Honor of the Clan: Chapter One

 

Sunday, December 20, 2054

    “It's official. We've been disavowed.” Father Nathan O'Reilly--Jesuit priest, diplomat, conspirator—threw his AID onto the desk in his office, glaring at the head of Clan O'Neal. The father was in the unenviable position of being the chief executive of this particular conspiracy. Unenviable, because a split among conspirators had turned his faction of the once broad-based Bane Sidhe into the O'Neal Bane Sidhe. Meaning that as a leader he was squarely in the middle between the Galactic forces constraining the resistance, and the very powerful man across from him—more especially, all the might and mystique the O'Neal name had come to represent. Along with the power of the O'Neals came their reputation among their partisans and skeptics both as loose cannons. Depending on who you asked, that propensity was either rare or habitual.

    Today, O'Reilly found himself reluctantly in the camp with the skeptics. “Dammit, Michael, why couldn't she just have restrained her impulse to 'kill the bad guy' for once!” It was a mark of his frustration that he used the clan head's Christian name rather than his usual sobriquet of “Papa.”

    “Seems to me that the people who are all het up about correction of that bastard's breathing problem are the ones who should be explaining, Nathan.” The redhead looked like a late-teenage boy with very old eyes—in other words, like a typical juv. He reached into the pocket of a frayed and faded olive drab shirt to pull out a package of red man and extract a plug of North Carolina's finest.

    The trouble with Papa O'Neal, the priest reflected, was that he had never truly come to grips with being a powerful man, as opposed to a lone curmudgeon in the hills or a soldier out in the jungle. The man was, at his own insistence, an operator on a Bane Sidhe field team. If their need for his skills weren't as strong as his own stubbornness, O'Reilly would have yanked him safely behind a desk long ago.

    “Michael, this is why having you on a team is as much a liability to the organization as an asset. You lose sight of the big picture, you forget the effect your actions—as a major clan head, not a field operative--have on Galactic politics. And don't give me your damn poker face. Listen to me for once, or retire me and run this outfit yourself. Notice I didn't say 'do what I want.' If you don't even hear me out, I might as well not be here.” He saw the other man sigh, and released his own pent up breath. “Are you listening now?” he asked.

    “Could you please not call me Michael? I've kinda gotten used to associating that name with my son, and I miss him, dammit. Nathan, I miss him like hell. I wake up in the night sometimes and I wonder if all this cloak and dagger shit is worth a damn. I've been in the field too long.”

    “Yes, you have,” O'Reilly responded gravely. “Mi—Papa, you're effectively an officer. And officers can't be captains forever. You have too much power not to shoulder the responsibility, and you haven't been. I can't take it off you anymore. It's getting good people killed.”

    The other man winced, as well he might, though the priest honestly regretted having this conversation—which pointed up his own mistakes. “I've gotten people killed, Papa, by being too much the priest and not enough the leader. I should have had this conversation with you years ago, before this whole mess broke loose. Yes, I needed you in a different position, but not putting you there was my own error. The sin of pride, I'm afraid,” he admitted. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I should have done this before either split.”

    “Whoa! You're not resigning on me, son!” Papa O'Neal's leaden mask of guilt gave way suddenly to alarm. “No way can I do your job, and I wouldn't even know who else should. And I guess I just 'fessed up to that power you're talking about.” He harrumphed.

    “Nobody gets to be our age without making some whoppers of mistakes,” O'Reilly said, tactfully reminding the younger man of his own age. “No, I'm not resigning. I'm trying to find a way to salvage what I can from this mess, and I need your help.”

    “Okay. What resources have we got?” The clan head reached into his back pocket for the buckley he carried in preference to an AID.

 

---

 

    “That's not quite what I meant. Without restoring some alliances with the other races, we're sunk. I hope you can take my word for the sake of argument.” The head of the O'Neal Bane Sidhe waited until the other man nodded. The nod was clearly grudging, but O'Reilly could deal with that.

    “As a major clan head, even of a human clan, you carry a diplomatic weight that I can't even begin to approach. Yes, I know you see where I'm going, shut up. You have to go talk to them, in person. When you get there, you have to know how to mind your p's and q's and have a firm understanding of Galactic geopolitics. The sooner you leave, the better. I need you here when we talk to Cally, but after that, we need you on a shuttle to Barwhon soonest. You're taking my best deputy, he can not only teach you everything you need to know, he can explain it all. Papa, God help you if he doesn't come back to me in the same pristine condition I'm loaning him to you. I need him more than you do. In this case where I need him is with you.”

    “You're asking me to buy a pig in a poke, Nathan. Trying to ship me off to the other side of the galaxy before I get a good chance to think about it? Besides, with this disavowal, how were you planning on getting me there? It's not like I can walk into O'Hare and buy a ticket.”

    “Hardly the other side of the galaxy. Barwhon's practically next door. I wish I had more time to talk to you—you'd listen to me better than you'll be inclined to listen to Clayton. He's in his early thirties, but he really does know what he's doing. As for how you'll travel, your son-in-law's organization conveniently has a ship available. With a limited supply of paying passengers, and some common interests, they'll be amenable.”

    “How early?”

    “Thirty-one, and don't wince. If you won't listen to him, you'll leave me no choice but to resign and accompany myself. Leaving him as my successor.” The old priest knew when to play hardball.

    “Dirty pool, Nathan,” he grumbled. “Oh, alright. I'll go. But they're not going to like me. If they're disavowing us now, after they meet me they just might be even sorer. Don't think they'd blow up the planet, but are you sure you want to risk it?”

    “You'll know the stakes, you'll know the situation, so by the time you get there, I am quite confident in your ability and motivation to do whatever it takes to mend fences. You'll do it, O'Neal, because none of us have any damn choice. I think you'll understand why before you get even half way through your briefing,” he pronounced coldly. “Meet me back here in an hour. I'm going to get some lunch and I suggest you do, too. Better not to confront Cally on an empty stomach.”

 

---

 

---

 

    Her silver blond hair framed her face, drawing attention to the startlingly intense, cornflower blue eyes. The hair, her “natural” color, was silken and glossed with a healthy shine. The latest conditioner Harrison had found for her had worked wonders at repairing her much-colored and treated hair. She wasn't asking questions, as she suspected he had alternately bribed and cajoled one of the human child apprentices in Sohon with who knows what to get some bastardized human equivalent of whatever it was the Darhel used on their fur. 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 Father O'Reilly's secular sanctum sanctorum.

    “Cally. Good, you're here. Have a seat anywhere. 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, as he pulled a pitcher from his small refrigerator and poured her a glass.

    Her eyebrows lifted as Grandpa 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 offered in a small voice, which uncharacteristically made her sound like the little girl she had perforce outgrown when she was eight years old.

    “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. In this case, he wasn't even in your way.”

    “What?! This is about that? 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, remember?”

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

    “Huh? 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. It didn't work. We've been disavowed.”

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

    “The Tchpht, the Himmit, the Indowy with whom we still had a minimal backdoor relationship. 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. I've tried to find words to describe to you how angry they are, and I can't come up with anything remotely adequate,” he said.

    He clearly wasn't through, and Cally was too smart to interrupt him.

    “That's not the point either. The point is that even though you were intimately involved in the unfolding of this mess, I cannot disentangle you from being involved in salvaging what we can. Unfortunately.”

    Cally winced, privately allowing that she perhaps would have done better to leave Winchon to Michelle. She simply hadn't expected him to be there, had considered him showing up an automatic “we lose” scenario, hadn't expected Michelle, and had had no idea of the relative capabilities of the two or any Go To Hell contingency for how to handle the situation. Definitely a failure in mission planning, and that was her responsibility.

    “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. Oh, I know the danger and the damage, but operators are adrenaline junkies, including you two.”

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

    “Yes and no. I certainly would if I could, but until we get the next graduating class into the field, I can't do it. Your DAG recruits are going to be even later getting through the pipeline. None of them know as much about the organization as they think they do. For the better part of the next year, you're going to have to wear two hats.”

    “Can I ask what the other one is?”

    “You may. 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.”

    “Go? Diplomat...Grandpa? Have you gone bonkers?”

    Nathan gave her a wry grin. Grandpa just sat there with his poker face taking on a distinctly grumpy note.

    “He's the only one who can. As bad as things are, they'll only meet with a clan head—O'Neal's clan head. Aelool can't carry our water on this. We're all going to be making some sacrifices and doing things we'd rather not. I, for instance, will be doing without my right hand because Papa needs the extensive briefing and...education...more than I need to keep my workload under control. The opportunity will be good for his assistant, although I doubt the poor woman will see it that way.” He spread his fingers and rested his hand on the arm of his chair, having noticed his imaginary rosary. “Which brings us to your second job.”

    “When you leave here, you're going to go use the back channel you have to Michelle, informing her that Papa will be out of pocket and that she will be acting head of Clan O'Neal during his transit. It would go to your father, but he's compromised by an AID and, well, doesn't know ninety percent of his clan exists. Don't boggle at me,” he scowled. “Michelle will be acting clan head, but you will be functioning on Earth for her as something between a consiglieri and an outright deputy. She doesn't know Earth, she doesn't know the Bane Sidhe, and after recent events, we judge that she'll be acutely aware of what she knows and what she doesn't. Your sister, like you, does not take failure well.”

    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. The second thought was that she didn't need this on her first day back from making the rounds of sympathy visits back home. Every man lost from DAG was family, in one way or another. On top of which, her cracked ribs had started to ache again, healing “quick” being a relative concept. She so did not need this ration of shit.

    “No, scratch that, not failure. You destroyed a huge threat, took out two monsters, and saved your sister's life. Not insignificantly, you greatly alleviated our financial problems. Your last assignment was by no means a failure. Let's say instead that the Law of Unintended Consequences has hit us right between the eyes. You have a more realistic appreciation of incomplete victories than your sister does. Michelle will be feeling the results acutely, and viewing it as a personal failure. You failed to plan for a mentat war in the middle of your operation; she failed to brief you on the possibilities.”

    When she would have objected, the priest held up his hand and continued, “She's not incorrect in that assessment. The case is more that there is plenty of blame to go around, as with most debacles. Also as with most debacles, blame is completely irrelevant to what happens next. Your new job starts when you leave this room, as Papa is going straight from here to O'Hare for his shuttle. Until Michelle replies to your message, you are acting head of Clan O'Neal.” He turned to her grandfather. “I'll need you to confirm that.”

    “Yep. You've got the football, Cally, and God help you with the headaches that go with it. This is almost going to feel like a vacation,” Papa O'Neal said.

    “Don't get used to that feeling. You have a lot of material to cover, and then you can expect a lot of practical work. If you see less than a ten hour day the whole trip, you'll feel like you've got a break.” The leader of the O'Neal Bane Sidhe stood and extended a hand towards the door, indicating an end to the meeting.

    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 massive 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.

    In the current case, the Indowy Iltai Halaani sat on a stool at one end of the bay, headset connected to all the tanks with an absurd spaghetti tangle of wiring, holding all the tanks in a stable state. Work had stopped. Michelle, walking to the center of the bay, turned full circle, absorbing the sight. She had expected the response, once word got back to Adenast that she had at last been compelled by circumstance to see her clan head. With that meeting ended the polite fiction that the estrangement of the Human Clan O'Neal from the rest of the Indowy species did not reach to Adenast. Clan Aelool and Clan Beilil had remained aligned with O'Neal in the Bane Sidhe split of 2047. Aelool was miniscule, and had a paltry three breeding groups on Adenast, and those refugees living completely on the other side of the world. Beilil was also quite small, one of the smaller groups re-occupying the most habitable portions of Dulain.

    Despite growing up there, Michelle O'Neal had no pressing reason to live and work on Adenast rather than relocating to Dulain—no reason except for the contracted projects in the middle of construction in this very bay. Once again, she faced a life or death situation. If she could not complete her projects on time, within specified variations of delivery, theoretically she could be hauled into contract court and her debts called in. With the troubles the Darhel Epetar Group was having from their recently foiled plot to do just that, she doubted another group would court similar disaster. Also, one of her projects had been contracted by the Epetar Group. In the likely event of its default, she would have to write a new contract with a new buyer. A building main control system wouldn't lack for demand, and she could write its contract for delivery as late as she had to, effectively keeping the project in abeyance for years.

    Her mind busily calculated the options. She had expected trouble, just not this much. Her problem was that she would have to exquisitely coordinate schedules and new project deadlines to move her operations, picking up lower-return short-term work as the long-term projects completed. It would cost a great deal of fedcreds, and further her debt, but it was possible; but only if she had the workers to get those coordinated projects to completion. The Aelools had contracts. She might be able to find a couple of Beilil families who were between contracts and could help her wind up her operation in the interim, but her work was large. There was low probability that it would be enough, and the scheduling delays while they traveled from Dulain to Adenast were prohibitive.

    She could take on substantial additional debt, if she could find creditors, to negotiate extensions on some of her projects.

    It wouldn't be enough.

    The problem was that she had very extensive operations and nobody ever contemplated wholesale walkout action and blacklisting by all clans on the existing planet. Her mind turned the problem over like a game of Aethal laid out on the board. It was a losing board, but her highly skilled gamesmanship refused to stop gnawing away at the problem.

    The Aelools were not blacklisted. It was possible she could get the Adenast families to swap out other-clan replacements for their current projects. If she could persuade them, she could have the Adenast Aelools relocated and working any time between one and ten days. Three breeding groups could take on one eighth of her current projects, and she could make all but one of her immediate deadlines for the Group most likely to be hard cases about her “issues.”

    The problem there was that Beilil, while remaining friendly with O'Neal, did not owe much of a favor balance to the clan. She'd have to get the word to Dulain, get groups with the right skill mix re-tasked, get those groups to Adenast for even on the most temporary of jobs. She calculated best and worst case estimates. It was an impossible task.

    If grandfather's diplomatic mission to Barwhon was a complete success, he might succeed in mending relations with at least one of the major clans on Adenast. The ///clan name/// Clan who raised her were, on the whole, quite fond of her. They, reasonably, felt that her high achievement reflected well on them and brought their own clan honor. Or, they had. If Clan O'Neal's reputation was restored, they stood to gain as much as anyone. They were also one fourth of her work force.

    Clan Roolnai was her real problem. They had staked a lot of personal reputation on the collaboration with Humans, albeit covertly through the Bane Sidhe, and were furious at the embarrassment caused by the now near-universal public opinion verdict of Humanity's irredeemable mass insanity.

    Since 2047 she'd held her Roolnai workers through force of personality, sheer will, and a very liberal hand with favors to the breeding groups contracted for her project. That same liberality with favors had prevented her from replacing Roolnai families with ///clan name/// families as several projects had completed and been replaced with new work.

    The bottom line was that without some kind of give from the Indowy Roolnai, she was, to put it in her Earth family's vernacular, toast. Maybe not dead, but in so unenviable a debt position that her carefully nurtured ability to pick and choose her projects would be gone for life. She'd have to take whatever projects would give her the best short-term profit like crumbs from the Darhel tables. If Grandfather agreed it was useful to the Clan, trickling in the credits she'd won for the O'Neals by “fencing” the level nine code keys would gradually pull her back up, but slowly, so slowly as to stretch even a mentat's long-term view. It was embarrassing that she had to resort to Human—er, Earth—vernacular to define her actions, even to herself. It felt odd considering herself a “fence.” And what was the etymology behind that particular word use? “Money laundering” did not, in itself, sound quite so bad to her own mind. At least it sounded clean. Still, the process was slow, which was why she'd had to offer such a paltry price. Well, that and knowing her sister would wheedle Grandfather into squandering the entire lump of fedcreds on the organization of intriguers she felt were taking advantage of her Clan. Grandfather might not share her view on that, but she was certain he'd share her view on Clan O'Neal keeping more of the money. But that didn't make it her money. It was Clan O'Neal's money and, though she'd be slowly laundering it regardless, she could never spend a single fedcred of it to alleviate her personal debt unless Grandfather determined, independently, that that was in the interests of the whole clan. Despite her skills, Clan O'Neal had many dependents, and bigger commitments than the comfort of any one member. In truth, if he offered she would be morally obligated to recommend against the idea. She would hate to be the cause of hurt to her clan over mere sentiment.

    The “laundering” process, however, could slow because of her own troubles. Her only way of turning those code keys into actual credit was to use them to surreptitiously add more nannites to the tanks of her various projects. There was inevitable loss and breakage of the tiny machines during any project, large or small. Care could reduce the breakage, but only just so much. Still, there was a range of what anyone's workers could do, given individual limitations in the needs for sleep, food, etc. Also, individual Sohon talent played a part; whether a particular worker was towards the high range of his class, or towards the low range; whether he was quick to learn or a bit slow.

    She had to purchase nannites to replace breakages, as a cost of doing business. She also had a reputation for understanding business with facility more similar to a Darhel than an Indowy. Since nobody who made the comparison ever implied social predation, in fact taking pains to make it clear that such was not implied, she took it as a compliment. Nannite replacement was part of her overhead. It came not out of her workers' pockets but out of her own. While she could spend fedcreds to lower her debt, she was not obliged to. The Darhel did not really want people paying off their debts, anyway.

    The system required careful balancing. The Darhel ///groupname/// Group, which had the current contract for nannite sales on Adenast, would notice if she bought too few nannites for her project load. They would not, however, notice if her work was consistently in the upper brackets of efficiency. That is, if they noticed it would only be to grudgingly admit that some Humans, though utterly primitive, were not entirely stupid about business. Higher profits meant her stash of physical fedcreds, owed to Clan O'Neal directly, would grow steadily—if and only if she could find a way out of her current problems.

    First, try the obvious, she thought, resisting the temptation to smack herself on the forehead. She walked the length of the bay, using the transit belts to cover the vast distance, until she stood beside Iltai Halaani. “I will take over this task. Please convey my regards to the Indowy Roolnai and pass on to him my humble request that he agree to see me on a matter of importance to his clan.”

 

---

 

 

---

 

    Very few things could make Michelle O'Neal nervous. As the highest ranking member of her own clan on Adenast, the request was, by Indowy custom, routine. Messages took time to get from system to system, and sometimes an interclan coordination issue couldn't wait. Custom also held that even if the clans were not allied, clan heads or acting clan heads granted these meetings, in the same way that Earth nations talked to diplomats whether the nations were friendly or not. Earth's “cutting off of diplomatic relations” had rarely been what it purported to be. Governments without diplomatic relations still talked to each others' representatives, the “envoys” and “embassies” were merely unofficial and protected only by custom and goodwill. On Earth, that wasn't universal. Among Indowy, the difference was that where the Indowy Roolnai would ordinarily come see her himself, being located in the same massive building—to call it a “skyscraper” would be misleading, as Earth architecture uniformly lacked the anti-gravity support necessary to the fully-populated Indowy worlds. She nibbled on her lower lip, hoping he would come himself. The tiny, childhood gesture betrayed her tension.

    A Galactic observer would have been shocked at the mentat's flagrant emotional display, but the present situation threw her back to childhood when clan heads were the closest thing to gods in her world, unimaginably remote, and she the sole, small, individual “ranking” representative of Clan O'Neal present on Adenast. Most Indowy-raised humans, having little to no aptitude for sohon, were forever outside the tangled Indowy social world of clan economics, favors, and politics. Those like her, the ones with “real jobs” even as children, were each thrust into the immediate position of ranking clan members on the worlds that hosted them, in the projects they joined, in a society where fedcreds were the currency with the Darhel, but favors were the currency with everyone else. Her father's high favor balance became hers to spend, with all the disapproval of local society should she prove profligate. “Pressure cooker” didn't even begin to describe her childhood. Like any Human child, her juvenile transgressions had been real and many, although different in kind to the point that any Earther outside of Japan or a few other cultures would be oblivious to them. Like any Human child, she had been called on the carpet in Indowy ways that she'd had to learn well, and fast.

    Now, kneeling to control the great tanks and keep them in stasis (the chair would never fit her), although the task was trivial, while she waited to represent her entire clan to the nearest thing to an Indowy demigod—a hostile one—she felt like the child she had been in the early days of the Posleen War. Unbidden, she re-experienced the grief for her mother, the regret and stifled anger at her inability to say goodbye, the culture shock amid constant fear for her father and sister. Present also were her grief at the death of that sister, and her anger, again stifled, upon discovering that death, along with her grandfather's, was a cruel hoax. The years of culture shock and isolation bore down on her, making her feel like the gawky teenager she had been, the girl who threw herself headlong into study and work as her only outlets for the tremendous, life-warping pressures. She had emerged from that fire as one of the leading diamonds of humanity, but not without cost. On the cold bay floor, under the ceilings so high that clouds would have formed, had they been allowed, Michelle O'Neal felt about fifteen.

    Please let it be the Indowy Roolnai and not some subordinate, her childhood mind reached for the vestiges of faith, and prayer, from before she had truly absorbed that whatever higher power there was had the no-face of the Aldenata, or something like them. If there were someone or something “higher” out there to be called, she had learned that it certainly wasn't listening to her. Her own native talent, forced by her driven devotion to work, had made her one of the closest corporeal, individual things to a “higher power” in the galaxy, herself. Or, at least, the reachable part of it, she amended. That long-held awareness lived closer to a sense of futility, on her bad days, than to ego. Powerful, yes, but power forever constrained by the knowledge that in her still-real fallibility, the tiniest misstep while using that power on a large scale could destroy everything she held dear, like a careless giant-child with a hen's egg.

    The awareness shocked her back to the present, and she forced herself to stop biting her lip, honestly appalled at her own loss of control. People who didn't have the ability to maintain control of at least their own bodies and consciousness, at all times, shouldn't be mentats. Reminiscences must never be allowed except as a purposeful exercise to remove a potential risk of control failure. She mentally rescheduled her evening to allow for the necessary purgation.

    Michelle was grateful that she had finally come to her senses before the Indowy Roolnai, himself, entered her construction bay. He came in person. We have a chance, she thought silently, automatically suppressing the natural sigh of relief.

    “Indowy Roolnai, I see you,” she said, rising effortlessly to her feet.

    Iltai Haalani had accompanied the clan head back to the bay and, as they had come in at the end where she'd been keeping vigil over her work, he was able to immediately resume control of the tanks, freeing her for discourse with the clan head.

    “Human Michelle O'Neal, I see you,” he replied politely, his green-furred face blank of all expression.

    “I appreciate your great kindness in coming to meet me personally,” she said.

    The Indowy inclined his head in acknowledgment, an expressive gesture common to both species. “Knowing you, I am sure you would not represent a matter as important to my clan if it was not.”

    A warning. He was prepared to hear her out, but not favorably inclined, and not disposed to spend any great time on the meeting. “I notice that the workers on these projects are absent today,” Michelle got right to the core of the problem.

    “Did you expect otherwise?” he asked.

    “No. Not under the circumstances. I did, however, hope that they might remain while Clan O'Neal re-organized obligations with allied labor.”

    “Such action is not customary in the circumstances. The clans who formerly worked on these projects are at odds with Clan O'Neal. How can the estranged exchange favors?”

    “I recognize that Clan Roolnai and Clan Halaani have already been more than kind.”

    “Pah. Kind! You had not yet communicated with your clan head. How could we decently proceed without allowing time for both sides to receive the news?”

    She accepted the polite fiction for what it was—a recognition of her own history of proper loolnieth towards her clan. “In my... news...from the O'Neal, he also communicated his intention to travel to Barwhon and attempt to restore relations with the Tchpht,” she offered. Leaving out the chronology also preserved necessary fictions about the speed of communications and related matters for discretion.

    “Interesting news,” he said, ears twitching in surprise. “Still, the nature of the breach is of a delicate kind, possibly unmendable.”

    The Indowy deciding humanity was fundamentally insane qualified as unmendable if anything did. Her only hope lay in introducing doubt in that conclusion. “Perhaps. You are aware that certain intriguers among my race massively altered their brain-physicians' procedure of tampering with the minds of long-term intriguers.” There. Frame the “insanity” as artificially induced by primitive medical practices.

    “The Indowy Clans, as all civilized races, recognize consumption of flesh as a dangerously primitive trait.” Roolnai shuddered at the word “flesh.” “There are natural concerns about such a species from the very beginning.”

    “Of course. But the 'beginning,' as you say, goes back far beyond the present eye-blink. Your race has a great deal of experience of mine, and of your clans harmoniously engaging with ours.”

    Again the clan head's ears twitched, surprised. “I suppose it is to be expected that you would be better informed than other humans. Your observation is true. It is also true that human clan structure has weakened, particularly in the survivors of the great slaughter, and many clans have judged that change not to be for the better. Including my own. Advancing medical care an infant's step is all very well, but if the fundamental cause lies elsewhere....”

    He's not buying it. Yet. He's not closed off, either.

    “Recent events, deplorable though they have been, should properly mitigate one of the causes for concern. However horrific the events, the O'Neal's judgment of the value to our very small clan of a particular member has in some measure been vindicated. Primitive skills, but a link in the chain not only to Clan O'Neal survival but to Path value that even the Tchpht acknowledged.”

    “You would speak to me of that?!”

    He was stiff with rage, as she had expected, given the bloody nature of her sister's skills—and actions. Still, her case largely rested on the proved truth that Grandfather's choice to rescue Cally, in violation of the will of a large chunk of the Bane Sidhe, was not mere sentiment, but rationally in the interests of Clan O'Neal and not adverse to its then-allies. She had no doubt that Grandfather's choice was based entirely on human two-way loyalty and his personal sense of honor, with sentiment to sweeten the pot, but the Indowy understanding of Human xenopsychology was limited. The Indowy Roolnai was not, in the next five minutes, going to come to an understanding of why two-way loyalty was a survival advantage for Human clans. She had to use the argument that would work—she hoped.

    “Primitive. Abhorrent. But the action was not only arguably necessary to Clan O'Neal's vital interests, it also appeared,” she strongly emphasized the word. “Appeared so favorably tied to Galactic interests and the safety of the Path itself that even the Tchpht believed those abilities were strictly necessary outside all precedent. They are wiser than all of us, and I concede that aspects of the outcome were overwhelmingly unfortunate--”

    Roolnai's expression of complete revulsion told her she'd better win him over fast or she'd have lost her chance.

    “The Tchpht are wiser than all of us. If their wisest, for a time, believed the Path itself was at stake, how can the Clans judge the same decision to be insane in a species all admit is underdeveloped and primitive?”

    He stopped. She just might have him. She mentally crossed her fingers. Visceral emotion was a strong, strong determinant of action, even among otherwise wise beings. Her only hope lay in the Indowy Roolnai's own highly trained wisdom to overcome his understandable anger and revulsion.

    He was still stopped, almost as if time had come unhinged. Only the beating of her own heart, and the rhythm of her breath, defied that sensation.

    The Galactic turned away from her, breathing slowly and carefully, reminiscent of the Darhel breathing exercises. Emotional control was not vital to his continued existence as it was for theirs. That did not negate his need to recover it. After a long moment he turned back to face her.

    “We may have acted in excessive haste. May,” he emphasized.

    “When a breach is not sure, a small favor of keeping families on their current, well-paid contracts while the matter is under consideration is surely not unusual.” She was sure a touch of pleading showed in her eyes despite herself. It was, after all, her clan she was trying to save. The whole of the O'Neals were in balance, right here.

    “When you were personally in danger, I saw no emotion for yourself—which is only proper. Now, with far more of your clan's interests at stake, emotion leaks through despite yourself. Knowing your professionalism and dedication to the Path, that is no small thing. This is what persuades me. Clan Roolnai will agree to continuing this exchange of favors with Clan O'Neal for the present. I feel confident that Clan Halaani, having an even closer personal tie in the matter, will take a similar view. And, as you say, the Tchpht are wiser than we, and farther along the path. In the circumstances, we have the opportunity to let our reconsideration be guided by theirs.”

    Oh my. Grandfather, I hope you do a very good job, she thought. I cannot believe that my lapse in control was the deciding factor. Even for me, what my sister says holds true: alien minds are alien.

    Before he turned to go, his face crinkled in amusement. “Some of your workers may not arrive back until tomorrow morning. I understand many have taken the opportunity to do something with their children. I believe that is something our species have in common.”

 

---

 

    In a small, modestly gilded office on the major transition station for the Prall System, a Darhel of unusual perspicacity and presence of mind looked at the material coming in from his AID and sighed. As a senior over-manager in the Epetar Group, he was far enough up the corporate chain to reflect his extraordinarily talent, but too far down the chain to have any real effect on events of this magnitude. He was, however, fortuitously placed to see the obvious Indowy collaboration in the ruining of his group by the Gistar group. There was enough shifting around in the human communities to show they were in it up to their necks as well.

    Personally, he was well and truly fucked. The assets of his group would go to pay default judgments. He, personally, was in the same position as an Indowy whose contract had just been called. His fellows in the group would be, no doubt were, dropping like flies as the disaster drove them to fatal rage and lintatai. Any few with the sense to forbear would be in the same position he was, unless they could get taken in by another group to do the lowest of shit jobs, like administering the out-station in some crappy food planet's system—positions informally called “junior assistant factor for dirt.”

    He was calm, but unlike his experience of his whole post-adolescent life, his emotional control was not going to be sufficient to even begin to solve his basic problems. Very well.

    Fucked over Indowy had their clans to consider. They'd sit and starve to avoid hurting their clans. Lalon had no one. It was the normal, satisfactory state of things. He was not Indowy. He was Darhel. Which meant he had every incentive to take as many bastards with him as possible.

    The first thing to consider was that no interests got in line for money until actual contract execution or valid default judgment. Epetar's total insolvency was inevitable; it would certainly crash in the red, but that would take time. Time enough to put a few debts and payments at the front of the line. He began dictating his analysis, his wishes, and his contractual offer into his AID.

    “AID. Consider these messages completed by my entry into lintatai. Send to the following addresses accordingly.” He listed the major economic planets where he knew their interests had fallen victim to the Gistar plot. “Oh, and summon my full complement of body servants,” he instructed.

    Indowy lived their entire lives in heavy debt from the costs of their education or working tools. If the Darhel group that owned its debts called them in, any Indowy would tolerate, if not blithely, resignedly, starving to death. Anything for the sake of their clan. They did, however, have their limits. Had any of them realized the state of mind of their Darhel master, nothing short of antimatter weapons pointed right at large bodies of their several clans would have induced them to walk into that room. Unfortunately, none of the five had the faintest glimmer of awareness of that risk.

    Indowy had been rather puzzled the first time they heard the human idiom “blue blood.” Having a circulatory system with similar structure to a human's, through parallel evolution, they had their own equivalents of arterial and venous blood. The latter was a darker shade of indigo than the former, almost purple.

    Lolan's eccentric preference for carved stone flooring ensured that his servants' blood pooled, instead of soaking into anything, other than the green filaments of photosynthetic symbiote, which sat in forlorn patches on the torn skin and parts. His manic grin, as he was found seated on the floor, retained chunks of pale blue meat caught between the shark-like teeth. He was no longer chewing. Between the silver of his naked fur, the drying blue splotches, and the bits of green, he looked rather like a bizarre, tinsel Christmas tree. If, that is, Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy had decided to celebrate Christmas.

 

---

 

    Eventually, when the servants did not come for their evening meal, Indowy from station maintenance came to check on the uncommunicative Lalon and his missing servants. The “presents” under the tree, lodged in congealed and still-drying blood, were such that no Indowy would willingly enter the room. The clean-up task fell to the human Fleet gunners assigned to the two presently on-station ships. There was already enough gore in the room that their own retching did little to add to their task. Very purple blood quickly supplemented the mess. The Darhel no longer cared about one of their number once he had entered Lintatai, and the Fleet personnel were highly unappreciative of the duty, not to mention being quietly un-fond of Darhel in general. That the Darhel would otherwise have died slowly, of thirst, mattered nothing to them. As hopped up as he was, he wouldn't feel anything anyway—a damned shame, in their professional opinions.

    The late Darhel's AID also cared nothing for the manner of its erstwhile master's demise. It had, as instructed, sent Lalon's final message to the planetary factor for the ///name?/// Group, and all interstellar vessels in the system. It's sole remaining task was to transmit that message to every ship that arrived in system, until it was wiped for reassignment. It awaited the latter event with the mild regret its masters had allowed, not out of sympathy or kindness, but simply because its kind were otherwise less capable in their jobs. It hadn't been much of an existence, anyway. Perhaps the new personality would be given a more interesting assignment. Either way, the present personality would not be around to experience it.

    These thoughts were tiny flickers, experienced and gone in nano-seconds. The AID did what it was designed to do, recording everything it could detect with all its senses, and watching the system for incoming vessels, precisely as instructed.

 

---

 

    The Darhel Caldon accepted his AID's delivery of a message from Epetar's system representative with the phlegmatic nature that was the envy of his peers. His dam had shared it, making her in much demand for breeding. So indifferent was he that his office, although elaborately styled like all Darhel quarters, nonetheless managed to convey the bland nature of the occupant. It was not that the room lacked in any detail, but rather that it was so precisely conventional in those details that it epitomized the term “generic.” As did the occupant, having the usual antique-silver shade of fur, the usual shade of green eyes situated in a regular, average face. Even his teeth were unremarkable, neither precisely straight, nor irregular enough to draw attention. His excessively calm nature was the only notably unusual thing about him, and thus stood out all the more.

    He would have expected any incoming message from an Epetar member to contain threats, protests, and other futile carping. He did not at all expect what he got. As the senior Darhel from ///Group/// on Prall, it was, in effect, his planet—which meant it was his decision what to do about Lalon's last message.

    Caldon had no percentage in supporting, or thwarting, Gistar's recent economic advancement. Previously a moderately small group, it was now set to become a moderately large group. His own projections indicated a moderate growth trend beyond this one-off advance, giving cause for indifference.

 

---

 

    However, if the Indowy and Humans were possibly getting partisan in supporting one group over another, his group did have an interest in stopping that. Taking sides was influence. The economic situation was unstable beyond precedent already. Besides, there was no telling how the contract courts would split up Epetar's assets. Ranking debts was complicated, and this Ghin was not above using his power of the court to manipulate events to his liking. Current transactions with Epetar would continue until it was formally declared insolvent. Meanwhile, there would be a feeding frenzy to execute as many of those current transactions as possible.

    Lalon's proposal would be small calpets as things went, but it was a way for ///group/// to suck some more money out of the failing group before the inevitable asset freeze came down. Besides, who knew? Debt-free humans might be offered enticements to take on new debt—humans tended to be very trusting about such things. For the rest, humans were vicious in killing, but they were frail, and quite vulnerable to accidents. The number would be small and, who knew? Other groups had had a great deal of success having a few humans taking care of their interests. Even with a credit balance in their favor, a tiny bit more money seemed to have a disproportionate motivational effect. The prospect of returning to their home planet, long-lived and with a credit balance that was paltry, as things went, reportedly had enormous draw for debt-free humans of the right personality type. And interplanetary passage was incredibly expensive, relative to their pay.

    Yes, implementing the Epetar representative's final contract—or, more accurately, enabling its implementation—would be very much in his group's interests. Properly controlled, of course. Which would include taking care of the matter himself.

    “AID. Compile me a list of humans with contracts to our group, prioritize by ancestry outside the predominant Fleet or Fleet Strike personnel strains, and then by aggressiveness of personality type.” He had no need to give his AID a name. It knew the voice of its master. Keeping an AID depersonalized reduced the risk of dependence, which was small risk for his species, but had been known to happen.

    “Displaying,” the device replied.