Crossover (41 page)

Equality. It was the oldest of human ideals. And those who forgot their past were doomed to forget why it had become such a grand ideal in the first place.

The rising engine roar cut into Ibrahim's thoughts as, with a deep thrumming of thruster fans, the flyer lifted smoothly from the pad.

"I just hope our GI's got her head screwed on straight about her buddy," Agent Chow said over local intercom, the flyer rocking slightly as it climbed clear of the surrounding buildings. There were no windows along the fuselage, but everyone had taken this trip so often that it made no difference.

"Don't sweat it," Vargas replied, eyes fixed on his monitor bank. "She's the only hook we've got right now, just go with it."

"No backup either," Chow muttered. "I don't like it."

"She'll be fine," came Rice's voice, switching from her usual TacCom frequency. "You can trust her — she's a pro."

"Her professionalism isn't my problem," Chow replied. "I just want to know the same thing I always want to know if we're working with someone new — when the shit goes down, whose side is she on?"

"I said you can trust her," Rice repeated firmly.

"LT, this is her long-lost buddy here," Chow retorted as the thrust changed direction, acceleration building. "She may like us plenty, she may be trustworthy as hell, but if that were your best friend with his head on the block, and you had to choose us or him, what would
you
do if you were her?"

Silence from Rice. Chow was a complainer by nature, but on this occasion he was right. They all knew it.

"Then let's just make certain it doesn't come down to a choice," Ibrahim told them all very calmly. He didn't mind constructive conversation on the job. And there had been so little time to prepare, his people's minds were still catching up with the issues at hand. "The goal is to get them both out of this alive and healthy. As long as our goals remain concurrent, we're all on the same side. That's the task."

At that moment, the subject of controversy on board Eagle One was figuring out the intricacies of Tanusha's road rules.

Sandy was on a motorcycle. Her cashcard had given her ample credit for the rental and her CSA badge had convinced the rental operator of her competence. That she'd never ridden one before in her life was a minor detail she had neglected to mention.

She was cruising now along a highway that her link-access map identified as Rama Five, ablaze with streetlight in the near-dawn. The bike was simple enough to ride — it was a Prabati W-9, hydrogen powered, large, comfortable and lightweight. Navscreen indicators gave a constant head-up display across the low windshield, a 3D projection that interfaced with the helmet visor. Warning indicators informed her of the relative positioning of surrounding traffic, cars behind, to the sides and ahead, with highlighted warning zones and projected movements ... motorcycles were, Sandy had discovered from the rental operator, a bone of contention among Tanushan city planners.

All road traffic was, of course, regulated. Highway and freeway travel was an entirely hands-off affair. Manual operated only on back streets, and even there rarely, all speeds and trajectories monitored on the central grid. Motorcycles however, unlike cars, would fall over if driven by remote. They needed to remain under rider control at all times. Many planners, the rental operator had told her, wanted them banned from Tanusha ... 'road toll' was an expression that provoked horror and disgust in the planning department. More people were killed in Tanusha each year by lightning strikes than traffic accidents. But most of those deaths, the planners pointed out, involved motorcycle riders and pedestrians.

Sandy leaned through a gentle 100 kph turn, eyeing the road ahead through the alert-sensitive display, trajectories and ranges shifting unobtrusively across her visor. Repressed an amused smile at the regulatory overkill. All those silly graphics just got in the way. She could calculate everything she needed with plain vision. She gave the throttle a gentle nudge toward the 110 kph ceiling, a sudden break in power transmission, the engine whine abruptly fading as the buffers cut in. She didn't like it. Fortunately the bike had an independent CPU with interlink barriers, which would last about three seconds if she wanted them gone. She hoped she wouldn't need it, but she was not in the habit of taking chances with equipment.

Crackle of mild static on audio ... she winced slightly as the encoded frequency locked in, a brief, squeezing pressure.

"
Cassandra
," came Ibrahim's voice, internal audio, direct input to her eardrum. It always sounded slightly strange on an unfamiliar frequency, through an unfamiliar code. "
We have your bike on traffic-scan, you're doing the near side of legal down Rama Five, left lane, Hammersley District, confirm
?"

"That's me," she replied aloud, voice muffled to her own ears in the helmet. Silent replies took practice, and vocal ones had the same result. "The speed buffers look a little vulnerable on this thing, just make sure the cops don't start chasing me if I have to break them."

"
I copy that, we'll kill the alert if it comes, but we don't want to tell anyone directly who you are in case we're being hacked ... nothing will make bad guys more suspicious than an on-duty CSA agent on a motorcycle
."

It was good thinking, Sandy thought. Like it was good thinking to barrier-monitor the dealership she'd taken it from under CSA identification. The dealer had seemed like a decent guy, but if he flapped his mouth they'd cut him off. Ibrahim's team knew this city's network far better than she did.

"
Any word yet from Angel
?" Angel was her idea — Mahud's codename. She wondered if he'd appreciate the humour. And thought no, probably not.

"He's still on standby," she replied, edging into a convenient space in the right lane, flash of sensor warning as she crossed the dividing line. Wind roared and flapped at her jacket, pressing her body.

Mahud's situation was tricky. He was alone. He didn't know where his 'team-mates' were. It was not his operation — he was only along for the ride at this point. When he was wanted, he would be sent to a set of coordinates. What happened then, when and how the team would reassemble from their scattered, covered positions throughout the city, was up to someone else entirely.

Sandy thought she knew who. Remembered cold, hard eyes, shoulder-length dark hair. A pistol levelled at her chest. "Get out of this one, Skin." The interviews they'd conducted on those FIA personnel they'd captured had revealed nothing ... they claimed Federate business and spun a conveniently simple story about tracking a dangerous League fugitive for 'security reasons' that CSA personnel could not be privy to under the regulations ... and claimed, obviously enough, to be working alone. Whoever that man was, he did not like GIs. Surely he was not happy to be working with one.

She gripped the throttle a little more tightly and tried not to think about it lest her worry for Mahud cloud her judgment. Worry was not something that usually afflicted her on a typical op. But this op was far from typical.

"
You think it's possible they might just leave him behind
?" came Vanessa's voice suddenly in her ear. "
If they're planning on leaving, that is
?"

"Christ almighty," Sandy muttered, "I hope not."

"
But wouldn't that
..."

"If they leave him here, Ricey, it won't be alive. I wasn't supposed to survive my procedure. The League might not mind if the Federation have live GIs running around, but the FIA certainly would. They hate our guts, remember? Meaning GIs generally." A brief silence.

"
Forget I said it
," Vanessa said then.

"Already have." She changed lanes leftwards, ignoring the indignant protests from her navscreen, indicating as she decelerated down a turnoff branch. "Any more ideas on what they're after this morning?"

"A few," said Ibrahim. "
I won't trouble you with them now. Our net is deploying quite nicely — you can access on TacCom QB1358 ...do you need a lead on that? The encryption's very serious
" A brief moment's concentration as she slowed to a stop, feet down, waiting at a red light.

"No, I'm in already." Clear grid-picture of deployed ground units of CSA personnel, in cars mostly. A few aircars, locked into repetitive transit patterns. And the flyers, Eagles One through Four, well above it all, widely dispersed. Even on grid-scan, the city looked as massive as ever. It took a lot of units to do a decent coverage. "That looks like a busy day for you. I'm glad I'm not coordinating that lot. My response trajectories tend to go through things instead of around them."

"
On this occasion
," Ibrahim said mildly, "
please refrain
."

Sandy nearly smiled.

"I'll try." Green light and she squeezed the throttle, curved right and under the freeway bridge, quickly accelerating down the empty road ahead. Even then, buffers curbed the power-application somewhat. She shook her head in mild irritation ... the bike would be lots of fun without those damn buffers. After a lifetime of soldiering, she was sick to death of pointless rules and restrictions. But then again, she thought, maybe she'd never liked them in the first place. Maybe that was why she was here now in Tanusha and not back in the League, hunkered in some carrier's gut, cleaning her weapons.

"
The traffic's going to get heavy in a few hours
," Ibrahim said. "
Chances are that if a move's being made, it'll be before or after rush hour
."

"More traffic will cover their movements," Sandy disagreed. The road was now a tree-lined thoroughfare, shops and sidewalks along both sides. She kept the bike to the suddenly lowered 60 kph buffer limit. Everything looked peaceful beneath the pale streetlight. Here and there were joggers, early risers. Past an open park where some martial arts types were already practising.

"
True. We'll keep an open mind. Tell us when you make contact
."

"Will do. Ricey, you there?"

"
I'm here
," came Vanessa's voice.

"What's the latest on the Berndt people?" Berndt was the district in which the recently devastated mall was located. It was on the news.

"
Still no personnel records. It's pretty clear they're offworlders. Beyond that, there's nothing that I haven't already told you
."

"Were they good?" Decelerating again, indicating for a right turn.

"
I'm not sure, I'm not sure that they'd have done better if they were better soldiers ...it wasn't much of a situation for them, surprised like that and unarmoured against a SWAT team
"

"Yeah." She took the turn and cruised at a gentle fifty up the residential roadway. Quiet houses, close and comfortable, nestled among the many trees. Behind the many blank windows, ordinary Tanushans were sleeping. "Considering what hot shit you are as a commander, did you meet much resistance?"

"
Plenty. I can't tell you how goddamn lucky we were
."

"Then they were good. The bad ones just dissolve." A brief silence. It seemed to Sandy an incongruous conversation, cruising up this dark, leafy back street between darkened houses. Soon the families would be rising, children coming out to play on the first day of weekend, the street filling with comfortable civilian life. No inkling of the woman who had cruised this way only hours before on her motorbike, who she was or what she'd done.

"Are you okay?" she asked then. As gently as she knew how. There was no simple way to speak of such things. No guaranteed approach. Nothing that would change the awful reality.

"
Yeah
," came the quiet, reluctant response. "
I'm okay at the moment, the adrenalin's still up thanks to your buddy. It's not like I'm feeling sorry for those pricks or anything
."

"That's good. A bit of vicious, homicidal rage can be a healthy thing, sometimes. Civilians never understand that."

"
A bit of your flippant irony doesn't go astray either, I'm sure
." Sandy smiled within her helmet. Vanessa's character observations seemed part curiosity, part affection and part defence mechanism. She had an interesting habit of turning words back against the speaker.

It needed, Sandy realised, a degree of emotional perceptiveness that she herself lacked. Perhaps it was because Vanessa was a civilian. Perhaps because she was a straight. And perhaps her bisexuality gave further insights, created certain multi-levelled interactions that others would not have ... it was a puzzle. It was the kind of puzzle she found so stimulating, here among civilians.

"It sure beats staying entirely serious," she agreed, slowing for a stop sign. Navcomp blinked green, the central grid reading no cross-traffic and the buffers allowed her to accelerate once more.

"
Hey, that's my general philosophy of life
," Vanessa told her. "
See, I told you we had things in common
."

"Stop hitting on me, Vanessa. It's very distracting."

Vanessa laughed.

"
The com guy's giving me the windup, Sandy ...I forget his name, he's some dweeby little redhead with a bad complexion. I never liked him
." Sandy grinned, almost able to hear the indignation at the other end. Evidently she knew him well. "
I'll get back to you
"

"Do that, Ricey. Ciao." The link went dead and there was only the muffled hum of the Prabati's engine, a smooth vibration beneath her. The road ahead was dark and silent. But she no longer felt alone.

Vanessa Rice spared Agent Andy McAllister a sly sideways grin as the connection went dead, grasping the handhold by Chow's navcomp terminal as the flyer gave a slight shudder and sway. McAllister scowled, pretending to be angry. Her gaze shifted across to Gabriella Razo, on the neighbouring terminal. Razo had been looking more and more incredulous as the conversation had progressed. Not, Vanessa thought, a big GI fan. Or she hadn't thought she was.