Crossover (18 page)

"You've had those before, I take it?" Flash, an impact of explosions, driving breath from the lungs and sense from the brain ... She blinked, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"A few times," Kresnov replied, not appearing to notice. Or choosing not to, more likely. "My muscles work like body armour. Two things make them harden to critical pressure — one is signals from my brain, and the other is a hard, high V impact. Pressure like that triggers the hardening reflex. Most shrapnel doesn't get much further than skin deep. Not with personnel grenades, anyway."

"Interesting material," Neiland said.

"Your muscles work on the same principle," Kresnov told her. "Mine just take it to an extreme." Neiland nodded, trying to think on that. Flash, and the grenade went off again, and a glimpse of a body flying, violently torn and everything going sideways ... her heart was suddenly racing again, thudding violently against her ribs. A stuttering roar of gunfire, shots thudding home in murderous succession...

"Take deep breaths," Kresnov calmly advised her. Neiland held up a reassuring hand, blinking her vision clear.

"I'm all right," she said a little dazedly. "The doctor gave me tape to lessen the shock. It hasn't really hit me yet."

"It will," Kresnov said. "Tape can only cover for so long." Like she was speaking from experience. Neiland gazed at her, heart settling in unpleasant, heavy thumps against her ribcage. Wondering if Kresnov, too, suffered from post-traumatic stress, or if the League doctors had taped it all over, and made her forget. Or if her brain was structured differently to help her deal with such distractions.

And yet Kresnov professed to have a conscience. She claimed to have been disturbed by the things she'd seen and done. Neiland did not see how that was possible without a clear memory of those individual, violent incidents. And now she'd recently killed twenty or more of her former colleagues, and appeared completely untroubled by the experience. Although, then again, she claimed not to have liked them very much. The thought gave Neiland a cold, sharp chill.

Kresnov just watched her, blue eyes unblinking. If the restraints or her seated posture gave her discomfort, she gave no sign. Her eyes were startlingly clear.

"You're staring at me," she said.

Neiland blinked. Glanced reflexively away to the blank wall by the end of her bed. And looked back, irritated at herself for being so flustered.

"I suppose I am. You must get that a lot."

Kresnov smiled wearily.

"No. It's a totally new experience for me. Nobody here seems to understand that."

It was another hour before Neiland emerged from Kresnov's hospital ward. Benjamin Grey was waiting for her.

"Ben, I want to talk to you." A sideways glance showed that the corridor was empty. Grey nodded, thin brows drawn downward in concerned concentration. His dark eyes appeared too large for his unremarkable, soft-chinned face. Neiland impulsively took him by the arm, and drew him several steps away from the doorway, where scrupulous agents, doubtlessly with enhanced hearing, stood guard.

"Ben," she said in a low voice when she was sure he was paying attention, "what are you planning to do with her?" Neiland was tall, but Grey was taller. She spoke to a point somewhere level with his shoulder, leaning close, looking up at him from under serious brows without tilting her head.

"Well," Grey said slowly, "I'm not sure it's entirely up to me, Shan's investigations are underway now and I'm not certain that I want to pre-empt..."

"So you're going to leave her cuffed to the bed and drugged to the eyeballs until Shan says that it's safe to release her?"

Grey frowned in surprise. The wall was behind him, and retreat was impossible. "Release her? Who said anything about releasing her?"

Neiland took a breath. "Ben," she said with forced calm, "she's not dangerous — to us. Any idiot can see that. She shouldn't be locked up like this."

Grey stared down at her from beneath furrowed brows. "That may be so, but many of the people and the groups she's connected with are most certainly
very
dangerous ..."

"That's no damn reason to lock her up, Ben. We should put her to work for us, dammit. She'd be a real help in Shan's damn investigations if you let her ..."

"Wait wait wait." Grey shook his head, hands raised in defence. Neiland stopped, arms folded, her stare burning. Grey took a breath. Doubtless he realised that his position had just become precarious, interrupting Katia Neiland in mid-flight. "Ms President, this is a
GI
we're talking about here. Now, I know she just saved your life. I'm as grateful to her for that as you are, believe me. But to make the leap from there to saying that this is our ally and comrade-in-arms is ... is a very big step, and one I'm not convinced is supported by the available evidence."

"Why would she save my life, Ben? Twenty-four hours ago you'd have been grateful if she'd just refrained from killing me, given the chance. Not only did she pass up that chance, she purposely and with forethought placed her ass in the middle of a hail of bullets with no other intention but to
save
my life."

Grey was frowning. Neiland knew what he was thinking — that his beloved President was letting her emotions run away with her. Again. Neiland liked Benjamin Grey, but sometimes she wanted to hit him.

"Just for once, Ben, you quit that damn bureaucratic poker face you like to pull and try looking at things from her side. She does
have
a side, you know, it's not all just cogs and gears turning in there. You tell me, why would she give a damn what happens to me, given everything that my administration's done for her so far? Why, huh?"

Grey stared at her for a long, troubled moment. Then shook his head, conceding defeat.

"Because she's not half as bloody rational as you are, that's why." Grey blinked. "You heard me." Neiland's balance was restored, and she was beginning to feel like herself again. Strange how a verbal barrage could do that for her.

"She's got feelings, Ben," she continued, just as forcefully, staring up at him with unwavering intensity. "I'm not talking touchy-feely here, I'm talking politics. She believes in things. That's how damn advanced those fools in the League finally got with her. They created a GI who is not only capable of free and independent thought, but who is actually capable of forming her own ideology independent of her creators and superiors.

"She didn't save me because she loves me — she didn't even know me. She just doesn't think people have the right to go around assassinating democratically elected Presidents, that's all. Now what does that tell you?"

Grey still looked puzzled. And baffled, as if trying to guess an answer that might possibly placate her, truthful or otherwise. Neiland felt a surge of exasperation.

"We're talking about
principles
here for God's sake, Ben. I can recognise it very easily because it's so damn rare among my colleagues and opponents. Kresnov is naïve, inexperienced and
principled
. That means she's either our worst enemy or our best friend. Now given recent events, which do you think is most likely?"

Grey scratched at the side of his nose with a finger, and grimaced. "What are you suggesting we do with her?"

"Do with her?" Hadn't he been listening? "I'm telling you that she's not our enemy, and given a little friendly persuasion she might even be a friend. How would you normally treat a friend, Ben?"

Grey just looked at her. Obviously, he didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Neiland exhaled hard.

"Look," she said, "just give her to me." She pretended not to notice his startled look. "She'll need a high security place to stay, and the Presidential Quarters are probably the only place in the whole damn city we could put her that wouldn't arouse suspicions. She'll be invisible there."

Grey was staring. "You're serious," he said then, like it had only just occurred to him that she might be. The muscles in Neiland's jaw tensed, very tightly.

"I'm not a comedian by nature Ben," she said coldly. "Give her to me. She might even be grateful."

"Ms President, I'm not sure that I can authorise something as ..."

"I can," she snapped. "I'm the President of Callay and Tanusha. That's got to count for something."

CHAPTER 8

Sandy stood head down in the shower, hands against the shower wall, leaning into the jets as the water coursed hotly over her head and down her body. The flowing water plastered hair to her face, clung thickly to her forehead, her closed eyelids, her ears and cheeks. She breathed deeply, thick, pleasant lungfuls of steamy air.

Her head felt unnaturally clear. The dim bathroom lights flooded her brain with white, artificial light. Water thundered and drummed against her skull. The heat against her skin was somehow both sharp and numb, a confusion of sensation. She tilted her head back, face up to the water jets. For the first time in days her system was free of drugs. It felt strange, to say the least. Perhaps, she pondered, this was what it felt like to be hung over. She didn't like the sensation.

No drugs. No restraints. No guards ... no, that wasn't true, the security perimeter of the Presidential Quarters were crawling with guards. But no personal guards. No watchful armed presence hovering over her shoulder, alert for that one hostile movement. A movement that now, by all appearances, was no longer expected.

"Christ," she murmured to herself tiredly, and dropped her head so water fell over her shoulders and down her back. Suddenly she was trusted. Trusted by President and Presidential security alike. It was too fast, far too fast. Her head was spinning from too much awareness, echoing like an empty room, and she was in no condition to process such political machinations. No condition at all.

Something twinged in her side, and she removed a hand from the wall, trailed light fingertips over the incision above her ribs ... light penetration. Would have ripped the lung of an unprotected straight. The hand trailed down, over a flat, bare stomach, probed lightly at a second and third incision, already healing. Sighed deeply, eyes still closed beneath the cascade of water.

Bad fight. Bad situation. What the analysts at DS Intel would have called a defensive counter. Grunts called it a fuckup. That covered any situation where the enemy held more cards than you did. A big,
big-time
fuckup. Not quite the biggest in her experience. But close.

Dark Star they'd been, all of them. It was possible, she knew, that she might know the unit. GI 23s and 25s. She'd never liked the designations, personally. Had never really known why, until she'd lived among civilians. 23s and 25s were just people, really. Kind of. Different from herself, obviously, but then she'd never met a GI who wasn't. And then, they were all different from each other too.

But they were predictable. She'd always found them so ... and had known that Federation soldiers always said that their one advantage against Skins was creativity. Fixed mindsets could only improvise so far, however creative their tape training. Sandy had found them painfully obvious. And not just in their combat patterns, either — their personalities were just as bad. Sometimes she'd spent time wondering if that was the model designation or the environment, or the tape. Or all three combined. She'd never really figured that one out, but somehow she'd never got too upset when some group of mid-twenties walked into a Federation ambush and disappeared for good. God knew, it had happened often enough. Not like her guys. Her lips pursed reluctantly, suggesting a smile. Not like Tran. Not much, anyway.

She remembered Tran asking her why she bothered reading those old books. Reading a few pages herself, before losing interest and going off to clean her weapons. Tran asking her if all wars had been as boring as this, once when they'd been stuck in systems patrol and recon for the better part of a month without having seen a station, let alone a planet.

Tran wanting advice over weaponry interface adjustments, moments before she was due to go under the scalpel for an upgrade. And Tran once challenging her to explain what an orgasm was, interrupting her and Dobrov in the act on Sandy's bunk to get an answer. They had not been alone to begin with — in ship berth you never were — and Dobrov hadn't bothered stopping for her to deliver an answer. Her explanation had become more of a moment-by-moment demonstration than a technical answer. She and the half-dozen others in the berth had found that very amusing.

Tran had looked up to her. They all had, to one extent or another. She was the Captain. She had an unusual designation. She was, in their own personal opinions, by far the best Dark Star unit commander ever. Which she was. She kept them alive, where other commanders expected heavy losses. They appreciated that, very much so. Worship was too strong a word, and was too emotive anyway. But they obeyed her utterly and without question. The Captain was always right. Sandy knew best.

Tran had taken this very much to heart. Unlike her compatriots, Tran had a mind full of questions. The Captain was the holder of all truths, the knower of all answers to every question ever invented. She always asked Sandy first. It had been occasionally irritating. But it was character, a rare trait among her underlings, and she was loath to discourage it. Tran without questions would not have been Tran at all. And by God, did Tran have questions. Sandy smiled, finding it amusing even now.

And was surprised at herself, standing head down beneath a private shower in a Callayan Presidential Quarters bathroom, for even thinking of Tran. She hadn't before, when things had been going well. Assuming that things had ever truly been going well... but that had all been an illusion, hadn't it?

She had so little choice in any of it. Leaving had been her choice ... but in the painful glare of hindsight, even that seemed perhaps inevitable. Certainly she could not have stayed, not feeling as she had felt, and knowing what she had known. Surely she could not have stayed and remained sane.

And perhaps, she considered further, she had no more choice now than she had back then, when things were as they were for no particular reason and there was no way to question any of it. She remembered lying on her bunk and thinking thoughts of other places, other things she might want to do ... if one day, perhaps, the war would end.

Which was what Tran had thought. God. Had she ever been that naïve herself? As naïve as Tran? And she smiled faintly as she remembered what she had told the small, dark-haired GI — "The war will never end, Tran. Not for us."

Tran had frowned. "But when we win, they won't have any need for us any more, will they? We'll get leave, maybe even a discharge ... Don't know what I'd do if I got discharged, but there's gotta be something. You're smart, Cap'n ... tell me what I could do. Security maybe?"

It gave her a cold shiver, even now, beneath the pleasant wash of warm water. No, Tran. When the war ends, they won't have any need for us at all. Not until the next one anyway.

Dammit. She squatted in the shower, suddenly unsure of her balance. Hamstrings and buttocks pulled tight as the water coursed down and she steadied herself against the water-soaked tiles. Beneath the warm water she felt suddenly cold, her stomach tightened with knotted dread.

Only now was it setting in. The shock, and the fear. The things she hadn't shown before the President. And Neiland had been understandably self-absorbed at the hospital, given recent events.

The firefight had been bad, but she could deal with that. Had dealt with countless others, though perhaps not under quite such drastic circumstances. What scared her was the organisation. The precision. The specific movements, some of which she'd practically pioneered herself, the timing moves, the coordination signals on the integrated assault network she'd been unable to hack effectively during the attack, what with the sensor plug still in place in the back of her skull, blocking selected transmissions. But she'd just known. Her Dark Star minders had frequently failed to understand the effectiveness of many of her assault techniques. Analysts often refused to believe in instinct in straight humans, let alone in GIs. But she hadn't known what else to call it. She just knew.

And she knew that no straight human had planned that raid. No straight human knew those moves. No straight human could have planned and executed them in that fashion ... straights never commanded GIs, they lacked the familiarity, the gut instinctual knowledge of a GI's capabilities. Only GIs commanded GIs. She was the highest level GI in existence. But often other, mid-range levels would suffice.

She dropped her forehead into her hands and let the hot water course carelessly over her head. Feeling that her balance might go if she stood upright again. Some revelations were too big for even a sane, rational, stable GI like herself to handle calmly. And she knew, with an absolute certainty that shook her to her bones that a high-level GI had planned that raid, and was here, right now, in Tanusha. A very high-level GI. One who knew her moves. The number of possibilities was not high. They were frighteningly, terrifyingly small.

Oh God. She slumped to her knees on the tiles, and sat on her heels, gazing with helpless dread at the blank tile wall before her face. She'd thought they were all dead. She knew they were. And now, it seemed, at least one of them was not.

And she had no idea what she was going to do about that now.

She emerged from the bathroom in the dark blue bathrobe she'd been provided with. Clothes were available too, she'd been told — civilian clothes — but the shrapnel wounds would heal faster if unconstricted.

Even so, walking down the main corridor of the Presidential Quarters in a bathrobe felt decidedly strange. The polished wooden floorboards were cool beneath her feet. The portraits on the walls were of faces that Sandy felt she probably should have recognised but did not. Former Presidents, she guessed, pausing to examine one work, and then the next. There were no name tags on the works. Presumably visitors were expected to recognise the faces at first glance. Pity she hadn't read up more on her Callayan history before coming here. But she hadn't paid much attention to the past back then. That had been her intention, anyway.

She sighed, moving slowly on aching feet from one portrait to the next. She could hear footsteps and voices on the far side of a door further down the hallway ... her hearing improving with the drugs now gone. She fancied one of them was Neiland's, but too much concentration made her head hurt. From the other direction a TV could be heard, and the sounds of someone in a kitchen. And all about, on various unobtrusive frequencies, were the security channels, leaking vague, watchful emissions. It felt very solid, though. At least something was working properly today.

The TV channel sounded like the news, which aroused her interest. She walked unhurriedly down the broad, high-ceilinged hallway and emerged into a luxurious setting that could only be the President's living room. Everything was old-fashioned. A pair of French doors led to a balcony beyond shrouded by gauze curtains. The wide, open floor was of polished wood, gleaming to a doubtless synthetic, mirror finish. Wood-carved and deep-cushioned furniture gathered about a large rug of intricate Indian design. There was even a real fireplace, with a real fire — doubtless the smoke was processed to harmless vapour somewhere up the 'chimney'. Tanushan zero-emission standards would not abide unrestricted log fires.

Intrigued, Sandy strolled about the room. Intrigued further that it was empty. She had expected a guard ... or a guide, at least. But it seemed she was free to wander, watched only from the usual closed-circuit TV.

Decorative ceiling, wall paintings (landscapes here). Christ, there was even a bar set into the right wall behind the furnishings. And, out of place amid this nostalgic pre-history, a broad, flat-screen TV in the far corner.

"... no clues as to the whereabouts of the assault unit's Command and Control element, or C-and-C, as the CSA investigating officers are calling it," the man on the TV was saying. "It now seems almost certain that the 'brains' behind the Dark Star suicide attack did not participate directly in the assault itself — indeed, when one considers all the covert, organisational activities required to position such a unit for an attack of this nature in the first place, it seems just... utterly incredible ... that they got as far as they did."

"Kim, many of the experts we've heard from tonight have expressed similar disbelief not so much at the nature of the attack itself, but that it could have got as far as it did undetected. Many of them have been questioning the CSA's effectiveness. What questions have you been hearing, and is there any truth to the rumours about an investigation into CSA and other regional and national security procedures in the wake of this unprecedented attack?"

"Su-Li, it's impossible to say at this time. Things are very confused down here ..." On the TV screen, red and blue lights were flashing behind the reporter's position. Engines whined and nearby voices added to the confusion. It made for very good television, Sandy supposed, ignoring the reporter's words as she had come to ignore much of Tanushan news reportage, what little experience she had had of it. But the TV package was much better than the direct net access that TV was always fighting with for viewers. TV packaged information for viewer convenience. Direct access required interactivity, and most viewers lacked the time, expertise or inclination to interact usefully, particularly when something like this was going on. The old medium was alive and well in Tanusha, and doing better by the minute, by all appearances.

Footsteps from the hallway ... she turned, and saw a small, dark-haired woman swagger in, stride adjusted for the weight of the heavy canvas gearbag she had slung over one shoulder.

"Hi-ya," said Lieutenant Rice with forced cheerfulness. Sandy wondered how the woman managed to operate outside of her armour — she was too small for heavy, unsupported armaments. Strength had never been a problem for GIs of any size. Rice dumped the gearbag onto the plush antique sofa. She wore operational gear, fatigue pants and jacket with unit patches. SWAT Four, a prominent shoulder patch read. Others denoting university and training school. A lieutenant's shoulder pips. And a few more assorted patches. Rice appeared to have collected quite a few. She folded her arms and gave Sandy a wry once-over. "So y've been busy, huh?"