Honor of the Clan (2 page)

It didn't matter. Tact was no part of the Ghin's purpose today. He made no further commentary, but merely moved to the aethal table in the center of the room. Pieces were positioned within a holographic display.

"I wished to start from this position and play out the problem, if you would."

"You are placing me in a position of much advantage, although you are allowing yourself much opportunity. Are you sure you wish to choose this starting configuration?"

"Yes. Very sure."

"This is quite likely to be in my critique at the end of the game."

"I understand. Perhaps better than you realize."

"Ah. So you have a purpose in your choice. You make the game interesting. And, of course, your problem draws from existing conditions, with much variation."

"Of course. Many problems and configurations may arise in the game," the Ghin offered.

"Within reason, O erring and insufficiently experienced student," the Tchpth said.

Their play proceeded at a dignified rate, Phxtkl withholding commentary for most of the game, as was his custom. He would wait until major crises in a problem emerged before lecturing on errors and the alternate options which a lower ranked opponent might have selected.

Merely rating high expert in the game, the Ghin was not ranked in the Galactic standings. Tchpth and Indowy masters played him on request out of deference to his position, but equally from what the humans would call the "waltzing bear" factor. Very few Darhel treated aethal with anything other than tolerant contempt, as a meaningless distraction from the realities of power and commerce. Intangible relationships had power only so long as they were honored. Darhel only honored relationships as stipulated by contract, rendering the alliances and intricacies of aethal meaningless from their point of view. Or, more accurately, irrelevant to their own lives.

The game drew to a crisis, a positioning almost certain to weaken the Ghin's position enormously and, by extension, grossly distort the interactions of Phxtkl's pieces in an unfavorable way.

"Now it is time for my comment, O arrogant slave to physical items." The master highlighted a section of the display in a red haze. "Observe this section and how it is now cut off from the influence of your web, held by only the tiniest of threads, the minimum connection that never ends. It may seem an insignificant set of resources, but look at the potential." The Tchpth pointed to various nexus pieces above the table. "Despite the loss of face here, here, and here, or the losses in several of your tertiary relationships, this was a critical play."

"I see that. I will set up an alternate problem for just a moment," the Ghin said. He had no worry of losing the current game which was, of course, saved in his AID. If Phxtkl was surprised that the referenced alternate problem was already crafted and saved, he gave no sign, bouncing and tapping upon his low stool as always.

"Here is a starting problem. You will see the relationship to a recent past current Galactic situation. Here is the current situation. You see, of course, the likely moves if no sacrifices are made to alter the web."

The alien creature was silent for a long few moments, looking at the three displays. "I disagree with a number of the particulars of the various patterns, but . . . your overall point is taken. Isolation is loss of influence. Avoiding that is worth much. Worth enough, in this case." Phxtkl was still for a few seconds, in his species' equivalent of a deep, martyred sigh. "This is one of the least enjoyable games of aethal I have ever played, O intriguing schemer of much age. Today, I have been the student; unpleasantly so. I must make some necessary social sacrifices to continue the movement you have begun just now. I wish you success, O annoying one, and I leave."

"Leave for Earth." The Ghin was uncharacteristically blunt. "You have something to repair."

Her silver-blond hair framed her face, drawing attention to the startlingly intense, cornflower-blue eyes. Other than a subconscious awareness of the soft brushing against her face and neck as she walked, her hair was the last thing on Cally O'Neal's mind as she rubbed sweaty palms on her jeans before entering Monsignor Nathan O'Reilly's secular sanctum sanctorum.

"Cally. Good, you're here. Can I get you some water or a soft drink?" the priest inquired gently.

Uh-oh. Whenever the leader of the O'Neal Bane Sidhe started out with the kind and gentle routine, you knew you were in for it. Not that it was her fault. At least, she didn't think there was anything serious going on that was her fault. She was a bit late on her expense report for the last mission, but she'd think he'd give her some slack for blowing it off over Christmas. She had had a feeling something was wrong, but this was obviously more serious than she had thought. She allowed a wrinkled forehead to show her worry as she started to get up. There was a cooler just outside.

"Just water, I'll get it," she said.

"Sit." The gentle tone carried the force of command; he pulled a pitcher from his small refrigerator and poured her a glass.

Her eyebrows lifted as Granpa came in, sitting across and facing her. They were both facing her. She instantly noticed that Papa O'Neal had no chew, and no cup. This was not good.

"Papa, can I get you anything?"

"Nothing, thanks."

"Can I ask?" the assassin asked.

"Cally, you have got to learn not to kill someone on a job just because he's a bad man and he's in your way," the monsignor said. "In this case, he wasn't even in your way."

"What in the world was wrong with killing Erick Winchon, and if you didn't want him dead, why the hell did you send
me
? Dead's what I do."

"The Aerfon Djigahr was your target, not Winchon," Papa pointed out. "Also, if you remember,
we
didn't pick you for this mission, your sister did. Not that we wouldn't have anyway. Personally, I think the little prick looked a lot better as a corpse, granddaughter, but there have been . . . complications."

"Michelle said she could deal with all that." She absently brushed her hair back, tucking the strands behind her ear.

"No, she said she'd
try
," O'Reilly said. "It didn't work. We've been disavowed."

"Disavowed by who and why? I thought violent mass-murderer scumbags like Winchon were persona non grata with
all
the races."

"The Tchpth, the Himmit, the Indowy with whom we still
had
a minimal backdoor relationship," the monsignor said with a sigh. "Thank God Aelool and Beilil felt too much personal responsibility to join the exodus. The whole reason the Crabs wanted Pardal dead was that plotting the death of one of only five emergent human mentats, the beginning of our species' enlightenment, was a far
worse
evil. Turns out, they viewed it as a problem on the scale of the Posleen war. That is the
only
reason they authorized the killing of Pardal, to protect Michelle. And then you have to go and kill one of the
other
four mentats!"

"He was a freaking psychopath," Cally said. "A powerful and dangerous one for that matter."

"They feel they could have managed that," O'Reilly said, holding up his hand to forestall a reply. "The point is, I've tried to find words to describe to you how angry they are, and I can't come up with anything remotely adequate."

"Like a kicked hornet's nest?" Papa said.

"Angry like a supernova is hot?" Cally asked.

"Angry like I'll get if you two can't take this
seriously
!" O'Reilly shouted. "Cut off. NO support. None!
Totally
on our own!"

"We've got funding," Cally pointed out, shrugging. "A lot more funding than we did before this went down."

"Would you care to consider what we
don't
have?" O'Reilly asked sarcastically. "Just consider the following. No access to GalTech. No access to Galactic medicines. No access to Galactic injury care, not nannites, not even a tank much less a slab. We don't even have
human
medical support. The next time you get seriously injured, you'd better be able to do internal surgery, Cally, because otherwise you're going to
die
for real and for certain."

"Oh," Cally said.

"No access to GalTech weaponry," O'Reilly pointed out, turning to Papa. "No plasma weapons. No grav-guns. No armor. No plasteel. No logistic support except what the Clan can provide. And entirely out of Clan funds instead of the trickle of continued support we got. We're entirely on our own for buying ammo for what weapons we've got or buy on the open market. Only our own access to black market."

"Stewart can help there," Cally said.

"Minimally," Papa pointed out. "Unless you want to get my son-in-law killed."

"Not . . . usually," Cally said.

"No access to Bane Sidhe intel," O'Reilly continued. "Or Himmit. No—"

"Okay," Cally said. "Okay. Got the picture. I fucked up. I was under a certain amount of pressure at the time."

"Not a good enough excuse for the mess you've created," O'Reilly said. "However, even though you were
intimately
involved in the unfolding of this mess, I can't figure out a way to help in the salvage operation."

"Yes, sir. No excuse, Father," she said.

"Cally, what were you thinking?" O'Reilly asked.

"I made a serious mission planning error, sir, and I was winging it."

"Quit sirring me, this isn't the army."

"Yes, sir—I mean, yes, Father." She watched him sigh and knew it wasn't the response he'd been looking for.

"In any case, you're not here for a dressing down. Or, more accurately, I'm done. What you're here for is a joint Clan/Organization planning meeting," the priest said, sitting down in a chair next to Papa's.

It wasn't what she'd expected to hear. Cally decided it was a very good opportunity to keep her mouth shut.

"My own mistakes in this debacle include not having pulled your grandfather behind a desk, doubtless kicking and screaming, ten or fifteen years ago. My reasons seemed good at the time." He sighed. "Hindsight is twenty-twenty." The young-looking old man rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, fingering rosary beads that weren't there.

"They say that infantry captain is the best job in the army. Every generation, every new crop of captains, has to face the same fact—you can't be a captain forever. Operations is fun."

"You're pulling me from the field," she said woodenly.

"I certainly would if I could, but but we don't have a good replacement. And we're down on support for training. Right now, with Direct Action Group no longer being trained by the Federation and both you and Papa in the field, we're effectively eating our seed-corn. Your DAG recruits aren't ready to do covert ops. So you're going to have to do the two-hat shuffle and train them."

"Can I ask what the other one is?"

"You just did. We cannot survive without Galactic allies. We need raw materials, transportation, tools, technology, information. These are all things they have, that we need. Papa here is going to have to put on his clan-head hat and go play diplomat for us."

"Granpa? Diplomat . . . ? Have you gone
bonkers
?"

"Why does everyone react that way?" Papa asked. "I'm a perfectly diplomatic person."

Nathan gave Cally a wry grin.

"He's the only one who can," the monsignor said, serious again. "As bad as things are, they'll only meet with a clan head—O'Neal's clan head. We're all going to be making some sacrifices and doing things we'd rather not. From the point of view of the Galactics, the
only
way to ensure that Clan O'Neal isn't going to go rogue, again, is to have agreements with the Clan Leader."

"If I promise you won't kill any more of the
nomenklatura
without authorization, they'll accept that as an unbreakable promise," Papa said. "Which it
will
be, granchile o' mine."

"Yes, O Great and Powerful Oz," Cally said flippantly.

"Which means that we're all going to have to be doing things we'd rather not," O'Reilly said. "I will be without my right arm, for example, since he'll have to go with Papa. His assistant will therefore have to speed up her learning curve, something that is good for her but not welcome. Which brings us to your second job. Although in normal line of succession your father would be clan head, that's not . . . appropriate at this time. You will, therefore, be acting clan head in your grandfather's absence."

"Which means you get all the headaches of running Clan O'Neal," Papa said with an evil grin. "Like herding Bengal tigers that is."

Cally felt the beginnings of a crushing sensation in her chest, her face automatically defaulting to an expressionless mask. Perversely, the first coherent thought to wander through her head was that this would ruin Christmas, and how was she going to tell Shari.

"Don't get used to that feeling," O'Reilly said. "You have
a lot
of material to cover, and then you can expect a lot of practical work. In an area that is about as far from your skill set as any I can imagine."

"Nailed that one," Cally said, trying not to grin.

"Hush," the monsignor said, suppressing a chuckle. It wasn't a moment for humor. "If you see less than a ten hour day the whole trip, praise God for the break."

Cally took the opportunity to grab her grandfather in a tight bear hug, loosening up when he grunted from the pressure of her Crab-upgraded muscles.

"Good luck in the lion's den," she said.

"Good luck to you in the hot seat. See you when I get back. If you get a chance, hug your sister for me."

In the hall, she watched him walk away, O'Reilly's deputy at his elbow, until they turned and were out of sight.

The first thing Michelle noticed when she entered her construction bay an hour before Adenast's nominal start time was the unaccustomed emptiness of the bay. A lone employee sat at the far end of the bay, headset engaged, holding the existing products static. She recognized him as one of the Sohon masters. Below adept level, the masters were the middle managers whose coordination skills, paired with their technical competence, glued each project together by mutual communication and ensuring everybody knew his or her assigned tasks. Everything from starships to the enormous building control machines grew whole in a single tank, a massive endeavor regarding years of effort by a single family—"family" for Indowy could encompass generations of an older breeding group—and it all had to be coordinated by the masters. Mental visions of the project had to remain in tune, and across multiple work shifts. Apprentices had to feed the great tanks with needed raw materials on a precise schedule and at precise input loci to support local control of the necessary reactions. In the rare but inevitable case when one of the experts found an engineering issue in the design, it was the masters who coordinated with the adepts to design a fix and communicate the revised design image to every member of the production team.