Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  “Right again.”

  “And they weren't wiped out, and now Federation is in there negotiating. Must be very important for the Federation to be there already. Unless there's more to the story than just some uprising of synthetic people, because as much as we all value synthetic rights, that does seem a thin reason for the Federation to be intervening in what is still technically League space, yes?”

  “Interesting,” said Sandy.

  “Well, if you feel the need to get anything off your chest prior to a week's time, call me.”

  “I'll certainly do that.”

  “Oh, and Sandy. I think I've settled on the title for the book.”

  “Yes?”

  With the faintest trace of anxiety. Heavily Armed Nympho had been Vanessa's suggestion. “What, you don't think that would sell?” she'd replied to Sandy's disapproval, all innocence.

  The Best Artificial Tits in Town had been Ari's effort. “I liked Vanessa's better,” she'd told him drily.

  And her various grunt squadmates had voted for Blonde Ambition. Had made a fake paperback cover of it, propped it up in the briefing room with all of them assembled, title over a photo of her arriving at some CSA formal function, a black-tie dinner, of all things. And poor, dumb GI Sandy, with little knowledge of how to exit a car in a fancy dinner dress, had managed to give the photographer a great look at thighs and underwear, now splashed across the book cover for all to see. “Fuck off, the lot of you,” she'd told them with a smile, as the briefing room had fallen about laughing.

  “Twenty-Three Years on Fire,” said Justice. “As we discussed before.”

  “Oh, okay.” They had discussed it before. It was a touch more dramatic than she'd have liked, but what kind of idiot invited a self-promoter like Justice Rosa to write a book about her and was then surprised by a dramatic title?

  “Kind of catchy, isn't it? Good luck with the Tanushan education department, dealing with them can be worse than the CSA.”

  Disconnected. Sandy sighed, cruising along her skylane, a gentle bank between towers, and mulling things over. The thing with being home, as much as she loved it, was that everything got so complicated again so quickly.

  She put in a call. Most people couldn't get through on this connection, but she would, once Ibrahim saw who was calling.

  “Hello, Cassandra,” said the FSA Director.

  “I hate to be all big brother on my biographer,” she said, “but he was just asking me questions, and he's a very smart guy. He doesn't know anything he shouldn't, but if anyone was going to solve this one soon, it might be him.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The whole line of questioning was designed to show how much he knew, and he's got all his reasoning in very straight lines, no curves at all. I thought you should know.”

  “You've a recording?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I recall that he's an author, not a day-by-day reporter. Books don't come out often, so perhaps we can buy some time with a briefing.”

  “He does the other kind too. Might work though, he does enjoy an exclusive briefing.”

  “Don't they all.”

  “He's got a book title too.” All her employers were nervous about the book and had requested to be kept in the loop. “Twenty-Three Years on Fire.”

  A pause. “You know,” said the Director, “I think that's quite good.” Which surprised her, because Ibrahim was hardly the type to go for commercial and catchy. “What do you think?”

  “So long as I'm not in flames on the cover, or naked, I'll live with it.”

  “Or naked and in flames. One can hope. Thank you, Cassandra.” He disconnected.

  She had to fight the impulse for gratitude. “Journalists,” Ibrahim had once told her. “At your feet or at your throat. Never trust them.”

  Danya had baked a cake. Sandy was astonished. It was banana cake and smelled wonderful—half-eaten, the kids had already polished theirs off for lunch, with some baguette sandwiches Danya had also directed them in making.

  “Where did you learn to bake a banana cake?” Sandy asked him, cutting her own slice and tasting. It was delicious.

  “I don't know,” Danya said with a shrug, sitting alongside Kiril on the sofa to help him read something. “I have this memory of baking things with Mama. I can't remember any recipes, I just always had this idea that I'd like to bake something again sometime. If I ever…well, you know.”

  He looked almost embarrassed. Not at baking, rather at admitting that he'd ever once dared to dream of a comfortable life. Maybe baking for him was like some kind of exercise, designed to convince his brain that he was actually here and things were better.

  Sandy grinned, feeling happier than happy, and eating. “Danya, this is wonderful.”

  “I can follow a recipe, it's not hard.” And he still remembered something of previous civilisation, before everything collapsed. It was what separated him from his siblings more than anything else. He knew what it was like to lose something and never to trust in solidity again.

  “Oh, I know what would go perfectly with this,” said Sandy around a mouthful. “The guy down at the restaurant makes his own ginger beer, you'll love it.”

  “We can have beer?” asked Danya.

  “No, it's got no alcohol, it's fine for kids.”

  “Well, Kiril's reading,” said Danya with irony. Kiril had barely looked up since she'd come in, eyes locked on the page, tongue in one corner of his mouth. Such concentration. “He's doing amazingly well.” And Danya liked to supervise when that happened; Kiril's education had been a mission for him the past few years. Once, they'd hoped it might get them out of poverty, if Kiril could get a good job.

  “That's okay, I'll take Svetlana. Svet!”

  They walked together to the store. The kids had already been out walking around the neighbourhood together; Sandy said it was okay so long as they didn't leave the Canas walls. The automated security systems all knew them on sight and would track them and make sure they were safe.

  “It's so pretty!” said Svetlana as they walked up the footpath of rough old stone, past stone walls, climbing vines, and thick overhanging greenery. “Why did they build it like this? I mean, everything else is so modern, but this looks old.”

  “It's what the architects call ‘historical memory.’ This is what lots of old stuff looks like on Earth. They thought the colonies shouldn't forget what old Earth looked like, where we all came from. So you have neighbourhoods that look like this, old Europe, old India, old China. This one's Spanish.”

  “What's Spanish?”

  “Spain, it's a country in old Europe. You know flamenco music?” Svetlana shook her head. “Oh, I have to take you to see some. It's wonderful.”

  They crossed the little road bridge over one of Tanusha's minor streams. On the far side was the eatery they'd passed before in the car, people sitting outside having a late lunch by the water. Someone Sandy knew from the neighbourhood said hi, and Sandy was pleased enough to stop and talk—it was a high court judge, in Canas due to his proximity to sensitive information. She'd lunched with him and his wife before and enjoyed it. Svetlana wandered inside the eatery, intrigued by the old stone walls and delicious smells.

  Two minutes later, a scream and some yelling. Sandy rushed the door as glass broke and found Svetlana beside an overturned table, one beer mug already hurled and another on its way, a table knife in the other hand. A man in a suit, security, was ducking the glass and coming at her.

  Sandy caught his arm, pivoted him into a wall, and pinned him there by the throat. “I wouldn't,” she warned, with a look back at his comrade, who was frozen in a shock of recognition. Local security, clearly. The comrade ducked again as Svetlana threw the second mug at him anyway, then rushed him with the knife.

  “Hey!” Sandy abandoned the first man to whip Svetlana quickly off her feet, still one-handed, and nimbly removed the knife.

  “No!” Svetlana was yelling. “Let's kill him, let's rip his fucking
head off!” And other, most un-little-girl-like things.

  “Svet, shush,” said Sandy, carrying her effortlessly away with a rapid stride, back across the bridge. With everyone staring and in commotion behind. That didn't bother her for herself, she'd given up caring a fig for her reputation long ago…but Svetlana's reputation was something else. Then, as soon as they were around a corner, she put her down against a wall and crouched before her. “What happened?”

  “They didn't recognise me!” Furious and tear streaked, breath coming in gasps. “Him and his fucking friend, they asked me to stand still for an ID scan, and I don't want to stand still for any fucking ID scan, and they said I had to or I'd be in trouble! I didn't do anything wrong and they were saying I was in trouble just for walking into the restaurant! And I…I called him some names, and he called me something back, and I got angry!”

  “Svet, Svet…it's okay, it's okay. Don't be upset, you didn't do anything wrong.”

  “But they did!” Furiously. Such anger in those pretty young eyes. “Let's get them, you can get them, right?” Expectantly. Because that's what protectors did. Sandy just looked at her sadly. “Okay, so maybe we can't kill them…can we get them fired or something? Sandy, I don't want them here, I don't want to live here with them still here…!” as the panic threatened again, and tears.

  “Oh, hush, hush.” Sandy hugged her. She was so skinny, so slight, her body heaving. “Svet, it's my fault, I shouldn't have let you go in there alone, I didn't think security would be there. But they sometimes are, and it's their prerogative to check whomever they like, even kids. It's no big deal, Svet, they just do a vid feedback to HQ and run recognition software, takes ten seconds…”

  “Why do they have to do that? Don't they know I'm with you?”

  “I'll talk with them. I'll talk with them very hard, so they'll know you guys on sight and won't do all the procedure. I'll tell them you don't like it. But they were just doing their jobs, Svet, you have to stop being scared of people who are just doing their jobs, they weren't trying to hurt you at all. If anything they were trying to protect you.”

  “I don't want them to protect me! I've got you and Danya to protect me!”

  Sandy sighed and held the shaking girl. She'd known this wouldn't be easy. Now she learned how and why.

  Vanessa and Phillippe postponed a dinner engagement to help out. Sandy thanked them profusely—Danya and Kiril had been okay alone that morning and would probably be okay again, but it wasn't fair on them, and on Kiril especially. They knew and liked Vanessa, and it was about time they met Phillippe, who was lots of fun with kids and not so secretly itching to have some of his own. Plus he'd brought his violin, needing to practise at least five hours a day, so Danya and Kiril would get to see some truly amazing musicianship.

  Meanwhile, Sandy and Svetlana were having a night out. First they took Sandy's cruiser and got some takeout, which was a long-established tradition in Tanusha, and some of the takeout places (or flyout places, they were often called) were top quality. They ate while flying circles about Tanusha, which traffic central frowned at and wouldn't allow more than one circuit, but most people circumvented with all kinds of trivial landings and takeoffs at places they'd no interest in visiting. Sandy having the security clearance she did, central didn't even query her route.

  So they sat, and ate, and watched the sunset, and the never-endingly amazing view of one of humanity's biggest cities, as sunlight faded and the city lights came on, and Svetlana got that awestruck look in her eyes once more that she'd had on that first night's arrival. Even Sandy still got that look when she was not too preoccupied to notice.

  Then they went to Safdajung District and landed amidst the flashing lights of a shopping district's major sale, and sent the cruiser on wheels to find itself a park in some underground lot. Svetlana's eyes goggled at the streetscape, kaleidoscopic displays and colours everywhere, thousands of people, streetside entertainers, daring outfits. But it was not the shopping nor the nightlife that Sandy had brought her to see…or not this nightlife, anyhow. The kind accessible to the mainstream crowds.

  Down some smaller side streets, bustling with restaurants and entertainment parlours, a few very unsuitable for kids, but nothing could possibly shock a girl from the mean streets of Droze. Then some nondescript stairs beside a tavern entrance and down the most boring stairway yet seen, through the outer door, then a knock on the inner door, for those not thoroughly put off by the bland whitewash…and answered by a seven-foot-tall Asian man dressed like a woman. With what looked like a giant pineapple on his head.

  “Cassandra, darling!” he shouted, and stooped to kiss her on each cheek with enormous ruby lips. “Wonderful to see you, and it looks like you've been in the wars again.”

  “You know me, Nánguā,” she said.

  “And oh, my goodness, who is this?” Stooping further to admire Svetlana. “Isn't she adorable? One of yours?” Looking at Sandy as though she must have done something naughty to acquire her.

  “If only I could get them that way.”

  “Oh, I think this breeding thing is catching, even you synthetics will be doing it next.” Sandy thought of the GIs operating the underground factory in Chancelry HQ on Droze and thought he wasn't far wrong. And to Svetlana, “Adorable child, my name is Nánguā, but if your Chinese is as bad as most of Tanusha's, you can call me Pumpkin. And what's your name?”

  “Svetlana.” Sandy didn't think it was so much shyness as astonishment. Svetlana had seen many things on Droze, but nothing like Pumpkin.

  “What a lovely name! Now child, do you have anything to wear? You see, I don't know if Cassandra's actually told you what this is about, but this party's kind of about…well, wearing things. What do you like to wear?”

  Beyond Pumpkin was a party worthy of a seven-foot-tall transvestite in a ball gown with a pineapple on his head (“If his name's Pumpkin,” Svetlana asked her an hour later, “why is he wearing a pineapple?”). It was co-run by Togo, of course, one of Sandy's friends via Ari, whom she didn't get to see nearly often enough and was now delighted to have an excuse. Togo was one of Tanusha's cooler underground fashion designers, not those awful mainstreamers with their displays of mass-market grotesquery; that was “beef steak fashion,” clothing for cattle, disdained by those present.

  These parties were fashion as fun, with little fitting rooms behind curtains rigged against the walls where local designers would run the latest hot fabric tech to knock up outfits in just a few minutes with the help of holodesigns and VR space, showing off their latest thought bubbles and outdoing each other for new ideas on a moment's inspiration, like musicians riffing competing solos in some downtown club. A person shouldn't walk into such a party if they weren't prepared to get changed numerous times…and there was of course also lively music, excellent if spontaneous catering, and lots of dancing and socialising.

  It wasn't conceived with children in mind, of course, but it was hardly risqué nor swirling with illegality, and Sandy had just had a hunch about the kind of thing Svetlana might like to see. Might need to see. Nice people. Fun people. Crazy and wild and utterly unpredictable people of all shapes, colours, sizes, and preferences…and all completely harmless, creative, and non-threatening. This was not an image of human interactions that Svetlana had ever conceived of. Adults made her wary, and outside of her own little circle, people only interacted with other people for profit or power, in her mind at least.

  But it was hard to sit on a bar ledge, with a glass of bubbly apple juice in one hand, amidst crowds of crazy-dressed, dancing, laughing people, and explain to an exotic black girl with hair like some fantastical spider and wearing ten-inch heels, exactly what her favourite colours and fabrics were, and still think of human interaction as something frightening and dangerous. The noise and crowds might have bothered Danya, but Sandy didn't think Svetlana would mind, and sure enough, soon she was ducking behind curtains and emerging in a pretty floral dress, then a girly “pop idol” skirt, then some
tight and sparkly pants, and suggesting various hats and shoes from her new crowd of adult friends. Because Svetlana, when she was confident, could command a crowd like an empress. She'd seen genuinely scary things, and little things like public attention didn't bother her, so long as she had the power, or at least the upper hand.

  “Well, she's a little princess,” said Togo, sharing a more alcoholic beverage with Sandy by the bar. He wore a lavender, sparkly shirt, exposing strong black arms, and had a few more piercings than Sandy recalled. No one was bothering Sandy with the dress-up routine, seeing her arm and other injuries, but every now and then a new hat was placed on her head, with some new decoration, at an appropriately jaunty angle. The current one was a beret. Sandy saw it in the bar mirror and thought…maybe. When her hair was longer.

  “She is a little princess,” Sandy agreed.

  “So now do you finally come to see the affinity between girls and dressing up?”

  Sandy laughed. “I see almost as many boys here as girls.”

  “Yes, but when we were her age,” pointing to Svetlana, “we were doing our dress-ups privately, in our mothers’ wardrobes.”

  “Surely not,” Sandy teased.

  “No, it's true,” Togo insisted. “And even more shy when the boy is heterosexual.”

  “You know, I hear heterosexual glamour boys are the new queers.”

  “Oh, shucks,” said Togo. “Flatterer.”

  Over in Svetlana's corner, the curtain came back dramatically, revealing the slender model stepping out in short top and suspenders, with a…bowler hat?

  “Hmm,” said Sandy. Svetlana jumped around to the music, to applause and exclamation.

  “I don't know if she's quite got the presentation down,” Togo suggested.

  “Not her fault, no one ever taught her how to dance.”

  “Sandy!” Svetlana yelled across the noise. “What do you think?”

  “Suspenders great!” Sandy replied, thumb up. “Not sure about the hat though!”