Where the hell are they? Morrison was becoming more and more certain, as he avoided checking his watch for the tenth time, that they had been played. He had been in place for one hour, two and a half pints, one shot of whiskey, and two sober pills. He'd taken the first before coming in the door, and the second just now. They'd break down the alcohol in his stomach before it got to his bloodstream. Well, most of it. Ten percent did get through, but his liver could handle that.
The Wexford Pub was a little hole in the wall that served lamb stew, soda bread, and greasy fish and chips, accompanied by beer or booze as cheap as it came or as good as you could afford. From the smell, what most patrons afforded most nights was cheaper than shit.
He carefully avoided looking at the three men and two women scattered around the pub who were his, and pretended an interest in the soccer game on the ancient television mounted on one wall. Boring sport—no good fights at all. And he couldn't even hear it over the piped music, which, as far as he could tell, was mostly ancient recordings of folk songs. It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't chosen the cheesiest and most stereotypical of the surviving renditions. If they played "Toora Loora Loora" once more he didn't know what he'd do.
He could come up with a dozen reasons, all of them bad, why the targets hadn't shown. Unfortunately, hard as it was to do, their go to hell plan specified waiting in place two hours past the rendezvous in case of a no show, on the theory that they had nothing better and might still get lucky.
He resisted the urge, again, to glance at his people or his watch.
Morrison hated waiting. It made the back of his neck itch.
Where the hell are they? Bobby shook the cramp out of his right hand before moving it back and snugging the rifle butt up to his shoulder again.
He devoutly hoped the other three shooters Johnny had come up with were doing the same. They'd better be. Still, they'd seemed competent enough.
It was looking more and more probable that something had spooked the targets.
Still, as long as the Fleet Strike pukes waited, they had to. His instructions were very specific. He was not to let Fleet Strike take any of the targets alive, regardless. The targets were not to escape alive, regardless. If they could somehow get one alive themselves, that was a bonus. He had a medical team standing by, but he didn't think that bonus was going to be possible.
Damn, but this waiting was a bitch. Especially with no way to know how long the Fleet Strike pukes would wait before giving up and going home, themselves.
"Where in the hell are they?" Kevin Collins, head of Team Jason, stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray of the taxi, looking back at his "fare" half-accusingly, as if he thought the other agent could somehow pull the overdue team out of her pocket.
"Hell if I know, and it's not my fault!" There was a sheepish tone to her voice, though.
"Ah, hell, Martin, I know it's not. I still think you shouldn't be on this mission."
"Well, you were overruled. When the word comes down I want to be on the spot getting Levon and the others out." She pulled out a compact and touched up her lipstick nervously.
"And if it doesn't come down?" His voice was flat.
"Then I follow orders even though it sucks. Levon would do just the same. We both know the risks and the stakes." She wiped away a small smudge with the tip of a finger.
"You're too close."
"Yeah, I know. I'll deal." She snapped the compact shut, putting it and the lipstick back in her purse.
"You'd better." He lit another cigarette and made another turn on the circuitous route winding them around the perimeter of the objective.
George Schmidt routinely spent his time in the field as a teenage kid. That meant that when he needed to be an adult it took some very old-fashioned appearance changes.
Regardless of his distaste for elevator shoes, they were necessary. Pads high in his cheeks made him look less baby-faced. For some reason brown hair made him look a bit older than his natural blond. Careful cosmetic work gave an appearance of dark stubble that would pass even close inspection.
His ID that claimed he was in his mid-twenties was now believable.
He was running right about on time, having spent Barry's extra hour playing holo and VR games at a local arcade. One of the things about being a perpetual kid was he not only had to know about what the current fads were for kids, he had to be able to do them. He could fake incompetence if the cover needed to be a screw-up, but competence was awful damned hard to fake.
Well, time to go. He looked around at the drab, messy efficiency apartment that was the kind of place an emancipated teen might have—right down to smelling of cheap pine air freshener and dirty socks. Definitely not the comforts of home. He flipped out the lights and left.
Twenty minutes later he was still swearing at the jack-knifed semi and cluster of ambulances and emergency vehicles. Nothing for it—he was going to be late again.
Cally nibbled on Pryce's earlobe as she pulled down on his arms trying to get him down to the floor.
"Thanks for having a word with Simms." She gestured at the door outside which the MP still stood guard. "It helps to know we have the evening all to ourselves, no fear of getting caught or interrupted."
"So why are you pulling me towards the floor?"
"I thought it might be fun to be on top," she breathed against his neck between kisses.
"That kind of presumes I'm going to let you direct the show, doesn't it?" He picked her up and put her back to the wall, pressing up very close against her, kissing her hair. "How about right here?"
"Mmmph." Her legs snapped up and around his waist, teasing him with the silks that were still in the damn way. "Okay."
She did climb back down long enough to let her silks slide off and puddle on the floor.
She wanted to scream with cheated frustration when he stopped in the middle and grabbed his silks to make a run for the men's room.
"I'll wait for you," she called as he left.
The only furniture in the room was a desk and chair, and there was a laptop computer in the drawer. More of Beed's paranoid dislike of AID's, probably. Not that she blamed him.
It only took a second to plug her PDA into the port.
"Crack it, buckley."
"Did you know there's a ninety-eight point two percent probability that we'll be captured and die here?"
"Shut up and crack the damned thing. The routines are on the cube."
"Right."
The other thing that had been on the cube, of course, was enough of its old data to get the buckley to be cooperative. Well, as cooperative as it ever was, anyway. Waking up the buckley was a risk, but Cally worked marginally faster with one, knowing just when to wheedle or cajole, and when to bulldoze right over its paranoia.
Time always slowed down in this part of an op. Still, she fidgeted nervously as the buckley worked. There was always the chance that the protections were more up to date than the routines chasing the security holes.
But Tommy and Jay were two of the best. She was in pretty quick. Then it was up to her human intelligence to search through the files and find the files she needed.
Oh, my god. Jay, the sonofabitch! And he burned Hector. Holy fuck.
"Send the data, buckley, send it now!"
"There's transmission protection on this room for sure. We'll be caught."
"Send, damn you! Send it now!"
"Right. It's sent. How fast can you run?" it asked.
"Fine." She punched the cube out and fished the bottle of vinegar out, dropping the incriminating material in to fizz and dissolve merrily.
"Buckley, execute full and complete shutdown. Now."
"Oh, sure, I'm expendable! What the hell, it's probably less painful this way. Bye," it finished glumly. The screen went dark.
Cally barely noticed it out of the corner of her eye, as she was busily yanking her silks back on.
The door slid open before she got the front seal half fastened. It was Pryce, and somehow she didn't think his pallor had anything to do with the drugs. She was staring down the business end of his nine mil sidearm, held very steadily.
"It was you?! Oh my God . . . You're under arrest," he said.
"Pryce—" She extended a hand.
"Actually it's Stewart. Major General James Stewart."
Her shoulders slumped. "A setup."
A splash of blood and bits of gore exploded forward from his stomach as the door slid open again, and he slid to the floor, hands clamped across the wound, staring down at it.
"That serves you, you poaching insolent pipsqueak. She was mine!" General Beed stepped over Stewart and to the side, kicking the other man's dropped gun away. He looked up at Cally. "And you get it straight—you may be a whore, but you're my wh—"
He was cut off in the middle of the word as the gray blur that was Cally rolled and came up with Pryce's gun, firing into Beed two to the chest and then into the head, firing until the slide locked back on an empty chamber.
"I think he's dead," Stewart choked wryly, "and I won't be long after. Hurry, now. As good as you are, you've got to have a way out planned." His voice was ragged but gentle.
"No." She slid across the floor to him and looked at his wound just a moment before ripping off the top half of her silks, tearing the tough Galtech fabric like paper. She folded it quickly and expertly into a field bandage and moved his hands, pressing it over the wound, hard, before it could gush.
"Never any damned Hiberzine when you need it, eh?" She smiled mistily at him, clamping the other hand over the entrance wound in his back.
"You're not going to die on me." She was firm, as if that was not allowed.
"I think I love you, whoever you are." He coughed, leaving flecks of blood on his lips.
She was actually thankful when the squad of MP's burst through the door, bare seconds later.
"He needs Hiberzine. Now!" she ordered.
One of them was already pulling a syringe from the kit at his belt.
"Captain Makepeace, or Jane Doe, you are under arrest." The Brigade XO, Colonel Tartaglia, had elected to lead the squad himself. Clearly, they had come in response to a call placed by Pry—General Stewart rather than in response to shots fired.
"I know." Free from the need to stop his blood loss by another MP taking her place, Cally let one bloody hand caress his jaw, before his eyes closed and a pair of MP's pulled her to her feet.
"You get General Stewart to the hospital." The colonel gestured to three of the MP's. "The rest of you, bring her. And pay attention!" He waved at Beed's corpse. "She's dangerous as hell."
On the shuttle, Jay's PDA and his AID beeped at the same moment. Since the message was urgent, and their game was not, the game autopaused and opened the incoming file.
Jay was the first to react, not being surprised by the news. Unfortunately for him, reactions honed in the brutally Darwinian environment of battle do not fade as long as the body is fit. Tommy Sunday was very fit.
The desperate flying tackle knocked Sunday out of his seat, but the blow that would have shattered his trachea never landed, skidding harmlessly aside off of a raised forearm.
In the enclosed confines of the freight shuttle's cockpit, Tommy's size was not an asset. Still, in the wrestling match that followed, Jay's hand-to-hand training in the gym, while excellent for what it was, couldn't match a combat veteran's front-line down and dirty fighting experience, kept honed by regular training. Humans didn't fight like Posleen, true. But Tommy knew to within a hair what his own body would do, and had ingrained a few dirty tricks the other man had never heard of.
Later, Tommy could never precisely describe the sequence of moves in that cramped, desperate fight. At least, he never told it the same way twice. All he was really sure of was that by the time Papa O'Neal came through the door to find him sitting beside Jay's body, catching his breath, his groin was on fire with pain and Jay was missing an eye, had two broken fingers, a broken neck, and was suffering from a severe and permanent case of dead.
"Did you send it through to Earth yet?" the older man asked matter-of-factly, stepping over the corpse to get to the communications equipment.
"No, not yet." Tommy shook his head, getting up and easing gingerly into a chair.
O'Neal harrumphed and tapped at the keys for a few moments, encrypting the data and sending it through a roundabout system of radio relays that sent it out to Earth as a three times repeated squeal of noise embedded in a routinely intercepted voice signal.
"What do we do with him?" Tommy nodded at the body.
"Put him in the cargo hold. It's nice and cold in there. He'll keep." He rummaged through a shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch. "Never waste a perfectly good corpse if you can avoid it. You never know when you might need one."
"What about Cally?"
"You obviously didn't see the end of the message. Warm up the engines just in case, but . . ." His face was bleak as he inserted a plug in his cheek and repocketed the pouch.
Tommy picked his AID back up and had it display the file so he could read it, this time thoroughly, down to the codes at the bottom that meant, in the judgment of her PDA, that capture of the agent was imminent, rescue or escape unlikely, presume any future transmissions compromised.
"Hey, buckley's always pessimistic, right?" he said.
Given the Bane Sidhe's experience of thousands of years of the Darhel playing hell with their communications security for any form of electromechanical data transmission, face-to-face meetings were regarded the most relatively secure and safe means of passing information the organization had, and was mandated as a major part of SOP. It had only taken a few catastrophic losses from the ranks of the Cybers in the early days of cooperation to convince them of the wisdom of the policy. One consequence of the policy was that in addition to specific high-impact ops, teams like Hector and Isaac were routinely rotated through information gathering assignments that involved traveling an assigned circuit and picking up physical reports from agents in place.
While it was generally the best use of limited resources, where practical, to split the team and send each agent on a segment of the route, effective coordination of efforts required periodic face-to-face meetings during the field cycle. Good intelligence had an unfortunate tendency to become stale quickly. The meeting allowed one team member to collect the take of the entire team and pass it upstream to a base courier before returning to his own circuit.
Levon liked the Wexford. Not so much this particular pub as cheap little dives that attracted a such a mixed bag of people that as long as you didn't get loud or dance on the tables, nobody looked at you twice. They never used a particular place for a field face-to-face more than three times in ten years if they could help it. This was the Wexford's second time for that dubious honor.
Automatically, he scanned the bar with his eyes as he came in, taking a quick visual overview and mentally cataloging what he'd seen as he picked an empty table against the wall and sat in a seat that gave him a good easy view of the door. A man and woman at the bar, looks like he's trying to pick her up and possibly succeeding. A couple of gentlemen in a booth, very fit, but also obviously interested in each other. A man drinking alone at a table by the window, staring out at the street. A man and woman in the back booth, holding hands across the table somewhat furtively. Path past the kitchen to the back exit was clear.
A determinedly cheerful waitress came over and he ordered a pitcher of hard cider and a cheeseburger. Okay, so it was junk food. At least it didn't have any corn or soybeans in it.
Barry got there before the cider did, so he was able get his food ordered and pour himself a cold pint, using the cover of looking through the menu to pass a cube out onto the table, blocked from prying eyes by the various items on the table. Levon lit a cigarette, palming the cube while adjusting the ashtray. He wasn't, personally, all that fond of the taste of the things, it just made such a damned good cover for moving your hands around.
Sam came in almost on Barry's heels, a short, gently rounded girl with mouse brown hair curling around her ears. He felt her cube drop in his jacket pocket as she leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek before walking back around to sit by Barry.
George, predictably, was late. You could set a clock by his son-in-law. When you saw him walk through the door, it was invariably twenty minutes after he'd been supposed to be there. He swore he didn't do it on purpose, and he could always spin you a yarn about whatever it was that had delayed him. The only time he was on time was when he had to make a hit or coordination was absolutely mission critical—then he was there on the dot. His wife liked to tease him about it. Personally, Levon thought he just got so caught up in his cover role that sometimes he acted like the teenager he was supposed to be.
The first sign he had that something was wrong was when everybody but the waitress and bartender started moving at once. He barely had time to dump the cubes in his cider before one of them was on him, taking advantage of his momentary distraction to jab something into his thigh. He tried to get his pistol in play from under his shirt, but the man knocked it from his hand. Barry and Sam each had their first man on the floor by the time he recovered his balance enough to snap the neck of his. And he doubted he would have taken him down that soon if the man hadn't hesitated, obviously expecting whatever he'd injected to have an immediate effect. The ring of shots told him that at least one of his people had gotten a pistol into play, but the dead man's ten seconds worked against them, the shots ending after the first two.
As he traded blows with the woman from the back booth, he had an instant to reflect that whatever was in the needle must have been one of the things his nannites were programmed to sweep out immediately, thank God. This girl was pretty good, but she lacked the strength and power of one of the Bane Sidhe's upgraded female agents. After years against agents in the gym, and men in the field, it was easy to forget how low on upper body strength unmodified women were.
The two gay guys joining in against him made it a real fight, and as he saw and heard the uniformed Fleet Strike troops pouring through the front and back doors, the bar staff having wisely disappeared behind the bar, he knew that this wasn't one they were going to get out of. Fighting that many without maneuvering room it was impossible to block everything. He saw the fist coming towards his head for just a second. Oh, fuck . . .
Afterwards, Bobby was real proud of his agents. They'd patiently waited until all three of the targets—the fourth one hadn't shown—were clear of the building before taking their shots. The first two were in near unison. The third had taken a couple of seconds too long and as a result needed three shots to put his target down.
Fortunately, his backup men were good enough to use their own rifles to confuse the Fleet Strike pukes about the direction of incoming fire long enough to cover their withdrawal.
The only bad thing was that the no show kept the mission from being a complete success. Some things just couldn't be helped.
Cheryl Martin barely restrained herself from throwing her PDA to the floor of the cab and stomping on it. Bare seconds after the shots started, the damned thing had beeped at her.
"Yes?" she snapped.
"Pinwheel. Pinwheel. Repeat, pinwheel." It had that slight colorless quality she associated with synthesized voices.
"Kevin, is there something I can kill around here?" she said.
"Cheryl, I'm so sor—wait!" He spun the cab up on the sidewalk, blocking the forward progress of a short, brown-haired man. "Grab him. Gently."
The rear driver's side door of the cab swung open and the man stopped in the middle of what had been a smooth, rapid motion, swaying a bit as he recovered his balance from suddenly aborting whatever he'd been going to do.
"Cheryl?" he croaked.
"No time, get in. Trade codes on the way." She yanked him, unresisting, into the back of the cab, which didn't even wait for the door to finish closing before backing up and finishing its U-turn, speeding off into the night.
"Pumpernickel. It all went to hell. We think you're the only one that got out. Good to see you, son, but why the hell weren't you in there?" She fidgeted with her purse, coming up with a pack of tissues she knew she was going to need any minute now.
"The rest of my team?"
"Not good. Come on, George, answer her." Kevin met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
"I was . . . I was late." His shoulders slumped.
"And you were walking because?" the other man prompted.
"I . . . I . . . ah, hell, I got stuck behind the second big fucking wreck I ran into on the way here just a mile up the road, and it was so screwed up I figured I'd get here faster on foot. If I'd been there . . ." He trailed off numbly.
"It wouldn't have helped," Cheryl mumbled.
"You don't know that." His voice was bitter.
"Yeah, we do. Unfortunately." The cab drove on.
The Tir was awakened out of a sound sleep by the melodious chiming of his AID. It took the usual three measured breaths to fight down the urge to kill something. The AID, out of long experience, heard and correctly interpreted the change in the pace of his breathing, waiting patiently until its master was more controlled.
"Intercept of local transmissions indicates the live capture of an enemy agent. Agent is in the custody of Fleet Strike personnel, currently in transit to the Detention Facility Dome for processing and interrogation," it said.
"Get me the Human Minister of Defense. Date a resolution of a Council of Ministers' vote from now appointing me an authorized observer for the Council based on the commercial ramifications of the espionage. Cite appropriate precedents and get the signoffs of the other Ministers' AIDs, of course. Forward the resolution to the Human Minister." His ears pricked in sudden alertness, whiskers twitching in barely leashed excitement.
"Resolution transmitted. Stand by for the human Li." The cool, melodic voice combined with his breathing exercise to restore him to his usual full control.
"Cancel that personal contact. Instruct him to pass the relevant orders down the line. Have his AID ensure that it is done immediately. Monitor the passage of orders and inform me when they get down to the guards at the detention center." Avoiding personal contact was better in this case. The more intelligent and competent the human underling, the more nervous they tended to be as recipients of direct, personal Darhel attention. Normally, this was a plus, but at the moment he needed efficiency more than intimidation.
He motioned with one hand for his body servants to attend him. He hated going out late at night, but it couldn't be helped. They had his sleeping robe halfway over his head when the AID chimed again.
"Traffic analysis data, Your Tir."
"Report." At least he was already awake.
"Our human service providers report the unfortunate demise of three hostile agents. Traffic records a transmission immediately prior to the capture of local enemy agent by Fleet Strike personnel. Area of transmission was department that initially provided the intercepted data revealing these specific enemy agents. Projected transmission and processing times suggest this leak as the probable cause of the fourth identified hostile agent failing to meet as scheduled with our human service providers," it said.
"One in the hand here, for one out of reach there. A favorable trade." He stalled the Indowy with the waking robe with a brief gesture, motioning for another to bring a plate of food. After it left, he allowed the first to resume robing him. He would need to eat before transit to the Detention Center. He would also have his traveling attendant bring stimulants. It was likely to be a long night.
AIDs were both a blessing and curse. Peter Vanderberg's wife tended to be a bit jealous of Jenny. Oh, she hadn't been at first, but a wife could only hear a female voice reminding her husband of personal appointments, time to take his medicine, errands to run, interrupting casually at even the most intimate moments for just so long before beginning to get just a bit ticked off. The crowning indignity was, of course, Peter knew, her having to watch his own growing emotional attachment to Jenny. Explaining that it was a normal design feature for greater efficiency did not help.
Ultimately, a separation had been his only recourse. He hadn't been willing to lose his wife, and he'd finally seen that the only way to preserve his marriage had been to ensure that his wife virtually never had to endure contact with Jenny. Strangely, although his AID had resented the exclusion from certain portions of his life and had gotten quite snippy at first, ultimately she had seemed happier, too. But an AID couldn't be jealous of the other woman, could it?
Anyway, the compromise meant that instead of his AID chiming in whenever a message came in, she very lightly vibrated if the message was urgent, so he could excuse himself, and otherwise he checked in once an hour or so. And usually he followed up immediately if she indicated he had an urgent message. Tonight, it being Jane's birthday, he had known better and had had to wait a few minutes before excusing himself. When Jenny buzzed him a second time, he figured it must be pretty important. He tactfully excused himself for the restroom. Jane's eyes narrowed a bit as he left. He doubted she was fooled.
"Jenny, I hope this message really is urgent. Jane's birthday is very important to me." Okay, not getting Jane pissed at me by her thinking I've slighted her birthday is important to me. Same difference. I was hoping to get laid tonight, not be in the doghouse.
"I'm sorry, Peter. You have two urgent messages. Morrison unfortunately has to report failure. They had them, but snipers on the roof killed the prisoners before they could be fully secured. Colonel Tartaglia on behalf of General Stewart reports a success, however. They have captured an enemy agent alive and transported her to the Detention Center on Titan Base for interrogation. Oh, third message. Defense Minister Li advises you and your subordinates that a Darhel delegation under the leadership of the Minister of Commerce and Trade, the Tir Dol Ron, will be observing the interrogation. Your orders are to ensure that your people give the Tir's delegation every assistance," it said.
"That's weird." Um . . . better think about that in private. "Jenny, relay the orders to General Stewart and Colonel Tartaglia. Uh . . . Jenny, does the message say why it was sent by the Colonel and what happened to General Beed?"
"General Beed is deceased, at the hands of the prisoner, one Captain Sinda Makepeace, his secretary. Or a Jane Doe masquerading as a Fleet Strike captain, although Fleet Strike biometric procedures make that impossible, of course. General Stewart was injured in the conflict and is currently unconscious and undergoing medical treatment. Full recovery is anticipated."
"Thanks, Jenny. Again, please hold any messages unless they are urgent." Or I may not get to sleep in my own bed tonight.
"Certainly, Peter. I understand," it cooed softly.
The Indowy Aelool took a small sip of his water and returned to a socially acceptable state of quiet contemplation. Normally, in Nathan O'Reilly's office he tried to interact a bit more in the human custom of little talk. It seemed to put his friend at ease.
Given the present situation and the continuing repercussions of the Cally O'Neal debacle, and the presence of the Indowy Roolnai, more traditionally decorous behavior was the better political move.
Roolnai had left his water untouched, disdaining to interrupt his contemplation, perhaps as a subtle rebuke to Aelool. Perhaps just to control personal nervousness. It was, after all, a tense situation they were gathered to monitor.
It was not turning out to be a good night for the Bane Sidhe.
Roolnai's AID chirped a rapid rush of Indowy. Roolnai raised his head and turned to O'Reilly.
"It is confirmed that the Human Cally O'Neal has been captured alive. It is confirmed that none of Team Hector was taken alive, neither due to our intervention nor their competence, but instead due to the Darhel's unwillingness to let Fleet Strike have those live agents. We presume the reason is that there are no Darhel currently on Earth to monitor or control the interrogations. Such is not the case on Titan. The Tir Dol Ron will preside there. We are also extremely fortunate that the perhaps precipitous action to retrieve one agent from Team Hector was adequately covered by the O'Neal transmission. Our information sources have not been compromised." As Roolnai spoke, Aelool hoped that O'Reilly was not enough of an adept at their language to catch the very subtle patronization in the tone. He was not confident in that hope. There was a slight glint in O'Reilly's eye that often accompanied human perceptions of subtleties.
"Thomas, please display a hologram of the military detention facility on Titan Base. Analyze defenses for possible weaknesses," he instructed his AID.
"Visual, or structural image?" it asked.
"Structural please," he said.
"Excuse me, Base Commander O'Reilly, but might I ask the purpose of this exercise?" Roolnai's voice was cool.
"To evaluate the possibilities for an extraction, of course," he replied absently, obviously already absorbed in contemplating the image.
"One might ask first whether an extraction would be a wise use of limited resources." The more senior Indowy spoke with the exquisite deference that usually accompanied an immovably firm position.
"I fail to see the harm in evaluating the feasibility, costs, and risks of an extraction." If I do not smooth over the crack, the entire foundation of this alliance is at stake. Does Roolnai realize the insult he offers to the humans by their standards? I certainly hope that this is unintentional on his part.
"Is false hope a harm? When retrieving the agent without damage that will render her incapable of being restored to reliable operational status is already so very unlikely?" Roolnai was bland. Too bland.
"Perhaps not. I find I am tired, my friends. It's been a long night and apparently there is little more we can accomplish together, in any case." The O'Reilly had stood and turned away. In Indowy body language, it was a gesture of polite fatigue. It was Aelool's fear that the behavior might have more significance. Knowing both his friend Nathan and his friend Roolnai, talking further with both together at this point would only increase the rift. He'd have to work on them separately.
Roolnai had already immediately reacted in polite fashion and was moving for the door. Aelool followed, pausing briefly in the doorway.
"Friend Nathan, would it be possible to continue our game of chess tomorrow afternoon? Is there a time you might find convenient?" The offer was on the table. The pause worried him for a moment.
"I'd like that. I don't know my schedule, but if Thomas could talk to your AID?"
Aelool nodded. Good. The breach was not final. At least, not yet.
"So, who is she?" Robert Tartaglia had not been enamored of his late CO's eccentricities, but he had not wanted him dead. Especially not if his death would in any way taint the promotion he had long since genuinely earned on merit. And it was certainly odd that she had apparently killed Beed in defense of General Stewart. And he sure never would have guessed that guy for a counterintelligence agent. Which was the point, of course, but still . . . It was going to be weird saluting a new CO he'd been used to thinking of as a screw-up kid first john. Guy was a real James Bond. Imagine, having the spy so ga-ga over him she'd actually waited around to be captured out of concern for his life. Talk about a ladies' man. The dorky first john, General Stewart, his new CO. It was just too fucking weird for words. He realized Baker was looking at him funny.
"Sorry, Baker, could you repeat that?" he said.
"I said we don't know who she is. She isn't Sinda Makepeace." Agent Sam Baker was a bit rumpled from coming back in after a full day's work. Civvies, no matter how well made, had nothing on silks for standing up to extended wear and still looking good. Baker probably would have preferred to wear silks, but it was against regulation for the warrant officers assigned to CID, where keeping rank out of investigations was essential to the job. "Fingerprints match, DNA matches, voiceprint doesn't. She sounds like her, and she's obviously very well coached. But she sure as hell isn't Captain Makepeace. For one thing, our Mata Hari bitched about the poor quality of the local coffee but regularly drank it. The real Captain Makepeace loathed coffee—was a tea drinker. I wonder how they missed that."
"Cover identities always miss something. So when's the database search on the voiceprint going to be back so we'll know who she is? Do I have time to go grab a cup of coffee?" He quirked an eyebrow at the younger man.
"I'm sorry, sir. I wasn't clear enough. The database searches are all back. She's not in them. Any of them. According to the system, she doesn't exist," he said.
"Makepeace has an evil twin, Skippy? Or a clone?" His tone was dubious.
"No twin, and no clone with any technology we know about. Oh, also, we got one of Makepeace's high school sweethearts on the phone. He said she had a vaguely triangular mole on her front, to the left, down in the bikini area. No mole on Mata Hari."
"Careful with that, Sam. Mata Hari's obviously got some phenomenal powers of attraction." He was only half joking. The woman was a looker, and had already provoked one man to kill over her.
"Yes, sir. Those were farther up, sir."
"Baker, you've had more interrogation experience than just about anyone else we've got because of your organized crime work with the local tongs. We need to get the ball rolling in anticipation of General Stewart's return to duty. Consider yourself TDY to the detention center for the duration, or until the general decides otherwise. I'm gonna go grab some coffee." He got up to leave but was stopped by the extended hand from a voluminous robe. The hand had some serious claws.
"A moment of your time, if you please, Colonel." The Tir's voice was melodious, almost hypnotic. The colonel might have enjoyed listening to him if having him here weren't such a pain in the ass. But orders were orders.
"Yes, Your Tir. What can I do for you?" Tartaglia nodded as Baker caught his eye and wordlessly excused himself to both provide his absence and go get his XO some coffee. A good man.
"While I certainly think Fleet Strike's man should participate in the interrogation as a learning experience, in a spirit of what you would call interservice cooperation, Fleet has generously agreed to provide a highly experienced interrogation team. I would think, given how close to the prisoner Fleet Strike personnel have been, that that would be a wise move. If you would consider a friendly suggestion, of course." His smile bared teeth, and the Indowy servant at his elbow reminded Tartaglia a bit of a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car back home.
Bob Tartaglia was nobody's fool, and he hadn't reached the rank of full colonel in Fleet Strike's very competitive career atmosphere without displaying the finely tuned political skills of an adept. Oh, he was a good enough leader to feel a certain disdain for certain aspects of the politics. But he could certainly recognize the lay of the land when he saw it. The Tir would not be here without the orders having originated at the very top of the chain of command. Polite suggestions from the Tir, if disregarded, would quickly come down the chain as full fledged orders.
"That sounds like wise advice, Your Tir. Would you happen to know when these loaned personnel from Fleet will be available to us?"
"Far be it for me to interfere with the chain of command that you humans value so highly. However, my understanding is that the personnel Fleet is so generously loaning are conveniently next door in the SP Detention Annex and can be here virtually as soon as you give the order to admit them. They've been quite considerate, don't you think?" If Darhel had been feline, the Tir would have been purring.
"How very thoughtful of them." One of Tartaglia's first acts after the demise of his former CO had been to dispatch an MP to his quarters to fetch his AID. Getting used to working without Suzanne over the past weeks had not exactly inclined him to lament the late general's passing. Now he had her relay the order to the MP's on guard at the front gate in the main entrance lock lobby, releasing a slow breath as the Darhel and his Indowy servant glided off to wherever they were choosing to be. He tried not to let it show how personally satisfied he was that where the Darhel had chosen to be was elsewhere.