Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (29 page)

“Amateur everything,” Vanessa said with a smile. “Yeah. He’s got my enthusiasm for stuff, any stuff. Tonight he just wanted to sit around and read and talk with me. He’s reading a history of Carthage, you know Carthage?”

“Sure, North Africa, wiped out by the Romans.”

“And he likes my military insights. That’s what we do to relax, we sit around and discuss the annihilation of ancient civilisations.” Her smile faded. “He was kind of pissed. Me being in SWAT is cool, but this middle of the night stuff I can’t even talk about. He doesn’t get to enjoy my profession, he just gets to sit alone and wonder where I am. Said it doesn’t have to be me all the time.”

Sandy shrugged. “Well, it kind of doesn’t.”

“Crap. On the big stuff, I’m in charge of SWAT, it does have to be me.”

Sandy sighed. “Yeah. I guess.” Cicadas chirped in a flower box beside the rooftop landing pad. “Call him.”

“Against regs.”

“I know. Call him. Or text. And tell him I say hi.”

Vanessa smiled and did that. Sandy was fond of saying that a dumb regulation wasn’t a regulation at all, just a temporary obstacle. Vanessa thought out a sentence, translated to text, and sent. Phillippe, sitting at home, would receive an uplink call, open it and find the message across his inner vision:
Hey babe, I’m with Sandy talking about you. Sandy says hi. Love you heaps. Don’t wait up.

The last bit didn’t feel right, but she had to say it or he would.

“You know,” she added, “I used to always think I’d end up marrying someone from SWAT. Or from the CSA at least. Same line of work, similar background, you know?” Sandy nodded. “But these days, I’m so damn glad he doesn’t do what we do. So glad I can’t begin to tell you.”

“Yeah,” said Sandy, somberly watching the apartment rooftop across the river bend. “I know what you mean.”

The woman appeared. “Here she is,” said Vanessa, and pulled her glasses down over her eyes. That filtered the natural light, and her inner-vision showed up more starkly against the contrast. She had multiple visual feeds on tacnet, showing the rooftop from several angles. Net monitors showed her all traffic. The woman was hooked into Tanushan traffic net, and making last minute adjustments to her outbound flight from Gordon Spaceport. She hauled several suitcases with her, and a large shoulder bag. A man was walking out behind her, with more bags.

“Yeah, that’s definitely Lu,” said Sandy. Lu Dongfu was an embassy worker on the trade desk. No one had suspected him of anything. They’d watched him arrive twenty minutes ago at this safe house, and known immediately who he must be coming to see. “Guilty by implication. The only people helping her at this point are those involved, given the League will deny everything. Still want to do it?”

“I’ll do it,” said Vanessa. “It’s my job.”

The two figures loaded suitcases into a cruiser. The woman was Paola Ortiz. She’d been at the League’s Tanusha embassy for nearly a year, worked in communications, and hadn’t been any more suspicious than any other League embassy employee. The general rule was that one in five of them were ISO, everyone knew it, but the ISO were as much a help of late as they were a problem. Ortiz was evidently something else, connected directly to League government but bypassing the ISO. Or so Mustafa insisted. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t known. Mustafa knew everything that went on in the embassy, whether he admitted it or not.

Suitcases loaded, Lu was about to join Ortiz getting into the cruiser when a call came through.

“External contact,” Sandy affirmed. “Coming from somewhere in . . . hang on a second . . . Mananakorn District. No . . . wait, that was a trick, it’s heavily encrypted.” Vanessa didn’t even bother trying to access the analytical functions Sandy was racing through right now, Sandy processed software constructs so fast it made a normal person’s brain feel like it was about to explode. “Well, this smells like Mustafa to me. Similar encryption, similar tricks.”

“
Who’s getting it?
” someone asked from outside. It sounded like Chandrasekar.

“Lu,” Sandy said immediately. “I’m not sure if Ortiz has access.”

On the rooftop, Lu changed his mind about getting in the cruiser. There followed a fast discussion between him and Ortiz, then the gull doors closed. Lu stood back as the cruiser lifted, running lights flashing.

“Got it?” Sandy asked Vanessa.

“Got it.” Vanessa was looking at a simple interruption sequence, chopping into the main datastream of Tanushan traffic control. Traffic control was inviolable. The CSA weren’t allowed to play with it under nearly any circumstance, and certainly not for this one. They weren’t even supposed to have the codes. There weren’t supposed to be any codes for this sort of thing.

The cruiser’s flightpath off the apartment rooftop took it out over the river, slowly building up speed as it climbed in an arc.

“Now,” said Sandy.

The interruption sequence ran, and quite smoothly and without any alarm, traffic control implemented a temporary override of the cruiser’s navcomp. Without even a wobble or a protest, the cruiser nosed down and dove directly into the river, disappearing with a huge splash.

“Well I never,” Sandy murmured. “Diplomatic immunity and all.”

“Guess traffic control has a few bugs,” Vanessa suggested, firing up the cruiser’s engines as the windows wound automatically up to a seal. On the far apartment rooftop, a small figure stood and stared at the frothing river where he’d very nearly died, and no doubt pondered that he owed Mustafa Ramoja his life. But Mustafa had saved only one.

Curious, thought Vanessa, powering the cruiser up into the air.

“Hell of a way to unwind from a war crimes hearing,” Sandy remarked. Vanessa didn’t find that particularly funny.

FSA Headquarters were a touch more stylish than CSA HQ. Things were whiter and glassier, with more natural light. Sandy wasn’t sure she liked it—the security was serious stuff, it demanded a stronger architectural touch. Or maybe the League had bred some aesthetic bias into her after all.

Ibrahim was in a meeting, but she wandered in and watched as several of the FSA’s seniors sat and talked with him about organisation and personnel. Ibrahim had an open office policy where possible, and if it wasn’t classified, anyone who felt they needed to know could wander in to meetings. Most people were so busy they’d only do it sparingly, but security organisations, Ibrahim insisted, were no place for specialists who knew only their own job and no one else’s.

Finally they left, a few with friendly greetings to Sandy, a few more guarded. “Seems to be going well?” Sandy observed, taking a seat. The seats were more comfortable here, too—deep, modern leather. From the windows was a great view across FSA grounds to the Grand Council Building.

“There’s a lot to do,” Ibrahim replied, rubbing at one pronounced cheekbone. He didn’t seem too tired, though. Sandy knew he loved this stuff. Radha Ibrahim had told her once that her husband would love his job until it killed him. To Sandy, he’d never looked more alive. “It’s actually part of what I wanted to talk to you about. I’d like a report from you on parallel integration.”

It was what he wanted to do between the CSA and the FSA. It was controversial, of course. “How long?”

Ibrahim smiled, shaking his head. “Just start writing and stop when you’re finished. Two pages or two hundred, I want your thoughts. You have unique insight.”

It touched her. “Sure. Though it seems to me the main problem is political, and I can’t help that.”

The FSA, obviously, was physically located on Callay. That meant the Callayan Security Agency’s jurisdiction overlapped with its own. Ibrahim’s idea was to integrate the two agencies, keeping command structures separate yet sharing jurisdictions—the CSA’s role would expand out beyond purely Callayan issues, and the FSA’s would also expand . . . or perhaps the better word was contract . . . to include local Callayan matters. But as the lawyers and politicians kept reminding everyone, Federal and local planetary jurisdictions were clearly separated by law, and combining them could be unconstitutional. President Singh, for one, was kicking up a stink.

“No one can help that,” Ibrahim replied. “Callay is what it is, and the moment we start regretting that is the moment we fail in our responsibilities.”

Sandy nodded. “This means Chandi will still actually be working for you, after you so cruelly granted him his freedom?”

“No,” Ibrahim said mildly. “Parallel means parallel, who is in charge will depend on whose jurisdiction it naturally falls into. Federal matters, I’m in command. Local, Chandi will be.”

“And of course every case you have will be easy to divide like that,” said Sandy.

“Yes.” With dry amusement. “I’m sure of it. The next matter—the war crimes prosecution are planning an appeal.”

Her Honour had rejected the possibility of trial at the hearing, citing the dubious source of the evidence.

Sandy nodded again. “Yes, I heard.”

Ibrahim looked at her cautiously. “It could go on a long time. The appeal will be to a full bench this time, which has fewer time restrictions. It could take months.”

“I know,” said Sandy. Ibrahim was worried for her emotional state. He needn’t have been; she was dealing with it quite well. Accusations of being a killer didn’t bother her as much as they once had. She was a killer. As were all soldiers, at least in potential. It was just a question of who, how and why. Here, on all three counts, she was comfortable she was in the right.

“The political implications of this are quite severe,” Ibrahim continued. “We are under pressure on many fronts, and we’ve lost what little cooperation we once had with the League government.”

“Killing their operatives will do that,” Sandy remarked. It had been Ibrahim’s order. The press knew nothing. They’d never known Paola Ortiz even existed. FSA and CSA had collaborated to make a cover story about a foreign temporary visa holder who had crashed into the river in a freak user-error accident—it happened occasionally, when smart people tried to override traffic net, usually for fun or a dare. In the FTL era, such personal details from other worlds would take months to check, and most news organisations hadn’t bothered. Those few that had would meet screw-ups at the other end from friendly security agencies doing the CSA some favours, and that would be the end of it. As far as Callay knew, neither Ortiz nor her assassination had ever existed.

“Yes it will,” Ibrahim agreed. “But the Federation does actually have many ongoing arrangements with the League, including many ceasefire monitoring deals, humanitarian assistance arrangements, a small amount of trade, various joint research programs, exchange programs and the like.”

“I know,” said Sandy, now a little frustrated Ibrahim was treating her like a kid. Everyone knew this stuff, why was he . . . ?

“And those arrangements are now in jeopardy.” He folded his hands, and leaned on the table. “As such, I’m afraid we shall be forced to end all cooperative arrangements with the ISO on New Torah. The mission’s off, Cassandra. I’m sorry, but we have no choice.”

“The fuck we don’t.” Her own language surprised her. So did her volume. “We’re just going to let them win? This is why they did it, why they gave Padma fucking Chaury and the SIB all that information on Tropez Station. They knew Mustafa was up to something with me and they wanted to stop it. And it’s why they sent
Eternity
before that, to put an end to Operation Patchup. So now you’re telling me that it worked? And we’re going to reward them for their cleverness?”

“Yes,” said Ibrahim, gaze level and unblinking. “I realise the sensation must be quite foreign to you, Cassandra, but sometimes the other side wins. And sometimes, our side loses.”

“We didn’t lose!” Sandy shouted. “You fucking quit!”

Her vision was tracking now, all the way into infra-red. She hated it when this happened, when she got so angry she slid all the way into combat-reflex with no immediate threat of combat. This reflex confirmed every fear of every prejudiced anti-GI campaigner who insisted that she and her kind were not to be trusted. And the worst of it was that when she was like this, she didn’t completely trust herself.

Ibrahim never blinked. Sometimes Sandy thought he had a combat reflex too, of sorts. “Cassandra, I realise that this is of some considerable personal importance to you. But understand that however much I sympathise, and share your concerns about New Torah . . .”

“Stop giving speeches,” Sandy told him. “Just stop. I know you make impartial decisions. I know you as well as anyone.”

“Not quite,” Ibrahim said quietly.

“I know you’re the guy who’ll order ten people killed so you can save a hundred. I know you’ll let friends suffer to save other people you don’t like. I get it. You’re the impartial one, everyone’s equal before the eyes of Allah. But this time, you’re wrong.”

“Right and wrong in this matter are not for us to decide,” said Ibrahim. “There are constraints. I recognise them. Apparently you do not.”

“GIs are the center of this!” Sandy insisted. “Out there in the Torah Systems, some bunch of murderous lunatics are taking GI technology in directions that could restart a major war, or . . . or lead to Gods know what!”