Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  “A hundred is a lot, even for you,” Vanessa said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Sandy sighed. “Probably the worst fight I was ever in. I gave myself one chance in fifty.” She paused. “Guess I underestimated myself. But I had some holes in me when it was over. Bit of a mess. I made a few of the surviving techs help patch me up. Then locked them up, and left.”

  “Blowing the station behind you?” Chandrasekar asked. Sandy nodded. “After those people helped you? Civilians?”

  “Yes,” said Sandy. “Recruitment. Manning a slaughterhouse. Several thousand GIs, easy, lots of higher designations among them. Mass murderers, every one.”

  Chandrasekar leaned forward, very serious. “But, Sandy. Defenseless civilians? Who’d surrendered, then helped you when you were wounded?”

  “Not by choice,” Sandy said coldly. Dammit Chandi, don’t go there, thought Vanessa. But he was too far away for her to warn with a glance. And being Chandi, would probably ignore her.

  “Cassandra,” he pressed, “you’re accused of being a monster. Now, we know you’re no monster. I’ve seen your compassion so many times. But you’re asking us to defend you from these terrible charges on the grounds that what you did was actually justified, and I’m just trying to understand . . .”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything,” said Sandy. “I’m telling you what happened. Whether you feel that makes me worthy of your defence is entirely up to you.”

  “Fine, just help me to understand how . . .”

  Vanessa saw the snap coming just before it happened. “Because they’re my people!” Sandy snarled at Chandrasekar, with more venom than Vanessa had ever seen her use. Her eyes blazed, and Chandrasekar shrank back into his chair in shock. “And if you murder my people, you’re gonna fucking die!”

  Deathly silence. Sandy sipped her juice, not missing a beat. That was almost as scary as the temper. It wasn’t an outburst. There was no fast recovery, no recognition of something gone wrong, no apology. As though the fury had always been there, just below the surface.

  “Anyhow,” she said, in a much the same, though calmer, tone. “That’s my story. You’re going to want to discuss it, and say things you’d probably prefer I wasn’t here for. That’s okay. Take your time.”

  She slipped off the bench, and walked. Her path detoured past Vanessa first, extending a hand. Vanessa took it. It wasn’t an apology so much, just a reassurance. “I know you understand,” it meant. Vanessa nodded slowly to herself as Sandy walked to the door, and closed it behind her. She did understand quite well.

  Chandrasekar let out a short breath. “Damn it,” he said softly. “I’ve never been scared of her before today.”

  “Rest it, Chandi,” said Vanessa. “I’d have done the same thing.”

  He looked at her, frowning. “Would you really?”

  “Absolutely. Without even having to understand what those years were like for her, I know I would. CDF may have folded, but I’m still technically a soldier. If anyone did that to my guys, I wouldn’t care who they were. I’d have killed them.”

  “No chance of a trial out there,” Obango added.

  “Sure, but that’s not it,” said Vanessa. “It’s just soldiers in war. I don’t like doing this to you, Chandi, but I will say it—unless you’ve been there, you don’t know. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for my guys. If anyone hurts them . . .”

  “Most of those the station at Tropez killed weren’t her guys, going by what she said,” Chandrasekar countered. “Just this one friend of hers, Jonti.”

  “Which brings in the rest of her life at that point,” said Vanessa. “She wanted so badly to believe in the League cause. Every soldier wants to believe in what they’re fighting for. But her real investment was in the guys she fought with, not her commanders, not the big picture. And those commanders treated her guys like shit, and threw them away like toilet paper. The resentment built for years, she was trying to justify it back and forth in her own head for a long time, and then when it finally dawned on her that everything up to that point had been a lie . . .” she sighed. She didn’t like getting into this with Sandy too much for a reason.

  “Well can you imagine the guilt?” she finished. “She’s not just mad at the League for what they did to her and her people, she’s mad at herself for not figuring it out sooner. Look, she’s my best friend in the whole world, and I know her as the kindest and most generous person . . . but that’s all wrapped up in some very dark stuff. She deals with it wonderfully, almost all of the time, but it’s still there, and even I don’t go prodding around in there without invitation. If she’s got issues, you can hardly blame her. And unlike all of us, she really is death on legs, and getting mad enough to kill is not just a hypothetical for her.”

  “Well, I’ll be real careful, then,” Chandrasekar murmured.

  “No that’s not it at all,” Vanessa snapped in frustration. “She wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head, and you know it. It’s just that there are a lot of people in her immediate environment who attack and try to hurt her in one way or another, and she has to be very restrained most of the time. When she finally does get a real enemy she can hurt, it’s almost a relief. She’s not scared of getting hurt herself, she’s scared that like the last time, she’ll miss something that will cause her friends to get hurt. She tries to protect everyone but she doesn’t always know how, and that scares her, because the last time in the League, a whole bunch of her friends died because she didn’t figure out what was going on quickly enough. Which is why she hasn’t spoken of Tropez Station until now, not even with me, because she can’t bear recalling how this horrible thing was going on under her nose all that time, and she didn’t pick it. People who threaten her friends just make her furious. That’s as angry as she gets. And that’s what you just saw.”

  Three days of listening to Callay newsfeeds on the way to station convinced Ari that he should avoid Balaji Airport on the way down, and go via Gordon instead. He abandoned the FSA Agents at Nehru Station as they took a runner out to their spaceplane and a direct way down. His own flight would give him a twelve-hour layover; it was the earliest available on short notice.

  He checked into a hotel with rucksack and luggage, not accustomed to travelling heavy and despising space travel in general. That last gravity shift had left him more than queasy. A robo porter wheeled his bags up three levels, then along the narrow hall to a little room with noisy ventilation and no windows. Ari had never been an especially outdoorsy person, but now he was desperate for some sunlight. Space was so incredibly big, but every room you stayed in while travelling through it was claustrophobically small.

  Locked in his newest cell, he opened a line down to the surface. Check messages? Shit no, he didn’t trust orbital uplinks for a second. Everything was filtered. Still, he could call people. He called Ibrahim. Ibrahim was busy, wouldn’t be available for a while, could the secretary take a message? He tried Chandrasekar instead, no more luck. Ibrahim, the newslinks had told him on the way in, was being promoted to FSA Director. Working with the FSA of late, Ari knew he should be delighted—the FSA might actually start working properly now. But Ari was Callayan through and through, and the thought of the CSA without Ibrahim filled him with dread. Chandrasekar was being moved up to Director. That wasn’t so bad . . . but hell of a big pair of shoes to fill. Hell of a big pair.

  He contacted Naidu instead.

  “Ari, dear boy,” said Naidu, looking rumpled and deadpan as usual on the vidphone. “You’re back, are you?”

  “In orbit.”

  “Wonderful, good for you. How’s space travel suiting you?”

  “Fucking hate it. Where is everyone?”

  “Chaos down here Ari, everything’s in a state.”

  “So what’s new?”

  “Quite a lot actually. The old man’s in Parliament for confirmation hearings, Chandi’s doing all the paperwork, there’s war crimes trials upcoming, we’ve appeals pending, I’m up to my neck in lawyers and we’
ve journalists literally hunting us around the grounds.”

  “Sounds great,” said Ari. “I’d like to speak to Sandy. Is she around?”

  “Haven’t seen her. Not taking calls lately, can’t say I blame her.”

  “Is she okay, do you know?”

  “About the war crimes nonsense?” Naidu’s expression was all disdain. “Absolutely. Complete beat-up, nothing to it. But as you might imagine, she’s not making herself available, and we’re facilitating that. How was Pyeongwha?”

  “Frightening,” said Ari. “Tell Ibrahim I need to speak with him at the earliest, in his capacity as either FSA or CSA Director, either one’s important.”

  “Will do,” said Naidu.

  “Oh, another thing,” said Ari before he could sign off, “why aren’t you being considered for CSA Director? I mean, you’re senior to Chandi.”

  Naidu smiled. “I’m old, Ari. Being old, I’m quite happy to stay in my little garden and prune the roses, so to speak.”

  “You’d have made a good Director.”

  “So will Chandi,” Naidu said firmly.

  “We’ll see. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, and Ari? Don’t let the journalists grab you on the way in, yes?”

  Ari slept for a while, then woke to take the shuttle. A trip up to the core, more weightless time as the crowd of civvie passengers was loaded, then a very bumpy reentry ride down. At Gordon he went through customs like everyone else—though his fancy passport did let him skip the queue—collected priority luggage and wheeled it straight for the taxi stand. There were media waiting in arrivals, for whom he didn’t know. But him they ignored—they’d tried to do stories from time to time on Commander Kresnov’s mysterious lover, but Ari valued his anonymity on par with his testicles. It had been one of several points of friction between them, when she’d wanted to go out, and he’d refused for fear of attention. She wanted to be a normal girl and have fun. He appreciated that. But normality had never been high on his own list of priorities.

  The taxi cruiser charged his card some obscene fee and lifted him off the ramp, forest green sprawling away from the spaceport perimeter below. Ahead, across all the horizon, hundreds and hundreds of towers, and air traffic so thick it looked from this distance like mist. Home.

  He checked messages on the way in, and got overwhelming thousands. Just too damn popular, he thought, sifting through the masses. Mostly friends and business, which with him was often the same thing . . . a few ex-girlfriends, a few potentially new ex-girlfriends, a handful of death threats, the usual. A bunch of very interesting leads, people who needed to be researched, others begging to be arrested . . . it frustrated him that he’d been away for so long and hadn’t been able to deal with it. Like a gardener returned from a long absence to find the hedges untrimmed, the grass knee-high, weeds and dead leaves everywhere. Travelling was so overrated, he’d be quite happy if he never left Tanusha again.

  He searched all the network for Sandy, and found not a trace. He tried all the tricks, all the encryption codes, all the hidden markers and trail seekers . . . nothing. Very few people as network-active as Sandy could just disappear like that, not from him, not in his city. She really didn’t want to be found.

  That left one obvious route. He locked into the CSA’s network, past the usual multitudes of querying barriers, then into SWAT and more barriers, and found SWAT One was on deployment in Ludhiana. As active CSA he had codes that could break into even active tacnet . . . which was up, he found, and he dialed into their coms. And called. And called.

  It disconnected.

  “Oh, come on, Ricey,” he exclaimed. “Don’t beat me up, this is important.”

  He tried again. Vanessa would see the indicator light, would know who was calling. Again it went dead.

  “Fuck.” Girlfriends would stick together. He’d have to take more direct action.

  SWAT One was deployed around a large demonstration in Ludhiana District’s main park. Or rather a series of demonstrations, Ari thought, flashing ID at ground level security and taking the elevator of a parkside building to the top. The building had rooftop gardens, like many flat-top towers in Tanusha, their coupolas emptied of their usual tea garden patrons, and Ari walked a path to the edge of the rooftop. There on the edge sat several figures in deadly powered armour, rifles strapped to their backs, observing the crowds in the park below with graphically enhanced vision.

  Ari identified the smallest, walked up behind and tapped a shoulder. “Go away,” said the armour suit.

  “No,” said Ari, and tapped the shoulder again. Vanessa turned on him, flipped up her visor and regarded him sullenly. “Hi,” he said. Vanessa still looked sullen. Ari held up the flower he’d picked from the garden, hopefully.

  Vanessa sighed, took it and hugged him. In bone-crushing armour, that wasn’t exactly comfortable. “Hey,” she said. “Just get back?”

  “Yeah.” She resumed her seat—a chair from the tea garden—and resumed her vigil. “Fun demonstration.”

  “Oh, hysterical. See this group over here?” She pointed to a far corner of the park, on the roads about which were a lot of police vehicles and flashing lights. “Callayan nationalists, demanding the FSA be abolished. This group over here,” she pointed again, “in the middle, they’re protesting biotech and GI immigration, it’s like one of those two for the price of one deals. And here nearest us, they’re demanding war crimes perpetrators be punished, because violence is bad, apparently. Naturally, they began throwing things at the poor bloody cops an hour ago.”

  “It’s good to be home,” said Ari. “So who called SWAT?”

  “Whole bunch of death threats, Feddie nationalists threatening Callayan nationalists, pro-biotech anarchists threatening the antis . . . that’s your crowd isn’t it?”

  “Oh, hell yes, where’s my black bandana?”

  “A few threats looked viable . . . hang on.” She clicked on her mike. “Rani, can you just check that fourth floor window, on my grid fix now? I can see movement. Yeah, just keep an eye on it, get a cop to climb some stairs and check on it.” She pointed to a chair alongside, and Ari sat. Vanessa commanded this rooftop and all those surrounding; one didn’t do anything without permission. “You looking for Sandy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Personal or professional?” Her visor was back down, sunlight glinting off a mean visage, voice a little tinny on the speakers. She wasn’t doing it deliberately to distance him, more that she had advanced visuals in that visor, and needed to see. Mostly.

  “Never done a good job of separating those two in my life.”

  “Me neither. You can’t have her back, you know.”

  “I . . .” Ari frowned, not really knowing what to say to that. “I know.”

  “I mean, I think I know why you left.”

  “You do?”

  “Ari, you were obsessing about Pyeongwha for the best part of a year. You think it’s your business. You think all this stuff is your business. You get pissed when people mess it up because you’re not there, and they don’t do as good a job as you do. So you took it on yourself to save a planet, and relationships get in the way. You’ve never been a relationship kind of guy, anyway. I was amazed you lasted that long.”

  Ari ran a hand through his hair. “Hmm.” She was half right. “Where is she?”

  “Plus, you worried about what you’d find, and that that relationship in particular meant you’d lose your objectivity.” Okay, Ari conceded, more than half right. Sandy was right, Vanessa had missed her true calling as a psych. “So I’m pissed at you, sure, but I forgive you too, because I was there on Pyeongwha, and that was hard, what you did. So I sympathise, but I’m telling you all the same, you can’t have her back now Pyeongwha is over.”

  “Well, firstly,” said Ari, “Pyeongwha isn’t over, not by half. And secondly, who says I want her back?”

  The visored, armoured face turned to look at him. “I do, because I know you, and every other girl will seem boring t
o you after her.” Well now you’re just projecting, Ari nearly said, but refrained. Vanessa returned her gaze to the crowds below. “And I won’t let you. She doesn’t, you know, emotionalise this stuff like we do. Non-GIs. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. And just because it doesn’t affect her in the same way it affects a non-GI, she knows you’re not a GI, so she’s wondering what you were feeling, and why she wasn’t important enough to you, and it’s confusing and complicated. She doesn’t need this right now, so don’t even try.”

  “Look, you’re a good friend to her,” Ari tried. “And I hope you’ll want to remain a good friend to me, whatever else happens. But there’s also business. I need to talk to her about Pyeongwha; she has insights into that stuff. Where is she?”

  Ari had always thought surfing would be hard. He hadn’t expected that the hardest bit would just be paddling out through the waves. They hadn’t looked enormous from the shore, but lying flat on his hired longboard, they towered over him. A wall of foaming water rushed into him, tipping the board up, then upending him. He struggled back on top and resumed paddling, only to be knocked off by a second one while he was still getting his breath back. He swallowed some water and coughed madly, losing breath, while more broken waves sent him back toward the beach. Great, now he was back where he’d started.

  He tried again. He was fit—partly from the combat exercises that he’d become very good at since living with Sandy, Vanessa and Rhian had made them seem like a good idea—and partly from the standard micro augments that accentuated every bit of exercise and made it count for triple. The two women he’d been with since leaving Sandy had been suitably impressed . . . which he had to admit he’d enjoyed, because living in a house with three of the Federation’s most dangerous women had been enough to knock any man’s ego down a few pegs. It had been nice to rediscover that by regular male standards he was pretty buff. Just not buff enough to impress those three. Or maybe they’d just enjoyed teasing him, whatever.

  But fit or not, several minutes later, he was still struggling. He rolled under another wave, resurfaced amidst the churning wash, and found he’d gone another twenty meters backward. How the fuck did surfers do it? A man could drown out here.