Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (26 page)

“Can I hug them?” Allison asked, tearing up at the prospect.

“Of course you can.”

“I've never hugged my family before.” Crying for joy. “Thank you, thank everyone in the CSA for me.”

The VR disappeared, and Vanessa stood in the lounge. A CSA flyer roared outside the tall glass windows, lights flashing, while other cruisers hovered nearby. The one healthy CSA Agent was telling them on another channel to break the glass, they had to get Amirah out immediately. That was a new thing, everyone so concerned about the dying GI. She'd saved their necks, it was obvious from the dead attackers Vanessa had seen on the way in.

“Don't kill them,” Vanessa said to Ragi, as Ragi sat and watched his captive GIs. God knew where they were now, mentally. Frozen in some VR world they couldn't escape? Unconscious? Writhing in Ragi-induced agony? “I'm sure you can kill them. But we need their information…and for God's sakes don't let them or anyone else access their killswitches.”

“Believe me,” said Ragi, “I want to know what they know even more than you do.” And looked at her oddly. “Commander Rice, are you okay?”

Okay? Why shouldn't she be okay? It was her last thought before her legs folded and she hit the ground.

Danya was quite pleased at how good he was getting at moving around. He'd been worried Tanusha would become like a golden cage, especially with Sandy as a guardian. They'd end up stuck in Canas, surrounded by high security and unable to move, but increasingly as he was learning the basic protocols, and when and who to contact in CSA just to let them know they were moving, he was discovering they could go pretty much anywhere—so long as he cleared it with Sandy first, of course.

And so they went from a self-organised trip to Ranarid to get some school supplies, back home for dinner with Sandy's apologies for having to work late, then to CSA HQ thirty Ks away, after word that something bad had happened. They just took the maglev and light rail like any other Tanushan, on transit passes they'd bought. Sandy had of course wanted to send them a cruiser, but that would take a while as the CSA were busy, and Danya said they didn't need a chaperone anyway. And walked them to the HQ public entrance off the rail stop, prepared for all the security checks, but a man in a suit took them straight through with minimal fuss, just the obligatory body scans and visitors’ passes, then a hand-off to some junior staffer to escort across to medical.

Sandy was there in the hallway, in civvie off-duty clothes. She was talking to several others who looked like they might be SWAT. Danya was learning to recognise the type, tougher and leaner than most, all short-haired, some with the sides shaved for a better helmet fit. They rang alarm bells to look at, like seeing augmented toughs in the street outside a club on Droze…but these were Sandy's friends and turned to look as Sandy saw them, and beckoned them over.

Sandy introduced them, and the SWATs all seemed friendly enough, with smiles and handshakes for Danya and Svetlana and ruffled hair for Kiril. And departed, as Danya gazed through the window they were all standing before and saw Vanessa lying in that medical bed, hooked up to various machines and unmoving. There was a tube in her mouth. Danya knew Vanessa as fun and lively, always with a smile or a joke. It didn't look right for her to just be lying there, small and silent. Her husband Phillippe was in the room with her, seated beside the bed, holding her hand and just looking at her.

Sandy knelt and hugged Danya, which startled him because he didn't need the hug…then he realised that the hug wasn't for him. He held her back. She was shaking. That scared him. Svetlana joined the hug, seeing she was upset, then Kiril, and Danya broke away to gaze through the window. After a moment, Sandy joined him, hand on his shoulder.

“How is she hurt?” he asked.

“We don't know,” Sandy said quietly. “It's like before, at Antibe station, only much worse. It's like her body just shut down, if it weren't for the life support she'd be gone.”

“So she's not injured?”

“No. No, she got three fucking GIs in a row, low forties, barely a scratch on her.” She took a deep breath. “The doctors think it might be a kind of augmentation overload. She's so fast these days, and so strong. They think when she really pushes herself, the augmentations are too much for her body and it just shuts down.”

“I'd thought…I mean, didn't they know that would happen before they did the augmentations?”

“It's all so new, Danya. Since the war ended and the restrictions got relaxed, the technology's just gone flying ahead. We're still learning what it does at this level, and SWAT gets the highest tech there is. We're guinea pigs. And I
told
her, I told her it was risky, that the meds didn't know half as much as they thought they did, but she was so excited at getting better, at getting closer to my level. And she just
can't
get to my level, none of them can, we're just made from different stuff and there are limits, and if you exceed those limits, things start breaking.”

“Sandy.” Danya put his hand on hers, on his shoulder. “Your hand's too tight, you're hurting me.”

“Oh, shit!” She removed her hand like she'd been shot, and bent, examining him with concern. “Did I hurt you? Where?”

“No no no!” Danya shook his head, smiling. “It was just a little tight, you could never hurt me properly. Look, there's not even a bruise.”

She looked unsteady in her relief. Like she might burst into tears. Danya took the opportunity of her proximity to put both hands on her shoulders, like he sometimes did to Svetlana or Kiril when they got overwhelmed by things.

“Look,” he said firmly, “Vanessa's going to be fine. She's incredibly tough,
and you've got the best medical care in the galaxy here. It'll be just like last time; she'll wake up and be fine.”

Sandy smiled at him and put a hand to his face. The last time Danya had seen any adult look at him with such love in her eyes, they'd been Mama's eyes. So long ago. She hugged him again, and Danya was glad, because he didn't want anyone to see him cry.

“I love you,” she said simply. “All of you.” And straightened, suddenly calm business again. “Now, I have to go to a debriefing, do you think you guys can hang around here? There's food at the cafeteria, all you need to do is ask…”

“Sandy,” said Danya, with reprimand. “I think we can manage. We'll try not to burn the place down.”

“Right,” said Sandy, suitably chastened. “Of course. Oh, and Kiril, Doctor Kishore might want to come by since you're here, do some more tests…now if you want me to be present, just tell him to wait until after the debriefing.”

“Sandy, go!” Kiril told her, copying his brother's exasperation. “We'll be fine!” Sandy laughed and left with a wave.

“She really loves Vanessa, doesn't she?” Svetlana said as they watched her leave down the hall. Svetlana might find the notion challenging, Danya knew. For her, three was family. Expanding that number to four had been a challenge, but she'd managed it. Now to discover, to
really
discover, that one of those four loved someone else just as much as she loved them…that made the number five. And then there was Phillippe, sitting at Vanessa's bedside and looking completely immovable until she woke up…and they didn't know Phillippe as well, but they liked him a lot. And then there was Sandy's other great friend Rhian, who was around here somewhere…and then even Ari, which all got complicated in ways that kids didn't really grasp.

Where they were from, love was something to be rationed in small parcels. Was it possible to spread love around too thinly, like plastic stretched too far, until it snapped? Danya knew it made Svetlana nervous. If he was honest with himself, it made him nervous too. Too many loved ones were a liability. Three was much safer. Four, if the fourth was Sandy. Sandy had gone through fire to prove herself. How could these others possibly do the same?

Debrief was one long frustration and went long into mealtime. The CSA and FSA's finest minds sat around a table, looked over all the evidence, and ate the
cafeteria meals that were brought to them, and concluded that it all made very little sense.

An emancipation activist had been shot too, a lawyer named Idi Aba, he'd helped some League GIs pro-bono through their asylum process. That had happened on the other side of the city, point-blank, just outside his apartment. No one had seen a thing, and it looked like a professional hit.

“Well, that's just fucking smart of them,” Sandy summarised in frustration, after they'd been reviewing events for half an hour with little to show for it. “If the League wanted to give the emancipation cause a big boost, they couldn't do a better job than murdering an emancipation activist in the Federation capital. And as for trying to kill Ragi, all that does is confirm he's Takawashi's, because if he was Talee they'd never have heard about it, or at least not yet. But this was planned well in advance, they've probably been at it a month or more…hell, we haven't
had
Ragi that long.”

“It does not appear the smartest couple of moves we've seen the ISO make for a while,” FSA Operations Director Hando agreed. They were all here, FSA and CSA, on occasions like this one there wasn't much discernible difference between the two agencies—League involvement automatically put the FSA in play, and local security concerns automatically made it CSA business. The location at CSA HQ was just a matter of convenience, given this was where all the wounded were taken, CSA's medical facilities being superior.

“And they've given us prisoners,” Ibrahim added, on the holoscreen, still back in FSA offices. “How long until we have actionable intelligence from them?”

“Interrogating GIs is hard,” said Naidu. “They're impervious to most stress-inducing techniques and have more patience than regular humans. They're more susceptible to uplink hacking, but our legal advice on that is cloudy. With recent synthetic rights legislation passing, it could be construed as torture.”

“Which is unfortunate,” said Chandrasekar. “Given that with Ragi apparently on our side, we've actually got the ability to get right into their heads.”

“Gee, you guys really have a record with locking up suspicious advanced GIs, huh?” Sandy said wryly. “Keep them in a small room, debate, equivocate, then wait until someone tries to kill them in some big blowup before realising whose side they're on.”

Naidu and Ibrahim repressed smiles. “Thank you, Sandy,” said Chandrasekar drily. She was talking about herself, of course. “And we
haven't
decided Ragi's ‘on our side,’ whatever that means. If his condition is what it appears to be, even he's probably not certain what side he's on.”

“You know how I decided?” Sandy asked them. Curious looks came back. “I went with the guys who treated me well. It's not difficult really, when you're lost and alone and don't know where to turn or where you belong, some kind treatment and offers of friendship can go a long way. Ragi might turn out to be ten times the asset I am. Be nice to him. Hell, get him laid if you have to.”

“You can arrange that?” Chandrasekar asked unwisely.

“You know I can,” Sandy replied. Chandi was too cool to blush and too smart not to have realised his mistake. “And our three prisoners too.”

“Who just killed a bunch of our people?” said Hando with disbelief.

“And nearly killed my three best friends in the world,” said Sandy. “I know. If they'd gotten to me at the wrong time of my development, that might have been me leading an attack like that.”

“And how many moral excuses do we make for GIs?” Hando retorted. “How many atrocities get the pass because oh, they can't be measured on the same moral axis as the rest of us?”

“Sure,” said Sandy, “when they break the laws of war they should be punished for it like anyone else, but they didn't kill any civvies this time, every casualty was an enemy agent defending a secure CSA facility. I did stuff
just
like that when I was on that side, but mostly to Fleet. And like you, some of Fleet still haven't forgiven me. But at the time, I hadn't yet realised there
was
a moral choice involved, I just did what I was told like the good drone I was. Good bet these GIs are the same. Don't just interrogate them, give them a choice. Explain it to them. We might have them in custody indefinitely, I doubt League will ask for them back…if nothing else, it's a psych experiment for you, how long does it take to turn a League GI, if at all? Put some of our new GI friends onto it, the difference between them and our new prisoners might only be about twelve months of introspection.”

Hando took a breath and raised a hand in faint apology. He was angry, and she got that. Sandy shook her head to say it was nothing, she understood. She hadn't even raised her voice at him.

“The most concerning part of what you've just said, Cassandra,” said Ibrahim, “is referencing the ‘laws of war.’ This attack was very much like an act of war from the League, and the one on Idi Aba was at least a very unfriendly gesture.”

“Well, we can't be certain of that,” Naidu cautioned. “If Vanessa and Rhian hadn't surprised their preparation and rushed them, the Ragi attack would have been very fast and professional too, and then we'd be calling it a covert operation, and not technically warfare.” Unimpressed looks came his way. “I did not invent the nomenclature.”

“Any way you interpret it,” Ibrahim continued, “League are very upset and are becoming increasingly drastic in their actions. What do we do about it?”

When she got out, she strode fast back to medical. An uplink had already informed her that Kiril was having checks with Dr Kishore, so she went there first, but Kiril was happy enough, chatting away and asking Kishore more questions than he was being asked in turn. She stayed long enough to be reassured herself, then went to see Vanessa and found Vanessa's family all there and some of Phillippe's family; it took time for the security clearance to arrive for anyone beyond immediate partner or guardian, so they'd only now been allowed in. She said hi to everyone, especially favourite cousin Yves, and tried to be reassuring. Svetlana was talking to Phillippe at Vanessa's bedside, and Phillippe seemed pleased at the conversation—he was telling her how they'd met, Sandy overheard. Svetlana showed no more sign of needing her there than Kiril had, so she accessed building security to find Danya and found him sitting in Amirah's intensive care ward with Ari, talking. Amirah was going to make it, surprising given the number of holes in her, but not so surprising given how much the girl wanted to live. The docs must have given them permission to sit in there, so it seemed Danya didn't need her at the moment either.