by John Ringo
It wasn't the best room for interviewing a kid, Schmidt reflected. It was your standard boring, windowless, institution-green, Galplas room, with four battered, chewing-gum colored, folding chairs and not much else. One for him, one for Saunders, one for Pinky Maise, and one for the grief counselor who was supposed to make a kid who'd just lost his mother and brother feel "comfortable." While George allowed that the pretty young thing—pretty juv thing, really—could make him more comfortable any time, he doubted Anne Veldtman was doing much for the kid.
The impression was confirmed when the kid looked at her and said, politely, "Ma'am, you've been really nice and everything, but would it be okay if I just talked to these guys by myself?" The five-year-old had a small child's gravity that would have been cute under other circumstances.
George reminded himself of Caspar Andreotti's debrief indicating that this kid was anything but cute, and would not only resent being treated like the little kid he was, but would also be likely to hide his intelligence behind a juvenile facade if thus treated. With the result that they could miss some critical data.
Veldtman started to object, but went quietly when Saunders jerked his head towards the door. That was one thing about a disciplined organization. You didn't tend to get many people who would let sentiment override orders. Orneriness, yes. Sentiment, no. This was Saunders' show. George was only along for the ride as a second check to make sure nothing of operational value was missed.
After she left, Pinky focused his intent gaze on George. "You're one of the guys who got us out. Thanks," he said. "You look kinda like a kid, but you're not."
The subtext was subtle as a sledgehammer. The Maise kid was asserting that he, also, was much less a kid than he looked. George didn't know about that, but he glanced at Saunders and gave a slight shrug. In his limited experience of children, they reacted better to adults who didn't patronize them.
"You're welcome," he said.
"Okay, Maise," Saunders was a pretty good interrogator, and opened by addressing the kid the way he would an adult in the military subculture. "Andreotti tells us there's a lot more to you than meets the eye, so I'm gonna treat you just like anybody else. That work for you?"
"Yeah," Pinky said.
"Okay, tell me about today from the time you got up to the time the team came and got you. Try not to leave anything out, but don't worry too much. I'll be asking you a lot of questions after to pull out all the details. Get it? Go," Saunders gestured to the kid—Maise, George corrected himself—to begin.
"At least five attackers," Pinkie said, looking into the distance. His eyes tracked back and forth as if he was reseeing the entire incident. "Basement, four. Three male, one female. Weapons: Nine-millimeter semi-automatics. Silenced. . . ."
It was a hell of a thing for a kid to go through. But it slowly crept in on George that they weren't dealing with a kid. Pinkie was more like a forty-year-old stuck in a five-year-old's body. One with a surprising memory for detail regarding the assassins, to the point that the Maise assured them he would be able to recognize their voices if he heard them again.
Given the kid's presence of mind and memory for detail, Schmidt believed him. By the time the five-year-old got through with his account, George found he had almost no questions. "Can you think of anything else?" just sounded . . . childish.
Nathan O'Reilly raised an eyebrow at Dr. Vitapetroni, the head of the Bane Sidhe psych department, who had joined the organization's director in his office to watch live holo of the interrogation. "Well?" he asked.
"Don't put him through the ordeal of hypnosis. I can't get much, if anything, else out of him than that interrogation did. The child has a remarkably detailed memory. I don't want him to feel like we're questioning his sanity, and people often do feel exactly that. I don't want to risk corrupting his memories with artifacts accidentally induced during the hypnotic process. There's no upside." The psychiatrist shrugged.
"All right. Then the next problem is where to put him for the night. I want to limit his outside contact without appearing to do so until we have this situation under much better control. Could he stay with me? Any problem putting him on my couch? Or do you want to put him up? I don't recommend young Schmidt there. The child is obviously itching to pummel him with questions, and I'd rather not send a five-year-old's head farther into the ideas of dishing out murder and mayhem than it already is."
"Given the personality type, the emotional age, and the formative experience, I think that's a forlorn hope," Vitapetroni said.
"Probably. But not tonight. So, does he crash on your couch, mine, or do you have some other suggestion of someplace secure to put him up?" O'Reilly stood, taking his mug along by habit. He always put it in the office dishwasher himself, rather than leaving it to some assistant to come in and clean up after him.
"He could go with Cap Andreotti."
"Andreotti has enough to deal with tonight on his own. I presume you will be seeing him soon in your professional capacity." The priest paused in the break room, downing a cupful of tap water before dispensing with the mug.
"First thing in the morning," the doctor assured him.
Chapter Ten
"I'm sorry to isolate you from people your own age tonight, Pinky, but unfortunately I'd like to keep what happened out of general circulation until we've had more chance to respond to it," the priest said.
Pinky figured the guy for a juv. Older looking people deferred to him, and he didn't have that happy look around the eyes like young-for-real grown-ups. No, happy wasn't the word. Optimistic. That was one thing Pinky had noticed early about the world. The much older adults were much less enthusiastic about whatever was going to happen next in life than the younger adults. Since the older ones probably had a much better idea of what was really going on, this told him a lot about the world.
He looked around O'Reilly's living room. Holo tank, a well-stuffed couch that looked comfortable even though the arms were torn up like a cat scratched them a lot. He didn't smell a litter box, so maybe the couch used to belong to somebody else. Three of the walls were a nice orange-pink, and the fourth was a green lighter than army stuff—a green that wasn't ugly. There was a sink and microwave, and some shelves with food on them. It was all really clean, everything put away. He obviously didn't have kids. Probably he was a Catholic priest. Pinky had heard they didn't get married.
He noticed a little ball with some feathers attached in a corner, barely sticking out from under the couch. Okay, so there was a cat.
"Are you Catholic?" he asked. Then, without pause, "Oh, and thanks. I don't really want to be around other kids tonight. They ask questions. I don't wanna talk about it. I mean, except to other spies. I figure you'll kill the people that did it. Are you a spy? And can you keep that lady off of me? She means well, but she's bugging me."
"Wow, that's a lot of questions." O'Reilly sat down on the arm of a chair and looked at him seriously. Pinky could sense that this man was not going to talk to him like a little kid.
"First, yes, I'm Catholic. I'm a Jesuit—" He held up a finger as Pinky started to ask what that was. "If Miss Veldtman's attention is upsetting you, you don't have to be around her. As for whether I'm a spy or not, it depends on what you mean. Spying is a part of what we do here, but I don't go out into the field. I run the place."
"I thought so," the child said with a nod. "Everybody seems to listen to you, and it's like you expect them to and never even think that maybe they won't."
"I certainly hope they do. I'd be very bad at my job if they didn't," O'Reilly said.
"Okay. I'm real tired. Can I go to bed now? I guess I get to sleep on the couch. That's cool. And it's okay if your cat sleeps out here some of the time. You don't have to keep him in your room or something. Cats don't like being boxed up."
"Her," the priest corrected automatically, blinking a couple of times, obviously surprised that Pinky had noticed something so obvious as a cat.
"Okay, her. Sorry. You must keep a really
clean litter box, because I can't smell it at all."
"It's automatic."
Pinky decided to think about whether he needed to play dumb in front of these people or not.
"I wish you wouldn't," O'Reilly said.
"Huh?"
"The expression on your face just went from what's obviously normal, for you, to a—and this is a professional statement as, yes, a spy—marginal copy of a typical five-year-old. I'm sorry if I did something to put you off, but I really wish you wouldn't pretend. It'll make my job a lot easier if you don't. And I'm rather good at spotting it when people do."
Then it was Pinky's turn to be surprised.
In his bedroom, after the child was off to sleep, Nathan O'Reilly composed a message to go out immediately by courier. He hated to call her back in from vacation and recovery, but he needed Cally O'Neal, and Tommy Sunday as well, back yesterday.
DAG was already pent-up, under-used and frustrated. Now someone was openly hunting their families.
The word "disaster" didn't even begin to cover it.
Friday, January 1, 2055
It had taken half a century, but Tommy Sunday had finally forgiven the game of football for its history with his father. Or vice versa. His father had been a linebacker before the war and before he had, presumably, been eaten by the Posleen in the scout landings at Fredericksburg. To say they had not gotten along would be putting it mildly. A huge man, like his father, Tommy had had absolutely no affinity for playing football. Computers, yes. Football, no. He had grudgingly participated in track, at his father's insistence, as the condition of his pursuing his own interests.
The Posleen had eaten his biological father but in time Tommy had found a new one, one who really understood him. His "old man" was, and would always be, Iron Mike O'Neal of the 555th—Papa O'Neal's son who fought on, killing Posleen on world after world under Fleet Strike's Darhel masters. The biggest tragedy of the war, in Sunday's opinion, was the cold military necessity that Mike remain ignorant of the survival of his daughter, his father, his grandchildren, and the legion of half-siblings, nieces, nephews, and more who now served with distinction in the battle for humanity's future.
His psych called it "tranference." Since Iron Mike was more a dad to him than his own father had ever been, it was, once again, okay to sit and watch football.
Ohio State versus Wisconsin was going to be one hell of a match-up. Football wasn't his favorite sport, not by far, but the small consolation prize from the return of satellites to Earth's skies was the availability of college bowl games over Christmas. The run of available bowl games was still compressed, the selection of teams was still compressed, and it was all in holo now. Other than that, bowl games were still bowl games, and sitcoms, unfortunately, were still sitcoms.
Rising to its ambitions, as well as the total destruction of the competition, Milwaukee still made the best beer in the world. Demand for some top-end product had improved the selection, though. There were brands that had come well beyond the old—ah, hell, the immigration of talented German beer-mistresses, recipes, yeasts and all, at the beginning of the Postie War had done wonders for Milwaukee.
Mueller laughed at something on the sitcom and looked at him and Mosovich, shame-faced.
"What? It was funny," he said. "Only good line in the whole damn thing, but that one was pretty funny."
"Yeah, okay." Mosovich had a grin playing around the edges of his mouth. "The fool could just ask her if she's cheating. Most women can't lie worth shit, contrary to reputation." He chuckled. "Not if you've baselined them."
"You would use interrogation techniques on a girlfriend?" Tommy clapped a hand to his heart. "I am shocked, shocked!" He opened his beer and hit the chill button on the next one before considering.
"Don't try it on Cally," he warned. "She'll use you baselining her to baseline you, and then mess with your head by showing you a completely different pattern from now until doomsday. No hesitations, nothing."
"Operator for decades. Got it," Jake said. " 'We are spies of Borg. Resistance is futile. You're already assimilated.' "
The three men cheered when the pre-game show broke into the sitcom before the latter's completion. The first run of commercials sent Tommy into the kitchen to refill the beer nuts and make microwave popcorn. One of the few uses of paper in modern times was the packaging of black-market popcorn up in Indiana. Cheaper than the legal stuff, it was still expensive enough that most people popped theirs the old way. Wendy's hobby made it one of the little luxuries they could afford without rubbing their relative wealth in people's faces. She and he both were fanatic about that, if only because "extra" money tended to attract family who needed help. With a whole island of family? No thanks.
She'd also laid on the stuff for turkey and ham sandwiches, but it was too early for that.
Commercials over, the pre-game show was a traditional time to shoot the shit. This was the primary reason for these two guys, in particular, sharing his den for the game today. Yeah, maybe he ought to be doing the officer-enlisted divide, but right now he considered it secondary to getting his new command together. He was making a point of keeping the handful of ships, his "Navy," and his logistics support "tail" separate from DAG. A clear chain of command, and clear separations between his branches, was the only way to run this railroad. His new logistics and naval COs were guys he'd known perrsonally for years and were not his sons or grandsons. Jake Mosovich and David Mueller were unknown quantities. Not to mention the fact that despite his own background, either one had twice his experience.
Hence the informal social gathering.
Throughout talk about the players' stats, injuries during the season, and the snow beginning to fall on the field, Mosovich and Mueller watched Sunday as closely as he watched them. He knew the history of the other two men, of course. Their work in the war, with a number of repeated postings together since, had made the officer and NCO operate as two halves of one man. Tommy had received a copy of their complete service records from Father O'Reilly, and studied it carefully. These two made a damn fine team, refining their relationship over the years to seamlessly set the standard for an officer and his senior NCO, tight as hell but each secure and precise in his own area of responsibility.
As their freshly minted boss he could have done a hell of a lot worse. The big man also knew that one hint of his discomfiture leaking through his command face would have a magnified, detrimental effect on the troops whose lives were now unquestionably his responsibility. His uncertainties were his own problem, to be buried deep for the sake of these men—his men.
He still didn't know what the hell he was going to end up doing with them, but that was a problem that wouldn't solve itself today.
The three men leaned forward as one. The snap, the kick, beautiful. Sixty yards if it was an inch. Waters was one of the best kickers in the game. Ohio had won two close ones on the strength of a couple of amazing field goals. Fast runners, on the team, too. Held Wisconsin to a ten return.
He got as far as third down before his son, Arthur, appeared at the door and interrupted. One look at his face and Tommy knew he could write this game off.
"Got a cube in from Indiana you better see, Dad. You too, sir. Top." He nodded to Mueller.
"That bad, huh?" One of the problems with being so far from the main—indeed, only—Bane Sidhe base on Earth was that security necessitated messages be physically couriered if they were either routine, or sensitive. Arthur's expression told him all he needed to know about just how sensitive, so he wasn't surprised that the message was directly recorded by Nathan.
"Cally, I'm sorry to interrupt your holiday." Nathan had clearly already gotten word of his promotion. "If you can, Tommy should probably see this, too. We just got word that the Maise family has been hit. Their safe house apparently wasn't. One of the kids survived and the house operator got home to find bodies and kid. He's called for a pickup and is waiting in place. By the time you get this, we should have him in hand at least, if no
t on base. I've got the Schmidts on it, blooding some of the new guys, and I devoutly hope that won't be literal.
"Cally, I know your first impulse is going to be to come running up here and get in the middle of it. Good. There's going to be blood to let and despite your current responsibilities, I cannot think of a person better suited to handling this. I can't order the acting head of Clan O'Neal, but . . . come."
"Cally's seen this already?" Tommy asked his son as the holo flicked off, automatically returning to the now forgotten game.
"Um . . . nobody knows where she is."
"Oh. Yeah, her belated honeymoon is a secret. Get it from Shari or Wendy. They both know where to find her."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, sir." The boy's face was tight, and his speech was beginning to take on a clipped tone. "Mom and Shari won't tell me where she is."
"What?" Tommy shook his head unbelievingly. "Wait, how did you know what was on this? You played it?" He looked at his son the way only a father can look at an erring child.
"No, sir. The courier . . ." His son shrugged, as if it was no fault of his if another guy had run off at the mouth. He'd deal with that later. Arthur swallowed hard, so his own face must have said as much.
"Mosovich, get three of your men who are the most dialed in on Bane Sidhe protocol and get them locking this down. Mueller, go get Maise. Nothing on why. My job to break the news. Yes, we're going to go up to Indiana, all of us, and we're going to pick up our hunting licenses. Questions?"
"No, sir," all three responded.
"Sounds to me like the Darhel have declared open war on the O'Neals," Tommy said, cracking his knuckles, then rotating his head and shoulders with a series of pops. "Time to show them why that's a terminally baaad idea. Right after I explain the . . . gravity of the situation to my wife."
"I need Cally. Now," he said grimly.