Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  But she’d broken out. She hadn’t obeyed her masters. Neither had Eduardo. What was going on out there? Who exactly in New Torah was making GIs, and for what reasons? She wanted to save them, but knew it wasn’t so simple. Some of them simply didn’t deserve to be saved—not their fault, they couldn’t help being what they were, but that didn’t make an emotionless killbot any more sympathetic. But the others, the high designations like her . . .

  What if they could be turned against their masters, like she’d done for herself? What contribution would that make, towards solving the overall security problem that New Torah presented? She didn’t dare raise it here. People would look at her crazy. GIs were a problem, not a solution. They’d think she’d gone all Moses on them, “let my people free,” leading them to some promised land.

  Well. Hadn’t she? Just a little bit?

  Mustafa walked in. The security agents in the room grasped that significance, and stared at him. The others didn’t notice, and continued their glum discussion. Mustafa headed for Sandy, and beckoned her to a corner. Sandy knew it wasn’t even worth asking how he’d gotten into the Assembly Building. Mustafa had ways.

  “Director Diez,” he said quietly.

  Sandy frowned. “Director Diez what?”

  “Told one of my agents. Who told League government. Who sent Eternity. Which scuttled Operation Patchup.”

  Sandy stared. A thousand thoughts went through her mind. She found the most relevant. “Why tell me now?”

  “I only just found out. I had suspicions, which I acted upon. And I was right, though the exact source was a surprise, I’ll admit.”

  “And you’ll give me evidence? We can’t move on Diez without evidence.”

  “I know. You can have it immediately.”

  “Damn,” said Sandy, looking out the window to gather her thoughts. The room’s agents were still watching, wondering what was going on. Their hearing enhancements weren’t as good as hers, then. “We’ll have to do this quietly, can’t let the media know it came from you.”

  “Surely the Director needs to spend some more time with his family,” Mustafa suggested.

  “Yeah,” said Sandy, darkly. “Damn, I’d love to throw him in jail.” She considered him more closely. “You wanted Operation Patchup that badly?”

  “ISO did, certainly,” said Mustafa. “Now there will be trouble.”

  “League governments excel at trouble,” said Sandy, and walked to the agents, to set up a group call to Ibrahim.

  It went down quickly. Sandy wasn’t even there; the FSA handled their Director internally, and sent him home on leave. Now they were stewing on Mustafa’s evidence, she knew. It was uncontestable—encrypted files only the FSA Director had access to, traced to the possession of one of League Embassy’s staff, who was, Mustafa shared with them, ISO and well connected with various League politicians. That last was a big breach by Mustafa. ISO never revealed information on the whos and whys of Embassy postings. Until now.

  She landed her cruiser now near her own home—Canas high security district, not only where she lived, but where various high ranking Grand Council figures now lived as well. She found Ambassador Ballan in a reclining chair in his rear room by an indoor fish pond. A sunroom, with glass windows and rooftop, streaked with drumming rain.

  “Cassandra!” said the Ambassador from Nova Esperanca, putting aside his reader. “Please have a seat, Ana come and say hello, Cassandra’s here!”

  Ana was Ballan’s teenage daughter. She gave Sandy a tight hug, as she did every time she saw her, then rushed to get them some drinks and snacks. Ana knew her father was only alive because of Sandy. She’d been thinking of a career in environmental management, before. Now, she was seriously considering security.

  “You’re looking well,” said Sandy, as they sipped fruit lassi Ana had brought them.

  “Not so bad,” Ballan admitted. “I’m looking forward to leaving the house in a few weeks. Margarite has promised me a football match.”

  He still wore a robe, with lots of bandages beneath it. The last time Sandy had seen him, he’d joked he had enough synthetic micros in his body to start their own evolutionary patterns.

  “I hear we have an FSA problem,” said Ballan.

  “We do,” Sandy affirmed. “It does present an opportunity.”

  “It does indeed.” Ballan thought about it, sipping his drink. “Will the CSA agree?”

  “They won’t like it,” said Sandy. “Hell, I won’t like it. Or not all of it. But in the time I’ve been working with the FSA, I’ve come to appreciate how important it actually is.”

  “There’s nothing like a dysfunctional organisation to make you appreciate its importance,” Ballan agreed. “It’s only the ones that work well that get taken for granted.”

  “And treated with contempt,” Sandy added, thinking of the protestors. And the SIB.

  “Will Ibrahim agree to go?”

  “I think so. We’ve spoken of it.”

  Ballan raised his eyebrows. “You have?” Sandy nodded. “And?”

  Sandy smiled. “My confidences with Ibrahim are unbreakable. Let’s just say I’m confident he’ll take the position if offered. It is just down the road, really. Its jurisdiction overlaps with his current responsibilities. And now that the Grand Council is on Callay, I’m sure most Callayans will feel safer with an FSA that actually works.”

  “Except for President Singh.”

  “He doesn’t count.”

  She went home for dinner—Thai curry she’d cooked the night before. Home felt empty. It had been her, Vanessa, Rhian and Ari living here together. Then, within the space of a year and a half, it was just her. Various of her GI buddies came over often enough, sometimes to visit, sometimes for a night or two. Particularly the men, of late. But they all liked to live together in big groups, as they were familiar from the League, while she was too senior ranked to be allowed to live with so many potential security risks even if she’d wanted to.

  She’d never minded solitude before—had sought it out in fact, in the League, where quarters were crowded and time alone something to be treasured. Then she’d come to Tanusha, and wound up in a communal living environment, which felt something like she was used to, only much more fun. And now she came home to no one. Not even Jean Pierre, Vanessa’s little pet bunbun, who now clambered at night through the trees surrounding Vanessa and Phillippe’s house.

  She ate dinner in front of the display, flicking through various news items her seekers had identified as interesting to her. She put music on—something African. It reminded her of the Kotam Road party, and the end of the world. There were a couple of bongo drums in the corner, previously Vanessa’s, but left for Sandy in light of Phillippe’s overflowing supply of instruments. Sandy thought of Poole and his piano. She could play drums, surely. Rhythm was instinctive; all fighters knew rhythm in one form or another. Timing, punctuation. Surely she could play drums as easily as she picked up racquetball.

  “But what if you’re hoping for emotion, and all you get is a dull, empty thud?” she heard Poole say. The food tasted sour in her mouth. She turned off the music, and the TV, and gazed at nothing.

  Vanessa called, her interlink codes as familiar as her voice. “Hey babe. How’s things?”

  “Okay. How was your day?”

  Vanessa proceeded to tell her. It was typical of days when they didn’t see much of each other, though there weren’t many of those. And sometimes even of days when they had, and one would call the other in the evening to continue a conversation from earlier at work.

  As Vanessa talked, Sandy checked her uplink messages, left by people whose concerns were either not urgent, or who didn’t know her well enough to access her direct link. Most were work, a few social, and one . . . one’s ID codings she didn’t like at all. Not in her in-box.

  She opened it as Vanessa talked—Vanessa wouldn’t hear, and Sandy could listen to two conversations at once. Sometimes three, but only if two were boring.


  “Hello Ms GI,” said a male voice. Unfamiliar. Trying to sound sinister, with amused self-importance. “I see that the Director’s wife got better real fast. That’s good to hear. But now I’m concerned, because you broke the law, didn’t you? That’s very naughty of you. I wonder how many people in this city would like to know that both you and your precious Director broke the law?”

  Sandy sipped her drink. “ . . . so Hashmi comes back to me with the wrong fucking manifest,” Vanessa was saying, “and can’t understand why that pisses me off so much . . . do you know Hashmi?”

  “Worked with her,” Sandy confirmed. “Bit of a ditz.”

  “Yeah no kidding. So I send her to get the A2 manifest, and you won’t fucking believe what she said . . .”

  “Now I’m a reasonable man,” the faux sinister voice continued. “Nobody needs to know what you did. But I’m a part of a very respectable organisation in Tanusha, and we control access to the kinds of things you and your Director are pushing. I’m a businessman; I might even let you in on a cut. All very quiet, you understand? You don’t really want to be in my business, because it’s bad for your reputation. Better you hand your business over to me. Otherwise some friends of yours might end up getting hurt. You’re a very popular girl. You can’t protect all your friends, can you?”

  “So then Rajendra comes in,” Vanessa was continuing, “and of course Hashmi’s his favorite, and he’s upset at me that I yelled at Hashmi, so now I’m dealing with two five-year-olds, as though one weren’t enough . . .”

  Sandy got up, still listening on both sides of her brain, and put her meal back in the refrigerator. Then she went upstairs to her bedroom and opened the closet.

  “If you want to talk,” the man’s voice continued, “just return this call. Peace, Commander.”

  Sandy searched for an outfit. She actually had a few that went all the way into feminine and impractical, not that she ever wore them, but shopping with female friends had a way of sometimes degenerating into a spree of wasted money. Tonight . . . well, she couldn’t go completely slutty, she didn’t want too much attention. She just wanted to blend in with a very different crowd.

  “So I heard the SIB arrested you!” Vanessa said cheerfully as Sandy dressed, her own story ending. “In the middle of your conference talk!”

  “Yeah, I’m actually not allowed to talk about it,” Sandy half-lied. The rule was that she shouldn’t, but it was well understood that those rules rarely applied to Vanessa. “So it’ll make for a very interesting tale in a few days, but not right now. Sorry.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Sandy smiled. Vanessa of course had led off with her own story first to cheer her up; it was the war crimes charge she was most concerned about. Not that she’d believe a word of it, of course, but she knew how, with Sandy, to approach these things sideways. “I’m fine. I’m just going to go out for a few hours.”

  “Romantic rendezvous?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. There’s just a show I’d like to see.”

  “You want me to come?”

  “No,” Sandy scolded. “You stay at home with your poor husband. I already feel guilty for how often I drag you away from him.”

  “Well, okay then. What are you wearing?”

  “And here I thought you were no longer a lesbian.”

  Vanessa laughed. “I was never a lesbian, I was bi. But it wasn’t that kind of question. What are you wearing?”

  “Nirvana” was probably the least original name for a club Sandy could think of. This was Tanusha, where hedonism, faith and consumerism were interchangeable, and there was a Nirvana fashion label, Nirvana hair stylists, a Nirvana jewellery outlet, Nirvana chocolates and, of course, a Nirvana series of VR sex sims that she’d heard were good, but wouldn’t work on her because VR sims never did. Besides, none of it was as good as a very old rock band by the same name she’d found archived many years ago.

  Much better than the crap she could hear booming from behind the doors of the Nirvana club. She faked a serious ID to her portable, which she flashed at the bouncers after skipping the long queue. They scanned it—big, heavily augmented dudes who these days were getting more dangerous by the week. In case the ID didn’t do it alone, Sandy put a hand on her hip as she waited, pulling aside the leather jacket to reveal the bra top underneath, and a lot of very shapely, hard midriff. Rhian and Vanessa had insisted she buy the top. It was an obvious fit for her, and they were both perhaps a little jealous. Not that she was actually big, she sometimes teased them, it was just that she had a pair. There was no way the bouncers would recognise her, her hair fuzzed up from the fifteen-minute salon treatment, half her face hidden behind large, fashionable shades. Bouncers didn’t care about faces, just net IDs, clothes and bodies.

  The bouncers let her through, to disgust and exclamations from the queue. Keeping the daughter of a senior Tourism Department bureaucrat waiting could have consequences. She strode in, hips swinging, feeling just a little stupid but knowing that her usual stride set off alarm bells with some well trained bouncers, the ones who knew combat augmentations when they saw them. She pushed through the doors and network-scanned, finding several ways into the Nirvana club’s construct, all of which turned out to be lure traps. No matter, she backed out and kept searching.

  Inside, the club was like clubs everywhere—dark with flashing lights, booming music and dancing crowds amidst holographic effects on dry ice. Dancing girls writhed on platforms about the walls in fluoro body paint. All the lights jumped and flashed abruptly in time with a music change, and all the dancers changed with it. Sandy guessed it was all very hallucinatory and dream-tripping for regular humans. But flashing lights and crashing sounds reminded her brain too much of battle, and she half-slid into combat reflex, separating bodies and motions into clear, distinct locations and patterns. This was why high-end VR never worked on her either; her brain kept breaking down the routines into component parts. Sometimes even with paintings, she couldn’t appreciate the picture because she was too busy noticing the brush strokes.

  She moved through the crowds, eyes flicking from face to face, then up at the higher balcony, and the people there. She knew this was the place. The signature on the message she’d received was too clear. The biotech laws were changing fast, but all kinds of advanced biotech was still illegal on Callay and in most of the Federation. Illegal meant underground, and in Tanusha, the underground controlled most of the trade. Usually they just did business. Many of them, like Anita and Pushpa, were entirely above board, and only dabbled in the illegal stuff in their after-hours, like most of the population. But then there were the gangs, who insisted they were businessmen too, but as they traded in illegal stuff, they tended to deal with disputes in illegal ways as well. Ways that involved sticks and knives, and sometimes even guns. Clubs made an excellent cover for activities—a hangout for all the usual characters, and part of a perfect laundering system that began in entertainment and gambling, and extended eventually to biotech services and even property. From her time with Ari, Sandy had come to learn a lot about it. From her time in SWAT, she’d busted up a few of them, too.

  That time had given her some interesting codes as well. She tried a few of them, working at the pulsating barriers before her internal vision until one faded and admitted her. Her personal tacnet compiled a building schematic for her, but she didn’t access too far too early. She wasn’t a sneak like Ari. If she went all in, she could gain control of pretty much any network function she wanted, but she’d set off every alarm as well, and smash them all into submission.

  She climbed the stairs from the dance floor to the upper balcony. Big men in suits let her through, not in the habit of turning back girls who looked like her. The upper balcony was full of them, sexy, pretty things drawn by the shine of jewellery and the smell of cash. Most were wearing a lot less than Sandy, but Sandy’s athletic curves made tight, sparkle-pattern jeans look hot enough. And black leather against her mostly bare torso beneath . . . he
ll, even she found that sexy. She slipped easily between them, feeling the gaze of the men on this VIP level slipping over her, and knowing that so long as she kept the hips swinging, it was like a force field that would prevent them from seeing. Men like these weren’t accustomed to women like her in places like this, and would assume she was like these others. It was a mental block, stopping them from recognising her. She’d had a similar experience as a soldier in the League. Here, they expected her to simper. There, they’d expected her to obey.

  She moved through the doorway from the balcony, and kept strolling. In side rooms, men and women gambled, or drank, or did fancy VR, or fucked. All just expected that she was where she should be. A man fondled her ass in passing. She whacked his in reply, playfully, and kept going.

  Next floor up? Her schematic suggested so. Lots of net traffic, and the heaviest encryption. She’d break it, but she didn’t need to know what was in it, just where it was. She took the next stairs, and came up on the higher corridor.

  There, walking toward her amidst a group of serious dudes, was Adash Radni. Handsomely dressed in the Tanushan style, smart suits with open collars, expensive and informal at the same time. Jewellery, but not garish, not vulgar. Here even gangsters had style. Designer facial hair, laser trimmed in lines so sharp they nearly bled. They did not walk, they strolled—gaits that cried out with heavy augmentation. Most people, confronting this lot coming down a club corridor, would stand aside. All men, of course. Tanushan underworld gangs didn’t do gender equality; the men were disinterested and the women even more so. Sandy was always astonished at the number of women who liked it that way.

  A few of the group looked up from their walking conversation and saw her. Most ignored her, too frequently surrounded by pretty girls to bother checking out one more. But one noticed, and frowned. Then froze. Radni seemed to smell something wrong, and looked up also. He saw her. Sandy calmly took off her glasses.