Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  “A lot more,” said Danya. “I guess most people don't believe him, they think Sandy was plotting a coup.”

  “If they believe that after all she's done for them, maybe she should have plotted a stupid coup,” Svetlana muttered. “Would serve them all right.”

  She wasn't wearing much of a disguise; they were all counting on any automated surveillance programs searching for all three of them—surveillance programs were limited, they all knew from experience, especially in crowds. And presumably Cassandra Kresnov's kids wouldn't be a very high priority if Ari was right and the Feds didn't know about the uplink message he'd sent to Kiril. Surveillance programs would narrow the odds by searching for all three of them together in a limited space—three kids of 13, 10, and 6, two boys and a girl, etc. Her alone, wearing the cute beret that her and Sandy's trip to the dress-up party had inspired her to buy, along with her own AR glasses, ought to hide her well enough amongst these people.

  And here before her, as she emerged from the cover of a big fig tree to the grassy rim about the amphitheatre…“Oh, look,” she said cheerfully, not breaking stride. “Surveillance.”

  Not that there weren't a lot of people overlooking the amphitheatre, there were—office workers come out on their lunch break, some with food in hand, other perhaps tourists, a few genuine attendees…but most of those were in pairs or small groups. Only this one woman, in unremarkable civvies, was standing alone and watching not only the ongoing speeches but also the people around her.

  “Careful, Svet,” said Danya. “Don't get cocky.”

  “They're not looking at little girls after an ice cream,” Svetlana replied, breaking into a run toward the ice-cream stall farther around the rim. Her run took her straight past the surveillance agent, close enough to show the little bulge at the back of the belt and a weight in the left pants pocket…and probably a gun in that silly handbag too.

  Danya and Kiril sat in the southern part of the square, a nice series of playgrounds, including an enormous and well-supervised jungle gym, a crazy water playground, and a go-cart track. They ate some lunch, roti rolls and samosa, and took their time because, as Danya had explained, it would look suspicious for kids to be sitting between all these play spaces and not joining in.

  They now watched on AR glasses of their own as Svetlana's vision feed approached the ice-cream stall, peering around taller bodies as she waited impatiently in line.

  “I want an ice cream too,” said Kiril.

  “We've got more important things to worry about than ice cream,” Danya replied.

  “But she's having one.”

  “She's using it as cover,” his big brother explained. “So she can get close without anyone being suspicious, they'll think she's just another kid with nothing better on her mind than ice cream.”

  “Like me,” said Kiril sullenly.

  Danya grinned and ruffled his hair. “Yes, like you.”

  “So what if she's using it as cover, it's still ice cream.”

  “Kiril, pay attention and help your sister like you're supposed to, and I'll get you an ice cream later, promise.”

  Ari had shown Danya how to blank the AR glasses setup so that it ran without ID—a very common thing in Tanusha, where people were techie smart and didn't like governments or advertisers tracing their every move. But most people, Ari said, then ruined it by using Augmented Reality in conjunction with uplinks, which weren't supposed to be easily traceable by communications law, but really were, to governments or security organisations with skills. Kids using ID-less AR, sans uplinks, wouldn't even register. The net monitored cyberspace constructs, but portable devices just bouncing signals off relays like antique phones used to do were anonymous, thanks to legal campaigns long ago by people who cared about stuff like this. People like Ari, Danya thought, whose concern of Feds abusing their power seemed pretty smart right now. And he hoped again that Ari was okay, wherever he was.

  It meant that Danya and Kiril could receive Svetlana's live feed, with the standard AR overlay, and break that overlay down into parts. Not that Federal agents would make themselves visible to AR displays, but some others did—even now as Svetlana waited in line and looked around, a nearby person highlighted on the feed, and a close-up on that highlight said that she was a journalist and writer, working for something called Golden Pen Presentations.

  “That's a journalist,” Kiril observed. “Maybe we could talk to her?”

  “No, remember we're not after journalists,” said Danya. Svetlana's vision stayed trained on the woman, giving them time to consider her, but unable to speak now that she was in a line with other people. “The media's not on our side, we just want to see if we can talk to Justice Rosa.”

  “But he's a journalist,” Kiril reasoned.

  Sometimes Danya wished Kiril still wasn't smart enough to be able to follow this stuff at all. But then he wouldn't be reading, or setting up their AR links, or doing any other useful things either. “Yeah, but he's a different kind.”

  Journalists, Danya guessed, would light themselves up on AR in places like this in case someone with information wanted to tell them something. Probably this woman would be very upset to know how close she stood to the biggest story of anyone's career. And then, maybe not so upset knowing how likely that knowledge was to kill her.

  Svetlana ordered strawberry gelato, a double serve, and walked away licking it all over. “Oh, Kiri, look!” she said loudly, examining the ice cream thoroughly on all sides with her glasses feed. “It's really delicious!”

  Kiril grumbled, and Danya tried not to smile. “Don't be mean, Svet.”

  Svetlana walked to the edge of the amphitheatre, overlooking the crowd. It was thickest here, several thousand at least. On the platform sat some people in cheap plastic chairs, while one talked into a mini-mike, eliciting the occasional roar from the crowd. Some others stood security, arguing with crowd members around the podium, waving hands in discussion, all concerned and serious. Some cops stood nearby, watching, their cars parked on the nearby road corner, lights flashing. The whole thing looked like a last-minute setup, Danya thought.

  AR lit up the people on the stage. “Intel…” tried Kiril, reading the captions. “Intellech…Intellechal…”

  “Intellectual,” said Danya. “Public Intellectual, they all are.”

  “What's that?”

  “People without a real job,” said Danya. “Kiri, can you zoom on the guy at the end there? That's Justice Rosa.”

  “What's a PhD?” Kiril asked as he did that.

  “Something they give people without real jobs.” Justice had a long brown face, made longer by his tall, curly hair.

  “He looks like a pencil,” said Svetlana through a mouthful of ice cream. “He's writing Sandy's book?”

  “It's not Sandy's book, it's his, but it's about her.” If anyone could get a message to Director Ibrahim, Justice could. Or that had been his reasoning in taking the risk to come here. There were probably others, but he had no idea who they were, and without knowledge, couldn't risk it. But Justice, he knew from Sandy talking about it, had contacts everywhere, and had now declared himself firmly against Operation Shield. “Just be careful, Svet, see if he has any advisors or someone you could slip a message to.”

  Svetlana walked down the slope and into the crowd. If it were a concert she'd have hated it, she only came up to most people's middles and couldn't see a thing on the stage. But today she liked it. Here she could move with complete freedom and slip through gaps no one else could. And do other things unnoticed.

  “Hey, Kiril, see if you can get a feed on this.” She put her new acquisition in her pocket with the AR regulator, saw the connection made on her vision, blinked on it, linked it to the main feed.

  “What's that, Svet?” As the feed reached Danya.

  “That's really shielded,” said Kiril.

  “I bet we could find someone to break it,” said Svetlana, licking her ice cream into a more manageable size and shape. “One of Ari
's friends.”

  “Svetlana, what is it?” Warily.

  “Just the spare belt unit I lifted from that surveillance lady back there.” Squeezing between gaps in the crowd. “I didn't look directly at it, you didn't see.”

  “Oh, for fuck's sake, Svet.”

  Kiril laughed. “Cool,” he said. And suddenly Svetlana could see new markers appearing on AR. Broadcasters, making a new signal pattern between them, like a grid of interlocking secure pathways.

  “What the hell is that?” Danya asked. “What's making that network?”

  “Don't look at me,” said Svetlana. She looked about, pausing for a moment. Each of the new nodes seemed to be located exactly where good surveillance would place a person, to watch the square. “It looks like…oh, wow, Kiril, did you just hack the shielding?”

  “Um…I'm not sure.” A pause. “Yeah, I think I did. It's, um…it's really weird, I can't see that network or anything, I mean I can't see a picture? A schematic?” Which was one of those technical words he'd picked up that he loved to use, in or out of context. “But I'm getting this different feed now? And I think…I think it's coming from them, from the Feds.”

  “And that's why we're all seeing it!” Svetlana barely remembered to keep her voice down in her excitement—there were people all about, but mostly the speakers from the stage and occasional cheering were too loud for them to overhear some kid beneath them. “You're processing the feed and sending it back to us! Kiri, your uplinks are really working!”

  “And working crazy well,” Danya muttered. “I don't like it, we should pull out, this is much more advanced than any uplinks should be at this level. It could be doing him damage.”

  “I feel fine,” Kiril protested.

  “Danya, this is too awesome,” Svetlana said in a harsh murmur. “I can see everything, this is much safer for all of us, I know where they all are!”

  A pause. Wild cheers following some announcement on stage.

  “Okay,” said Danya finally. Reluctantly. “Just stay low and do your own surveillance, Svet. No more stupid risks, okay?”

  “It wasn't a stupid risk,” Svetlana muttered, moving forward again. “I made us safer.”

  She finally reached the front of the crowd and peered through a small gap between arms. From her low angle, the stage was too high, and she could barely see Justice's face as he sat near the present speaker. There were no barriers holding people back from the stage, though, and the volunteer security looked nervous. Shouldn't the cops be protecting the stage? Shouldn't there be barriers? Everywhere else in Tanusha the government seemed to stick its hand in, making everything safer…but not here.

  She did a slow circle, edging into gaps. It was possible there was even a security person or two down here—they'd have a poor view, but sometimes you needed someone right up close. Funny the things you saw as a kid, down low, that no one else did. Litter on the once-perfect grass. Shoes people wore, from crazy boots to silly heels, to smart leather. She thought it would be funny to tie someone's laces together when they were watching the stage. A tough-shelled beetle, several times stepped on but still undamaged against the soft grass, struggling to find a safer place.

  Around the back of the stage were a lot more officials…or maybe “unofficials,” as they wore no uniform and were scampering back and forth, talking, arguing, trying to organise things. Sometimes Svetlana wondered if adults knew what the hell they were doing, surely it couldn't be this complicated just to have a few people stand on a stage and talk? A few uniformed cops were talking to them, and as she got closer, she overheard something about permits, noise volumes. The “unofficials” wanted some cops around the front of the stage, between the speakers and the crowd.

  “Hey, little girl.” She looked up and found the man beside her looking down—African, dreadlocks, grey-streaked. “Where are your parents?”

  “I'm not little,” she replied, with just the right amount of petulant independence. “They're back there.” She pointed. “They can see me through these; I said I'd get them a different angle.” Pointing to her AR glasses.

  “You know, when I was your age,” the man said, leaning down to her with a conspiratorial smile, “I'd go and crawl under that stage when there was someone singing. I'd get right underneath them and hear all the musicians talking to each other between songs.” Svetlana smiled politely. “But I don't think it's safe to do that today. In fact, I don't think it's safe for a child to be here at all, these are not safe times.”

  The AR showed him clean, so he certainly wasn't a Fed. He seemed very nice.

  “Why isn't it safe?”

  The man smiled. “When you have pacifists taking the side of those trying to preserve Federal military reach,” nodding at Justice Rosa on the stage, “and those who say they're campaigning for individual rights standing against GI emancipation and for mass murder on Pyeongwha, you know the world is going crazy. And when the world goes crazy, young girl, you know no one is safe.”

  Pop pop pop. Svetlana hit the ground before anyone, face pressed into the grass amidst the many shoes. Then, a second later, everything erupted in screams, running and falling as others figured what was going on.

  “Svet! What's happening?”

  “Someone's shooting at the stage!” Not especially worried, despite her galloping heart—shootings were always dramatic, but she was far enough from the stage, and amidst this crowd would have to be very unlucky. “Ow!” As people ran over her. Then, “Ow!” again as someone landed on her—the dreadlocked man, and he was heavy! Had he been hit?

  “Svetlana!”

  “Stay down, stay down!” the dreadlocked man was telling her. Svetlana rolled her eyes—she'd been down, like a whole four seconds before him, and didn't need him falling on her…though it did stop the galloping crowd from kicking her in the face.

  “I'm fine!” she said, for his benefit and her brothers’. “I'm fine…look, the shooting's stopped!”

  “Stay down!” From his desperate voice and trembling, Svetlana didn't think it was entirely her safety that worried him. “He could still be out there!”

  Looking sideways, face pressed to the grass, Svetlana saw cops against the side of the stage, weapons out, pointing into the main crowd. None were looking skyward, so it didn't seem to be a sniper—logically a sniper would be up high somewhere, and the cops would all have tacnet, and tacnet could find snipers just by cross-referencing the sound of bullets passing different tacnet feeds.

  “I have to find my parents!” she shouted. “Look, it's safe, the cops have got him!” And struggled out from under the man, determinedly slipping his grasp, then running, sidestepping, and leaping over all the people lying flat, the others running at a crouch…and found a new cover position behind several people in turn behind a tree, more concerned about being seen by Feds than shot.

  She could see the stage from here; at least one person down and apparently hit. Justice Rosa was crouched over him, ripping a shirt and applying first aid. A cop was helping, firmly directed by Justice, who seemed to know more what to do than the cop—Svetlana recalled Sandy had said he'd been a war correspondent.

  Other cops were converging on a place in the crowd, guns levelled at someone now lying on the ground on the cleared grass. Presumably the shooter. Crap, she thought—she must have gone straight past him, concealed in the crowd.

  She looked back to the stage, at officials, volunteers, cops, and others, hiding and low, apparently with no real idea what was going on—keeping your head when there was shooting was hard without practise. She'd had practise, they hadn't. Maybe she could get to one of them, one of Justice's friends, slip him the note Danya had written in pen on a scrap of paper…

  “Svet. Look up.”

  She did, at the surrounding buildings. And saw a whole series of red dots that hadn't been there before, linked by encrypted network. Like the sky above the square had suddenly come alive, like a spider's web.

  “Holy fuck,” she said.

  “
Some of those signals are, like…computers or something?” said Kiril, sounding puzzled. “It's tacnet, but it's like computer signals inside tacnet?”

  He was decrypting tacnet? Again, as Sandy would say, holy fuck.

  “Snipers,” said Danya. “They had this square covered so much more than we thought. Svet, get the fuck out of there, that's an order. Head two blocks east and find the kind of store kids might go into, we'll join you there.”

  Svetlana didn't argue with Danya when he took that tone. She took off running toward the nearest road, where cops were yelling and gesturing at everyone else running their way to keep running, and cross the traffic-empty road. She did, then slowed, and walked briskly down the adjoining street.

  “If they had snipers,” she muttered, “why didn't they shoot the shooter? Why just let him shoot?”

  “We don't know they didn't.”

  “Danya, that many snipers would see a gun as soon as it was drawn. And he'd be dead before the cops even saw him, but all the cops knew where he was on their tacnet. No way is the cops’ tacnet linked to the snipers’ tacnet, but the cops all knew where he was when he was shooting. I reckon the snipers saw him, and let him shoot until the cops got him.”

  She was better at this stuff than Danya, and he knew it. She could feel him thinking.

  “Hey look, Justice is okay!” That was Kiril, hooking into a new feed. That feed made a square on Svetlana's vision, and she could see Justice not merely okay, but resuming his seat on the stage as the wounded speaker was carried off by medics. And now getting to his feet, taking a mini-mike, and starting to speak himself. Upright and chest out, as though daring someone else to take a shot.

  “Balls,” said Svetlana. It was what they'd said in Droze when someone had done something brave but almost certain to get him killed.

  “Balls,” Danya echoed.

  “Balls!” Kiril added cheerfully.

  “Preeti!” Rami Rahim exclaimed, sitting before his operator's bank with a wide view of Tanusha's night skyline. “Where are you calling from?”

  “Hi, Rami! I'm calling from DV8, the new decor is just rocking and there are lines to get in going round the corner! Plus Deepak Gaur was just seen here, rumours are that Augment League football star Jennifer Straughn might be here too…”