“I love you,” she said simply. “All of you.” And straightened, suddenly calm business again. “Now, I have to go to a debriefing, do you think you guys can hang around here? There's food at the cafeteria, all you need to do is ask…”
“Sandy,” said Danya, with reprimand. “I think we can manage. We'll try not to burn the place down.”
“Right,” said Sandy, suitably chastened. “Of course. Oh, and Kiril, Doctor Kishore might want to come by since you're here, do some more tests…now if you want me to be present, just tell him to wait until after the debriefing.”
“Sandy, go!” Kiril told her, copying his brother's exasperation. “We'll be fine!” Sandy laughed and left with a wave.
“She really loves Vanessa, doesn't she?” Svetlana said as they watched her leave down the hall. Svetlana might find the notion challenging, Danya knew. For her, three was family. Expanding that number to four had been a challenge, but she'd managed it. Now to discover, to really discover, that one of those four loved someone else just as much as she loved them…that made the number five. And then there was Phillippe, sitting at Vanessa's bedside and looking completely immovable until she woke up…and they didn't know Phillippe as well, but they liked him a lot. And then there was Sandy's other great friend Rhian, who was around here somewhere…and then even Ari, which all got complicated in ways that kids didn't really grasp.
Where they were from, love was something to be rationed in small parcels. Was it possible to spread love around too thinly, like plastic stretched too far, until it snapped? Danya knew it made Svetlana nervous. If he was honest with himself, it made him nervous too. Too many loved ones were a liability. Three was much safer. Four, if the fourth was Sandy. Sandy had gone through fire to prove herself. How could these others possibly do the same?
Debrief was one long frustration and went long into mealtime. The CSA and FSA's finest minds sat around a table, looked over all the evidence, and ate the cafeteria meals that were brought to them, and concluded that it all made very little sense.
An emancipation activist had been shot too, a lawyer named Idi Aba, he'd helped some League GIs pro-bono through their asylum process. That had happened on the other side of the city, point-blank, just outside his apartment. No one had seen a thing, and it looked like a professional hit.
“Well, that's just fucking smart of them,” Sandy summarised in frustration, after they'd been reviewing events for half an hour with little to show for it. “If the League wanted to give the emancipation cause a big boost, they couldn't do a better job than murdering an emancipation activist in the Federation capital. And as for trying to kill Ragi, all that does is confirm he's Takawashi's, because if he was Talee they'd never have heard about it, or at least not yet. But this was planned well in advance, they've probably been at it a month or more…hell, we haven't had Ragi that long.”
“It does not appear the smartest couple of moves we've seen the ISO make for a while,” FSA Operations Director Hando agreed. They were all here, FSA and CSA, on occasions like this one there wasn't much discernible difference between the two agencies—League involvement automatically put the FSA in play, and local security concerns automatically made it CSA business. The location at CSA HQ was just a matter of convenience, given this was where all the wounded were taken, CSA's medical facilities being superior.
“And they've given us prisoners,” Ibrahim added, on the holoscreen, still back in FSA offices. “How long until we have actionable intelligence from them?”
“Interrogating GIs is hard,” said Naidu. “They're impervious to most stress-inducing techniques and have more patience than regular humans. They're more susceptible to uplink hacking, but our legal advice on that is cloudy. With recent synthetic rights legislation passing, it could be construed as torture.”
“Which is unfortunate,” said Chandrasekar. “Given that with Ragi apparently on our side, we've actually got the ability to get right into their heads.”
“Gee, you guys really have a record with locking up suspicious advanced GIs, huh?” Sandy said wryly. “Keep them in a small room, debate, equivocate, then wait until someone tries to kill them in some big blowup before realising whose side they're on.”
Naidu and Ibrahim repressed smiles. “Thank you, Sandy,” said Chandrasekar drily. She was talking about herself, of course. “And we haven't decided Ragi's ‘on our side,’ whatever that means. If his condition is what it appears to be, even he's probably not certain what side he's on.”
“You know how I decided?” Sandy asked them. Curious looks came back. “I went with the guys who treated me well. It's not difficult really, when you're lost and alone and don't know where to turn or where you belong, some kind treatment and offers of friendship can go a long way. Ragi might turn out to be ten times the asset I am. Be nice to him. Hell, get him laid if you have to.”
“You can arrange that?” Chandrasekar asked unwisely.
“You know I can,” Sandy replied. Chandi was too cool to blush and too smart not to have realised his mistake. “And our three prisoners too.”
“Who just killed a bunch of our people?” said Hando with disbelief.
“And nearly killed my three best friends in the world,” said Sandy. “I know. If they'd gotten to me at the wrong time of my development, that might have been me leading an attack like that.”
“And how many moral excuses do we make for GIs?” Hando retorted. “How many atrocities get the pass because oh, they can't be measured on the same moral axis as the rest of us?”
“Sure,” said Sandy, “when they break the laws of war they should be punished for it like anyone else, but they didn't kill any civvies this time, every casualty was an enemy agent defending a secure CSA facility. I did stuff just like that when I was on that side, but mostly to Fleet. And like you, some of Fleet still haven't forgiven me. But at the time, I hadn't yet realised there was a moral choice involved, I just did what I was told like the good drone I was. Good bet these GIs are the same. Don't just interrogate them, give them a choice. Explain it to them. We might have them in custody indefinitely, I doubt League will ask for them back…if nothing else, it's a psych experiment for you, how long does it take to turn a League GI, if at all? Put some of our new GI friends onto it, the difference between them and our new prisoners might only be about twelve months of introspection.”
Hando took a breath and raised a hand in faint apology. He was angry, and she got that. Sandy shook her head to say it was nothing, she understood. She hadn't even raised her voice at him.
“The most concerning part of what you've just said, Cassandra,” said Ibrahim, “is referencing the ‘laws of war.’ This attack was very much like an act of war from the League, and the one on Idi Aba was at least a very unfriendly gesture.”
“Well, we can't be certain of that,” Naidu cautioned. “If Vanessa and Rhian hadn't surprised their preparation and rushed them, the Ragi attack would have been very fast and professional too, and then we'd be calling it a covert operation, and not technically warfare.” Unimpressed looks came his way. “I did not invent the nomenclature.”
“Any way you interpret it,” Ibrahim continued, “League are very upset and are becoming increasingly drastic in their actions. What do we do about it?”
When she got out, she strode fast back to medical. An uplink had already informed her that Kiril was having checks with Dr Kishore, so she went there first, but Kiril was happy enough, chatting away and asking Kishore more questions than he was being asked in turn. She stayed long enough to be reassured herself, then went to see Vanessa and found Vanessa's family all there and some of Phillippe's family; it took time for the security clearance to arrive for anyone beyond immediate partner or guardian, so they'd only now been allowed in. She said hi to everyone, especially favourite cousin Yves, and tried to be reassuring. Svetlana was talking to Phillippe at Vanessa's bedside, and Phillippe seemed pleased at the conversation—he was telling her how they'd met, Sandy overheard. Svetlana showed
no more sign of needing her there than Kiril had, so she accessed building security to find Danya and found him sitting in Amirah's intensive care ward with Ari, talking. Amirah was going to make it, surprising given the number of holes in her, but not so surprising given how much the girl wanted to live. The docs must have given them permission to sit in there, so it seemed Danya didn't need her at the moment either.
She went to see the one surviving wounded CSA Agent, and to the bodies in the morgue—she'd already paid condolences to the friends of the others who'd died, but hadn't yet had time to see the bodies. She felt it especially incumbent upon her as senior in SWAT, given SWAT were the ones who usually took the casualties and were not shy reminding Investigations, Intel, and other suits of that fact. These nine suits had stood up to high-des GIs with no armour and average weapons and augments, and paid the predictable price. Had stood, review of security tape had shown, and fought, when others better knowing the odds might have run.
SWAT acknowledged now with an honour guard at the morgue door, two troopers in full armour at attention, beside the growing pile of flowers, mementoes, and other symbols of unknown personal value, about the photographs of the nine dead that were propped against the wall. A football, a fancy pen, a gold ring. A necklace. A mouth organ. So many stories, all suddenly ended. In the seven years she'd been on Callay, she'd come to appreciate how non-GIs weren't born soldiers, as she and her kind were. There'd been a time in the League when she'd never really thought about it, just assumed that soldier was a type of life that people just had.
Being here, she'd come to realise it was a choice, and that these agents had once been regular civilians like everyone else, children in the schools, young men and women wondering at their future prospects. No one forced them to choose, and yet they did, even knowing what it might cost them. Sandy had seen similar shrines in the League for dead GIs. No family mourned them, just their squad mates, a photograph on a wall, a few pictures of favourite things. A few messages of affection or loss. From synthetic minds struggling to comprehend what it meant, in the wider scale of things, that a life should be lost that was made to be lost, and should merely have been accepted as such…but somehow wasn't. If GIs were made to die, why did it hurt? Why grieve at all?
She recalled the shrine at a briefly empty bunk of a soldier of hers—Tan. John Tan. He'd liked cats, in the way some people liked cats, photographs of funny cats, silly cats, cats hiding in shoes, cats sleeping in odd places. Not that he'd ever actually seen a cat, besides the occasional station master's moggy, the only people of sufficient rank to keep them on stations, certainly no one on a ship was allowed. And so his photograph on the bunk had been joined by pictures of cats, and a stuffed cat of his, a rare personal item with shipboard luggage restrictions. Hell of a summary for a life, a curious affection for an animal he'd barely known. League didn't do religion much among civilians, sure as hell no one in high command had wanted GIs getting religious, fear of what might happen should GIs wonder at the existence of a higher moral power that exceeded even League Command. And so John Tan had passed, like so many others of his kind in that awful fucking war, without really knowing who he was except that he liked cats, and was a very poor chess player, and had a funny laugh—no service, no honour guard, not even a grave because GI bodies were valuable and full of expensive parts that would be recycled.
She stood now before the nine photographs of the CSA's fallen and knew that this was what the League had stolen from her and her kind. Dignity. Meaning. Choice. These men and women had made a choice to be here, and in dying here, gained dignity. Their deaths had meaning, because they'd known for what they risked and fought. If she stood for anything, and fought for anything, it was this, signified by these slowly growing shrines against the morgue wall, and the two SWAT troopers at hard attention, weapons angled sharply at the ceiling.
Sandy had never really gone for ceremony, perhaps because she'd always felt the hollowness of it all, back in League. But now she stood before the photos, central to all, and went to full attention and saluted hard. And held it with moist eyes. Fellow agents and family around her saw with approval. There's Sandy Kresnov. She's one of us. She put her arm down and nodded to them all. Then she walked back to her life and hoped that she would not need to do this too many more times. It seemed an unlikely wish, but even so, at least here, in this life, even loss made some kind of sense.
When she got back to Vanessa's bedside, a doctor gave good news—all of Vanessa's vitals were continuing to stablise, and she'd likely wake up on her own in an hour or two. Sandy sat with her for a while, with Phillippe and Svetlana, but a doctor wasn't happy with three in the ward, and Phillippe should certainly be here…and he and Svetlana seemed to be enjoying each other's company. So Sandy left them to it and went next door to Amirah's ward.
Rhian was there too. She was holding one of her twin girls, Sunita, who was fast asleep—the CSA sometimes relaxed the family attendance policy, especially in med ward, so it would work more like a regular hospital, and employees could spend time with wounded friends without worrying about family left at home. Amirah was asleep too, hooked up to life support, having undergone surgery to remove all the rounds. Sandy could see her jaw was patched and her forehead. One arm above the covers had another three patches. Presumably she was like that all over.
“Wow,” she murmured. “How many holes?”
“Fifty-three,” said Ari. “We'd all be dead without her, even Ragi; we didn't get the net collar off him fast enough otherwise.” Ari seemed particularly affectionate toward this girl, Sandy thought. Certainly she was very pretty. And funny too, and smart, very socialised for a new, young GI.
“There wasn't enough space to fall back in that place,” Rhian observed. “She had to hold ground, and that meant taking fire. She did it well.”
“And she was hitting them too or else they'd have been more accurate and she'd be dead,” Sandy surmised, well knowing that kind of combat, GI to GI. Even she'd have taken hits. But not so many, and half the CSA's dead would still be alive, at least. But that wasn't Amirah's fault, she was the designation she was, and had done magnificently with what she had. Sandy walked to Amirah's bedside and sat on the mattress edge.
“The doctor didn't want us in here,” said Danya. He sat with Ari, between the bed and the windows overlooking the compound. “But Rhian said GI brains were different; you don't like peace and quiet.”
“No,” Sandy agreed, holding the girl's hand. She was drugged, of course, muscle relaxant the only way you could operate on GIs. “I remember waking up after some procedure in the League, I hated the quiet, I couldn't focus, kept slipping away. Asked for some buddies to come in and play movies and music, that was much better.”
“GIs are social,” said Rhian, gently rocking her little girl. “Odd side effect of so many combat impulses, but there you are. All those impulses have to latch on something, silence drives us crazy. Hopefully if Ami wakes a bit she'll hear us and know she's not alone.”
“Did you sleep with her?” Sandy asked Ari. Meaning Amirah.
She could see in Ari's eyes the pause, wondering whether to lie. And concluding, correctly, that it gained him nothing. “Um, yes. She's, um, persuasive.”
Sandy smiled. “Good. She's a good girl. And I can personally attest that sleeping with newly arrived GIs is a great way to make them feel at home.”
She and Ari gazed at each other for a moment. She was almost hoping for some jealousy, but predictably there wasn't. She'd thought once that jealousy might be a sign of advancing mental maturity, but it seemed that she just really didn't do that…so what the hell, why hope for something that everyone said was intensely unpleasant?
She glanced at Danya. She'd almost expected him to be uncomfortable. These were the kinds of life complications he was mostly unfamiliar with. But instead he just smiled a little and put his hands in the air. “I'm thirteen,” he said. “No comment.”
Sandy's eyes flicked to Rhian. “Danya, would you
like to hold Sunita?”
Now there was caution in his eyes. He shook his head. “No.”
Rhian looked a little hurt. “No?”
“Babies make me nervous. Kiril was that age when the crash happened. Younger even. Svet was five.” The hurt faded from Rhian's eyes. “They both nearly starved. I had to keep them fed. I nearly died trying, so many times. I'd hear him crying because he was hungry, and…” He looked down at his hands, twisting and fidgeting between his knees. “I still hear him sometimes. That's when I wake up sweating.”
Rhian looked sad. “I had a bad experience with a child once. When I was a League soldier. But it's not the kind of thing you just live with, Danya. It's the kind of thing you overcome.”
She got up and held out her sleeping little girl for Danya to hold. His enthusiasm was underwhelming, but Rhian was accepting no refusal. Danya held the girl and still clearly knew what to do, how to cradle her head on his arm. Rhian leaned close, hand on Danya's shoulder.
“This is a different place than where you're from,” she said. “She'll never be truly hungry. If she cries it'll be because it's time for her feed, or she's tired, or she's filled her nappy. No one's going to try and kill her, and if they ever did, I and all my friends would kill everything in our path to stop it, ourselves as well if necessary.” It was imagery that Rhian, unlike most mothers, would find intensely comforting. “Look how peaceful she is.”
Danya looked. And still looked awkward. Like the sight of that little sleeping face brought back too many memories, all at once. But evidently not all of them were bad, because he did not give her back.
“Her mother nearly died today,” he reminded Rhian.
“She did,” said Rhian, nodding. “But her birth mother's already dead, back in the League, and she got a second chance, like you. There's no room for pessimism with family, Danya. You of all people should know that.”
Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield Page 24
