Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (25 page)

“
They're coming through the secure floor!
” He was audibling, she could hear
gunfire in the background. “
Can't tell how many, we're trying to get the network locked back down…
”

“
SWAT's on its way, Ari! Hang on a few minutes!
”

“
Ami!
” she heard him yelling. “
Ami, kitchen floor! There's a breach!
”

Rhian was moving, just a little. Rolling onto her back amidst debris and smoke, now rolling her eyes to look up at Vanessa. “Go,” she whispered. “It's coming back. I'll be fine.”

Some hotel guests were in the halls now, shocked, as emergency announcements told them to return to their rooms. “Look after her!” Vanessa yelled at them, pointing at Rhian. “She's CSA, look after her!”

And took off toward the elevators, dodging people on the way. A figure emerged from the elevator doors, weapon raised. Vanessa stepped into a flying aim, the only way to attain stability while running, firing as she fell, saw the figure kick backward into the elevator doorway and fall. She hit and rolled, came up, and arrived at the elevator. Blocking the doorway was one of the girls from the lobby, no longer so pretty, heavy caliber rounds through the face. Still she was moving, only stunned, and Vanessa put another three in her temple to be sure.

A quick peer into the glass elevator and ducked back as rounds from across the lobby smashed the glass. Step one, draw fire, identify source. Step two, hit target. Yeah, sure. She dragged the dead GI from the doorway, then accessed the elevator by network, found the building network open to her, whatever had restricted traffic now released. CSA overrides were good enough to get the elevator moving upward at speed. Whoever was shooting at it across the lobby kept shooting, not knowing if she was in it. And that gave her a location, shots echoing above the screams and shouts in the atrium below. And if she concentrated, she could feel the augments kick in, the armscomp calculating all she'd seen of the atrium, the width of it, the sound of shots travelling across it, traversing up the side wall as the elevator accelerated away.

She took a deep breath and stepped side-on about the edge of the elevator shaft, aiming across the atrium in the sure knowledge that a high-designation GI over there had just seen her and was reacquiring. She glimpsed a figure, fifth floor like her, crouched…she fired and ducked back, but drew no fire. Surely that must have been a hit, or she'd have at least been grazed or most likely killed.

And ducked back as shots did take the corner of the shaft but from a lower angle, and now a man in a suit was sailing up over the exposed railing from the floor below, weapon tracking onto a point-blank shot…and was hit from behind even before he landed, multiple times, body lurching as he spun and tried to return fire, only to take five rounds in the back of the head from Vanessa, flat on her back.

He fell, revealing Rhian, standing propped against a corridor wall, small pistol in hand. “Told you it works!” she yelled at Vanessa, evidently much stronger. “Go, that's all three of them, I'll follow when my legs are working!”

Vanessa's links had stopped another elevator, and she scrambled in. Doors closed and the car hummed upward, leaving the atrium behind in a gathering rush. Then a long, quiet ride, only not so quiet because her heart was hammering in her ears, and now that she noticed, her hands were flexing in time with her pulse. In fact, she was buzzing, her ears were buzzing, her hair tingling and prickling, colours and sensations surreal. The elevator car seemed impossibly large, as though the distance from one side to the other was a yawning canyon. Her augments felt a little like this in training, but in the real deal they made her a completely different creature. It was awe inspiring. And it was disorienting. Even her emotional responses felt odd, whereas normally this degree of awareness in a deadly fight would evoke some degree of fear, of concern, of desperately pumping herself up, urging herself on…here, it was absent. Not that the danger was obscured, she knew it only too well, could see it staring her in the face, teeth bared. But past the buzzing in her ears and the pounding of her heart, she felt she could almost step aside and consider it objectively. Consider her own death, if necessary, and watch calmly as it happened. These were not her thoughts, surely? Her brain didn't work like this. She barely recognised herself.

Seventieth floor. There was elevator music playing.
Four Seasons
, Vivaldi, but played just horribly, by someone who sounded bored. Phillippe hated what these “limp-wristed tarts” did to poor Vivaldi, it was music to be played “like you wanted to punch or kiss or fuck someone.” She wondered if she could still make the concert. Probably not with this synthetic blood all over her.

This elevator wouldn't go beyond the 85th floor, and she reckoned the attack had originated from the 89th, so she got off at 84 and went for the stairs. She couldn't reach Ari, hadn't heard anything from this level the whole ride up.
Objectively she knew what that probably meant, but she was CSA, and there were other Agents up here, a good friend of hers among them. She moved fast up the stairs to level 89, paused at the staircase opening, no stairwell doors here; god, how she and every other spec ops agent hated stairwell doors.

This level was offices, all abandoned at this hour. In the ceiling here was a gaping hole, debris blasted down over desks and partitions, all ruined. Shaped charges, Vanessa knew this entry technique well, had done it herself…only the CSA secure level would have extra-reinforced floors. An attacker would have to know the weak spots, CSA didn't have architectural permission to just armour plate an entire floor; it could upset structural characteristics. Detailed analysis would show the weak spots. Planning again.

She moved fast, weapon ready. Saw a weapon abandoned in a corridor, then some civvie jackets tossed over some desks. Then some equipment webbing. GIs moving fast through this level, she and Rhian must have rushed them with their unexpected arrival. They'd cast off things they hadn't needed. But they might have had time to booby trap their approach, so she kept a careful eye out.

And reached a big ceiling hole, above the central corridor. And jumped straight up through it, having the augments to do that now, and not daring to announce herself first. The charge had blown through a big room, scorching the ceiling. Adjoining it was a security/surveillance room, its door was busted open; she caught a glimpse of bodies inside, blood spatter and broken glass screens, all limp. CSA Agents, but she couldn't check on them, not until she knew it was secure.

Down a short hall into another room, surveillance glass looking onto a secure apartment with a big, heavy, locked door. The door was open. It looked like the kind of apartment they'd kept Sandy in when she'd first arrived in Tanusha and no one knew if they could trust her or not. Or rather, most were certain they couldn't. There'd been rumours of high-des GIs kept in secret facilities, and it figured that Ari would be in on that…had that been what he was doing here? Evidently it wasn't
that
big a secret if he'd been about to let her and Rhian in on it…but where was the GI now? Was he in on this? Was that how things had gone down so smoothly? An inside job? What the hell was this new GI anyway?

There were no signs of shooting in the secure apartment. She checked it
quickly, saw food in the kitchen for more than one person. Ari had said he'd feed her and Rhian when they got here.

Vanessa left the secure door, down the adjoining hall, and immediately here were bodies, GI bodies, two felled by precise gunfire, two more by powerful blows that could only have been from another GI. And here were more rooms, an office torn apart, bullets and blood everywhere, three human agents down and all far too messy to still be alive. Here a living room, for more agents to pass time while guarding whoever-it-was, two more dead, one decapitated. And now she could hear talking, someone talking fast, and someone crying. A voice sounded like Ari's.

“CSA!” she yelled, pretty sure she'd covered the whole floor; the building wasn't very wide this high up. “I'm clear out here! Is that you Ari?”

“Vanessa!” He sounded relieved, and genuine. “Good god, get in here.”

It could have been duress, but Ari would never, not that earnestly, not even with a gun to his head. She entered carefully and found their last stand—the other big penthouse lounge at this level, one semi-circular wall all glass and spectacular view, fractured in places by bullet holes. Ari was holding a girl, slender, long dark hair, who was on her back and covered in blood. She was crying.

“I don't want to die, I don't want to die,” she was repeating.

“You're not going to die, Ami,” Ari soothed her. “I've seen GIs take much worse than this, this is nothing, you'll be fine.”

“I only just got here,” said Amirah, blood mixing with tears on her cheeks. “And I like it here so much, I was gonna do so much, I don't wanna die now…” She coughed, and blood came up.

There were another two CSA Agents, one wounded, tending to an unconscious girl, a frail teenager, lying on a sofa.

And there was a slender black man, sitting opposite another three individuals and staring at them. Those individuals looked like…and Vanessa raised her gun again in a rush.

“What the fuck?” They were GIs, and from their battered civvie clothes and bloodstains, they could only be League GIs. The ones who'd attacked. They appeared mostly unharmed and just sat there, looking vacantly into space. Vanessa stared.

“Ricey!” called Ari. “That's Ragi. We were holding him here, he saved us. He's got them locked.”

“Locked? What the fuck is ‘locked’?”

“Here, let me show you,” said Ragi.

And suddenly she wasn't standing there anymore.

It was cyberspace, pale and indistinct. Her gun was missing. There were a lot of glowing constructs surrounding her, massively intricate. And nearby, some smaller ones, combinations of familiar pieces all joined together in neat, barriered little bundles. Those were people.

“This is them,” said Ragi, and she spun to find him standing before her. A pleasant-looking man, round-faced, calm, with intelligent little eyes. “League GIs, ISO, I imagine. They tried to kill me.”

“They succeeded with a lot of others.”

Ragi nodded sadly. “I'm very sorry. But I didn't ask to be locked up here. I'm certain I would have been safer if I'd been free to venture out and make my own defences. This tower is really a big gleaming target.”

Vanessa stared at the three constructs he was pointing to. Massively barriered, GIs always were. They needed to be, as entirely synthetic they were so much more vulnerable to network infiltration. Normally to immobilise a GI you needed a direct connection, a cable, GIs like anyone had hardware that filtered wireless, made it harmless.

And he'd just barrier hacked her as well, transported her instantly to a VR network. It wasn't technologically possible, of course, though she had recently met one man who could do it. But he'd been the representative of a massively advanced alien species.

“You're Talee?” she asked him.

“It's possible,” said Ragi. “I don't recall. That's been rather the problem, I don't know who or what I am, and your CSA can't let me out until they're sure. Meantime the League wanted me dead, unless you can think of some other target in this tower they were after.”

Vanessa thought about it. “Who's the girl?” And recalled even as she said it the reason Ari had invited her and Rhian there in the first place—a girl, he'd insisted, emotion in his voice. Her life restored.

Ragi smiled. “I can show you that too.”

The scene changed with an effortless fade of colours and textures. Suddenly she was in an old bedroom with wooden floorboards in a creaking old house. In the four-poster bed lay a girl, who sat up bright-eyed and smiled at her.

“Hello!” she said with delight. “Ragi, have you brought me a friend? Who are you?”

“
I haven't told her what just happened
,” came Ragi's voice in her inner ear. “
Please don't tell her, the poor girl deserves more joy
.”

“Allison, this is Commander Vanessa Rice,” Ragi said audibly. “She's a good friend of Ari's. Vanessa, this is Allison.”

“Hello, Vanessa!” said Allison. “Isn't this amazing? I can sit up now, and I can talk properly!”

The pale girl in the room. Vanessa recalled Ari talking a few times over the years, of a girl with a rare disease who couldn't move and couldn't uplink properly to VR either. He hadn't been able to make VR work for her, the usual “cure” for incurable vegetables, and so she was unable to have a life in either world. Until now, evidently Ragi had fixed it so she could.

And then the League had come with advanced GIs to kill him, and once he'd been released from his network restraints, Ragi had brain-hacked them fast as you like and held them in their own externally-imposed vegetative state. If he could do that to the best the League had to offer…no wonder he'd been kept in isolation.

“Hello, Allison,” said Vanessa. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears. Coming down off the combat high, the brain did funny things. “How long have you known Ari?”

“I think about four years,” said Allison. “Are you really a friend of his? He's been absolutely wonderful, I mean, he's introduced me to so many others? You know, hackers and network experts, and they've all been so amazing, I've made so many friends and they've all tried to help me. And they helped a lot, I've been able to access libraries and live shows, I've even made friends with AIs who've helped me to see all across the city, attend concerts and parades, everything's covered somewhere on the net! But I couldn't, you know, actually move. In a VR construct, not like this!”

She swung her legs carefully off the bed.

“I think you'd better wait, Allison,” Ragi said gently. “You still need to know how to stand, even in here.”

“I know!” she beamed. “But it's wonderful just to sit up.”

Even in post-combat shaky wind-down, Vanessa could still see why Ari had invited her here. This was truly something.

“Allison,” said Vanessa, “we'll have lots of people here to visit you soon. I have to go right now, but now that you're moving, I'm sure your family can come.”