Pinky decided to think about whether he needed to play dumb in front of these people or not.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” O’Reilly said.
“Huh?”
“The expression on your face just went from what’s obviously normal, for you, to a — and this is a professional statement as, yes, a spy — marginal copy of a typical five-year-old. I’m sorry if I did something to put you off, but I really wish you wouldn’t pretend. It’ll make my job a lot easier if you don’t. And I’m rather good at spotting it when people do.”
Then it was Pinky’s turn to be surprised.
In his bedroom, after the child was off to sleep, Nathan O’Reilly composed a message to go out immediately by courier. He hated to call her back in from vacation and recovery, but he needed Cally O’Neal, and Tommy Sunday as well, back yesterday.
DAG was already pent-up, under-used and frustrated. Now someone was openly hunting their families.
The word “disaster” didn’t even begin to cover it.
It had taken half a century, but Tommy Sunday had finally forgiven the game of football for its history with his father. Or vice versa. His father had been a linebacker before the war and before he had, presumably, been eaten by the Posleen in the scout landings at Fredericksburg. To say they had not gotten along would be putting it mildly. A huge man, like his father, Tommy had had absolutely no affinity for playing football. Computers, yes. Football, no. He had grudgingly participated in track, at his father’s insistence, as the condition of his pursuing his own interests.
The Posleen had eaten his biological father but in time Tommy had found a new one, one who really understood him. His “old man” was, and would always be, Iron Mike O’Neal of the 555th — Papa O’Neal’s son who fought on, killing Posleen on world after world under Fleet Strike’s Darhel masters. The biggest tragedy of the war, in Sunday’s opinion, was the cold military necessity that Mike remain ignorant of the survival of his daughter, his father, his grandchildren, and the legion of half-siblings, nieces, nephews, and more who now served with distinction in the battle for humanity’s future.
His psych called it “tranference.” Since Iron Mike was more a dad to him than his own father had ever been, it was, once again, okay to sit and watch football.
Ohio State versus Wisconsin was going to be one hell of a match-up. Football wasn’t his favorite sport, not by far, but the small consolation prize from the return of satellites to Earth’s skies was the availability of college bowl games over Christmas. The run of available bowl games was still compressed, the selection of teams was still compressed, and it was all in holo now. Other than that, bowl games were still bowl games, and sitcoms, unfortunately, were still sitcoms.
Rising to its ambitions, as well as the total destruction of the competition, Milwaukee still made the best beer in the world. Demand for some top-end product had improved the selection, though. There were brands that had come well beyond the old — ah, hell, the immigration of talented German beer-mistresses, recipes, yeasts and all, at the beginning of the Postie War had done wonders for Milwaukee.
Mueller laughed at something on the sitcom and looked at him and Mosovich, shame-faced.
“What? It was funny,” he said. “Only good line in the whole damn thing, but that one was pretty funny.”
“Yeah, okay.” Mosovich had a grin playing around the edges of his mouth. “The fool could just ask her if she’s cheating. Most women can’t lie worth shit, contrary to reputation.” He chuckled. “Not if you’ve baselined them.”
“You would use interrogation techniques on a girlfriend?” Tommy clapped a hand to his heart. “I am shocked, shocked!” He opened his beer and hit the chill button on the next one before considering.
“Don’t try it on Cally,” he warned. “She’ll use you baselining her to baseline you, and then mess with your head by showing you a completely different pattern from now until doomsday. No hesitations, nothing.”
“Operator for decades. Got it,” Jake said. “ ‘We are spies of Borg. Resistance is futile. You’re already assimilated.’ ”
The three men cheered when the pre-game show broke into the sitcom before the latter’s completion. The first run of commercials sent Tommy into the kitchen to refill the beer nuts and make microwave popcorn. One of the few uses of paper in modern times was the packaging of black-market popcorn up in Indiana. Cheaper than the legal stuff, it was still expensive enough that most people popped theirs the old way. Wendy’s hobby made it one of the little luxuries they could afford without rubbing their relative wealth in people’s faces. She and he both were fanatic about that, if only because “extra” money tended to attract family who needed help. With a whole island of family? No thanks.
She’d also laid on the stuff for turkey and ham sandwiches, but it was too early for that.
Commercials over, the pre-game show was a traditional time to shoot the shit. This was the primary reason for these two guys, in particular, sharing his den for the game today. Yeah, maybe he ought to be doing the officer-enlisted divide, but right now he considered it secondary to getting his new command together. He was making a point of keeping the handful of ships, his “Navy,” and his logistics support “tail” separate from DAG. A clear chain of command, and clear separations between his branches, was the only way to run this railroad. His new logistics and naval COs were guys he’d known perrsonally for years and were not his sons or grandsons. Jake Mosovich and David Mueller were unknown quantities. Not to mention the fact that despite his own background, either one had twice his experience.
Hence the informal social gathering.
Throughout talk about the players’ stats, injuries during the season, and the snow beginning to fall on the field, Mosovich and Mueller watched Sunday as closely as he watched them. He knew the history of the other two men, of course. Their work in the war, with a number of repeated postings together since, had made the officer and NCO operate as two halves of one man. Tommy had received a copy of their complete service records from Father O’Reilly, and studied it carefully. These two made a damn fine team, refining their relationship over the years to seamlessly set the standard for an officer and his senior NCO, tight as hell but each secure and precise in his own area of responsibility.
As their freshly minted boss he could have done a hell of a lot worse. The big man also knew that one hint of his discomfiture leaking through his command face would have a magnified, detrimental effect on the troops whose lives were now unquestionably his responsibility. His uncertainties were his own problem, to be buried deep for the sake of these men — his men.
He still didn’t know what the hell he was going to end up doing with them, but that was a problem that wouldn’t solve itself today.
The three men leaned forward as one. The snap, the kick, beautiful. Sixty yards if it was an inch. Waters was one of the best kickers in the game. Ohio had won two close ones on the strength of a couple of amazing field goals. Fast runners, on the team, too. Held Wisconsin to a ten return.
He got as far as third down before his son, Arthur, appeared at the door and interrupted. One look at his face and Tommy knew he could write this game off.
“Got a cube in from Indiana you better see, Dad. You too, sir. Top.” He nodded to Mueller.
“That bad, huh?” One of the problems with being so far from the main — indeed, only — Bane Sidhe base on Earth was that security necessitated messages be physically couriered if they were either routine, or sensitive. Arthur’s expression told him all he needed to know about just how sensitive, so he wasn’t surprised that the message was directly recorded by Nathan.