Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (6 page)

“Oh, poor Sandy,” Vanessa laughed. “As if seeing me all day every day for work isn’t more than any sane person could bear.”

True to his word, Admiral Alemsegad only kept them a week, until Marine and Army reinforcements arrived. After that, the FSA assault team were free to return to Callay on the first available cruiser.

Sandy recovered fast; she’d need the bandages for a while yet, but the damage hadn’t affected a joint or moving part, so her mobility was relatively unaffected. Mentally, from the combined effects of events on Anjula and finally seeing Ari again, she was less unscathed. She had several mandatory tape sessions, where the shipboard psych ran invasive readjustments through her short term memory—standard for all soldiers to prevent the onset of post-traumatic stress, and it worked pretty similarly for GIs and straights alike. It helped her sleep, though truly, like most tape-adjusted vets, she had no idea if she was actually susceptible to PTSD or not. Common theory was that GIs weren’t, thanks to the response-deadening effects of combat reflex . . . but then, she’d seen GIs blow themselves to bits rather than face an upcoming fight. Twice. And she’d heard of a number of others.

Whatever the cause, she still felt off, and so resorted to her old League-side medicine: fucking. GIs of any designation were largely immune from jealousy and other inconvenient emotional strangleholds, so Khan and Han were obvious choices, and lucky for her, both volunteered simultaneously. It had been a long time since she’d done anything as wild as two at a time—League-side, she supposed, when life had been simpler, and life expectancies considerably shorter, leading to more enthusiastically wild entertainments of the kind.

The orgasms were incredible. And it bothered her a little, because Ari had been a good lover, and they’d had some great sessions together. But there were things a straight human man simply couldn’t do, like experience some of her more wild and powerful manoeuvers and live to talk about it. On her cramped shipboard bunk, she embraced alternately Khan or Han, and really went for it, and felt so liberated that she did not have to worry about harming either of them, let alone killing them, as could easily happen when she truly lost control. No more careful sex, then—Vanessa had told her to make the most of where life took her, and this was one obvious advantage. She kept the two men busy for nearly an hour, until finally collapsing, sweat-drenched and exhausted, on a bunk with torn sheets and a newly-bent frame.

After a shower, she called on Vanessa, a short walk down a narrow, dog-legged corridor to the small gymnasium. It felt weird to be on a combat ship again, where she’d spent so much of her previous life. The faintly stale, recycled air, the low overheads and the emergency acceleration slings lining the corridors set off all sorts of memories, some fond, others utterly unwanted. That she was bandaged, with a healing hole in her side, returning from a fairly nasty fight with the after-effects of trauma tape in her head, and the recent recipient of a truly awesome fucking, all combined to amplify the effect.

Vanessa was belted into a weights machine, lifting about five hundred kilos’ worth of resistance with her legs. That was somewhat remarkable to watch of such a small girl, and a good two hundred kilos more than she’d have managed perhaps a year ago. Sandy herself, of course, could do comfortably ten times what the machine could offer without breaking. That wasn’t what made GIs dangerous, however—it was the fast-twitch, high velocity release of all that power.

“Good to be back amongst your own kind, then?” Vanessa asked her with a grin, sweaty and not-particularly strained, as Sandy sat on a bench alongside.

“You heard?”

“I walked past your door half an hour ago. Sounded like you were trashing the place. Are the boys okay?”

Sandy smiled. “They’re fine. And quite talented too, if you’d like a turn.”

“Oh no,” said Vanessa, still pushing. “Happy monogamy for me. If even you could manage it for four years, I’m sure I can.”

“Even me,” Sandy repeated, taking mock offence. But her heart wasn’t in it.

Vanessa saw. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.” She thought about it for a moment. “I think I’m reverting.”

“To what?”

“To how I was. I’d thought I was progressing. Maturing as a person. I was learning civilian life, I had a steady boyfriend, I actually made a pretty good girlfriend too, at times.”

“You did,” Vanessa agreed, nodding.

“I mean, I wasn’t pushy or demanding. I could be fun, I’d drag him out of his comfort zone often enough to make his life more interesting, and he seemed to appreciate it.”

“He did.”

“I’d thought that was the direction I had to go. To move away from what I’d been, as a League soldier. A drone.”

“Sandy, you were never a drone.”

“Oh, we all are at some point. All GIs. Some of us grow out of it, that’s all. I’d thought I was growing, but now I’m back to old ways. Fighting, fucking . . .” She shrugged, and ran a hand through her wet hair.

Vanessa stopped with the weights, unstrapped herself and sat up. Sandy tossed her a towel.

“It’s not the sex that’s bothering you, is it?” It was more a statement than a question. Vanessa always saw through her. Given a choice between her and any shrink, Sandy chose Vanessa every time. “It’s the fight.”

“I killed a lot of people in that fight,” Sandy said somberly.

“Me too. So what?”

“It usually bothers me. Last year, when I took out that idiot at Larion Park . . .”

“Who was holding a room full of innocent people hostage with explosives and firearms, thus saving at least twenty lives, yes?”

“Yeah, but it bothered me. The guy was a mental case, the system failed him, his family were so upset . . .”

“And all those soldiers in Anjula had family, too,” Vanessa interjected, “and no doubt they’ll be very unhappy, as well. Sandy, they were part of a system that was massacring thousands of innocent people. We stopped them. You saved a lot more than you killed, and . . .”

“I know,” said Sandy, with a calm stare. “That’s the point. It doesn’t bother me at all.” Vanessa frowned a little. “I mean, I think about them now, and truly, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Well that’s good then,” said Vanessa, switching the machine over so she could do reps with her arms.

“I don’t know. I began life not caring, because all GIs start off as drones, like I said. Then I realised I did care, but couldn’t do anything about it. Then I realised the League sucked, and I could do something about it, so I did. I just . . . I just got used to the idea that my guilt, or conscience, or whatever you want to call it, was a sign of my evolution as a person. And now, I go cut a swathe through Anjula’s finest, and I just don’t care. And it’s not just the tape, I’m sure of it.”

“So you’re scared that you’re turning back into a version of what you were when you were younger, in the League?”

Sandy sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Because your boyfriend left you?” It was one of Vanessa’s familiar, sharp little underhanded jabs.

Sandy’s lips twisted. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Look.” Vanessa hooked her arms over the machine’s handles. “It’s tough for you right now, I know. And not just with Ari, that’s bullshit—with all these other GIs pouring down on you from the League the past few years. You feel responsible, you worry about them, there’s all the legal and political shit. And you’re worried about how it’s all going to turn out. I don’t just mean facts on the ground, I mean more broadly.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I’m a straight, organic human. All the literature’s been pretty much written on me and my kind. But you guys . . . Sandy, you ever just think that however you turn out, that’s what you’re meant to be? Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about what you ought to try and become, and just accept what you are.”

“Vanessa, you know better than anyone. There’s a whole bunch of things about what I am that I don’t like.”

“So let me tell you this—there’s a whole bunch of things about what you are that I absolutely love. And I don’t just mean as your friend, I mean in general. As qualities everyone could learn from. As improvements to our species.”

“Including Anjula.” Drily.

“Including Anjula,” Vanessa declared, with a very firm nod. “Yes. Absolutely including Anjula. Someone has to do it, Sandy. Be proud of it. And fuck lots of guys, and continue to like too many different brands of coffee, and be addicted to surfing like a junkie, and just be what you are, and stop fucking worrying about it.”

Vanessa tossed the towel back at Sandy, who could have caught it, but let it catch her in the face instead. Vanessa glared at her, then settled back down to do her reps. Sandy watched her. Nearly three hundred kilos, with the arms of a girl who, unaugmented, would probably struggle to do forty.

“So, how does the upgrade feel?” Sandy asked her.

“Awesome,” said Vanessa, with real pleasure. “The tech’s incredible. It’s not so much the extra strength, it’s the speed and endurance. I nearly got a mid-des GI’s score on the last combat course I did.”

“I know,” said Sandy. “I’d say you were eighty percent what I’d expect a mid-des like Khan to do.”

“And I’ve gotten faster since then, too,” Vanessa said smugly.

“Only your command skills are so much better.” Sandy was relieved about that. It kept Vanessa further to the rear. Plus, there was something faintly unnerving about watching Vanessa’s transformation, and her pleasure at its results. “Exactly what are you trying to become, Ricey? And are you aware what it’s going to cost? “They haven’t found an upgrade for command yet.”

“Nor wisdom, nor humour, nor good sexual technique. But I’m sure they’re working on it.”

The trip took two weeks. Vanessa wanted to go home to her husband. Rhian wanted to go home to her husband and her three adopted kids. Han, Weller and Khan wanted to go and see their friends, other GIs newly arrived from the League, and see how things were progressing. Sandy wanted that, too, but there would be plenty of time for that later. First, she wanted to go surfing.

The problems began at Balaji Airport. Balaji was the airport Fleet used to avoid crowding up Gordon, the main civilian port. It was nestled in a shallow valley, two hundred kilometers from Tanusha, far enough that the environmentalists didn’t protest at all the trees to be chopped down. For all Fleet’s increasing scale on Callay, now that the Grand Council made Callay the administrative center of the entire Federation, Balaji remained somewhat rural—some big structures mostly underground to guard against orbital strike, a small accompanying town, and only averaging perhaps twenty shuttle flights a day, as Gordon retained all of the station traffic. Balaji only took independent shuttles from interplanetary vessels that did not go through station customs first. Normally, that caused no one any problem.

“What d’you fucking mean we have to go through customs?” Vanessa snarled at the airport official who’d informed them. They stood in the middle of a vast underground hangar where they’d all expected an aircraft of some description to take them into town. Instead, there was a Fleet officer, accompanied by some government people in suits.

“I’m sorry,” said the officer, “but we’re informed by the Callayan government that the crew of all foreign vessels must pass through customs first.”

“Foreign? We’re Federal Security Agency, which is based on Callay . . . how is that foreign?”

“If it’s not a Callayan national entity, it’s foreign,” one of the suits explained.

“Um, excuse me?” said Yeoh, who was the unit’s leading Intel officer, pushing to the front. “I actually have a Masters in law from Kannan University, and that’s just not correct . . . clause182b was inserted into the Callayan constitution following the relocation, and it states that all Federal security personnel based on Callay shall be regarded as Callayan citizens for arrivals and departures.”

Everyone looked hopefully at their antagonists.

“Our information is that you need to go through customs,” came the reply. Exclamations of dismay.

Yeoh would have taken it further—the studious young man almost laughing at the stupidity of it all—but Vanessa stopped him.

“Don’t worry, kid,” she told him, “the president’s just fucking with us. Won’t matter what you say.”

And so, sixty FSA troopers and nearly a hundred and twenty support staff, newly disembarked from a journey of thirty-three light years and a great military success, found themselves sitting in the sun beside the big elevator leading down to the big empty hangar, waiting for a customs inspection. A few played ball games, a few board or video games, or watched movies or caught up on Tanushan news and events that they’d missed in the past few months. Most simply sat, or lay in the sun, and enjoyed the warmth they’d missed while in space or, briefly, on Pyeongwha.

“I hate this fucking government,” Vanessa said, sunglasses on, lying at Sandy’s side on a patch of green grass off the taxiway, surrounded by their soldiers. “I want Neiland back.”

“Fat chance,” said Sandy. “She makes more money a year consulting than we make in twenty, and she lives on a beautiful river with her porch literally over the water. She got out at just the right time, you couldn’t drag her back.”