Sister Time-Callys War 2 (15 page)

All too soon, he was nudging her awake, tapping her hand from a careful distance on the other side of the aisle.

"Hey, sleepy, time to wake up," he said.

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, glancing at the window. Not that it did any good, since someone had thoughtfully lowered the shade. She didn't feel the slightly hollow sensation of descent. "How far out are we?"

"A bit more an hour," he said.

"What?! I've only been asleep a half hour," she glared accusingly. "A bit more," she echoed grumpily, pulling the mask back down over her eyes.

"You got a cat nap. Quit bitching, time for business."

"Can't it wait?" she grumbled.

"Maybe for you it can," Tommy broke in, "but I've got three doctor's appointments and paperwork in personnel. Vitapetroni expects me pretty much as soon as we get off the plane."

"And I need my ducks in a row for Nathan. Alright," she sighed, sitting up and yawning. "Anyone think to bring coffee?"

"Sure." Tommy poured a cup of coffee into a thermos cap and handed it over. The slightly sour aftertaste as she drank made her wish they could brew it on board. Unfortunately, the last coffee pot for the plane's machine had broken and from the prices on ebay you'd think the things were made of gold.

Wendy had probably brewed this in a pan on the stove. She ignored the grounds in the bottom of the cup and finished the whole thing.

"So. Papa filled me in on the basic mission. Darhel-owned secret research facility, we pull a switch while the all-seeing high mucky-muck mentat is out of town. Broadly, what are the less obvious things that could go wrong? His schedule changes, difficulty getting people inside, all the standard stuff is a given."

Tommy shrugged, pouring himself some of the aging brew.

"Well, first off the Darhel and the mentat are going to be worried directly about Michelle. If they weren't scared of her, they wouldn't be trying to kill her. She doesn't plan a direct attack, but how sure of that are they?" Cally offered.

Papa O'Neil spat thoughtfully into a paper towel, wadding it into an airsick bag. "I don't know how she'd attack if she did. Whether the mentat thinks he can handle it or not, my understanding is he's the
only
thing that could handle a direct attack and everybody would be worried about apocalypse anyway. You can't exactly plan for apocalypse. At least, I've mulled it over and I can't think of a way they could do it. They may be scared, but their whole play is a bet that she won't. If she goes ballistic on them, they'd have to worry just as much about her doing it when they try to call her debts. They've placed their bets, I don't think there's anything we can do about their own 'what if we're wrong' scenario for direct attack."

"They'll expect her to try to call in favors with Indowy clans to find it and steal it back. She's Indowy raised, and that's how they'd handle it. Especially since she's got few clan members of her own as far as they know—just Mike and her breeding group's kids. They'll obviously make sure Mike's on the far side of inhabited space," Tommy said.

"They have, I checked." Papa O'Neal nodded and put in, "They'll call in an Aethal master. Get him to set up a situation board and block any moves with the Indowy. Since she's a master herself, they'll hire the best one they can find. We can only hope she's better than he is and has successfully camouflaged any connections she'll be using. That ball's in Michelle's court."

"Darhel. Aliens are alien. As it gets closer to her being in breach of contract, he may get antsy. If he gets nervous, he'll try to cover his own ass. To a Darhel, that will mean flashy moves to look like he went above and beyond in the event that something goes wrong. So what's he do? One thing is it's Earth and humans. Smart Darhel hire security when dealing with Earth and humans. He doesn't know how much they need, so he'll think more is better and expect his bosses to think the same, but he won't want to pay much for it. DAG."

"What? How do you get that?" It was Tommy who said it, but he and Papa were both looking at her as if she'd gone nuts.

"No, it makes sense if you think like an elf. Great Lakes is right next door. DAG has figured prominently in three or four big box office holodramas lately," she explained.

Tommy and Papa rolled their eyes. The shows in question had been more Hollywooded than anything Hollywood had turned out pre-war. Really bad, and really popular.

"The point is they're glamorous right now. Flashy. The Darhel always have to have the best of the best of whatever Earth's got. Adding to the attraction, he probably doesn't have to pay his lackeys in the Joint Chiefs' office an extra buck to get them. Just bully the guys—they're already nice and compromised. He'll do it because he can, and he'll
like
it. It's an excuse to throw his weight around. What's the downside to him?"

"That's a hell of a longshot," Papa complained. "He may not even think of it. You can never be too paranoid. Okay, we'll cover it. Brief in one of the cousins just in case."

"He's more likely to bring in a second Aethal master. Where a first won't get her, a second might,"

Tommy insisted.

"True. All we can do about it is remind her to be paranoid as hell and not get caught. Cally, that's your department."

"Got it. I'll take care of the briefing, too. We've got that family reunion coming up. I'm sure there will be someone I can pull off to the side. Are we done?"

"For now, unless any of us think of anything else." He spat once into the bag and grabbed a bottle of water. "I wouldn't turn down a cup of that coffee."

"I'm sleeping." Cally said, emphatically. "Don't wake me until we're on the ground."

Father O'Reilly's office was a familiar and usually comfortable place, but today he looked more strained than she'd seen him since the first, tough weeks right after the Bane Sidhe split. Aelool was absent, attending a birth celebration for his newest clan members. It would take all day. It had become necessary for the health of the remaining Indowy to break the traditional prohibition against their highly prolific race establishing breeding groups on Earth. It had been done with trepidation on both sides and a hard upper population limit. Once the limits had been reached, the tentative plans were to proceed with some highly clandestine shipyards that had always been beyond the daring of the original organization. Human influence on the Indowy on this side of the split was so infinitesimal as not to be noticeable to most humans. Cally knew enough about the Indowy to realize the changes were at breakneck speed, for them, and to understand quite clearly why the Bane Sidhe split had been a total divorce. She also knew why the organization was so very careful to conceal the extent of the social changes from the Tchpht observers. Nothing could be concealed from the Himmit, of course, but just because they collected stories didn't always mean they told them.

It made her nervous to see the father so clearly stressed. Anything that could upset him couldn't be good news for the organization. Usually, he wasn't a man given to fidgeting and had one of the best poker-faces of anyone she knew. It took more than a still expression to conceal dark circles under your eyes, though, and the usually immaculate clerical collar was wrinkled as if he hadn't been to bed and changed clothes in quite awhile. He had that look around the eyes that she couldn't quite put into words but had learned to associate with an active dose of Provigil-C. His thumb and forefinger were rubbing together as they must when he prayed the rosary, even though his hands were empty. She doubted he had even noticed he was doing it, which disturbed her even more. The weather in the artificial window reflected the cold, wet, stormy day above. Not the most pleasant day in the world. She herself would have preferred something more cheerful, but she didn't ask him to change it. It would have been rude.

Normally she found the shushing sound of rain peaceful. Today it was just dismal. She took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap, waiting for his comments on the mission profile displayed in front of him on his desk. He turned the display off and sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose before looking up at her.

"When, exactly, is Michelle's contract with the Darhel overdue? I see nothing explicit in here about an inside man, and we'd need one. Does she have a man inside or doesn't she, and if not, what are your plans for how we would get a man inside, ourselves, before the whole endeavor becomes moot?"

"Her contract doesn't go into default until May, but she's not confident of being able to hold off a contract court, if the Epetar Group chooses to convene one, for more than about two Earth months." She pointed to the folder. "As you inferred from that, she does have someone inside, but his willingness to help us is limited to helping influence any hiring decisions in our man's favor."

"A hiring decision in our favor. Or, knowing who our applicant is, he could be setting a trap. He could get caught, himself, and give our man up. Of course, no operation is without risks." The priest propped his chin on steepled fingers for a moment.

"I understand that your sister wants this device, and I understand that she's willing to pay very well for its retrieval." His tone was pained, and she knew this wasn't good. "But nothing you've shown us so far gives us good enough assurance of team survival to make it worth the hazard. Also, there's no operational benefit to our organization. Thanks to your own efforts, we do have some financial breathing room. But for strictly financial supplementation, there are safer options. We have always reserved this level of risk for operations with a specific strategic goal. Unless you can show me how this qualifies, I'm afraid we're going to have to decline," he said.

It was not at all what Cally had expected Father O'Reilly to say, and she was temporarily at a loss for words.

"Cally, it's not that I'm indifferent to your family interest here, or the Clan O'Neal interests, for that matter. It's that now, more than ever before, we have to reserve major risks of trained assets to operations with major, long-term, strategic significance." He sighed. "I would love to be able to say yes.

And I have heard enough from the Indowy to have a great deal of respect for Michelle O'Neal. I'll give you this much. If you can either bring her on board with the organization or show me why this operation has serious strategic implications that we have so far missed, we'll reconsider."

"Excuse me. External mind control of Human beings doesn't have serious strategic implications? And as a pure business matter, on board or not, have you considered how much having a Michon Mentat owe us favors
means
to this organization?" Cally blinked in disbelief.

"It's strategic if they really have a working prototype. Just because Michelle thinks they do or are about to doesn't mean she's right. I know a lot about what someone with her capabilities can do, and I'm not questioning that it's impressive. I also know that her ability to spy on the immediate environs of another Mentat, without alerting him and triggering exactly the kind of conflict she's trying to avoid, are limited. I need hard evidence. A schematic, a workable theory of function, information about the origin of the device, a man inside—hard evidence."

"All that? You don't want much. What if you're wrong?"

"Not all that, just enough of it to be going on more than fears and hunches—even hers. I have to calculate our risks. I can't do that without hard information. For something this big, I'm afraid Michelle's unsupported word, very good though that may be, isn't enough."

"The assessment of a Michon Mentat, to the point of being willing to actually get involved in something, isn't enough." Cally was still.
Shit, Father O'Reilly is
never
this unreasonable. I don't think I'm going to
get any more out of him than this. Not today. Fuck. Well, I'll just get more and try to catch him in
a better mood.

"If it means that much to her and she's that sure, recruit her. That would be worth enough by itself to justify the risk. Cally, I'm sorry, but you're thinking like a Human. I have to look at Michelle's request as if an Indowy of the same level had made it. And her motives and ends may not be our motives and ends,"

O'Reilly said.

"That makes no sense."

"Believe me, it does. This is academic, you know. She has to be basing her assessment on something.

It's enough for her to risk her, even herself. But it may not be enough for
us
to risk. You need to meet with her. It's time for her to show some of her cards." The priest looked pointedly at the door, clearly dismissing her.

What the fuck's eating him? I dunno, but I'd better find out.

Cally made sure she snagged Willard Manigo for lunch. He was more plugged in to the grapevine than any three other people in the organization. She had checked the menu and had shelled out for a bottle of steak sauce to go with his soyburger, and even managed to find him a snickers bar that was only a week past its sell-by date.

Then she waited until he got in line before sliding up behind him.

"Hey, Willard, how's it going?" she said.

"Well, hi, Cally, it just
amazes
me to see you here," he grinned.

"Heh. Okay, so you don't miss much. Grab a table with me?" she asked.

"Sure. Especially since I figure you're pretty much the reason chocolate chip cookies have made it back onto the desert menu." He gestured towards a corner near the conveyor belt. Not quite on people's path out, it was still close enough for the kitchen clatter to muffle their voices.

She walked across the room with him, dodging tables and other diners, sharing a friendly greeting on the way with the people she knew well enough to be almost friends with. The steel of the chair legs squeaked on the tiles as they pulled up to the table. Even with galplas flooring, it didn't matter. It seemed to be a law of nature everywhere that cafeteria floors had to squeak.

"See the Old Man this morning?" he opened, picking up the steak sauce and dousing his burger. He looked at it doubtfully and gave it a few more shakes. "Hey, thanks for the stuff."