Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1) (38 page)

Ramoja's frown remained. Intent. Troubled. A light breeze shifted the branches about the broad, grassy yard, gentle whispers in the dark. Water bubbled in the landscaped stream, splashing over carefully laid pebbles beneath the ornate, arching footbridge. Something in Ramoja's gaze unsettled her. As if he himself was unsettled. She hadn't expected that at all.

"What?" she asked him.

A pause from Ramoja before replying. Then ...

"Captain Carlotta Teig is dead. Suicide. A few months ago. She overdosed on neuro-enhancement prescription pills, left a suicide note telling of the lack of purpose in her life after the new Expenditures Review Committee announced the decommissioning of Firebird. "

Sandy stared at the pretty little footbridge for a long moment, nestled among the drooping native willows that swayed in the night-time breeze. Took a deep, slow breath.

"I'm very sorry," Ramoja said with quiet sincerity. "I know from your review files that the two of you got along. She invited you for dinner and backgammon on occasion." He had done his homework on her if he knew that much. "She wrote in her diary that she thought you yourself were one of the most hopeful, positive things to come from the entire war. She said that you were a clear demonstration of the "ultimate futility of violence." It seemed to me a curious sentiment from one of the League's most accomplished naval captains. I wondered what she meant."

"She believed in her politics," Sandy said quietly, gazing at the little bridge, peaceful and calm. It helped against the growing pain in her throat. "Not in violence. She always hated the necessity." Another deep breath. She wiped at her eyes. Ramoja watched in sombre curiosity. "She meant that the best weapon is intelligence. Intelligence with which to kill the enemy. But my intelligence made me wonder if I should be befriending them instead. She thought that was wonderful. Said it gave her hope for the universe."

Long-suppressed memories came rushing to the surface. Late-shift meals in Teig's quarters, a glass of whisky for the Captain, tea for herself-whisky did nothing for her. "My condolences," Teig had said upon hearing that, and meant it. Ship smells, metal and synthetics, dull-smelling air from the purifiers. The comfortable, familiar rustle of jumpsuit fatigues. Sparse furnishings, a complete lack of clutter, all loose items locked away in case of sudden manoeuvrings. The clank and whine of cylinder rotation, the gravity that kept them seated.

Discussions of politics. Economics. The bread and butter of what the fighting was all about. Teig was committed passionately to the League cause, whatever her distaste for some of the methods. Sandy herself, the Captain had told her, was reason enough to believe the League position on artificial humanity was sound-far from the old fears of artificial intelligences turning on their creators, Sandy's greater intelligence increased her degree of emotional attachment and commitment. The irony, Teig had said, was that in their search to create a more lethal killing machine, League bio-engineers had made her less dangerous, not more so. A machine could kill innocents and feel no remorse. A greater, more developed intellect would agonise about whether to pull the trigger-morality was nothing if not a higher intellectual function. Sandy herself hadn't been all too sure of the rationale behind the argument, having read a great deal about certain highly intelligent tyrants in past human history, but she was willing to concede the Captain's basic point, if only to make herself feel better.

What had happened to Sandy's team must have hit Teig hard also, when she heard. She'd never had a chance to talk to her before leaving. Leaving had been a fast decision, a spur-of-the-moment thing. Just a fake ID with some fancy hack-work to get her a spot on an outgoing freighter from G-4 station in Argonis orbit. By the time the overstretched, under-manned staff at that chaotic base station realised she was missing, the freighter had already jumped, and there was no way of telling if she'd actually been on it, so many freighters had been coming and going in those last, desperate, chaotic months before the final election, and the peace treaty that had immediately followed the old administration's overthrow. The battered military infrastructure had been struggling under impossible resource demands, plummeting budgets, horrendous periphery casualties due to the newly aggressive Federation assault squadrons having perfected decimating system strikes that left League shipping and system infrastructural facilities smashed and defenceless. There was no hope in hell that anyone was going to be able to trace the whereabouts of one maybe-AWOL GI who was awfully good at forging electronic credentials for whatever purpose she required. And who had technical skills that made her an automatic selection for any merchant's crew in need of an extra specialist or two ... and in those times, that meant everyone, personnel were abandoning posts to see to their families in the crisis and there weren't enough hands to go around. She'd just vanished. And of those she'd left behind ... several might possibly have taken it hard. Teig had been one.

But hard enough to suicide? No chance. Teig had a family she'd been greatly looking forward to seeing again. Teig had wanted to go to a rock concert again-live, loud and sweaty-she'd talked about it often. Teig would have been happy for her, getting out and off on her own while the whole marvellous, glorious League system imploded like a collapsing neutron star behind her. Teig knew damn well she'd head to the Federation. But she doubted greatly that that explained Teig's death. No. Far more likely it was Torres Station and a few other such incidents, and threats of review before newly appointed investigatory committees established under the new administration. Certain folks in the old administration would have felt mighty threatened by such a prospect. Dear God. Now ... now, of all times, she wanted to kill someone. She had a pretty fair idea she knew who.

"If she was going to kill herself," Sandy said quietly, "she'd have blown her brains out. Pills were not her style." And turned a dampeyed, burning stare at Ramoja. "Neither was suicide. There's no fucking way, Ramoja. No fucking way. You know that, don't you?"

"It was mentioned as a possibility," Ramoja replied sombrely. "Things in the last year have been crazy. Everything's changed, from the economy to the administration. It's been chaos, and many investigations have been launched. Intelligence and law enforcement resources have been severely stretched. Not all investigations begun have yet been completed."

"If you need anything. Anything. You come ask me. I'll give you anything you need to get the fuckers who killed her. Or any other similar matter you have on file. You say the ISO's improved ... you do this, you damn well prove it to me, nail these scum to the wall. Hard."

"Madam," Ramoja said with all seriousness, "it would be my great pleasure." Their stares locked. He seemed sincere, Sandy reckoned. Greatly so. "Cassandra, the war has ended. It allowed much to develop within the bureaucracies that was not desirable, most of it kept from public view by wartime security restrictions. But there is a new administration in power now. Things are not perfect, it will be a long time until they are, if ever. But the steps are being taken, and the ISO is stepping alongside. On the civilian, democratic side. You must believe me on that."

"Surely you didn't come all this way just for me. What did you expect to find when you arrived here? What was your mission?"

"To help put things right." Sandy just looked at him, unimpressed by such cryptic utterances. He took a breath. "I certainly hoped not to find that unauthorised parties had been allowed access to classified League attack codes. We are in the process of tracing the parties involved. The leak will be plugged, I assure you."

That was the raid. Sal Va's accomplices. Tracking him, and tracking who'd given him those codes. She brushed loose hair from her brow as a light gust caught at it, her gaze unwavering.

"Lu Fayao was a Tanushan citizen," she said. "A criminal, perhaps, but not a convicted one. His death qualifies as murder. Surely you realise that."

"Prove that I was there," Ramoja replied-a certain, quiet challenge. "Prove that it wasn't self defence. Prove that the perpetrator wasn't under orders. Prove that in the grand scheme of events currently under way in this city, one minor criminal's death really matters. Shutting down such dangerous leaks will save lives. The choice is obvious. And diplomatic immunity still applies, as it does for all the other hundreds of official representatives from various other Federation worlds and administrations who are currently engaged in bilateral or multilateral negotiations that could easily result in far more deaths than one single disruptive underworld influence."

It was as good as an admission. Probably he knew that any recordings she made would be of little legal use in a court, given her presently dubious legal status with the CSA. And diplomatic immunity meant it wouldn't get to court even if she was right.

And the message was clear and straightforward enough-League resources had been used in an attempt to kill people on that boat. The League resented being implicated for something it had never condoned. The League meant to demonstrate to various wayward Tanushan groups how dangerous it was to make them angry. If only, Sandy thought sourly, they hadn't established so many dubious connections with so many of these dubious groups in the first place as an article of League foreign policy.

Former foreign policy, Ramoja insisted. Did that mean that the entire events of last month were not approved by the current League administration? The temporary removal of the Callayan President from office following the attempt upon her life? She wasn't willing to bet on it. Biotech infiltration into the Federation private sector was one of those peripheral activities that no League government liked to associate itself with directly. But that did not mean they didn't know it was going on ... just that they'd failed to take steps to stop it, or moderate the implementation. Individual League field agency commanders, usually ideological extremists, had the final say. And the glimpses of potential profits involved in the new technologies now drove Tanushan BT corporations to press for independence from the Federation, and freedom from those restrictive, profit-squeezing antiBT regulations. Potential profit determined political ideology. Ideological determinism. League foreign policy at work.

That it had necessitated cutting her open on an operating table while she'd been awake and screaming ... a small price to pay for the future progress and ideological stability of the human species. The needs of the many, the line went, outweighed the needs of the few.

It had taken many years for Sandy to learn to distrust such logic. The many were the few, after all, only multiplied. And if a civilisation could not even guarantee the rights of the few, the rights of the many were surely beyond their grasp.

A familiar sound interrupted her next question. A sharp, distant echo. Again, and once more ... the same sound, deflected off multiple highrises. Thump. And another ... Explosion. Perhaps fifteen kilometres off, maybe more. She and Ramoja stared at each other for a moment, with knowing recognition ... Sandy uplinked at rapid speed, and found ... Junshi. She hadn't realised it'd been that close. The hostage drama. Vanessa. Shit.

"Offensive," said Ramoja, his eyes distant. Concentrating. "Penetration explosive. Probably they took out a wall."

Several walls, ceilings, and probably floors too, with Vanessa in charge. She didn't do things by halves.

"I've gotta go." Quietly. "I'll speak with you later."

"Captain ..." Ramoja frowned in surprise. "... we have much to

talk about yet, I was hoping to ask you about ..."

"Plenty of time later," Sandy replied, turning and striding back toward the brightly lit rear verandah, and the guards on ready-standby about the railings and parked cars at the rear. Ramoja accompanied her, matching her pace. She felt suddenly tight, tense and claustrophobic. Scared. She had to get over there. "Please don't venture outside of these premises more than necessary, for everyone's benefit."

"It rarely proves necessary." Still frowning, with evident puzzlement. "You are leaving because of the hostage drama? They were always going to attack, Cassandra, and most likely at night. The hijackers are a most disagreeable sect, something religious, I forget the name. Probably your CSA has put their best SWAT commander onto the job. From what I've heard of local SWAT, he should be perfectly adequate. I don't understand why you must leave now."

"No," Sandy muttered, striding faster toward the verandah. The tightness in her stomach pulled on recent wounds, a painful cramping. "No, I don't imagine you would." And realised something in a sudden shock, and turned on him forcefully ...

"Chu! Is Chu still alive? Do you know where she is?"

Ramoja looked totally blank for a moment. Then recalling ...

"Rhian Chu, your old Dark Star comrade?"

"Yes!" With agonised impatience, heart beating hard against her ribcage ...

"I'm sorry, Cassandra ... I don't know." Helplessly, alarmed at her evident distress. "Honestly, I don't ... those elements that took in the survivors of your unit were among the first to technically "disappear" when everything started collapsing in those final days ... I just don't know. She might be alive, but I've no way of telling."

A new sound reached her maximised hearing, a faint, drifting reverberation on the cool breeze ... weapons fire, light and percussive. Lots of it. She turned and ran.