Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (31 page)

But it wasn't…or not
just
fun, anyway. It had always been there, or for quite a while. Vanessa had gotten over it once, and had fallen in love again, this time with someone capable of reciprocating the same way. But the old feeling had never entirely gone away, just…displaced. Or translated, into new form. Sandy would have preferred it if Vanessa wouldn't keep prodding, but she knew her too well, and like a kitten at a passing butterfly, she just had to take a swat. Ignoring it wouldn't work, because Vanessa never ignored anything, and it drove some less patient people up the wall. Better to wear her down, strike first and control the conversation.

“If I were even five percent lesbian,” Sandy told her, “I'd have done you so well you'd be walking funny for a week.”

“Oh, come on, every woman's at least five percent.”

“I recall your theory was twenty percent.”

“Depends how much I've had to drink.”

“You should be pleased I'm not,” Sandy joked. “I might have killed you.”

“You wouldn't have,” Vanessa retorted. “And I'm not.”

Sandy gave her a properly reproachful look now. Vanessa grinned at her, an apology of sorts, and took another bite of her sandwich.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just a near brush with death. Gets you thinking.”

Right, thought Sandy. She was asking for it. “Vanessa,” she said, very hard, very blunt. Vanessa blinked at her, paused in mid-chew. “If you desperately want to fuck with me before you die, I'll do it, I'll fucking close my eyes and make Poole's effort on me look like light petting, I'm sure I could. But it'll damage us forever, because you'll feel guilty, and I'll be resentful because I won't enjoy it, because believe it or not, when you're
not
bisexual, it's actually not that much fun to have someone twisting your arm to do gay sex because gay sex is actually pretty disgusting.”

Vanessa looked offended.

“I'm your best friend forever,” Sandy said shortly. “That should be enough.”

“You don't think it's disgusting,” Vanessa accused her, mischief unquenched. And poked her with a boot. “You're making that up as you pretend to be angry.” And held up her hands in defence, laughing, as Sandy threatened to hit her. “I'm sorry.” Somewhat sincerely this time. “I know you're right. I've just felt like poking at things lately.”

“I've noticed.” Another bite. “Entirely too much talk about poking, I think.”

Vanessa gave her another friendly push with an armoured boot, this time at her head. Dangerous in armour against anyone not a GI. Sandy head-pushed her off with a glare. Vanessa sighed, just smiling.

A com link opened. “
Cassandra, there's a meeting in the Director's office in ten minutes, all senior officers will be present
.” That was Angelis, Ibrahim's secretary.

“I can't be there in ten minutes, but I'll be there,” she replied aloud.

“
The Director requires you to be there in ten minutes
.”

“Son, I'm on the combat course, and unless the Director wants me to blow holes in walls, it's not possible to get there in ten minutes.”

“
Cassandra, it's very important that you be here on time
.”

Sandy disconnected and finished her sandwich, still seated.

“Something important?” Vanessa wondered, not privy to that secure message.

“Some fucking secretary with no sense of time or geospatial relationships,” said Sandy. “You were saying?”

She got there seventeen minutes later, in full armour. Angelis gave her a reproachful look behind his desk outside Ibrahim's door on the way in. Inside, as she'd suspected, everyone was gathered on the broad carpet before Ibrahim's
desk, watching the wall display—ten minutes’ notice usually meant some political announcement, and while those could be important, they did
not
require her to rush like a lunatic from the combat course to the Director's office. If it had been more important, someone would have said, but some overzealous secretaries whose only concern was ensuring punctuality didn't see things that way.

Ibrahim was half-sitting against his desk rather than seated, so it was moderately serious, whatever it was. Hando was here, head of FSA operations, technically second-in-command. All three Branch Chiefs, Cassillas, Shin, and Boyle. Admiral Vernier too, Fleet Liaison.

On the screen were politicians, standing in the Grand Council foyer before the main chamber, a suitably grand setting for professional show-offs, with high ceiling, patterned tiles, and busts of important dead people. That in itself was somewhat alarming—all the people standing before the journalists’ cameras were Grand Council representatives, ambassadors from their various worlds and systems. A majority of those were selected indirectly by parliaments and leaders, not directly by their populations. That usually made them less prone to populist theatrics, being technocrats rather than baby-kissing politicians, and a long way from their support base anyhow. So what were they all doing standing together before the cameras, making this announcement?

“They're forming a party,” said Chief Shin of FedInt.

“A party,” Sandy repeated distastefully. And toned down her armour reception so the actuators wouldn't hum while everyone was trying to listen. “In the Grand Council?”

There were no parties in the Grand Council. Ambassadors were beholden to their worlds, and those worlds had typically divided politics. Ambassadors displaying a preference for one or another line of politics in the Grand Council would usually find themselves replaced when the other side won power back home. Most long-serving ambassadors, and most had aspirations to be long serving, studied a bland neutrality on most things, only daring to venture a strident pronouncement when they were absolutely certain that a majority back home would agree.

“They're called the Party of 2389,” said Hando. “We've seen them coming for a while. Which you'd know if you'd read the political reports.”

“Some of us work for a living,” said Sandy. She
had
read some reports, but
this seemed premature. The Federation was founded in the year 2389. The original language of the Federation constitution excluded the possible use of force by the center against its member systems, language since considerably altered by an entire war's worth of constitutional amendments. Many factions were agitating loudly for systems’ rights against the center in light of the recent Federal attack on Pyeongwha, demanding a return to the original language of 2389. Thus, this party. “Do they have the numbers to block the amendments?”

“No,” said Ibrahim, stroking his goatee, watching the screen with lidded eyes. “Constitutional amendments take a two-thirds majority. They've got 21 out of 57. But this creates a pressure group that can agitate for more, and they'll get them.”

Thus denying any Federal arm of power, be it FSA, Fleet, or otherwise, the right to mount further operations like the one against Pyeongwha.

“Wonderful,” said Sandy. “They could call it the genocidal murderer restoration movement. Pyeongwha would have loved that a year ago, they'd still be dissecting people.”

“My sources indicate they'll push for a trade,” said Shin. Shin Chung-Kwan ran FedInt, the largest spy organisation in the history of spying. He was an Earth native, a top Chinese operative from Beijing, and was reputed to have an IQ off the charts. He looked the part, deadly serious, slicked hair, elegant black suit, and expensive, old-fashioned wristwatch. “Repeal amendments 14, 19, and 20, or 16, 22, and 23. It's a package deal, swap one for the other.”

Sandy recalled her constitutional amendments. “You mean they'll give the choice of repealing local security powers or foreign ones?”

“We'll have the choice of using force against the likes of Pyeongwha,” Hando said heavily, “or against the League. But not both.”

“That's not a bargaining position,” said Sandy. “That's a suicide pact.”

“And this is their moment,” Ibrahim added, “because they never had a chance at a majority before. But right now there's a lot of folks upset at what we did on Pyeongwha, and a lot more folks very jittery as tensions come back up against the League. Combine the two groups, and suddenly they might have the numbers for at least one repeal, as Mr Shin says.”

“Which casts recent League activity here in Tanusha in a different light completely,” said Shin.

“Shit, yes,” said Sandy. There had been a lot of alarmed talk on the news nets after those attacks, people scared that League was serious, and League was crazy, and League was really prepared to fight. The last thing anyone wanted was another war against the League. Now League ratcheted up the local populist fears, helping to create this rift in the Grand Council. “They hit us just when Federal military action is least popular, inside the Federation or out. They know the only way we'll lose a war is if we defeat ourselves before firing a shot. Clever.”

“Indeed,” said Shin. “But two can play at this game. Our plan for reciprocal covert attacks is in play, and not a moment too soon.” With an appreciative nod at Sandy. That one had been her and Shin's plan together; he'd come to her the morning after the attacks seeking her League knowledge and found her about to propose something very similar to him. They'd combined the two plans over a long afternoon with reports, charts, and lots of green tea, and presented it together. Ibrahim had approved, and now the details were in motion through the bowels of FedInt.

“I still don't like it,” said Boyle. Boyle was head of the FSA's League Department. Many of his assets were actually Shin's, but LD provided an overarching network of specialised intelligence gathering that pooled all the data and talked endlessly to Fleet about it. Some dismissed LD as just a glorified networking function with no real assets or power, but Sandy had found some of their data and contacts quite useful. “The most important thing we know about the League right now is how much we don't know. The last thing we need over there is to be creating more instability.”

“As a security agency, it is our responsibility to create an adequate deterrent to known threats,” Ibrahim replied. “League attacked us, now we privately promise them attacks of our own—the threat will be far more useful than the actual action should we genuinely choose to follow through with it, the fear of covert attack with our new GI assets may alter their decision making in useful ways. It was my call and I'll stand by it.

“What truly concerns me about the Party of 2389 are the forces behind it. These Ambassadors are barely the tip of the iceberg. I want full reports from all of our system bureaus, I want to know how the announcement is being met on all the worlds. So much here depends upon public reaction. There aren't many issues that have the potential to destabilise the Federation from within, but this is one of them.”

Picking the kids up from school was the most incongruously, weirdly, surreally civilian thing she'd ever done. She had to rush there from FSA HQ, with special dispensation to skip the mid-afternoon's crush thanks to a rescheduled meeting and a delayed review of ongoing Pyeongwha operations, which kept a couple of field agents waiting who'd travelled all the way back to Callay to make their reports. But she'd said she just wanted to walk her kids home from their first day, and people had smiled and said “aww” and made the arrangements.

All the kids at Canas School were high-security kids. Sandy had considered putting them elsewhere, but they were all from Droze, couldn't be asked to pretend otherwise given their ages and accents, and while news media weren't allowed to show their faces or names, they did know their ages and genders. With all three in the one school for mutual support, with matching ages and genders to the “Kresnov kids,” people would put two and two together as even in a city the size of Tanusha the odds weren't great they'd be anyone else. And once people knew what school they were at, outside a secure zone, travelling back and forth on their own became genuinely unsafe, which meant armed escorts, and guards at the school, and comments from the other students, the whole mess.

And so they were here, with pretty, old brick buildings, green playing fields, and big trees, looking about eight hundred years older than it actually was, like the rest of Canas. She waited by the playing fields with the rest of the parents or private minders or nannies; no car pickups in Canas, the district wasn't big enough, nor the streets wide enough, and you could walk across it in fifteen minutes—not that that would have stopped some of them from driving if they'd been allowed, but the school deliberately had a no-parking policy. If you attended, you walked or cycled, teachers and students alike.

Other parents politely avoided eye contact while she waited, the way people did who were accustomed to the presence of “big names” and were often “big names” themselves…but this time it was different, everyone desperately curious to see her
here
, of all places, and looking while pretending not
to. Especially given that it meant that her kids, the three they'd heard about from the war zone, were also here, mixing with
their
kids.

Danya, Svetlana, and Kiril emerged amidst the stream of other kids leaving across the grass and down the paths, and were delighted and surprised to see Sandy waiting, and ran to her. She hugged Kiril, then Svetlana, then even Danya, who hadn't invited it but didn't protest at a kiss on the cheek. There were other parents watching, and now lots of other kids too, looking to see if what they'd been told about these three new kids was true. Sandy listened to them talking, hearing tuned to those farther frequencies even as she listened to Kiril and Svetlana talking eagerly about their first day—“Look, that's Kresnov!” “Hey, look, there she is!” and the ever-predictable, “I thought she was bigger.” And their parents, reprimanding them not to stare and point, even though it was nothing the parents hadn't just been doing, only kids were more honest about it.

“I'm sorry I couldn't be there this morning,” she told them as they walked home along the winding footpaths, decorative walls and gardens of Canas. “I had to go in at four.”

“Why?” Kiril asked, genuinely curious. “Was it an emergency?”

“She can't talk about it, Kiri!” Svetlana reminded him cheerfully. They hadn't quite gotten him to grasp the concept of “confidential” yet. Or rather, that “confidential” also applied to him, even with her. “It's to keep you safe too, remember? Otherwise people will think you know important stuff and try to kidnap you!”

“Svet!” Sandy scolded.

“Well, they would,” said Svetlana defensively.

“No one's going to kidnap any of you,” said Sandy. And because it was the simplest, most comforting explanation they knew, “If they tried, I'd kill them.” And glanced around to see if any parents were close enough to hear that, but the only others walking this road were too far away to hear.

“Yeah, that's right,” Kiril agreed far too loudly, “if anyone tried to kidnap me, Sandy would kill
all
of them!”

“So how were all the other kids, Danya?” she asked him. It was the thing that really concerned her, partly for her kids’ welfare, and partly for the other children's. She'd made certain the principal was very clear that bullying was simply not on, not just because she'd get upset, but mostly because her little
darlings would lure the bully into a bathroom, put a bag over the bully's head and a knife to his or her throat. Not that she thought they'd actually
cut
, but then they'd all be in serious shit with the Education Department, various psychs, and eventually, inevitably, the scandal media, as someone found a loophole excuse within which to reveal those events.

“They're okay,” said Danya with a faint smile. She'd discussed her concerns with him, and he'd promised to bring any such problem to her and the principal, in that order, rather than take matters into his own hands as he was accustomed. She still didn't trust his promise; Danya didn't outsource immediate self-defence willingly, but she was at least confident she'd get enough warning in most circumstances to head off anything drastic. She was still astonished to learn how nasty kids could be amongst themselves. And was thus convinced it was better if they all knew exactly where her own kids came from, so they might refrain from nastiness, from simple fear. “They know we're your kids, all day it was Kresnov Kresnov Kresnov. Got a bit boring.”

“Some of the girls are really dumb,” Svetlana complained. “A few of them were really rude, asking what it was like having a GI for a mum. One of them asked if you'd killed my real mum, and they laughed, like it was
so
funny.” Sandy felt her heart skip a beat with worry. “I said no, but you'd kill their mums if they didn't shut up, because you were FSA and you knew where they lived. They shut up pretty fast.”

Sandy didn't know what to say. Svetlana had de-escalated the situation, which was good, but done it in a pretty shocking way, which wasn't so good. Danya saw her confusion. “Svet made some friends,” he said. “She was hanging with a couple of the popular girls after lunch. They came up and talked to all three of us when we were sitting together.”

“They just liked Danya!” Svetlana teased. “All the girlfriends I ever made were just girls chasing after Danya!” Grabbing his arm as they walked. Danya swatted her off, smiling.

“No,” he said reasonably, “they like Svet because Svet's such a bitch.” His sister gaped at him. Sandy laughed, seeing it was safe to do so. “Well, she is, she's tough and pretty nasty when she's pushed; I think they heard her put those other girls down. And you know, she can pass herself off as pretty when she has to…”

“Hey!” Svetlana pushed him into the neighbouring wall, which Danya bounced off and kept walking faster to escape her.

“…and you put that together,” he continued, “she's got popular written all over her.”

Sandy hadn't really thought of that. Svetlana as one of the cool kids?

“Sandy, you don't need to worry about us,” Danya explained to her further, seeing she was a little slow in getting it. “We've seen people get killed. We've seen war. We're not scared of what other kids our age think of us. The worst that can happen is that they don't want to be our friends, but we don't care because we only need each other, and you.”

“And the worst they can do to us,” Svetlana finished, “is say bad things, because they don't know what
really
bad things are, not like we do. Danya already gave us this talk, Sandy. Some of them are kind of scared of us; you can see it. We're fine.”

Somewhat astonishingly, another possibility occurred to Sandy. She'd gotten this all wrong. She'd been so accustomed to seeing her kids as frail victims walking on eggshells, she hadn't considered the possibility that let loose in the typical Tanushan playground,
they'd
be at the top of the pyramid. Because they weren't alone, they had their usual support network of three, plus her, and they were accustomed to an environment of constant and ruthless competition. Faced with a serious threat, sure, they'd get jumpy…but against Tanushan kids their age? Kids who'd never faced real danger in their lives? It wasn't like they weren't socialised with other kids, they'd mixed with plenty of other street kids in Droze, though not always in a friendly and cooperative manner.

“Okay, guys,” she said, “here's the thing. I was worried you might have trouble fitting in, that you might get bullied. But it seems that was stupid, you're way tougher than any Tanushan bullies and they'll know it.”

“Absolutely!” said Svetlana with ferocious satisfaction.

“So here's the next thing. Kids who've always been kicked around and frightened might suddenly discover they're in a place where
they
can be at the top of the stack. And how much fun would that be, to be able to push
other
people around for a change?”

Danya frowned. “I don't think we'd do that.”

“You don't think so now, but if they were nasty, or stupid, or you just lost patience, you could, right? So let me tell you this now—if I find out that any of you have actually been bullies
yourselves
? That you've pushed around or hurt
or said nasty things to some other kid just because you could, or because they annoyed you without meaning to? Or maybe they're just weird? I'd be
so
upset with you. I'll always love you, but I'd be
so
upset. So promise me you'll never do it, promise me you'll only ever be nasty to kids when you need to defend yourselves.”

“We promise,” said Danya quite seriously. “We promise, don't we, guys?”

“We promise,” Svetlana and Kiril echoed. Sandy repressed a smile at the thought of Kiril bullying someone. Surely never.

“You know the reason I'm really serious about this?” Sandy pressed. “Think about it. Think about what I am, and what I could do to people if I wanted.”

“You could kill anyone,” Kiril announced. For such a sweet boy, he was very pleased to pronounce that at any time.

“That's right. I'm the toughest GI ever, I could be the
ultimate
bully if I wanted to. But I don't, because the way I see it, this is like one of your stories, Kiril. In the story there are good guys and bad guys. Now I know it's not always that simple in real life, but we should try to make it simple, like pretend, right? So in this story, I choose to be the good guy, and try to do good things. Bullies are
always
the bad guys, no exceptions. Got it?”

Danya didn't need the lecture, but Svetlana and Kiril were suitably thoughtful. Danya was a trouble avoider, and there was simply no percentage in bullying because bullying made trouble. Especially when Danya's biggest fear was trouble with Tanusha's authorities and getting kicked off Callay…which couldn't actually happen legally, but in Danya's imagination big authorities in big cities were always bad people just waiting to do bad things, and never mind that one of the biggest of those authorities was Sandy herself.

Kiril didn't need the lecture
yet
, but with young kids it was never too early to start and get them fixed on the right path from an early age.

The real worry, of course, was Svetlana. Because Svet was both confident and insecure, happy and angry, more easily provoked and less likely to be merciful. And if she did become one of the popular girls, it didn't take much imagination to see her in a few years’ time, a teenager, beautiful, giddy with attention from boys and girls alike, and with a famous guardian who was cool to teenagers because she scared people…it would be natural for such a girl, having experienced so many bad things, to revel in this new and expanded
self-confidence, and to love being on the top of the stack for a change. And in the psychology of insecure teenagers, the best way to make sure you were on top of the stack was to tread on the faces of others beneath you.

Sandy didn't really know what else she could do about it, other than to try and function as a handbrake, and to diminish those teenage insecurities by loving her to bits and providing a good example in how to treat people well, especially those you didn't need to. At which thought she put an arm around Svetlana's shoulders as they walked and took Kiril's hand in the other, while Danya took Kiril's other hand and swung him happily between them while they talked about lessons, teachers, and sports.

Kiril thought Danya should play football, but Danya wasn't interested. He'd have to join the school team, Sandy reckoned, and the only team that interested him was right here. Svetlana wasn't much interested in sports or teams either, but she wanted to try dancing, the school arranged classes. Terrific, Sandy told her. Do it. And since she'd enjoyed swimming, the last time they went to the public pool, maybe she could try the swim team too…with a scheming look at Danya, because as she'd told him, he had to learn to swim before he could surf.

Kiril wanted to swim too and also wanted to play the piano, because his friend Poole played the piano, and pianos were really interesting with all their internal hammers and strings and stuff. So maybe, she said to them, if they wanted to try these other things, they could arrange their schedules so they could do stuff after school together. And since she didn't need too much sleep, if they didn't mind her being gone in the mornings, she'd try to work her long-hour days early when she got them, and be home for all the evenings?