Cally wasn’t nearly that fussed about it. Tommy late meant more sacktime for her. She shifted enough boxes that she could recline her seat and got her sleep mask out of her thigh zip pocket. She could sleep without dark. She could sleep propped standing up if that was all she had time for. But she’d get the best use out of the available rest if she had dark. Besides, Granpa was alert enough for both of them. The last thing she heard before she drifted off was a grumpy harrumph from his general direction.
All too soon, he was nudging her awake, tapping her hand from a careful distance on the other side of the aisle.
“Hey, sleepy, time to wake up,” he said.
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, glancing at the window. Not that it did any good, since someone had thoughtfully lowered the shade. She didn’t feel the slightly hollow sensation of descent. “How far out are we?”
“A bit more than an hour,” he said.
“What? I’ve only been asleep a half hour.” She glared accusingly. “A bit more,” she echoed grumpily, pulling the mask back down over her eyes.
“You got a cat nap. Quit bitching; time for business.”
“Can’t it wait?” she grumbled.
“Maybe for you it can,” Tommy broke in, “but I’ve got three doctor’s appointments and paperwork in personnel. Vitapetroni expects me pretty much as soon as we get off the plane.”
“And I need my ducks in a row for Nathan. All right.” She sighed, sitting up and yawning. “Anyone think to bring coffee?”
“Sure.” Tommy poured a cup of coffee into a thermos cap and handed it over. The slightly sour aftertaste as she drank made her wish they could brew it on board. Unfortunately, the last coffee pot for the plane’s machine had broken and from the prices on eBay you’d think the things were made of gold. Wendy had probably brewed this in a pan on the stove. She ignored the grounds in the bottom of the cup and finished the whole thing.
“So. Papa filled me in on the basic mission. Darhel-owned secret research facility, we pull a switch while the all-seeing high mucky-muck mentat is out of town. Broadly, what are the less obvious things that could go wrong? His schedule changes, difficulty getting people inside, all the standard stuff is a given.” Tommy shrugged, pouring himself some of the aging brew.
“Well, first off the Darhel and the mentat are going to be worried directly about Michelle. If they weren’t scared of her, they wouldn’t be trying to kill her. She doesn’t plan a direct attack, but how sure of that are they?” Cally offered.
Papa O’Neal spat thoughtfully into a paper towel, wadding it into an airsick bag. “I don’t know how she’d attack if she did. Whether the mentat thinks he can handle it or not, my understanding is he’s the only thing that could handle a direct attack and everybody would be worried about apocalypse anyway. You can’t exactly plan for apocalypse. At least, I’ve mulled it over and I can’t think of a way they could do it. They may be scared, but their whole play is a bet that she won’t. If she goes ballistic on them, they’d have to worry just as much about her doing it when they try to call her debts. They’ve placed their bets, I don’t think there’s anything we can do about their own ‘what if we’re wrong’ scenario for direct attack.”
“They’ll expect her to try to call in favors with Indowy clans to find it and steal it back. She’s Indowy raised, and that’s how they’d handle it. Especially since she’s got few clan members of her own as far as they know — just Mike and her breeding group’s kids. They’ll obviously make sure Mike’s on the far side of inhabited space,” Tommy said.
“They have; I checked.” Papa O’Neal nodded and put in, “They’ll call in an aethal master. Get him to set up a situation board and block any moves with the Indowy. Since she’s a master herself, they’ll hire the best one they can find. We can only hope she’s better than he is and has successfully camouflaged any connections she’ll be using. That ball’s in Michelle’s court.”
“Darhel. Aliens are alien. As it gets closer to her being in breach of contract, he may get antsy. If he gets nervous, he’ll try to cover his own ass. To a Darhel, that will mean flashy moves to look like he went above and beyond in the event that something goes wrong. So what’s he do? One thing is it’s Earth and humans. Smart Darhel hire security when dealing with Earth and humans. He doesn’t know how much they need, so he’ll think more is better and expect his bosses to think the same, but he won’t want to pay much for it. DAG.”
“What? How do you get that?” It was Tommy who said it, but he and Papa were both looking at her as if she’d gone nuts.
“No, it makes sense if you think like an Elf. Great Lakes is right next door. DAG has figured prominently in three or four big box-office holodramas lately,” she explained.
Tommy and Papa rolled their eyes. The shows in question had been more Hollywooded than anything Hollywood had turned out prewar. Really bad, and really popular.
“The point is they’re glamorous right now. Flashy. The Darhel always have to have the best of the best of whatever Earth’s got. Adding to the attraction, he probably doesn’t have to pay his lackeys in the Joint Chiefs’ office an extra buck to get them. Just bully the guys — they’re already nice and compromised. He’ll do it because he can, and he’ll like it. It’s an excuse to throw his weight around. What’s the downside to him?”
“That’s a hell of a longshot,” Papa complained. “He may not even think of it. You can never be too paranoid. Okay, we’ll cover it. Brief in one of the cousins just in case.”
“He’s more likely to bring in a second aethal master. Where a first won’t get her, a second might,” Tommy insisted.
“True. All we can do about it is remind her to be paranoid as hell and not get caught. Cally, that’s your department.”
“Got it. I’ll take care of the briefing, too. We’ve got that family reunion coming up. I’m sure there will be someone I can pull off to the side. Are we done?”
“For now, unless any of us think of anything else.” He spat once into the bag and grabbed a bottle of water. “I wouldn’t turn down a cup of that coffee.”
“I’m sleeping.” Cally said emphatically. “Don’t wake me until we’re on the ground.”
Father O’Reilly’s office was a familiar and usually comfortable place, but today he looked more strained than she’d seen him since the first, tough weeks right after the Bane Sidhe split. Aelool was absent, attending a birth celebration for his newest clan members. It would take all day. It had become necessary for the health of the remaining Indowy to break the traditional prohibition against their highly prolific race establishing breeding groups on Earth. It had been done with trepidation on both sides and a hard upper population limit. Once the limits had been reached, the tentative plans were to proceed with some highly clandestine shipyards that had always been beyond the daring of the original organization. Human influence on the Indowy on this side of the split was so infinitesimal as not to be noticeable to most humans. Cally knew enough about the Indowy to realize the changes were at breakneck speed, for them, and to understand quite clearly why the Bane Sidhe split had been a total divorce. She also knew why the organization was so very careful to conceal the extent of the social changes from the Tchpth observers. Nothing could be concealed from the Himmit, of course, but just because they collected stories didn’t always mean they told them.
It made her nervous to see the father so clearly stressed. Anything that could upset him couldn’t be good news for the organization. Usually, he wasn’t a man given to fidgeting and had one of the best poker-faces of anyone she knew. It took more than a still expression to conceal dark circles under your eyes, though, and the usually immaculate clerical collar was wrinkled as if he hadn’t been to bed and changed clothes in quite awhile. He had that look around the eyes that she couldn’t quite put into words but had learned to associate with an active dose of Provigil-C. His thumb and forefinger were rubbing together as they must when he prayed the rosary, even though his hands were empty. She doubted he had even noticed he was doing it, which disturbed her even more. The weather in the artificial window reflected the cold, wet, stormy day above. Not the most pleasant day in the world. She herself would have preferred something more cheerful, but she didn’t ask him to change it. It would have been rude. Normally she found the shushing sound of rain peaceful. Today it was just dismal. She took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap, waiting for his comments on the mission profile displayed in front of him on his desk. He turned the display off and sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose before looking up at her.