Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  “I'm glad to hear it,” she said. “Lovely to see you again.”

  “Oh, look, a little bird told me you had some additions to your household, and I knew I really shouldn't be bothering you on your first morning back, but I was just in the neighbourhood from visiting one of the Justices on other business, and I have some news I thought you'd find fascinating.”

  He indicated a folder he was holding, expectantly. “More arrivals?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes!” said Kushbu, looking quite pleased. “There were another seven GIs arriving while you were gone, including three non-combat designations!” He beamed. Non-combats were relatively rare. He, Sandy, and others had worked often the past five years to lodge their asylum applications, Kushbu and his legal pro-bonos navigating that process while Sandy covered the security side, which was always the biggest hurdle to defecting League GIs wanting asylum. “Two of them have just fascinating stories, would you like to see?”

  Sandy sighed, leaning on the doorframe, not moving aside. Kushbu looked puzzled. “Do you mind if I don't?” she said.

  Kushbu blinked. “Of course, if you're too busy…oh, look, how silly of me, I really should have called first before surprising you like this, but I…”

  “No no no,” said Sandy sadly. “It was lovely of you to come. But I think it's time the Callayan asylum seekers began to manage without me.”

  Another blink. “But you'll want to sit in on the asylum applications, surely?”

  “Kushbu, the system has become very accustomed to League GIs arriving here and claiming residency. There's quite a lot of opposition to those claims simply because of my involvement. Maybe it's time to see how things work without me.”

  “Cassandra, I assure you, your expertise on the security side of things and your personal familiarity with the confusion faced by our asylum seekers are invaluable!”

  “But there are so many here now,” said Sandy. “And a lot of them are quite capable of taking my place. I think it's time they did so. I think I've been too soft on them, and too willing to just let them ride on my coattails.”

  Kushbu looked taken aback. It hurt to see it. But she'd hurt a lot lately and was used to it. “Well, of course, Cassandra, if that's how you truly feel.”

  “It is. I'll talk to you again soon, and thank you for coming by. But I have other priorities now.”

  She gave him a farewell kiss on the cheek and left the gentle lawyer staring dumbfounded at the closed door.

  FSA had acquired quite a team of experts. They clustered about Kiril now in the medical ward, a big, shiny room with wide windows and a large view over green gardens and Federal compound buildings. Kiril sat in a comfortable chair within the scanning paddles, an uplink receptive headset on. The head doctor, whom Sandy understood was an outside expert, chair of a prestigious institute, and quite famous in the field, asked Kiril cheerful questions and introduced him to various stimuli—listening to recorded sounds at various decibel levels and ranges, watching holographic images, tracking moving targets, then touching alternately some ice and a cup just hot from the microwave. They even gave him some chocolate to eat, then a biscuit, then some cheese, just to watch the different brain activity from each.

  Other doctors compared it to the uploaded activity model Cai had given Sandy to take back to Tanusha. It was far beyond Sandy's expertise—there were few who knew better than her what to do with uplinks once established, but the process of getting them established was a field that ten years of solid tape teach and a genius-level IQ still was no guarantee of mastering. It pleased her, though, to have so many bright folks gathered around Kiril. Danya and Svetlana watched, with no complaint from the doctors, some of whom even explained as best they could what the various displays and technologies they were operating did. Danya looked cautious as always, but no longer paranoid. Just quiet and watchful.

  “This one,” said CSA Intel Director Naidu, after a warm embrace with Sandy and some minutes watching proceedings from behind the glass of an adjoining office. Nodding at Danya. “This boy's impressive. Thirteen, you say?”

  Sandy nodded. “And nine months.”

  “So calm. Objectively, would you rate his intelligence?”

  Objectively? Sandy smiled. “I'm not sure I can do objectively with these three.”

  “I've adjusted assessments for bias before,” Naidu deadpanned. “It's not unknown.”

  “He's extremely clever. Top fifth percentile, my objective guess. I'd think each of them only had a fifty percent chance of surviving what they survived, that makes the odds of all three surviving one in eight. It's all due to him, Svetlana says so too.”

  “But he's paid a price for his wisdom.”

  Sandy looked at him sideways. “Compiling for the psych report?”

  “We all have them, Cassandra,” said Naidu, thumbs hooked into his belt beneath a considerable, authoritative belly. “Me, you, Director Ibrahim, all our close family and relevant friends.”

  “I'm not complaining,” Sandy said mildly. “I'd be pleased to see this under your authority.”

  Naidu shrugged. “You're a Callayan citizen; that makes it primarily a CSA responsibility.” In the ongoing struggle over the CSA, FSA overlap, where the former handled Callayan issues, and the latter Federal ones. Based in the same city, sharing many of the same personnel, including Sandy, the problem wasn't going away any time soon.

  “Danya has stress issues,” said Sandy. She didn't like informing on him like this, but it had to be done, someone would compile the psych report, and best they heard it direct from her to someone solid like Naidu. “And trust issues, as you'd imagine. He's not dysfunctional though, none of them are. In fact, given his environment until now, I'd say Danya is ultra-functional and completely adapted. The question is how well he re-adapts.”

  Naidu nodded soberly, uncommenting.

  “Very clever,” she continued, “very observant, very cautious. A real problem solver. Mostly non-aggressive, he'll do anything to protect Svet and Kiri, but he's an avoider. He keeps out of the way, tries to be polite, keeps a tight rein on his temper.”

  “Has he killed, do you know?”

  “No,” said Sandy, quite certain. “He might lie if he had, but Svetlana's very bad at lying, and she insists not. Danya might be able to keep a secret from Kiril, but I doubt he could from Svetlana.”

  Naidu pursed his lips. “I have to ask. It becomes a primary focal point with children.”

  “I know.” She took a deep breath. “Almost completely selfless where Svet and Kiri are concerned. I don't know if his brain even truly understands the concept of ‘I.’ It's all ‘we.’”

  Naidu looked at her. She must have choked up a little as she said it. And Naidu repressed a faint, private smile beneath his greying moustache.

  “And the girl,” he said. “Lovely little thing, isn't she? But you'll need to feed her, she's so skinny.”

  “The way she eats she should have doubled in size by now. It's a metabolism thing from their upbringing, they've all got it.” Svetlana was sitting alongside a doctor, peering at his screen as the doctor explained things. Far more trusting than Danya. “Svetlana has a very well-developed sense of ‘I,’” Sandy said with irony. “Danya thinks in terms of ‘we,’ but Svetlana thinks ‘I’ plus everyone else…foremost of whom are her brothers, of course. Which makes her attachment possessive, I think. ‘We’ is not possessive; it's collective. Svetlana is possessive of her brothers, which makes her a lot more aggressive in her attachments.

  “She's as clever as Danya, but she's never had that responsibility, never been the eldest. Maybe Danya looked out for her too well…I mean, she's incredibly self-sufficient by the usual standards of ten-year-olds, but she's adjusted to stress and deprivation by wanting things. And maybe she's compensated for Danya's caution by just going and getting things when he'd rather hang back.”

  “Selfish?” Naidu suggested.

  “Intensely self-interested,” Sandy corrected. Recalling what Naidu said
about adjusting for bias and seeing his noncommittal expression. “An alternative survival response. And far more emotionally engaged.”

  “And thus capacity for negative emotion as well as positive,” said Naidu.

  “Hey,” Sandy said coolly. “Me too.”

  “You control it well.”

  “So does she. She's still alive.”

  “Thanks to her brother,” Naidu added. Sandy gave him a hard look. “Now this one, I hear, has taken life.”

  “Very recently. Danya was being held by a crime boss. The corporations were coming to take him. Good chance if she had not acted, Danya would be dead. Or in corporate custody, which might be worse.”

  “How many?”

  “She says three. Danya thinks perhaps as many as five.”

  Naidu looked at her for a long, solemn moment. “How?”

  “Handgun. Point blank. Walked through several rooms shooting until she reached Danya.” She did not mention the flashbangs. A ten-year-old who remained clear-headed enough to use flashbangs to prepare a room before entering with lethal force scared even her.

  Naidu took a deep breath. And murmured something Sandy couldn't hear. “In a ten-year-old, this is…”

  “Determined,” Sandy said firmly.

  “Developed,” Naidu replied carefully. “Alarmingly developed. Most ten-year-olds cannot muster the resolve…”

  “Most ten-year-olds haven't grown up starving, seeing other ten-year-olds getting raped and murdered.” She might have said it too loudly. Naidu's lingering look suggested as much. “She did what she had to do. She did it out of love.”

  “And in doing so demonstrated a capacity to conceptualise other human beings as deserving of death, and acting upon that conceptualisation. The literature says that if the child is placed into that situation through a social construct, like a child soldier, say, that's one thing. The catalytic influence was external, and the child can regain a normal growth path from that point on, if removed from the external influence and treated correctly. But for a child to reach these conclusions and act on them all on her own, at such a young age, is an indication of potential psychopathy.”

  “She's a good kid,” Sandy said quietly.

  “Has she shown remorse?”

  “Why the fuck should she…” Sandy began, and caught herself. Another deep breath. “The pain is there. She'll never regret the action, but the pain of having to do it is there. I know what that's like. I can help her.”

  “Good,” said Naidu, nodding as he gazed out the window. “Good. And the little one?”

  “I can't even attempt an objective opinion with Kiril,” Sandy said firmly. “He's gorgeous. He's kind, generous, brave, funny, and clever. Danya says he's the smartest of the three, and he's probably right. And I'm worried sick about those fucking things Chancelry put in his head.”

  Naidu nodded. And gave her a sideways look and a smile. “Very good,” he said with a final, lighter note. And made to leave. “We'll talk longer once you're actually working again, I'm sure. Lovely to see you well.”

  “Hang on,” Sandy said, with growing suspicion. Naidu stopped at the door. “You're not doing a damn psych report on the kids. You're doing it on me.”

  Naidu gave her a patronising look. “Cassandra, as interested as we are in your lovely kids, you are the Commander of FSA special combat operations, and you hold a continuing operational rank in CSA SWAT. These children now become a potential operational liability for you, one that League commanders recognised on Pantala and attempted to exploit. We are now going to have to protect these children, for the simple fact that they are our enemies’ best chance of getting at you.”

  “And you want to know if such threats make me completely fucking unstable or what,” Sandy added sarcastically.

  “Well…” Naidu nodded at her immobile arm and the bandage on her head. “Apparently not unstable, since your rescue was successful. But very angry.”

  “Sure.” With a glare.

  “Let's just say from our interview I can conclude that there are safer places to be than between you and these children. But I only needed to look at you to know that.”

  They were all surprised to see her so beaten up. She'd seen them looking at her injuries in astonishment. Wondering if she'd screwed up. “There was no other way to do it,” she said. “Heavy walls, narrow bottlenecks, they were pouring explosive into every opening; I had to take chances and expose myself. I just absorbed some near misses and kept on coming. Otherwise I'd never have broken through.”

  “Motherhood becomes you,” said Naidu, smiling. “And have no fear, you'll have access to my final reports like everyone else with clearance, and you're free to challenge whatever you want.”

  He left. Motherhood? Sandy turned to look back through the office glass. Surely motherhood meant more than the willingness to soak up high explosive?

  “She's cut off all contact with the asylum process?” Ibrahim couldn't quite believe it. She'd been so passionate about it before leaving for Pantala. It had driven her to Pantala, no question. Had driven her to do questionable things, in the fear that the New Torah government were doing things to GIs that would have irreversible consequences for the entire species…if artificial humanity could be called a species.

  “It appears so,” said Naidu. Naidu technically did not work for him anymore, but on this matter he knew Cassandra best, and Federal and Callayan Security Agencies were close enough that they shared personnel and expertise on a needs basis. “She's still receiving reports, but I understand she's given no feedback, and she hasn't attended their meetings nor had contact with any of their personnel. Several of them are quite upset, they feel she's abandoned them.”

  Ibrahim looked at Vanessa. Vanessa wasn't happy to be here and showed it in her usual way, sitting on the desk in her old SWAT jacket, with complete disregard for protocol. “They broke her heart,” Vanessa said tiredly. “The GIs on Pantala. Leave the girl alone, as if she hasn't gone through enough.”

  Ibrahim walked to the wall opposite her and leaned there, directly in her vision. Unable to avoid him, Vanessa rolled her eyes. “It was that fight, that last big one,” she said. “I mean, she's been in bad fights before, she's lost individual friends before…in that one she lost about a thousand. They weren't friends, but…you know.”

  “The mass application of the killswitch.” Even Ibrahim still could not quite believe the corporations had done that. If for no other reason than it had cost them a lot of money. But few things frightened the users and makers of combat GIs like the prospect of a mass uprising.

  “She'll deny it, of course,” said Vanessa. “But she really did have these big dreams of leading some rebellion. Not at the expense of her loyalty to the Federation, never that, but she thought somehow she could do one while serving the other, fold an uprising into the Federation cause.”

  “And she nearly did,” said Naidu, sitting rumpled and grey-streaked in one of the FSA Director's office chairs.

  Vanessa nodded. “And then it all blew up in her face. All her rebels were too eager and idealistic, and they just didn't want to listen to her when she told them to be cautious; they're GIs, I'd imagine it's easy to feel invincible when you're a GI, if you're not as smart as Sandy. You get a whole bunch of them together, overthrow New Torah Chancelry…they must have felt they could take on the universe.”

  “They're rebels,” Naidu rumbled, old and wise. “They were rebelling. It's a state of mind, and Sandy was telling them to submit to a new ruler called the Federation. Like telling a life-term prisoner who's just escaped and is just enjoying his first pleasures of freedom that he now has to return to a different cell.”

  “And they wouldn't listen to her, so she just left them there,” Vanessa finished. “Holding a bunch of cards, thanks to her, and with no real choice how to play them. But she didn't hang around to see them through, she just got her kids back and came home.”

  “To what effect?” Ibrahim pressed. Cassandra was important. The l
ynchpin in so many ways, she'd proven it time and time again. The isolated variable that could swing any number of ways. As FSA Director, Ibrahim knew that she was both an asset to be treasured and utilised, and a potential threat to be feared and guarded against. Either way, he needed to know. And her best friend was of course not happy about playing the informant…but most likely Sandy knew and would forgive her, it was all a part of the job.

  “Everyone wants to fit in,” Vanessa sighed and hung her head. Kicked absently at the green frond of a potplant by the desk. “Even Sandy. She knows she's not like other GIs, but still she feels responsible for them…or she did. Responsible for the things they do, responsible for the things that are done to them, she couldn't let them suffer like she suffered. I'm sure she didn't expect them all to embrace her and call her sister for her efforts, but somewhere deep down, maybe subconsciously, perhaps she did.”

  She looked up, brushed curls from her eyes. “And then they rejected her advice and rejected her, really. And Sandy's pretty tough emotionally, but she's not that tough. I don't think anyone is. And that's what she's protecting herself from now, by cutting herself off from them.”

  Ibrahim nodded. “And the children? How do they fit into this?”

  Naidu cleared his throat. “Well, I certainly don't wish to suggest that her affections for them aren't substantial. But it is clearly a reaction of sorts. A shield, to hide behind and save herself from other pains. Cassandra's emotions are as real as anyone's, but we've never seen this before from her, nor from any other GI…except for lovely Rhian, of course. But Rhian was different, because Rhian had always had affection for children, and because Rhian developed her own motherhood attachments in her own good time. Cassandra's have arisen from a specific circumstance, and we'll just have to wait and see how it goes from here.”

  Ibrahim looked at Vanessa. Vanessa shook her head firmly. “Rhian's affection for children is itself a result of combat trauma. Remember Sandy's story of Rhian's experience in combat, the little girl who died in her arms as a result of a firefight Rhian had been in?” Naidu nodded with a conceding gesture. “Rhian was a far less developed individual then, had shown precious little interest in children or other civilian things, was just another simple-minded 39-series soldier until that happened. And if I had kids, I'd trust them with Rhian anytime, anywhere, more than nearly anyone. Where the emotion comes from doesn't matter, what matters is what it is, and Rhian's love of children is as real as it comes.