Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel

by Joel Shepherd

  Ramoja turned to face her fully, arms folded, frowning at her like he was trying to figure her out.

  "They requested me. Really, Captain, I find your evident distaste for the processes of your own creation quite surprising."

  "League Internal Security Organisation requests a high-designation GI for their own specific purposes, and you don't find that just a little alarming?"

  "Based on your model, Captain, and the remarkable success that you attained."

  Sandy stared at him. Shit. She really wished he hadn't said that.

  "You suggest we're related or something, I'll kick your arse."

  Ramoja smiled. Abruptly charming, in a most handsome, broadfeatured manner.

  "After a sense, Captain, we're all related. I know the ISO quite intimately. I was brought up there, if you like. It is an honourable organisation, with the best interests of the League at heart. They've treated me as nothing less than an equal for all my waking memory."

  Bet they did, Sandy thought, watching his face with expressionless intensity. Taller than her, a clipped, lean shadow in the dark. Dark Star had left her to fend for herself, mostly. She had her team to socialise with, and various straight humans about, whether ship or stationboard, or planetside between tours.

  But the ISO didn't work in combat teams. Individual-oriented organisation, like all Intel. With their own advanced GI. No other GIs to socialise with, just straights. One of the gang. Of course they treated him well ... operationally, if they wanted him to be any use, they didn't have a choice. In Dark Star, she'd tolerated the inevitable few non-GI officers and assorted supervisors who hadn't welcomed her company-she could ignore them if she wished, and go elsewhere. Ramoja hadn't had that option. She could just imagine the instructions before his first days on the job ... "Be nice to the GI, or else." Or else he'll get mad and kill you. Or become increasingly disillusioned with the entire League ideology, and defect to the Federation.

  Only she'd managed that without excessive ill-treatment, for the most part. So where'd it come from? Why was she here, on this side, and Ramoja, the opposite? What was wrong with him? Or, come to that, with her?

  "The Zaiko Warren," she said, firmly stepping on the turmoil in her brain. "What were you doing there?"

  "You are mistaken, Captain, I was not there."

  "A GI killed a man by the name of Lu Fayao in the Zaiko Warren," Sandy continued impassively. "Lu Fayao was a member of a shadowy Tanushan underground group who indulge in all kinds of illicit information-crime related activities. This group is connected to a hacker named Sai Va, who just happens to be a dedicated anarchist-a common affliction among the underground. Sai Va used League-issue attack codes to infiltrate Lexi Incorporated. Sai Va then passed on the scheduling information from this infiltration to a bunch of radical ideologues called the Human Reclamation Project. They used it to plan and execute an attack upon top Lexi executives. You do understand, Mr. Ramoja, that whichever League agency or operative who allowed Sai Va access to those League-issue attack codes is therefore directly responsible for whatever purposes that information was put to after it was stolen?"

  A calm, expectant look from Ramoja, waiting for her to come to her final point.

  "The League retains many operational activities in Tanusha that the CSA finds greatly concerning," Sandy continued. "Your ties to Tanushan mafia groups and their blackmarket trade in illegal biotech and other information foremost among them. On behalf of the CSA, I'm here to formally request you sever all such ties and contacts, and ask all such groups acting on your behalf or upon the understanding of your future support to cease, and cease immediately-before we have any more explosions or mafia-funded goons running around public areas firing military-grade weapons at anyone who comes into sight."

  "And the League is to blame for the existence of Tanushan mafia?" Ramoja asked mildly. "For the presence of self-styled assassins, who dress and operate in the manner of drug-crazed civilians who play too much combat-VR and watch too much television?"

  "Not for their presence, Mr. Ramoja." Coldly. "For their employment."

  "I assure you, Captain, League operatives would never seek to employ such erratic and unreliable individuals on any matter."

  "Friends of yours did."

  "No friends of mine, Captain. I am a recent arrival here. I did not initiate any activities. I am here to put things right. League operating policy has been less than perfect in the past, I'll warrant. Thus my presence."

  "You're their fix?" Vision locked onto him with deadly intensity. "You're their idea of a problem solver? Jesus ... you transmitted League encryption on an open street near active and operational netmonitoring software. How do you think the GGs found you so fast? How do you think I was tracking you? You don't even understand the basics of a civilian infotech network infrastructure, this is an entirely alien operating environment for you ..."

  "Oh, I knew you would track me." Smiling calmly. "Your patterns were very obvious on the network. I wanted you to catch up." Sandy's gaze remained unwavering and unresponsive. "The mafia-the GGs, as you call them-were a possible nuisance, but I thought it worth the risk. To meet you, Cassandra. Well worth the risk indeed."

  She could feel her stomach tightening. Memory of the bullet strikes of that meeting ... but also the cold, hollow feeling that not everything was as it had previously seemed. Ambassador Yao, so delighted to meet her. His daughter Ying, telling of her father's hopes for the possible return of their runaway GI ... Obviously it had been on the Ambassador's mind a lot, if he had even confided in his daughter about it. The new GI contingent arrived with the new League delegation, sent by a new League administration in power after the new elections that had crushed the old hardliners in a massive landslide. So much new. So much changed since she'd been a soldier of the League armed forces. New hopes and new priorities for a new administration. Loose ends to tie up. Lost sheep to gather back into the flock.

  "I'm never going back," she said softly. "Never."

  "ISO would welcome you, Cassandra," said Ramoja. A soft, comforting note to his voice. "You appear to have shown a real flair for intelligence of late. You need not return to your old post at Dark Star ... special ops alone does appear something of a waste for a creative intellect of your credentials."

  "You put me back in Intel," she said, just as softly, "I'll go through Recruitment back offices with an assault rifle, I guarantee it. Clean out all the human waste your shiny new government didn't have the guts to axe."

  "They are no longer a factor, Cassandra." Eyes narrowing somewhat, despite the conciliatory tone. "Every administration has its factions. Just look at the Callayan Parliament."

  "The Callayan Parliament never murdered my friends."

  "Many of them would like to murder you, given the chance."

  "And my friends here would try and stop them. I have people here who value me for who I am rather than what I am. In the League everyone associated with me has some kind of vested interest or position to protect. No one in the Federation shares responsibility for my existence. In some ways I'm less politicised here than back there. I'm certainly much safer. I don't think you can realise just how many powerful people would want to silence me if I returned unless you've actually served in the frontlines during the war, and know just how much there is to cover up ..."

  "So I've heard speculated before." Ramoja cut her off, his brow furrowed. "I think you'd be surprised at the extent of ISO resources within all branches of the military ..."

  "And what d'you reckon happened to Torres Station? What do your reports tell you?"

  "An unfortunate accident." His frown deepening. "Federation warships blew their own station rather than let us have it, they weren't aware of the civilians still on board."

  "I took that damn station, me and another team under my command. I bet you didn't know that either." No, the look on his face said as much. "I took it with minimal loss on either side. We got the com mand centre and shut down the guard stations which let the shi
ps in. It was a damn pirate raid for the Fourth Fleet, we stole their supplies, then loaded their civvies onto transports for deposit elsewhere while they blew the station. Feddie cruisers were using it for home base from which to raid our shipping through the Batik Corridor. They said they'd get all the civvies off before they blew it, but I thought the cargo manifests didn't add up with the extra supplies they were taking on board-I checked it and they were a full seven thousand people short of what I already knew were on that station. Seven thousand. Just like the Feddie newscasts said, seven thousand civilian deaths. They had the choice between cargo or saving those seven thousand ... they chose the cargo, sealed the exits with all those people still aboard, backed off and blew it just as the Feddie reinforcements came in from jump ... Jump approach is autofire, the Fed captains themselves could never be certain in the reassessment that some of their rounds hadn't mistracked in the confusion immediately after jump. They could never rule out the possibility that they had blown their own station by mistake-that was the Fourth's intention. And, of course, the civvies they had taken on board were no wiser. They couldn't see what was happening, all they knew was they'd come under attack after the undock, the last transport hadn't been able to dock and the station had been hit by Federation fire."

  "Then how do you know?" His dark stare was intense. "You hadn't access to bridge data either, you wouldn't have seen what was going on."

  "I asked the Captain." Meeting his gaze with expressionless certainty. "Carlotta Teig, Captain of Firebird, common ride of mine in the Fourth-fast assault carrier, perfect for Dark Star ops, I'm sure you know it. Ask her when you get back. Tell her I sent you. She won't be surprised. She's a tough, cynical old thing, always told me I was wasted in the military-one more thing she was right on. Sure as hell she wasn't surprised when I went AWOL. You ask her, privately and off the record. She'll tell you what happened at Torres Station. She nearly resigned herself after that one. She bitched so hard they would have removed her but they didn't want a mutiny on Firebird, she was that popular."

  Ramoja's frown remained. Intent. Troubled. A light breeze shifted the branches about the broad, grassy yard, gentle whispers in the dark. Water bubbled in the landscaped stream, splashing over carefully laid pebbles beneath the ornate, arching footbridge. Something in Ramoja's gaze unsettled her. As if he himself was unsettled. She hadn't expected that at all.

  "What?" she asked him.

  A pause from Ramoja before replying. Then ...

  "Captain Carlotta Teig is dead. Suicide. A few months ago. She overdosed on neuro-enhancement prescription pills, left a suicide note telling of the lack of purpose in her life after the new Expenditures Review Committee announced the decommissioning of Firebird. "

  Sandy stared at the pretty little footbridge for a long moment, nestled among the drooping native willows that swayed in the night-time breeze. Took a deep, slow breath.

  "I'm very sorry," Ramoja said with quiet sincerity. "I know from your review files that the two of you got along. She invited you for dinner and backgammon on occasion." He had done his homework on her if he knew that much. "She wrote in her diary that she thought you yourself were one of the most hopeful, positive things to come from the entire war. She said that you were a clear demonstration of the "ultimate futility of violence." It seemed to me a curious sentiment from one of the League's most accomplished naval captains. I wondered what she meant."

  "She believed in her politics," Sandy said quietly, gazing at the little bridge, peaceful and calm. It helped against the growing pain in her throat. "Not in violence. She always hated the necessity." Another deep breath. She wiped at her eyes. Ramoja watched in sombre curiosity. "She meant that the best weapon is intelligence. Intelligence with which to kill the enemy. But my intelligence made me wonder if I should be befriending them instead. She thought that was wonderful. Said it gave her hope for the universe."

  Long-suppressed memories came rushing to the surface. Late-shift meals in Teig's quarters, a glass of whisky for the Captain, tea for herself-whisky did nothing for her. "My condolences," Teig had said upon hearing that, and meant it. Ship smells, metal and synthetics, dull-smelling air from the purifiers. The comfortable, familiar rustle of jumpsuit fatigues. Sparse furnishings, a complete lack of clutter, all loose items locked away in case of sudden manoeuvrings. The clank and whine of cylinder rotation, the gravity that kept them seated.

  Discussions of politics. Economics. The bread and butter of what the fighting was all about. Teig was committed passionately to the League cause, whatever her distaste for some of the methods. Sandy herself, the Captain had told her, was reason enough to believe the League position on artificial humanity was sound-far from the old fears of artificial intelligences turning on their creators, Sandy's greater intelligence increased her degree of emotional attachment and commitment. The irony, Teig had said, was that in their search to create a more lethal killing machine, League bio-engineers had made her less dangerous, not more so. A machine could kill innocents and feel no remorse. A greater, more developed intellect would agonise about whether to pull the trigger-morality was nothing if not a higher intellectual function. Sandy herself hadn't been all too sure of the rationale behind the argument, having read a great deal about certain highly intelligent tyrants in past human history, but she was willing to concede the Captain's basic point, if only to make herself feel better.

  What had happened to Sandy's team must have hit Teig hard also, when she heard. She'd never had a chance to talk to her before leaving. Leaving had been a fast decision, a spur-of-the-moment thing. Just a fake ID with some fancy hack-work to get her a spot on an outgoing freighter from G-4 station in Argonis orbit. By the time the overstretched, under-manned staff at that chaotic base station realised she was missing, the freighter had already jumped, and there was no way of telling if she'd actually been on it, so many freighters had been coming and going in those last, desperate, chaotic months before the final election, and the peace treaty that had immediately followed the old administration's overthrow. The battered military infrastructure had been struggling under impossible resource demands, plummeting budgets, horrendous periphery casualties due to the newly aggressive Federation assault squadrons having perfected decimating system strikes that left League shipping and system infrastructural facilities smashed and defenceless. There was no hope in hell that anyone was going to be able to trace the whereabouts of one maybe-AWOL GI who was awfully good at forging electronic credentials for whatever purpose she required. And who had technical skills that made her an automatic selection for any merchant's crew in need of an extra specialist or two ... and in those times, that meant everyone, personnel were abandoning posts to see to their families in the crisis and there weren't enough hands to go around. She'd just vanished. And of those she'd left behind ... several might possibly have taken it hard. Teig had been one.

  But hard enough to suicide? No chance. Teig had a family she'd been greatly looking forward to seeing again. Teig had wanted to go to a rock concert again-live, loud and sweaty-she'd talked about it often. Teig would have been happy for her, getting out and off on her own while the whole marvellous, glorious League system imploded like a collapsing neutron star behind her. Teig knew damn well she'd head to the Federation. But she doubted greatly that that explained Teig's death. No. Far more likely it was Torres Station and a few other such incidents, and threats of review before newly appointed investigatory committees established under the new administration. Certain folks in the old administration would have felt mighty threatened by such a prospect. Dear God. Now ... now, of all times, she wanted to kill someone. She had a pretty fair idea she knew who.

  "If she was going to kill herself," Sandy said quietly, "she'd have blown her brains out. Pills were not her style." And turned a dampeyed, burning stare at Ramoja. "Neither was suicide. There's no fucking way, Ramoja. No fucking way. You know that, don't you?"

  "It was mentioned as a possibility," Ramoja replied sombrely. "Things in the last
year have been crazy. Everything's changed, from the economy to the administration. It's been chaos, and many investigations have been launched. Intelligence and law enforcement resources have been severely stretched. Not all investigations begun have yet been completed."

  "If you need anything. Anything. You come ask me. I'll give you anything you need to get the fuckers who killed her. Or any other similar matter you have on file. You say the ISO's improved ... you do this, you damn well prove it to me, nail these scum to the wall. Hard."

  "Madam," Ramoja said with all seriousness, "it would be my great pleasure." Their stares locked. He seemed sincere, Sandy reckoned. Greatly so. "Cassandra, the war has ended. It allowed much to develop within the bureaucracies that was not desirable, most of it kept from public view by wartime security restrictions. But there is a new administration in power now. Things are not perfect, it will be a long time until they are, if ever. But the steps are being taken, and the ISO is stepping alongside. On the civilian, democratic side. You must believe me on that."

  "Surely you didn't come all this way just for me. What did you expect to find when you arrived here? What was your mission?"

  "To help put things right." Sandy just looked at him, unimpressed by such cryptic utterances. He took a breath. "I certainly hoped not to find that unauthorised parties had been allowed access to classified League attack codes. We are in the process of tracing the parties involved. The leak will be plugged, I assure you."

  That was the raid. Sal Va's accomplices. Tracking him, and tracking who'd given him those codes. She brushed loose hair from her brow as a light gust caught at it, her gaze unwavering.

  "Lu Fayao was a Tanushan citizen," she said. "A criminal, perhaps, but not a convicted one. His death qualifies as murder. Surely you realise that."

  "Prove that I was there," Ramoja replied-a certain, quiet challenge. "Prove that it wasn't self defence. Prove that the perpetrator wasn't under orders. Prove that in the grand scheme of events currently under way in this city, one minor criminal's death really matters. Shutting down such dangerous leaks will save lives. The choice is obvious. And diplomatic immunity still applies, as it does for all the other hundreds of official representatives from various other Federation worlds and administrations who are currently engaged in bilateral or multilateral negotiations that could easily result in far more deaths than one single disruptive underworld influence."