Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  Ari frowned. “Some reason they don't want the CSA looking?”

  “Not just the CSA, anyone not from our precinct,” Sinta explained. “Organisational barriers, once it gets out you can't control it. They've been instructed to control it, or that's what it looks like. But just because I can't show you actual stuff doesn't mean I can't talk about it. So long as no one else knows.”

  With a wary look. She was serious, at least. A mere detective could get into serious shit with this kind of thing.

  “I didn't get this well connected by just repeating every sensitive thing I was told,” Ari reassured her, sipping his drink. The leather booth seats vibrated beneath them, boom boom boom, lights from outside flashing against the curtains.

  “Okay, Idi Aba was shot close range, outside his apartment, almost exact same time as the attack on the HDM tower took place.” The very mention made Ari feel far more serious than he wanted in such entertaining company. He remembered that attack very well. Remembered thinking it his last moment alive. “Building security has no record of an entry or exit, we've looked at all the hacking tricks, counted the numbers of people coming in and out in case the attacker used someone else's face, you name it. But we've still no idea, which tells you it's a pro.

  “Idi Aba was shot in the back as he walked from his door, one in the back, two in the head on the ground. Gun was an 8 mil, no one heard anything, so figure something quiet, probably a mag shooter. Only two other doors on that apartment level, he had a nice place, big apartments, not much risk of being surprised. Hallway camera shows nothing, empty corridor.”

  “Security system?” asked Ari.

  “Zaphira Tech.”

  “Good,” Ari affirmed. “Not that good, but good as they go. You'd think serious pro to do it that clean, maybe ISO.”

  “Here's the thing,” said Sinta. “For all the security, this big apartment building has external glass elevators. Facing them is a sniper's paradise, buildings, cover points everywhere. If it's ISO, League GIs, why not just shoot him from range? Rather than penetrate all those levels of security to get into the building and get out again? It's a two-person job for a real pro, one to keep lookout, the other to do the hit, right?”

  Ari frowned. Thinking of several things he could offer at this point, but Sinta was good and on a roll. “Keep going.”

  “And again, an open-air parking lot at a lower level. So even if the glass elevator makes a tough moving target, again doubtful for GIs but possible, they could get him while he goes to his car. I didn't want to run the sim because I didn't want to have to explain what I was doing to my captain, but just standing there in that parking lot, I counted maybe thirty spots for a good sniper. Including a couple of mega-rise where you park up top and bring the sniper rifle in from there, that's much easier security to breach than coming up from the bottom.

  “And I don't reckon there's any way this was GIs, because ISO GIs are fighters not sneakers, and there's talk going around that League don't like training their own GIs with these kinds of covert skills in case they start using it against League, they prefer their GIs as spec ops combatants, not spies. So if this other attack is GIs, Idi Aba's murder isn't, must have been regular humans.

  “But League lost their diplomatic access to Tanusha three months ago when the embassy was closed. They can't get people in through those channels anymore. Now, it could be sleeper agents, people who've been here a while…but deep cover in Tanusha's hard to get, you'd blow that for, what, an emancipation activist? We know they can sneak stealth ships into the system and make capsule drops into the atmosphere, but the Gs they pull are hard for regular humans, GIs do much better. It's just a lot of work for such a small target.”

  “Doesn't mean they didn't do it,” said Ari. “Trying to guess the how and why of ISO is best left until three years after they've done it. They play long-term chess; short-term analysis never makes sense.”

  “Right,” said Sinta, nodding. Ari liked the way her eyes became all animated as she followed her train of thought. “So it looks open and shut, right? Two League operations, against two League enemies, an emancipation activist and the CSA, both at the same time, using each other for cover. And with pros like that, we're not going to find any evidence, so when we've such an obvious explanation, why bother looking further? Blame it all on the League and do the paperwork. Very convenient. I hate convenient.

  “So I figure if the shooter's this good, he's not going to screw up and I'm not going to catch him that way. So I look at the victim instead. Idi Aba was acting very strangely up to his death. I got access to his data files, only they've crashed, they had a delete function that saw he was dead and erased everything.”

  “Well, some of these emancipation guys are paranoid,” said Ari. “They think all the anti-GI crazies will come after them.”

  “I couldn't see what was in his files,” Sinta continued, “but he put the delete function there last week. The same time he started taking lots of network calls. I talked to his colleagues, lately he'd been net talking all the time, normally on business he'd just shrug them off like anyone does, but he was stopping in the middle of briefings to take urgent calls, missing the beginning of trial preps because of calls…some thought he was having woman trouble, only he wasn't married and wasn't seeing anyone, that anyone knew, and his financials seem to confirm that.

  “I couldn't get any message content or where it came from, but a buddy of mine who works off-grid…a bit like your buddies here…” with a glance around, “…managed to salvage a bit of the encryption whoever was calling him used.”

  “Just one caller?” Ari asked.

  Fast nod. “Yep. Government encryption. Grand Council. Top security.”

  Ari's eyes were wide. “Oh, fuck.”

  Another fast nod. “It's not supposed to survive a recording, but my network guy knows some serious tricks.”

  “Look,” Ari said urgently, “do you still have a copy of that encryption pattern? Because I know some people who can place that even more specifically than…”

  “Already done,” said Sinta, a gleam in her eye. “My guy put me onto some other guys…the same guys who put me onto you. They'd broken the fucking Grand Council encryption seals, can you believe that? Just for fun. They still don't know what the messages say, but they know who's saying it. This one's coming from Ambassador Ballan's office.”

  “All of those calls?”

  “Yes. He's got a big staff though, narrowing it down would be hard even if I had access, which I can't get without telling my Captain I suspect it's not League GIs, and him getting all ratty on me.”

  Ari stared at her for a long time. Normally that would be very distracting, but now his thoughts raced unimpeded. Sandy called him paranoid, but even she would be thinking nasty thoughts at this point, surely. Sinta finally got tired of him staring at her, and made a “so?” expression and a little shrug, challenging him.

  “That's it?” asked Ari.

  “That's it. I was kind of hoping you could do some digging yourself with Ballan, I understand you know him.”

  “Well, not really.” That was Sandy's friend, and he didn't want to bring her into this right now. “But I'm real good buddies with a fellow named Ibrahim you might have heard of.”

  A wide-eyed nod.

  “Look,” he said, “you said you like crime fiction…when I read it, I'm terrible, I turn to the last page first.”

  “Barbarian,” she said.

  Ari nodded. “What's your last page here? What do you think it is?”

  Sinta shook her head. “My working theory is someone in the Grand Council. Probably not even one of Ballan's staff, probably that's a cover used to throw any investigations off. Beyond that, I'm not prepared to guess. What's your last page?”

  Ari shook his head. “You're not thinking anywhere near big enough. First, ask yourself a couple of questions. If someone in the Grand Council used the League attack on HDM tower to cover the murder of Idi Aba, how did they know Leag
ue was going to attack?”

  Sinta blinked at him. “I hadn't really thought of that,” she confessed. “You think they knew in advance?”

  “If they did,” said Ari, “then we're looking at a traitor. They won't see it that way, of course, but working in conjunction with League agents attacking Federation agents is treason, and the last I checked the war may be over but the statutes are still on the books for treason, and the punishment is death. Now if the person to be put to death is a high-ranking member of the Grand Council…”

  Sinta's face paled. She really hadn't thought it through that far. Some people were micro-focused, their brains were brilliant at small details, but they missed the larger picture. Such people might make good detectives, paying attention to every tiny clue but never looking up long enough to see where they were headed. The macro-focus people might be better suited to CSA Intel.

  “Secondly, ISO don't just let slip their plans to people in the GC by accident. So either they approve, or they're using someone there for another purpose. What would make the League really, really happy right now? Concerning Federation policy?”

  “Well, if we started…” Sinta blinked rapidly, and she looked up at him with dawning concern. “…fighting ourselves,” she concluded.

  “And stayed out of their business,” Ari added. “There's a new political party in the GC advocating pretty much that.”

  “Oh, no,” Sinta breathed. “You think those calls from Ballan's office to Idi Aba were someone warning him to drop whatever he was onto?”

  “Could be. And when he didn't, it got passed onto someone higher who did more than just threaten. 2389’s been attacking emancipation activists left and right lately, verbally at least, saying they'll provoke the League and what we all need right now is a kinder, gentler Federation that doesn't go around upsetting people. You get what I'm thinking now?”

  Sinta nodded.

  “Good,” said Ari. “So if you want to work with me on this, here's my deal. I'll dig as much as I can into the Grand Council and all the places you can't access. You do all the legwork on Idi Aba that cops are much better at than CSA, tell me what he was organising, what he was into, why he might have upset someone in 2389 or anywhere else. And also, I don't know what your personal security situation is like, but take all precautions and if you don't think you're secure enough, call me and I'll put someone onto it. We've got systems cops don't get, and your superiors don't need to know.”

  Sinta was staring at the tabletop, a knuckle in her teeth. “God damn it,” she muttered.

  “Ah, yes,” said Ari. “They all think it's such a great idea to come and bother Ari with their cases and their problems. Then they change their minds. Hey, are you single?”

  Rishi watched a debate on the flight up. It was between a woman, who was spokesperson for the new Grand Council Party 2389, and a man, who spoke for the present Federalist position. It was the big political news story, everyone was watching it…except of course for the ninety percent of the Callayan population who, when they weren't working, were watching anything but.

  “…no one is arguing that what happened on Pyeongwha wasn't the most tragic, awful thing,” the 2389 woman was saying. She was older, white-haired, and elegant. “But what Federal Constitutionalists like myself are arguing is that the precedent unleashed by Federal intervention on Pyeongwha, whatever short-term gains might be apparent, will ultimately be much worse. And look, even now we see guerilla war commencing against the new Pyeongwha provisional government and its Federal backers, a few hundred dead so far and that number will surely escalate before long, so the short-term gains would appear illusory also.”

  The FSA jet bumped a little through the troposphere, nearly Mach Four and the five-thousand-kilometer flight would take barely an hour and a half all told. Rishi ate a small bowl of fruit salad and sipped a glass of red wine provided by the stewardess—it was just her, Rishi, and the apparently junior female FSA officer accompanying her in the cabin, seating for up to twenty others left empty. The FSA were certainly being very nice to go to all this trouble just for her.

  “But you are saying exactly that,” the spokesman countered. Spokesman for what, Rishi hadn't entirely figured—2389 was the only party in the Grand Council. Spokesman for all the others, she supposed. Not an ambassador but senior staff. “You're saying exactly that Pyeongwha wasn't a bad enough situation to warrant interfering, and I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but the vision of all those people being gruesomely murdered by the lunatics who ran the place tells me otherwise. Pyeongwha is not a foreign state, it's a MEMBER state, and member states of the Federation only enjoy their rights as Federation members so long as they abide by their obligations, foremost of which is that they can't massacre their own citizens. Pyeongwha abrogated that right, and so is denied all rights as a Federation member as well—membership should and does have conditions, otherwise what's the point of having a Federation at all?”

  And from there it degenerated into a series of increasingly personal arguments about what the founders of the Federal constitution truly envisioned, and whether that vision was relevant any longer. Rishi didn't know what to make of it. She was a new arrival and lived now on a mostly deserted island archipelago a third of the planet's circumference from Tanusha. They didn't get a lot of news there, though she tried to watch some, during breaks in construction work. It all seemed so distant there.

  The jet circled around Tanusha at altitude, coming in to a gradual hover at a district where the city sprawl abruptly ended at virgin forests and rivers. Building there was illegal until authorised, the bored junior agent informed her when she asked—every centimeter of Tanusha was planned. Certainly it looked every bit as impressive as Sandy had described it, and as she'd seen herself, briefly, on a very impressive VR Sandy had shown her some months back. A hell of a long way to come from Droze, that was certain.

  They landed vertically on a pad between officious-looking buildings, then walked to one of them, across pleasant grassy gardens, trees everywhere. The FSA building was nice too, air-conditioned with lots of glass and wide spaces. She barely had to check through any security, the agent accompanying her just handed her off to another agent, who walked her though various halls and offices, then across an air bridge to an adjoining building that she immediately recognised as medical, because it looked like Chancelry medical back on Droze, only way more advanced and pleasant.

  There she was handed off again to a couple of doctors, and the guard disappeared completely. That surprised her. No security at all. Though of course they'd be monitoring her, and probably there were FSA-employed GIs nearby, just in case, little good a non-GI agent could do if she suddenly did decide to turn on them. As if she would, now of all times, when she had nowhere else to go.

  The doctors took her to the new floor of the medical wing, which she was told had been deserted until just recently, FSA HQ having been built several sizes too large with the intention to grow into it. Here in the first ward was Stezy, female GI, a 42 series. She was completely immobile here, which was good, because back in Chancelry she'd occasionally convulsed when they reduced the drug dosage, damaging equipment and requiring restraints. She had a mask on her face and a tube in her mouth, and advanced equipment monitored every function.

  “We've tried to make contact through VR,” Doctor Singh explained to her, “but though her uplinks seem to be functioning, we just don't think there's very much going on.” He seemed very nice, and quite sad at the fate of this Chancelry GI he'd never known. And he wore a red turban, which Rishi thought was odd; people didn't wear stuff like that on Droze, or not that she'd seen. Certainly they hadn't around GIs in Chancelry Corporation. “We'll keep trying until we can establish what degree of mental function she has, and what if anything we can do to increase that function. I must warn you that our best estimate is that we can't really do anything, but we'll try. And then, if she's adjudged to be mentally nonfunctional to even the primary degree required, then we'll have to discuss
with you appointing someone to act as the guarantor of her legal rights. When it comes to making the decision on whether to turn off her life support, you understand.”

  Rishi nodded, not really having expected anything else. “You don't want to keep her alive to study her?”

  “That would be illegal under Federation law,” said Doctor Singh. “Certainly we can keep her alive longer to study her if we can demonstrate material benefit to the lives of these other GIs in our care, but if we can't establish that, we're not allowed to keep a brain-dead body alive for reasons of any other profit. But we'll need someone to be appointed her official guardian. If that person is you, then you can meet with Stezy's lawyer while you're here to make sure you understand how all the legal clauses work in her case, and in others. And then if you wish you can talk about it with your other friends down in Malina, whatever you choose, just so long as you understand that by Callayan law, where we can't establish the wishes of the patient, the guardian holds most of the cards and we have to do what you say, within reason.”

  Rishi felt dazed. Rights, he said. Sandy had told her about this too—in the Federation, GIs had the same rights as everyone else. Lawyers, clauses…it was confusing, but it was good too. Director Ibrahim had assured her that the Chancelry medical cases would be well looked after, and it seemed he'd kept his word. Cassandra had assured her the same, back on Droze, and it looked like she'd been right too.

  In the next ward was Melvin, similarly restrained, but with less life support. He drooled and stared blankly at a wall. Dr Singh explained that he was just as brain damaged as previously feared, but that with time they might be able to restore some more pathways and improve cognitive function, since he was still so young. But most likely he'd be little more than a vegetable for life. Despite the expense, someone in the government would keep him on and look after him; euthanasia was only legal on Callay for the brain-dead and irrecoverable, with technology these days no one was prepared to pull the plug on hopeless medical conditions that in thirty years turned out to be changeable. And with biosynth moving as it was…Singh shrugged, maybe in thirty years Melvin's life would change for the better as well, he said.