Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  “Your house net is jammed.”

  “The wireless boosters aren't.” Which set off a new round of scurrying, stomping footsteps, all enforcement types hated being recorded when they stormed a house, and Vanessa had considered this possibility long ago. Jamming big signal boosters would shut down entire neighbourhoods, not the low profile this operation was targeting, and the house feed was currently going straight to the net, with an emergency signal to get people's attention. Vanessa thought it would make things safer for him and more embarrassing for everyone else.

  Finally the man who'd addressed him reappeared. “Stop playing and get up, you're under arrest.”

  Phillippe stopped playing. “On what charge?”

  “Federal emergency, we don't need charges.”

  “What emergency?” He got up and put his violin back in its case. It was one of his cheap practise instruments, not the replica Stradivarius. That was safely locked away; he'd been unsure the goons wouldn't smash it.

  “None of your business.” Phillippe didn't recognise the armour, and there were no insignia, nothing to identify an organisation. The accent sounded foreign though.

  “What kind of facist smashes into the home of a law-abiding citizen and tells him the reason he's being arrested is ‘none of his business’?”

  “Quit your posturing,” said the armoured man. “We found the signal booster, you're not being broadcast anymore.”

  “All of them?” asked Phillippe. And smiled as they went scurrying again.

  Ibrahim arrived at the rooftop HQ pad to find Agent Teo waiting for him. Nearby the engines of A-12 flyers keened. Over by the looming Grand Council building, a steady stream of VIP cruisers approached, flowing into secure parking. Ground defences covered them on hair trigger, ready to remove anything unauthorised from the night sky with violent precision. Outside the ground defence perimeter, the A-12s were authorised to do the same. The Federation capitol had been woken early this morning, and now everyone rushed for their offices. Before the gates, the media were gathering, cars, vans and cameras in swarms.

  “Sir, the official word is a coup,” said Teo, terse and worried. They walked for the entrance, flanked by armed agents. “Office of the Intelligence Directorate, they say FSA spec ops were plotting a coup against the Grand Council; they're taking steps to arrest and neutralise.”

  “Utilising what resources?” They entered the main hall off the pads, people were rushing, shouting across offices. Checking data, finding weapons, asking after colleagues.

  “We're not sure yet, though they came down on assault ships, so we know that Fleet brought them. We think their ground forces are mostly non-Callayan Federal assets from other worlds, but the A-12s are using army codes. Sir, we're technically suspended, emergency order from the Office of Intelligence Directorate countersigned by Council Chair, FSA is ordered to stand down and await further instruction.”

  “I know.” Silence was Ibrahim's greatest professional strength. Silence of mouth and silence of mind, save what was absolutely necessary. He could have thought and worried and demanded a thousand things, yet none of that would help him here. “Which of our people have they gone after?”

  They arrived at Ibrahim's office, and here at the doors waited Fleet Liaison Admiral Vernier, grey and grim. “Shan, I'm sorry, I didn't know.” Ibrahim nodded and walked past, finding Hando inside in furious conversation with someone on uplink.

  “Mostly they seem to be going after the GIs,” said Teo, hurrying to keep up. The big office screens showed live feeds from various sources, crowds before the GC gates, fires burning in some unidentified part of the city, news camera shots of A-12s cruising the Tanushan skylanes, ominous foreign silhouettes. “They seem to have most of them in custody, we've instructed them not to resist. Some of our senior spec ops aren't responding. We think a small group of them centered around Commander Kresnov saw something like this coming and were ready for it. We know foreign assault teams went in hard at both Commander Rice and Captain Chu's homes and found no one. But they don't seem to have shared those preparations with many others, probably they didn't want to be discovered.

  “Sir, there's some confusion over Commander Kresnov's whereabouts.” With great concern, as Ibrahim sat on the edge of his desk, and others filed into the office behind. Like a conductor preparing to lead his orchestra into musical battle. “She went off-grid more than an hour before the emergency was declared, it's like she was tipped off. Twenty minutes ago we received an emergency signal from her cruiser, and now there are reports of a cruiser crashed in Claremont District. It hit a house and killed several occupants. It seems to have been shot down.”

  Teo indicated a display, pictures showed a house on fire, emergency vehicles responding, a chaos of strobing lights and flames. “And just nearby in Claremont District an A-12 has crashed, and there are reports of shooting preceding that crash. We've queried Intelligence Directorate but received no reply.” Another screen showed wreckage that looked to have once been a flyer, sprawled and burning across a high-rise city intersection, more emergency vehicles and gawking civilians surrounding.

  “If an A-12 shot down her cruiser, then was itself destroyed, chances seem likely Kresnov was in the cruiser at the time,” Ibrahim observed, watching the screens with narrowed eyes. “Cassandra is very hard to kill; attempts usually backfire.”

  “How does she shoot down an A-12 with pistols?” Hando asked, ending his uplink conversation.

  “Bare-handed,” Vernier replied. “Her action report from Droze was an eye-opener. Those towers give her access and cover.”

  “No wonder they went after the GIs first,” said Hando, hands on bald head.

  “Sir,” Teo added anxiously, “can I also remind you that the Office of Intelligence Directorate has summonsed you to appear before them immediately, Ambassador Ballan himself.”

  “I know,” said Ibrahim. “I was supposed to go straight there.” No one asked why he hadn't. “I want assessments. Is Ballan leading this?”

  “Who else could it be?” Hando replied. “Even the Council Chair doesn't have the authority to tell the FSA to stand down, they need Intelligence Directorate approval. OID are the only ones with unilateral authority to run something like this and keep it quiet.”

  “Ballan ordered Kresnov killed?” Admiral Vernier asked. “Aren't they friends?”

  The room gave him faintly pitying looks. Military people were sometimes slow to understand how the politics worked. The brutal pressures of popularly elected billions. All forces collided here, like continental plates, creating both mountains and earthquakes. Some military people believed in old-fashioned concepts like honour that those forces contrived to destroy.

  “Next assessment,” said Ibrahim. “What are the chances that the coup plot was real?”

  “Led by Kresnov?” asked Hando. “Unlikely. She wouldn't do anything without Rice, Chu, probably Ruben. I can't imagine any psych profile pegging that group as plotting to overthrow the Federal government.”

  “Difficult to tell until we've heard the allegation in entirety,” said FedInt Chief Shin. He'd drifted into the room and now stood by a wall, watching unobtrusively. Of all the worried, grim faces in the room, he was the only one besides Ibrahim to look calm. “There may be illuminating details. No possibility should be ruled out so early. Kresnov is known to be dissatisfied with current Grand Council policy in many respects, and sees constitutional amendments about to pass Council that would cripple all her hopes of pursuing emancipation for her fellow GIs. Her capabilities appear to be increasing fast beyond their already impressive levels; she has many fellow GI friends to help her.”

  “And then do what?” Hando replied. “A small team of GIs taking over the Grand Council, what possible support base could they have?”

  “The same support base that OID now create by declaring it was a coup,” Shin said calmly. “The support of outraged citizens, rising up against wrongdoing. Certainly it may be a fabrication, a tactic. Kresnov may
have had a tactic in mind as well. Note this Detective Sinta, purportedly pursuing inquiry that could conclusively discredit 2389’s primary political operatives. What if that was the fabrication? Certainly that evidence would hurt 2389’s public credibility just as a coup hurts Kresnov's.”

  “And Compulsive Narrative Syndrome dictates that the public will be most compelled not by the evidence,” Ibrahim concluded, “but by whichever ideology they supported in the first place, irrespective of the evidence. I'm not sure that evidence matters at our present juncture as much as power, and currently all power rests in the hands of 2389 and the OID. Perhaps that will change, but only after a time.

  “I expect that 2389 will use these events to demand a vote on the amendments and ride that wave of popular anti-Federal sentiment to get them passed. The FSA's duty is not to take sides in this, even though some of us may feel that we ourselves have been placed on one side or another by OID's actions. We will look after our own, preserve operational integrity to the greatest degree possible, and await further developments.”

  He could have said more. Currently, he did not know if it was safe to. In the CSA, he had been relatively certain of the loyalty of all departments beneath him. But the FSA was a different animal entirely, its different parts far larger and with far less in common. Individual units, organisational theory said, pursued not individual power but autonomy. Autonomy to make decisions, to control events, determine outcomes. Sometimes, within a large enough system, with diverse enough conflicting interests, autonomies came into competition.

  “Sir,” said Teo, “OID have also requested our assistance in locating our officers whom they cannot locate themselves. Commander Rice and Captain Chu primarily.”

  Not Kresnov, thought Ibrahim. Either they'd killed her or did not wish to admit that they'd tried. Such actions were best presented as fait accompli, after the fact. “No. We'll not obstruct their operations, but neither will we assist. Besides which, I'm quite sure those individuals can take care of themselves.

  “Two people I do want, as a matter of top priority, are Ragi and Detective Sinta, and all of her case details. If OID is correct about a coup, Sinta's information will be crucial. If they're not correct about the coup, even more so. In the latter instance, I expect someone will try to have her eliminated. I will accept any action, no matter how violent, and no matter who against or who it upsets, to prevent this eventuality. Am I understood?” Grim nods. Cautious ones. “The FSA will not take sides, but we will protect the truth, whichever side it supports.”

  “And how do we find and protect Ragi and Detective Sinta if OID have ordered us to stand down?” Hando asked. “I understand she's gone to ground as well, no surprise. Ragi we lost contact with almost immediately when it went down.”

  “Quietly,” said Ibrahim, with a very direct, dry stare.

  Hando nodded. “I understand.”

  “Now,” said Ibrahim, pushing off the table, “I must go and speak to Ambassador Ballan in person. I'd like some protection. Is Agent Trainee Togales still in medical? I heard she was in for final checks.”

  Agent Trainee Amirah Togales was the only GI in FSA HQ not in an otherwise incapacitated state. As such, she had a pair of armed guards outside her ward, and a second pair inside as well. Ibrahim gave the guards a long look as he passed them, learning nothing. All were armoured and helmed, with no identification marks and, he'd been informed, were silent when spoken to. All his people were certain of was that they weren't Callayans.

  Unprejudiced as he fancied himself, even Ibrahim sometimes found female GIs a surprise. Cassandra often looked the part, strongly built and ice cool…when she wasn't laughing or otherwise ruining a perfectly good GI stereotype. Even Rhian Chu, lean and pretty, had that unworried calm of a synthetic mind raised on foundational tape, that sometimes-deadly focus. But Togales at first glance was mild and utterly unthreatening, slender with an incongruously large nose, pretty eyes, a self-effacing smile, and what was lately becoming a mop of long dark hair. She wore it tied now, sitting cross-legged on her bed with promising poise for one still recovering from enough gunshot wounds to have killed a regular human ten times over.

  “Agent Togales,” said Ibrahim, as she regarded him with cautious astonishment. “You're aware of events?”

  “Yes, sir.” Tapping behind her ear to indicate uplinks and pointing to the display screen in the ward.

  “I find myself in need of personal protection. Do you think you're up to it?”

  Togales blinked. “Yes, sir. The latest tests were just precautionary, I was in for observation overnight but nothing's been observed, so…” She shrugged.

  “Director,” said one of the guards. Ibrahim turned to him. “Our orders from OID are that she is not to leave this ward.”

  “We stand on FSA administrative territory,” said Ibrahim. “There is no institution in the Federation constitutionally empowered to exercise overriding authority here.”

  “My orders are clear.”

  “The FSA's founding charter is even clearer,” said Ibrahim. “Listen well, soldier. Outside of this compound, your authority stands. But defy me here, I will have you killed. Do you understand?” An uplinked pause, as the soldier called for advice. “Within the next thirty seconds,” Ibrahim added, with clear pronunciation.

  Togales must have moved to stand behind him, because both soldiers raised weapons. She was thoughtfully standing to one side, taking him out of their line of fire. Ibrahim deliberately stepped across, placing himself in that line.

  “Agent Togales,” he said, “I find myself personally threatened by these soldiers. “Will you require a firearm?”

  “No sir,” she said. “Probably not even both hands.”

  The other shoe dropped when Ibrahim was on his way to the Grand Council building by groundcar. A live announcement on all news channels, from Callayan President Singh. The gist of it, Ibrahim heard while perusing three active uplinks and two handheld display slates simultaneously, and listening to a field agent describe the last known whereabouts of Detective Sinta, was that FSA spec ops had been caught doing something very bad, that Singh had personally been shown incontrovertible intelligence proving the coup plot, and that CSA SWAT, given its operational links and sharing of personnel with FSA spec ops, was now stood down indefinitely pending further investigation.

  “This means Callay is effectively defenceless against all foreign forces,” Agent Teo suggested from the driver's seat. Ibrahim was mildly surprised that he'd care. Teo was Earth Chinese like his boss Shin, a personal recruit of Shin's, to hear the reports. As rising star of FedInt, he was doing his stint as Director's Assistant—and, Ibrahim had no doubt, keeping an eye on him for his boss. As always with FedInt, Ibrahim had no illusions who the spies thought their real boss was. “That's ironic given Singh's anti-Federal stance. Surely it puts his public standing in danger.”

  “Singh has no choice, he's nailed his colours to this particular mast,” said Ibrahim, still scrolling over fast-moving data. “CSA has always been more pro-Federal than him; this is his chance to purge the CSA, and so he cuts off Callay's nose to spite its face.”

  In an odd way, the current situation proved Singh's political point—moving the Federation capitol to Callay hadn't strengthened Callay's autonomy, it had weakened it by creating Federal jurisdiction here. And now look at Callay, no CSA, no local firepower at all, foreign A-12s cruising the skylanes bristling with weapons and foreign troopers raiding private Tanushan homes, and all answerable to the Grand Council's Office of Intelligence Directorate, backed by the Council Chair. Cassandra had predicted something like this would happen, that Singh would leave Callay defenceless in the name of protecting Callay's rights. Ibrahim had always agreed with her assessment of Singh's wisdom but was quite happy for others to take the credit for being proven right. Silence was his weapon, not Cassandra's.

  He spared the briefest moment to hope she was well. Surely she was. Surely.

  “Gosh, look at this checkpoint,”
said Agent Togales from the rear seat. “Ludicrous deployment.” The checkpoint marked the separation between Grand Council grounds and FSA grounds, the two buildings in Federal secure land but still with a wall between.

  “Why is it ludicrous?” Teo asked, slowing the car as the checkpoint flashed lights at them, bristling with heavily armed soldiers and built-in sensors.

  “No spacing, no real cover, one good fire position would get all of them.” Togales wore standard light combat armour, quickly fitted in HQ's armoury, and carried a modest arsenal besides. Nothing too frightening for GC security but befitting the situation. “I wonder if the rest of the GC's security deployments are like that.”

  “Cassandra thinks so,” said Ibrahim. They stopped at the checkpoint and were swarmed by sensor barriers, sniffers, scanners, lasers. Then biometrics, windows rolled down, verifying identifies.

  “Very interesting,” said Togales, peering up at the GC building walls ahead and at the gardens and layout surrounding. Like an expert mountaineer contemplating a juicy slope. Or a combat GI wondering how she could peel the Federation's most important institution like an orange.

  Ibrahim said nothing and wondered if that in itself was traitorous. No, he decided. He owed the Grand Council nothing. He owed the Federation everything. The two were not the same. He would do his job and let historians decide what to call his actions afterward.

  Teo drove them to the downramp and into underground parking. A central drop-off manned by GC security brought them to elevators, where security once more intervened as they left the car.

  “Sir, we cannot allow the GI to proceed inside.” With weapons pointed not directly at Togales but in her general direction.

  “As I understand it,” Ibrahim replied, “FSA spec ops is suspended from operations, as is CSA SWAT. Agent Togales is neither, she is a CSA agent-in-training, and I have utilised my discretionary authority to appropriate her for the role of personal security in this emergency, according to the personnel sharing agreements between FSA and CSA.”