Cally's War

by John Ringo

  Li was fairly new and hadn't put anything in his office except some tropical-looking tree with big shiny leaves. It wasn't even dusty. Someone had probably cleaned it out before he arrived and he just hadn't been there long enough for a new layer to form. She was bent over the bottom drawer and was just closing it back when she heard a sound in the hall. It gave her enough warning that she didn't jump when the door slid open, just looked up and calmly closed the empty drawer. It was Pryce, and despite the second or so advance warning she felt her breathing quicken and her palms start to sweat.

  "C—can I help you with anything, ma'am?" he asked.

  "Maybe. Have you seen the Leave File?" She wiped her hands on the side of her silks as she stood back up. "It has the markup draft of the revision to the brigade leave and sick call policies and procedures."

  "Oh, that." He frowned for a minute. "Sanchez had it this afternoon, ma'am."

  "He brought it back, I remember that, and I thought I filed it. And now I can't find it and I just know I would be so embarrassed if the general, bless his heart, asked for it in the morning and I had to go look for it then." She frowned thoughtfully.

  "Could Sanchez have thought of a comment he forgot and borrowed it again, maybe, ma'am?"

  "Maybe. We can take a quick look." So Pryce was with her as she searched Sanchez office, and she didn't dare copy the three cubes he had in his top desk drawer.

  "No luck, huh?" he asked

  "I'm afraid not." She straightened and walked past him out the door. He must have lost his balance as he turned behind her, because he stumbled up against her again, steadying himself with one hand on one side of the small of her back and the other on her arm, just below the shoulder. She knew right where his hands had been, because the skin there tingled even after he caught his balance and removed them.

  "M—ma'am I am so sorry." His eyes were downcast. He was obviously embarrassed as hell. "I guess I'm not the most coordinated person in the world."

  "Bless your heart, Pryce, nobody's perfect." She smiled sympathetically. "You've been to Titan before. You wouldn't happen to know if there's a decent place to get a pizza somewhere on this giant snowball, would you?" Did I just ask him out? Yep. Why the hell am I attracted to this consummate klutz? I probably ought to speed things up with the general before I totally lose it. You have a job to do, Cally. Wake the hell up and do it, instead of fucking around with cute lieutenants.

  "I know just the place, ma'am. I could give you directions, but it doesn't have a big sign. You have to pay extra for that, and I guess Lin feels he doesn't need it. Most of his business is delivery, anyway. If you don't mind company, I haven't eaten either . . ."

  "Uh, that would be just fine, Pryce." After all, I have to eat, anyway. It has nothing to do with those deep, dark eyes of his. Nothing at all.

  * * *

  The Little Venice Pizzeria was a small place located in the lower level. Stewart estimated that perhaps half the square footage was devoted to kitchen space. The small dining room was a bit busier than usual, but they didn't have to wait long for a table. While the busboy was cleaning their table, he used the mix of prints and reinterpreted holos of old Venice as inspiration for small talk. Flower boxes of lush vines, hung on the walls all the way around the dining room, gave the place a more dirtside feel than anywhere else she could've been on Titan. Tony Bennett was playing in the background. Stewart saw her notice the plastic roses on the tables and smiled slightly.

  "Not exactly the place for a business dinner, Lieutenant."

  "Were we going to discuss work, ma'am? They do a damn fine pizza here. I don't know if you're hungry or not, but I'm starved. Split a large?"

  "That sounds good. Is it just me, or does it not smell as . . . smoggy . . . in here as it does out there?" she asked.

  "It's not just you. Lin installed extra filters, and the extra plants help a lot. He said the pollution was inhibiting his yeast, whatever that means. So, ma'am, what do you like on your pizzas?"

  "Everything, with extra cheese." Makepeace grinned like a little kid.

  "Um . . . ma'am, how about everything except for anchovies?" He walked up to the counter and looked back at her, raising an eyebrow.

  "Deal."

  "One large garbage pizza, extra cheese, hold the cat food." He looked at the petite brunette behind the counter curiously. "Hi, Suzannu, good to see you again. Where's Lin?"

  "His wife is sick, so I take over for a few days until she gets better. Gotcha, one catless garbage, extra cheese. It will be up in about fifteen minutes. You want drinks with that?" She set two empty cups on the counter. "Sorry I don't have time to talk. I am run off my feet trying to handle all this by myself, just myself and Jon, and we are so busy."

  As he half expected, when he got out his ID and swiped it through the machine, Makepeace tried to pay, but he didn't let her, and she didn't go to the point of actually making it an order. He'd probably have to let her buy next time. What? Waitaminute—next time? She is a third of your age, you idiot, and a ditz to boot. She is a complication you do not need on this job. Now after the job—she'll still be a third your age and a ditz, but . . . she's over the age of consent and, hey, brains aren't everything. Damn she's got big tits.

  They got their drinks and sat, after a moment of confusion as each went for the seat facing towards the door. He let her have it. She was a captain, his cover was a lieutenant. Having his back to the door bugged the crap out of him, but it couldn't be helped.

  "So, why did you join Fleet Strike, Pryce?"

  "Get out of the Sub-Urbs, get rejuv, get off-planet, see the universe, kill Posties. What's not to like, ma'am?"

  "Bless your heart, Pryce, we're going to have a long evening if you spend the whole time ma'am-ing me. In private you can drop the ma'am's and just call me Makepeace, all right?"

  "Okay. So why did you join?" He inhaled about the top third of his drink.

  "Get off the farm. Get rejuv. See more of at least some world without having to be a colonist. If I didn't want to be a farmer's wife on Earth, I sure didn't want to be one on some other Godforsaken planet. There just wasn't much for me back home. My brother's going to work the farm, and I could either have had three little kids by now and be working my butt off as a farm wife where I grew up, or I could be here. I picked here. And if they ended up shipping me off to kill Posties, well, they're the reason I never got to meet my maternal grandmother, so I pretty much figure our family owes them."

  "The rejuv was a selling point for me, but I also almost didn't join because of it. They don't like juvs much in my old neighborhood," he said.

  "Maybe by the time we get out in fifty years the prejudice won't be so bad. Or the drugs'll be more available and there won't be a reason for hard feelings." She plucked at the edge of the table.

  "Optimist," he smiled teasingly and she grinned back and in that moment she looked so beautiful he stopped breathing for a moment just looking at her.

  When he finally inhaled it was sudden, and then her eyes were caught in his, both looking, and somehow neither of them were smiling anymore. Suzannu broke the moment by calling out his name and sliding a pizza tray on the counter. He took the chance to tear his eyes away and go get the food.

  Watching Sinda eat a piece of pizza was fascinating. She picked it up with one hand and supported the pizza slice with two fingers of the other hand under the tip. He was sure she was going to dump a load of the toppings in her lap, but she didn't. She bit into it delicately, closing her eyes to savor the first bite.

  "Mmmm. That's good." She opened her eyes to take another bite and Stewart realized that not only was he staring, he also hadn't gotten himself a piece and was letting the pizza get cold. He pulled a slice onto his plate and attacked it with a knife and fork. Yes, it would be in character to pick up the whole piece and have some of it drop in his lap, but it would also make an embarrassing blotch on his silks and he didn't want to look quite that bad in front of Sinda.

  You're too old for her, id
iot, he told himself, but he didn't commit any embarrassing feats of clumsiness during the meal.

  "So, Pryce, what do you do for the general. I mean, aside from briefing new arrivals on the history of the command."

  "And passing canapés?" He grinned.

  She laughed, and as her head tilted her hair caught the light. He looked her in the eyes. Restraining the urge to talk to Makepeace's really spectacular chest was always an exercise in willpower.

  "I coordinate the weekly reports of the agents, and the Tuesday and Thursday special reports on our major investigation," he said.

  "Is that the organized crime one?"

  "Yep, the tongs." He nodded.

  "I read the background material, but it didn't explain why you don't just go in and shut them all down." Her head was tilted to the side, curiously.

  "It's been tried. About twenty years ago." As he spoke, she leaned forward, hands clasped on the table, listening intently. "Suddenly Fleet Strike's traveling arrangements got very uncomfortable and late at the worst possible times, and there were problems with the chow aboard ship, and environmental conditions in the troop quarters were always going on the fritz. So the General of Fleet Strike talked to the General of Fleet and the upshot was that we treat the tongs as legitimate civic organizations and only arrest and prosecute individual members we can catch in actual crimes."

  "Okay." She nodded, but he suspected from the slightly glazed look in her eyes that she still didn't understand.

  "So what did they do about all the problems in Fleet?" she asked.

  "Fleet fixed them," he answered slowly.

  She nodded again, and it was all he could do to keep a straight face.

  If this had been a normal date, or a date at all, he might have reached across the table to hold her hand after they finished eating, and they might have gotten refills on their drinks and sat and talked for awhile after they finished eating. As it was, she said she had some shopping to do and he said he had some things he needed to take care of back at his quarters, and they went their separate ways.

  On the transit car back to his quarters his mind kept replaying flashes of silver-blond hair, Sinda laughing at one of his jokes, the way her mouth pouted up when she took a sip of her drink. The ride seemed to take no time at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cally opened the door to her quarters and took her packages inside. It was only her second day and the institutional green and gray were boring her to tears. She tossed a large red shawl over the ugly gray plastic nightstand that came with the room and put the cut glass vase she'd bought on the table, filling it with yellow silk roses. She used tacky clay to stick a couple of posters of unicorns and pegasuses—or was it pegasi—on the walls. Strange obsession, but she'd had covers with more obnoxious ones. At least the pictures were colorful. She'd even managed to find one that wasn't in pastels.

  What is that obnoxious beeping? She looked at her PDA, but it was fine. She looked around the room for a source of the beeping, finally localizing it to the shawl-covered end table and the top drawer in it. Oh. It's the phone. Who the hell wouldn't just page my PDA? It's registered in the directory . . . oh. Paper-boy.

  She lifted the phone out of the drawer and looked at the red light blinking on it in time with the beeping. She had to look at the thing's buttons for a moment before she found the play message button. There was no message, and she had to experiment with more buttons before she found the combination that would get the phone to display the number of the last caller. She read it off to her PDA and told it to call the number, waiting for an answer.

  "Hello, Beed residence. May I help you?" a woman's voice answered.

  "Um . . . yes, I guess you can. Is the general in? I'm his secretary and he may be trying to reach me."

  "Oh, is this Captain Makepeace? Hang on and I'll get him."

  Cally waited, sitting down on the bed and splitting the PDA screen so she could use the bottom half as a remote. The cube from last night still had a bunch of movies she hadn't seen yet. It had been in the original Makepeace's purse when they made the switch, so she supposed it reflected her taste in movies pretty well. She started it to get the advertising tease out of the way, turning the volume to mute. She still had a few seconds wait before the general finally answered. Most people in this day and age took their PDA with them everywhere. Well, unless they had an AID. Knowing Beed, he had probably been whole rooms away from whatever he was using to call her. Cally imagined a big, black, rotary dial phone sitting on a table somewhere and suppressed laughter as he started speaking.

  "Hello, Captain?" It certainly sounded like the general.

  "Yes, sir. You were trying to reach me?"

  "Ah . . . yes. I was trying to get a little of the red tape squared away and realized I need the Lee file. Unfortunately, I'm expecting another call and really can't step away right now. I know it's an imposition, but could you possibly take a moment and drop by the office and bring it around? I haven't caught you at a bad time, have I?"

  "No, sir, not at all. I'd be glad to get that file for you," she fibbed.

  "Good, good. I was just afraid I might have caught you at a bad time because you were out when I called before. Thought you might have had plans." His voice had a hint of a question in it.

  "Yes, sir. I just got in from dinner, sir."

  "Trifle late, isn't it?" He seemed to be waiting for some sort of explanation.

  "Yes, sir. I worked a little late getting things in order, sir, and then I had some shopping to do."

  "Ah. Okay. Well, if you'll just nip by the office and bring that file over, Captain. Thank you." There was an audible click as he ended the call.

  She glared at the phone for a minute. Is he for real? And of course he just assumes I know where he lives. It's not like he couldn't have called my PDA and reached me right off. The real Sinda Makepeace may have gotten the better end of this deal. And I know better than to slip out of character, even in private, dammit.

  It was actually no trouble to find the general's quarters. The base directory had no problem with telling his secretary where he lived.

  It also didn't take very long to get there, since it was a Tuesday night and in the middle of a shift. Transit car traffic was minimal, and the MPs on duty at the transit station that serviced brigade headquarters were surprised to see anyone coming in so late, but passed her through after a quick look at her ID.

  Moments later, she tucked the file into a manila envelope, passed the MPs on the way out and caught a transit car three levels down.

  The corridor that housed Fleet Strike general officers was not institutional green. Nor were the doors battleship gray. The cream walls and Wedgwood blue doors were set off by a strip of wallpaper across the top of the walls that had been designed to convey the impression of crown molding. The charcoal gray carpeting was thick and gave softly under her feet. In all, it reminded her of images she'd seen in movies of the sort of prewar hotel that catered to business travelers who were on a budget but did not want to feel they were staying in some cheap dive.

  Suite G one-oh-three was about fifty meters from the transit car doors. It had the standard electronic lock and a little glowing button in a brass plate cast in curlicues that might have been stylized leaves.

  "Captain Sinda Makepeace to see General Beed, please," she announced clearly to the door. Nothing happened. She waited, and then announced herself again. Still nothing. He couldn't. They wouldn't have . . . What the hell, I'll try it. She pushed the button and immediately heard a ringing tone from inside the apartment. They must have actually drilled through the Galplas to install that damned thing.

  As the door slid open, she caught a distinct whiff of men's cologne. Beed was just inside the doorway, but he didn't move to take the envelope from her.

  "Ah, good. You have it. If it won't be too much trouble, why don't you come in. I may need you for a couple of things. That's not a problem, is it?"

  "No, sir. Of course there's no problem, sir." Sh
e stepped inside the door and it closed behind her. It may have been phrased like a request, but she knew an order when she heard one. Besides, he was a safe way to get rid of some excess hormones while furthering her mission. A good deal all around.

  "I didn't really need the file." He met her eyes and held them as he took the envelope from her and tossed it onto a small table just inside the door.

  "I didn't really think you did, sir."

  "Quit sirring me, Sinda. In public, yes, but . . . Would you like a glass of wine?"

  "Only if it's not local, thanks. If the air does that to coffee beans, I'd hate to think what it would do to a poor, defenseless grape."

  "It's up from Earth. A nice California chardonnay. You'll like it." He led her out of the foyer into the living room. On the coffee table was an ice bucket and a chilled bottle of the wine, with two glasses. He uncorked and poured it smoothly, handing her a glass and saluting her with his own. He was right. It was crisp and cool.

  "Excuse me for asking, but where is Mrs. Beed this evening? And if I don't call you 'sir,' what do I call you?"

  "My friends call me Bernie. And Mrs. Beed has her movie night with some of the other wives. They grab a drink together afterwards. She won't cross the threshold before oh-one-hundred at the earliest."

  "I—I haven't done this much." She took a largish gulp of her wine and dropped her eyes.

  He set his glass down, taking hers and setting it beside the other, then stepped forward until he was nearly touching her. He cupped her face in his hands and bent to kiss her lingeringly.

  "I think I'm going to enjoy walking you through it," he said.

  His breath tasted like peppermint and his mustache tickled her lip as she ran her hands up his chest to twine her arms around his neck. His hands were playing with her breasts and her breathing started to quicken and she pressed closer, up against him.