Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  “Yes they will,” said Gunter, gazing toward the lights of corporate territory, between various buildings ahead. “I know I will.”

  Danya said nothing, back to the wall beside the window, with no interest in the view.

  Gunter’s com unit flickered. Gunter frowned, and looked at the hand screen, dialling frequencies and adjustments in his head. “That’s broadband,” he observed. “Must be corporate, anyone else would be dead in seconds.”

  “Can you put it on?” Sandy asked.

  Gunter took Danya’s place by the window so he could show the screen without that illumination registering on any distant scan. Danya crouched by Sandy, watching. On the little handscreen was a man in a suit.

  “That’s Tarasan,” Danya and Gunter said simultaneously. Emilio Tarasan, that could only be. Chairman, Chancelry Corporation, New Torahn Division.

  “Apparently,” Tarasan told the screen, with an air of dry contempt, “there are violent, dangerous people out in Droze tonight who seek to attack Chancelry Corporation and its allies. As you are now observing, recent attacks have been answered in full. Our retribution shall be harsh, and further security measures are being pursued even as I speak.”

  He paused, leaning forward a little, with great seriousness. A square faced man, heavy browed, humourless. “It gives the corporation no pleasure to do this.”

  “Bullshit,” said Danya.

  “But corporate policy is clear and unwavering—security is paramount, and we will accept no alternative but total security. Should any attack be received, civilian casualties from our response shall be enormous. I appeal to the common sense of the ordinary citizens of Droze, do not allow this folly. Stop them, or alert us to their location. Rewards shall be high, we’ve proven that in the past. Penalties shall be final.

  “Furthermore, I would finally address the leader of last night’s unprovoked attack. Chancelry Corporation has in custody someone dear to those close to you. Remember that. I’ll say no more.”

  The screen flickered, and then the message began to repeat. Gunter silenced it.

  Sandy made a face. “Well, he’s dead,” she said sourly. “He’s made my list.”

  Danya looked terrified. “Kiril,” he breathed.

  “We’ll get him out, Danya.”

  “Sandy you can’t!” Danya exclaimed. “They’ll kill Kiril!”

  “Danya, listen for a moment . . .”

  “No! No more listening . . .” he made to get up, but Sandy grabbed him, pulled him back down.

  “No sudden movements,” she reminded him.

  There was no use struggling in that grip, but Danya gritted his teeth, pressing against it. “Danya. Danya, stop.” He stopped, breathing hard. Sandy put her forehead against his. “Look, kid. I know you’re scared. But Tarasan just made a huge mistake. Relations with the other corporations are shaky, and he just dropped his bundle. I don’t know how much the other corporations know about Chancelry’s GI experiments. I’m betting a lot of them don’t like it but have gone along with it until now . . . but it makes Chancelry the most powerful of the bunch. They won’t like that, and now Chancelry’s causing them trouble, too.

  “I can get my message out. I have enough intel now to get the Federation coming down on this world pretty hard, and they’ll all be neck deep then. I can stop that. I just want Chancelry to stop, that’s all, and one of those other corporations can give them to me.”

  “You’re playing games with Kiril’s life!” Danya shouted, fighting away from her. Sandy let him, and he knelt by her side. “That’s my brother you’re playing with!”

  “Danya. I didn’t take you for a naive boy. Don’t be naive now. What do you think I am?” Danya said nothing, staring at her. “This is what I do, Danya. Whatever you might want me to be, and whatever I’ve come to feel for you, Svet and Kiril, this is what I am. Now, I can save Kiril’s life. But there are GIs dying in there, in all sorts of horrible ways, and I just can’t allow it. I can’t allow this to be all that my people are, in human society. Objects to be experimented on. Our lives must have value, Danya. Do you think I should just live with that?”

  “I don’t care!” Danya retorted, his voice trembling. “That’s my brother’s life! My family’s all I’ve got, and it’s not the same!”

  “So when you say you care about me, is that the only reason why? Because I might protect you, Svet and Kiril? Because I might do something for you? Is that really affection, or is that just selfishness?”

  Danya didn’t know what to say, his eyes darting. Hell of a tough question to ask the kid, in his circumstance. Sandy nearly hated herself for asking it. But she was asking him to consider the difference between being a boy and being a man. That was what parent-type figures were supposed to do. Wasn’t it?

  Danya got up. Sandy caught his arm. “Let me go,” Danya muttered.

  “It’s not safe out there, Danya.”

  “It’s never been safe out there. I survived five years on my own before you got here, then you got Kiril kidnapped and now you’re going to get him killed. I can do without your help.”

  His stare was cold, his manner abruptly less childish by the second. It hurt about as badly as anything anyone had ever said to her. Sandy let him go. He moved quickly to the door and disappeared.

  Sandy squeezed her eyes shut and leaned her head against the wall. When she opened her eyes, Gunter was before her on one knee, awaiting her response. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  Mother or soldier? Whatever Danya thought, she could see only one way to get Kiril back and shut down Chancelry. Abandon her goal, just to save Kiril? Ridiculous to even think it. How many civilians had already died in this mess? Who was she to decide that one was more important than all the others?

  No, that path was impossible. She was a soldier. Pain was in the job description, and this pain was just one more she would bear.

  “I want a secure com line to Dhamsel Corporation,” she said. “We’ll route it remotely, directional link on a micro-UAV. They can torch it, won’t cost us anything, but I think they’ll want to listen. And I want that uplink to Antibe Station. My team should have arrived by now. We need to get the latest report back to Callay ASAP.”

  “No deal, Ms Kresnov,” said Dhamsel CEO Patana in her earpiece. “I’ll take my chances with the Federation Fleet.” The sarcasm suggested how little he thought of that possibility.

  “You might not live that long,” said Sandy, munching a snack bar from the store shelf. “You’ll have to take your chances with me first.”

  “I’ll risk it,” said Patana, with contempt. “The fact that you’re talking to me now shows clear enough that you can’t break our defences.”

  “Can,” said Sandy, still eating. “I don’t know if you know my life history, Mr Patana, but I’m pretty much knee deep in blood by now. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to kill everyone. Again.” She put a foot up on the stool opposite at the bar. “I want Chancelry. You give me them, I’ll leave you out of it. They’re doing things to GIs over there that I object to. I’m going to stop it, and that’ll leave you top of the tree here on Pantala. Win-win, as I see it.”

  “You know, Ms Kresnov, fuck you. The day I cave in to the pathetic threats of a Feddie skinjob who’s upset because a few of her plastic pals lost a few bits next door . . . you know, you all deserve it, you’re not good for anything else.”

  “Well,” said Sandy, taking another bite as Gunter made some coffee behind the bar, “I’d like to congratulate you on making my list.”

  “What list?”

  “My kill list. No one’s ever survived it yet, and buddy . . .” she gave an amazed laugh, “. . . you’re on it. Have a nice final few hours, and if you change your mind, you know my frequency.”

  She cut off, and sipped the coffee Gunter put in front of her. The store was dark and deserted; most of Droze was in shelters or basements, sleeping, or trying to.

  “Let’s see if we can reorient UAV3 down to mid-west, get a l
ine of sight on Navaran Corp, get Mr Wellington on the line,” she said.

  Gunter nodded, and began making adjustments on his hand unit—they had a system set up: transmission from here on the local building network to the rooftop unit Gunter had set up, which made a directional laser com to the small network of mini UAVs they had flying tonight, little more than the size of insects, matte black and hovering behind buildings, nearly impossible to detect.

  An explosion lit up the night outside, then a thud that shook the windows. Then another, further away.

  “Patana’s not happy,” Gunter observed. Sandy snorted, sipped her coffee.

  An explosion hit the street right outside, blasting the windows in a shower of glass. Sandy shielded her coffee, not wanting glass or dust in it.

  “Seems pretty frightened, for a guy who’s not scared of my threats,” she remarked. As dust swirled in through the store, coating her hair and jacket. She took another sip as more explosions walked away, giant footsteps falling across further neighbourhoods. “We still connected?”

  Gunter nodded. Then frowned, looking at his display. “Message traffic from near the Chancelry neutral zone. Put it on?”

  Sandy indicated yes. The unit connected, and now she could hear chatter. A couple of GIs whose names she didn’t know, talking on directional com about activity in Chancelry.

  “Dahisu,” she said, “this is Sandy, what’s going on?”

  “Looks like gunfire,” said Dahisu.

  Gunfire? “That information might be useful to me if I knew where it was coming from?” Sandy suggested. Some of these guys hadn’t seen real combat in years, if they ever had. Their com etiquette was a little scratchy.

  “Chancelry HQ. You want me to feed it through?” And before she could reply, “Whoa, big explosion.”

  “Inside Chancelry HQ?” Sandy had been doing this too long to be bothered wondering what was happening. She had to see; guessing was pointless.

  The feed came through, vision carried on laser com . . . and now she could see a blast taking out an upper floor. Another, smaller pop, removing one window.

  “That’s anti-personnel,” she observed. What the hell was going on? The visual feed shifted to another building, rapid strobe flashing, heavy machine gun fire. Now she could see ricochets. And more flashes, moving from window to window through the building.

  “Someone’s clearing that building floor,” Dahisu observed. “It’s not us, unless Sandy’s doing something she didn’t tell us about?”

  “Not me, no,” said Sandy. Trouble in Chancelry? She was still figuring how to get through the defences. Was someone inside saving her the trouble? The only people that could possibly be . . . but no. She shouldn’t leap to that conclusion. That was an old dream, and a dangerous one. A dream she wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to come true. “Keep an eye on the network perimeters,” she said urgently. “Whoever it is might be trying to bring the barriers down.”

  Suddenly there was a new broadband transmission. The com booster said it came straight from Chancelry, but the vision, when it came up, was not some Chancelry corporate suit sneering at her. This was shaky cam vision, filled with muzzle flashes and explosions, currently sheltering by a corner as other people exchanged fire nearby. The firefight was moving fast, dark shapes leaping past, then exchanges further away, and shooting in this corridor ceased. GIs, making rapid flanking moves, as only GIs could.

  The cam flashed around, to resolve on a woman’s face. Brown skin, shaved head, wrapped in a thin bandage. Rishi. Staring at the camera, with hard intent.

  “Hey, Sandy!” she said. “You coming or what?”

  “Rishi got out!” Kiet was shouting on the network from somewhere up ahead. Sandy sat on the back of the truck tray as it bounced and roared along broken, dusty streets, no lights and hoping no one at the cross streets would be stupid enough to be out this pre-dawn morning. “Your drug must have worked! Home Guard didn’t report her missing, probably too embarrassed!”

  “She must have got back through the barriers,” someone else added. “They’d have recognised her, let her in, she must have convinced them she was friendly . . .”

  “Damn, Sandy!” said Kiet, excitement obvious in his voice. “What did you tell her?”

  “Enough to make her angry,” said Sandy, scanning the sky between the hurtling, dark concrete shapes of buildings. “Looks like she shared it with friends . . . Kiet, I need tacnet up ASAP! I don’t want you to wait for me. If that barrier gets compromised you need to hit it immediately, get everyone concentrated on the Chancelry perimeter, forget going around the long way!”

  “If we convert the UAVs to broadband they’ll get toasted!” Kiet retorted.

  “Not if we keep them low amongst the buildings! We’ll make enough confusion they won’t be targetted! And once we get into Chancelry, we can tap into their network . . . Rishi might even get us hooked in before that!”

  The truck braked hard into a roundabout, skidding and throwing Sandy about in the open tray. She held on with one hand, rifle tight in the other. Somewhere behind and above, their little UAV was buzzing on little props to try and keep up, maintaining directional com down to the truck. Someone would see that soon, Sandy was certain.

  “Well, we can’t talk to Rishi now without giving away our location . . . Sandy, we’re suiting up and positioning, get here as fast as you can.”

  “That’s the idea. And get ready to knock down those corporation UAVs! You’ll just have to dodge the counter strike before it arrives. We can’t have them up there when we go in.”

  “Yup,” said Kiet, sounding busy.

  Damn the lousy timing, Sandy thought. Rishi had been a longshot, maybe an intel assist, some useful codes to access Chancelry network once they were in. She hadn’t expected a full scale uprising. This was truly “revenge of the synthetics,” the old vid thriller title come to life, the scenario she’d gotten entirely sick of seeing all over the Tanushan entertainment networks. It had only happened before in isolated pockets, individuals like herself getting sick and tired and unwilling to take it anymore. But what she saw going on here was entirely different—the formation of a collective identity. GIs were “us” now, everyone else was “them.” It was exhilarating. And it was frightening.

  But the detour to talk to the other corporate honchos had taken her halfway across town, to the southern neighbourhoods where UAV coms could gain a direct line of sight, away from Chancelry’s perimeter. Now she had maybe fifteen kilometers to travel, along awful, potholed roads. There were Home Guard road blocks along here that could turn hostile anytime. And there was corporate artillery raining down on anything suspicious-looking.

  “They’re going to see us any second now,” Gunter said, reading her thoughts. There was little activity on the streets; a lone pickup hurtling along with no lights would be an obvious target. But it was too early to take out the corporate UAVs yet. Chancelry artillery might be too busy to spare rounds, but the other corporations were helping now, the entire central ring of corporate zones primed on highest alert. With Kiet’s GIs gathering, shooting down the UAVs now would only give positions away and cause a mad scramble to reposition, right before they were needed elsewhere. Damn, she wanted tacnet. She needed to see where everyone was!

  Their own UAV’s feed relayed her an orange missile trail rising from Heldig Quarter, accelerating fast. “Here we go, one up,” said Sandy. That one zoomed away on a different heading. Then another. “Two up. That one’s heading our way. Right turn, please.”

  The truck screeched and slid right, fishtailing violently. Sandy steadied and raised her rifle. “Steady,” she told the driver.

  Teller 9s were high powered and deadly accurate out to a kilometer and more. For most people, including GIs, shooting at incoming missile artillery with rifles was futile. Even for her, it was iffy—there wasn’t much she couldn’t hit from any range, provided she could see it. But at the speed these things came in, even hitting it was no guarantee. Doubtless it w
ould keep coming, it was just a question of how much damage she did in the second before it arrived.

  Combat reflex zoned in as intensely as she’d ever felt it before. Interface established with the Teller. She could feel its balance, microscopically. Found the weight, the trajectory. Locked it in. Focused ahead. The tray bounced, and her body absorbed it like built-in suspension.

  Here it was, a flash of contrail, two Ks out. Crossing the road, acquiring a good look down between buildings. Disappeared, then zoomed back, zagging, then hurtling high overhead, then the death dive. Even in time-slowed combat reflex, it was fast. Sandy’s rifle tracked, her legs extending to a higher crouch to absorb any sudden bump, and fired. Hand and index finger shuddered, blurring at a rate of fire comparable to the rifle’s automatic setting. A whole string of hits, she could see flashes lighting the incoming projectile all over, eight hundred meters down to four hundred down to one hundred . . . it tumbled, broke up and crashed in eight places behind them, dust and debris and no explosion.

  “We’re clear,” she said, changing her mag. “It broke up, supersonic things don’t take punishment well.”

  “I’m glad you can do that,” Gunter remarked, as the truck veered left once more, back to their original heading. “I can’t.”

  If she hadn’t been making her own continual upgrades and enhancements to software and augment hardware in Tanusha, Sandy knew she wouldn’t have been able to do it either. Not all of her performance improvement in the past years was from experience. She was a long way better than her original design specs, and those design specs were still largely unmatched.

  “Yeah, well,” she said, “if they figure out that one was shot down, they’ll figure who’s on the truck and send ten of them after us next. Let’s hope they think it was a dud. Kiet, do me a favour and take out those UAVs now.”

  It was bad timing, but she had no choice. She was the command asset and the command asset was worth saving. Kiet would fire immediately, and, given the pause of a few seconds to assess the situation . . .