Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  “Oh, we all are at some point. All GIs. Some of us grow out of it, that’s all. I’d thought I was growing, but now I’m back to old ways. Fighting, fucking . . .” She shrugged, and ran a hand through her wet hair.

  Vanessa stopped with the weights, unstrapped herself and sat up. Sandy tossed her a towel.

  “It’s not the sex that’s bothering you, is it?” It was more a statement than a question. Vanessa always saw through her. Given a choice between her and any shrink, Sandy chose Vanessa every time. “It’s the fight.”

  “I killed a lot of people in that fight,” Sandy said somberly.

  “Me too. So what?”

  “It usually bothers me. Last year, when I took out that idiot at Larion Park . . .”

  “Who was holding a room full of innocent people hostage with explosives and firearms, thus saving at least twenty lives, yes?”

  “Yeah, but it bothered me. The guy was a mental case, the system failed him, his family were so upset . . .”

  “And all those soldiers in Anjula had family, too,” Vanessa interjected, “and no doubt they’ll be very unhappy, as well. Sandy, they were part of a system that was massacring thousands of innocent people. We stopped them. You saved a lot more than you killed, and . . .”

  “I know,” said Sandy, with a calm stare. “That’s the point. It doesn’t bother me at all.” Vanessa frowned a little. “I mean, I think about them now, and truly, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”

  “Well that’s good then,” said Vanessa, switching the machine over so she could do reps with her arms.

  “I don’t know. I began life not caring, because all GIs start off as drones, like I said. Then I realised I did care, but couldn’t do anything about it. Then I realised the League sucked, and I could do something about it, so I did. I just . . . I just got used to the idea that my guilt, or conscience, or whatever you want to call it, was a sign of my evolution as a person. And now, I go cut a swathe through Anjula’s finest, and I just don’t care. And it’s not just the tape, I’m sure of it.”

  “So you’re scared that you’re turning back into a version of what you were when you were younger, in the League?”

  Sandy sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Because your boyfriend left you?” It was one of Vanessa’s familiar, sharp little underhanded jabs.

  Sandy’s lips twisted. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Look.” Vanessa hooked her arms over the machine’s handles. “It’s tough for you right now, I know. And not just with Ari, that’s bullshit—with all these other GIs pouring down on you from the League the past few years. You feel responsible, you worry about them, there’s all the legal and political shit. And you’re worried about how it’s all going to turn out. I don’t just mean facts on the ground, I mean more broadly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, I’m a straight, organic human. All the literature’s been pretty much written on me and my kind. But you guys . . . Sandy, you ever just think that however you turn out, that’s what you’re meant to be? Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about what you ought to try and become, and just accept what you are.”

  “Vanessa, you know better than anyone. There’s a whole bunch of things about what I am that I don’t like.”

  “So let me tell you this—there’s a whole bunch of things about what you are that I absolutely love. And I don’t just mean as your friend, I mean in general. As qualities everyone could learn from. As improvements to our species.”

  “Including Anjula.” Drily.

  “Including Anjula,” Vanessa declared, with a very firm nod. “Yes. Absolutely including Anjula. Someone has to do it, Sandy. Be proud of it. And fuck lots of guys, and continue to like too many different brands of coffee, and be addicted to surfing like a junkie, and just be what you are, and stop fucking worrying about it.”

  Vanessa tossed the towel back at Sandy, who could have caught it, but let it catch her in the face instead. Vanessa glared at her, then settled back down to do her reps. Sandy watched her. Nearly three hundred kilos, with the arms of a girl who, unaugmented, would probably struggle to do forty.

  “So, how does the upgrade feel?” Sandy asked her.

  “Awesome,” said Vanessa, with real pleasure. “The tech’s incredible. It’s not so much the extra strength, it’s the speed and endurance. I nearly got a mid-des GI’s score on the last combat course I did.”

  “I know,” said Sandy. “I’d say you were eighty percent what I’d expect a mid-des like Khan to do.”

  “And I’ve gotten faster since then, too,” Vanessa said smugly.

  “Only your command skills are so much better.” Sandy was relieved about that. It kept Vanessa further to the rear. Plus, there was something faintly unnerving about watching Vanessa’s transformation, and her pleasure at its results. “Exactly what are you trying to become, Ricey? And are you aware what it’s going to cost? “They haven’t found an upgrade for command yet.”

  “Nor wisdom, nor humour, nor good sexual technique. But I’m sure they’re working on it.”

  The trip took two weeks. Vanessa wanted to go home to her husband. Rhian wanted to go home to her husband and her three adopted kids. Han, Weller and Khan wanted to go and see their friends, other GIs newly arrived from the League, and see how things were progressing. Sandy wanted that, too, but there would be plenty of time for that later. First, she wanted to go surfing.

  The problems began at Balaji Airport. Balaji was the airport Fleet used to avoid crowding up Gordon, the main civilian port. It was nestled in a shallow valley, two hundred kilometers from Tanusha, far enough that the environmentalists didn’t protest at all the trees to be chopped down. For all Fleet’s increasing scale on Callay, now that the Grand Council made Callay the administrative center of the entire Federation, Balaji remained somewhat rural—some big structures mostly underground to guard against orbital strike, a small accompanying town, and only averaging perhaps twenty shuttle flights a day, as Gordon retained all of the station traffic. Balaji only took independent shuttles from interplanetary vessels that did not go through station customs first. Normally, that caused no one any problem.

  “What d’you fucking mean we have to go through customs?” Vanessa snarled at the airport official who’d informed them. They stood in the middle of a vast underground hangar where they’d all expected an aircraft of some description to take them into town. Instead, there was a Fleet officer, accompanied by some government people in suits.

  “I’m sorry,” said the officer, “but we’re informed by the Callayan government that the crew of all foreign vessels must pass through customs first.”

  “Foreign? We’re Federal Security Agency, which is based on Callay . . . how is that foreign?”

  “If it’s not a Callayan national entity, it’s foreign,” one of the suits explained.

  “Um, excuse me?” said Yeoh, who was the unit’s leading Intel officer, pushing to the front. “I actually have a Masters in law from Kannan University, and that’s just not correct . . . clause182b was inserted into the Callayan constitution following the relocation, and it states that all Federal security personnel based on Callay shall be regarded as Callayan citizens for arrivals and departures.”

  Everyone looked hopefully at their antagonists.

  “Our information is that you need to go through customs,” came the reply. Exclamations of dismay.

  Yeoh would have taken it further—the studious young man almost laughing at the stupidity of it all—but Vanessa stopped him.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” she told him, “the president’s just fucking with us. Won’t matter what you say.”

  And so, sixty FSA troopers and nearly a hundred and twenty support staff, newly disembarked from a journey of thirty-three light years and a great military success, found themselves sitting in the sun beside the big elevator leading down to the big empty hangar, waiting for a customs inspection. A few played ball games, a few board or video games, or watched movies
or caught up on Tanushan news and events that they’d missed in the past few months. Most simply sat, or lay in the sun, and enjoyed the warmth they’d missed while in space or, briefly, on Pyeongwha.

  “I hate this fucking government,” Vanessa said, sunglasses on, lying at Sandy’s side on a patch of green grass off the taxiway, surrounded by their soldiers. “I want Neiland back.”

  “Fat chance,” said Sandy. “She makes more money a year consulting than we make in twenty, and she lives on a beautiful river with her porch literally over the water. She got out at just the right time, you couldn’t drag her back.”

  Callay’s president now was Vikram Singh, having disposed of Neiland in a political coup nearly two years ago. Establishing the Grand Council on Callay had chewed through Callay’s budget, disrupted long held financial goals, and of course, cost far more than Neiland or anyone had promised. Then loopholes had begun appearing in Callay’s laws, special deals for foreign worlds, for Fleet troops, for new embassies, all the things that needed to happen for Callay to become the central Federation world, but smacked of an erosion of sovereignty to Callayans unaccustomed to such things.

  Portions of the Fleet had practically declared war on Callay five years ago, and were only defeated in what historians now called either the first, second or third Federation civil war, depending on which writing of history you preferred. Now the Fleet had control of spaceplanes, and Fleet Marines wandered Tanushan bars, occasionally causing trouble as hard-drinking Marines sometimes could. And then the GIs had begun turning up. One GI was an interesting curiosity. Two, when Rhian had joined Sandy, was tolerable. But now it was fifty and climbing. The religious radicals who hated GIs had faded but not disappeared, and now raised their voices once more. The Federation loyalists, who’d fervently hated the League precisely because of GIs, were also unhappy, as were all the biotech conservatives. And a lot of ordinary Callayans, who may or may not have come to accept the presence of Cassandra Kresnov, now worried that while one or two GIs might be an acceptable risk, fifty could be stretching their luck. And where would it end? Even Sandy didn’t know the answer to that.

  Vikram Singh had been Neiland’s Education Minister, until Neiland’s numbers had begun to slip badly on accumulated concerns. He’d taken power in a typically craven fit of backstabbing, and now promised a hard line against the overreach of new Federal agencies, promising to defend Callayan independence against all comers, be they Federation or League. To Sandy’s astonishment, she now found herself associated by many with both. Well, the first was true, at least.

  “Let’s launch a coup!” a soldier shouted, flat on his back and chafing to see his family again. “Fuck it, we just knocked off one planetary government, let’s make it two!” Loud cheers from the troops.

  “Hey!” Vanessa yelled. “None of that! Not even in jest, I’m serious!” They quietened. “If someone heard that, God forbid in the media, we’d be fucked!”

  Silence settled. Vanessa checked her internal visual for the time.

  “Half an hour,” she muttered. “How long do you think they’ll keep us?”

  “Vikram’s just trying to show who’s in charge,” Sandy said calmly, arm behind her head, using the rucksack for a pillow. “Could be another half an hour, could be five hours. Either way, he made us wait, we only moved when he wanted. He makes his point, he wins.”

  There was an election coming up, too, due in three months. President Singh had to justify his faction’s betrayal and removal of Neiland, who though unpopular at the time, had still won two previous elections and led Callay through some truly tumultuous times.

  “I don’t like him winning.” Vanessa got up. “Let’s go.”

  “Balaji won’t let us leave,” Sandy reminded her from the ground.

  “Balaji won’t let us leave by air,” Vanessa corrected. “If we take the highway from here, we’ll be home in ninety minutes.”

  Sandy smiled, and also got up. “We’ll catch shit for skipping his customs inspection.”

  “Do you give a shit?” Sandy shook her head. “I don’t give a shit. Better that than him winning. Now, transport for two hundred. Any ideas?”

  A network scan showed them a number of charter companies in the area, running bus tours for tourists, as the countryside was quite beautiful. Vanessa called a human operator, and managed to wrangle up four busses over the next couple of hours, at a reasonable fee on Federal credit. Various suits scrambled to stop the troops as they walked to a gate, and were cheerfully ignored. Vanessa was right. Balaji airport could only stop them from leaving by air, and Vanessa herself had security access to get through the gate.

  The busses arrived shortly, capacity of sixty each, and everyone piled in. Once on the regional highway, speed accelerated to 150 kph, through valleys and across wild, sloping hillsides and thick, green forests. Spirits were high, and there was singing, and joking around. Sandy kept an eye on the network, and sure enough, there was soon an unmarked flyer following them overhead, transmitting on heavily encrypted frequencies. She pointed it out to Vanessa, who grinned, and pointed it out to the rest of the bus, to much hilarity. Every soldier liked to win. Against the president of Callay, who was an asshole, winning was especially sweet.

  Sandy got home mid-afternoon, grabbed her board and wetsuit and went straight to the beach. A sea breeze made the surf a bit messy, but it was wonderful to just be out on the water again, bobbing in the swell, with nothing about but sun and breeze and the roar of breaking waves. This was Kuvalam Beach, well north up the coast from the suburban encroachments that had made the main Tanushan beaches unpleasant for serious surfers. Tanusha grew so fast, and she could hardly begrudge its sixty-two million inhabitants their share of her favorite part of Callay—its coastline. The developments weren’t even objectionable, no gaudy high-rises or marinas, just pleasant suburban neighbourhoods and protected parks by the beaches.

  But there were literally thousands of people in the water even on workdays like this one, which was to a surfer what Tanusha’s crowded sidewalks were to a jogger. Even out here at Kuvalam where the landscape was almost completely wild there were lots of people in the water, but most were surfers, and so long as they didn’t cut in on her waves, she didn’t mind. To live in a big city was to learn to tolerate others, even out on the water.

  Returning to her spot beyond the break after her sixth decent ride, she sat up on her board and saw a surfer paddling toward her. Something about his stroke was familiar. Powerful, she saw, as he effortlessly burst over the top of a breaker and kept coming. An African man with strong shoulders. She vision-zoomed, and was not particularly surprised to see who it was.

  “Mustafa!” she called, not as displeased to see him as she’d have thought. “I didn’t know you surfed?”

  “I don’t!” he replied. “But you learned rather quickly, so how hard can it be?”

  He sat up beside her, with only a slight wobble on the unfamiliar board. It was a short board too, and only an idiot or a GI would come out in surf like this on a short board if he wasn’t experienced. Mustafa Ramoja, of course, was the latter.

  Mustafa was still League. He was ISO, League Intelligence, a senior attachment to the League’s Tanushan embassy. Callayan and Federal Intelligence knew he’d gotten up to things he really wasn’t supposed to, but hadn’t expelled him, partly on Sandy’s assessment that he was actually quite helpful at times, and partly because everyone felt safer when they knew where he was. As GIs went, he was exceptionally rare—technically a higher designation even than Sandy. Not quite the combatant that she was, though not by much, he was the only GI Sandy had ever met that she had to concede was a match for her in intellect. And on her less self-important days, grudgingly, probably somewhat more than that.

  Mustafa gazed at the shoreline, the long stretch of sand, and the nearby rocky bluffs that broke up the coastline and gave each beach its separate identity. “It is very pretty,” he conceded. “I can see why you come here so often.”

 
Sandy smiled, amused at the small talk. “So, why did you follow me today?”

  “Oh, come now,” he said. “Can’t old friends just catch up and talk? I’d have invited you for a coffee, but I knew I’d be keeping you from your surfing, and you wouldn’t thank me.”

  “You want to know about Anjula?” Sandy tried her second option.

  Mustafa was amused. “Well, yes. If you wished to discuss it, that would be nice.”

  “As League Intel, you probably know more about what was happening on Pyeongwha than I do.” Mustafa shrugged. “What would you like to know?”

  “Oh, a whole bunch of things you’re not allowed to tell me.” A big swell rode them up, then down the far side. “I hear the assault went well?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “And your president still doesn’t like Federal Security Agency treading on his toes.”

  “He should have thought of that before supporting the relocation.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Excuse me, this wave looks excellent, back in a minute.”

  She lay flat and took off paddling. The wave was a nice six-footer, standard for Kuvalam, and she put on a few moves, nothing fancy. As with most things physical, it wasn’t the technical challenge that drew her to the activity. Plus, she’d been told she could sometimes be identified from a distance when she showed off—there were things she could do on a board that even augmented humans couldn’t. The price of anonymity was mediocrity.

  Paddling back out, she saw Mustafa trying a wave. He judged the drop nicely, stood up fine, then put too much weight on the back leg and the board took off, dumping him behind it.

  “Not so easy after all,” Sandy suggested as she paddled in beside him.

  “How many tries did it take you before you could stand up?” Mustafa wondered.

  “First time. Bigger surf than this, too.”

  “Show-off.”

  “I’m not a show-off. You asked me a question, I answered it truthfully.” They rolled under another big breaker that swamped them. “Don’t be troubled,” she added as they emerged and resumed paddling, “you’re doing quite well for a non-combat model.”