Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  She watched him leave. “I haven’t the heart to tell him you’re a lesbian.”

  Vanessa laughed, and shoved her tongs under Sandy’s nose, threateningly. “You’ll find that in a fit of rage I become so powerful I can take even you down.”

  “Sure. If I were a pork chop.”

  “I haven’t thought that way about women in years,” said Vanessa, returning to her meat.

  “Hmm,” Sandy agreed, sipping her wine. “When I was with Ari, I’d think about other men at least six times a day. But sure, if that’s what you need to tell yourself . . .”

  “Well okay, I think about it. But it’s just not that interesting any longer.” She seemed perfectly serious.

  “Well observe,” said Sandy, smiling. “The magical vanishing homosexual.”

  Vanessa grinned, then shot Sandy a hard look. “When did you become such a dry wit?” Sandy snorted. “I just found the right person, that’s all. If Phillippe was a girl, I’d probably be telling you I had no need for men anymore. It’s quite nice to know that the emotions can drive the sex drive, and not the other way around. Makes me feel in control.”

  “Hmm,” said Sandy, amusement fading.

  Vanessa looked at her, suddenly concerned. “Oh, hey, I didn’t mean that.”

  “No, right,” Sandy brushed her off. “I wonder that myself. About myself.”

  “You’ll find the right guy someday,” Vanessa said firmly. And added mischievously, “You’re too damn hot not to.”

  “I don’t know if I want the right guy. I think for the next few years I’ll just settle for a wide assortment of penises, and give preference to none.”

  “The thing with penises,” said Vanessa, “they have a habit of moving in and spending your money.”

  “So long as they cook me breakfast, I don’t care.” Sandy frowned. “What’s the collective noun of penises anyway? Or is it peni? A gaggle of peni?”

  “A flock?” Vanessa suggested. “Maybe a swarm.”

  “A parliament,” said Phillippe in passing back up the stairs, and the girls doubled up laughing in his wake.

  “He’s wonderful,” Vanessa said as she recovered, wiping her eyes. “Isn’t he wonderful?” Sandy just sighed. It was only funny because it struck too close to home. In the pool, kids were shouting. Then came that word again. “Right, Isabelle!” Vanessa shouted. “I warned you!”

  She handed Sandy the tongs, then turned and sprinted to the pool, leaped a final five meters through the air and hit the water in a flying dive. There followed much splashing and squealing and protesting kids. Sandy wondered if Phillippe had entirely thought through the consequences of marrying an infantry grunt. Their own kids, when they arrived, would learn a lot of interesting vocabulary.

  Sandy turned, and found Phillippe watching from the balcony, stars in his eyes. “She’s wonderful,” he beamed. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

  Sandy smiled. “You’re a few years late to the fact,” she sighed. “But yes, she is.” And sculled the rest of her wine, wishing that some of its legendary effects on regular humans carried over to GIs.

  Sandy was woken at three in the morning by an uplink alarm. It was the CSA, requesting her presence immediately. Sandy got up, dressed quickly, stuffed her usual two pistols into belt and jacket holster respectively, grabbed a makani juice drink from the fridge and went outside, allowing the house minder to lock up behind her.

  A CSA cruiser was landing in the narrow, stone-paved street between high brick walls—when SWAT said immediately, that meant now. The howl would wake the neighbours and no doubt provoke some angry calls, but the CSA did have flight clearance even in no-fly security zones like Canas special protective district, in the event of emergencies.

  Sandy got in and they took off immediately. She didn’t recognise the pilot, and sculled makani juice fast—caffeine only worked on GI physiology half as well as makani juice. They flew five minutes through the sprawling high-rise sky, then landed upon a high tower pad where a CSA flyer was waiting. Sandy switched vehicles and found herself in the back with SWAT Two, ten troopers in full armour, led by Captain Arvid Singh.

  “Hey Arvid,” said Sandy, hanging on the overhead as they lifted off immediately. “What’s the deal?”

  “Eduardo,” said Singh from his command chair. He hadn’t been on the FSA raid and was pissed about it, but he was senior SWAT team leader these days, Vanessa’s old job, and Tanusha couldn’t afford to have all of its senior SWAT officers offworld at once. Sandy hooked into the flyer’s network and found tacnet already up, coordinating with several other units about a park in Montoya. One of them had a visual.

  Imagery blurred before her eyes as she changed resolutions and zoomed. Then resolved upon a man, in plain shirt and cargo pants, sitting on a park bench. At three-fifteen in the morning, in the dim glow of a park light, with no one else around. Sandy checked the visual match, but there was no mistaking it—the man’s face was the same as Mustafa had shown her in the data package. He wasn’t active on the net, so they couldn’t check his uplink patterns . . . likely they’d be impenetrable anyway, League GIs normally were. But it could only be him.

  “Not exactly inconspicuous, is he?” Sandy observed. “How was he acquired?”

  Singh shrugged. “Montoya’s a high security zone. You sit alone on a park bench at three a.m. long enough, someone will scan you and see if you match a database. He did.”

  “Hmm,” said Sandy. SWAT Two were still looking bleary-eyed, a few yawning, so they’d all been woken and assembled—SWAT worked on a roster, so squads knew if it was their turn to be on call, but still it took some time. Maybe a half hour to get everyone here. She’d taken ten minutes, so they’d waited twenty before calling her. Once Eduardo had been IDed, SWAT would have been called immediately. “So he can’t have been there more than . . . forty-five minutes?”

  “I was thinking a trap,” said Singh. In monotone, because it was that obvious, but procedures said you had to be absolutely clear in prep.

  “Hmm,” said Sandy. Navcomp said they’d be there in three minutes. “Have we got a sniper scan?”

  Vision flashed up, a full graphic of the park and neighbouring buildings. The only possible sniper vantages were covered and cleared—there were enough cameras around to do that thoroughly. It was possible Eduardo had support hidden in the buildings, but if they made a sudden move there’d be warning. Warning for someone who moved as fast as she did, at least.

  “Not much of a trap,” Singh admitted. “I suppose you want to take this?” With resignation.

  “Sorry, Arvid. I really think I should.”

  They landed on a tower a kilometer away, and a police car was waiting to speed her to the park. She got out at a secluded corner and walked. Tanushan parks were lush and green, fragrant with tropical vegetation. Trees dripped with recent rain as she walked a main path. Puddles reflected dim city light. Insects fluttered around park lights. Bunbuns and native possums crawled in the trees. On combat reflex, it was a lot of distraction, sharp motions that made her eyes jump from one potential target to the next. GIs weren’t really designed for natural environments. On combat exercise in Callay’s wild forests she was forever within milliseconds of assassinating cute and furry animals left and right. The little buggers kept surprising her.

  Eduardo saw her coming. He couldn’t miss her, since they were the only two people in the park. His hands were visible, elbows hooked over the seatback. Sandy’s belt holster was closer. He’d know what she was, watching her approach. GIs could usually recognise each other just by walk or stance, sometimes right down to the designation.

  Sandy walked to the bench by Eduardo’s side. The bench was wet, so she touched the evaporator on the seatback, and watched the moisture steam and vanish. Then she sat.

  “I’ve been told your name’s Eduardo,” she said. “I’m Commander Kresnov.” Eduardo wasn’t really looking at her. What he was looking at, she couldn’t tell. He was good looking, like most GIs. Tanned skin, dark
hair with a short cut, military style. God knew how these cosmetics were decided, the ethnicity of appearance and names. GIs had to fit in to the regular population, and the regular population of nearly all colonial worlds, League and Federation alike, was racially diverse.

  But it was always amusing when Federation media assumed she could speak Russian, or could name more European classical composers than Indian ones.

  “How did you find me?” Eduardo asked finally.

  “You’re about a kilometer from the Grand Council Congress,” she told him. “This whole neighbourhood is new—this park, the buildings, streets, everything, less than a year since it was all opened. And of course, it’s all wired with surveillance.” She paused, peering at him more closely. “But I think you knew that.”

  He moved, and with a twitch a pistol was in her hand, down in her lap, angled up at his neck. Eduardo kept moving, slowly, and stretched an awkward kink.

  “I like the moonlight,” Eduardo explained. Sandy frowned. There was no silver light from the moon tonight. She didn’t want to look up to see, and take her eyes off Eduardo, but a quick uplink calendar check confirmed her observation. The moon had set two hours ago.

  “I’m told you came from the League,” Sandy tried. “Why did you come here?”

  “Rinni and Pasha.”

  Sandy frowned. “Who?”

  “I came for Rinni and Pasha. Came to see them.”

  Sandy opened her mouth to ask further, but was interrupted by Singh. “Sandy, Rinni and Pasha are a kids’ TV show. My kids watch them all the time.”

  “Eduardo,” Sandy said carefully, “are you telling me you came all the way to Callay for a kids’ TV show?”

  Eduardo wasn’t really responding to her. Just sitting, and gazing at the park, and lights of tall buildings that rose beyond the trees. She didn’t think it was an act. This GI wasn’t entirely there. There were as many possible reasons why as with a regular human.

  “Who are Rinni and Pasha?” Sandy silently formulated to Singh.

  “They’re friends. A boy and a girl, they go to school together. It’s funny, like all kids shows, but the idea is that they’re just friends, but of course they’re really more than that. You know, teenage romantic tension.”

  “Yeah.” Well, she’d heard of it. And to Eduardo, “Why do you like Rinni and Pasha, Eduardo?”

  An uplink activated. A gentle touch on the local net, a contact on her barriers. Attached was a tiny little picture file, far too small to hold some kind of code bomb. Sandy accepted it, and a picture opened upon her vision. It was Eduardo, and a girl. A GI, Sandy guessed, by the look of her. They had an arm around each other and looked cheerful, posing for the picture.

  “She’s very pretty,” said Sandy. It was redundant, since nearly all GIs were pretty, but it seemed the right thing to say. “Who is she?”

  “She’s Pasha,” said Eduardo. “I’m Rinni.”

  “Oh.” Sandy’s heart began to thump. It wasn’t excitement. Cold dread, more like it. Something here just felt very wrong. “Eduardo, where is Pasha now?”

  “They were going to take her.” He took a deep breath. The breath shuddered, with obvious emotion. “It’s not good when they take you away. I’m here now.”

  “You came from New Torah, didn’t you?” Sandy pressed. “Did they send you to Callay? Did they take your friend, your Pasha, and make you come to Callay? Did they threaten to do something to her if you didn’t?”

  “He wants to kiss her,” said Eduardo, very sadly. “He wants to kiss her, but he can’t. You know?”

  “Eduardo,” Sandy pressed urgently. “I’m a GI like you. I came from the League. I belong here now, and I have many friends. They can be your friends, too. Would you like that?” She took a risk, and placed her non-gun hand on his arm. “This can be your home too, if you want.”

  He turned and looked at her for the first time. His stare was unfocused, but not stupid. Dazed. “You’re not as pretty as Pasha.”

  “No,” Sandy said quietly. “I don’t suppose I am.”

  “Will you go and get her? If I help you?”

  Sandy felt helpless. This, she’d been dreading. For years and years. “I’d like to,” she said earnestly. “I’d like to very much.”

  Eduardo smiled. And began convulsing.

  “Eduardo?” The convulsions grew worse. Sandy grabbed him. If she hadn’t been a GI herself, the convulsions would have smashed her bones. A flailing arm crushed the chair back of the bench, and Sandy threw herself on top of him to pin him. “I want an ambulance!” she yelled, not bothering with internal formulation. “Whatever leading biotech surgeon you can get, he’s in trouble!”

  Immediately she could hear a cruiser coming in; they’d had one on standby for rapid transport in case something happened. Eduardo’s eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth foaming. And then he stopped. GIs had no jugular pulse, so Sandy put her ear to his chest. The pulse was still there, but galloping.

  She tried a violent network access, but the barriers were hard, unresponsive. She reached instead for a pocket, withdrew an ever-present access line, clicked it into the back of her own head, then rolled Eduardo to get at his own inserts . . . and her fingertips felt hot, melted metal. It was smoking, the inserts entirely melted through the skin.

  Oh, God. She slumped back and sat on the path as the CSA cruiser howled in to a landing on nearby grass, landing lights flashing. Gull doors opened and medicos rushed to her, and the lifeless body of her newest friend.

  Sandy sat in the observation chamber, elbows on knees, and watched the coroners work. They had tools set up especially for this—laser cutters that could saw through even a GI’s synthetic tissue and bone. Scanners showed a clear picture, and visual diagnostics programs tried to make sense of what they saw. The CSA knew a lot more about GI physiology now than it had a few years back, and one of the coroners was actually a leading biotech surgeon, a civvie but security cleared. They cut efficiently, removing a piece of skull.

  Some years ago, no one would have dared sit near her and offer comfort when she was in this mood. Now, Singh came by, recently showered post-armour, and sat beside her and asked how she was. Not great. He put an arm around her shoulders and just sat with her for a while, watching the monitors. Naidu likewise came and asked, and Chandrasekar. Ibrahim was elsewhere, probably briefing politicians. These days he had to do more of that than he liked.

  Then Vanessa arrived, and took Singh’s place as he left. “It’s the killswitch,” said Sandy.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know who triggered it, there was no transmission. It just melted his brain.”

  “Yeah.” Vanessa clasped her hand.

  “I think he was sent here to kill someone. I think he was being blackmailed, and now he refused, and they killed him.” Vanessa’s gaze was very worried. “I swear I’m going to find who did this.” Her tone, like her mood, was utterly black. “I’m going to kill them. I don’t care if there are hundreds, I’ll kill them all.”

  The biotech surgeon’s name was Sasa. She sat at the end of the briefing table, with the intense, slightly exhausted look of someone trying to process a lot of information in a short space of time. About the table, CSA command sat and listened.

  “Well,” said Sasa, “it’s hard to tell exactly what they did to him. But it looks like one of his memory implants was converted into some kind of a control matrix. There are two kinds of memory implants—real memory and cybernetic. What the real memory implants do is compile a copy, like a facsimile, of memory triggers—for a smell, a sensation, there’s a pattern firing of neurons that the brain instantly recognises and uses like a key to unlock particular memories. Real memory implants don’t actually store the memory itself, they store the key that helps the brain to unlock that memory from within its natural, organic memory. Unlike cybernetic implants, which store electronic, virtual memory like any computer.

  “Eduardo’s real memory implants seem to have been compiling this f
acsimile copy of memories into a pattern. My guess is that something in that pattern triggered the killswitch.”

  “You’re saying that if he ever had the wrong kind of thought, it could trigger the killswitch automatically?” Sandy asked.

  Sasa looked a little unnerved by her stare. “Um, yes. Well no, not exactly. It’s . . . it’s a pattern. It’s very complicated, but brainwaves create memory triggers in patterns, which can be compiled into three dimensional displays in a memory implant. It’s not a single thought that will trigger the killswitch, it’s a certain frame of mind.”

  “Traitorous thoughts,” said Sandy.

  “Yes.” Sasa fidgeted. “More likely. Your own implants have been inspected?”

  “I’m clean,” said Sandy.

  “And your own killswitch?”

  “I said I’m clean.”

  In a tone that left silence around the table.

  “We’ve managed to make some nano-scale inroads into Cassandra’s own killswitch,” Ibrahim said for Sasa’s benefit. “It hasn’t been disconnected, it’s too well integrated into her brainstem, but the trigger is now less sensitive, and one of our experts feels the micro-battery charge may be susceptible to degradation over the years. Her implants have been so heavily shielded now that it seems highly unlikely anyone could trigger the killswitch by remote.”

  Sasa nodded. “There’s something else odd,” she said. “The brain structure’s a little different. The neural groupings just aren’t where we’d expect in some places. It’s almost as though the brain was developed using one of the alternative generation methods.”

  There were puzzled faces about the table.