Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  Justice Rosa’s coordinates led to a garden amphitheatre in a park. It was one of those beautiful little Tanushan public spaces, a pagoda stage surrounded by intimate terraces, the whole lot over shadowed by the huge, gnarled trunks of centuries-old trees. The lower terraces held a scattering of children and parents, and on the stage were school dance rehearsals, a common sight about town.

  Sandy looked about the terraces. Higher up were various other people, some reading, some working on portables, others watching the performance. One man stood out immediately. Leaning against the winding roots of the tree alongside him, was a bicycle. She climbed toward him, and he indicated to her. No one else paid her any notice, and with her cap on, she wasn’t easy to recognise.

  “Don’t see many of them here,” said Sandy, nodding at the bicycle.

  “Oh there’s quite a few of us,” said Justice, sipping a water bottle. “You cruiser passengers just fly too high to notice.” He was a tall rake of a man, ethnicity indistinct, somewhere between Indian and African; brown skin, a lean face, curly black hair. He smelled of sweat and deodorant, and his bare legs were strong.

  Sandy sat on a step. Justice’s look was . . . different. Not frightened, not excited. Like he knew what she was, had seen it before. And more than that. He had a depth to him.

  “You were in the war,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Impressive.” On a chain about his neck was a swastika. Another common thing in Tanusha.

  “You’re a Jain?” Sandy asked. A nod. “So, not a soldier, then. War correspondent.”

  “Even more impressive.”

  “How long for?”

  “Five years. The last five. I was an author before that, not really a journalist. I volunteered to be a correspondent, and some media folks liked the idea of my name on the byline. I won an award for coverage on Goan.”

  He seemed very keen to mention his awards and writing success, Sandy thought. “I was on Goan,” she said. “On the other side. Only two months, though. Feb to March, 2539.”

  “Six months, October 2538 onward. You ever go near Rachongi? Daria Road?”

  “Many times. Fed Fourth Army put its Intel assets there.”

  “And Dark Star chased Intel assets in particular,” said Justice, nodding. “They didn’t know you knew they were there. My best contacts were Forth Intel.”

  “We probably passed within blocks of each other.”

  “I’m surprised I’m still alive,” said Justice.

  Sandy shook her head. “It was all a fuckup on our side, even worse than yours. The whole city was crawling with traps. They tried to use us as regular recon in the worst areas. I kept losing highly trained strikers to fucking pointless objectives. I wasn’t going onto Daria Road. We called it Hell Strip. We just hovered, and waited for targets of opportunity.”

  “And so now,” added Justice, “I want to talk to you about Operation Patchup, and I’m wondering again if it’s safe for me to ask.”

  “I don’t know what you think you know about me,” Sandy said edgily, “but I didn’t do that kind of thing even when I was on that side.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” Justice said easily. “Not everyone in the Federation seems convinced of it, though.”

  “Mostly journalists,” said Sandy. “My approval rating on Callay actually runs between sixty-five and sixty-nine percent.”

  “It’s not that high for GI immigration, though.”

  “Hell, even I’m not certain if I’m in favour of large scale GI immigration. But sixty-five to sixty-nine percent of Callayans generally approve of me, that’s been consistent for five years now. And after the Assembly attack, I actually went up to seventy-two.”

  It turned out most Callayans actually liked having security personnel who shot walking bombs first and wondered if their rights were being violated later.

  “You seem very confident of those numbers,” said Justice. He seemed to Sandy a very serious man. He didn’t pay her as much attention as most journalists would, staring rapt at her face, in search of some penetrating insight. His eyes wandered from her to the children performing on the stage, and back again. It was a Kathak dance, North Indian. The kids looked very cute in their costumes. Some other kids played instruments, mostly drums, and a teacher counted out the rhythm.

  “I have to be. When the numbers are high, I get left alone to do my job. If they fall, I’m in trouble.”

  “They’re not what the polls I’m aware of indicate.”

  “I have better polling.”

  “Ah,” said Justice. “Interface polling.” Among Sandy’s underground friends numbered those who had pioneered polling techniques that polled not people, but network activity. There were complicated algorithms that could calculate people’s interests, biases and opinions by monitoring general network activity. Sandy didn’t pretend to know how it worked, but she’d seen some very scientific research that proved the results significantly more accurate. They could even predict future trends, given certain circumstances. “That’s illegal.”

  “Illegal to publish, not illegal for private use.”

  “You’re a publically employed official. You’re not using it for private use, solely.” But everyone did it, and these distinctions were hair-splitting to say the least.

  “Yeah, well, fuck you,” said Sandy. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Justice smiled. As though he’d learned something important about her, and where her limits were. Well, perhaps he had.

  “Operation Patchup,” he said. “Is there really a secret plan to intervene in New Torah?”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Sandy. “Even if something like that were true, why should I tell you?”

  “Because the public have a right to know.”

  “Everything?”

  “Nearly everything.”

  “Tomorrow’s lottery numbers? My credit details? Your most private secrets?”

  “Obviously not,” said Justice, now with a slight frown. As though whatever he’d been expecting of her, it hadn’t been this. “But the Federation has been engaging in some very aggressive policy-making lately. Take Pyeongwha. When the government that you live under decides to start attacking and killing other members of the Federation to achieve its policy ends, surely that’s relevant to ordinary people in the Federation in a way that your credit details and my private life are not?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” said Sandy. “Security policy doesn’t work if every bit of information we have is made public. You covered a war, you know that as well as anyone.”

  “This is another war we’re potentially talking about, and the public have a right to be informed.”

  “There is no plan to make war on New Torah,” Sandy said firmly. “I can state that categorically. Nor on the League if they don’t act on New Torah. There’s nothing happening that would require a major public debate, and as for strategy, we’d be stupid to tell anyone how we’re playing that. Besides, out of curiosity, how did the public vote go when the choice of whether to go to war against the League was put to them?”

  Justice sighed. “There wasn’t a vote.”

  “Exactly. Democracies elect leaders to make these decisions for them. The people in power make decisions as best they can, and wear the consequences. There’s just no workable time or procedure to let everyone have a vote, especially not over these light years in the Grand Council. If the public don’t like it, they can vote them out at the next election.”

  “After it’s too late.”

  “So what?” Sandy asked incredulously. “You know how difficult it is to make decisions in committees or cabinets of fifteen people? You want a decision-making cabinet of twenty-seven billion people?”

  “After what I saw on Goan,” said Justice, “I swore that if I could ever do something to prevent another conflict like it, I would. Given that conflict is the only reason you exist, perhaps you feel differently about it.”

  “Yeah, because we GIs got such a bargai
n from the war,” Sandy retorted. “In about nine years of fighting, I lost ninety-three people under my command—that’s in units rarely larger than twenty soldiers, our turnover was that high. Not all of them were friends, but a lot of them were. When you extend the number to include friends not under my command, including non-GIs, it goes into hundreds. GI lifespans during the war were measured in months, even for high designations. My team was a bit longer because I was better at it, and because after a while I just took fewer risks, to the point of disobeying direct orders on occasions. And if that weren’t enough, I found out toward the end that my own side were knocking off the rest of us, because we’d be a political inconvenience to them once the war ended.

  “Regular soldiers at least had a chance to lead a real life for a little while before they died. My guys never got to do even that. My first real memories are combat. I only discovered what real humanity was about later. The first real children I saw were huddled in ruins, screaming over their dead parents. I work security on Callay because I want to prevent that kind of thing. And people like you make that job more difficult. Don’t you go around claiming some kind of moral superiority over me because you once saw a few dead people on Goan. That’s pathetic.”

  Justice studied her for a long moment, with serious eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said then. “That last comment about you was unfair. I see I haven’t done enough research on you, and that was a mistake.”

  “A common enough mistake among a certain segment of Tanushan society,” Sandy conceded.

  “But I stand by everything else I said. And unless you can give me a very good reason not to, I’ll go ahead and publish what I already know.”

  “Which is?”

  “An organised campaign to pressure the League to deal with New Torah itself. Beginning with treaty revision, then moving to shipping lane access, then moving to Fleet overwatch of New Torah space, if League still don’t agree. Cancelling all trade restoration talks, political exchanges, the works.”

  Sandy kept her face blank. She couldn’t let him know how good his information was. She pulled a small portable from her pocket and uploaded a file with a fast mental link. Then she handed it to him.

  Justice took it, and accessed—third party units were useful where one party didn’t necessarily trust the other enough to make a direct link. But Sandy could see the file as he watched it, at the same time he could.

  “This is just one of our bits of intel from New Torah,” she said. “No one without a security clearance has seen it, that I know of.”

  The file was from a visual augment, a recording of someone’s vision. This person was sprinting down a dusty street. Buildings were ramshackle, industrial, with rough signage and dirty windows. In the street, many other people were running. Some entered a doorway, and the file-viewpoint followed.

  Within was a workshop, equipment crates and shelves, the viewpoint running past other people crouched, terrified and armed. Then it slid behind some shelves and hid. There was a lot of shouting back and forth, and some fast, frightened close-ups of people sweating, checking weapons, asking for more ammunition. Arguments in several languages, some wanting to run, another retorting angrily in Mandarin.

  “He’s asking them where the hell they’re going to run to,” Sandy said. They’d had the audio cleaned and translated.

  In the street outside came shooting. Concentrated bursts, not random sprays. Rhythmic crashes, like footsteps, coming closer. More shooting. Sandy’s mind automatically translated a picture for her, return fire, cover fire, heavy reply, dead. Cover fire from a different angle, return fire, dead. The viewpoint owner’s breathing was harsh and frantic, sheer terror. A fast glance across the workshop showed more people . . . and Sandy paused the tape.

  “See the guy there, by the cooler?” she said. “That’s a GI.”

  Justice frowned, shading his eyes. He reached for some sunglasses—not everyone’s visual cortex switched as effortlessly between simulated vision and real sight as she did. Justice put on the shades and blocked out the light.

  “You can tell?” he asked.

  Sandy nodded. “So tell me this. Why’s he defending a bunch of regular humans? If he was manufactured by the other side?”

  She resumed play. Explosions blew the front of the workshop apart. Then lots of shooting and too much chaos to see clearly. She paused again on the brief glimpse of what attacked them—AMAPS, huge, scary things with rotary cannon arms, hailing fire onto cowering civilians. Then the feed vanished.

  “Just another day in New Torah,” Sandy said quietly. Justice took a deep breath, and took off his shades.

  “Who were they?” he asked.

  “Some neighbourhood that pissed off one of the companies. They got taught a lesson. That’s how the system works now.”

  “But the Federation isn’t interested in helping these people,” Justice said cautiously. “They’re about protecting the Federation’s interests. These people won’t be helped directly at all.”

  “Maybe not,” said Sandy. “But there is stuff we can do, and will do. Trust me on that.”

  “After the League abandoned them, they won’t want the League back.”

  “If they had to live under threat of this,” said Sandy, pointing to the portable, “after a while the League’s return might look pretty darn good. Look, I can’t guarantee that anything we do might make a positive difference. But while I can’t tell you exactly what we’re working on, I can tell you that we’re trying. And if you go talking about this right now, in public, you blow up a big political shit storm that could scuttle everything before we can get it right, and you condemn everyone on New Torah to a future like this, indefinitely, with no hope of outside help or change.”

  “The last foreign ministers are due in tomorrow,” said Justice. “They’re here to vote on it, aren’t they? The new trade bill’s just a cover.”

  Sandy said nothing.

  “Tell me this, then,” he said instead. “Do you want to help mostly because of these poor people we see suffering here? Or because of that GI hiding behind the water cooler? It seems to me you have a lot of unfinished business with the League. First they made you, then they betrayed you, and now they’re doing the same to others. Or, New Torah is while the League does nothing and denies it. And here you sit, helpless, wondering if other GIs are out there going through far worse than even you did, and wondering further if there isn’t some kind of closure to be had. Confronting the system that made you? Perhaps destroying it? Bringing justice to those that deserve it? Saving those like yourself who need to be saved?”

  Sandy smiled faintly. “Make a good book, wouldn’t it?”

  “It might.”

  “If you hold off on publishing what you’ve got, I’ll give you the fully authorised story. My story. Or this part of it, at least. That’s the best I can offer you.”

  Private astronomers noticed the new arrival first of all, out past Vamana, the sixth and smallest planet of the Callayan system, an unexpected jump point for any Federation vessel. It broadcast no ID, closing very fast, and generated enough trans-radiation that they thought it might be quite large. The media picked it up, and soon all the channels were issuing live coverage, filling the airwaves with unfounded speculation. The system defense grids were activated, and Fleet placed on high alert. Anything that big, travelling that fast from jump, could kill a planet.

  In reality there was nothing to worry about—it would still take several days to arrive, and Callay’s defensive stations were well positioned to turn the arrival to radioactive dust well before that, along with any ordinance it fired. Fleet itself was an extra safety net. But determined not to miss a dramatic opportunity, Callayans responded with “end of days” parties, spontaneous prayer services, and groups of robed crazies roaming the streets, yelling at everyone to harmonise their chakras before it was too late. Zoroastrians slaughtered goats in public parks, and were promptly arrested for animal cruelty. Hari Krishnas danced in shopping malls. Buddhist
monks drew huge mandalas with coloured sand in public squares. Sufis gathered at shrines to sing praise of Allah. And Hindu holymen did whatever the hell they felt like, as had been their way for thousands of years.

  Sandy thought it all wonderful. With a day off, she took several of her GIs to a street dance party, to show them how much fun their adopted home could be. A full kilometer of road in Kotam District had been shut down, filled with live dance and music acts, some traditional, some techno or fusion, and all incredibly rhythmic as one would expect from a society obsessed with parties and celebrations, nearly two-thirds of whose population traced ancestry to South Asia or Africa. Word had gone out on the net, and soon all of Tanusha’s amateur drummers were gathering on the dance road—there were thousands. Nearly every school kid learned tabla or bongo at some point. Soon professional acts and amateur but talented enthusiasts were mingling, and the noise was incredible.

  Different sections of road gathered about different acts, which grew and swelled as new drummers joined or left. The rhythms were not only loud, they were intricate and would shift organically, as appointed leaders led to a new change, and the rest followed by osmosis. Thousands of people danced as the sound shook their bones, half naked and sweaty. The sheer adrenaline of the sound and movement was intoxicating, and Sandy danced with the rest of them in her surfer-chick short top and board shorts—her most comfortable civilian identity, the one that let her be sexy without having to indulge impractical feminine fashions that would never be her style. To her delight, her GIs all joined in—they were that kind of group anyway, that being why she’d brought them. Several looked utterly astonished, like virgins having great sex for the first time, or children having their first taste of chocolate. Incredulous delight.

  They stayed, as some people left, but even more arrived, and the drumming continued well past midnight and only got louder. They split up, and went from group to group up the road, each with a different character. Some Tanushans were now arriving dressed up, some even in Mardi Gras costumes, others in various festival extravaganzas that Sandy did not recognise: sequins and feathers and crazy, sexy things that left breasts bare and backsides shaking. Amongst the cool crowd there were even mostly-naked, ash-smeared Sadhus, stoned off their heads and dancing crazily toward alignment with nirvana, dreadlocks flying. Sandy flirted with total strangers, her big sunglasses on and confident she wouldn’t be recognised in the night’s confusion. There were now sparklers and miniature pyrotechnics going off, plus the flashing lights of professional rigs, and besides, most Tanushans knew her serious in uniform, not sweaty with her hair flying. In addition to which, there was quite a lot of mind-altering substance being consumed, some eaten, drunk or smoked, others uploaded in uplink connections, much of it illegal and as at least nominal law enforcement she should probably have said something, but what the fuck, the world was ending.