Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (54 page)

Then she hit the brakes, feet first and thrusters howling, fired an airburst blinder grenade above an intersection, a white flash to temporarily blind sensitive night vision, and nearly nailed an enemy hopper that leaped from a taller rooftop in time, skimming his armour with a shot; missing was acceptable if you achieved results by fear. She hit a big city road at eighty Ks, bounded like
a kangaroo, just missing some hastily abandoned vehicles, then leapt abruptly skyward as sensors showed indirect fire…a missile blew a hole in the street as she rocketed up fifty floors and blew a hopper off the rooftop on the way past, a split-second snap. Cut thrusters and coasted up the glass front of a 140-storey mega-rise, gravity for brakes as her teammates arrived below, flashing rapidly moving fire as they chased other hoppers down the canyons, a twisting of missiles, a shower of glass from a detonation.

Approaching zero velocity at apex, Sandy slammed another round down at a fleeing hopper…it was dodging, and she made a hole in the road instead, at these ranges and speeds, accuracy even with 50mil armour-piercing mag rifles wasn't certain—she never missed, but targets often weren't where they should be when the round arrived.

Another short kick took her to the top of the mega-rise, grounded with heavy boots on the roof amid com and transmission gear, and took a look out at her city. Flashes, shooting and missile trails across the tower-studded horizon. Not every munition was detonating early; in a few places, things were burning, and emergency crews were braving the night in flyers and cruisers, IDs on full blaze and hoping no one blew them from the sky by mistake.

The net she could sense was a mess, conflicting security protocols destroying each other, out-of-control code eating other constructs, data channeling to relatively secure pathways and feeders. Lots of vid feeds, lots of interrupted regular broadcasts, lots of emergency announcements, shouting, politicians, personalities, regular folks screaming for the shooting to stop, can't we all just talk about this?

Been talking, Sandy thought with contempt. Now shooting. People who didn't care then but suddenly cared now, rated on the moral minus scale. Fuck off and shut up, the grownups are working.

Suddenly she had at least ten incoming missiles from a variety of ranges. All angling for the top of this tower. She jumped off, turned head down and kicked, ripping down the towerside at building speed enough to make a fatal crater if her thrusters died…but she righted, kicked again, and they slowed her at a bone-crushing 18Gs amidst the smaller towers. The Gs made her synthetic muscles clench, just to stop her internal organs from rupturing, and then the missiles were streaking in, and these were not airbursting but ripping into walls, blasting huge waves of debris across the roads as Sandy cut thrust, fell
again, bounced off the road then kicked again into rapid flight at no altitude…a missile streaked an intersection ahead and blew out a wall ahead, as she dodged wildly over the top of it, wreckage showering off her armour.

“
I reckon they know this is you
,” Gamma Two suggested.

“Fair bet,” said Sandy, bounding again, then kicking up to a well-sheltering cover of gardens and parking atop a fifteen storey, and crouched while taking another look. And violated all tacnet protocols by opening to an external net link, which quickly propagated into broadcast across multiple channels. “Yeah, here I am, cocksuckers. Come and get me.”

No immediate reply of missile fire. In fact, a noticeable pause across the immediate five-K front. Fear had its uses. Soldiers facing her would demand more support, weakening other sectors. Some might panic, with reason. They might throw more soldiers this way, thus losing more. In war as in chess, you made your opponent do something they'd rather not. Something different, out of their comfort zone. If she was bait for that, so be it.

A broadcast channel opened. “
Hello, Tanusha, this is Rami Rahim, going live in the middle of a FUCKING WAR, isn't this fun?
” Everyone who liked Rami, and there were millions, were now receiving uplink alert of an unscheduled show running off black code. “
Now we've got some great shit lined up for you folks who wanna know what the fuck is actually going on, suffice to say that this violent removal of parasitic scum is brought to you by Director Ibrahim and Sandy Kresnov, that same duo who previously brought us such hits as ‘Die Feddie Fifth Fleet Die,’ and ‘Die League Assassins Die,’ and are now bringing you their brand-new single, ‘Die Operation Shield Fuckholes Die.’ But before we bring you the good stuff, here's a little track to warm you up
—
this is for you, Ambassador Ballan!
”

And the audio erupted to the thudding percussion and power chords of Death's Door, Tanusha's best metal band, the best power riffs this side of the Federation; Sandy had nearly damaged walls dancing to it when no one else was home. It had always had the alarming but fascinating effect on her of dropping the red mist of combat vision, like she suddenly wanted to kill someone—so she hadn't heard it since the kids arrived.

Now she used her own uplinks to bounce the signal off about three thousand major relays, just to make sure everyone had it. “DIE MOTHER FUCKER DIE!” roared the pounding opening, before the ball-tearing rhythms cut in. They'd know that signal came from her too. Psych warfare was not usually her
style, but this time it seemed appropriate. Even more so, given that by now, Ambassador Ballan really would be dead.

Ibrahim sat in the green room and stayed low, as the walls shook and rattled with incoming fire. Ballan's office had been hit several times from across the vast open space across the GC building donut and was now a flaming ruin, but the intervening walls to the waiting room were thick enough to keep the blasts out for now. He kept AR glasses on, uplinked through several systems into the GC mainframe, newly liberated with Ballan's demise and FSA attack codes, and tried to manage things from the little portal he'd set up there, surrounded by hostile defences. At the front doorway, barely four meters away, Amirah was holding off assaults from two directions at once, currently crouched in the doorway and reloading, hair a-mess from dust and debris kicked up by incoming fire. But the bend in the main hall made it hard for assaulting forces to get an angle, plus putting them at severe risk of hitting their friends farther up if both sides fired at once.

A grenade hit the far wall and showered her with debris. Amirah barely flinched. “Sure could use a grenade,” she suggested.

“They barely let you in here with guns,” Ibrahim replied, hands flying over visual icons in the air before him; it was too dangerous for a full emersion dive when he might need to move so suddenly. “With grenades, no chance.”

Amirah stuck her arm out and fired a burst, just to keep heads down.

Hando tried to reach him for the third time. “
Sir…work unstable…pound under fi…spond if poss…
”

“Certainly seems the FSA compound is under attack,” said Ibrahim, trying to get a clearer picture with the various command functions available to him. It was difficult; he wasn't a net tech, he could only rely on the superior coding given to him for use in this sensitive location, behind the primary barriers. “Hando can't get a clear connection here, we're on our own.”

“Was always the plan, sir,” said Amirah. Watching GIs under fire was a learning experience, even if he wasn't truly watching her. Incoming fire provoked not fear or flinching but thought process, he could see her looking at the rounds blasting holes within hands’ reach of her head and immediately calculating return trajectories. “Sir, if they decide to simply wipe out this entire section of building, I can't stop them.”

“These things work by procedure, Ms Togales,” said Ibrahim, as heavy rounds hit the wall separating Ballan's office. “Taking out a section of the building will require high-up clearance, even in these circumstances. That will take time, and with any luck, Cassandra and company will be here by then.”

And if not, they wouldn't. He didn't need to say it, Amirah understood.

“Yes, sir. Excuse me a moment.”

She rolled, then leaped into the hall, firing both ways simultaneously. Then disappeared. More firing, crashing, and then screaming, that stomach-turning moment when a soldier's mind went from tactical professionalism to the realisation that he had a split-second of life remaining. Relative silence in the hall, then grenade fire whistling past the doorway, detonations farther away…a thunder of fire as Amirah returned, crashing in so fast she impacted and spun off the doorway. And sat, back to a wall, head cocked as though listening for indications of the damage she'd done.

“You're hit,” Ibrahim observed.

Amirah made a face, as though wondering how anything else was possible. There was a clear hole in her clothes to the front of her hip, though no visible blood. The other blood on her fist, Ibrahim reckoned, was not hers. “That'll keep that side clear for a few minutes,” she said. “They had too little defensive gunnery; they won't make that mistake again.”

Danya sat watching the wide windows of the presidential suite and wishing he could stand with Svetlana and Kiril for a better view. They were not especially high up, perhaps twenty storeys, but their view north of central Tianyang District showed them zigzagging missile trails, darting magfire rounds and rapid tracer sprays. Explosions lit the dark towers in silhouette like some approaching lightning storm.

“Ragi,” Danya tried again, “you have to help them!”

“I'm not intervening in a civil war,” Ragi said quietly. He stood farther from the windows, a drink in hand, surveying the deadly view with somber resignation. “I have sympathy for what Cassandra and her friends have had done to them. But her side wishes to pursue the option of war against the League. For the moment, I'm unable to choose between them.”

“You stayed out of it because you didn't want to risk starting a war between the FSA and Operation Shield!” Danya retorted. “But look! War came anyway! And it'll come again against the League no matter what you do, if that's what's going to come.”

“Odd sentiment for a street kid who's spent his life staying out of the way to stay alive,” Ragi suggested.

“Yeah, well, this is the first time I actually
could
make a difference.”

“Seductive, isn't it?” said Ragi. “To be so powerful? I do not trust it.”

The underworld doctor who had put the cast on Danya's leg and his arm in the sling had departed. Danya did not question how Ragi had contacted her, any more than he questioned how Ragi could get this massive hotel suite. He suspected that with Ragi's network skills so advanced, the more sophisticated an entity's network, the more vulnerable they were to takeover. Big hotels like this didn't even require you to turn up in person—if you had sufficient network ID and security, they just presumed you were real. And most of the time, unless the guest was Ragi, they were right.

The doctor had done the cast well though, and the sling—it only hurt now when he moved. Or breathed. She'd been a Jain and served the underground types who'd rather suffer than go to hospital.

“Danya!” Kiril exclaimed, peering through his AR glasses. “I can see missiles!”

“Can you see what's going on, Ragi?” Svetlana asked.

“The FSA are advancing quickly,” said Ragi. “But they're going to struggle to get past the final defences. Every minute they take, those defences get stronger.”

“That's Sandy leading that attack, isn't it?” Svetlana demanded. “Ragi, if the attack fails, she's going to be killed! Operation Shield would rather kill her than anyone else!”

“I'm sorry,” said Ragi, spreading his hands helplessly. “I'm not going to take sides in this war. Cassandra understands what it means to have principles; I'm sure she'll understand this one.”

Svetlana stared at Danya. Demanding of him. Pleading.
Do something!
She had the pistol with her still; Ragi had not attempted to take it from her. Perhaps Ragi was naive in his own way, not understanding how far even a child might go. Danya took a deep breath. Every instinct he possessed told him Ragi was right, in tactics if not in strategy—look out for yourself first, minimise your risks, don't bring trouble down on those you love. But one of those he loved was already in trouble, and here it was, the great dilemma he'd faced upon first meeting Sandy—that by increasing the number of people in your close little family, you increased the amount of risk you'd have to take to keep all of them safe.

But it was too late now, because if he didn't try everything to try to help Sandy, when he had the means at his disposal, and Sandy died…well, that was just unacceptable. The same way it would be unacceptable with Svetlana or Kiril.

He pulled his AR glasses over his eyes, saw the local network connect to his portable, and Svetlana's and Kiril's, which boosted the local network to something sizeable. “Well,” he said, “even with Operation Shield's control of the city net reduced, it's still going to be impossible to make contact with the FSA or Director Ibrahim. But I reckon if his network works the way I think it works, we can reach Rami Rahim.”

“Danya?” said Ragi, frowning with alarm. “Danya, you shouldn't do that; you boost the local signal size any bigger, Operation Shield will see it.”

“Well, then why don't you help and make sure they don't?” Danya suggested.
He was in the network now, he could see the constructs displayed before his eyes, appearing to float in mid-air. Ari had shown him basic techniques, the kind of thing any Tanushan kid knew real young but were still a novelty to a kid from Droze—how to match a net construct with a physical location. A simple search showed him where Rami Rahim's studio office was…of course he wouldn't be there, Operation Shield would put a warhead in it anytime. Private houses? Well, he was rich, he'd have a lot. So where was this signal coming from?

“Kiril,” he said, “can you see where Rami Rahim's network is operating from?”

“You won't be able to trace his immediate location,” Ragi said with mild frustration, “he's got a lot of very smart people working with him; all of Operation Shield won't know his location.”

“But he gets outside calls all the time,” Danya retorted. “It's a talkback show; he talks to people all over Tanusha. I'm betting he'll still have talkback function enabled. We don't need to find where he is, we just need to be able to talk to him.”

“Danya, you can't do that.” Ragi was properly alarmed now. “You can't upload Kiril's information to him anyway. Kiril's wireless uplinks aren't advanced enough to upload to a civilian network…”

“No, but we can just tell him what we've got,” Danya retorted. The glasses put rows of icons in the air before him, but it was hard to manipulate them fast enough with only one hand. The viewpoint flashed and rotated, then darted to a different part of the network, then ran multiple search functions on different strands of data…it was frustrating to see just how much data there was. He felt he was moving very fast, but in reality he was barely scratching the surface.

“Danya, if you tell him what you've got,” Ragi replied, “everyone will hear. Including Operation Shield. They'll trace back to here, and they'll probably put a missile into this room, do you understand that, Danya? Or anywhere else you move to, they can trace the transmission.”

“Not if you stop them,” said Danya, still working.

“I told you I won't. Now stop this immediately.”

“Or you'll do what?” Danya asked. “Stop me yourself?” Ragi was staring at him. Standing against the wall, looking increasingly cornered, eyes wide
with alarm. Danya didn't know exactly what he was doing, except that it was instinct, and it seemed to be right. Ragi didn't know how to handle confrontation. Sitting on the sidelines was one thing. Having a gun put to your head and being forced to make instant decisions, that was something else. Danya had experience of it. Ragi didn't. Speaking of guns…

“Svetlana,” he added, “make sure he doesn't try to stop us.”

Svetlana pulled her pistol and aimed it at Ragi, quite calmly. “You're not a combat model,” said Svetlana. “And we don't have uplinks you can hack. I wouldn't try it.”

A promising lead turned into a dead end. Danya swore beneath his breath. “I'm not going to help you,” Ragi repeated.

“You don't have to,” said Danya. “There's the door.”

“No way!” Svetlana protested. “Danya, he can really help, we can make him!”

“I'm not going to make him do anything,” Danya said firmly, and distant explosions shook the windows. “He insists on being allowed to do what he wants. That's fine. He can't stop us doing what we want either. But he can leave.”

“It is my hotel room,” Ragi pointed out.

“We're street kids,” said Danya. “We steal. Sorry.”

Rami was aware that Liz was having an increasingly agitated, wide-eyed conversation with someone while seated before her production bank arrayed before the sofa. Her hands flew through multiple icons at once, as on the display screens, their crude imitations of tacnet software tried to translate multiple incoming data sources into some kind of tactical picture. That feed was running on multiple self-randomizing net feeds throughout Tanusha, which in turn was getting them millions of ongoing links throughout the city from frightened citizens desperate to know what was going on. Those citizens were now in turn adding their own data into the feed, vid images out windows, audio recordings of nearby shootings that software was triangulating into location points…Tania and Anjul, his two main net geeks, were running furious interventions over by the indoor garden, trying to keep the whole system synched as feed-ins kept multiplying.

“Remember,” Rami was saying now, watching the feeds unfold, “don't contact us directly even if you know how. Operation Shield has murdered before to keep their shit intact; we figure there's a good chance they'll just lob a missile onto your location. We are
not
the CSA or FSA, we can't guarantee anonymity, and if any of you netsters listening out there can help run interference for us, that'd be bilkool awesome, capish?”

Liz was gesturing to him frantically now. “Kirpal, tell us what's happening?” Kirpal Singh took over, former CSA SWAT and friend of Rami's, he'd come knocking on the door of this Rami's “other” house ten minutes ago, figuring Rami might be here, and was now offering strategic insight, but only into what Operation Shield were doing. FSA analysis he left alone in case he gave the bad guys ideas.

“Got a kid on the line says he's Danya Kresnov!” Liz hissed at him. “It's encrypted, but it's, like, only grade 3 at best…”

Danya Kresnov? “Oh fuck!” said Rami, and linked fast. “Danya, what's up, buddy? Are you safe?”

“
Rami, you know how Special Agent Ariel Ruben was nearly killed a few days ago?
” A boy's voice, but not a young boy. A teenager, cool and serious.

Rami blinked. “I…hang on, who?”

“
Special Agent Ariel Ruben, good friend of Sandy's, Police Inspector Sinta was nearly killed with him, Operation Shield blew up their car on the freeway…
”

“Oh wait, shit, I remember that on the news…”

“
Yeah
,” the boy interrupted, “
well, Sinta was investigating Idi Aba, the lawyer who was killed by the League. Only he wasn't killed by the League, he was killed by Operation Shield because he'd been in contact with an activist in the League who'd given him a vision of a secret new League facility for mass-producing GIs
.” Rami tried to process that for a moment. “
It's against all the treaties that ended the war, probably it would restart the war, and Operation Shield is trying to force these anti-war amendments through the Grand Council, you get it? This would kill the amendments dead
.”

“Well…well, shit, Danya, that's…that's a great story, but I don't know if…”

“
Rami, we have the damn vision. Ari Ruben sent it to us just before his car crashed. The League GI production facility, we've got it. You show it, Operation Shield's finished
.”

Rami's jaw dropped. “Danya…Danya, hang on, I'm going to put you onto our technical people…wait, what's your format?”

“
Well, that's where it gets tricky
.”

Sandy flanked hard left across the defensive grid assembling on Santiello District, herself and five others streaking low over suburban neighbourhoods, coming down on apartment towers, moving rather than shooting, and making it quite obvious to the defenders. UAV presence directly opposing her had tripled since she'd made her identity known, and tacnet showed defensive depth boosting dramatically—it was taking tips now from Rami Rahim's independent network, which was now getting open-source feeds from all kinds of places, including some crazy fools out in their cars filming out the window and daring Operation Shield to shoot them. If they kept piling up resources here they'd leave a flank exposed.

Only now her net sensors were warning her of new tacnet alerts, but these weren't strategic, they were audible, meaning tacnet had overheard something and was feeding it to her…and her eyes widened with a shock that nearly caused her to miss her next landing on a roadway and crash through a streetlight. Danya's voice. Tacnet said he was talking to Rami Rahim, something about Ari and Sinta, and…and if she could overhear this, Operation Shield could too.

She gridsearched frantically, that confusion of emotion trying to override the deadening weight of combat reflex…who was closest? It was Tianyang District, almost squarely in central Tanusha, ahead of their line of advance for now but about to get pulled onto the friendly side, and if Operation Shield wanted to do something about a target there, they'd have to do it soon or risk losing the capability. Vanessa! Vanessa was closest, taking 9th Company in a typically aggressive hard push through the guts of the defences…but she couldn't tell Vanessa to abandon her command priorities just to save her kids.

“Sandy, I got it!” Vanessa yelled, and kicked off the pavement behind apartment buildings, blasting low over the adjoining park and watching hard for the source of autocannon fire hovering behind buildings in Tianyang just over a K ahead. “Sandy, get back in fucking command, I got it, your kids are a strategic fucking asset, now get your head together and go!”