Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (48 page)

“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…
”

“Thank God for the Augment League!” Rami announced. “Where tiny women can give huge men an enormous butt whooping and men in the stands even more enormous erections doing it! Thank you, Preeti, also on red we've got Mohammed in Kuta, where you calling from, Mo?”

“
Rami, I'm calling from the Wunderbar here on Khan Street. They're having a bikini wax competition tonight, special guest starring the entire chorus line of the hit RK Road musical ‘Mardi Gras!’
”

“Oh, hell, yes!”

“
The best bikini line, as voted by drunken fools in the audience, will win an entire Michelle Mauvin swimwear collection and the undying gratitude of about three hundred men in the audience.
”

“And a wad of goo in the left eye, no doubt.” Behind her sound barrier, Liz the producer rolled her eyes.

“
And I'm going to get you some vision on the Rami Matrix!
”

“Awesome, make sure it's a real low angle, you know? Thanks, Mo!”

His feed meter showed close to a million direct links across the city tonight—a Friday, and every Friday was a party night in Tanusha—and Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays—political crisis or not. The ad market feed was showing twenty-three thousand dollars a minute and up to forty-five for premium, not a bad rate of return given the competition from other sources. But when the shit hit the fan in Tanusha, people got drunk and danced. Usually Rami found that admirable. Tonight, less so.

“Here's the news!” he announced, not missing a beat. His night beat style was tempo tempo tempo, never a break save for feed crosses. “Malini Chopra's tits grew a little smaller today…can you believe that? Breast
reduction
, Malini?”

“No!” called Angus from the other mike.

“Yes, that wailing sound you hear is a thousand teenage boys throwing themselves out their apartment windows. And if the
old
Malini had been lying on her back on the road beneath them, they'd all survive, dammit!” Angus and Caitee's laughter gave him a beat. “In other news, Finance Minister Richards’ penis, just as small as ever.”

More laughter. The minister's wife had been photographed in bed with a male stripper three days ago, giving comics three nights of running gags.

“I mean, poor Mrs Richards,” said Rami, scrolling through multiple feeds on his board, already scanning ahead for the next three segments. “Four centimeters just doesn't cut it, right? It used to be six, but then there were those budget cuts…” Laughter. “Liz, what say you?”

“Five,” said Liz with confidence. “Absolute minimum.”

The secret to Rami's success, as with most comics, was that he never felt apologetic for what he found funny. Dick jokes, fart jokes, breast jokes…hell, he had six hours to fill, and he loved it, and mild literary puns wouldn't fill the time or pay the bills. It was old reflex, and he could yammer on like this all night, the quickest wit in Tanusha and everyone knew it. But tonight, somehow, it didn't make him happy.

“In other news,” he announced, “writer and Very Serious Man Justice
Rosa denounced Operation Shield! He said it was all a scam and a con job, and he'd go down to the local park with some friends to protest about it! Two hours later, someone tried to shoot him. So I guess we can just put that down to coincidence, right?”

Liz gave him a wary look.

“Well, the shooter was a well-known anti-GI nutter,” said Angus. “Can't really blame the GC for some loon who thinks Rosa's for emancipation.”

“In further news,” Rami added edgily, “the ghosts of two hundred and fifty recently killed GIs on a remote island in the Maldaris want to know why this guy gets called an anti-GI nutter, while the Federation chairman who had them all killed for no immediately provable reason gets called a hero.”

“Oh, great, he's going after the Chairman now. How big's his penis, Rami?”

“Surely much, much bigger after he killed 200 people for no obvious reason.”

“No obvious reason aside from the coup plot that they have
recordings
of, Rami, your buddy Kresnov planning in private conversations.” Angus's job was to give Rami something to bounce off, and to fill the silences. But this was politics, not dick jokes, and his heart wasn't in it.

“Wonderful,” said Rami, “a media professional who listens to a couple of recordings he could cook up in five minutes in this studio, and automatically believes they're genuine. Angus, you're a great loss to the legal profession.” Angus made a face. “In other news, there was a lot of shooting in the Supreme Court building today. The authorities refuse to tell us who was shooting, or why, or at whom, because, you know, we're just the public, the people who pay for all this shit, why would we care?

“And in local politics, Callayan President Vikram Singh crawled a little further up the Grand Council's collective butthole today! Who knew there was still room up there? What with all the local media and the Callayan Parliament all crammed in there together…way to stick up for Callayan rights guys! That'll show ’em.”

On his board, the ad market feed began falling to twenty-two thousand. Thirty thousand links disappeared just like that. He was supposed to be in a perpetual good mood, but sometimes Tanusha made him angry. Behind her window, Liz was gesticulating frantically at the boards.

He took a deep breath. “We've got Juanita on the line! Where are you, Juanita…whoa! Vision on line five, what the hell is that behind you?”

“
This is Callay's Largest Pizza competition, Rami, and behind me is the biggest pizza on the planet!
”

A call light was blinking. And on Rami's uplinks. The blinking was accompanied by beeping, quite distracting; it shouldn't do that. He looked at Liz, as Juanita rambled on about sauces and toppings, and Liz looked puzzled.

“
I'm trying to block it
,” she said on their private line, “
but it won't go away.
”

Rami just had a feeling. He wasn't sure. But he felt it was worth the risk.

“I'm sorry, Juanita, we have an unscheduled caller, who is this?” And connected the call.

“
Hi
,
Rami. It's Sandy Kresnov.
” And the whole studio just stared, as though stunned by some jolt of electricity. Followed by frantic activity, as new links were made to ad markets, to publicity houses, to feeder nets.

“Sandy. Wow.” Rami put his boots down off the opposing chair and felt a deep chill. His heart suddenly thumping in his chest. Every now and then, he did serious. Usually he did it on his own terms, rarely if ever on his famous weekend night beats. One of those serious sessions, long ago, had been with Cassandra Kresnov. Since then, they'd done a few more, the only sessions at any length, and away from pure journalism, she'd done with anyone. Some jokingly called Rami “Kresnov's favourite journalist,” which was meant as an insult, because he wasn't one. To which Rami had told them all, on air, that he didn't think Cassandra had favourite journalists—she'd talk with anyone whose morals and ethics were superior to a blood-sucking insect, and she hadn't found any actual journalists whose weren't, so she chose him instead.

Beyond the window now, Liz was gesturing furiously for him to continue. So fickle, Liz.

“How are you Sandy?”

“
To paraphrase a great writer long ago, reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.
”

“I can hear that. Or at least, well, we don't have any visual feed of you, but…can I just tell listeners that I just received a shock when your call lit up my board, I've no idea how you do that, you got past all the network barriers and I don't know who else could do that but you.