Authors: Joel Shepherd
“Yeah, and here's why,” said Sandy, showing him the bat. It had folded at the handle, more from the force of her swing than the impact with the ball. “If GIs are going to play this game seriously, we're going to need steel bats.”
The kids found it fun to meet the Subianto Shock players as they watched some cricket on TV. But Sandy only hung around long enough for some brief conversation and to sign a few of Justice Rosa's books. She was more interested in sport than she had been, but the athletes themselves were never going to awe her, given that she played their sport far better than they ever could and with almost no experience.
“Sandy,” said Kiril in the cruiser on the way home, “are we gonna be rich with the book?”
“No, Kiri,” said Sandy from the driver's seat, “it's not our money. It's Justice's money because he wrote the book.”
“That's not fair,” said Svetlana. “It's your life he's making all this money from.”
“Oh well, I'm used to that.” Her seekers were returning only light “interesting” traffic tonightâsome stuff on a controversial asylum case, a report on Chairman Li's upcoming trial, some speculation on new GI technologies employed by the League's illegal new production facility. All nonsense, of course. Nothing on tonight's little gathering yet, though that wouldn't last. “Besides Justice is donating most of it to war charities.”
“Hey, the war orphan lady who visited last month!” said Svetlana. “So we
will
get some of it!”
“We're not eligible, Svet,” said Danya, as Sandy repressed a smile. “We do pretty well with Sandy; the war orphan charities only go to kids that actually need it.”
“So why was that lady talking to us?”
“I guess there aren't that many war orphans on Callay,” reasoned Danya. “She just wanted to make sure we knew about it.”
“Sandy, will the street kids on Droze get money?” Kiril asked. Quite seriously, Sandy saw with a glance back.
“No, Kiri. The Federation has no official contact with Droze or any of the New Torah systems. It's in the League, we're not allowed to touch the League.”
“You went there.”
“I went there for security reasons.”
“But you helped us.” He looked troubled, looking more out the window than at her, as light from passing towers slid across his face.
“Yes, I did,” Sandy affirmed.
“So why don't the Federation help other Droze kids?”
Sandy glanced at Danya. Danya was craned all the way around in his chair to look at Kiril. Danya thought this significant thenâKiril's sudden recollection of all the other kids who
hadn't
made it out. “Because we're not allowed to, Kiri,” she said. “League will say it's interference in their internal affairs.”
“Helping street kids?” Kiril asked. With a faint incredulity that seemed too subtle for his age.
“Yes,” Sandy said solemnly. “Helping street kids.”
“That's stupid,” said Kiril.
“It's very stupid,” Sandy agreed sadly. “But a lot of things are stupid like that.” In the backseat, Svetlana took Kiril's hand. And gazed at Danya silently. Danya turned back around in his chair, head back, knee up. With that thousand-yard stare thing he did sometimes, more typically seen on combat veterans.
Sandy was about to ask further, but something interruptedâa general alarm, this one CSA-coded but forwarded through FSA. The encryption-grade was Fleet.
“. . .
we have an alert signal on inner perimeter
,” came Reichardt's voice. She checked logs . . . Reichardt was still in Tanusha, wasn't due to return to
Mekong
in orbit for another three days. “
New arrival, signature indicates hard jump, he came from a fair way off. Well off the main entry lanes, FOG recommends preliminary emergency status
.”
That would give everyone shivers, given what happened to Cresta. Svetlana started to say something else.
“Hang on, Svet,” said Sandy, putting the feed to the cruiser's screens. “Something's happening.”
“
FOG, this is Ibrahim. Who's up?
”
“
Bursteimer's in best position
.” Sandy checked the feed on Fleet positions and found it was trueâ
Caribbean
was on station out that way. As usual from Fleet, no explanation of why. “
Preliminary trajectory calc is coming through now. Looks like 182 by 23. League-wards. Could be a long jump
.”
“That's a new ship, right?” Svetlana asked, frowning. “Could it jump all the way from the League?”
“Way too far,” said Danya, listening carefully. “But there are mass points through the Federation that are hard to guard, someone could three-or-four-jump it.”
“That would take a long time though,” said Svetlana, no doubt remembering their own trek from Pantala, weeks locked within narrow metal walls.
They landed at Canas and drove in, watching the situation unfold. The media were still not reporting it, plenty of amateur astronomers would have seen that entry pulse, but it took longer for amateurs to tell the difference between scheduled and unscheduled activity without access to Fleet feeds. No doubt a few of the more advanced amateurs would be guessing by now, but the credible ones didn't just blab everything to the media at first notice. But as Sandy and the kids settled for a late hot chocolate and snack before bed, still there had been no ID signal received from the ship. That was odd, because most ships newly arrived in a system automatically sent an ID package. In an important, populated system like the Callayan System, failure to do so would get you intercepted, or worse.
“Maybe they're damaged?” Svetlana wondered. Sandy's kitchen display showed the arrival's position, a holographic glow above the stove and fruit bowl. Coming in fast, less than two days from Callay at that velocity. Usually new ships took a week.
“Can we stay up and watch it?” Kiril asked.
“Sure,” said Sandy, sipping her chocolate. Danya and Svetlana repressed smilesâKiril always wanted to stay up late but always fell asleep anyway. Usually he got to sleep faster if he was allowed to stay up than if he was sent to bed complaining. Sandy was not above taking devious advantage. “But I warn you, watching ships arrive from the outer system is deadly boring.”
“But the world might end!” Kiril insisted.
“The world's not going to end,” Danya said calmly, checking some database on his AR glasses. Probably something about ships, trajectories, and physicsâDanya always felt compelled to know. “That ship will be intercepted by a whole bunch of defensive systems before it gets anywhere near Callay.”
“But League ships get to Callay all the time! That's how League agents end up in Tanusha all the time!”
“Those are stealth ships,” Sandy told him. “They're small things that only hold thirty or forty people, they don't have FTL drives so they piggyback on bigger ships that arrive in the outer system. Then they coast in, usually from zenith or nadir, so we can't see them against black space. They're not fast or big enough to be a threat to the planet.”
“Have you been on one?” Svetlana asked. Sandy nodded, sipping her drink. “In the League? Did you do insertion missions for the League?” Another nod. “Oh, come on, tell us! What did you do?”
And Svetlana glanced at Danya, as though by some telepathy, to find Danya giving a small shake of his head. No. Svetlana looked at the floor.
Sandy sighed. “Svet, it makes you more of a target if you know these things. League don't like lots of people knowing this stuff.”
“That's not why, though,” said Svetlana reproachfully. “You don't trust us.”
Danya's faint roll of the eyes told Sandy what she already suspectedâit was one of Svetlana's little manipulations. Sandy didn't fall for it as often as she'd used to.
“Sandy trusts us with all kinds of things,” Danya said firmly. “Don't be unfair.” Svetlana looked exasperated.
“Svet,” said Sandy. “You want to know the truth?” Svetlana nodded earnestly and came to stand closer. “The truth is that I don't really like talking about it with you. I was a different person back then. I did a lot of things I'm not proud of. Back then, the only use I had to anyone was to the League, as
a killer. A lethal weapon. I'm much more than that now. Or I like to think I am. And I don't like you to think of me that way, or have nightmares about what I've done.”
“I wouldn't have nightmares,” Kiril said earnestly.
“I do,” Sandy said quietly.
“But that's not fair, is it?” Svetlana insisted. “You get to watch us grow up, and you get to see how we change as we get older. And probably when we're all adults you'll say all kinds of embarrassing things about what we did when we were kids. But you won't share your growing up stories with us?”
Sandy watched her sombrely. Svetlana gazed back, with those pretty blue eyes. Delicate, at first glance, within that pale, fine-boned face.
“Wow,” Sandy finally deadpanned. “You're good.”
Svetlana struggled against a treacherous smile. “I know.”
“I especially like the big orphan-waif eyes. âPlease, Sandy. It'll mean ever so much to me.'”
Svetlana lost control of her grin. “She's always done that,” Danya observed.
“Security stuff,” Sandy told her, “and fighting, I'm excellent at. None better. This other stuff, I'm not so good at. Like you, like everyone. So I'll tell you eventually. But I'll do it when I'm ready. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Svetlana. “Can I use my orphan-waif eyes to get you to break out the marshmallows?”
“Yeah!” said Kiril.
“Can't really have hot chocolate without marshmallows,” Danya offered in support.
Nothing made Sandy more skeptical than when they started teaming up like that. “Is that some kind of law, is it?” she said drily.
“It is,” Danya agreed. “It's an immutable law.”
Vanessa was helping Phillippe feed the twins when the alert sounded. She dashed for the cruiser, with baby food and drool still on her shirt, and in eight minutes on emergency lane privilege was halfway across town to rendezvous on a rooftop pad at Surat. She jumped from the cruiser the moment it was down, and it flew away on auto to park itself somewhere secured.
The spec ops flyer was down on the pad, hulking black and heavily armed, engines keening but no running lights. Even as she ran up the rear ramp, her
other team members were jumping from other cruisers and running to join her. Up the rear aisle between armour racks, and people quickly wriggling into armour, powering up, testing feedback.
“Where we at?” she yelled as she stripped outer clothes before her suit and stuffed them into the foot locker.
“Tacnet up!” Munde shouted back above the engine shrill, checking weapons and helmet interace alongside. “Target's in Bhubaneswar CBD, Lotus Tower!”
Dammit, Vanessa thought, ducking to slither into her upper-half armour. Anywhere in central Bhubaneswar was crowded; the market there was one of Tanusha's biggest. Central planners had added extra subway lines just to compensate for the numbers and had expanded the residential zones for more and taller towers around them. Operations in densely populated zones were a nightmare.
The last team member arrived three minutes later and the flyer lifted. By then Vanessa had the armour on, and completed the final adjustments automatically, full attention on tacnet as it showed her the scene.
Lotus Tower was two blocks from Bhubaneswar Market, above bustling streets lined with expensive shops and restaurants. Worse, it was Friday, just after 9 p.m., with rush hour faded and nightlife well begun. The market would be crammed with tens of thousands; there had once been entire roads of traffic there, but planners had blocked it all off for pedestrians about twenty years ago when it had emerged how popular the shopping had become. She called up traffic central, where monitors gave her rough estimates of people-density, and sonofabitch, even the lead-in streets were crammed, just below crush densities on the underground, and just as bad on the huge interdistrict maglevs. People came from the other side of Tanusha for a night out in Bhubaneswar. A high camera shot showed her crowds pouring down the steps of the maglev station from the latest train arrival. At 9 p.m. the maglevs arrived every four minutes, the underground every two. Add to that the rapidly filling parking lots. . . .
“
Hello, Vanessa, how's it looking?
” came Amirah's voice in her ear.
“Hello, Ami. Crowded as fuck. Where are they?”
“
We've units in position now, our intel says forty-ninth floor
.” Tacnet updated even as she spoke, showing the blue dots of friendly units on various floors of Lotus Tower and several floors shaded red. No eyes-on yet . . . which raised the question . . .
“Our Intel here is pretty weak, what's the rush?”
“
Our tip says they're about to move. Could be a big one
.”
“Who's the tip from?”
“
We don't know. But seems accurate so far
.”
Which could mean anything. Vanessa knew better than to start wondering about that now. It was the Pyeongwha terrorists, of course, and Lotus Tower would supposedly mean they'd been staying there, for a few days at least. Again, how they'd managed
that
, there was no way of telling.
“
Okay, they'll be on this feed
,” one of their techies in HQ said, and Lotus Tower feed came through, all the data security services were usually not allowed to look at, people in rooms, security setups, elevator and stairwell activity.
“Yeah . . .” Vanessa fiddled with the inputs, not as good at juggling all these feeds simultaneously like Sandy, “damp that down a bit, the fucking targets will be on the building net, they'll see we're linked in. . . .”
“
Vanessa, I've got it
,” came Sandy's voice, calm as ever, and Vanessa felt that particular tension flee her. Like a cool drink on a stinking hot day, everything felt right again. The incoming building feed modulated, just a trickle of incoming data, nothing they'd notice . . . only somehow multiplying here on tacnet, cross-referencing data adding up to more than was escaping. God knew how she did that, some trick of multiple sources adding up to more than the sum of their parts. . . . “
Can we get eyes-on, give us an ETA
.”