mike asked.
"You begin to understand the complexity," Tam said. "Thus on to the next level. A year ago there was a major shake-up among the Darhel. Among other things, the Epetar Group went out of business and the Clan Leader suffered lintatai."
"Hooray," Mike said with a grin.
"Yeah, great," Tam said. "The problem being, it wasn't just bad business practices. At least, not the normal sort. What, exactly, happened I'm not even too sure. But we know the following. There was an Epetar facility here on Earth conducting classified research having to do with 'neurological interfacing.' "
"I thought the Darhel were dead set against that," Mike said.
"Well, for one thing, their research wasn't anything to do with neurological interfacing," Tam said. "What, exactly, they were researching we're not too sure. What we're sure of is that SOCOM got a heads up that there might be a 'terrorist' attack on the facility. There was such an attack. DAG was sent in to secure the facility and arrest the terrorists. DAG, instead, switched sides."
"I'd heard they were going deep undercover or something," Mike said. "They went rogue?"