by John Ringo
Meanwhile, Harrison and Sands were out in an ancient utility shed in the backyard of the slowly collapsing house next door repainting the car. Cally was making lunch on an ancient Coleman camp stove they had found, unaccountably half full of fuel, in said shed. She had appointed herself cook on the grounds that Harrison was the only other team member who could fix a decent meal from their box of supplies in the trunk. She had declared that she wasn't going to eat sandwiches twice in one day if she could help it.
Hence, George and Tommy were free for a little quick PT with an old ball that it had taken Harrison about five minutes to repair, and George was free to vent about his beaut of a black eye.
"What had happened just before that?" Tommy asked, shooting carelessly over the short man's head. To his chagrin, he missed and his opponent recovered on the rebound. He concentrated more on the game while Schmidt filled in the details of their heroic egress from the Greenville Police Station.
"Oh. So she was taking a guy down and you inserted yourself to help. Yep. That'd do it." Tommy intercepted the ball in the air and shot again; this time he made it. "What the hell is it with you two?" he asked.
When George started to say something, Tommy just shook his head, grinning. "I know James Stewart," he said. "You do not want to let him catch you cuddling up to his wife."
"Cuddling up to her? Half the time I want to strangle her," the other man said.
"You two are so junior high." Tommy missed the grab and watched as the ball dropped through the basket from another of Schmidt's seemingly effortless shots. Schmidt was good enough, despite his height, that the game of one on one wasn't nearly as mismatched as it might have seemed.
"You want to fuck her. Join the club. You can't. She thinks you're cute, so it's worse. You still can't. End of story, grow the fuck up," the big man said, but he said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that it was impossible to take offense.
"She thinks I'm cute?" George echoed.
"Dude. James Stewart's wife. You're damn good, but he's better. I wouldn't. And she won't, anyway."
"But she thinks I'm cute." The little blond man missed his shot by a mile, letting Sunday recover the ball for an easy lay-up.
"You're hopeless," Sunday pronounced. "Just find somebody else to screw and behave yourself until it wears off. And if you don't, don't say I didn't warn you." He focused and dropped another one right in. "That's ten. My game."
"What do you mean 'join the club'?" Schmidt asked suspiciously as they walked off the court.
"Don't look at me. You've seen my Wendy. There's a club, all right. I didn't say I was in it."
"You didn't say you weren't."
Tommy set the ball down by the door to the old locker room, which, unlike the gym itself, was dark as hell. They just had to go through there to get to the lobby of the building. "Hopeless," he repeated.
The gym at the base had water fountains on two sides. Miraculously, the chiller on one of them even worked. Aluminum bleachers stood collapsed against the walls on each side of the basketball court. The curtain at the far end of said court was open, leaving a good view of exercise machines, a free weight section, and a compressed obstacle course. All were in use, as was the matted martial arts area. The DAGgers on base, even the ones who were Bane Sidhe first, coped with their enforced idleness in a way that kept them fit, busy, and not coincidentally, together. PT was a near religion for them and, like people turn to faith and each other in times of trouble, the DAGgers immersed themselves in PT schedules that were frankly brutal, raising protests from the medics who they kept busy with over-training injuries. Bane Sidhe sports medicine, as a result of decades of Tchpth patronage and lack of Darhel interference, was leagues ahead of their prior experience. With fear of injury greatly reduced, the men took full advantage of their extended envelope. They did, at least, readily share the facilities with the permanent denizens of the base and the dependents.
The Bane Sidhe field operatives, however, made it subtly clear that they were sharing their facilities with DAG. With the large number of DAGgers who had started as Bane Sidhe, and the others having witnessed the performance of the upgraded field operatives, especially the women, this didn't cause the friction it might have. There was respect between professionals. Rivalry, but it was a bit hard to get used to cute chicks who could and would run you into the ground or kick your ass, situation depending. Not that they were that far ahead of peak male athletes. They didn't always win. It was still a novel experience for those who hadn't previously encountered upgrades.
News that the equipment that achieved these results was no longer available was greeted with intense disappointment, a sentiment that was, of course, completely unrelated to the new tendency to overtrain and screw the transient, readily reparable injuries. Like stress fractures. The clinic director was beginning to scream about his budget.
Even though the gym was fairly crowded, the basketball goal on the far end had some space around the four people playing an energetic two on two, they having indicated a desire to be by themselves this time.
Cally paused as Tommy came in, and missed a catch.
"Hey!" George protested as one of the intel geeks they were playing snagged the ball out of the air and made a seemingly effortless shot that dropped it through the net.
"Time," Cally called.
"Okay, but it still counts," Boyd said as George snagged the rebound. The investigator's usually proper rows of hair spikes were limp with sweat, and he wiped his face with his already soaked T-shirt as Cally walked over to her teammate.
"Finished with your debrief?" she asked.
"Remind me again why I do this job?" Tommy asked. The large, open space of the gym seemed to be letting him breathe easier. She knew a lot of places he went were just plain cramped for a man his size.
"That bad, huh?" She adjusted the faded red sweatband that was holding her hair out of her face.
"Apparently our 'hunting trip' and 'cross-country jaunt' delayed us from getting the goods in and caused us to commit the gross sin of being later than the e-mail and the cleaners' fingernail," he said grumpily. "At least, that's what the little REMF bastard implied."
"Yeah, never mind we had orders not to worry about how long it took to get in but put security absolutely first. Never mind that sending said fingernail in by itself was an incredibly dumbass risk of interception and or having it followed right in. Never mind that the damn deer was a piece of blind luck," Cally sighed. "He's probably just jealous he didn't get any. Or a militant vegetarian."
"Anyway, the status on the investigation is this: the fingernail was great, but she had two guys' DNA under there which either means she was attacked by two men, or that she's a healthy young co-ed with a social life and forgot to scrub under her fingernails. We don't want to whack an innocent boyfriend. They only got partials on the two guys—enough to identify if we had a match, but not enough to put together a holo. They're still analyzing the DNA we got, but it should flag one of the two as definitely guilty, and hopefully complete his code," she said.
"Hey, Cally, are you playing, or what?"
"Yeah, just a sec," she called over her shoulder, then turned back to Tommy. "There probably is a second baddy, but she's female. A couple of students noticed the niece walking off with a woman they hadn't seen before. One of her friends thought it was odd that she didn't smile or wave when they passed each other, but just assumed she hadn't seen her. But she noticed the stranger female, so they got a pretty good description of her." Cally pointed over her shoulder at the investigators.
"Hey, I gotta go. Bottom line, they're closing in on identifying us some targets, so cheer up!" Her grin was predatory as she clapped Tommy on the shoulder, and there was an extra bounce in her step as she jogged back onto the court.
Chapter Fifteen
Tuesday, January 12, 2055
Papa O'Neal was in the best shape he'd been in in half a century or so. Specifically, the best shape he'd been in since the "new" wore off on what his rej
uved and upgraded body could do at the tail end of the Postie War. His fitness this time had an entirely different reason, which was that if he hadn't kept himself PT-ed to the gills he'd have died of boredom. Or killed somebody.
Since the only somebodies on this tub were the Himmit pilot and owner, and Nathan O'Reilly's personal assistant, that would have been bad. Particularly, he had the feeling that Nathan would miss the PA and would be rather cranky if he were throttled and stuffed down the head.
He looked around his cabin. Same old bulkheads and extremely boring crap. The only reason he was in here at all was because he'd just woken up. The food was the same shit, more or less, that they served at base. He always carried a small bottle of hot sauce, periodically refueling it from a large bottle. Unfortunately, he hadn't had time for any of that and was finding hot sauce much less effective when one had to ration it. He was still running out.
He had already gone through Candy's supply of various kinds of stored entertainment, having had little time to gather up cubes before boarding this mobile purgatory. He had traded all entertainment back and forth with Alan and gone through all of that. It was bad when you started to look forward to telling war stories to the Himmit. Titan was positioned all wrong for them to pick up transmissions of broadcast entertainment, and reception from Earth was practically nil due to solar weather.
Hard PT was one of the few ways he had to exhaust his brain into semi-passivity and get past the boredom. He used it. He had managed to persuade the Himmit to cobble odds and ends together into bars for chin-ups and dips. Hadn't been able to get an obstacle course out of it. Did get amplification for Candy to project the ones he didn't have to climb on and buzz at him if he, for example, snagged himself on the holographic barbed wire overhead, tipped over a hurdle, or let the ball-buster live up to its name. It was something to do, and he thought he almost had talked the Himmit into kitting out one of the bulkheads in the cargo bay as a climbing wall. He just hadn't hit on a story quite good enough to get it to "deface its ship" in such a fashion. He was also campaigning for a resistance-based weight training equivalent. His offer to lift the Himmit hadn't gone over well.
Between training times, he amused himself by trying to compose original dirty limericks, which was surprisingly difficult. Alan was having better luck with dirty haiku. Papa had taken to sitting with him while he did so, because the process and content tended to confuse the Himmit, which in itself was at least a little amusing.
Then there were the interminable lessons in xenopsychology from "the diplomacy expert." He had gotten to where he could get his head around the Indowy, Darhel, and the Crabs, but he still couldn't say Tph . . . Tic . . . Tch, oh, dammit, Crab. His understanding of the Himmit was more limited, but that just put him in the same boat as all the other races. They were still alien as hell, and he'd always have to think about it to try to see from their point of view, or try to understand something they were doing. Alan said this was actually an advantage, in that it protected him from forgetting the first rule: "Alien minds are alien."
He breakfasted alone, since he needed less sleep than Mr. Alien Expert, and so got up "earlier." Only this morning he was halfway between some nasty stuff that was supposed to copy eggs when he realized he was not alone and looked up to see the Himmit perched on his wall. Odd time for it to request a story. Not that he minded an interruption while eating, in the case of this junk.
"There has been a change in schedule, Human Papa O'Neal. A Tchpth ship has emerged from jump and commed me that they wish to rendezvous for negotiations. We should have contact in just over three of your days," it said. "I will leave you to resume nourishing yourself."
Papa supposed that was a more accurate term than calling it eating. He also noticed that the Himmit had no trouble pronouncing oh-hell-dammit-Crabs. Froggy little bastard.
He thought about waking his tutor, and then decided against it. Once the kid woke up he wasn't going to get a moment's rest, so he'd better get PT-ing while the getting was good.
Three hours later, Papa was glad he'd gotten his workout in because he could see that his free time was over. Thank god. Even negotiation preparations were a welcome relief from boredom now that he had the promise of not having to endure them all the way to fucking Barwhon.
"So what kinds of things are on our list to negotiate for? I have some ideas of what I want, but what do the Bane Sidhe want, from your perspective?"
The PA sank his head into his palm. "Let me repeat, the Tchpth do not think in terms of deals and arrangements and agreements. The Tchpth think in terms of relationships and favors." He paused, and Papa could see that he was going to have to listen to another run of xenopsych, only this time he had more incentive to pay close attention.
"Okay, what kind of relationship should I be negotiating for?"
"Let me try to explain things another way," Allan said, clearly meaning one more out of umpty-jillion he'd already tried. "Humans look at the Galactics and see the Darhel in charge, because the Darhel control the contracts, and the shipping, and the money."
"And life and death over the Indowy masses," Papa growled. "And attempting it over humans, and damn near—"
"Let's not get sidetracked. The Tchpth look at the Galactic organization and see a web of relationships. The Darhel do tasks the Tchpth agree need doing by somebody, but don't want to do themselves. The Tchpth control what amounts to the money supply, control the technology level available to the Darhel, the Indowy, and us. They see allowing the Darhel to play their contract games as humoring them. It's an easy favor that, from the Tchpth point of view, they're getting a lot of favors back for. The Darhel may appear to control what looks to humans like all the political power, but the Darhel's ability to step outside the Tchpth relationship format and favor economy is exactly zero. The Tchpth own the money supply. Um . . . picture it as if in the twentieth century, oil were actually money and some government had the power to make an unlimited supply of it effortlessly, and was militarily unassailable. See why the Darhel are stuck?"
"The fucking Elves can and do do a lot to the Indowy, and us."
"Yes, they do. But their relationship with the Tchpth is entirely on the Tchpth's terms as to definitions. The Darhel do have a lot of maneuvering room as to the trading of favors, and they understand, and use, that.
"The Tchpth relationship with the Indowy clans are what ultimately allows the Bane Sidhe to function. The Tchpth have more genuine philosophical thought in common with the Indowy than with the Darhel. The Indowy actually get this 'Path' thing. The Darhel don't. Realize that the Tchpth can bypass the Darhel by delivering nanogenerator code keys to the Indowy any time they damned well please. And they sometimes do. The Bane Sidhe is a case in point. The Bane Sidhe nannite pool is entirely off the Darhel books. Maybe it will help for a moment if you think of the Bane Sidhe less as a resistance movement aimed at overthrowing the Darhel than a labor union. That's not accurate, either, but figure this—the Indowy are lousy at management, economics, logistics, firm and formalized agreements. The Indowy need the Darhel. They don't want to make the Darhel go extinct, or go stay on their own worlds. The Indowy just want better terms. The Tchpth relationship with the Indowy is to provide enough support to the labor union to keep the balance between the Galactics the way they think it should be. The Indowy also operate on the basis of a favor economy with the Tchpth. Think of this as another form of currency that's completely off the Darhel books. Relationships."
"The Himmit? Nobody's really got a great handle on the Himmit's story economy, but there are things they can do, and favors can be traded with them, so the Tchpth have their relationship with the Himmit somehow slotted into their scheme of things. We humans don't actually have any understanding, at all, of the workings between the Himmit and the Tchpth. Are you following me so far?" The PA ran both hands through his hair, thinking so hard he was sweating.
Papa O'Neal was actually kind of impressed. "Yeah, I think so. You're saying we've been mistaken about the Darhel
and the Crabs are in control of the whole ball of wax—which tells me that maybe we should be pissed off at them."
"No. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying the Tchpth have the power to control the whole ball of wax but don't have the time, inclination, or aptitude for doing so. I'm saying the Darhel don't mess with the Tchpth because they know the Tchpth can upset the applecart at any point. We are not negotiating with the Indowy. We are not negotiating with the Darhel. We are negotiating with the Tchpth. If the Tchpth see Galactic civilization in terms of relationships and favors, then we—and you—had better be able to see it that way, too. Or at least fake it real well." He sighed. "Does that make sense?"
"Yeah. I reckon that makes sense. They could help us, they could help the Indowy, they could jerk a knot in the Darhel, but they really don't have any percentage in it and don't give a shit. Is that about the size of it?" Papa O'Neal patted down his shirt pocket before realizing he'd run out of tobacco.
"Closer. They do give a shit. They just think of it differently. Alien minds. Humanity's opportunity, and our curse right at the moment, is that the Tchpth haven't decided where we fit in. They haven't decided where, over the mid-range time scale of the next thousand years or so, we 'work' as part of a stable relationship pattern between the races. It is almost as much false as it is true, but think of human involvement in the Bane Sidhe, for a moment, as the Indowy doing a favor for the Tchpth by developing xenopsychological data on the humans as part of the process of evaluating our place in the scheme of things. All this is hampered by all the Galactic races having extreme prejudices against us for all the reasons you already know, and probably a couple more we haven't figured out yet.
"Your job, as a diplomat, is to almost but not exactly socialize with the Tchpth, and probably a few Indowy, but no Darhel, of course. In the course of this not exactly schmoozing, they and the Indowy will make loaded comments about relationships and balances of favors between different groups, including various Indowy Clans. Possibly the Tchpth will test you by making a few comments about other relationships, such as some internal to them, or some with the Himmit or Darhel. You are not going to pass that test on any level more sophisticated than a grossly barbarous, vicious omnivore, so don't get your hopes up or give up hope," he said.