Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  She tensed up further, locked her knees hard, and really gave it a pull. Anti-projectile-armour strength alloy squealed and groaned. They’d had it installed in the SWAT gym several years ago as a Christmas present, walked her in with her eyes closed and revealed it to her—custom designed steel beams driven into alloy-reinforced walls to a depth of four meters and surrounded by buffers of hard, synthetic rubber so the walls didn’t crack—the kind of engineering usually used to hold up freeway overpasses. Now she could hang and pull, and stretch nearly every muscle out fully without breaking any equipment. Muscles ripped tighter and tighter, swelling and flexing down shoulders, abdomen, thighs and buttocks, with a release of synthetic endorphin into her system that felt quite exhilarating.

  She held it for a full minute, intensifying one muscle group after another. After thirty seconds, she could feel the heat of high-intensity combat myomer nearly burning her skin. After the full minute, she was dripping with sweat, her body temperature reaching levels that would be dangerous if sustained. She stopped when the forty-centimeter-wide beam she hung upon started to squeal from two meters deep in its wall socket, and she dropped to the floor. Of course, she was now completely surrounded by gym rats, watching with the same expressions motorsport enthusiasts wore at rocket racer weekends.

  “What?” she laughed at them, and sat to stretch out. Most of them were men, all SWAT colleagues and friends, but some of the newer ones were still unaccustomed to seeing her do this. Among straights she usually pulled her punches, literally and figuratively. But exercise was a universal human requirement, organic or synthetic.

  “How’s the rib?” Kohla asked her.

  “Excellent,” she said. “Wow, I haven’t been able to do that for a while.” A side effect of the endorphins, of course, was that surrounded by this many fit men, all staring at her in her gym clothes, she was struck by the predictable urge to grab one of them and take him somewhere private. But she was very senior here, and took her job as commander and mentor very seriously. These guys were not GIs, fraternisation could harm them, and the thought was never more than entertaining whimsy.

  “Can I help you with that, Commander?” asked Banipal. His colleagues laughed and egged him on. Banipal was new and young, a good soldier and not shy with any woman.

  “Absolutely,” said Sandy, seated with legs splayed, grabbing her toes. She had to grit her teeth, and Banipal’s hands on her back helped. Flexibility was never the strongpoint of any GI. “Just keep your hands above the waist or I’ll have you up on charges.”

  She repeated her stretches several times, then strolled with a towel about her shoulders to check on Vanessa, who was sparring with young Yusuf, who was huge, powerful and heavily augmented. Like Vanessa, his augments were the latest ALK series, and for all the enormous size difference, the big guy had his hands full. Whenever he kicked, Vanessa went low for a pivot leg. When he tried to grapple, she’d sumo-push and shove his 120-kilo frame straight back like he’d been kicked by a horse. Even Sandy found it unnerving, to see how strong Vanessa’s slight frame had become. She’d always been fit, but now she was ripped, and under the natural muscle, Sandy’s trained eye could find the swelling at reinforced joints, where muscle sheathes had been severely bulked up, and muscles themselves interlaced by growth myomer not too dissimilar to Sandy’s own, taking the strain off the organic tissue and adding serious power.

  It wasn’t even “cyborging,” as the underground called it, because ALK series augments were League-derived and completely organic . . . just “synthetic organic,” meaning nothing that occurred naturally, but still technically alive in ways that fused with new host organisms. If the host’s biology was compatible, it would colonise the new implants and fuse with them in much the same way a coral reef would absorb a sunken ship, artificial fusing with organic to become part of the same, living system. This was true synthetic biology, the foundational technology that had eventually given rise to GIs, and true to all the earliest fears of its opponents, it was loose and increasingly legal in the Federation.

  Even so, given the restraints of the sparring ring, Vanessa was always going to lose eventually, and Yusuf got her down for good and pinned her. In a real fight, of course, Vanessa would have more weapons and more options, and less qualms about maiming her opponent. As always in combat between straights, women’s chances improved as rules were removed.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Sandy asked her, as Vanessa climbed back to her feet and repeated a few fast combinations.

  “Amazing,” said Vanessa with a grin. She bounced a few times, went for a sip of water, then resumed moves with Yusuf. This time she circled, dangerously fast. When Yusuf lunged a little too far, she went sideways at a speed even Sandy found hard to follow, grabbed a wrist to pull him a little further forward, then caught him with an open handed right to his sparring helmet. It rocked the young man to the ground, to exclamations from those watching. Yusuf took a few seconds to get up, then grinned at her, shook out the cobwebs, and gestured to go again.

  “I don’t like it,” said Sandy to Captain Hiraki, finding him at her side. He was shirtless, scarred and tattooed, hands down the meanest-looking guy in SWAT. The kids called him Shogun, without really knowing what it meant. “I know they can both take more punishment now without danger, but offensive power always increases faster than defensive. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

  “Soldiers must train,” said Hiraki. “Accidents happen in all training. This is not more dangerous than a live fire exercise.”

  “No, but it’s another dangerous form of training. I don’t like them multiplying.”

  “You worry too much,” said Hiraki, with utter disregard. “We are not GIs. When we train, there are risks. This is our profession, and we accept them. If it bothers you, close your eyes.”

  “Thank you,” Sandy said sourly. “You’re a great help.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Hiraki, and applauded Yusuf and Vanessa’s next exchange.

  Hiraki’s subtext, of course, was specifically that he thought she worried too much about Vanessa. Which was probably true, and unavoidable. The stronger and more invulnerable our bodies, he’d told her once, the weaker and more fragile our minds. It was the very fact of human weakness, in other words, that created human strength. If people could never feel pain, and never know defeat, they would have no need for courage or character. Upon which philosophy Hiraki beat himself into shape every day, with the toughest training regimen Sandy had ever seen—not because he wanted to be invulnerable, but rather because he sought, in bashing himself against his limitations, to breed the strength, hardness and resolve to overcome them.

  “He’s calling you soft,” said Sergeant Raf Tufau from her other side.

  Sandy smiled. “I guess it’s progress to know there’s one person on Callay who thinks I am.”

  “You think that’s progress?” Raf asked.

  “Yeah. The most exciting time of my life was when I realised I could actually be more than just a killing machine. Some of you guys might get your kicks trying to turn yourselves into one, but I came to the Federation to become more human, not less.”

  “Strength is the most human thing there is,” said Hiraki, still watching the fight. “And it’s softness that places all the rest in danger.”

  “If strength was all we had,” Sandy said firmly, “there’d be nothing for the strong to defend. What brings you here, Raf?”

  Raf was SWAT Five, and they were detailed for equipment maintenance right about now. “Maintenance is boring,” said Raf.

  “And?”

  “So we found you a sport. Why don’t you come and see?”

  She and a number of others followed Raf down to the equipment bays, where flyers and cruisers filled hangar bays, and the occasional robot roller scurried by from one storeroom to another. Heavy equipment whined and echoed.

  “I won’t like it,” said Sandy.

  “I promise you, you will.” The few girls in SWAT called Raf “dream boat
,” partly to tease him, and partly because they meant it. Tall, handsome and mild mannered, he’d chosen the CSA over stocks and trading, though rumour was he had a lot of money invested. Vanessa thought he’d probably end up running the whole show some day, if he didn’t get bored first.

  “Like that time you introduced me to darts,” said Sandy.

  “Well, that was just an experiment,” Raf explained. “I wasn’t sure you could hit a bull’s-eye from across a crowded bar with your eyes closed and talking to someone else, but it turns out you can. Now we know.”

  “And then there was volleyball.”

  “Well, the game is better served when you don’t leap five meters in the air before smashing the ball into a corner at two hundred kilometers an hour.”

  “I took off behind the line. It was legal.”

  “Surely even a GI can understand a concept like ‘the spirit of the game’?”

  “The game only works because it has rules,” Sandy said testily. “If the rules can’t sustain an interesting contest, there is no spirit because there is no game.”

  “Well, come on, you did enjoy playing football.”

  “Only because you lot look so funny crashing into each other.” And it was entertaining watching them trying to tackle her. She hadn’t the heart to tell them she’d been barely out of first gear all game, and at one point, actually doing homework on her uplinks while dodging and passing. If she’d actually wanted to score, at any given moment, they couldn’t have stopped her.

  “Well then,” said Raf, stopping before a storeroom door where some other members of SWAT Five had gathered. Some of them had industrial paint spray, in jumpsuits stained with colour, and great rolls of scotch tape. They all looked very pleased with themselves. Sandy looked at them with great suspicion. “Allow me to introduce you to something new.”

  He pressed the door button, and it opened. Within, smelling strongly of recent, fast-dry paint, was an empty concrete storeroom, with perfectly symmetrical walls. There was a precisely horizontal line, bright red, upon the far wall. On the side walls, it angled downward a little, and was not present at all on the rear wall. On the floor were more lines, dividing the room into two boxes against the rear wall, within which were too smaller boxes against the side walls.

  “May we present, racquet ball!” A cheer from those who’d painted the lines. “It’s like squash, only we figured you’d probably break a squash racquet.” Someone produced two racquets, like tennis racquets only with no neck, and shorter.

  Sandy sighed, and took one. A fast demonstration of why her automatic motor skills made this sport utterly boring for her also, and she’d be out of here. “Fine,” she said. “What do I do?”

  “First,” said Raf, “you find another GI.” Han stepped forward, unzipping his jumpsuit. He was assigned to SWAT Five at the moment. Sandy was pleased to see he’d been helping with this utter waste of time, and seemed in good humour. “Then, you stand in one of those small squares, and hit the ball against the front wall.” He tossed her a ball, orange, rubber and squishy. “It has to land in this other big square here, that’s the serve, to start the point. Then you rally. If you let the ball bounce twice, you lose. It only has to hit the front wall once, and stay below this high line up here, otherwise you can bounce it off whatever walls you like. And you have to stay out of the other person’s way, and not obstruct them as they try to reach the ball.”

  Sandy stepped to the small square, thinking about it. She looked about the court. She couldn’t hit it too hard, to land in that square, but after that, anything went. And no matter how hard she hit it, the ball would just keep rebounding, back into the middle of the court.

  She blinked, gazing in amazement. The very dimensions of the court neutralised the GI power advantage. However she smashed it, the ball would come back. So she had to keep it below the high line . . . but that was a dumb rule, given that GIs could easily reach the ceiling.

  “Okay,” she said, with dawning enthusiasm. “First GI rule change. The high line is out, we’re allowed to bounce it off the ceiling.”

  “Done!” Raf beamed.

  “Now, all of you out. Someone could get hurt.”

  They hustled out the door, leaving a couple of tiny vid units on the wall by the doorframe. Those broadcasted on open frequency, so any passerby could access and watch.

  Sandy and Han began playing. Quickly it became obvious that the game needed more changes—power was counterproductive. The object was to get the ball further away from your opponent, so finesse was needed to drop the ball into a far corner. But GIs were fast, and the court far too small. It was simply impossible to drop the ball anywhere a GI couldn’t reach it before bouncing twice.

  “We need to put power back in the game,” Sandy announced after a rally that went on for four minutes straight and began to get dull. “If you can hit the front wall twice, with a single shot, you win.”

  That livened it up immediately. Both Sandy and Han could smash the ball at the front wall so hard, it would fly to the rear wall, then hit the front wall a second time before bouncing twice. That now became the object, with shots ripping the air like bullets. Intercepting a wildly bouncing ball travelling at up to four hundred kph was actually difficult, even for Sandy. To do it, she had to concentrate so hard she slipped into combat mode, vision tracking on multiple spectrums, reflexes hairtriggered. Often, to hit the ball she’d have to throw herself and roll. Soon evolved a new strategy, to end each dive near a wall, then shove off at just the right moment and fly across the court in mid-air to intercept the next one. Soon it was not just the ball that was shooting and bouncing off the walls, but the players, literally.

  But they kept getting hit by the ball, travelling by now so fast it was impossible even for GIs to avoid.

  “If you get hit by the ball after a fair shot,” Han decided, “you lose.”

  That was a stroke of genius. Now they could aim at each other, so long as the ball hit the front wall first. Strokes became target practise, each of them dodging frantically aside from a ball that was travelling considerably faster than the rubber bullets sometimes used to take down rioters, then recovering to try and hit it off the rear wall on the slower rebound. Aiming straight at the front wall was often impossible; they’d have to shoot at the rear wall first, or side walls, or ceiling, and hope to impart enough trajectory and power to hit the front wall as well. Playing was like sharing an armoured room with a high velocity ricochet, ripping and fizzing in all directions at once. Sometimes the players collided, in spectacular default. If they’d been regular humans, even augmented ones, bones would have been fractured.

  They broke racquets instead, then an unbreakable rubber ball exploded. Each time, the door opened and a new one was thrown in. They kept score, and Sandy won two out of every three points with a recurring mathematical precision that was almost spooky. At times, Sandy found herself making genuine mistakes, so hard was this game to master. It was one of the few things she’d ever done that stretched her to the genuine, exhilarating edge of her abilities. There were times that even she forgot where those edges were, and here, she found them once more. It was like a self-knowledge session with a psychologist, only fun, and useful. And finally, after Sandy had won three sets straight and actually cracked a concrete wall by kicking off it too hard, they stopped.

  “Good game,” said Han, grinning and dripping sweat. Being male, he wasn’t as tired as she was. But also, he was that tiny bit slower, and had lost. Though that was far more her designation than any structural implications of her gender.

  Sandy laughed, exhausted and buzzing. She hadn’t had this much fun doing something physical since she and Han had done something else physical, on the way back from Pyeongwha. And several times since, though they didn’t talk about that. She opened the door and led him out.

  A big crowd was gathered, maybe a hundred people filling the hangar beyond the hallway. Someone had put up a display screen, better resolution for straights than an uplin
k visual, and they’d all been watching. Now they cheered and yelled with an enthusiasm that astonished her.

  “Holy fuck!” Raf greeted them, the well-comported young man not usually a big swearer. “That was fucking insane! We just invented a new sport! GI racquetball! We’re rich!”

  Sandy wondered how long it would be until someone put the footage on the net. Oh well—she’d come to Tanusha to learn, and finally, after seven years of bemusement and disdain, she’d finally learned to like sport. Or one sport, at least.

  She was on her way home when uplinks registered an incoming call. The signature was unfamiliar, so she circled it, analysed, and traced its routing. Its user was pretty clever. The route went all over the place, but she had routines that could break barriers in the actual carrier networks, another of those things that would freak the media if anyone knew she possessed them. The carrier networks told her exactly where the call was coming from, and she traced the source to a person, walking on the street. No, not walking, it was moving too fast. But the network wouldn’t tell her how. An unregistered vehicle?

  It intrigued her enough to open the link. “Hello.”

  “Commander Kresnov?”

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name’s Justice. Justice Rosa, you might have heard of me.”

  “Can’t say I have.” The vehicle, whatever it was, was averaging thirty kph in Petersham District, five minutes’ flight time away.

  “I wrote a few books. Best sellers. Plus I write columns.”

  Great, a journalist. “I’m sorry Mr Rosa, I’m sure you’ll appreciate that if I gave interviews to all the journalists who wanted to speak with me, I’d spend my days doing nothing else.”

  “I’d like to speak with you about Operation Patchup.” Fuck. That wasn’t a name she wanted to hear upon the lips of journalists. “Can we do that?”

  “Where?” Sandy asked impatiently. A link came through; map coordinates.

  “This should be adequate. And yes, I’m aware you don’t want to be seen, and if I value my safety I should come alone.”