Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  “Then you’ve just committed an act of war against the League, you idiot! We may not consider ourselves League space, but League certainly does!”

  “Maybe, but that won’t help you, bitch. Nor will God himself if you continue to piss me off.”

  She broke off, and walked across the landscaped courtyard, heading for the medical research building. The day was bright, hazy, sunny and cold, like most days on Droze. Wrecked vehicles still burned upon the landscaped grounds, amid sprawled bodies. In the near and far distance she could hear sirens, flyers, and the occasional burst of firing. The other Droze corporations were mobilised, encircling Chancelry Quarter with their own forces, a tightening ring of bristling armament. They were all trapped in here now, and almost certainly, there was no fighting their way out. She had enough firepower to ensure her perimeter against infiltration, but no way to ward off a bombardment if it came. Only the fear of orbital firepower could stop that.

  Whoever was now in charge of HQ communications directed some new orbital transmission to her. It was Vanessa. “Hi Sandy, what’s your situation?”

  “Gonna get pummelled if Reichardt doesn’t convince them not to.”

  “I think he can do that. You understand the amount of collateral damage that’s going to cause?”

  “I do. Tell Reichardt I’ll understand if he has a problem with it, but if he doesn’t, all us GIs are dead, and all evidence of what Chancelry’s done here will be destroyed. Which means this shit will happen again and again. It has to stop somewhere.”

  “I know. He’ll agree. He didn’t volunteer to back us up for nothing.”

  Captain Reichardt was their personal guardian angel, and had bailed them out of trouble several times now. Every time he’d managed some shore leave in Tanusha the past few years, Sandy and Vanessa had organised to show him and his officers a good time, SWAT-style. On one of those eventful nights, Reichardt had met a very pretty FSA analyst, to whom he was recently engaged. Sandy didn’t know if that made them even, but the captain seemed to think his role as guardian angel had paid off handsomely so far, and kept volunteering. Or maybe he was just a crazy Texan who liked trouble.

  “Ari tells me you’re struggling with the barrier construct of their secure mainframe?” Vanessa continued.

  “Looks like it could take days,” Sandy affirmed. “Even for the likes of me and Ari.”

  “Well we have . . . a guy, up here. I think he can help. Can you get him an uplink direct to the construct?”

  “I don’t know how much one guy is going to help, but sure, I’ll arrange it.”

  “I think he could help quite a lot.”

  “Are you guys safe up there?” Sandy asked, as the medical building loomed ahead of her.

  “Station crew stopped trying to cut their way in once Reichardt threatened to board with marines. We’ll be okay, we’ve food and water for a few days. Toilet facilities, thank God.”

  “Good, I gotta go. Stay safe, and thanks for saving all our asses.”

  “You betcha. You know, we might have to actually sleep with Reichardt after this. Both of us.”

  “Ha,” said Sandy. “That first night out, after Nehru Station. Who says I already didn’t?”

  Vanessa laughed. “You slut.”

  The secure level of the medical building had visitors. Lower designation GIs, most in standard issue tracksuits, filing slowly through the facility floor. They stared unblinking at the bodies, the parts, the “examination rooms,” with their cutting horrors and heavy restraints. And with silent respect through that part of the ward where some of Chancelry’s experiments still lived.

  About some of those beds, there was activity. Some medicos worked at gunpoint, attaching tubes, detaching others, applying medicines. These were straight humans, looking very scared. Sandy wondered where the rest of the Chancelry working population were, who hadn’t run away in time. Perhaps she didn’t want to know.

  She could guess why the lower designation GIs were here. Chancelry employed a mix of lower and higher designation as a combat force, then siphoned off selected higher-des GIs for experimentation—probably when those hit a certain age, and the results of genesis-experimentation came to maturity. That would also be the age when a GI might start to ask questions. From what she’d gathered of Rishi’s uprising, they’d managed to lock most of the lower-des GIs in their building for most of the fight. Some others had fought and died, and yet others had had a crisis and sat it out, not knowing which side was right.

  Now they were filed through these ghastly rooms to see for themselves. Even a lower-des would be affected by this. She could see it in their eyes as she walked past their slowly shuffling line. Could see some of them bending to peer at names and designations listed on patient boards at the end of the beds. Mouthing them, silently to themselves. This could be me, they realised. This is me, or someone just like me. And then, one hoped, the first, faint glimmering of a concept known to the rest of the world as injustice.

  At Anya’s bed, the horrific monitoring gear had been removed. No more pins through the spinal cord, surveying signals, compiling maps of feedback and response on whatever odd things they’d done in creating Anya’s nervous system. It made so much more sense now, knowing that so much of it was Talee technology from inception. Even the most advanced human laboratories still didn’t know how a lot of it really worked, thus all this experimentation and research. Of course, they could have made non-combat GIs; it might have been possible to study those without mutilating them, while combat GIs were built so tough there was little choice but to crack them open. But it would be equally expensive either way, and combat GIs were required for the hostile combat environment Chancelry so often found itself in here on Pantala, so why not kill two birds with one stone? It had been an executive decision, no doubt. A matter of sensibly employing available resources. The kind of thing that executives got promoted for.

  There was no medico by Anya’s bed. Just a GI Sandy didn’t know, who sat by her bedside and watched. And met Sandy’s eyes, and gave a faint shake of the head. Sandy knew. Whatever they’d done to Anya was degenerative, she’d been told. Chemicals were breaking down her internal systems. That degeneration gave good data readings, apparently. Sandy didn’t know why—she wasn’t a biotech medico. She could quite happily have lived the rest of her life without knowing why.

  Anya blinked at her, sleepily. “Hello,” she murmured. “You’re Sandy.”

  Sandy grasped the girl’s hand. “I am Sandy. I told you I’d come to you.”

  Anya smiled. “You did. You kept your word.”

  “You inspired a lot of people,” Sandy assured her. “If you hadn’t helped me, this wouldn’t have happened. Now all of the GIs here in Chancelry have a chance to be free. And those GIs working for other corporations too.” And one day maybe, she might have said, far more than that.

  “Free like Eduardo,” said Anya, her smile growing broader. “When you see him again, tell him I love him. Tell him to be happy with his freedom.”

  Sandy’s eyes spilled. “I will. He loves you very much, Anya. He told me he did.”

  “I know,” Anya said quietly. “Thank you for coming. But it’s sad here, and it hurts. I’d like to go now.”

  Sandy kissed her. Then indicated the GI by the life support. The GI nodded, and pressed the sedative. Soon Anya was sleeping. Then the life support was turned off.

  Sandy sat by Anya’s bed for a while, holding her hand and gazing at nothing in particular, in her heavy, battle-scarred armour, as lower-des GIs filed past the bed. Then, after a long moment, she got up, and left.

  As she left the ward, she saw through the doorway of a side room, bodies lying on the floor. Lined up and shot, execution style it looked like, one to the back of each head. They wore the clothes of lab technicians, Chancelry workers. Regular humans, sentenced to death by those who were to be the next victims of this program. Sandy was too sad to feel any satisfaction at the sight, yet neither was there a shred of remorse. She m
erely wondered, with vaguely academic curiosity, exactly what she’d started here. And what the history books would record had happened on this day: the day that synthetic humanity had finally turned, en masse, upon its makers.

  And not before time either, she thought, shouldering her rifle and heading for the stairs.

  The next level down was secure rooms, all sealed glass and once-sterile environments like the upper room, but all the doors now flung open, people passing back and forth in numbers. Someone had said there was someone here she should see, but no further information, and she always thought it best not to wonder, because she’d had times in Dark Star when she’d wondered after a fight, and been disappointed at what she’d found.

  The medical ward was open and some GIs were here, armour discarded in piles upon the floor, sitting on chairs or on beds for treatments to bullet wounds, mostly. Treating them were other GIs, possessing only basic medical knowledge, but bullet wounds on GIs usually didn’t require much, just pull out the slug, disinfect, patch and wrap. And here was one woman sitting on the edge of a bed, treated by a man, who was assisted by a boy of perhaps six. The man was pulling out slugs and handing them to the boy, who gave him disinfectant gel and bandages, and a sip of water to the wounded GI from a flask. The GI took it, observing the boy with curiosity.

  “Kiril!” said Sandy. The boy looked at her. Recognised her, grinned and waved.

  “Cassandra!”

  Sandy went to him, dropped to a knee and hugged him. The boy seemed surprised, his hands full of bandages, and not really knowing her that well . . . but Sandy felt like she’d known Kiril an age.

  “You know,” said Kiril, “I didn’t know you were such an advanced GI? But I was talking to your friend Poole, and he said you were the best GI ever, and that you’d be here real soon . . .”

  “Poole!” Sandy stared at him. “Poole’s alive? Where?”

  “Here, you fool,” said Poole, still treating the woman on the bed. She hadn’t even recognised him with his back turned. “Someone said the kid was your friend. I thought you’d be mad if I didn’t look after him.”

  Sandy wanted to hug him too, but he was busy. And, she recalled past the emotion and relief, had never really been that kind of guy anyway.

  “Thank you,” she said, squeezing his shoulder. “You’re okay?”

  He shrugged. “Drugs, restraints, a few injuries, I’ll be okay. The first I knew about all this was GIs crashing into my room, releasing me, and giving me a gun. Not much more than two hours ago.”

  “Yeah. Long two hours.”

  “Cassandra, where are Danya and Svetlana?” asked Kiril, urgently.

  “They’re fine, Kiril.” Even as she said it, her heart set to thumping. She couldn’t really be sure, Danya had stormed out on her over in Whalen neighbourhood . . . a good thing in that it had been a long way from the fighting, but now he’d have to make his way over to where Svetlana was on his own. But Danya was more adult than most adults. Moving around a city was a simple thing for him, even a city in the state this one was in.

  Svetlana worried her more—she’d been in the warehouse with Kiet’s forces, but all of them had advanced; they’d not been able to leave any reserve behind. So now Svetlana was all alone too, with only the Home Guard for protection . . . and the last Sandy had seen of the Home Guard, they’d been shooting at her.

  “I don’t know exactly where they are,” she explained, “but I’m sure they’re very safe. You know how smart they are. I couldn’t bring them with me—I had to attack through the neutral zone to get here, you understand? Danya and Svetlana aren’t soldiers, so I couldn’t bring them. I promise I’ll try to find them, but honestly, I think they might be safer where they are. It isn’t very safe here at the moment.”

  “That’s okay,” Kiril said confidently. “They’re really good at staying safe. And you don’t really have to find them, they can find you—that’s what Danya always tells me. He says if I’m lost I shouldn’t look for him, he’ll find me. He always knows how to find me.”

  Sandy wasn’t at all surprised. And that should have been that—she couldn’t do anything more about it, there was a wall of firepower encircling them now, there was no way of getting Danya and Svetlana here, and if there was, it would be ridiculously unsafe. Plus, as she’d told Kiril, they were probably safer where they were. So why this unsettled sensation of . . . of what? It felt like panic, heart thumping, mind unsettled. A very low grade panic, because of course she didn’t do panic. She did affection, and love and friendship, and all that good human stuff, but not the kind of maternal mode, high intensity attachment that Rhian had discovered. So why this creeping desperation?

  Then she noticed the light bandage on the side of Kiril’s head for the second time—the first time she’d assumed he’d had a light, recent scrape. But this looked like something else.

  “Kiril, what happened to your head?”

  “Oh, they did an operation,” Kiril explained, offhandedly.

  “An operation?”

  “Yeah. Uplinks, I think. They’re not working yet.”

  Uplinks augmentation. On a six-year-old boy. Now she wanted to kill people again. Line them up like those corpses upstairs, and blow holes in their heads. It was medically unsafe to do mental augmentation on children below the age of at least sixteen, everyone knew that. Doubtless Chancelry had been doing similar things to abducted street kids for a while now.

  “Does it hurt? Do you feel any different?”

  “Not yet. But uplinks are cool, right?” With enthusiasm. “I’ve always wanted to have uplinks!” He handed Poole some more bandages as he worked.

  “Tell you what,” said Sandy, “as soon as I find the right medical facility, we’re going to get that looked at. Just to be certain.” An urgent call registered on her uplinks. Rishi. “Crap . . . Poole, you look after Kiril for me?”

  “No,” said Poole. “I’ll look after Kiril for everyone.” Pointedly. Sandy managed a faint smile. She’d always liked Poole. He was a contrarian. “You think there might be a piano around here somewhere?”

  Sandy rolled her eyes and walked for the door. “Kiril, you stay with Poole. I’ll be back when I can!”

  “That’s okay,” Kiril called after her. “I want to stay here and help!”

  Of course he did, Sandy thought, smiling as she left. A friendly, generous boy, just as his siblings had described him.

  Back at the basement office, she found that the impossible had happened, and Rishi’s people had cracked the mainframe barriers.

  “No, not us,” Rishi corrected. “Cai.”

  “Cai?” Sandy took a seat by their open wall panel, frowning.

  “Your friend Vanessa’s friend. Up on the station. We linked him in directly, he solved it in fifteen minutes.”

  Which wasn’t possible, Sandy knew. She herself was likely one of the fastest to break such a barrier, and she didn’t think it was possible in less than ten hours. But whatever, she’d solve that puzzle later.

  She uplinked to the local network and found the giant, spherical side of the barrier looming before her. At first glance it looked intact. But then she saw the slim, gleaming wire of a data link, like a loose thread in a huge ball of yarn. Plugging into that was entirely simple.

  Within were simple data files. Not a phenomenal volume of information, but it was big enough. Data was filed under various headings. Rongyao. Hadiah. Angel.

  “These are planet names,” said Sandy, puzzled. “League systems.”

  “I know,” said Rishi. “There’s a lot more. I’ve no idea what it means; I was hoping you would.”

  Sandy did not move too fast this time. This wasn’t the kind of data she could just whiz through. It looked like a sociology rundown, the kind of thing she’d read in Tanusha, where sociologists compiled news clippings as footnotes to their various databases that attempted to track social trends. Government departments loved them, and attempted to tailor government services according to the statistical mode
ls provided. And yet Sandy had always been sceptical, a scepticism reinforced further by Ari and his underground friends, who’d never failed to point out to her how the grand sociological theories always overreached and overexplained, and never failed to identify social patterns that truly only existed in sociologists’ heads. No coincidence that a lot of sociologists hated Compulsive Narrative Syndrome theory, and tried constantly to disprove it, with efforts that usually served to confirm it instead. Sandy concluded that a lot of this stuff was really Rorschach Tests for sociologists rather than an objective model of anything real.

  Her eyes flicked over one series of reports from Angel—a large League world of nearly three hundred million, a wealthy place but now struggling with various troubles. The articles listed were obscure, almost trivial—a shooting, the description of a political squabble, an incident of road rage, a first person account of a big social event . . . this was the contents of Chancelry’s top secret vault? You could find this stuff anywhere, Tanusha included. This was what a League warship, Vanessa had hair-raisingly informed her, had been trying to nuke Droze over, rather than have the outside world find out?

  News clippings were grouped by planetary heading, and then further grouped into a broader statistical framework that at first glance did not seem to make sense. That framework organised into various charts and graphs, with strange letters for heading that might be acronyms.

  These in turn linked into more files. Public opinion surveys. Interface polling. Aha. Very large scale interface polling . . . damn, it looked like every world in the League had been comprehensively polled. Something that large could only have been run by a very coordinated central government program. Spying on its own citizens, attempting to discern public preferences, opinions, social breakdowns by net traffic intensities across various indices. And there were other references she didn’t recognise . . . she herself had come across her little psychological profiling trick for large network constructs that had so freaked out her CSA friends, probably League operatives had their own little tricks. Was that what this was? A giant attempt to psychologically profile the entire League population? Well that would certainly be a bombshell if League media ever got a hold of it. No doubt the government would come crashing down, a scandal of monstrous proportions. But enough to try and nuke Droze? Not even close—politicians were scared enough of losing office, to say nothing of their lives. The League had used their death penalty far more often than the Federation during the war, sometimes even against wayward or traitorous politicians. No doubt a few would like to use it on her, if they could.