Originator

by Joel Shepherd

  “I don’t think he’s a little prick, I think he’s just over his head.”

  “I didn’t ask what you thought,” said Bursteimer, smiling. A typical enough response from Fleet. “So that leaves Ibrahim, but lots of Fleet don’t like his politics. . . .”

  “Yeah, he’s been mean to Fleet Captains,” Sandy interrupted drily. “They hate that.”

  “And Fleet HQ is just a bunch of old salts who should have retired years ago and who are supposed to do what the GC says . . . did I mention the GC’s been suspended?”

  Sandy exhaled and leaned her head back against the wall. Closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Hey,” said Bursteimer gently. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You know, I could end up in the infirmary for saying this, but I got this sneaking suspicion you’re not actually as tough as you let on.”

  She looked at him for a moment tiredly. Bursteimer liked her, it was obvious. Probably had a crush on her. He wasn’t that attractive, and his manner was usually more irritating than charming, but she’d learned not to disrespect offers of friendship from anyone in her business.

  “I don’t ‘let on’ anything,” she told him. “It’s just me.”

  “Well, y’know, if you need a shoulder to cry on, mine’s available.”

  “You’re a couple of years late,” she told him wryly. “I used to do casual sex with equal ranks and superiors. But now I’ve got kids and I got all respectable.”

  “Damn,” he said. “But you’re a good mother. And you put your kids above everything, and that’s pretty awesome.”

  “Kiril got abducted on Droze because of me,” she said quietly. “His connection to me made him a target. Now the tech in his head made them all targets. Sometimes I think they’d have been better off on Droze without me.”

  “Hey.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to those kids. Droze is a hellhole. You got them out.”

  “They were so lucky to survive this one. And Talee assassination squads aren’t ever going to leave them alone.”

  “They will,” Bursteimer promised. “We’ll make them. You need a lift to Pantala? You got one. Reichardt agrees, and we’re canvassing others. It’ll take a while yet, we have to be subtle, can’t talk to anyone who might turn around and tell PGC or FedInt. But hostile Talee are the biggest Fleet nightmare there is, and the war was one giant lesson that deterrence is the only thing that works, again and again, for thirty years.”

  It was like Sandy suspected. She nodded. “How would you feel about some League Fleet help?”

  “Not great, why?”

  “Got an ISO senior commander real interested. Share Talee tech, work the attack together.”

  Bursteimer scratched his unshaven jaw. “I just chased a damn League cruiser across space no League cruiser’s got any business being in. Now you want me to buddy up with him?”

  “Maybe. Thing is, our ISO boy will need a ride back to the nearest concentration of League Fleet ships, real soon. And real fast.”

  Bursteimer looked unhappy. “If they don’t want us there, you’ll be giving them advance warning.”

  “If Takewashi was right, Talee will be stripping Pantala of all the original source technology that gave the League GIs in the first place. I think that’ll be priority over another Federation incursion.”

  “You’re giving them Talee tech,” Bursteimer disagreed. “They might not care anymore.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Our tech is just network tech. Theirs is inception, and potentially the key tech to stopping the League from going insane, the stuff in Kiril’s head. There’s no comparison.”

  “Didn’t Takewashi have his own stash?”

  “And Talee are probably hitting that too. But he was using Pantala to do all the research he wasn’t allowed to do at home, like putting it into the heads of kids. So chances are he doesn’t have what matters. Pantala’s the place.”

  He thought about it. “Need to have a talk to my fellow captains. Then I’ll get back to you.”

  “You got protection down here?”

  That got his attention. He frowned. “Who from?”

  “Talee or FedInt, but probably not in that order.”

  “Right. I’m not down for long, I’ll sleep on the shuttle and get some bodyguards.”

  “Don’t leave this HQ without them,” Sandy warned. “Are they at Balaji?” He nodded. “Call them out here, someone might have seen you come in and hit you on the way out. Combat flyers only, assume a hostile environment.”

  “Got it.” He looked a little nervous. Fleet Captains weren’t much used to ground threats. “Damn. Was safer fighting that fucking cruiser.”

  Sandy smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Now go,” she said, while he was still getting over his surprise.

  “Yes ma’am,” he replied, smiling broadly, and left with a jaunt in his step.

  “You know it doesn’t mean anything?” she called after him. “We don’t do romance, it’s just a kiss.”

  “Sure sure sure,” he dismissed her, striding merrily away. And burst into song around the corner. Sandy grinned, shaking her head. And opened the ward door, unsurprised to find Danya there, who had obviously listened to the whole thing.

  “Aren’t you worried someone heard you?” he said, looking up at the corridor ceiling and walls.

  “Jammed it,” said Sandy, tapping her ear. “You hear everything?”

  He nodded. And glanced after Bursteimer. “You like him?”

  “Not like that,” she reassured him. “Like I said, it’s just a kiss.” Danya looked unconvinced. “Hey, I like kissing men sometimes. Get used to it.”

  “You could do better,” Danya opined.

  “Oh, what would you know,” Sandy retorted, and grabbed and kissed him repeatedly as he protested.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Amirah arrived at the southern gate on foot, before Gandhi Circle, where wide lawns and pavements about the traffic circle made an ideal place for frequent protests to assemble before the Grand Council building and the directly adjoining FSA HQ. The crowd crushing in this morning was ridiculous; surveillance estimated at least a hundred thousand, thronging all the way back up the streets of downtown Montoya, clogging traffic back to the maglev station and beyond.

  Before the high steel fence a line of police in riot gear made a wall, backed by vehicles and armoured walkers. She stepped out amongst them now, amidst the yells and chants, and was shown by an officer the way to a police car now on the edge of a swarm of people. There, several senior police negotiated with protest leaders and a crowd of media, all bristling cameras and lights, now turning her way as she approached. They swept forward, blocking her way so that she had to step and shoulder her way through, as the noise assaulted her ears and the beating of drums made her reflexes jump, vision tingeing red as combat reflex descended around her like a veil.

  “Agent Togales!” the senior cop shouted above the noise. They all knew her by sight, all the cops and media. She hadn’t been a Federation civilian long enough to know if she found it disconcerting or not. “It’s getting a bit tense, the protest leaders want a statement!”

  “About what?” She was rare for a GI in that she was a good public talker and that normal people didn’t confuse her like they did so many of her com-patriots. Indeed, she often felt more at home among the “normal” people than she did among her own kind. But big protests like this did confuse her, group thinking and group emotion were alien to most GIs, making the organic crowds more machine-like than the synthetics, to her mind.

  “About the attack! They’re saying it’s a cover-up!” Amirah refrained from rolling her eyes. The FSA, like most security organisations, did most things in secret. Everything was a cover-up. What did they want her to do about it?

  But Ibrahim had told her to come out here and “do something,” which was an unnerving amount of faith to have shown a combat GI for doing something other th
an killing people. She pointed to a journalist by the police car bonnet. “Diggi! Want an interview?”

  Digvijay Chaula blinked at her, then pushed around the car to get to conversational range. “An interview? What, before all of them?” Amirah nodded. “You don’t just want to read a statement?”

  “Yeah, ’cause that won’t look at all authoritarian.” With cheerful sarcasm. “I have to be seen answering questions—you ask some questions, I’ll answer.”

  “Hey!” said one of the protest leaders. “He’s a journalist, not a protestor! Why not talk to an actual protestor?”

  “Because you guys suck on camera,” Amirah said lightly. “Trust me, I’m doing you a favour.” Digvijay leaped into action, uplinked and talking fast to his producers, while whipping out a comb for his hair. “Right, we’re going to need some amplification. . . .”

  “We’ve got drones up,” said the senior cop, “they do audio. Where do you want to do this?”

  Amirah looked around, but there were no platforms, nothing obvious that could be used as a stage. No statues or fountains in the traffic circle, as security codes feared it could give cover to snipers. But over by one of the Grand Council gates was a big police van, three times taller than the cars.

  She pointed. “On the roof of that?”

  The cops looked. “Uh . . . that’d be a safety code violation.”

  Amirah gave them an exasperated look. “What’s the bigger safety risk—a journalist facing a three-meter fall, or a hundred thousand people getting angry?” The cops looked at each other. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t fall.”

  The cops led the way over, riot police making way before them, keeping noisy crowds back. Amirah looked them over as she walked—they didn’t look like some rent-a-crowd; there were all ages, a predominance of younger and not-so-wealthy people, but in Tanusha that could be deceptive, lots of folks wore slacks on their days off. A few were a mass of tattoos, crazy hair, and piercings, but those were severely outnumbered, no more numerous than the robed, religious types or other Tanushan protest staples. Many looked mainly curious, straining for a look as she passed, delighted and intense to find themselves this close to the front. Amirah wondered what they actually wanted. Or if they even knew.

  The senior cop talked to the others around the van, who made sure the brakes were on, then at Amirah’s suggestion opened a door and wound down that window. She leaped straight up to the roof, and then Digvijay climbed to the cabin, got a foot in the open door window, and accepted her hand to pull him up. He quickly straightened his collar, adjusted his tie, and looked distracted as uplink feed came in—Amirah could see it on tacnet, a simple illustration of who was connected to what. If she’d wanted an unfair advantage, she could probably listen to the questions his producers were feeding him before he actually asked them.

  From up here she could see the crowd, and the size of it amazed her. All open space before the GC fence was filled with people, with no telling what was road or grass or footpath beneath. Up the feeder roads between the Montoya buildings there was still space to move, and people walking, but still it was crowded. More seemed to be streaming in from the stations. Many of the nearby crowd were exclaiming and pointing at her, recognising her from news feeds, or having the augmented reality feeds identify her on the spot. Some, she realised, were still marvelling at her vertical leap onto the van—effortless for her, and even some straight augments could do it, but the rule with security types was never let anyone see what you had unless you had to. She didn’t think it would matter here, and when facing any potential threat, reminding them what she was could be useful, even defusing.

  “Hello?” said Digvijay. “Hello?” And suddenly his uplink feed caught his voice, and the seven or so drones hovering over the crowd were booming out his voice. Then silenced, as he reported back to his producers, “Yes, that sounds good, just turn it up one notch more.” And to Amirah, “You have the link?”

  It was very obvious on her internal vision, short-ranged to only two meters, coming from a booster probably in his pocket. She nodded and made the connection, aware that several sections of the crowd were now chanting different things.

  “Tell us the truth!” was the main one, taken up by people all across the circle.

  “Feds go home!” was another one, with less volume, but what the hell? People thought this was a Federation versus plucky-little-member-world problem?

  “No war on the Talee!” a few others were yelling, not having figured a way to turn that into a catchy chant. Great, so within hours of launching humanity’s first recorded alien attack on a human world, those same humans had already formed a pro-Talee lobby group. Damned if we’re not the strangest species, Amirah thought, tugging her slightly wild hair into place.

  “Hello all!” Digvijay’s voice boomed out from multiple locations overhead. Over such a wide area, on multiple speakers, it created a long-stretched echo from the farthest reaches. “My name is Digvijay Chaula, I’m a senior correspondent with Tanusha KBS . . .”

  Immediately the crowd started booing over his introduction. Members of the media were not popular, and Amirah had learned that she always came off better in confrontations like this one, because however much people disliked or distrusted the FSA, they disliked or distrusted journalists even more. And so she’d cunningly dragged one up here to hide behind.

  “I’m here with Agent Amirah Togales of the Federal Security Agency, and she’s offered to let me ask her some questions on your behalf!” Random noise, some cheers, some boos. A crowd this large took on a mood, a personality, all of its own. “Agent Togales, can you give us anything more than you’ve already said? Was this an attack by the Talee?”

  Finally the crowd hushed. Amirah paused for longer, letting them strain for the answer, quietening further. “It was incredibly advanced,” she conceded. “Whatever it was, it forcibly puts people into virtual reality, as you’ve seen. We’re putting every technical resource we can onto it right now, we’ve got experts analysing what they did, and finding ways to stop it from happening again.”

  “Was it Talee?”

  “I can’t say.” Boos and shouts from the crowd, rising like a wave of sound. Clearly a lot of them already had their own opinion and took anything less than confirmation as evidence of evil government lies. A bottle hurtled from the crowd, very close, and would have struck Digvijay in the face if Amirah hadn’t caught it neatly one-handed and tossed it onto the grass behind the van. “I’m not really the best person to be asking,” she continued without missing a beat, as the startled reporter tried to process what had just happened, “there are plenty of Tanushan experts who could give you a better answer than me.”

  Digvijay looked unsteady, as the fear of what had just nearly happened struck him, and cops lashed out through the crowd to grab the bottle thrower. Fortunately, others in the crowd were turning him over, with boos and shoves and pointed fingers. Cops grabbed the thrower and hauled him away. Amirah put a hand on the journalist’s arm and gave an encouraging smile. No bottle was going to get past her. Bullets were another matter, but tacnet had the immediate crowd well monitored, and if a longer-range sniper round came in, all Montoya was studded with sensor mikes that would detect the sound and turn it into signal fast enough that she should be able to duck in time. And take Digvijay down with her, though she doubted such a bullet would be for him.

  “Well,” said Digvijay, steadying himself. “Thank you for that. Don’t you think perhaps we should find a safer place to . . .”

  “I’m fine right here,” Amirah said calmly.

  The journalist took another deep breath. “Is there any further danger that you know of?”

  “Yes.” The crowd hushed again to hear that. “Whoever the attackers are, we can’t be sure we got all of them. In fact, I’d tell everyone here to go home for their own safety, but they’re probably not going to listen.” A disarming smile.

  “Do you know of any specific threat to this crowd?”

  “No
, but the primary targets of this attack were security institutions and the Grand Council. So if you stand in front of them, logically there could be trouble if shooting starts.”

  “Do you think there’s a risk of more shooting?”

  “Mr Chaula, at this point I wouldn’t like to rule anything in or out. We were in a big fight at SIT just this morning, so it’s not impossible, no.”

  “Stop threatening us!” someone shrieked from farther back. “She’s threatening us!” Then boos and yells as others shouted him down.

  “Agent Togales, my information says that the FSA and CSA were the primary targets of this . . . this VR matrix that’s been attacking people through their uplinks. A number of experts have said that only GIs could carry out such a thing.”

  “That’s possible,” said Amirah.

  “Were most of the soldiers fighting in the Sadar Institute of Technology also GIs, by any chance?”

  “Not all, but a number of them, yes.” Which was stretching it, as Detective Sinta had been the only non-synthetic present.

  “It just seems that Callay is increasingly at the mercy of synthetics,” said Digvijay. “We get attacked by synthetics, we’re defended by synthetics, GIs like yourself are occupying most of the high-level security posts . . .”

  “Well, that’s not completely true,” Amirah interrupted, not sure she was liking that line of questions. “The FSA and CSA command posts are all occupied by organics, and . . .”

  “It’s common knowledge that the FSA’s special operations branch is run by Commander Kresnov.”

  “Right, but special operations is not a core command, it’s a special wing. Core command takes a lot of experience, and whatever our capabilities, no GI yet has the experience required for those roles.”

  “And what happens when you get it?” The crowd were hushed now, the quietest since she’d arrived. She could see tens of thousands of faces watching her. Concerned. Some fearful. Others intrigued. A few, angry. “Commander Kresnov has been here eight years, and she heads special operations. CSA SWAT now has some synthetic SWAT Team commanders; you yourself have only been here a short time, but you’re already the FSA’s public spokesperson. If the only thing holding you back now is experience, what happens when you get it? Surely all our security posts will eventually be held by GIs? I mean, who else could compete with you? You’re smart, talented, physically superior. You’re collected under pressure, you don’t get scared . . . hell, you’re even beautiful, all of you. What role is there going to be left for us straights, as I gather you call us, in providing our own security? At what point do we all become passengers in our own society?”