John Ringo & Julie Cochrane by Cally's War

Author:Cally's War [War, Cally's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction, Adventure, General, Assassins, Women murderers, Suspense fiction
ISBN: 9780743488457
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2004-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

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Wednesday morning, May 22

When the knock at the door came for breakfast, she looked over at the alarm clock. Seven-thirty? Ugh. She pulled on her bathrobe and trudged to the door, rubbing her eyes. I suppose sleeping in was a vain hope. They want to emphasize I'm in the doghouse. I don't care. The bastard needed to be dead—even if he was a pathetic schmuck.

She opened the door and stepped back, blinking, as her grandfather walked in with the tray. It was set for two, with pancakes, eggs over easy, sausage links, orange juice, and coffee. It smelled like heaven, especially after a dinner of low-salt pinto beans in corn tortillas.

"Okay, thank you. But . . . why? Yesterday you seemed royally pissed," she said.

"I am. I am royally pissed that you are letting this job eat you. The guy you killed was a worthless asshole. Probably doesn't matter one way or the other that he died. Yeah, he'd earned it, but it probably wouldn't have hurt anything to let him live." He patted his pocket reaching for his tobacco pouch, looked at the tray and poured syrup on his pancakes, instead.

"I can't believe you just said that. Team Conyers saved your butt, too, when the Posleen came up the gap. Doesn't that mean anything to you?" God, I sound shrill. I'm never shrill.

"Sure. It means I think it's a crappy raw deal that they died so young—"

"Were killed!" she interrupted.

"Yeah, that tends to happen in this business, sooner or later. And I can tell you right now that if some bastard or crop of bastards gets me, that I do not want you to kill anyone you are not ordered to kill just because you think you owe me something. You're more than welcome to make the case that someone who was involved needs to be dead and take the mission if it's ordered, but I don't want you to do this again. I don't think Team Conyers would have wanted it either," he said.

"That's what you want. We'll never know what they want, because they're dead, because of a fucking traitor, who is now dead, himself." It still made her mad as hell.

"You have to let there be someone higher than you as the judge of who needs to be dead, or the job eats you alive. You have to have a life, or the job eats you alive. You don't have a life outside of the job, Cally, and that more than concerns me. It grieves me. I have been a professional a long time, I have seen other professionals, I've seen this job chew people up and spit them out and unless you get yourself some sort of meaningful life outside of work, and soon, you're setting that up to be you." He rubbed his head as if it was starting to ache.

"Look, can we just eat before the coffee gets too cold?" She tasted it and made a face, stirring corn syrup and cream into it.

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