by John Ringo
The Keys and she's back on the boat with Dad, and he's proud because she just caught a really big one and she's washed the salt from the wind out of her hair and is sitting on the edge of the dock watching the sunset as Mom combs the tangles out. Michelle is in the water swimming with Dad, and a dolphin is chittering to her as she strokes under its chin. And Mom's brought her a nice, cold limeade and a plate . . .
The alarm shrilled at her and she slapped it and the system off, reflexively grabbing the washcloth to dry her face. Mmmm. I've always loved the beach. Maybe next time I get a real vacation I'll finally go back for that visit I've been promising myself. I guess after forty years it's probably changed a bit. Gotta be Cally today. Let's see, Cally's very casual, got a smart mouth, wears a lot of olive drab but also likes red.
She tossed the used washcloth in the basket and carried it into the kitchen, sticking out her tongue at the empty coffee maker she had forgotten to set last night and hitting its button with an elbow on her way past. Just off the kitchen she opened the door and raised the lid of the laundry machine, dropping in the clothes and a packet of fragrance-free fabric saver before closing the lid. The machine detected the added weight, analyzed the contents, and she heard it filling as she shut the door behind her.
She rummaged through the freezer until she found a bar of chocolate-cheesecake breakfast ice cream and pulled up the news, glaring again at the offending coffee machine that still hadn't finished brewing.
The House and Senate are still debating what Posleen-free means for purposes of reconstruction to Statehood? Yeah, the Urbies really don't like the difficulties they already have with the Senate over food subsidies. And their internal media makes sure they get a full report on every feral Posleen attack in CONUS, so they're not bloody likely to poke a nose out and take a look. Some days nonexistence beats the crap out of citizenship.
"Ah, it's done." She grabbed her mug and filled it with coffee, adding a sugar cube, and took a look at the weather and ferals report before going to get dressed. Looks good enough for me.
In the bedroom she pulled on a red bikini with a T-shirt and jeans over it, pulled on an old pair of sneakers, threw some clean underwear and a towel in a beat-up khaki backpack and pulled her hair back in a neat braid. She sorted through the rows of wallets in the bottom drawer until she came to a battered khaki and Velcro one that had very sincere identification and bank cards in the name of Cally Neilsen. The wallet was a bit old fashioned. It was the one used least often, and least hazarded, so it was least often in need of replacement. All the wallets had artful wear and tear. This one had acquired them the old-fashioned way, although the contents had to be as frequently updated as the others to stay current, and the last name, like those of the others, had varied over time. Fortunately, the Darhel were no more interested in U.S. computer identification procedures being truly secure than the Bane Sidhe were.
As she loaded the Colt .45 and extra magazines into the front of her car, she wished she'd picked up at least something beyond a small cooler of beer to add to the picnic. She had her go-to-ground supplies—never left the Wall without them—but they weren't exactly your recreational sort of refreshments. Her eyes lit on Justine's bag of cheese curls. Just the thing. Wendy's kids would love them.
She drove to the James River exit, partly because it was close, but mostly because the simple sliding gate of heavy steel, combined with the drawbridge, was easier to navigate than some of the other gates. It just took a few minutes to get through the checkpoint. The .45 and three spare magazines, along with her range certification card, were enough to exempt her from the municipal convoy requirement and fee. Even in the postwar world, liability was a bitch. Charleston's city government, elected from a population of many of the first Southerners who had returned from the Urbs and the heartland, along with the local militia and the Fleet Strike cadets, had chosen a uniquely Southern solution. Since tourists from the Urbs were generally a braver sort to start with and sensible enough to travel with the convoys, it worked rather well. The few who weren't might gripe about the fee, but the people of Charleston firmly believed that the best way to keep the local population of Postie ferals low was to avoid feeding them.
The road north of the walled section of Folly was not as well kept up as the road to the walled municipal beach, but it wasn't as bad as one might have thought even after decades of official neglect and two decent-sized hurricanes. The more enterprising and independent Charlestonians who used the unwalled beach made a habit of collecting buckets of cleaned clam shells in the backs of their cars and bringing them along as an unofficial toll for beach use. The Citadel Cadets had picnics on the beach a couple of weekends a year at which it was an unofficial tradition to bring a couple of thick steel sheets and a few sledgehammers and have impromptu contests to see which company's champion could pulverize the most shells (Golf Company being the current record-holder at twenty-three buckets), after which the cadets carefully filled in any significant cracks or potholes with the makeshift paving material. Over time the road had become perhaps more tabby than asphalt, but it remained essentially adequate for the mostly local traffic it served.
She pulled into the parking lot, checked her holster, and went around to the trunk, carrying two large buckets of cleaned shells to dump into the steel bins. Fortunately, even feral Posleen did not consider empty clam and oyster shells edible. She was a few minutes early, and, as was the case more often than not on a weekday, the beach was empty, so she went ahead and got started on the normal precautions of activating a couple of portable Postie alarms and running them up the flagpoles that had been set into the edge of the parking lot. They were okay on a wire stand or on top of a car or rock in a pinch, but to get the best warning time you really needed to give them a bit of elevation. She set her PDA up to listen on the sensors' individually programmable alert frequencies and entered the sensor locations and orientations on the screen. Now if a feral showed up she'd have not only an alarm but a distance and a moving dot-on-a-plot.
"Please tell me you've got more than that dinky forty-five and aren't planning to fight a horde of Posleen alone with it. Or a boat? If we're far enough out, they can't get us in a boat. We'll be just fine until it capsizes and we get eaten by sharks." The buckley always did get a bit agitated on sensor watch.
"Buckley, do you actually sense the presence of a single Posleen feral?"
"No, they're doing a real good job of hiding this time. I can call in reinforcements if you want. Won't do any good, but if you want . . ." It trailed off.
"Don't call anyone, buckley," she ordered.
"Good idea. No reason they should all die, too," it said.
"Shut up, buckley."
"Right."
With the basics done she was free to get cooler and bag down onto the beach, jeans and shirt off, pop open a beer, and amuse herself throwing a couple of cheese curls to the seagulls until Shari, Wendy, and the kids pulled up and came down onto the beach, Wendy's four kids at a run close behind Shari's golden retriever. Well, okay, she was mostly golden retriever and all dog, running straight at the gulls and barking cheerfully.
Cally surrendered to a lapful of sand, fur, and dog drool, scratching Sandy's ears vigorously while the other women maneuvered loads of food and gear down the stairs, and tried to variously call off the dog and the kids.
"Okay you hoodlums, get back here and help carry!" Wendy called, grinning, "Mike, you too!"
"Hang on, Mom! I've gotta reboot my shoes, again." Her six-year-old was staring down at his feet, where a hologram of an ACS trooper was shooting at a hologram of a Posleen normal with a boma blade, the latter having frozen mid stride, interspersed with flickering bits of static. Muttering words a six-year-old probably shouldn't know, he took the offending shoe off and stuck his hand inside, fumbling around for the reset switch. The hologram disappeared and reappeared later, the Posleen chewing red drippy bits of meat better left unidentified. With the shoe back on the child's foot, it resumed swinging it
s boma blade at the ACS trooper every time one foot passed the other, finally erupting backwards in a slow-motion welter of yellow gore as a line of bullets cut its torso in half. When the pieces hit the "ground" they stayed for a second while the ACS trooper jumped up and down triumphantly, then both holograms flickered back to pristine health and began their battle anew.
"Hiya, Aunt Cally." He made it back over to the others as his mother was spreading out the blanket next to Cally's towel. "Daddy bought me some new shoes. Like 'em?"
"Hey, those are great! Great detail on the images." She watched the Posleen normal explode again, this time having its head splattered apart by aimed fire. The victorious ACS trooper turned a backflip, before going into a classic prewar end-zone dance. "Does the Postie ever win?"
"Once in awhile," he nodded solemnly, "but it's okay, 'cause they don't show the gooshy stuff for that." He reassured her as if he was the one talking to a small child.
"Do you remember me, Annie?" She tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear and craned her neck, trying to make eye contact with the little girl hiding behind Wendy's leg.
"Sorry, she's going through a shy phase." Her mother absentmindedly stroked the wispy blond curls the little girl was shaking, her face buried in Mommy's knee. "Oh, come on, Annie, you remember Aunt Cally, don't you? Sandy remembers her."
"That's my doggy." The four-year-old's gray eyes met hers. "You've got sand all over yourself."
"I know. Sandy shared." For a minute her eyes looked as young as the rest of her, as she laughed and stood up, brushing the sand off of her belly and legs, and giving Sandy enthusiastic scratching at the back of her head. "You're so good to share, you're a good dog, aren't you?"
As Sandy's tail was sweeping back and forth as if to enthusiastically agree that she was a good dog, James and Duncan arrived with several folding chairs and one big beach umbrella.
"Hi, Aunt Cally. Gonna throw a few passes with us after lunch?"
"They would be football fanatics, wouldn't they?" Shari pulled a ball from one of the towel bags and handed it to Duncan as the younger boy dumped his load unceremoniously on the sand and made a run for the water, spiking the ball enthusiastically as he hit the high-tide line.
"Hey!" James looked up from setting up a chair as his brother left him with the work. "Mom!"
"Oh, go on. I've got it." Cally picked up a chair and waved him towards the beach.
Wendy caught Shari's eye for a moment as the six-year-old followed his brothers and dog towards the water.
"The kids really like you, you know." She began unloading plastic containers of food onto the blanket. "It seems to be mutual."
"Oh, yeah, they're great." She opened another chair. "Glad you and Tommy decided to have another bunch, now that the first group's flown the nest. Oh, congratulations by the way. I thought you guys were gonna wait until this bunch was up and out before having more though."
"Yeah, well, even with GalTech you get the occasional pleasant surprise." She blushed. "So when are we going to be congratulating you, sweetie?"
"Say what?" Cally spluttered, dropping the chair she had just picked up. She retrieved it and suddenly became very occupied with brushing every bit of the sand off of it.
Shari put her hand over her eyes, shaking her head slightly.
"Okay, so I could have handled that better," Wendy sighed.
"Ya think?" Shari suddenly became very interested in the beach umbrella she was putting up.
"Cally, you can't just be twenty forever," Wendy tried again.
"I haven't been twenty for thirty years or so." She plopped down in the chair and stretched her legs out in front of her, crossed her arms, and leaned back looking at the two of them suspiciously. "Okay, give. What are you two up to?"
Shari sat down and curled her arms around as Annie scrambled into her lap, and looked out over the sea. The wind was blowing her hair back from her face and she squinted to keep stray grains of sand out of her eyes.
"Cally, this life's not good for you anymore. If it ever was. You're not happy. When are you going to give yourself permission to have a life and settle down?" she said.
"You know what we're up against. I do things that very, very few people can do. Things that need to be done for other people to settle down." She sat up and leaned forward in her chair, resting her hands on her knees. "Look, if and when I meet the right man I probably will do the kid thing, I just . . . haven't met him. And the anti-juv prejudice doesn't help. Not to whine, but it's hard to get intimate with a guy when you're old enough to know he's an immature idiot."
"But you're never gonna meet him in some bar," Wendy broke in, handing her a juice pack. "Look, I can understand if you're not keen on the BS organization's matchmaking program. Hey, that would creep me out a bit, too. But between Tommy and Papa, they've gotta know at least half a dozen decent guys who would love to have a wife who didn't have to be kept quite so much in the dark. I mean, geez, what's the harm in letting them fix you up with a date or two?"
"What's the harm?" Cally asked flatly, her eyes suddenly dead. "Just that having an emotional tie to someone who ends up on the same mission could get me or him captured or killed. Not to mention his side of it. Who wants a wife who faces the odds I face, or does the things I have to do? I'm good, but it's sheer dumb luck I've only died once so far, and that not permanently. The only thing worse than the odds of death for a female assassin are the odds of a successful marriage."
Shari winced and clapped her hands over Annie's ears. "You never talk about that!" she whispered.
"Get my point?" She pulled out a mug and a flask, squeezing the juice pack into the cup and pouring an ounce or so of clear liquid on top. "You want?" She extended it to Shari.
Shari's hand went to her stomach. "No, I . . . can't."
Cally broke into a grin. "You dog! No wonder you're trying to get me married off and pregnant, misery loves company!" she joked, then smiled. "Congratulations!"
"Are you really?" Wendy laid her hand on her best friend's knee. "You wouldn't kid between girlfriends? Congratulations! Oh, this is so great. We will eat ice cream and go off the curve together! Have a juice pack."
"There, see what you're missing?" She turned back to Cally. "Will you just promise me you'll consider letting Tommy fix you up on a date? Just one teeny weenie little date? If you want, you don't even need to see him alone—we could double."
"Oop. Now you've gotta do it, Cally. I'll baby-sit. She and Tommy haven't been out on a date in ages, it's your positive duty to your best girlfriends in the world."
"My only girlfriends in the world." Cally grimaced. "Not that I don't appreciate you two—that is, when you're not trying to fix me up with Tommy's or Granpa's fishing buddies." She caved when the two of them glared at her. "Okay, okay, I'll think about it. After I get back from this next mission."
"A short one, I hope?" Shari asked.
"You know I can't say. But, I wouldn't get your hopes up on it." She used the juice pack straw as a swizzle stick to stir her drink and took a sip before checking her PDA. "Everything's fine. Still up, still scanning, no signs."
The rest of the afternoon was practically idyllic. They washed down the crab salad sandwiches with juice and sodas—well, Cally had a beer. It didn't matter that she had Postie watch since she'd been immune to the effects of alcohol her entire adult life. The kids didn't eat many of the cheese curls—it was more fun feeding them to the gulls and the dog. Since Sandy loved cheese curls and chasing gulls, she usually won the race to each freshly tossed treat.
Duncan and James loved passing practice with Cally, as she generally caught the ball even when their throws went a bit wide, and they generally caught the ball because she could land it right in their hands from twenty-five yards down the beach. Cally reflected that the boys, who had had very little social contact with adult females who were not fully upgraded, were going to have a rude awakening some day. She could have landed it in their hands at twice that distance, but the display wou
ld have been bad tradecraft. As it was, she never would have done this much if there'd been outsiders on the beach.
That afternoon, she carried a sleeping Annie up the stairs for Wendy and got her strapped into her booster seat in the station wagon, while the older boys stowed the folded chairs and gear in the back. A few seconds after Mike climbed into the seat beside his little sister his sneakers, obviously sensing that their wearer was no longer standing or walking, shut off the holograms.
"Those are really cute shoes," Cally said as she walked around to the back of the car where her friends were waiting to say good-bye, "but I was a little surprised the battles were silent. They had neat weapons sound effects even when we were kids."
"Shhhh." Wendy held a finger over her lips, obviously smothering laughter. "Tommy turned that off the first night."
Cally's mouth rounded in a silent "oh" of understanding. She felt a small scrap of paper being pressed into her palm and looked at Shari enquiringly.
"It's a time and number for your grandpa. Call him," she said.
"What? Over the phone?" She patted her bikini lightly. Still damp. She'd be riding home on a towel. Her mind snapped back into gear and she looked at Shari in bewilderment. "Phone? Why the phone?"
"It's what we outside the ops world call a personal call, Cally." Shari patted her on the back with an exaggerated pitying air, then, more seriously, "He just wants to talk to you. Not shop talk, not mission talk, just a visit. Okay, obviously you're going to use a pay phone somewhere, but . . . just call your grandfather, okay?"
"Okay, sure." She hugged both of them a little awkwardly. "Okay, then, well, I guess it's goodbye until next time."
"We'll wait while you get your sensors back down," Wendy said, climbing into the driver's seat and watching her pull the small boxes down the flagpoles and put them back in her car.
A bank of clouds was rolling in and Cally could smell the rain on the air as she pulled onto the road behind the blue minivan for the drive back to town.