Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  Danya said nothing. And looking at him, Sandy knew that that just opened up a whole can of worms. Danya didn't do optimism or pessimism, he did realism, hard, cold, and nasty. Pessimism was no help, but optimism got you killed, so he went for something in the middle, something that black-and-white, straightforward Rhian would probably never understand and was not wired to.

  “That's great, Rhi,” Sandy uplinked to tell her privately. “You're good with him. But I think that's enough, huh?”

  Rhian looked up at her and smiled, and returned to her chair. Her eyes again fixed on her sleeping child. Trusting or not, Sandy could read GI body language better than anyone, and Rhian was poised to be there in a flash. And go through walls to do it.

  “Where's Ragi?” Sandy asked.

  “Not sure,” said Ari. “Safer that way.”

  “He's free? With this network?”

  “Limited. He's volunteered to some monitoring and controls; he knows we're nervous.”

  “Cai could shut down traffic control in a minute or two, I'm sure,” said Rhian.

  “Ragi's not Cai,” said Ari. “But he's something similar, no question. Sandy, we could use your help with him.”

  “Why? He's nothing like me.”

  “Takawashi made both of you.”

  Sandy snorted. “Takawashi made me the same way that the president of a nut company makes peanuts. He's an administrator, bureaucrat, and self-promoter. The system grows and packages the peanuts.”

  “Sandy,” Ari tried again, “it's kind of important that he comes to like us…”

  “A point I made very strongly to Ibrahim, Chandi, and company just now. I don't need to be personally involved in every escaped GI's life. You guys are doing fine without me, and if he needs other GI friends, well, I'd think he should feel quite close to Ami after this. It doesn't always need to be me, Ari. I have other priorities.”

  She glanced at Danya, holding the baby. Ari exhaled and looked skeptical. “Well, speaking of your other priorities,” he said, “let me take Danya out some night or even a weekend. He's a self-sufficient guy, he's not going to be happy just being taken care of all the time. I can show him the real Tanusha. My Tanusha.”

  Most mothers would have been horrified at the thought. Ari's Tanusha was not a place parents willingly let their thirteen-year-old children wander into.

  “You'd do that?” she asked. “You have the time?”

  “Well, no, technically I never have the time. But I do what we all learn to do, we involve people who matter to us in our work, we make an overlap.” With a glance at Rhian, still watching her sleeping child. “He can come on the job with me for a bit, nothing dangerous, just meet some people, see the sights. Call it work experience.”

  Danya's look was hopeful. Sandy smiled at him. “Don't even need to ask you, do I?”

  Danya shrugged. “I'm glad you're my guardian, Sandy,” he said. “But we both know that some things I'm not going to ask permission for.”

  “Well, then thank you for being polite and asking,” Sandy said drily. He and Ari had spoken of this already, she was certain, in her absence. “Make a time. Explaining to your brother and sister why you can go and they can't will be your job, understand?”

  “Been giving them bad news all my life,” said Danya, unworried. Sunita stirred in his arms, writhing and shifting. He bounced her a little, with long-remembered reflex, and cooed to her gently. The little girl settled and went on sleeping. Rhian and Sandy exchanged a glance and a smile.

  And looked up at the new figure appearing in the doorway. Male, broad-shouldered, head recently shaved. Poole, in a rough shirt and jeans, like he'd been out in the wilds somewhere. Which he had.

  “You're back,” Rhian observed.

  Poole nodded. “Just talking to my buddy Kiril. He's convinced…get this, absolutely convinced, that Doctor Kishore's green jelly snakes taste better than the yellow ones.” He walked to Amirah's bedside.

  “I've watched media debates on security policy that contained nothing so profound,” Sandy told him.

  “My problem is I always found jelly snakes more interesting than security policy,” Poole admitted, looking down at Amirah. “She's going to be okay, yeah?”

  “Yeah. How was Callay?”

  He'd been touring, looking at the wildlife, climbing mountains, and diving reefs. Looking for whatever qualified as inspiration for Poole.

  “Callay's pretty. But I'm back now, and I'd like to join the CSA.”

  Just like that. Rather than sitting at home and playing piano, or wandering the tourist circuit—also on Anita and Pushpa's money. Disassociated, disconnected, disinterested, no one had yet figured Poole out. He just didn't seem to care that much.

  Sandy looked at Ari. Ari scratched his jaw. “Any particular reason?” he asked.

  Poole made a face, looking down at Amirah. “Oh, you know. Something to do.”

  “If that's your answer to psych questions,” said Sandy, “you'll fail.”

  Poole smiled. “Well, I'll just have to come up with something better, yeah?” This time Ari looked at Sandy. Sandy rolled her eyes. Poole looked at Danya and Sunita. “One of yours, Rhi?” Rhian nodded. “Can I hold her?”

  “Of course.”

  Danya got up to transfer the sleeping infant very carefully. Sunita looked so much smaller in Poole's arms than in Rhian's or Danya's. The little girl snuggled and slept on.

  “Hello, there,” Poole murmured. “Hello, little thing. So when do you go and pay the unofficial League embassy a visit?”

  “No idea what you mean,” said Sandy.

  “Sure you don't. Can I come?”

  “Can you come where?”

  Poole looked at her for a long moment. Sandy gave nothing away. She was the only one qualified to discuss or deny what he was asking. Poole sighed. “Join the CSA?” he suggested.

  Sandy nodded. “I can tell you all kinds of things once you join.”

  “I'll want to fast-track it to the FSA. Like Amirah.”

  A smile escaped Sandy's control, but she shut it down fast. “Sure. Just make sure you pass CSA prelim psych tests first.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Why FSA Poole?” asked Danya. “Why not just CSA?”

  “Kids interest me,” said Poole, looking down at little Sunita in his arms. “Music interests me. Turns out nature and wildlife interest me too, within reason. And killing people from the League interests me considerably. That's mostly a Feddie job.” Sunita stirred again. “And you, little bumpkin,” he told her, “aren't gonna know nothing about it.”

  Professor Gao Dan did not expect to find Sandy waiting in her office. She did a fast double-take and recovered herself commendably well.

  “Commander Kresnov! I don't believe we've met in person. I wasn't told you were coming.”

  “There's a reason for that,” said Sandy, sitting in the chair beside the professor's desk. The desk sat before a wide window overlooking the grassy grounds of Rao University, one of Tanusha's five most prestigious. Professor Dan was head of League Studies in the InterSystem Relations Department, and had been for three years since she'd arrived from the League. “Please, take a seat.”

  “Actually I'm expecting a guest. I've a meeting here with the Ambassador to Jade, and…”

  “That meeting will not be taking place,” Sandy said calmly. “I'm here instead.”

  “Oh,” said Dan. Evidently doing fast calculations in her head. She'd had ambassadorial postings herself, back in League, and the procedures were not so different in the Federation. “Well, in that case, can I offer you some refreshment?”

  “No, thank you. Please, a seat.”

  Dan put her briefcase on her desk and sat. A plain woman, dark suit, straight hair, no makeup. Every inch the unremarkable professor of what had once been known as International Relations, until interstellar travel had made planetary systems, not nations, the primary decisive actor on the stage of human affairs.

  Sandy had selected dark pants
, boots, and a black leather jacket. Suits did not really work on her, but she'd wanted something that said “authority.” Black leather somehow worked where shoulder pads did not. For such a formal effect, her still-too-short hair now played the part, neatly combed, a striking blonde contrast to the black.

  “Professor Dan,” she said, “we have a situation. Your friends in the League's Internal Security Organisation have gone and done something completely unacceptable, launching two attacks within this city, causing the deaths of nine CSA personnel and one Callayan citizen.”

  “Well,” said Dan, taking a breath to prepare herself for argument, “if you would present me with the evidence of your accusation, I could take it to the relevant officials and see if I can get a formal response for you…”

  “We have League GIs in custody,” Sandy interrupted. “Captured alive. I wasn't making an accusation, I was stating a fact.”

  Dan shifted uncomfortably. “If that is your position.”

  “Now, it was an act quite similar to this one that led to the League Embassy being shut down on this world,” Sandy continued, “and the League losing all official use of diplomatic privileges and contacts with the Federation capital. Federal Security and our elected masters in the Grand Council find it quite disconcerting that this behaviour should continue, despite the Federation's previously clear assertion that we would not tolerate any more acts of this kind.”

  “I understand your position,” said Dan.

  “Well, I wonder if you really do.” Sandy shifted forward to the edge of her seat, forearms on knees. “You see, Federal Security's position on these matters has become quite tough, as has the CSA's. Callay keeps getting attacked, you see, and just demanding that it stop does not appear to work. So lately, you may be aware, we've been arranging for some of the perpetrators of these attacks to…well, to disappear.” She kept her gaze quite calm and level. “Not just the actual agents, but the organisers behind them. People who wear comfortable suits and work in nice offices.”

  She looked around at the Professor's office. Dan was sweating, eyes darting. There was a reason Sandy had been sent to perform this task. She did not particularly enjoy it; she had no quarrel with the professor personally. But then, conflicts between planetary systems, as Dan taught well to her students every day, had little to do with personal feelings.

  “I've been aware of several reports, yes,” Dan admitted. “Commander Kresnov, please be assured that I have absolutely no contact with the ISO on operational matters, or on most other matters. It's not like I'm running a…a fully-fledged embassy here…”

  “Oh, I know that,” Sandy cut her off. “But like I said, I'm not sure that you do understand our position. Our position is that the ISO are clearly not deterred by our previous threats. Now, there are several broad strands of thought as to how to deal with this, in the FSA. Some say that we should retaliate directly against known League operatives here in Tanusha. People like yourself.” Dan swallowed. “We know you had nothing to do with it personally, but the ISO organisers themselves are quite proficient at remaining unseen, especially in light of our new measures, and the people who actually organised these attacks are doubtless many light-years away in the League. We can hope that by retaliating against people like you, that it may at least upset League government enough that they crack down on the ISO themselves; after all they were quite upset with the ISO last time too, most of them hadn't expected to lose their embassy here so suddenly to ISO activities they hadn't directly authorised.

  “But then others make the case that action against just any League operatives would be pointless, partly because we here in the Federation pride ourselves on killing the right people, not just any people, and partly because after the retaliatory expulsion of our embassy in the League, we too have been relying upon unofficial Federation figures in the League to act as our unofficial embassy staff, to maintain contacts between Federation and League. Anything we do to you would just be done in turn to our people in the League, and that would be criminal negligence on our part toward our own people.”

  Dan nodded nervously. “Not an unreasonable assumption, I'm sad to say.”

  “So here's what I've been sent to tell you today,” said Sandy. “Firstly, be aware that all our local security apparatus are now extremely suspicious. Of course you're aware that we constantly track who you and your colleagues are meeting with. Best that you scale back the scope and sensitivity of your meetings. You're all on very thin ice, and if we suspect even the hint of threat in planning or purpose, we may act suddenly and unexpectedly against any of you. As a new mother myself, I can personally guarantee the safety of your families—should any of our people touch your families, I'll deal with them myself. Our people know that, and they're not that dumb. But everyone else is now on warning. Am I understood?”

  Professor Dan nodded shortly. “Very well understood.”

  “Secondly, please convey this circumstance, and our displeasure with it, to your League masters. Tell them to rein in the ISO before they upset our politicians so much that someone decides to restart the war. Those are the words of Director Ibrahim of the FSA, not mine.”

  Another nod. “I'll tell them.”

  “And thirdly, please convey to everyone that these aggressive League actions shall not go unanswered. We in the security agencies are not in the business of table thumping and accusing others of risking wars by their actions—that's what politicians are for. We understand the difference between a covert action and an act of war. But because we understand that difference, we can promise that the League will now be answered in kind. You attacked us twice, and so you have two attacks coming to you.”

  Professor Dan blinked at her. “Attacks?”

  Sandy nodded. “Two attacks. They will be planned at the highest level and will strike somewhere in League space that you least expect. Be reminded that we have assets now that we did not have just a few years ago. We will strike security-related targets only, which is better than you've done in killing an innocent lawyer just now. And we expect that you shall repay us the same courtesy once we're done of not declaring these attacks to be acts of war, as we've restrained ourselves with you. Should there be more attacks on our territory and our people in the meantime, our replies shall increase accordingly.”

  “I see,” said the Professor. “When should I say these attacks are due?”

  “Any time,” said Sandy. “Also, please inform your masters that we are currently debating whether or not political figures should be considered a part of League security infrastructure.”

  Professor Dan shook her head. “I'm sorry, are you saying that you're considering assassinating League politicians?”

  “No,” said Sandy. “The political establishment is large. Security targets are not necessarily elected, in fact, the most significant ones usually are not. Will you tell them?”

  Ibrahim took off his shoes and walked barefoot in the sand. His job took him to strange places, and beautiful places, but rarely places as beautiful as this. He stood on a long, curling beach, white sands receding down to the cool water, where aqua blue turned to deep ocean green. Above the beach, the land was thick with palms and other trees. The bay ended just nearby at a headland, a rocky outcrop upon which nested various birds and batwings. Beyond the headland, another long beach. And it was all nearly deserted, save for the recent descent of a hypersonic VTOL onto a small clearing in the trees behind the headland.

  His entourage this trip was small—two pilots, Ambassador Ballan and one trusted member of his staff, Agent Ruben, and Commander Rice. And her husband Phillippe. Curious choice that was. The two pilots were both GIs, highly trusted and valued members of the Federal Security Agency for several years now. The indigenous synthetics had to be represented by someone, and of their two seniors, Captain Chu was too busy, and Commander Kresnov had been given the choice and had declined to come.

  “Better not tell the rest of the galaxy about the Callayan relocation program,” Agent Ruben
suggested, sunglasses on, looking around. “They'll all sign up.”

  Ibrahim smiled. Ruben looked as out of place as he did, in his city suit, shoes in hand. Only Ibrahim was perhaps a little more comfortable shoeless, and the sand reminded him of hot pavings at the mosque. That same sensation of needing to hurry, yet that given the surroundings, one should take one's time.

  “I do hope they like it,” he admitted. “You have no idea the difficulties obtaining environmental clearance for a secret facility.”

  “Right,” said Ruben, frowning. “How do those pointy-headed little bureaucrats approve environmental clearance for something they're not allowed to see or know the purpose of?”

  “I'm afraid that shall have to remain a great mystery.”

  “You didn't get a clearance did you? You just built it.” Ibrahim only smiled. “We've got to be a hundred kilometers from the nearest settlement. Who's gonna know?”

  “Someone, eventually,” said Ibrahim. “It's only temporary, to buy us some time. And there's the question of orbital surveillance and lone adventurers touring these islands. If it buys us six months we'll be happy.” Though of course, orbital surveillance could be altered, if one were the FSA. And lone adventurers spotted in advance and diverted.

  Commander Rice's presence was not entirely formal, though it was certainly of use to have the FSA combat arm represented. More than that, she was here on doctor's orders and had been told to stay on a few days and relax. But Vanessa Rice being Vanessa Rice, she was already in her swimsuit and now swam out upon the reef in the mid-shallows with snorkel and fins. Her husband was with her, a necessity if she were to be gone for more than twelve hours, and now swam with her, duck-diving for a closer look at the reef below. He'd been involved in the major security incident four months ago that had led to the closure of the League Embassy and had acquired a security clearance by necessity from that incident plus his relationship to Commander Rice. The psychs said he was little risk so long as he and she were together. Hopefully the relationship would last.