“Oh, he’ll get it all worked out somehow. I mean, she’s an O’Neal, you know?” Jay grinned, and if it was just a hair too tight, well, they were all worried about their teammate. And not just because she was maybe the best shooter in the business.
Tommy looked away from his teammate and caught Martin’s eye. He took a deep breath.
“What I did hear is that you might know a lot about it, but weren’t saying, Levon,” he said.
“Yeah, I do, but I wish I didn’t. Look, I like Cally. I respect her. I would have her on my team any day of the week. But the past couple of years… I don’t know, maybe she’s just working too hard. It’s not like we haven’t all seen something like this coming.” He shook his head.
“Excuse me? Something like what?” Tommy’s voice had a definite edge to it.
“Sunday, don’t go all big brother on me. The least I can do for her is give her the dignity of letting her tell you herself. I owe her that much, and so do you,” he said.
“So you’re pretty sure she’s gonna be back on active and everything in a couple of days?” Jay asked casually around a bite of his enchilada.
Martin was silent for a long moment.
“If she’s not, then you can ask me,” he said.
Tommy dove to the side as the guy in the gray suit aimed at him and emptied the magazine of his pistol. He had time to pull the pin and toss a grenade — he was out of ammo — before the rapidly falling health indicator showed him he was hit and bleeding out. He got the other guy, but it had been in the “dead man’s ten seconds.” Still, the computer credited him with the kill, and, even more important, the ambush had happened just like it was supposed to after his hacking mistake earlier had resulted in detection. The holographic projection of the game faded out.
“You’re dead, man.” He felt Jay’s hand clap him on the back.
“Nice shades. And I’m supposed to be.” At six foot eight and three hundred pounds, Tommy Sunday was not a small man. Still, other than his size, he looked fairly typical for a juv in his first century. That is, he looked twenty, despite the fact that he now had grown grandchildren to baby-sit his and Wendy’s small children.
“Play testing another training scenario?” Jay’s grin was affable as he tossed himself into a chair beside his teammate and kicked his feet up on the table next to the larger man’s.
“Yep. And after the royal fuck-up I made hacking a system earlier, well, there was a small theoretical chance I could survive, but it should have fried my ass. As it did,” Tommy sighed.
“Ah, the sacrifices you make for quality control.” Papa O’Neal snagged a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the coffee pot, pulled a small pouch out of his pocket, and got himself a fresh plug of tobacco.
“I’ve already played it through for real. And several times multiplayer interactive. Now I’m trying to see if I can break it.” The former ACS trooper shrugged and closed the game, popping a fresh cube into the reader slot as Cally came in to begin their briefing. The brown curls didn’t faze him. He’d seen her with every hair color and style known to man over the years. He did wonder if the brown curls were coming or going, though.
“Okay, folks, this is your basic counterintelligence mission. We have every reason to believe Fleet Strike is aware of us and that our security has been penetrated. They have a man inside. Which is why your briefing was eleventh hour and neither you nor I will have any unmonitored communications, nor will any of us discuss this mission outside this room or with anyone except each other. The number of people in the Bane Sidhe hierarchy who know the actual nature of this mission has been kept to an absolute minimum. We are to find the identity of the leak, and plug it.” She reached down and pushed a button on the screen of her PDA, bringing up a hologram of a man in his apparent early thirties, in a Fleet Strike general’s uniform — which meant he was probably a fair bit into his second century.
“This is General Bernhard Beed. General Beed has been tasked with, basically, finding out everything he can about us. He is setting up his headquarters on Titan Base to coordinate the intelligence they develop. The office is covered as criminal investigations and military policing for Titan Base.” She touched the screen again and the hologram changed, revealing a young goddess in a captain’s uniform.
“And my cover, Sinda Makepeace.”
Fuck, she is stacked as all hell. And look at those power-lifter thighs. I think I’m just as glad Wendy will not see Cally in this cover.
“Captain Makepeace is presently on Earth and due to board a shuttle for passage to Titan from Chicago O’Hare this Sunday at 0815. The preliminary plan is to make the switch at the airport. I go on the slab in an hour.” She tossed each of them a cube.
“Here’s the rest of what the higher ups gave me and what I’ve been able to develop. Tommy and Jay, I need you to get a complete profile on everyone in that office, including voice and motion samples for Makepeace. Granpa, I need you to review the airport and Titan Base, plan the switch, plan the extraction after I get the data. Your cover is as crew on an in-system freighter taking manufactured goods for the shops in the business district. The local tong will cover you because you’ll be taking an unofficial cargo of partial doses of rejuv drugs. Apparently, there’s a worthwhile supply of troops willing to pay just about anything to take a little wear and tear off a dependant or two. They will, of course, pay you for the drugs — they’re just getting a particularly good deal. They don’t know why you want to be in the vicinity of Titan Base, and they don’t want to know.” She noticed their eyes were still fixed on the hologram and touched the screen of the PDA again, watching them blinking as the image vanished.
“Does anybody have any questions? No? Great. I’ll head down to medical and see you back here in three hours.” She scooped up her PDA and headed for the door.
“Uh… wait a minute, Cally,” Jay interrupted, looking around at Tommy and Papa, “I just wanted to say, and I think I speak for all of us, how glad we all are that you’re still going to be with us on this mission. And I’m sure I speak for all of us again when I say that I’m sure that, well, everything will work out just fine.”
“Well… thank you, Jay.” Her forehead had wrinkled slightly, but her eyes warmed as she turned and left.
“Will you be carrying a no-name pill?” Papa sounded like he thought it was a very good idea.
“No. The secret of that pill is worth more than I am. And if I was taken, they could find it or, even if they didn’t, the chances of you getting to me inside the time limit would be small. That’s too much like a suicide pill for my liking. I don’t plan to be caught, but if I am, I’ll do everything the nuns taught us in SERE. Besides, there probably wouldn’t be time to make one up to my new stats. And, frankly, I don’t plan to need it.”
“If that wasn’t the fastest briefing I’ve ever had, it’s close.” Tommy sat watching the door for a moment before taking the cube she’d tossed him and swapping it into the reader slot of his AID.
“To the point, though.” O’Neal spat neatly into his cup, as he brought up a map of the Chicago air and space port.
“Okay, I feel better now that I see what she pulled together and what she left for us. Cally always has had a good sense of the hacking she could get away with.” He walked over and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee.