Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (11 page)

“We've acquired telemetry that suggests
Mekong
could not have made that intercept,” said Ramoja. “Pantala says they couldn't hit it from the ground.”

“Your telemetry's wrong,” Reichardt said calmly.

Ramoja gazed at him for a long moment. The deadpan stare reminded Vanessa of Sandy. There was a depth there. A calm. It was in the psychology of all high-des GIs. None of this wash of impulsive thoughts and reactions that regular humans struggled, and occasionally succeeded, to control. “How did you gain control of this station?”

Reichardt smiled and said nothing.

Ramoja knew…something. Vanessa was certain. Exactly what he knew was unclear. But probably League Intel knew a lot more about the Talee than Federation Intel.

“League will demand immediate withdrawal,” he said. “Your intervention here has violated the Five Junctions Treaty on numerous levels. Technically it is an act of war.”

“Which League can't afford to reciprocate,” said Reichardt.

Wong held up a hand, demanding attention. All looked. “Diplomatic though my esteemed colleague is, on official Federation diplomacy, my seniority is established.” Reichardt nodded. “Federation regrets this matter. Federation will remind League at this point that this mission was only pursued in conjunction with League Internal Security Organisation, of whom Mr Ramoja here was most recently Callay's senior-most operative.”

Calou shifted uneasily. “League is aware. League and ISO have settled their differences. We are united in our demand that the articles of Treaty must be followed, and Federation must withdraw.”

“However we arrived at this point,” Wong continued, with the air of the trained diplomat that he was, “Federation cannot ignore facts come to light on Droze. Facts regarding League's internal stability.”

“An internal matter,” said Ramoja firmly. “Not the Federation's business.”

“With respect, Mr Ramoja, the scale of these discoveries make it the business of every member of the human species.”

“This will not be discussed here,” Ramoja insisted.

“Then somewhere,” Wong replied. “Federation withdrawal from New Torahn territories is incumbent upon the formal establishment of higher-level negotiations. Failure to comply with this condition will see the Federation presence in New Torah become permanent, I am quite confident my council will back me on that.”

Silent consultation between Ramoja and Calou.

“I assure you that Federation involvement in this matter is inevitable at this point, internal or not,” Wong insisted. “All that remains to be seen is how deeply involved Federation becomes. Cooperation would significantly lessen the degree.”

One did not need to be a diplomat to recognise the threat. Either League lets us get involved, or we'll get involved anyway. With or without your permission.

“We are not that weak yet, Captain Wong,” Calou said grimly. “Understand that League will take any violation of sovereignty as an act of war.”

“We are not talking about violations of sovereignty, only negotiations.”

“Brought about by duress from
this
violation of sovereignty, and the threats of more to come.”

“Which we hope to avoid by talking. And Captain Calou, Mr Ramoja, Federation is concerned that your reluctance to even enter negotiations may indicate that the League's internal problems may be even more severe than previously thought. Which may alarm members of the Grand Council into even more stern action than may currently be the case.”

Oh, clever, thought Vanessa. The more you refuse to talk, the more alarmed we get, thereby making the thing you fear most, more likely.

“Captain Wong,” said Ramoja carefully. “Let me be quite clear about this. Do not be fooled into thinking that the League is so outmatched by the Federation's firepower that you can push us into anything. If our internal matters were as severe as you suggest, we might just decide to go down swinging.”

Just as clever, if far more diabolical. It was the suicide ploy—we're not scared of dying, push too hard and we'll take you down with us.

“Which only underlines how correct Federation is to be concerned,” Wong concluded. “Please. Federation self-interest drives all external policy, as you know. League stability and survival is in this instance also Federation self-interest. I offer you negotiations as a means of keeping Federation involvement in League affairs to a minimum.”

Further, silent deliberation between Calou and Ramoja. Clearly League had been keeping this quiet for so long that agreeing to talk to the Federation about it, and thus acknowledge the problem existed, was a huge step.
Admitting it did more than damage League security; it undermined the entire League philosophy, the raison d’être of League existence—that progress was all good, all the time.

“We must consult with higher government,” said Ramoja finally.

“As shall we,” said Wong. “When they arrive.”

“How many more are arriving?”

“The barest minimum,” Wong placated. “Merely those who can make the preliminary arrangements we make here more permanent. If ship numbers bother you, one Federation vessel may depart for each new arrival.”

“We shall consult,” Ramoja repeated.

It was a finality. Nothing more to discuss until we've consulted on this much.

Wong nodded, looking satisfied. Primarily he'd hoped to force League to talk about their little techno-social problem, structured talks involving the Federation so the Grand Council would be directly involved. That much now seemed possible.

“Now,” said Ramoja. “The corporations.”

“Can negotiate for themselves, surely?” Wong suggested.

“They have agreed for now to delegate that function to us,” said Ramoja, with careful deliberation.

It was Wong and Reichardt's turn to glance at each other. Whether words passed between them on private link, Vanessa couldn't tell.

“So a League recon vessel attempts to nuke Droze,” said Reichardt. “Droze attempts to shoot it down, fails, is saved by me. Now Droze turns around, presumably with the backing of the full New Torahn government, and throws in their lot with the people who just tried to kill all of them.”

Ramoja waited patiently. With no intention of answering what had not been clearly phrased as a question. And probably not if the phrasing changed, either.

“I take it,” Wong tried with greater diplomatic subtlety, “that this means League is declaring New Torahn sovereignty to be void?”

“We have always declared it void,” said Calou. “The Torahn systems have always been, and remain, League space.”

“Only now you're choosing to enforce it,” Reichardt completed.

There wasn't a lot the Torahns could do about it. League had let them
go because they were expensive and superfluous. Now they had something League needed, and however reduced the League's Fleet capabilities, they were still infinitely more than New Torah's little group of lightly armed freighters and planetary defences could handle. New Torahn sovereignty had been useful when League had discovered its catastrophic new problem, providing a safe place to conduct experiments on advanced origin biotech far away from the prying eyes of ethics monitors and journalists. New Torah had accepted, no doubt desperate for cash and eager for leverage over their old masters. But now the secret was out, and forced to choose between a new Federation overlord or the old League one, they'd gone with what was familiar. No matter that
Corona
had tried to nuke them.

Suddenly Vanessa was very suspicious.
Corona
answered to ISO, as did Ramoja.
Corona
had acted without full knowledge of the situation and would have killed Ramoja too, had it succeeded. So the corporations trusted that Ramoja had nothing to do with it. Now they struck a deal with him to get the ISO onside? No more nukes? You don't need to kill us, we can keep a secret? But what use would that secret keeping be, unless the Federation agreed to it too?

“Now,” said Ramoja. “About the Federation's very illegal occupation of Chancelry corporation on Droze.”

“Not the Federation's occupation,” Wong corrected. “I understand it's more of a civil conflict, almost all of the occupiers are either former League GIs or Chancelry domestic GIs.”

“Yes,” said Calou, “but the
almost
in this regard is quite significant. Kresnov is yours, and she leads them.”

“She didn't lead their last action, I promise you,” said Reichardt.

“How can you promise me?”

“It was reckless, poorly planned, and ultimately unsuccessful. Kresnov is rarely any of those, and never all three.” Reichardt leaned forward a little. “The real answer is that League's own GIs don't like you.” He jerked a thumb back at Rhian. “What's happening in Chancelry is a rebellion. Kresnov's role in it was largely accidental.”

Calou snorted. “Yes, she seems to get accidentally involved in a lot, doesn't she?”

“I believe,” said Reichardt, turning in his chair, “that Commander Rice
can speak for Kresnov?” Wong looked displeased. Clearly Reichardt hadn't cleared this with him first.

“In a limited capacity,” she said, externals activated. It gave a fair approximation of her voice, if slightly metallic. “The GIs occupying Chancelry tell me to tell you that they've had meetings on it and have voted. There's hundreds of them, though they won't of course reveal their precise numbers, given their current strategic situation. They began with a number of demands, but now they've whittled them all down to one single demand. This demand has been transmitted to departing system freighters and will be spread independently around League and Federation systems regardless of what we do here.”

Everyone was looking at her now, even Wong. He in particular looked most unhappy with this talk of departing freighters and spreading.

“What demand, Commander?” asked Calou.

“Universal emancipation. For all GIs, everywhere. That it become policy, agreed to by all sides through negotiation. Otherwise, they won't agree to anything.”

“Emancipation!” Wong was furious. He had her in Reichardt's quarters on
Mekong
, no time for her to change from armour, the narrow space barely big enough for the three of them. “This is Kresnov's idea, isn't it?”

“I think at this point the distinction is meaningless.” Vanessa's helmet was under her arm, her back to the door. Reichardt poured her a drink, non-alcoholic.

“Upon this negotiation,” Wong thundered, finger jabbing back toward the dock, “hang the lives of billions. We are this close to getting a deal on inclusive negotiations on the gravest internal threat space-faring civilisation has yet faced, and you throw emancipation into the works! Without consulting me first!”

“You were consulted,” said Vanessa, sipping Reichardt's drink. Ice tea. “I was going to speak for the GIs in Chancelry. You never enquired what I'd say, what
they'd
say. What did you think they'd say?”

“It's out now anyway,” said Reichardt. “League and Federation public will hear the demand.”

“Like they've heard it a thousand times before from various activist groups,” Wong retorted, “all ignored because they know League will never
allow it. Hell, League never did allow it, it nearly upset all the Five Junction Treaty talks. We got the Nova Esperenza agreements on limits to GI production, and that was that…”

“All of which they subsequently ignored,” Vanessa said sourly.

“Exactly! GIs have always been the League's battlefield trump card, the creation of GIs was the reason for the entire war…”

“No, synthetic life sciences were the reason for the war,” Vanessa corrected. “Of which GIs are but one particularly useful application. They wanted to get one up on the Federation in a synthetic bioscience arms race.”

“And the fact that GIs are so central to League ideology,” Wong continued, most unaccustomed to being interrupted, “only illustrates what an absolutely farcical illusion it is to believe that League will ever allow full emancipation to its synthetic citizens!”

“Least of all now that the main search for a cure to their new crisis is to use GIs as guinea pigs,” said Reichardt.

“Yeah,” Vanessa muttered. “Least of all.”

“So what's she thinking?” Reichardt sat on his bunk, back to the narrow corner. “Kresnov's not stupid. And we're not stupid either, so you drop this shit about how that might not be her idea.”

Vanessa said nothing. She wasn't the only one who knew her friend.

“It's not her
official
idea,” Wong said darkly. Brooding. “She'll let her new friends make that claim themselves while maintaining her neutrality. But she's smarter than all of them, she's the real puppetmaster, and now with divided allegiances.”

“No,” said Vanessa very firmly. “Absolutely not. She's shed blood for the Federation, she's lost friends for it, she believes in it. She just disagrees with your course of action.”

“If the League's internal problems are as bad as the data she found suggests,” Wong retorted, “all human civilisation could be facing existential threat. FTL starships are weapons of mass annihilation in the wrong hands; if the League suffers an outbreak of borderline psychotic nationalism and sectarianism of the kind that we know only too well human beings are capable of, half the species could wind up dead.”

“More than half,” Reichardt murmured. “I ran the scenarios at Academy. Wouldn't be much left at all.”

“Now, I'm sorry for Kresnov's GIs,” Wong continued, “I truly am. But down there in Chancelry are a few hundred. There's nearly a hundred more in the Federation, perhaps a hundred thousand in the League.”

“More,” said Vanessa. Sandy had been quite sure.

“And I'm negotiating for the survival of the human race.” Wong's expression said that he didn't think any more needed to be said. And he was right, it didn't. “So I think, that at some point, we all need to choose what's most important. You included, Commander.”

Usually when Sandy walked in on Kiril in the medbay, she'd find him sitting on a spare bunk talking with one or another GI, or playing with his beloved AR glasses. But this time, he sat slumped, looking tired and uncomfortable. That wasn't like him.

“Kiril?” Sandy sat quickly on the bed alongside him. “Kiril, are you feeling okay?”

“My head hurts.”

“Where does it hurt?”

Kiril pointed to his forehead. “And I keep seeing lights.”

“Lights?”

“Yeah. It's like, when I close my eyes, I see green, and blue, and red. And they all move around.”

Sandy uplinked fast. “
Poole, get here now
.”

“
What's up
?”

“
I think Kiril's uplinks are propagating
.” No reply from Poole. “Kiril, can you open your eyes for me?” He did that. “Now here, follow my fingertip with your eyes, can you do that?”

He nodded and did so. Poole appeared around a corner, walking fast.

“His pupils are dilated,” Sandy told him, as Poole took over the examination. “Response time's a little slow, what do you think?”

“Well,” said Poole after a moment, “I can't tell from here, I don't have the equipment. There's only one place that does.”

Margaritte Karavitis stared at the scan display with goggles on, reaching now to toggle and shift her 3D view. Kiril lay as still as he could beneath the scan. He'd wanted his own goggles on, but Margaritte had said that would mess with the scan. He was a no-trouble kid on a lot of things, but he really didn't like not being able to see cool stuff that other people were looking at. Sandy thought he'd get on well with Ari.

“It shouldn't do that,” said Poole. Poole had his own feed and didn't need goggles. “He's only had them two weeks, even given for the differences in kids…”

“They propagate faster in kids,” said Karavitis.

“What do?” Sandy asked suspiciously.

“Uplinks. Any uplinks. No matter you try to slow them down, a child's brain is more malleable, late-generation uplink tech will integrate faster into a younger neurological structure because it gets more feedback.”

Sandy glanced at Poole. “Seems logical,” said Poole. Who would know such things, when the knowing was illegal in both League and Federation? Who experimented on children? Simulations were advanced, but even the most advanced simulations available still could not replicate with reliable accuracy the finer details of human brain function. And experimentation on subhuman-level sentient species were incredibly difficult these days, given ethical understanding of just how semantical “human-level sentience” actually was.

“Why'd they do it to him?” Sandy asked.

“No idea,” said Karavitis, studying her display. “I'm a synthetic neurologist, not an integrationist. This is organic.”

“I'm not asking for a scientific explanation,” Sandy said coldly. “There are reasons organisations do things. They have objectives in mind. Unless you've been living in this basement the past five years straight like a hermit, you'll have some guesses.”

“Pretty damn close,” said Karavitis. She highlighted a spot on her display. “You see this? This is making a baseload pathway between the…well, if you're not a neuroscientist you won't know the words—between this bit here, and here. A child's brain will see that and respond twice as fast as an adult's, maybe faster.”

“So why do it?” Sandy fought the urge to point a gun at Karavitis's head. Doing this to children was an extreme moral stretch even for Droze's corporations. But Karavitis wasn't directly responsible, and besides, they needed her. And it had never been Sandy's style to make threats she couldn't follow through. “We didn't find any other kids they'd done it to, despite them having abducted plenty.”

“Kiril,” said Karavitis, “I'm going to stimulate a small portion of your uplinks. Can you tell me if you hear or see anything different?”

Now Sandy really was about to point a gun at Karavitis's head. She looked at Poole. Poole shook his head faintly. “It's normal,” he said. “It's how you tell what stage the propagation is at.”

Sandy couldn't know, her uplinks came built in.

“Will it hurt?” Kiril wondered.

“Nothing in your brain hurts, Kiril,” said Karavitis. “The brain has no nerve endings, so it feels no pain.”

“So why does my head hurt?”

“That's an involuntary secondary reaction, like all headaches.”

“That's bullshit, that's what that is,” said Kiril, with the air of a boy pronouncing something he'd heard his elder siblings say. Poole grinned. Sandy would have, but she found nothing in the situation amusing.

Karavitis did something. “Kiril, what do you feel?”

“Everything sounds funny,” said Kiril. “It sounds like the whole room just got bigger.”

Karavitis glanced at Sandy. “That portion of the brain is audio, plus it cross-integrates some spatial functions. His baseload is already about one-thirty percent of what a child's would normally be; his brain's adapting.”

“Make it stop,” Sandy demanded. It wasn't safe at this age. Children's brains needed balance; you made one part hyperactive, and it changed all the other parts, just like making one leg longer would change the walking gait and throw everything else out of whack.

“I'm not sure that I can,” said Karavitis. Gnawing a lip, black bushy curls falling in her face. Hair that looked like it hadn't been brushed in months. “The patterns are different, I don't recognise them.”

“Recognise them from what?” Sandy asked dangerously. “Not from adult patterns, children's patterns won't look like adult patterns. From
other
children's patterns?”

“I told you,” said the other woman patiently, “organic biology isn't my field. But the synthetic stuff they've put in his head is, mostly I only see it in GIs, where the entire neural structure is calibrated from day one to account for multiple augmentations. My understanding of what happens when you put it in any organic's head is sketchy, let alone a kid's head, but I can guess what it's doing by looking at its growth. And this thing isn't doing anything normal.”

She highlighted the display. Several sections illuminated, a 3D-map of Kiril's brain. “Normally these points propagate much more slowly, plus they'll do what we call a phased stagger, where one point of neural outreach will advance and pass on its knowledge to the rest of the nano-formations, which will process and integrate accordingly. But this is all simultaneous.”

“You're saying it's growing too fast to be safe?” asked Poole, now with a frown of concern.

“It's not a matter of safe,” said Karavitis. “It just shouldn't be able to do what it's doing. Without progressive mapping the nano-formations don't know where to grow. They can't grow, they've got no instructions. But these grow anyway, without the processing interval.”

“Like they already know where they're going,” Sandy murmured, gazing at the display. “Fucking Talee research base.” Poole looked at her. Karavitis remained studiously noncommittal. “All the neural synth tech the League got from this place were derivations, the basic technology with adjustments to human type. There had to be more pure strands of Talee tech they never used.” Suddenly she was frightened. “You can't get this shit out of him?”

Karavitis shook her head. “Even if I had the expertise, which I don't. Someone who did would tell you no, it's too integrated. You'd take big chunks of brain with it.”

“Then I want to know exactly what it is.”

“Those files they erased,” Poole reminded her. “They'll have copies, but we're not exactly in a position of leverage…”

“We've got an expert in orbit,” said Sandy. “Let's use him.”

The mall had been nice once, some old-timers said. In the crash, Home Guard had used it for staging and supplies, and the corporations had hit it, leaving half of it a collapsed ruin. Danya and Svetlana sat in what had once been a kitchen of some mallside restaurant, huddled in long sleeves and hats against the cold. Svetlana had her AR glasses on, looking for drones. Somewhere farther down the mall, stray dogs barked.

Danya examined the booster unit. His own glasses gave him a graphical display of receptive targets and sources he could potentially lock into besides the Home Guard feeds. Quietly monitoring local and supposedly “secure” networks, they could move around like this for quite some time and have real eyes and ears. Would have been damn useful the past five years. But it made them a target too, and they couldn't live like ghosts forever.

“Danya, what did Mama do before she came to Pantala?” Svetlana asked suddenly.

Danya thought about it for a moment. It took a mental adjustment. That
was another world, the world with Mama. “She worked in insurance,” he said, remembering.

“What's insurance?”

“Insurance is where you pay a company some money each year, and if something bad happens to you, they pay you even more money back. So you're covered, in case something bad happens.”

“Who'd pay a company money?” Svetlana asked incredulously. “What if the company was the one that made something bad happen to you?”

“Companies elsewhere aren't like they are on Droze. You can trust them.”

“And what good's money if something bad happens to you anyway?” Svetlana adjusted her glasses settings. “Why not pay money to make sure something bad
doesn't
happen?”

“I guess even offworld sometimes they can't stop bad things happening,” Danya reasoned.

Silence for a moment. Down the mall, dogs were still barking. Sometimes the strays found scraps, left by other street kids or wanderers. The mall was a common place to look for a sleeping spot. You wouldn't do it more than one night at a time, because it could be dangerous sometimes, thieves or worse targeting the helpless to steal their stuff. But tonight, Danya feared thieves less than he had, and preferred some place farther away from regular folk.

“Why did Mama come to Pantala if she worked in insurance?” Svetlana asked then.

“Pantala was rich,” said Danya. “She thought she could make more money.” She had been making money too. Danya remembered a big apartment. He'd been younger then, maybe Kiril's age. Before Kiril, then. Svetlana just a baby, he remembered her as a baby, a little thing all squished up in her bedclothes. Remembered being shown her, straight from the tank, all pink and wailing.

Confident Mama. Single woman, big apartment, new city. Bit of a wasteland, but you could build anything if you had enough money, he remembered her saying so. They'd all called Droze the sandbox, even before the crash. But the companies kept the money pouring in from big military contracts, and no one thought about it. Until the war stopped, and the money with it.

Confident Mama. Three kids, no father, just a donor bank and gene labs. They were all three of them pretty well set, gene wise, Mama had wanted for
them all the best in life. He remembered her saying so, tears on her face as she held him in the crowds of the transit camp with the cops yelling and the sirens and roadblocks blaring and flashing, and everyone pushing and screaming for a seat on some departing transport. She'd only wanted the best, please forgive her.

But they hadn't gotten a transport. There'd followed a smaller apartment, then troubles, then a lack of food. Kiril, in the tank even as the trouble started, but Mama hadn't terminated, no, she didn't believe in that kind of thing. A new baby, Danya remembered holding him in the water queues, remembered Mama getting milk from company officials, company people were all about town back then, still trying to help, you could ask them for stuff and not get shot. Thank you, she'd said, as Danya had held the baby, and Svetlana had cried and clutched her teddy.

Then the queues had been less orderly, lots of people yelling, and Mama didn't like the kids in line anymore, even though it had helped to get them more stuff. Then locked doors and crouched with other neighbourhood parents and kids as the riots ran up and down the streets outside, and then the shooting started…and then it was concrete and basements, watching the walls shake and dust rain down as explosions crashed and boomed above. Running from one place to another, terrified of shooting but desperate for water and food. Bodies in the street, things burning. Lots of shooting.

One day Mama had gone out and not come back. Danya remembered crying and being terrified, but also being so preoccupied taking care of Svetlana and Kiril that he hadn't had time to cry and be terrified for very long at all. He'd put it off, crying for Mama, and by the time he remembered again, it was too late, and he'd almost forgotten her face.

“I think she was right,” Svetlana decided. Danya looked at her in surprise. “I'd like to have money.”

Ah. Of course she did. “I think you're quite a lot like Mama, Svetochka,” said Danya. Svetlana looked pleased at that. Danya put an arm around her. Svetlana would never blame Mama for dumping them in this mess. Kiril neither. They were too young to know anything else and could not recall that there was an alternative. Mama was a mythical figure, of distant memory to Svetlana, and of only tales for Kiril. And their older brother had no business tarnishing that figure with doubts and crude, blunt observations born of a lifetime staying alive on the streets of Droze, like what kind of fool moved
to a government-run munitions town in the last throes of an ending war and brought three kids into a world that, suddenly without all its money, and her money, she had no chance of supporting…