“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.”