Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (39 page)

The kids were very impressed with a hotel room on the sixty-third floor. There were two adjoining rooms, four beds and two bathrooms. For most even
advanced net hackers, passing a famous person through hotel biometrics with intent to hide was a difficult thing. But Sandy simply took over the whole hotel construct and told it what it saw. VR matrixes of the kind Cai had used made it possible, no longer was it a matter of hacking through barriers the old way and hoping the different portions didn't notice the sudden lack of symmetry, rather a matter of enveloping portions of the construct in another construct, which fed its inputs a constructed world—like VR for non-sentient AIs. She'd given this hotel a face, biometrics, stride pattern, everything, while the kids had gone straight to the room.

Tanusha's network and functions were evolving, but not nearly as fast as hers were. She was becoming so accomplished lately, utilising new construct tools, shredders, and environmentals like VR, it was nearly alarming. And still she'd never be nearly as capable as Ragi, let alone Cai. Suddenly the horizons of those possibilities seemed so much further away.

She'd barely closed the door when an uplink com link blinked, an advanced function, relaying through FSA secure systems to find her. Steven Harren, network expert extraordinaire, lately running the K project, as it was being called—something so obscure and bland that no one could possibly guess its origins, if any.

“
Hello, Cassandra, you should really see this.
” Earnestly alarmed. Like a teenager with his first uplinks, who found them doing something weird and wanted to show an expert before he knew how worried to be. Sandy gestured to the kids that she was uplinked and sat on one of the beds as they noisily sorted out whose was whose.

“
Concerning what?
” she formulated.

“
Look, I know you're skeptical about my work, but this concerns your personal safety among other things, and it's just easier if you take a look.
”

“
I'm not skeptical whether it works, Steve
,” she said. “
Just whether using it constitutes selling our soul to the devil. Would VR suit you?
”

“
Um…I can't do a secure VR from where I am, and I don't think something that bandwidth would be too smart where you are.
”

He'd heard then. “
Plug in on the hardline, I'll show you something.
” A techie like him wouldn't be able to resist Sandy Kresnov volunteering to “show him something.” She found the construct, access gates, cleared a path on massive encryption, and sent him the link. And announced to the room,

“Guys, I'm on VR for a moment, if you need anything just give me a whack.”

It opened, and she still had to consciously relax, taking her various resistant net functions out of play, toning them down so they didn't disrupt the VR formation as it slowly wrapped around her main construct…

…and she was sitting at an outdoor restaurant halfway up a mountain in the French Pyrenees. Ragi's copy of public VR space; Allison wasn't here at the moment, she had a number of different spaces she liked to spend her time now. And here seated opposite, in a slow rush of materialising data, was Steven Harren, a look of astonishment even now on his unresolved gridform face.

“Wow,” he said as the last textures of skin, hair, and clothing resolved themselves, grinning and looking around. “This is Allison Roundtree's space isn't it, the one Ragi made for her? I heard about this.”

“The Pyrenees were my idea,” Sandy admitted. “My biographer comes here to cycle, he rigs his bike on a feedback stand, then pedals in VR like he's actually climbing mountains. Crazy pretty place. What's up?”

“Well, I ran our infamous little software analysis package on the Grand Council.”

Sandy stared at him. She wasn't often left speechless. Then, “How and why?” she said.

“How doesn't matter,” said Steven. “Let's just say I got permission. Why, well, I'd think that was obvious. To figure out what they're up to. Look at this.”

He drew a square space above the table with his fingers, activating that space, then uploaded his data to it with a fluency that Sandy had to find impressive. A 3D graphic of the Grand Council building appeared. Sandy knew it well enough to identify various offices and sections, from central Grand Chamber to basement parking and security, to the Committees with their permanent staff. Building staff, security, she'd helped review those setups, knowing more about how they might be broken by League GIs than most.

“Now obviously,” said Steven, “the sample sizes are far too small to come up with any meaningful sociological analysis. Deviation levels are about what you'd expect considering staff tend to favour offices according to their own ideological preferences, not much to be learned there either.”

Graphics emerged from the different offices and sections, 3D lines and
indices. He must have had access to all Grand Council network traffic, Sandy thought, to run through these software filters. Who the hell had the authority to order something like that? She doubted even Ibrahim did.

“…but,” Steven continued, “if we stop running broad scale analysis like we've been accustomed to, and start using the truly freaky capabilities of the psych analysis stuff that you wrote, over a week's worth of data we can get things like stress, anger, general anxiety.”

More graphical lines appeared, spectruming through various colours. Percentages indicated, changing levels, all time stamped. If only the average person knew how much net traffic their uplinks generated, and that personality and states-of-mind were imprinted onto most of it, if one had the tools to decipher it. It would scare the shit out of people, to know governments could learn this stuff so easily.

“Hold it,” said Sandy, eyes wide as it occurred to her. “Can you run for matches in chronology?”

Steven smiled, making more changes with little indications of his hands in mid-air. “I knew you'd see that.” The graphs all shifted, running over the last week, shifts in anxiety, anger, progressions of disturbance. “Within the Grand Council, nothing.”

“Hmm.” Sandy gnawed a thumbnail, staring at the display. A little guilty for finding it this compelling, but in these circumstances she wasn't about to miss an opportunity.

“But,” Steven added with a glint in his eye, “you cross-reference this with the profiles I ran of the Callayan Parliament and President's Office…”

“Crap,” said Sandy. “Chandi gave you permission to run this stuff on the Government of Callay?”

“Sure,” said Steven. Evasively? Or was that just her imagination? Who else would he be answerable to, if not Chandi? The whole project was CSA, Ibrahim didn't like it…“Look at this, this is the last week's worth of traffic.”

He ran it. Sandy could see changes, sudden spikes in anxiety and stress readings, coinciding with various events over the past week, all while the timecode unwound, first twelve hours, then twenty-four, then more. But they diverged too. Different departments in different parts of the government were concerned with different issues, the things that might make tempers boil in the Education Committee may not concern anyone in Communications or
Biotech. The big events effected everyone, but the software could recognise those “universals,” factor them out, and search for underlying variances…

“There,” said Steven, as the program found two increasingly synchronous matches and put them together. Sure enough, the highlighted timelines were running at a statistically significant parallel.

“It's still within the margin of error,” said Sandy, still gnawing her nail. GI nails were hard to cut with scissors, sometimes teeth were easier. Now the habit was translating to VR. “Why won't it show what those two timelines are from?”

“So we won't be swayed by personal prejudices and leap to conclusions,” said Steven. “Now look at this…these major spikes, across the last seven days?” As the timelines ceased running. “I discard most of the data, just look for similar spikes at those exact date lines, this is the stress/anxiety line here. And I get…” more data flashed up in the space above the tabletop, “…these additional matches, a couple of them just individuals, but very strong readings, matching those times down to the minute.”

Another wave of the fingers, and names appeared. Sandy stared and felt herself drop almost immediately into combat mode. VR nearly broke up completely, she had to consciously force the reflex down, disabling interface functions so she didn't lose the link. VR never worked in combat reflex, her brain tried to break down code, not build it up and be manipulated by it.

“Son of a bitch,” she murmured. One of the highlights originated from the Intelligence Committee staff, no more than two or three people. Another came from the office of Ambassador Kitimara, from the Argell System, appointed leader of the Federation political party most commonly known as 2389. Another came from Ambassador Ballan's office, Sandy's old friend, head of the Intelligence Committee and highest-ranking security rep in the GC. Another came from President Singh's office, Callayan Government. And one more, a spike less convincing than all of them but still a temporal match, came from the office of Chief Shin of FedInt, FSA.

“The system matches them all up because on these specific dates, all generated network interface that the system reads as high on the stress/anxiety indicators,” Steven explained, his usual excitement with the tech now tempered with worry. “This first date matches with only one notable event—on Wednesday the 18th, the Intelligence Committee met, and broke up at
1:22pm, this first spike peaks at 1:25, so just after whoever was in the meeting gets out of the com shielding and starts talking to people.

“The second spike was on Thursday, and we don't know what it was, there are no matches I can find, but it was at 4:16 in the morning, and again, all of these offices registered an anxiety spike between then and 4:30.”

“Early morning and no record, that's probably a ship,” said Sandy. And if it was a ship, could be it Fleet? She thought of Reichardt's cake, and the file inside.

“And the third spike was here.” Steven pointed to the spot, hovering in mid-air. But he was looking at Sandy, not at where his finger was pointing. “Sunday, today. Or yesterday rather. Just following your little tangle with the Feds who were after Detective Sinta.”

Sandy's mind was racing. But there were too many possibilities and not enough firm information.

“The question,” said Steven, “is what could there be that connects all these individuals to either be talking to each other, or to be simultaneously responding to the same event, in a way that generates a stress/anxiety response? One event can be statistically explained, sure, but all three? And all quite different—an Intel Committee meeting indicating forethought and planning, something that might have been a call from a ship, and your rescue of a homicide detective tracking down some leads that could embarrass the Feds? It's nearly statistically impossible that there isn't some specific connection.”

And now Reichardt sent her a warning, which meant that whatever it was, it was connected to League-Federation negotiations. Negotiations on how to handle the biggest crisis in League-Federation relations since the war, and some very powerful people with great incentive to sweep all the League's nasty little secrets under the carpet in the name of not rocking the boat.

She'd thought the move when it came would be political only, perhaps the disbandment of FSA spec-ops for starters, perhaps legal proceedings to follow. But would something technical like that require this much coordination between this many different groups? Of course, just because an office was implicated did not mean that the head of that office was involved—she'd have bet her house Ballan was not involved with such schemes, 2389 was anathema to him, he'd helped plan and mobilise the Pyeongwha operation after all. But Ballan's office was large, as was the Intel Committee staff, as were all of these
highlighted offices and institutions. If there were spikes emerging on this software directly following an Intel Committee meeting, then someone
very
high must be involved, because most of those even she wasn't allowed into. But there was one person she trusted who the Committee weren't allowed to keep out.

“Ibrahim,” she said. “I have to talk to Ibrahim. Now.”

Sandy had only visited Ibrahim's home a few times—Ibrahim scheduled no official functions, parties, or gatherings there of any kind, believing in the strict segregation of work and home life. She set a course there now, only telling traffic central she was heading nearby, not game to let it know her destination until she was right on top of it.

Hypothetically Ibrahim would have some of the best network security in Tanusha, yet he was Federal. All security at the Federal government level was now suspect, and she had to suspect that any direct contact would be traced back to her. It was face to face or nothing.

“Vanessa,” she said as the cruiser left the hotel vicinity, building up speed on a main skylane amidst a smattering of 3am traffic. “Go red please. No time for more, just go red and tell everyone, thanks.”

“
Gotcha
,” came the terse reply. “
Take care.
”

That would set the ball rolling, at worst if she was wrong it would cost them all some sleep. But now all their personal security plans would be activated, and there weren't many operatives in Tanusha, legally or otherwise, who would confidently tangle with FSA spec ops, even alone and just out of bed.

“
Sandy, what's up?
” came Ari's voice.

“Code red, Ari, best not talk to me, if this is Feds, we don't know what codes they can break and trace.”

“
Sandy, I don't know what you're tracking, but good authority just told me there's RFM in orbit, you understand?
” Random Fleet Movement. Which was usually nothing, unless it wasn't. “
This good authority also tells me that…
”

Sandy registered a combat track and dropped into combat mode so hard it hurt, a physical jarring. Two warheads, twelve Ks out, accelerating past Mach One, and very fixed on her. “Ari, I have incoming! This is a war, if they come at you, shoot back!”

And disconnected, tacnet establishing fast, complete 3D visual as time slowed and trajectories displayed. Ten Ks, fired from two-K altitude, war indeed. FSA weren't allowed to do that over Tanusha no matter who the target, no one was. Acceleration profile showed her what she'd suspected; they were
military tech, nothing her little FSA cruiser was equipped to dodge, dividing even now in case she tried to hide behind a tower, the first would force her stationary, where the second would nail her. Her only chance was to hack them, but they were running full autistic, independent warheads that not even their owners could call back, save a simple termination signal.

Four Ks and still accelerating, if she stayed here she had seconds to live. She broke her restraints, smashed the window, and pulled herself out. And fell. The cruiser exploded with a deafening thump that sent her spinning as she fell, twisting in the howl of wind to reorient herself on the ground for a landing. Suburban streets, some high-rise residential, otherwise two and three storeys, lots of trees. If she angled herself and caught the wind like a skydiver, she had just enough altitude left to aim for that road over…

Fire cracked past her, detonated on proximity charges, then more, hailing shrapnel. Long-range fire, inaccurate but getting closer, and she spread-eagled to catch the wind, saw her chance at the road disappear, then curled into a ball, super-tensed her muscles, and smashed into rooftops at a forty-five-degree angle like a cannon ball. Blacked out briefly at the force of it…

…and came to as she spun off a wall and onto gardens, digging a furrow. Unwrapped her limbs with difficulty, a rippling sensation as tightly lodged synth-alloy muscles at first refused to move. Her clothes were torn but still serviceable, the very reason she liked jeans and leather. Back the way she'd come, she could see a hole torn through the top of a tiled roof, branches missing from a large tree, and now a big dent in the wall she'd glanced off. At least two house alarms were blaring, and several dogs barking. And surely no one would shoot at her down here, sleeping families on all sides.

New missile tracks registered even as she thought it, and she was up fast, uncooperative muscles pushing hard for speed. She leapt a fence, turned hard left, jumped for a rooftop as a round blew up half the garden behind her, sending her spinning, crashing off the tiles, but recovering as she sprang for a roadside tree, kicked off a branch, smashed another that got in her way, and landed on the road with barely a hand down to steady herself.

And accelerated. Overhead trees made some cover but couldn't hide her. A house could, but she had no guarantee they wouldn't just blow the whole thing, family and all. Whoever “they” were, they were playing for keeps; she was senior FSA, and the legal penalty for killing her was death. Unless “they”
were planning to upend the entire foundation upon which that legality rested. A family's life might not count for much against that, and God knew where her cruiser's wreckage had landed.

Claremont business district was only a K away. She sprinted down the avenue, overstriding as GIs would with far more power than a human stride pattern could contain, leaping ahead in ever-increasing bounds. Whatever was shooting at her was not registering on her uplinks. In fact, nothing was. Tacnet was there, but it was a tacnet of one person, connected to nothing, like an empty shell. To draw such a complete blank, they'd had to have shut down nearly everything. But she still had basic mapping, which told her a right turn ahead took her to Claremont District…she cut the corner by leaping a couple of rooves and caught the first glimpse of something dark hovering, out of lanes, perhaps a K behind.

And firing now, sonofabitch, they weren't kidding. Micro-munitions, highly strung enough to target fast-moving GIs as most missiles couldn't, and she kicked off the last rooftop for a moment's extra airtime, spun, pulled both pistols, and fired. Kept spinning, hit the road she was aiming for and kept running as one missile dropped abruptly short, the other spinning off into the night…thankfully neither exploded, those warheads were very stable, even her pistol fire wouldn't set them off. This asshole was too far away and apparently poorly informed of her abilities—big missiles would leave craters all over Tanusha, little ones she could shoot down, and his gun wasn't accurate enough against her mobility in this environment from that range. He had to get in close and use it where she couldn't dodge. Perhaps now he was realising.

She hurdled light traffic on the road to Claremont, reaching nearly 100 kph as the bridge across a river approached ahead…and suddenly the flyer was descending over it, everything aimed her way. It was big for a combat flyer, broad-shouldered, entirely jet-powered rather than rotor nacelles, and foreign to any Callayan service. An A-12 gunship, mostly they were Fleet marines and Federal Army. They'd shot at her before in the war, but she'd rarely seen them. They were typically long-range, airbourne artillery largely immune to counterstrike.

She leapt left, hit the wall of an apartment building at 100 kph, and stopped hard, concrete shattering and falling, leaving her a hole in the outer wall. And she waited, because blowing up a civvie house was one thing, an
entire apartment building something else. A strategic victory, if it claimed her as well, but surely a political disaster.

Then she saw the second flyer, coming around from the side.
Two
of them. She dropped into cover between buildings and ran for the river. It was forty meters wide at this point, far enough that a simple, arcing trajectory across it would get her killed, predictable as armscomp would find it. But her uplink map showed that here, moored by the riverbank was a pleasureboat, a tourist ferry.

She leaped down the road between taller apartment buildings that overlooked the river, a few astonished pedestrians looking, some not even noticing, her singular, bounding footfalls made little sound, and the engines of nearby hovering gunships made a distinct shrieking that covered everything else. Sandy took off between buildings, flying low, cleared the riverside walk, saw the ferry rooftop rushing at her ahead, planted both feet and shoved as hard as pre-tensed combat myomer could shove, a force that rocked the whole boat.

And flew, low and hard as office towers loomed ahead. Gunfire from the right, proximity rounds thudding a string of fireworks across the river in her wake, adjusting now for her riverside course change and plotting ahead until…she made herself thin like a diver and hit the office windows opposite, curling again into a ball as the glass smashed. Another impact, less hard than the last, and found herself lying amidst panels in an office hallway having punched straight through a partition wall. She got up and ran, away from the river—putting missiles into expensive office buildings would be drastic, but unlike suburbia, at three in the morning these were all deserted.

BOOM! as the concussion blew her off her feet down the hallway, flames and debris ripping about, clattering off the walls. But now she was at the concrete core, and the storm of high-explosive cannon fire that followed could not penetrate concrete, as she pressed herself into an elevator alcove and watched the walls disintegrate around her. The occasional shrapnel chunk tore her skin and stuck hard, thumping impacts like hailstones and about as dangerous…unless one took an eye, which she covered beneath an arm.

Then, after she'd ensured he'd wasted a good chunk of his ammo, she yanked open the elevator doors and slid down the central cable, past the ground floor to underground parking. Hauled those doors open and found herself in a large underground car park that was certainly immune from anything those flyers could throw at her. Which gave her time to think, so she walked to the
center of a driving lane, holstered both pistols, and stretched armour-tense limbs and back. Shrapnel caught at her left arm, she felt and yanked it out. Another protruded from her neck, right where the jugular would be on a straight. A third she felt, then pulled from her buttock. There was always one in the butt; back in Dark Star it had been Sandy's immutable law of shrapnel.

Stay here? To pull this off, whoever was behind it must have pulled some serious legal move through the Grand Council. More than just declaring her and her colleagues disbanded, more like illegal. Probably they'd fabricated something, a plot she was supposedly hatching. A coup would be perfect. Thus giving these attackers full legal authority to “save” the Federation from nefarious traitors. But with all uplinks down she had no idea what else was going on…how the hell were they doing that?

Tacnet! She abandoned it, empty shell that it was—it left her more exposed, but suddenly the city was crashing in, various seekers feeding her news reports, breaking news, crisis news, great alarm at the Grand Council, reporters hurrying in the dead of night, big announcements, breathless reportage. And reports of shooting in Claremont District. She wound back her profile, kept all functions passive, her attackers would be watching here as well, and if she operated in combat mode in the open city network without tacnet to organise and shield everything, she'd stand out like a beacon. A beacon that announced “Shoot me!” at the top of its voice, complete with targeting coordinates.

A few smaller shrapnel pieces removed, she stretched once more, trying to get the stiffness out. From somewhere outside, she could hear the howl of hovering engines. No one would be dumb enough to send troops into a closed space to get her face to face. But if this was now political, every poor foot soldier she had to kill to get out of this was a PR victory for the other side. And God forbid they had enough strings and levers to pull to send Callayans after her, maybe even people she knew.

Plus it was a bad look—caught in a basement car park surrounded by authorities, like a common fugitive. Negotiating for her emergence, no doubt in full media view. It would look like she'd done something wrong, and as of now, this was all about power at the highest level. Ultimate power in any democracy came from popular opinion. She could no more do anything to hurt popular opinion toward her now than expose herself to deadly fire.

So. That made it easy.

She selected a car park exit, waited for the engine noises to fade a little, then kicked the security roller door off its side hinges. She could have just hacked the system, but it was too dangerous now; she was a deadly net operator, but the powers currently arrayed against her, all knowing she was trapped in the one location, were not something even she wanted to tackle. Ever since she'd discovered her own killswitch nearly six years ago, she'd been very cautious of open-grid net access, especially where shadowy conspiracies prepared long-gestation plots against her. Her killswitch was far too well shielded to be accessed, everyone said so…but she hadn't lived this long by just accepting what people said.

She slid through the gap and onto the car ramp, crouched low. The sidewalks were as close to deserted as she'd ever seen in any Tanusha high-rise center, but this was a business center, offices only open in work hours, very little residential or nightlife. Down by one intersection she could see people gathering to stare and point upward, no doubt at the smoke rising from the tower above, wondering what all the shooting was. Damn fools should go inside, the firepower on an A-12 could level city blocks. Accessing the map now was risky, but she did it anyway…and got a good 3D visual of the Claremont CBD skyline. There. That was a good spot, just around the corner. If her attackers wanted to finish her here, they'd have to try it.