Sister Time-ARC Page 33

  "Why do you believe your attackers were from Epetar? How are you even sure you've been attacked, or that the attackers even hold your facility?" the Tir of Earth asked.

  "We don't merely believe it. We know it. They are apparently unaware of an AID still recording in the mining office. Visual data is severely degraded, as the AID appears to have fallen behind an object. An enhanced thermal holostream is the best we have. I've dumped the take and the feed to your AID for verification. Again, I demand your immediate action." A Human observing the Gistar factor would have been strongly reminded of an angry pit bull.

  "I do not, I will not, allow this kind of rish on one of my worlds. Earth is an obnoxious pain in the gort, but it will not become the site of a group vendetta. You will take absolutely no direct action on this world. Is that clear?" Dol Ron was breathing deeply now, but his bulging veins gave his eyes a distinct purple cast, nonetheless.

  "Fulfill your responsibilities competently and I won't have to."

  The communications lag inherent in even the best communication did nothing to diminish the impact of Ann Gol's clear anger. Earth's Tir hid a wince at how much this call would be costing him, as the party in contractual jeopardy.

  "Listen and do not speak, while I make the arrangements to correct this unfortunate incident." The Darhel Tir Dol Ron's breathing was returning to normal as the attack of one group on another, on his ground, became just another business problem to be solved. He quietly directed his AID to contact the Human General Horace Veltman.

  "SOG, this is Veltman," the general said. Unnecessarily, because it was obviously him answering his own damn AID.

  "General Horace Veltman. There is a mine in Africa that has been attacked by terrorists and pirates. I will send you a file. It is a matter of some urgency that you correct the problem immediately. Contact me when you have retaken the mine to make arrangements for its return to its proper leaseholders. There will be no problems with your recovery of this property. Unnecessary damage to the facility in the process is unacceptable. Do you understand?" He always included the last with humans, having found that they could botch the simplest of jobs if he did not.

  "Understood." The general had learned quickly never to interrupt a Darhel, and that the Tir did not like chatter from humans. Military habits lent a certain efficiency to radio communications to start with, but the general had found that exercising self-discipline with the Darhel was the safest way to collect his supplemental pay. "I'll put our Direct Action Group on it immediately," he added.

  "Don't tell me how, just do it." The Tir gestured to his AID to cut the connection, then turned to Ann Gol. "Send me the contact for your local recovery team. This problem will be solved as quickly as is Humanly possible."

  The Gistar representative twitched an ear in annoyance. "That is not necessarily satisfactory. Resolution had better be very prompt."

  Gistar cut the connection and Dol Ron relaxed some of the tension in his muscles. Finally that fool was off the comm. Earth's Tir stuck his AID to his robe. A session at the gym would help relieve his tension. That, and then a soothing massage by his Indowy body servants.

  "AID, update me once a day on the humans' progress on the problem." One had to watch humans very closely. The barbaric species wasn't so much stupid as prone to doing the unexpected in highly inconvenient ways. Annoying. Perhaps he should go straight to the massage.

  Jake "The Snake" Mosovich was in the gym getting his Friday workout on the weight pile. As usual, he had conveniently forgotten his AID back at the HQ and had his buckley sitting on the floor under the bench. DAG's private gym was outfitted with just about every workout machine that had ever been invented for toning and tightening the Human body. Atlantic Company's master sergeant took a proprietary interest in the equipment and helping the men use every bit of it in ways that minimized unnecessary injury and maximized results. Gym PT was an enhancement, not a simulation of combat conditions. Mosovich agreed wholeheartedly that there was no excuse for over training injuries in the gym. In the field, okay, shit happened. In the gym, there was just no purpose to doing it wrong and getting an avoidable injury.

  He was taking a pull at his water bottle between sets when the buckley started playing the famous opening riff from Eric Clapton's version of Crossroads. He leaned over and grabbed it, trying not to notice an ache in his deltoids as he sat back up. "Mosovich here," he answered.

  "Jake, how can I help you properly if I'm in your desk?" his AID's softly voiced complaint had a definite edge of snippiness just underneath the velvet.

  "Oh, sorry, Mary. What's come up?" he asked. He had named his AID Mary in what some might think was a nod to the Blessed Virgin, or a pun. In fact, she was named after Bloody Mary of horror movie fame, as a constant reminder to himself of what she was and who she really worked for.

  "You obviously remembered to take the drag queen," she sniped, referring to the buckley's Suzie Q persona being a personality overlay on top of the characteristically morose, and male, base buckley personality.

  "Now, Mary, you know the PDA doesn't have a real AI and I couldn't possibly do without you. Can I help it if the thing just happened to be stashed in my gym bag when I ran out the door? I was in such a hurry. I sure am lucky you were smart enough to try calling the PDA." He didn't know whether the AIDs were susceptible to flattery on any existential level, or even if they had an existential level. He did know it made his AID easier to live with.

  Jake had one frustrated AID. He knew what her problem was. The things' fundamental nature was to seduce the user into psychological dependency so he'd carry it everywhere. They recorded everything, and periodically uploaded the whole take into some master Darhel data banks somewhere. They were masters of emotional manipulation, alternately being helpful, supportive, and occasionally very snippy when their user did something they were programmed to disapprove of. Leaving the AID behind tended to be one of the things that pissed them off the most. His AID was noticeably torn between seducing him into compliance with her—no, its program, versus punishing him for not going along. A very frustrated little machine, as Jake tended to shower it with empty flattery rather than doing what it wanted. It made the machine marginally easier to deal with, but he sighed inwardly. Today was obviously going to be one of its snippier days.

  "You were going to tell me why you called?" he prompted, since she was clearly not going to break the long silence.

  "You have a memo from General Pennington. It's marked 'warning order.' I told him I didn't know where you were but I'd have you call him back as soon as I found you," she said sweetly.

  He groaned inwardly. She could be such a cold bitch on her bad days. "Dump it to my PDA, and no tricks with the file format!"

  "Fine. You can call him back on that thing then!"

  "Fine."

  She—it—cut the connection and he looked for the file for a couple of minutes before turning up the AI emulation level on his buckley. "Suzy, please pull up and display or play the most recently transmitted file."

  "Are you sure you want me to do that, boss? I have half a terabyte of files that were dumped to my system in the past two minutes. Well, dumped to my enhanced system storage through an index."

  "Great. Just great. I want you to find a particular file. It's a warning order memo from General Pennington and it could be text, audio, audio-vid, or even full holo."

  "Found it. It's a compressed holographic file."

  "Compressed? What's the rest of all that data?"

  "Um . . . It appears to be a complete set of maintenance manuals for the waste reclamation systems on an RZ-400 class freighter."

  "That figures," he sighed. "Any idea how you get a divorce from an AID?"

  "No . . . But I'd be happy to find that out for you. Would you like me to search the database of Galactic law and precedent?"

  "No! Don't start that search! Just play the memo."

  The white haired young-old man appeared only from the shoulders up, automatically oriented to face hi
m. "Colonel, I need you to call me back ASAP. We have received a mission for DAG, hooah?" Beside his head, a mostly flat map of the northeast rift zone of Africa appeared, obsolete political borders outlined on it for convenience, with a blinking red dot on it roughly halfway down Ethiopia.

  "The Darhel Gistar Group has leased a mining concession to extract tantalum and niobium in the old Oromo area of the rift. The Awasa mine has been taken over by terrorist raiders, of unknown affiliations. The mine is being held by these hostiles, and is believed to be being looted at this time, hooah? DAG's mission is to proceed to the former Ethiopia as expeditiously as tactically feasible and retake the mine, holding it until Gistar replacement personnel and their private security detachment have been reinstated and firmly reestablished. Rules of engagement for these hostiles will be optimized for maximum speed, efficiency, and maximum protection of the security of DAG personnel and surviving Indowy labor forces. Prisoners for interrogation are not, say again, are not a desired objective. You will, of course, be authorized to take and secure surrendered prisoners, where practical, as colonization volunteers for off-planet, privatized security details. Seems it would be right up their alley, anyway, hooah. Get me some preliminary time on target options and call me back by ten hundred hours, Sierra time."

  Great. That left him about half an hour to get with Mueller and run some sims. He was also going to need his AID, if she would behave. He considered ways to butter her up before grabbing a dry towel and his gym bag from the locker room on his way out the door. No time to shower and change here. First thing was to get back and take her out of his drawer. If he picked her up as soon as possible and started carrying her around immediately, she'd want to take the opportunity to prove her usefulness. It had certainly worked before. Besides, he was good and warmed up and wouldn't feel the cold on the short jog back to the HQ. Not much, anyway. He groaned as he stepped outdoors into the icy wind. Full sprint. Definitely go for the full sprint. Thank God it was dry.

  Sergeant George Mauldin looked a lot like his dad. He was bit on the short side, the constant training at DAG keeping him solidly muscled. Standing still, he tended to look somewhat awkward, with arms too long for his body. The grace with which he moved, a combination of his mother's influence and lifelong martial arts training, belied his gawky appearance. His hair was a light, muddy-apricot color. He hadn't entirely escaped Papa O'Neal's red hair, but Shari's blondness had muted the shade. He kept it cut in an old-fashioned high and tight style, so there wasn't as much of it to see except in good light. What really gave him away was the fair, ruddy skin. Very red, when he'd been working out—which was most of the time, including now.

  About an hour into the day's weight program, he was outside the gym cooling off with a sports drink and an energy bar. Even in the cool of November on Lake Michigan, most of the members of DAG used the outdoors as a quick way to drop some of the excess heat built up during the day's training.

  He wasn't surprised to see the colonel step outside in his workout shorts, despite the cold. After all, the colonel was a juv, more than capable of keeping up, and trained as hard as any of his officers or men. What surprised him was watching Colonel Mosovich take off at a hard sprint for the headquarters building, towel around his neck and gym bag in his hand. Colonels didn't do that, not in George's limited experience. Something was up.

  George was something of a fan of gadgets. Around his neck with the dog tags he carried a miniature PDA that would take a low-emulation buckley with a minimal overlay. About the size of one of the dog tags, it naturally was voice access only. He picked it up and addressed it, "Carrie, call Major Kelly for me."

  Chapter Sixteen

  The fountain plashed softly in one corner of Michelle's office. The breeze today smelled of apple blossoms and rain. The ceiling gave the impression of clouds moving in an overcast sky. In another corner, a sohon tank stood, containing its mass of nannite jelly and some as yet ill-defined parts and bits, whose purpose and final assembly pattern were indecipherable to any of the few dozen Indowy who came and went in her private space. She knew what he must be thinking: that whatever it was, it must be very important and delicate indeed to merit the personal attentions of a Michon Mentat. The apprentice, like the dozens of others on her personal work crew outside, would ask no questions. If he needed to know something, she would tell him. Besides, they knew that there was every likelihood that anything a Mentat took on personally was a matter for those whose wisdom exceeded their own. An apprentice's teaching emphasized that if he did not involve himself in matters that did not concern him, he could make no embarrassing or damaging mistakes.

  Michelle O'Neal's Indowy apprentice was twitching with excitement, despite years of Sohon discipline, and despite having shown the self-discipline to earn the position of primary apprentice on her work crew. She ignored it as understandable in one just entering his sixth decade—not considering that she herself was close to the same age. For one thing, he had just been entrusted with the great secret of the existence of rapid transit this morning—a secret only a handful of masters held. For another, he was going to travel by that almost miraculous method himself, this very day. For a third, this important job, if he completed it with wisdom, was to be the final test of his ability to function in the journeyman post he would hold provisionally until the assignment was complete. It was a great honor, and the apprentice—journeyman, she corrected herself—was not presently operating a tank. She could allow him some high spirits on his big day.

  "It's important that you understand both your job and the reasons for it. The Darhel Epetar Group has done something very unwise. Unwise to the point that the appropriate people have decided upon the appropriate responses. The Darhel Gistar Group is neither particularly wise nor particularly unwise, but happens to have a ship conveniently positioned in the Dulain area—never mind how. A group of humans, also neither particularly wise nor particularly virtuous, happens to have been set in motion by others to assemble the rudiments of a cargo with no planned shipping. That is, if a ship suddenly becomes available to carry it, they can appear to have merely scraped a cargo together on short notice, without any prior plan. The Epetar ship will be late to drop off its cargo of humans and pick up a mixed cargo of uninitialized Sohon headsets and tools. The Epetar ship will have defaulted on its shipping contract—ordinarily a matter of simple fines. In this case the Rontogh factor will have re-booked the cargo onto the conveniently available, and timely, Gistar vessel. The Epetar ship will not want to depart with empty cargo holds. They will book the cargo 'hastily assembled' by the humans." She faced the journeyman with quiet, serene eyes. If she had any personal feelings about this matter, they didn't show.

  "Obviously, this would normally be a minor annoyance and profit loss," she continued. "The Epetar ship would simply skip its next stop and jump directly to its third scheduled port of call. This is where the Human plan against Epetar would ordinarily fail. Because of Epetar's gross lack of wisdom, we will help the plan to succeed. The Epetar ship will also be late for its third port of call. This is the reason for your assignment."

  "Remember, for purposes of the station's employment log, you have just debarked from the ship High Margins. With your orders from me, neither the ship's real crew nor the station's crew will gossip or pry. The station master is Aem Beilil. You will convey my message to him to expedite the loading of Gistar shipping and delay the loading of Epetar shipping, and to do so unobtrusively. He is to discretely facilitate the operations of humans with the replacement cargo, who will stall the loading of the Epetar ship after it is irrevocably committed. The humans will most likely seem sincere but incompetent. This is not to put him off dealing with them. They are neither. Do you have any questions about your assignment?" The question was rhetorical. The instructions were clear.

  "Mentat O'Neal," the young Indowy asked tentatively, "isn't the Epetar group the one that holds your contract for—"

  "This decision comes from those far wiser than myself," she
said, holding the little green Galactic's eyes until his ears narrowed in embarrassment at his own presumption. The only people who would ordinarily be considered wiser than a Mentat—any Mentat—would be major clan heads or Tchpht policy planners. Michelle would never have involved herself in large scale Galactic politics without the sanction of higher authority. Wxlcht's seemingly casual comments over a game of Aethal would, in the military, have amounted to a direct order. In the hierarchy of established Galactic wisdom, almost everyone took the "suggestions" of Tchpht planners of any rank very seriously indeed. She did not like to think that personal friendship might have colored such a major decision, but was not about to let minor misgivings divert her from following the considered advice of someone whose wisdom was as far above her own as hers was above—well, above her sister's, for example.

  "We will be going now," she took his hand, then released it as they appeared in a purplish-brown maintenance closet. The intense crowding in the destination space was unremarkable to him, but he did startle slightly at the abruptness of the transition. He only had an instant to blink before she was gone, leaving him alone with his new job.