Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (40 page)

She took off running toward the little crowd on the intersection, pistols still in holsters, and took a fast right. Away from the river the towers got taller, glass canyons rising sheer on both sides. Not even micro-munitions could turn right angles, and cannon would require
very
close range…

The howl of engines abruptly doubled, as directly ahead a flyer crabbed down the cross street directly in front of her. And levelled cannon.

Sandy sprang, not straight up, nor ahead, but for the left wall. Hit, and bounced hard off for the right wall, the cannon traversing rapidly to follow. Then left, then right, careful not to push so hard she broke the glass, an ever ascending zigzag. A final bounce, straight at the flyer cockpit. Smashed the canopy, then the pilot's head, and yanked the frame off with a bang! of snapping alloy. Broke the pilot's straps, determined to throw the body out and repeat the trick she'd first used on Droze a few months ago, as the weapons officer struggled against straps to try and draw a personal weapon and twist around to shoot her…

Only now there were missiles heading in. Sandy jumped well clear, a ten-storey fall to a bounce on barely bended knees, and watched as the flyer was hit once, then twice, explosions tearing out all windows within fifty meters, flaming wreckage crashing to the road amidst a hail of falling glass. And burned, an orange glow reflected in the foyer glass of intersection buildings. One nacelle had flattened a parked car, and Sandy peered inside—it looked empty, thank God, an auto-park overnight. The only visible pedestrians were running away.

The second flyer emerged, hovering perhaps six hundred meters off, with a clear line of sight down this road. Deadly serious he was, if he had orders to shoot down his buddy rather than let her commandeer his flyer. Sandy stood amidst the flaming wreckage of his wingman and stared up at the second flyer. Smiled at him and beckoned. Certainly he'd see her on armscomp, full magnification. Come on, you still want me? Here I am. Surrounded by towers your missiles can't turn fast enough to get in among. You'll have to use your gun at such close range that you'll have towers on either side, and I can ping-pong off the walls and bring down your multi-million-dollar machine with a single fist. Fire now, and I'll see the barrels spinning a half second before the bullets fly, and will be up the side road before they reach me.

She pointed her fingers at him, in the shape of a gun, cocky as all hell. They wanted to know they'd rattled her. Scared her even. She smiled and pulled the trigger with gangsta-style exaggeration. Boom. This is just me having fun, and I'm gonna kill every last one of you fuckers, just watch. The flyer turned and flew away.

Phillippe was playing Kubayashi when armoured troops smashed in through doors and windows. Alone in the living room, wearing just the clothes he'd dragged on when Vanessa had grabbed her things and left with a kiss. Kubayashi was quite loud, fast, and required concentration that he much preferred to spend on his instrument than watching armoured goons trash his lovely house.

One of them finally stood in front of him, while several others covered, and addressed him through tinny helmet speakers. “Where is she?”

“You think she's stupid enough to tell me?” The allegro fourth verse was a real bitch, now the distraction made him miss his fingering. “By the way, you're being recorded.”

“Your house net is jammed.”

“The wireless boosters aren't.” Which set off a new round of scurrying, stomping footsteps,
all
enforcement types hated being recorded when they stormed a house, and Vanessa had considered this possibility long ago. Jamming big signal boosters would shut down entire neighbourhoods, not the low profile this operation was targeting, and the house feed was currently going straight to the net, with an emergency signal to get people's attention. Vanessa thought it would make things safer for him and more embarrassing for everyone else.

Finally the man who'd addressed him reappeared. “Stop playing and get up, you're under arrest.”

Phillippe stopped playing. “On what charge?”

“Federal emergency, we don't need charges.”

“What emergency?” He got up and put his violin back in its case. It was one of his cheap practise instruments, not the replica Stradivarius. That was safely locked away; he'd been unsure the goons wouldn't smash it.

“None of your business.” Phillippe didn't recognise the armour, and there were no insignia, nothing to identify an organisation. The accent sounded foreign though.

“What kind of facist smashes into the home of a law-abiding citizen and tells him the reason he's being arrested is ‘none of his business’?”

“Quit your posturing,” said the armoured man. “We found the signal booster, you're not being broadcast anymore.”

“All of them?” asked Phillippe. And smiled as they went scurrying again.

Ibrahim arrived at the rooftop HQ pad to find Agent Teo waiting for him. Nearby the engines of A-12 flyers keened. Over by the looming Grand Council building, a steady stream of VIP cruisers approached, flowing into secure parking. Ground defences covered them on hair trigger, ready to remove anything unauthorised from the night sky with violent precision. Outside the ground defence perimeter, the A-12s were authorised to do the same. The Federation capitol had been woken early this morning, and now everyone rushed for their offices. Before the gates, the media were gathering, cars, vans and cameras in swarms.

“Sir, the official word is a coup,” said Teo, terse and worried. They
walked for the entrance, flanked by armed agents. “Office of the Intelligence Directorate, they say FSA spec ops were plotting a coup against the Grand Council; they're taking steps to arrest and neutralise.”

“Utilising what resources?” They entered the main hall off the pads, people were rushing, shouting across offices. Checking data, finding weapons, asking after colleagues.

“We're not sure yet, though they came down on assault ships, so we know that Fleet brought them. We think their ground forces are mostly non-Callayan Federal assets from other worlds, but the A-12s are using army codes. Sir, we're technically suspended, emergency order from the Office of Intelligence Directorate countersigned by Council Chair, FSA is ordered to stand down and await further instruction.”

“I know.” Silence was Ibrahim's greatest professional strength. Silence of mouth and silence of mind, save what was absolutely necessary. He could have thought and worried and demanded a thousand things, yet none of that would help him here. “Which of our people have they gone after?”

They arrived at Ibrahim's office, and here at the doors waited Fleet Liaison Admiral Vernier, grey and grim. “Shan, I'm sorry, I didn't know.” Ibrahim nodded and walked past, finding Hando inside in furious conversation with someone on uplink.

“Mostly they seem to be going after the GIs,” said Teo, hurrying to keep up. The big office screens showed live feeds from various sources, crowds before the GC gates, fires burning in some unidentified part of the city, news camera shots of A-12s cruising the Tanushan skylanes, ominous foreign silhouettes. “They seem to have most of them in custody, we've instructed them not to resist. Some of our senior spec ops aren't responding. We think a small group of them centered around Commander Kresnov saw something like this coming and were ready for it. We know foreign assault teams went in hard at both Commander Rice and Captain Chu's homes and found no one. But they don't seem to have shared those preparations with many others, probably they didn't want to be discovered.

“Sir, there's some confusion over Commander Kresnov's whereabouts.” With great concern, as Ibrahim sat on the edge of his desk, and others filed into the office behind. Like a conductor preparing to lead his orchestra into musical battle. “She went off-grid more than an hour before the emergency was declared, it's like she was tipped off. Twenty minutes ago we received
an emergency signal from her cruiser, and now there are reports of a cruiser crashed in Claremont District. It hit a house and killed several occupants. It seems to have been shot down.”

Teo indicated a display, pictures showed a house on fire, emergency vehicles responding, a chaos of strobing lights and flames. “And just nearby in Claremont District an A-12 has crashed, and there are reports of shooting preceding that crash. We've queried Intelligence Directorate but received no reply.” Another screen showed wreckage that looked to have once been a flyer, sprawled and burning across a high-rise city intersection, more emergency vehicles and gawking civilians surrounding.

“If an A-12 shot down her cruiser, then was itself destroyed, chances seem likely Kresnov was in the cruiser at the time,” Ibrahim observed, watching the screens with narrowed eyes. “Cassandra is very hard to kill; attempts usually backfire.”

“How does she shoot down an A-12 with pistols?” Hando asked, ending his uplink conversation.

“Bare-handed,” Vernier replied. “Her action report from Droze was an eye-opener. Those towers give her access and cover.”

“No wonder they went after the GIs first,” said Hando, hands on bald head.

“Sir,” Teo added anxiously, “can I also remind you that the Office of Intelligence Directorate has summonsed you to appear before them immediately, Ambassador Ballan himself.”

“I know,” said Ibrahim. “I was supposed to go straight there.” No one asked why he hadn't. “I want assessments. Is Ballan leading this?”

“Who else could it be?” Hando replied. “Even the Council Chair doesn't have the authority to tell the FSA to stand down, they need Intelligence Directorate approval. OID are the only ones with unilateral authority to run something like this and keep it quiet.”

“Ballan ordered Kresnov killed?” Admiral Vernier asked. “Aren't they friends?”

The room gave him faintly pitying looks. Military people were sometimes slow to understand how the politics worked. The brutal pressures of popularly elected billions. All forces collided here, like continental plates, creating both mountains and earthquakes. Some military people believed in old-fashioned concepts like honour that those forces contrived to destroy.

“Next assessment,” said Ibrahim. “What are the chances that the coup plot was real?”

“Led by Kresnov?” asked Hando. “Unlikely. She wouldn't do anything without Rice, Chu, probably Ruben. I can't imagine any psych profile pegging that group as plotting to overthrow the Federal government.”

“Difficult to tell until we've heard the allegation in entirety,” said FedInt Chief Shin. He'd drifted into the room and now stood by a wall, watching unobtrusively. Of all the worried, grim faces in the room, he was the only one besides Ibrahim to look calm. “There may be illuminating details. No possibility should be ruled out so early. Kresnov is known to be dissatisfied with current Grand Council policy in many respects, and sees constitutional amendments about to pass Council that would cripple all her hopes of pursuing emancipation for her fellow GIs. Her capabilities appear to be increasing fast beyond their already impressive levels; she has many fellow GI friends to help her.”

“And then do what?” Hando replied. “A small team of GIs taking over the Grand Council, what possible support base could they have?”

“The same support base that OID now create by declaring it was a coup,” Shin said calmly. “The support of outraged citizens, rising up against wrongdoing. Certainly it may be a fabrication, a tactic. Kresnov may have had a tactic in mind as well. Note this Detective Sinta, purportedly pursuing inquiry that could conclusively discredit 2389’s primary political operatives. What if
that
was the fabrication? Certainly that evidence would hurt 2389’s public credibility just as a coup hurts Kresnov's.”

“And Compulsive Narrative Syndrome dictates that the public will be most compelled not by the evidence,” Ibrahim concluded, “but by whichever ideology they supported in the first place, irrespective of the evidence. I'm not sure that evidence matters at our present juncture as much as power, and currently all power rests in the hands of 2389 and the OID. Perhaps that will change, but only after a time.

“I expect that 2389 will use these events to demand a vote on the amendments and ride that wave of popular anti-Federal sentiment to get them passed. The FSA's duty is not to take sides in this, even though some of us may feel that we ourselves have been placed on one side or another by OID's actions. We will look after our own, preserve operational integrity to the greatest degree possible, and await further developments.”

He could have said more. Currently, he did not know if it was safe to. In the CSA, he had been relatively certain of the loyalty of all departments beneath him. But the FSA was a different animal entirely, its different parts far larger and with far less in common. Individual units, organisational theory said, pursued not individual power but autonomy. Autonomy to make decisions, to control events, determine outcomes. Sometimes, within a large enough system, with diverse enough conflicting interests, autonomies came into competition.

“Sir,” said Teo, “OID have also requested our assistance in locating our officers whom they cannot locate themselves. Commander Rice and Captain Chu primarily.”

Not Kresnov, thought Ibrahim. Either they'd killed her or did not wish to admit that they'd tried. Such actions were best presented as fait accompli, after the fact. “No. We'll not obstruct their operations, but neither will we assist. Besides which, I'm quite sure those individuals can take care of themselves.

“Two people I do want, as a matter of top priority, are Ragi and Detective Sinta, and all of her case details. If OID is correct about a coup, Sinta's information will be crucial. If they're not correct about the coup, even more so. In the latter instance, I expect someone will try to have her eliminated. I will accept
any
action, no matter how violent, and no matter who against or who it upsets, to prevent this eventuality. Am I understood?” Grim nods. Cautious ones. “The FSA will not take sides, but we will protect the truth, whichever side it supports.”

“And how do we find and protect Ragi and Detective Sinta if OID have ordered us to stand down?” Hando asked. “I understand she's gone to ground as well, no surprise. Ragi we lost contact with almost immediately when it went down.”