“Aaah! I’m sorry! It was a mistake!”
“Yeah, I know you are. Sorry that is.” LeBlanc stepped back and shook her head. “Get up, you look like a baby down there whining and clutching your privates in pain.”
“Are you going to kick me again?” Kilzer groaned.
“Are you going to be an ignorant asshole again?”
“Oh, shit.”
“Get up. I’ll let you buy me a drink.”
“You’re really not going to kick me again?” Kilzer said, getting painfully to one knee. “Promise?”
“Not unless you screw up again.”
“Damn.”
“We have to quit meeting like this,” Wendy said softly.
“You’ve only seen me, what, once before in the body and fender shop?” Tommy said from inside the tank. He was fully submerged in a red solution, but a bubble of air was open around his mouth and nose. He grinned through the nannite solution and pointed to where a darker, more opaque cloud was worrying around his shoulder. “Hey, if only they could increase the size of my cock!”
“You don’t need that,” Wendy said, looking at the tank and suddenly seeing it as old technology. It was practically magic to most people, able to regrow limbs and heal almost any wound short of death. But she had seen real magic, for which even death was not an impossible barrier. And she really wondered what in the hell was going to happen when someone figured out what she knew. The world was already a very dangerous place; she didn’t need non-random enemies.
“I’ll be out in a couple of days,” Tommy said, when she seemed to have drifted off. “I’ll have some leave coming and with the Fleet back, well, I’m not sure what they’re going to do in the way of forces. Anyway, I was wondering… you wanna get married?”
She looked at her boyfriend and shook her head. “You can’t kneel in that condition and it would be hard to hold out the box and then put the ring on my finger. So, under the circumstances, I’ll accept the method of proposal!” she said with a broad grin.
“Great!”
“What about Fleet? What are they going to say?”
“Fuck ’em. What are they going to do, send me on a suicide mission?”
“Not anymore, love,” Wendy said quietly. “No more.”
“Well, I’ve got to do something,” Tommy said in a worried tone. “They’re talking about cutting back the Fleet and even Fleet Strike. I might be a discharged lieutenant with no training and no future. That wouldn’t be fun to be married to!”
“We’ll cross that bridge when or if we come to it,” Wendy said. “But I’d be just as glad if you weren’t working for Fleet, to tell you the truth.”
“Well, I’ve got to do something.”
“I’m still trying to get straight if you guys are white hats or black hats,” Papa O’Neal said, taking a sip of coffee.
The meeting room was apparently deep under ground. Now that he had seen what a Himmit ship could do to rock, he was not surprised. What he had been surprised by was the briefer.
“The Bane Sidhe would, I think, qualify as white hats,” Monsignor O’Reilly said, quietly. “You’ll be told some of our history and background. You of course understand the term ‘need to know.’ You will be told what you need to know. For the rest, well, we’re the people who saved you. We have done favors for your son as well. This is in our interest, you understand. Michael O’Neal is one of several possible paths to victory over the true enemy in this war. And it is for that that we saved you, in the hope of recruiting you to this great task.”
“Uh, huh,” Cally said. She had a Coke in her hand but so far she hadn’t touched it. “Who is the real enemy, then?”
“The Darhel, of course,” O’Reilly said. “It is they who waited until the last minute to warn Earth. It is they that, when it was apparent humans were going to be even more inventive than they gave them credit for, slowed production of essential war materials both off-planet and on Earth. They have supplied the Posleen with critical intelligence, without the Posleen’s knowledge by the way. On a personal note they forced the choice of commanders on Diess that nearly got your father killed, hacked the Tenth Corps data net and did various other things, including sending an assassin after you when you were eight, to make your life less pleasant than it could have been. The only personal loss that is not directly attributable to them is the loss of your mother. Random chance does play a role in war. And even there… she should have been in command of a cruiser, not stuck with a half-finished, poorly constructed, poorly designed frigate. This, too, could be laid at the door of the Darhel.”
“And we can believe as much of that as we like,” Papa replied.
“We’ll give you some bona fides eventually,” O’Reilly said dryly. “I think that after you get to know us the truth will become obvious. And the appearance of Michael O’Neal, Senior, or Cally O’Neal will be cause for some comment. Given that they are presumed most thoroughly dead.”
“I doubt that telling them the truth would be a good idea, huh?” Cally said.
“Not particularly. The Terran authorities would take you for nuts and the Darhel would have you silenced in very short order. We have a need for well-trained, highly motivated and self-directing special operations experts. You, Mr. O’Neal, have a long track record of such things and Team Conyers was most impressed on their brief visit.”
“I wondered when that was going to come up,” O’Neal said, nodding.
“And, with the exception of the experience part, the same goes for Miss O’Neal. If nothing else, the Bane Sidhe have been, from time immemorial, believers that ‘blood tells.’ And you are of the finest… stock imaginable. I cannot imagine you failing to be a fine operative, can you?”
“No,” Cally said with a grin and a shrug, finally taking a sip of the Coke.
“Both of you have a need, new identities, new lives and… trust me, protection in that anonymity. If the Darhel got wind you were alive… We have a need, and you are two of the best examples of a round peg in a round hole I have seen in quite some time.”
Cally sighed. “What the hell, I’m in. As long as the missions make sense.”
“You won’t need to worry about missions for a while young lady,” the monsignor replied. “You’ve got quite a bit of schooling, of all sorts, ahead of you.”
“School?” Cally asked, aghast. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, he’s not,” Papa O’Neal snapped. “You need to get an education. Even if you’re doing this… whatever it is, for the long haul, you still need an education.”
“School,” Cally grumped. “Great. I bet they’ll take away all my guns.”
“Only to put them in an armory,” O’Reilly said with a smile. “As I said, ‘of all sorts.’ Just… try not to kill any of the nuns?”
“Better and betterer. Nuns.” But she nodded. “As long as they don’t bang my fingers with rulers, I’ll let them live.”
“Okay, Cally’s taken care of,” Papa O’Neal said with a frown, staring at the priest. “And I’ll come on board too; I’ll hunt your Sidhe for you. I’ll be the best darn hunter of Sidhe you’ve got, a fucking Wild Hunt all on my own self.” He paused and flexed his jaw as if preparing for a fight. “But I have one condition…”