Crossover

by Joel Shepherd

  An access signal registered in Sandy's inner ear ... she frowned and allowed the linkup, a brief crackling pop! in her eardrum.

  "It's me," said Vanessa's voice in her ear. Sandy spared a look at Vanessa, who had swivelled her chair back to her command post displays, monitoring while she conversed in internal formulation without apparent effort. Sandy regripped the overhead, and scanned back out the cockpit windows as the towers slid by.

  "What's up?"

  "HQ called in five minutes back, they found a shuttle in the Verdrahn region tucked in among the hills ... that's about five thousand kilometres away. They say it looks to have come in about five weeks ago."

  "Big shuttle?"

  "Capacity about one hundred and twenty. Enough for all the GIs who hit the President, and all the FIA involved in your abduction too, if it turns out to be the same bunch. Not that we're allowed to speculate that the FIA and the League are working together on anything..."

  "No. Not even when it's true." Her mind was racing.

  "Especially when it's true. What d'you think? Five weeks ring any bells?"

  "I've only been in town about two weeks total, Vanessa. They got here three weeks before I did. If this whole thing is about me, they had some serious advance warning."

  "True. Raises the question of how they're getting out again"

  "A smaller shuttle," Sandy replied sourly, "once they've let their GIs kill themselves off."

  "But all of them?" Vanessa queried.

  "Well I suppose that's the big question, isn't it?" The flyer bumped again, and things rattled ominously in the back.

  So it was definitely a large-scale infiltration. A capital-O Operation, in every sense. One hundred and twenty was a very large shuttle. She knew all the models personally, and the physical constraints by which such large-capacity assault shuttles operated. They were not used lightly in a military environment. In a civilian environment they were not used at all. Legally. But the security agencies on both sides of the conflict had precious little respect for interstellar law.

  "Two minutes," Vanessa shouted in the back, which started a flurry of final preps. Sandy scanned out the canopy, adjusting visual patterns for maximum effect. Scattered air traffic moved along various skylanes, gently curving past the lighted towers, running lights blinking. She hooked briefly into navcomp reception, found the target closing, a declining sequence of numbers. From behind came the power surge of activating armour, com-systems and tracking units, familiar sensations.

  "LT," the pilot said calmly over radio frequency, voice now active in Sandy's ear.

  "Go, Sunset," Vanessa replied, calmly doing a final weapons check to Sandy's right.

  "Hover LZ has a bad crosswind—be careful on the pancake."

  "Roger that Sunset. Team Four, affirm and copy." The calls came in, one at a time. An altitude dip and curving around the next looming tower, a flash of window light slipping close by to the left and suddenly the target was there, ten o'clock and coming about. One minute.

  Sandy switched her links to scan, multiple sources, ground-fixed on neighbouring towers. Usual security, all unsuspecting. Clearance came in from those observers, and everything went green. The flyer continued its innocuous course along the registered lane, and the tower ahead swung gently by as they curved left across it. The rooftop was an intriguingly aesthetic mix of a large dome, a spire antenna, and a landing pad.

  Very obvious, that landing pad, squarely illuminated in the ostentatious lighting from the surrounding floods and the deep, golden glow from within the dome ... function rooms for important guests, luxurious beyond imagining—the Intel previews had said so. The Intel previews had also detailed the security provisions at great length—CSA had helped set the regulations governing their use and operation, after all. For people foolish enough simply to land on the rooftop pad without authorisation, there were obvious and extensive precautions. But desperate times allowed for desperate measures, and when the tactical briefing had begun Sandy had been quite surprised. And impressed. These guys didn't mess around.

  "Go go go," said an unannounced voice on directional com, and the flyer came about with a hard starboard turn, breaking lanes with a flaring of navigation alarms, quickly overridden. Thrust flared as the acceleration kicked in, Sandy braced firmly, left fist gripping the overhead and feet widely spread, rifle gripped in her right fist, having done the final checks in advance of final approach, as was her habit. She always liked to take a look, if possible. She looked now, connections hooked in, watching and scanning, thinking ahead. Counting down.

  Reached zero, and a thin red line from a nearby towertop targeted a point alongside the landing pad, clearly visible with a spectrum shift. By the landing pad, something flashed, and caught fire. Another line, and a big surge of power as a highly charged electrical system dissolved into flame ... bang, a sudden eruption of fire from beside the pad, mushrooming skyward.

  "Flamer," Sandy announced, watching it rise. "Very pretty." The pad was rushing up then suddenly dropping away as the flyer flared, the pilot kicking the thrusters forward and the G forces shoving them down. Clack, and a sudden roar from outside, the rear doors fanning open. Cold wind rushed in, a swirling backdraft. Sandy felt the familiar calm descending, smooth and unhurried.

  Then the pad was rushing up below, the rearmost team members unhooked and jumping, vanishing into the cold, gleaming night. The rest departed in an orderly rush, Vanessa following them out and Sandy surging after, a guiding hand along the overhead rail and then out ... a moment of dizzying fall, then hit hard and rolling to a firing crouch, team members fanning out across the pad with purposeful haste as the flyer howled and thrust backwash hit them with hurricane force. Then faded, a dark, sleekly cylindrical shape, paired thruster fans angling forward as it accelerated away into the night.

  Sandy got up and walked slowly forward. Hardly a textbook modern assault technique, but the other eleven troops were rushing about their allotted tasks and she was out of the coordination loop. So she did the one thing everyone trusted her to do—kept the rifle tucked to her armoured shoulder and scanned the garden-lined pad-departure zones for anyone looking to shoot at them.

  Troops sprinted and covered alternately through the clearing wind-blown smoke from the laser strikes. Several went to one doorway, several to another, others crouched in support, weapons levelled. Another pair erected a receptor tripod, the big dish unfolding like a flower toward a nearby towertop. Sandy waited behind, anticipating movements as she moved to the pad perimeter, keeping her firelines clear. It dimly occurred to her that the wind was very strong and very cold, and that the view was truly spectacular. The eastern glow had grown to a clear orange line rimed with blue.

  A percussive thump and the twin doors blew apart, a simultaneous blast of flying glass and frames, and the first troops disappeared into the smoke. Sandy ran, hurdling obstructing greenery, then through the smoking right-hand doorway.

  Scanned the broad, decorated marble atrium, slowing to an unhurried jog as troops behind quickly laid cabling through the wrecked doorway and sprinted to the corner console, right where the Intel schematics said it would be. Fast communication and terse commands as they hooked in, laser com from the near tower feeding penetration codes to the outside dish and direct to the terminal, bypassing the tower's impenetrable encryption barriers completely.

  Luxurious entrance corridors abruptly turned a dull, emergency red, and a loud, male voice said very firmly over the intercom, "This is a CSA raid! Remain where you are!" over and over again.

  Nothing like physical penetration to render fancy software obsolete, Sandy found herself thinking as she jogged smoothly down across the marble atrium, tall, high, mirror-like polish on every side. Sometimes those software jocks got far too full of themselves.

  Got a frequency patch on the security layout even as she approached the T-junction ... empty ahead, but she slowed up and scanned for wall reflections on the marble before cornering, knowing better than to trust un
secured links. A trailing trooper covered left as she went right—Hiraki, she remembered. Both clear. From back down the hall came the sound of SWAT Six landing.

  She waved Hiraki forward, covering as he raced across the left junction. Confusion on the links, invading programs overriding old controls, locking things down, preventing information transfer ... another minute and the entire system would be locked. But that would do nothing to stop a well-placed axe through a terminal. Thus the haste. Hiraki arrived and covered, and she sprinted forward toward that side door, sliding in on one knee to slow herself on the slippery marble. Then up and with one kick the door simply exploded open, dual-reinforced fibrous alloy locks and all, lock fragments scattering. Rolled through and covered right as Hiraki angled left across above her. And froze for a moment, taking in their new surroundings.

  The dome. It loomed high above, held with minimal support and almost entirely transparent. Above, the underlit patchwork of silvery cloud against a darkened sky. Opposite, the dome fell to the tower's side, presenting 120 degrees of open, uninterrupted views across the dazzling city skyline. And laid out beneath their present walkway-level was a broad circular floor—crowds of tables, a performer's stage, a step-down lounge and bar a dance floor, all decoratively segmented by lush palms and other greenery. The floor was huge—Sandy estimated seating for at least three hundred, with much room to spare. All silent and dimly lit now. And a good eight metres below their present position.

  Hiraki wordlessly produced his rappelling hook and clamped it onto the railing, with no time to bother with stairs. With even less, Sandy gestured for him to cover, half hurdled the rail and pushed off, sighting a landing spot as she did. Fell for several long seconds and pushed out as she hit. Bam! as she smashed a table to pieces, hit and rolled, coming up to a firing crouch immediately and scanning for hostiles. Seconds later, a whirring screech of rope from above, then Hiraki dropped down behind her. Cut the rope and moved up beside her, weapon levelled. Spared a brief glance at the decent-sized wooden table she had reduced to kindling, legs exploded outwards and surface spit down the middle.

  "I can't believe you did that," he murmured, beneath mike tolerance. "Such a lovely table."

  "They can bill me," Sandy murmured, and moved forward, weaving smoothly between the tables. Hiraki followed his own line, closer to the stage, creating a crossfire angle. Heart thumping and half smiling, Sandy realised she was enjoying herself. What a violent, destruction loving creature she was. The half-smile grew a little broader.

  Elevators at the far wall, stairs beyond. Sandy reached them first and dropped fast down the broad staircase, round the bend and down to the next level, covering the open left, then spinning right, weapon levelled on an open hallway. A security robot sat motionless on silent wheels, immobilised by the invader software. "Remain where you are," the voice continued over the intercom. The robot obeyed, tracking her with dark, suspicious scanners.

  Hiraki arrived and Sandy moved off past the immobilised robot, a quick scan confirming it as harmless. Hiraki covered the rear as they advanced down the grand, well-lit hallway toward the locked staff sections.

  "On the floor!" she heard someone yell over the intercom, and "CSA!" That was Singh and Bjornssen, her links told her, probably with an early-rising employee. After a raise, Sandy thought as she found the red-badged Staff Only door and punched it clean off its hinges with a ferocious front kick. Sparks flashed and alarms sounded as she entered with rifle levelled, quickly suppressed by racing attack-element functions. Down a narrow corridor at high speed, smashing doorways left and right with ruthless force, Hiraki following, scanning what she'd exposed.

  More intercom shouting, some terse conversation—the ground floor teams had run into some bigwigs on their way up who were demanding answers to problematic questions. She hammered the last locked door and spun through—a quick weapons scan showed no tampering, just banks of stacked computer hardware inset in the walls with comfortable chairs before fancy access screen/interface modules.

  Flipped the protective cover on the interface unit hooked to her armour webbing, jacked herself in and tuned through the frequencies as the attack elements told her the required adjustment ... flash, and she was in, leaning against the seat back as the information flows rushed over her, branchways locked down, massive database entry points, multipoint storage ... huge, huge system. Enormous didn't even begin to describe it.

  "Is it okay?" Hiraki called from the doorway behind, braced in comfortable cover position by the wreck she'd made of the double-locked alloy door.

  "I think so," she replied, mike deactivated to avoid channel clutter. A further scan, racing at mind-blurring speed, searching for telltale activity that the attack elements should have painted nice and clearly ... "No access or transfers that I can see." Her mouth was working on autopilot, her attention racing rapidly elsewhere. "Have to check the AI for anything preprogrammed, though."

  "Nothing in the other rooms," Hiraki told her. "Hardware and equipment, maintenance units, a security station. As advertised."

  Sandy nodded absently. In one ear, arguments continued with the folk downstairs, who probably had master codes that could halt this search very quickly if they got close enough. Vanessa was stalling them, reading the warrant. Another, nearby link opened, multi-level and intricate ...

  "Hello," said a voice from the walls, "you must be a GI."

  "Oh great," Hiraki muttered, "the bloody AI's come out to play."

  "Is this a problem?" asked the mildly androgynous voice. "I sense that your activities are legal, I have taken no obstructive measures but to safeguard the rights of the Tetsu Corporation according to the corporate constitution and recent Tanushan law."

  "I thank you for your cooperation," Sandy murmured, still racing. "You've performed quite admirably under difficult circumstances, and I'm sure the Tetsu board will appreciate your efforts." Final sweep ... a scan of associated linkages ... it was no diversion. The Tetsu network AI seemed to genuinely want to talk. It wasn't usual, not on networks of this size. Network admin AIs generally only answered to their respective corporate heads and kept all non-essential contact with those messy, awkward outsiders to a minimum. Sandy suspected that most of them found the outside world rather boring.

  "That's exceedingly polite of you," the AI said, genuinely appreciative where a human might be sarcastic. "I hadn't expected that from a GI. What model are you?" Small talk. God.

  "It's classified," Sandy replied, unhooking herself and winding the cord back into the interface. Suspicious, as she turned to look at Hiraki, of coincidence of the AI's sudden appearance with that of the Tetsu bigwigs downstairs. Hiraki spared her a sardonic glance, mostly lost behind his faceplate, then focused back down the corridor. Still, she had to hold this position for now, and there was nothing else to do. "My name's Cassandra," she told it ... it would know that anyway, monitoring their communications. "What's yours?"

  "Cody," said the AI. "Amusingly suggestive, yes?"

  "Definitively." As always, it was difficult to tell exactly what AIs were thinking. It did amuse her, though. "As you've probably guessed, we're looking for some information, Cody. Has there been any transfer or deletion of information during the last several minutes?"

  "Not that I'm aware of." Sounding slightly puzzled. "Why did you knock all the doors down? They're very difficult to fix, you know." In the physical, outsider world, where things were not constructed from electronic code to be reassembled at will. Sandy nearly smiled.

  "It's considerate of you to think of that, but I was instructed to make interface as quickly as possible in case any information was lost."

  "Well, I don't control the entire system, you know. I only monitor it ... I think you could call me a librarian. I'd offer to check for you if you wished, but I really must await instructions from the board. I'm not sure of the legal situation regarding any of this." Sandy held up a placating hand, which would doubtless register on one scanning unit or another.

  "No,
waiting would be correct. I hope that our infiltration software is no threat to your systems?"

  "Oh no, it's perfectly harmless to me, thank you for asking. It's rather fascinating, actually ... do you know who wrote it?"

  The smile broke Sandy's control. "No. But I'm sure you'll have lots of fun trying to figure it out."

  "I'm sure I will." With considerable enthusiasm. Old cliche that it was, AIs just loved processing data, the more complicated the better. She'd heard of some AIs actually constructing their own non-essential databases of analytical processes on data processing on various levels of manifestation ... 'philosophy', certain intellectuals had called it. Other expressions of spatial relationships were defined as 'art'.

  And she suffered another twinge of sour amusement that it was AIs, of utterly inhuman and mechanical construct, that should be popularly upheld as representing the 'nobility of sentience', while GIs—human imitations—were regarded with such fear and loathing. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn't that people were scared of non-human sentience at all. Perhaps they feared that she was too much like them, not too little.

  "Garden is secured," Hiraki announced into his mike at her signal, weapon still levelled down the corridor through which they'd come, strewn with pieces of broken doors and security frames.

  "Roger. Garden is secured," came the affirmation.

  "Cody," Sandy said, "you won't tell anyone that I'm a GI, will you? It's a security secret at the moment, with the lockdown legislation in place."

  "Sure," replied the disembodied voice from the walls. Monitor screens were blank, save for a few operation lights on the various interface stations. Nothing to suggest a living, thinking sentience, hiding somewhere in the surrounding network. "But you understand that I'll have to tell Mr Milanovic, the Tetsu executive chairman. He's my boss, you know. He's just downstairs now, waiting for permission to come up."

  "That's okay," said Sandy. "I think I'm going to tell him myself."

  * * * *

  Milanovic was not helpful and pointedly refused to talk to any lowly SWAT grunt, choosing instead to wait until someone 'important' arrived. Looking on disdainfully as more armour and weapons invaded his pleasantly civilised building, while his varied advisors hovered at his elbow and communicated on secure, silent uplinks that Sandy could have monitored if she'd wanted, but she was legal now, and felt it incumbent upon her at least to go through the motions of legality, even if she wasn't entirely sure what that meant yet. After several minutes' arguing with a wall of suited, patronising sneers, Vanessa gave up trying and had them herded into a private office section with tight-lipped disregard of their outraged protests, explaining several more times in increasingly dark tones that the building facilities were now quarantined, you understand, and left them there with Zago to guard the door. Zago was a one hundred and ninety centimetres tall African who was built like a starship haulage container. In pre-op, Sandy had found him intelligent, funny and charmingly good natured. She now discovered that he did a very convincing job of hiding those qualities when needful. Arguments from the suits ceased, and Vanessa departed with Sandy in tow, determined to personally effect the quarantine before the herds of CSA Intel, investigations and others descended from the heavens and found fault with her procedures. Intel, Sandy gathered, had little faith in SWAT's intellectual subtlety on various procedures, and Vanessa was determined not to give them any further ammunition.