Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  At dawn came word that the unidentified vessel had revealed itself to be the Eternity, a League ship bearing government envoys, their communications damaged in jump, with sincere apologies for any nervous moments their unannounced arrival may have caused.

  “Who are they kidding?” said Rami Rahim on his crazy live show, still Sandy’s favorite Tanushan entertainment personality. Dancers had been linking to him on and off all night as he jumped coverage from one Tanushan party to another. “Callay hasn’t had this much fun since the last ice age.” And had then sent roving reporters to go and find various crackpot religious figures to see if he couldn’t arrange some kind of calendar of impending global catastrophies, so all Callayans would know when the next cool party was on.

  Some among the tired, departing crowd were unhappy because Eternity’s identification meant the dancing stopped. Sandy was unhappy for different reasons.

  “Fucking League envoys,” she told her group of departing GIs, as they headed for the maglev in pale, morning light. “Pity they fixed their coms, better if we nuked them.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Khan, shirtless, with lipstick smears on his cheek and a happy smile on his face.

  Eternity arrived in orbit three days later. The day after that, Sandy was attending the conference Ibrahim had put her up to. It was held at the Colonial Institute, a Callayan policy think tank which occupied levels eighty-five to ninety of the Surat Tower in Surat District. The gathering numbered about three hundred, Callay having become a center for think tanks in the last five years, it being the one place besides Earth where Federal-level policy makers could be reliably found in numbers.

  They had plenty of people there to tell the attendees how the current bunch of GIs were little threat, and plenty more to make the case that by granting GIs asylum, the Federation was potentially inoculating itself against the further, aggressive employment of GIs by the League, by making the League worry about the loyalty of every high-designation GI they produced. Already there were propaganda efforts going underground through League society, with slogans like “the League makes them, the Federation sets them free.” Sandy knew that she herself, had she heard something like that, would have been skeptical about her own side’s intentions a lot earlier than she had been.

  What they didn’t have was someone to tell them about the League’s GI production facilities, something she’d been accumulating intelligence on over the last five years. Ibrahim thought it nice she had a hobby, and encouraged everyone in Intelligence to indulge her. Director Diez of the FSA was less enthusiastic, but as all the necessary intelligence sources were heading for Callay, the CSA had probably better information than the FSA anyhow.

  After her talk, she took questions from a very crowded room, before a massive view of the skyline.

  “The League’s official pronouncements on their GI production levels have denied retaining any research capability,” asked one person. “You’re saying they’re lying?”

  “Yes,” said Sandy. “I’m not even sure they know where all of their production and research capacity is. It was all centralised under Recruitment in the final ten years of the war, but Recruitment then dismantled everything before the new government took over. They never found all the pieces again. And to this day I haven’t heard any reliable intelligence on the whereabouts of Renaldo Takawashi, to name just one prominent researcher.”

  “What are your thoughts on the speculation he might be in New Torah?” asked another.

  “It’s one of several sobering possibilities.” Should have killed the old bastard when I had the chance, she thought. “The problem is, like I said, they’re working on mind control. I proved to them that GIs are unreliable because we make up our own minds. But just now on Pyeongwha we’ve seen an entire civilisation of human beings go into a state of mass homicidal paranoia because of League-related uplink technology. If New Torah is working on this stuff again, it’s not just GIs who might get more dangerous, it’s everyone.”

  The door at the room’s far end opened, and some people in suits walked in. Sandy knew immediately something was wrong. They looked official, and they strode up the aisle through the audience without looking for a seat.

  “Commander Kresnov,” said one, “I’m Special Agent Gilberta Sullivan of the Special Investigation Bureau. I’m here to inform you that you are under arrest under the war crimes act of Five Junctions Treaty, for the suspicion of war crimes against League personnel in the year 2542.”

  In the audience, people began getting to their feet in astonishment. Gilberta Sullivan—more than half the SIB’s agents were female—stopped by the speaker’s podium, holding a piece of paper.

  “Will you please accompany us, Commander.”

  Sandy sighed.

  “Excuse me,” said a CSA agent in the audience front row, “what the hell is this about? War crimes?”

  “Commander,” the special agent insisted. “Now, if you please.”

  “It’s Eternity,” said Sandy, holding up her hands to placate those in the audience becoming increasingly angry. “They’ve concocted something to accuse me of through the war crimes act . . . Henry, could you contact the Director for me? I’m technically not supposed to once I’m under arrest.”

  She stepped down from the podium. Sullivan was holding handcuffs. Sandy turned around to let her put them on, as the room erupted in conversation and protest. Some more CSA agents looked furious enough to jump on the SIBs, but Sandy shook her head at them as she walked up the aisle and out of the room. The SIBs were no doubt hoping she’d do something rash, and she’d then be charged with the real retaliation, rather than the insubstantial crime.

  Once in the SIB cruiser, however, she snapped the handcuffs to scratch her nose. “Commander, you’re resisting arrest,” said Sullivan, seated opposite as the cruiser took to the air from the mid-level hangar.

  “I’ve got an itchy nose,” Sandy retorted. “Want to scratch it for me?”

  Sullivan didn’t bother trying to put more cuffs on her. The whole thing was for show—the timing in front of the audience, all of it. And pointing guns at her was, of course, not wise.

  “You know,” said Sandy, “I’m surprised it took them so long.”

  “To find a bunch of innocent people you killed and charge you with it?” Sullivan asked coldly.

  “No. For a bunch of cold-blooded murderers to realise that in a contest between the devil and me, the SIB would side with the devil every time.”

  At SIB HQ they put the cuffs back on. They led her through the main offices, SIB agents standing and watching her, like zoo employees watching some dangerous animal recently recaptured. Some looked very happy, as though her being here represented some great triumph. How the SIB had got to this point, even the CSA’s best behaviouralists weren’t entirely sure. It was like Pyeongwha, but without the murders, or the NCT.

  They put her in an interrogation room, at a desk before one-way glass. Sandy snapped the cuffs once more, tore the manacles off her wrists, and rejected the chair to lie down on the table instead—interrogation room chairs were always uncomfortable, and she had a typical myomer-twinge in her lower back and hip.

  The building network was surprisingly open to her, so she accessed the news nets. And there she was, without vision, but some talking heads were already deep in conversation about the SIB’s charging the CSA’s Commander Kresnov, an artificial person, with war crimes from year 2542 of the League-Federation War. It was one of the peace articles, controversially included in the League surrender—controversial in part because it had not been an unconditional surrender, because the Federation had no intention of occupying League space. That would be far too expensive. Conditional surrender entailed conditions, of course, and the League had demanded theirs in full. One of them was that if League officers were to be held accountable for war crimes, Federation officers must be also. Thus, an exchange process had been worked out, where evidence by either side would be considered in full view of both.

 
; Eternity must have brought evidence of some sort. Sandy was pretty sure she knew what. There were only a few institutions that could enforce such matters; war crimes were on a high Federal level that went over the Callayan police force’s heads, and given that the accused was CSA herself, the CSA couldn’t do it. That left the SIB, everyone’s favorite law enforcement bureaucracy, who never saw a moralising, semantical piece of nonsense they wouldn’t try their damnedest to enforce. Especially if it involved putting Kresnov and the CSA in a bad spot. One of the SIB’s favorite judges must have signed the warrant, and rather than doing it quietly and in consultation, the SIB had chosen to barge into her convention talk and do it in public.

  Clearly it was a diversion. The League wanted her out of the way. There was only one big thing she was involved in that might provoke a League starship to come all this way with trumped up charges of something that, if Sandy was right about its nature, the League would usually prefer to keep quiet. Sandy wondered what else Eternity’s envoys were up to in Tanusha, at this very moment, when everyone’s attention was elsewhere. Frustration set in. Ibrahim had better send someone fast.

  Her seekers brought back further net hits, and she scrolled through them—no details about the charges yet. That didn’t surprise her; she hadn’t been told, either. Some commentators were calling for her resignation anyway. Some were vigorously defending her. Most of those were independent media. The establishment, Sandy had long known, was a lost cause where she was concerned. Thankfully, the establishment had been proven wrong so many times on security issues, most Callayans didn’t take them seriously.

  Another hit caught her eye—a video link, and she opened it.

  Super cool vision!, it said. Sandy Kresnov, Callay’s hottest soldier babe, spotted dancing at Kotam Road party!

  The vision was clear enough, and it was indeed her—hard to recognise directly in the crowds and flashing lights with her shades on, but if you paid attention . . . Sandy smiled. As with most things physical she was a very good dancer, and looked good doing it. Here on the vision, someone was spraying the dancing crowds with water, everyone dripping and having a blast. The vision lasted thirty seconds, then cut. There could have been more, close-ups of her face, or tits, but there weren’t. Someone had taken the trouble to make her look good without being too intrusive, and released it just when her public image could most use the support.

  Her smile grew to a grin. She could almost get emotional at how her strongest supporters here, most of them anonymous civvies she’d never met, consistently came to her defence. No, dammit, now she was getting emotional. She wiped her eyes.

  Ibrahim did better than send someone. Barely thirty minutes later, he came himself. She was led from the interrogation room back into the main offices, where Ibrahim very pointedly returned to her her ID and her guns, in full view of all the SIBs who’d watched her come in.

  “I invoked emergency privilege,” he answered her unasked question, in the backseat of his cruiser as they flew into a cloudy midday sky. “You’re essential personnel and they’ve no business arresting you. The charges won’t be so easy to dismiss, however. It’s going to cause a stink for quite a while I’m afraid.”

  He looked at her, questioningly. “I’ll tell you later,” she promised.

  “A lot of very awful things happened on all sides of that war,” said Ibrahim. “Many of them are far too readily politicised by those seeking to make a political point against the other side.”

  “Don’t,” said Sandy, shaking her head. “Don’t abandon your objectivity just for my sake. I value it too much. I’ll tell you, and you can judge. You all can. Just not right now, because it was intended as a distraction, and it will be.”

  Ibrahim pursed his lips, and nodded. “Very well. When the current noise has faded, you can speak when you wish.”

  “They’re after Operation Patchup, aren’t they?” said Sandy. “Eternity’s envoys?”

  Ibrahim nodded. “Somehow they found out, or suspected. They’re from League Interplanetary Affairs, so they’re government.”

  “What else are they doing, aside from discrediting me?”

  “Making threats. Resumption of war seems the main thing.”

  “They can’t afford it,” Sandy scoffed. “They had riots on five worlds in the past three months, law and order problems everywhere. The only business sector booming over there right now is domestic security.”

  “Of course. But the foreign ministers are all here, and foreign ministers, like chickens, are best frightened in groups. Safe to say that the resumption of a war everyone in the Federation thought we’d won is not a popular proposition, not even to risk it.”

  “But it’s not a risk,” Sandy retorted, “the League physically can’t do it. They’d lose in weeks. The economy’s collapsed and they’ve nothing left!”

  “Well yes,” said Ibrahim, smiling at her naivety. “We rational security types know that. Foreign ministers consider their reelections and begin to cluck and lay eggs.”

  “Fuck!” Sandy exclaimed. “God damn our fucking useless security. How did they find out just the moment to send their special envoys to Callay and make threats?”

  “Probably the same way that your journalist friend found out here, only weeks ago. There are many worlds in the Federation. Keeping secrets on all of them simultaneously is hard, and beyond our control.”

  “You don’t seem that surprised,” Sandy accused him.

  Ibrahim shrugged. “It’s politics.”

  Sandy frowned. “You don’t seem all too upset about it, either.”

  Ibrahim smiled. “When have you seen me upset?” Then he waved a hand. “No, don’t answer that.” He seemed almost . . . cheerful. He saw her looking, and sighed. “Radha had her tests this morning. I just came from the hospital. The cancer is in remission.”

  Sandy stared. “It worked?”

  “It seems to have.”

  Sandy didn’t know how Siddhartha had done it. The technology was far beyond what laymen could even begin to comprehend, save to say that Radha’s cancer had been caused by one of those new cellular mutations humanity had picked up in response to generations of uplink augmentation. As synthetic organisms, GIs were packed with various synthetic microdefenses that copied human biology while breaking all kinds of normal biological rules—natural/synthetic fusion, like so much League tech. Some of that stuff could be synthesised and recreated in new, custom-designed cells and proteins to do all kinds of other stuff in regular humans. Siddhartha’s massive VR computer systems had calculated which bits would work on what (as there was no chance of a human holding all that data in his head) and come up with some drugs. A week ago, he’d applied them himself. Today was Radha’s first checkup.

  “How much reduction?” Sandy asked, holding her breath.

  “Eighty percent.” Ibrahim was beaming. Sandy laughed, and did something she’d never done to her boss before, hugging him, and kissing him on the cheek. Normally she valued the solemnity of their relationship far too much, and did not wish to belittle him, nor the rock-like reassurance of his guidance. But today, it was obvious, he didn’t care a bit.

  “Oh that’s wonderful,” she said. “Perhaps we should both break the law more often.”

  “Allah does not like me to break the law, I am certain,” said Ibrahim. “But his first command to every husband is to care for his wife.”

  “It’s a stupid law, anyway,” Sandy added. “I bet Allah thinks so, too.”

  Ibrahim laughed, a very rare sound indeed. “I bet he does.”

  Sandy was very pleased Ibrahim had chosen this day to find out Radha’s good news. It saved her from being quite so depressed when it became clear that the Operation Patchup vote was collapsing.

  She sat in Grand Council offices with some leading aides, FSA and CSA agents, and several academics who had all been leading the way on Patchup the last month, and waited for the final meetings to conclude. Every ten minutes someone on their side would message one of the
group with bad news—the debate was swaying the wrong way, foreign ministers were uncommitted, making excuses, going back on carefully worded arrangements that their permanent ambassadors had been writing the past month. There was a conversation going, here in the room, about how they might yet find some way to intervene, or do something with New Torah, once it became finally clear that Patchup was a non-starter.

  Sandy didn’t contribute much, sitting and watching the usual summer mid-afternoon rain pouring down. She thought of Eduardo, and the picture of his female GI friend. She still had it in memory storage, and recalled it now to look at once more. The girl could have been Sandy herself, League-built and young, like Eduardo. Perhaps four or five years old. What had she known, at that age? Almost nothing, and her memories were very vague, almost non-existent. Like dreams.

  She knew she should have been more concerned for the broader security issues. New Torah was a threat, in so many ways. And the Torahns themselves were suffering and dying. But if she was honest with herself, she knew that wasn’t the reason for her growing obsession. GIs were the key to this, she knew they were. The technology could go in directions that would give her no peace for the rest of her life, nor her GI friends. Eduardo had ended up here, and others would follow. She’d hoped to escape all this, but increasingly she knew she couldn’t.