Sister Time-Callys War 2 (48 page)

His train of thought jarred loose as the little mentat finally strolled in, ten minutes late, for their meeting.

"I apologize for my unpunctuality, Mr. Stuart. There was a matter I was unable to delegate," the suited pansy said.

Billy got a lid on his feelings. He wasn't all that sure Winchon couldn't read his mind or something. Some of these Indowy raised types could do some pretty scary stuff, and this little guy was one of the scariest.

Especially knowing what went on here. As a manager of professional killers and dirty tricks men, Stuart couldn't decide whether to be impressed or revolted. Probably a little of both.

"The Tir is getting kinda antsy. As it gets closer to you-know-what, he's getting worried about somebody trying something. I'm supposed to check and make sure you've got a lid on all that. What you do isn't my department, but the boss wants a report. So, what've you got?" the larger man said. He didn't, himself, "know what", but he wasn't going to give this gay prick the satisfaction of admitting it. The bastard's shrill, annoying giggle might mean he knew about Billy's own ignorance, though. He tried to keep a poker face.

The mentat gestured to the far side of the room, where one of those weird game boards was set up with its layers of pieces and multicolored lines connecting these and those in ways that made no damned sense to him. He could see, though, that the setup at least mostly matched the similar board set up in the Tir's office.

"I am quite confident that I've blocked off all the avenues where, as you say, 'somebody might try something,' " the twerp said.

His choice of words showed that he knew damned well the spymaster had been kept in the dark about crucial factors in the operation—which seriously fucked up his ability to do his job.

"Yeah, well, Tir Dol Ron seems to want more guarantees than that. If I take that back to him, he's going to show me his own Aethal board and tell me he already knew that. He won't be happy." There. Let Winchon chew on that.
Yes, I know what your dumb game is called, I don't think much of it, and
you've got as much reason to keep our boss happy as me.

"Far be it from me to tell an expert such as yourself what to do, but if it were my problem," the mentat implied that it wasn't. "I'd find some ostentatious barbarians somewhere to augment building security or some such. A bit of advice, Mr. Stuart. When you have dealings with a Darhel employer, and you do not know what else you should do, follow two old adages you Earth raised have. Look busy. Cover his posterior. With the exception that when you do so, attempt to spend as few of his resources on the matter as possible."

The executive's AID chirped, "Your three o'clock is here, sir."

"If you'll excuse me, I think we've covered the matter. If you find yourself in any need of more assistance or advice, please feel free to call my AID. I'm always happy to find time for a . . . colleague such as yourself." The small man giggled again and walked out, leaving the spymaster fuming in his chair.

Much as he hated to admit it, though, Billy wasn't one to scorn useful advice just because it came from a jerk. A scary jerk, but a jerk. Flashy security. Flashy
cheap
security. Yeah, it might smooth down the boss's ruffled feathers—well, fur, anyway. That shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

As he stalked out of the building, he pulled at his lip, thinking over his options.

Monday, 11/29/54

If he had been a civilian, Jake Mosovich would have been miffed at getting an important call, requiring action, after four o'clock on a Friday. As it was, sixteen hundred on Friday was just another set of digits on the watch he still wore. His hours had been so irregular for so long that he only thought in terms of duty and leave, which for a lieutenant colonel was just a more unpredictable extension of duty. His leaves or off-duty hours were relaxing in a fragile kind of way, but never inviolate.

His office at DAG had remained fairly spartan, Jake the Snake being the kind of man who noticed everything in a tactical and strategic sense, but little to nothing in an aesthetic one. Unless, of course, it involved a proper military appearance at the proper time for same. In the field, he was, by turns, muddy, sweaty, and bloody or all of the above. Red, yellow, or orange blood, as the case might be. Like many of the hardest of the hard core, when he did dress up, DAG's CO made a point of looking sharp.

His car, of course, was an object of affection that had occasionally bordered on obsession—or so he had been accused.

Loathing paperwork along with all the best of his kind, his office was a place of function, no more. His "I love me" wall was obligatory, but there was far more personality outside of his office than in it. In the rest of the building, the walls were lined with unit history, honors, the faces of past commanders. In the rare cases where DAG had made the news, the clippings of complimentary pieces had been printed and the holos saved, all carefully framed. The break room was adorned with the latest crayon artwork of the men's children, those who had them. Such pieces held images of well wishes and admiration for Daddy, prompted by the inevitable cabal of military wives.

The color that entered Mosovich's office was usually, as now, in the form of holo calls from his own commanding officer, as projected by his AID, standing about two feet tall on his desk. It took a certain knack to project authority from a live image that was two feet tall. The Gods of War had, as always, a perverse sense of humor. Said knack was something his CO did not possess.

"Mosovich here, sir."

"Colonel, I have just forwarded your AID a detailed set of orders. Because of their unusual nature, I deemed it advisable to make myself available to answer any questions you might have," he said. "I think it would be best if we meet in town for lunch. I'd like to discuss this, for clarity's sake, in a situation where we won't have to worry about interruptions."

That last was a carefully worded instruction to leave his fucking AID back at the office. Over the years, the officers of SOCOM, along with the other more savvy officers and men in the armed services, Galactic and Earth-based, had developed unwritten routines and code phrases for the systematic isolating of AIDs from information they shouldn't have.

It wasn't that said military personnel were worried about recorded information being accessible to their own chain of command. They weren't. The tacit observation was that AIDs had proved to be unsecure on several occasions, and discussing that lack of security in the presence of AIDs had proved conspicuously unhealthy.

Initially, the Darhel had been able to keep a lid on their own accessing and manipulating of the AID data and behaviors by having any Human who found out killed. That had worked throughout most of the Posleen war, even in the military.

The problems the Darhel faced with that strategy on a continuing basis were Darwinian in nature. The military culture had thousands of years of natural selection balancing the competing priorities of OpSec, the back channel, and the grapevine. Military culture likewise had the same forces of natural selection craft, in the survivors, a healthy distrust of upper level brass and higher command authority. It was a distrust that followed orders—with its eyes open.

As always, the upper level brass and higher command authority were not the real brain of the military, although many liked to believe they were. They
directed
the real brain of the military as to policy and mission, but they were not, themselves, that organ. Below the level where geopolitical strategy and politics built policy and mission, where the rubber of implementation strategy, application of logistics within given constraints, tactics, and doctrine met the hard road of military reality, lived the real brain driving the machine. The smarter of the top brass knew this, as did a few very smart political animals.

Generally, those few survived in their positions by choosing not to remind their peers of inconvenient truths.

In a shorter time than the Darhel would have believed possible, their own heavy-handed actions had created, in reaction, an unofficial but highly effective combination of security-mindedness, back-channel, and grapevine—a post-war scar tissue. This barrier walled off the AIDs—and the Darhel—more and more from any information which the brains and teeth of the military tiger truly wanted to keep from them.

The Darhel were adept at dealing with Human political animals. They were adept at dealing with Human economic animals. They were adept at dealing with Human lone predators. The brain and teeth of the surviving Human military structures functioned like none of these creatures.

Two centuries earlier, Kipling had observed: "The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf."

Had the Darhel home world evolved a closer analog of that terrestrial animal, the aliens might have had a more natural metaphor for understanding the most dangerous branch of humanity. Unfortunately for them, as advanced, brilliant, and predatory as the Darhel were, they had incompletely applied the biggest truism of xenopsychology—that alien minds are alien.

Hence, they—and the political humans, the economic humans, and the lone Human predators—were aware of the exclusion of the AIDs from some matters as a minor irritant, but totally ignorant as to its scope and depth.

Mosovich's AID was quite put out with him when, reasoning that it would
have
to interrupt him if a communication came from a sufficiently high authority, and that he had been ordered by competent authority not to allow such interruptions, he left it behind in his desk. Jake's AID had long since retreated, permanently, to whatever emulation of the Human martyred wife lived in its programming.

The General waited for him at a table next to the indoor waterfall of a very discreet Szechuan restaurant.

The reputed excellence of the food was a nice bonus. He rose as Colonel Mosovich arrived, directed by a wizened little old lady carrying a pair of menus.

"Good to see you, Jake. I see you've forgotten your poor AID?" he asked, returning his subordinate's salute.

"Yes, sir. I'm afraid so." He sat, only a second behind the general.

"Good." His CO affirmed, nodding politely when the tiny woman offered their very good jasmine tea.

"Jake, this mission has come down at the behest of the Joint Chiefs, but they don't much like the smell of it and I don't either."

"There is a corporation with a facility in your area that has, I am
informed
, had some intelligence indications of a terrorist threat. You will be providing that facility with a supplementary security detail immediately, for a duration to be determined. Because DAG must remain available for deployment in the event of attacks elsewhere, you are authorized to detach two squads to advise and supplement the corporation's own security forces and the civilian authorities." General Pennington looked like he had just swallowed a piece of broken glass.

"Jake, this is where the mission gets complicated. The Epetar Group, as you are probably aware," he waited for the colonel's nod before continuing, "had connections to the wrong side of a terrorist operation your people just had to clean up in Africa." He grimaced.

"DAG's mission is counter-terror and anti-piracy. We protect innocent civilians, and legitimate corporate property. We are not the Epetar Group's water boy to end up, through some goddamn complex Darhel fuck-up, supporting terrorist activity instead of fighting it. Where this ties in is that we suspect, but can't prove, that this facility, through a number of cutouts, is an Epetar Group operation. Among other things, one of their Darhel has been out there several times and the Darhel are too self important, and too genuinely busy, to go places with no reason."

"No, we don't routinely tail high level Darhel, much as we'd like to be able to. We just sometimes hear things. Never mind sources and methods," he shrugged as the century long specwar operator nodded.

Jake had seen far too many friends die because of blown OpSec. He would have been alarmed to get too much information he didn't need to know, rather than the reverse.

"Now, as far as I know, that Epetar facility is one hundred percent legitimate. And if we get indications of an imminent terrorist attack against it, you are to reinforce your token detachment. However, in service to DAG's primary mission, you may have to exercise some independent judgment on this one. Out of school, I am not happy. If I could give you clearer orders, I would, just to ensure any crap afterwards falls on me instead of you. I do not trust these Epetar people and I flat do not know what you're going to find up there. If it goes to hell, I'll back your play, Jake. Back on the record, we're good soldiers, and good soldiers obey orders, hooah?"

"Roger that, sir," Mosovich said unhappily. This mission already stank to hell and gone.

"Two squads, I know that's an unusually low detachment, but it is the absolute minimum we can send for this. My chain of command ordered us to send a few men up there, but they've quietly let it be known that we're not to over-do the corporate hand-holding, either. The fewer men we send, the less potential they have to wind up in the middle of some corporate cluster-fuck where the politicians decide which side we were supposed to have been on after the fact." Pennington grimaced. He was a good officer, and good officers hated having to drop their men in the shit.

"Hooah," Jake said.

The rest of the conversation concerned the finer points of golf, a sport the general avidly pursued.

Mosovich hadn't attained his current rank without a rounding out of this part of his military education. It wasn't a hobby of his own, but he could hold up his end of the discussion. In this case, Pennington wasn't talking from real interest, anyway, but just to provide necessary social noise in case someone was watching.

The food was excellent. His CO left a tip that expressed ample of appreciation for its quality, along with that of all the other services just provided.

As a first day, George's started out normally enough. Loud music in his ear too damn early, hitting the snooze button, donning stiflingly boring corporate clothes, chugging a cup of his own bad coffee, black, rushing out the door. If traffic hadn't blessed him with extraordinary luck, he would have been late. As it was, he walked in the door two minutes early and congratulated himself on living up to his resolution to be on time, every time.