Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (12 page)

It was the scariest truth that he knew. Adults were stupid too, and there was nothing to look forward to in growing up, except that you might be a bit stronger and wiser, and people wouldn't treat you quite so much like shit all the time. Or if they did, you could do more about it.

Truth was he didn't much like it when Svetlana asked questions about Mama. He always tried to tell her the truth, but with Mama, he couldn't. And he didn't like to think about it, because unlike Svetlana and Kiril, he was old enough to remember things that they'd happily forgotten or never really known.

Outside the kitchen, on the floor where the restaurant had been, a dog started barking. Danya got up and looked. Sure enough, it was barking at them; it could smell them. Most of the mutts weren't dangerous, just suspicious and territorial. A few he'd even been friendly with, the ones that licked and wagged their tails. Not so much different from street kids, they just got by how they could.

“He'll go away in a minute,” said Danya. He looked around for something he could throw…but that could be awkward, he didn't want to make any more noise.

“He'll give us away,” Svetlana warned.

“I'll chase him.”

“Don't,” said Svetlana. “There's a pack out there, packs are dangerous.”

“I don't think it's a pack, it's just some mutts in the same place…” He finally noticed what Svetlana was doing. The pistol came with a silencer, and she was screwing it quickly into place. “Svet, what the hell…”

Svetlana rolled quickly to the edge of the bench, got up, and sighted the pistol on the benchtop. Danya could have stopped her, but he wasn't about to wrestle a loaded gun off his sister over a dog. Besides, he couldn't quite believe she'd do it.

The gun thumped, just a small thud of compressed air. The dog stopped barking. It looked puzzled, wobbled slightly, then sat down, panting heavily. With a jet of arterial blood shooting out of it at least a meter, like water from a punctured pressure pipe. Both kids stared in horrified fascination. Or Danya did. Svetlana calmly unscrewed the silencer, all business.

Still panting, the dog lay down, with a glassy, slightly desperate look. Not knowing what was wrong with it, but wanting it to stop. The jet of blood reduced to a trickle, and the dog lay still.

Danya crouched back down and stared at his sister. Silencer back in a pocket, she had the safety back on the pistol like Sandy had shown her.

“What?” she said stubbornly. “That dog was going to get us killed.”

“It wasn't; it was just barking.”

“And attracting attention! There's people looking to kill us!”

“Dogs bark all the time, you think the people after us have sensors looking for barking dogs? They'd get a thousand readings all over Droze.”

“We can't take risks anymore, Danya,” Svetlana retorted, jaw set stubbornly. “I'm not getting killed over some stupid dog.”

“So that's going to be how you solve every problem from now on, huh?” This new turn scared Danya in ways he couldn't put words to. Svetlana could be ruthless. “Selfish” was a hard word to use about someone you loved more than your own life…but there it was. Only her definition of selfish included her brothers and anyone else who happened to be important to her. Most of her life, it'd just been them three. Lately, it had come to include Sandy. Who Danya was starting to think had been a very bad influence in this one respect. “Someone annoys you, shoot him?”

“If that someone's trying to get us killed, yes!” Svetlana settled back against the counter, knees drawn up, arms about her legs.

“Svet, any number of people might nearly get us killed. It's not always on purpose, sometimes things are just dangerous! You can't just shoot everyone who worries you!”

“They were going to take you away!” There was panic in her tone, the calm cracked. “They were going to take you like they took Kiril, and I was going to be left all alone!”

“Svet, this isn't about that.” He held her arm firmly, knowing that he lied—it
was
about that, of course it was. How could it not be? “That wasn't a bad thing that you did.” Dead eyes staring at the ceiling. Screams and blood. He'd had nightmares of seeing her or Kiril like that. He'd wanted them free of all of that kind of thing. But now they were in it neck deep, and there was no getting out, and Janu's people were after them with revenge on their mind, and there was just no getting out of this that he
could see, nothing that would stop the two of them ending up the same way…

“But if this is how you start dealing with everything,” he continued, forcing himself, “well…people shoot back, Svet. And they've got much bigger guns than that one, and there's more of them, and…”

Something hit the counter with a thud, then a bang! and acrid smoke everywhere. Stunned from the noise he tried to scramble for his own bag and gun, then realised that Svetlana's was in her pocket, and she was pulling it out. He grabbed her, holding her arm, and something heavy came over the counter and fell on them, gloved hands pulling him off with effortless power.

He was being dragged then, something pressed over his mouth regardless how he struggled, but he didn't pass out like he assumed; they weren't trying to smother him. A mask to keep gas from his lungs. He heard voices instead, muffled from inside helmets.

“
Rear's clear
.”

“
Two bags, some field kit. Two pistols
.”

“
We got them
,” said the man holding him. “
Objective secured, returning to rendezvous
.”

“
This is Ramoja
,” came the reply on an audible speaker. “
Good job
.”

Sandy moved quickly in the lower hallway of 9-R building, fine-tuning systems on her armour, quickly selecting weapons and ammo, an extra harness for grenade rounds, more lateral rotation through the torso; mobility was going to be important here. On local tacnet she had Droze primary spaceport, out beyond the northern periphery, visible defensive grids downlinked to her from
Mekong
.

“
If this was my sitrep, Sandy, I couldn't confirm what they're up to
,” Vanessa warned her.

“They grabbed the kids,” said Sandy, running through armour systems on linkup. A right arm flex, and the armour flexed in response, harnessed to a wall of the hallway with a couple of underarm straps. “There's nothing else it could be, you don't drop a combat shuttle from orbit onto Droze outskirts with a sudden tacnet linkup with corporation defences for any other reason.”

“
That you can think of
,” Vanessa cautioned.

“
That I can think of
's been all I've had for the last twenty-two years, Vanessa.” Amp down feedback, lateral flex up two, rebalance the power ratio to the shoulder mount, recalibrate, pump up the feedback once more…“Corporation defences were set to shoot down League orbital descents just an hour ago, now they're locked down, they've done their deal and now they both want me out of the picture. Grabbing the kids is the best way to do it.”

Poole came stomping down the hall in heavy gear, loaded with extras and not yet calibrated. Rishi followed, unarmoured. Dahisu, Kiet's best friend, likewise.

“They're at the spaceport,” said Rishi, frowning. She leaned against a wall, arms folded. “You going to attack it?”

“No, I'm going to go and ask nicely if they'll let me have my kids back.” Poole handed her some loaded webbing. “You don't have to come. Someone should look after Kiril.”

“Kiril wants his brother and sister back,” said Poole, starting his own calibrations, unshouldering a massive rifle. “I think in poker it's called ‘all or nothing.’”

“This isn't your fight.”

“You think I don't like Kiril? I spend nearly as much time with him as you do.”

Sandy stared at him for a moment. It was unexpected of Poole…and yet, somehow not. He was laconic, withdrawn. Some might say moody, for a GI. And also unorthodox and prone to confound. For him to forge a friendship with a six-year-old was surprising. Yet Poole often did things with the air of one raising a calculated middle finger to others’ expectations.

“I don't get it,” Dahisu said flatly. “You claim to be our leader, to lead all us GIs to something better. Now you're going to go and get killed for a couple of kids. I get tired of asking whose side you're on.”

“So stop,” said Sandy.

“Dahisu's right,” said Rishi, still frowning. Her head still bore the scar where a bullet had nearly taken it off, when she'd attacked Sandy and her friends in service of Chancelry. Hers had been the biggest and most rapid turnaround in loyalties and worldview. “It doesn't make sense. How can you lead us if your loyalties are divided like this?”

“And your inability to understand makes me wonder if you're worth leading,” said Sandy. She was processing on too many levels to get into the full emotive discussion now, gear calibrations, tacnet scan, comlink to
Mekong
, recalculating possible options now that it seemed they were two and not one. Rishi didn't get it, fine. She hadn't expected Rishi would.

“Help me to understand,” said Rishi. “You helped me to understand before. I know I'm not like the rest of you, I'm young. But I know I can understand more, if you show me.”

“Rishi,” said Sandy, removing clothes down to her undershirt for a better armour fit. “I really don't have time.”

“You do,” said Rishi. “A League Fleet marine squad won't use corporate shuttles to get back to orbit, corporation vehicles all have embedded control systems and League don't trust them that much. The corporates would like those kids too, leverage over you and League. They'll have to refuel their own ship, take them another four hours at least.”

Rishi was four years old, a 45 series. One iteration of synthetic neural tech below Sandy, though, making mere numbers misleading. Definitely far smarter at this age than Sandy had been, faster maturation with a lower plateau, like all GIs below her designation. Or all that she knew of.

Sandy slipped into the armoured upper half from below, thrust her arms in with the reflex ease that she tied shoelaces. “I like these kids, Rishi. I can't explain it, but I like them a lot.”

Rishi's frown grew deeper. “Like motherhood?”

“I don't know.”

“GIs don't get that,” said Dahisu. “It's not written anywhere.”

“Tell it to my friend Rhian on
Mekong
. She's a 39 series and she's the mother of three adopted.”

“Liking kids and having maternal impulses aren't the same thing,” said Dahisu skeptically. “Maybe you're trying too hard.”

“To be human?” Sandy said drily, testing the arm and shoulder resistance and liking it. “Maybe you could try some self-respect.”

“To be a straight,” Dahisu retorted. “To be just like them.”

Sandy might have shaken her head in disbelief, if she could be bothered. “There is no
them
. Nor
us
. That's what you're not getting.”

Only she'd called them “my people” back on Callay, arguing with Director Ibrahim. And she'd felt that too, emotionally. Was this the curse of being high-designation, to be continually confronted with contrary impulses? Or was it rather the blessing, to ensure that no moral imperative was followed over a cliff?

“So all this mass production, experimentation, and murder was just a figment of our imagination then?” Dahisu snorted. You had to be fairly high-des, and fairly old, to do sarcasm like that.

“No,” said Sandy. “The persecution isn't your imagination. But your conception of the persecutors is. Everyone not a GI is not the enemy. If they are, we're finished, you may as well shoot yourself now.”

Dahisu glowered at that reference to his friend Kiet. “And you think you can make them like us by forming attachments with their kids?”

Sandy gave him her first dangerously contemptuous look. It had some effect. “This is like arguing with someone with the emotional range of a flea. I can't make them like us by doing anything, but my life experience tells me that many of them
already
like us or like some of us at least. But they probably won't like you, not because you're synthetic, but because you're showing every sign of being an asshole. I don't like assholes either. Give me an everyday straight or an asshole GI, I'll take the straight every day.

“Now after not letting me lead you in preference to a guy who turned out to be strategically incompetent, you're now complaining that I won't lead you because I have higher priorities. You're damn right I do. You want my help? Be worthy of it. Right now I couldn't tell why you're
worth
leading.”

“We're your kind,” Dahisu said darkly.

“That's not enough. Of all the standards to judge people by, that's about the worst.”

“So why did you come to Pantala at all?” Rishi asked in simple curiosity.

For a brief moment, Sandy had no reply. Damn, she thought. Wasn't that a question. “I don't know,” she muttered. “Maybe I came to save myself.”

A few minutes later, Dahisu and Rishi were replaced by other, silent observers, Captain Wong was even less impressed.

“
As theatre commander of Federation operations in New Torah, I order you to desist from this venture
.”

“Fleet captaincy gives you theatre command of military operations in wartime,” said Sandy. She was fully in armour now and taking her time with remaining preparations. There was, as Rishi had suggested, no mad rush. “We're not at war, and in peacetime the FSA is not within the Federation FBO.”

“
Wartime or matters of wartime potential, Commander
…”

“Everything has wartime potential. You're late; I'm commander on the ground; I've never entertained the strategic judgement of orbital armchairs and I won't start now.”

“
Commander, you are proposing an assault upon League assets located on a nominally League world over their alleged but unproven abduction of nominally League citizens! You might be able to squirm your way out of current League accusations of acts of war against them, but if you go ahead with this assault you will in fact have violated all the articles of treaty that keep League and Federation at peace!
”

“Federation citizens, Captain. Under asylum rules, status pending, Section 48 of the immigration act.” She'd double-checked repeatedly, figuring how she might play it.

Short silence from the other end. “
Minors can't claim asylum
.”

“They can be granted pending status by ranking Federation officials. I'm certain I qualify.”

“
You're not going to violate the treaty over two pending asylum claims who are not yet technically Federation citizens
.”

“For someone with no command authority over my decisions you seem very certain of what I will and won't do.”

“
When this is over, if you survive, I'll have you up on charges with process to criminal conviction
.”

“Good luck with that,” said Sandy. “They're not taking these kids. They'll have a
spare
, two kids, so if I do anything at all that displeases them for years to come, they'll kill one without blinking and still have leverage. I'll be neutralised as a Federation asset, in which case I might as well die here anyway. Add to which their little brother has something in his head even Cai doesn't recognise, except to say it's certainly pure Talee, and if you want
his
cooperation in the next few years you're going to need his brother and sister back safe.

“Add to which, these cunts just abducted a couple of kids with lethal intent for nothing more than leverage. I'm going to kill them. If you don't mind.”

She disconnected. Only now did she realise she was shaking. The armour picked up the motion and accentuated, rattling ceramic joints with a sound like hailstones. It scared her to be so scared. She'd rarely been this scared before. But she'd come to Pantala to try to unravel something important, something that had been eating away at her very soul, but that cause was all in bloody tatters and disappointment. Yet somehow, she'd found three kids who'd triggered something inside herself she'd been clueless had even existed. Lose something, find something else. And now the something else was going to be taken away as well.

Poole stepped in front of her, armoured and ready. He'd been playing these other roles lately, musician, medic, child minder, it was almost surprising to see him like this—a combat GI, his truest self, square jawed and armed to the teeth.

“Only a fucking idiot would try this,” he said. “But of all the fucking idiots I know, you're my favourite.”

“Thanks,” said Sandy.

He searched her face. “You tell me it'll work, I'll believe you.”

“That would make you the fucking idiot,” said Sandy.

“I've played the part before,” he admitted.

“Poole, stay here. This is my instinct. Me in a fight, I can vouch for, I can usually figure things through.”

“You have a special affinity with violence,” Poole nodded.

“You in a fight, or anyone else in a fight…I can't vouch for you. Not in this fight, this will be crazy.”

“Read my psych report? I'm good at crazy.”

Sandy smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “I'm tired of losing friends, Poole.” Her voice nearly cracked.

“Not many things that get me out of bed,” said Poole. “Combat GI never really agreed with me, never saw the point. Got labelled a psych case real early, rather play my piano, play cards…you know I tried gardening once?” Sandy managed a smile, eyebrow raised. “Hydrohelios, nice flowers. Hydrohelios will get me out of bed. Mozart. A friend who understands why I'm me.”

“Buddy, I've no fucking idea why you're you,” Sandy laughed. “But I like you, so I don't care.”

“And kids,” Poole concluded. “Kids will get me out of bed. Pretty sure I don't want any, not like you and crazy Rhian. But if I don't help you get Kiril's brother and sister back…” he exhaled and made a vague, uncomprehending gesture. “Then what's the point? Of me being here at all? Combat GI, all dressed up and no one to blow away? Don't think I'd want to go home.”

Want kids? Her? She nearly protested the thought. But Poole had said it now and…the fear got even worse. She didn't know what was happening to her.

“Cai? You reading me?” She sat in the pilot's seat of the combat flyer, a tight fit in full armour, linked into the expanding local tacnet. Poole sat in the seat before her, similarly belting in.

“
Hi, Cassandra
.” It was Cai, up on
Mekong
.

“What have you got for me?”

“
Like you suspected, they made a tactical level link from Fleet systems to Droze corporate nets when they went in, to neutralise the ground defences with redundancy backup
.”

Sandy nodded, running activation sequences in the cockpit, the engines beginning their low howl. “Via the uplink I've got feed to Antibe Station then down again, that gives me some windows into corporate tacnet…I've been working on it, I think I can buy time past their ground defences, get to the spaceport in one piece.”