Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  Reichardt sent her a cake with a file in it, from negotiations into the future of Federation-League relations. A warning, perhaps, that someone was going to prison. After the Battle of Nehru Station, Reichardt had been concerned it would be him, for fighting against elements of the Fleet, and never mind that that Fleet element had started it by violating basic Federation law about the rights of worlds. If there was trouble again in Fleet over negotiations out in New Torah, Reichardt would be the one who'd know.

  But he sent this warning to her. With a misspelled card—Reichardt was a well-read man, and like all captains a stickler for detail. “They're watching us,” he said. “I can't tell you what's going on. But one of us is in trouble.” And the card expressed concern for her kids.

  “Danya,” she said quietly. “Go and wake Kiril. Then all of you pack a bag of things you think you might need.”

  Silence as they stared at her, but only for a moment. “For how long?” asked Danya.

  “I don't know. Probably I'm just being paranoid and we'll be back tomorrow. Probably. But take more, just in case.”

  Danya took his and Svetlana's half-eaten cake to the fridge. Svetlana just stood, looking upset.

  “Svet?” Sandy asked. “What's wrong?”

  “I like it here!” she said, lip trembling. “I like living here with you; I don't want to leave!”

  Sandy put hands on her shoulders. “Svet, it's just a precaution. You know if we live this life, we all have to take precautions sometimes. No one's going to make you leave. If we ever leave, it will be because we've chosen to leave for somewhere even better. If someone tries to make us leave, they'll have to come through me first. You understand?” Svetlana nodded. “Now go with Danya and get ready.”

  She went, following Danya up the stairs. Canas security would see them leaving. That could be accessed. It no longer felt safe, not after Detective Sinta's run-in with anonymous Feds today. If there were enemies in the Grand Council, then there weren't very many places that were safe. Nowhere on the official network anyway.

  Click. “Sandy, what's up?” Vanessa's voice.

  “Reichardt just sent me a warning, something's not right. I think Fleet trouble.”

  “The negotiations. Fuck.” Waking up fast. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing, he can't risk it, that's the point. We know there's Feds in town we can't account for. We know an internal push within the GC could tip us all out. Too many variables, I'm shifting house with the kids. Say we're visiting with friends if anyone asks.”

  They'd talked about this, her, Vanessa, Ari, Rhian, and some of their FSA/CSA comrades, people who'd had each other's back under fire and could be trusted absolutely. FSA spec ops only existed on the GC Security Committee approval, and their other employer, the CSA, was run by a Callayan government administration that currently disliked everything Federal. If the squeeze came, they'd agreed, it would be political, aimed at shutting down the perpetrators of the Pyeongwha action. If it happened, Sandy wanted herself and, most importantly, her kids to be on ground that couldn't be pulled out from under them by any administration. Canas security barriers were Callayan government–controlled and could turn from a shield to a noose.

  “Dammit, we didn't figure on Fleet. You've checked who's in town?”

  “Yeah, they'll never tell us, not even Ibrahim knows ship movements if Fleet doesn't want them known. Only Shin might know.”

  “Who carried that message back from Reichardt, do you think?”

  “More likely some freighter, so Fleet couldn't touch it. Hasn't the best relationship with his fellow captains, Reichardt.”

  “Well, thanks for the heads up, I'll spread the word with the others, you just look after the kids.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. What about you?”

  “I'll stay here. I understand you wanting to get out of Canas, but this is a more normal neighbourhood. They couldn't detain me without detaining Phillippe, he's a public figure, it's awkward for them. No political stunt they might pull will work if they start upsetting the general public, and Phillippe's friends are all on their side right now. They piss the Tanushan arts community off, next thing all the actors and singers turn on them, etc.”

  “That's a nice theory Phillippe's been peddling,” Sandy warned. “Don't rely on it.”

  “I won't. Talk to Ibrahim, huh? You're the only person he'll listen to more than Ari.”

  They drove out the Canas gate in the replacement cruiser, the old one in an FSA shop getting repairs to dents and two bullet holes. Canas security scanned them leaving, but once they were airbourne Sandy activated her self-designed functions and disappeared from the grid. It wasn't strictly legal even for an FSA agent, because she'd disappeared from their grid too, and HQ liked to know where all its vehicles were. She landed at a deserted TZ in a quiet neighbourhood, then lifted off once more with a false ID on the traffic net, and no one would know without a closer look.

  She explained the situation to Ibrahim as they flew.

  “I've not heard anything myself,” he said. “But as you suggest, if there were moves afoot in the Grand Council they'd be careful not to let me know. Mr Shin is another question.”

  “Director, if they decide to shut down FSA spec ops, that's one thing. They'll find an excuse, like League did six months ago with the war crimes charges. My main worry is the CSA, because most of us FSA spec ops are also CSA SWAT. If the Callayan government goes after SWAT as well, not only are all we agents in some difficulty, but Callay is left relatively defenceless.”

  “I'm not certain President Singh is quite that pig-headed…”

  “I myself have no doubt of it,” Sandy cut in.

  “…but I'm keeping an eye on him. Or Chandi is.”

  “And who keeps an eye on Chandi? If you were still CSA Director, I'd have no doubts of your support. Chandi remains very vague on this.”

  “Cassandra, Director Chandrasekar answers directly to the President of Callay. Should Singh give him an order, he'll follow it.”

  “Yes, but you see how precarious this whole thing becomes. We rely upon one person who relies on another and so on. 2389 is struggling for the majority in the GC to make constitutional amendments, and people like me, like FSA spec ops, we get in the way. There's a lot of desperate people who seriously think we're headed for another war, or Federal disintegration, if they don't pass those amendments. And now Detective Sinta has evidence they've already killed one person who got in their way.”

  “We should not taint an entire groundswell movement because of the actions of a few extreme operatives,” Ibrahim reminded her. “We've no evidence so far that it's anything else. But your concerns are justified, and the FSA will stand by its own people.”

  “Some elements of the FSA will be happier to hear that than others,” Sandy replied. FedInt, she meant. The broad remains of the old FIA, before it had been disbanded. Or rather, central command had been disbanded, back on Earth, but the tentacles lived on, though somewhat reformed, as Federal Intelligence. When the FSA had been constituted under Director Diez, FedInt had been folded back into the structure—suddenly the FSA, previously just some fancy offices in Tanusha, had a body that spanned the Federation. But there were many who speculated that the body had never entirely accepted its new brain.

  “I'm onto it, Cassandra,” said Ibrahim. “I cannot put the FSA on alert without our potential enemies being aware of it, but I'll do what I can off the grid.”

  The kids were very impressed with a hotel room on the sixty-third floor. There were two adjoining rooms, four beds and two bathrooms. For most even advanced net hackers, passing a famous person through hotel biometrics with intent to hide was a difficult thing. But Sandy simply took over the whole hotel construct and told it what it saw. VR matrixes of the kind Cai had used made it possible, no longer was it a matter of hacking through barriers the old way and hoping the different portions didn't notice the sudden lack of symmetry, rather a matter of enveloping portions of the construct i
n another construct, which fed its inputs a constructed world—like VR for non-sentient AIs. She'd given this hotel a face, biometrics, stride pattern, everything, while the kids had gone straight to the room.

  Tanusha's network and functions were evolving, but not nearly as fast as hers were. She was becoming so accomplished lately, utilising new construct tools, shredders, and environmentals like VR, it was nearly alarming. And still she'd never be nearly as capable as Ragi, let alone Cai. Suddenly the horizons of those possibilities seemed so much further away.

  She'd barely closed the door when an uplink com link blinked, an advanced function, relaying through FSA secure systems to find her. Steven Harren, network expert extraordinaire, lately running the K project, as it was being called—something so obscure and bland that no one could possibly guess its origins, if any.

  “Hello, Cassandra, you should really see this.” Earnestly alarmed. Like a teenager with his first uplinks, who found them doing something weird and wanted to show an expert before he knew how worried to be. Sandy gestured to the kids that she was uplinked and sat on one of the beds as they noisily sorted out whose was whose.

  “Concerning what?” she formulated.

  “Look, I know you're skeptical about my work, but this concerns your personal safety among other things, and it's just easier if you take a look.”

  “I'm not skeptical whether it works, Steve,” she said. “Just whether using it constitutes selling our soul to the devil. Would VR suit you?”

  “Um…I can't do a secure VR from where I am, and I don't think something that bandwidth would be too smart where you are.”

  He'd heard then. “Plug in on the hardline, I'll show you something.” A techie like him wouldn't be able to resist Sandy Kresnov volunteering to “show him something.” She found the construct, access gates, cleared a path on massive encryption, and sent him the link. And announced to the room,

  “Guys, I'm on VR for a moment, if you need anything just give me a whack.”

  It opened, and she still had to consciously relax, taking her various resistant net functions out of play, toning them down so they didn't disrupt the VR formation as it slowly wrapped around her main construct…

  …and she was sitting at an outdoor restaurant halfway up a mountain in the French Pyrenees. Ragi's copy of public VR space; Allison wasn't here at the moment, she had a number of different spaces she liked to spend her time now. And here seated opposite, in a slow rush of materialising data, was Steven Harren, a look of astonishment even now on his unresolved gridform face.

  “Wow,” he said as the last textures of skin, hair, and clothing resolved themselves, grinning and looking around. “This is Allison Roundtree's space isn't it, the one Ragi made for her? I heard about this.”

  “The Pyrenees were my idea,” Sandy admitted. “My biographer comes here to cycle, he rigs his bike on a feedback stand, then pedals in VR like he's actually climbing mountains. Crazy pretty place. What's up?”

  “Well, I ran our infamous little software analysis package on the Grand Council.”

  Sandy stared at him. She wasn't often left speechless. Then, “How and why?” she said.

  “How doesn't matter,” said Steven. “Let's just say I got permission. Why, well, I'd think that was obvious. To figure out what they're up to. Look at this.”

  He drew a square space above the table with his fingers, activating that space, then uploaded his data to it with a fluency that Sandy had to find impressive. A 3D graphic of the Grand Council building appeared. Sandy knew it well enough to identify various offices and sections, from central Grand Chamber to basement parking and security, to the Committees with their permanent staff. Building staff, security, she'd helped review those setups, knowing more about how they might be broken by League GIs than most.

  “Now obviously,” said Steven, “the sample sizes are far too small to come up with any meaningful sociological analysis. Deviation levels are about what you'd expect considering staff tend to favour offices according to their own ideological preferences, not much to be learned there either.”

  Graphics emerged from the different offices and sections, 3D lines and indices. He must have had access to all Grand Council network traffic, Sandy thought, to run through these software filters. Who the hell had the authority to order something like that? She doubted even Ibrahim did.

  “…but,” Steven continued, “if we stop running broad scale analysis like we've been accustomed to, and start using the truly freaky capabilities of the psych analysis stuff that you wrote, over a week's worth of data we can get things like stress, anger, general anxiety.”

  More graphical lines appeared, spectruming through various colours. Percentages indicated, changing levels, all time stamped. If only the average person knew how much net traffic their uplinks generated, and that personality and states-of-mind were imprinted onto most of it, if one had the tools to decipher it. It would scare the shit out of people, to know governments could learn this stuff so easily.

  “Hold it,” said Sandy, eyes wide as it occurred to her. “Can you run for matches in chronology?”

  Steven smiled, making more changes with little indications of his hands in mid-air. “I knew you'd see that.” The graphs all shifted, running over the last week, shifts in anxiety, anger, progressions of disturbance. “Within the Grand Council, nothing.”

  “Hmm.” Sandy gnawed a thumbnail, staring at the display. A little guilty for finding it this compelling, but in these circumstances she wasn't about to miss an opportunity.

  “But,” Steven added with a glint in his eye, “you cross-reference this with the profiles I ran of the Callayan Parliament and President's Office…”

  “Crap,” said Sandy. “Chandi gave you permission to run this stuff on the Government of Callay?”

  “Sure,” said Steven. Evasively? Or was that just her imagination? Who else would he be answerable to, if not Chandi? The whole project was CSA, Ibrahim didn't like it…“Look at this, this is the last week's worth of traffic.”

  He ran it. Sandy could see changes, sudden spikes in anxiety and stress readings, coinciding with various events over the past week, all while the timecode unwound, first twelve hours, then twenty-four, then more. But they diverged too. Different departments in different parts of the government were concerned with different issues, the things that might make tempers boil in the Education Committee may not concern anyone in Communications or Biotech. The big events effected everyone, but the software could recognise those “universals,” factor them out, and search for underlying variances…

  “There,” said Steven, as the program found two increasingly synchronous matches and put them together. Sure enough, the highlighted timelines were running at a statistically significant parallel.

  “It's still within the margin of error,” said Sandy, still gnawing her nail. GI nails were hard to cut with scissors, sometimes teeth were easier. Now the habit was translating to VR. “Why won't it show what those two timelines are from?”

  “So we won't be swayed by personal prejudices and leap to conclusions,” said Steven. “Now look at this…these major spikes, across the last seven days?” As the timelines ceased running. “I discard most of the data, just look for similar spikes at those exact date lines, this is the stress/anxiety line here. And I get…” more data flashed up in the space above the tabletop, “…these additional matches, a couple of them just individuals, but very strong readings, matching those times down to the minute.”

  Another wave of the fingers, and names appeared. Sandy stared and felt herself drop almost immediately into combat mode. VR nearly broke up completely, she had to consciously force the reflex down, disabling interface functions so she didn't lose the link. VR never worked in combat reflex, her brain tried to break down code, not build it up and be manipulated by it.

  “Son of a bitch,” she murmured. One of the highlights originated from the Intelligence Committee staff, no more than two or three people. Another came from the of
fice of Ambassador Kitimara, from the Argell System, appointed leader of the Federation political party most commonly known as 2389. Another came from Ambassador Ballan's office, Sandy's old friend, head of the Intelligence Committee and highest-ranking security rep in the GC. Another came from President Singh's office, Callayan Government. And one more, a spike less convincing than all of them but still a temporal match, came from the office of Chief Shin of FedInt, FSA.

  “The system matches them all up because on these specific dates, all generated network interface that the system reads as high on the stress/anxiety indicators,” Steven explained, his usual excitement with the tech now tempered with worry. “This first date matches with only one notable event—on Wednesday the 18th, the Intelligence Committee met, and broke up at 1:22pm, this first spike peaks at 1:25, so just after whoever was in the meeting gets out of the com shielding and starts talking to people.

  “The second spike was on Thursday, and we don't know what it was, there are no matches I can find, but it was at 4:16 in the morning, and again, all of these offices registered an anxiety spike between then and 4:30.”

  “Early morning and no record, that's probably a ship,” said Sandy. And if it was a ship, could be it Fleet? She thought of Reichardt's cake, and the file inside.

  “And the third spike was here.” Steven pointed to the spot, hovering in mid-air. But he was looking at Sandy, not at where his finger was pointing. “Sunday, today. Or yesterday rather. Just following your little tangle with the Feds who were after Detective Sinta.”