Killswitch (10 page)

Rather than resisting the hard pressure of her arm, Ari grabbed her by the collar and pulled. She could have resisted. But somehow, his lips had found hers before she could decide what to do, and her good arm braced her instead against the wall. His hands found her face, running through her hair, his lips warm, his closeness suddenly intoxicating. Someone could have come along the corridor at any moment, and senior officers were not supposed to indulge in such things upon the premises, particularly not where just anyone would see them.

His hands found the tight spots of her new uniform-the old one now largely in tatters-and she felt her temperature rise several more degrees. She kissed back even harder, struggling for air and getting her good hand behind his back, wanting to plunge it under his clothes and feel the warmth of his skin against her ... and he pulled away, holding her in place with a physical confidence no other straight besides Vanessa ever dared. He knew how to hold her, and how to move her, if necessary. He knew when she wouldn't push back.

"I'm glad you're okay," he murmured, resting his forehead momentarily against hers. "Now stop ignoring me when I'm trying to tell you things that could save your life, or I'll get really mad with you." And he turned on his heel, and left her leaning against the wall, breathless and now slightly dishevelled.

"That's not fair," she complained. "You can't leave me like this."

"Promise me you'll listen," came the reply as he swept away down the corridor.

"Look, there's a bed just in there!" she suggested, trying to be reasonable about it. "We can polarise the windows, lock the door with a vacant sign, no one will know. Come back here and fuck me for a while, and I'll think about it."

"I'm not hearing the answer I want." He paused at the glass doors at the end, looking back at her, his expression glum. "No listening, no Mr. Pinky."

Sandy fought back a traitorous grin. "Please?" she said plaintively.

"First accept that my advice is sage and just."

"I'd rather just take the orgasm, thanks."

And Ari gave a tired shrug. "I tried." And continued looking at her, for a longer moment. Humour faded, as the implications slowly sank in. Suddenly, it wasn't very funny at all. And he shook his head in disbelief, opened the doors, and strode into the medical ward beyond. Sandy slumped her back against the wall, ran a hand through her hair, and sighed.

Rhian was standing by Doctor Obago's side in the private office at the far end of med-bay, gazing at a high definition display. She turned to look through the windows as Sandy approached between med-bay beds.

"Is Ari angry at you too?" Rhian asked as Sandy entered, and shut the glass door behind her.

"Ari and I have a difference of opinion about recent events." Rhian kept looking, a quizzical eyebrow raised. She had expressed curious scepticism ever since hearing of Sandy's new monogamous relationship. Not that she disapproved of Ari. On the contrary, she'd several times expressed irritation with civilian rules of sexual etiquette that prevented her from inviting Ari to bed herself. But she'd served with Sandy back in the League, in a small, separate, GI-dominated society where jealousy was alien and monogamy unheard of. And she'd seen Sandy's sexual appetite in action. Now, she wondered how Ari could find time to keep up.

"Ari and you seem to have different opinions about a lot of things," Rhian observed.

Sandy came over to stand by the monitor where it sat upon a side table-facing the glass wall that opened onto the med-bay. Medical privacy, another of those things she'd never had in the League. The back of the office was a minor lab, with glass dishes and various analyser equipment, and chairs where several junior medical personnel were working on various medical-type things ... Sandy consciously limited her knowledge of medical procedures. Her experience of most such things in her life had not been pleasant. And she'd seen enough blood and human insides in her life to last her another five Hindu reincarnations, at least. Ten, maybe. The office smelt like antiseptic detergent, and she didn't like that either.

"Ari and I made a decision not to let our relationship cramp our professional style," Sandy replied, gazing at the display screen. It was clearly a three-dimensional, colour-coded map of a GI's skull. Rhian's, she reckoned, recognising the outlines and shapes of the implants about the ears and lower back of the skull. "What's the story, Doc?"

"There is no apparent mechanism," said Obago, hands folded in front of his white coat. He studied the graphic for a moment with pursed lips. "It should be here." He touched the screen at a point that Sandy reckoned would be about the hypothalamus. Obago pressed a button, and a new display appeared, this one of another GI's skull. Her own, Sandy recognised. "I obtained this from one of your earlier checkups," said Obago. "I apologise for not asking permission first, but time seemed of the essence."

"Of course," Sandy said blandly. The doctor's forefinger now rested upon precisely the same spot on the new display. Again his other hand manipulated a control, and the screen image zoomed in prodigiously, approaching microscopic detail without losing much apparent clarity or detail. Now the image appeared as a mass of cojoined, overgrown fibres, like a tangle of jungle vines.

"There," said Obago. "Can you see that?"

"I can see a lot of things," Sandy replied. "I just don't know what any of them are."

"Well, technically speaking, neither do I," said the doctor. "League synthetic technology is simply on another dimension from Federation capabilities. We don't even have the exact name for the microfilament substance from which both of your brains are grown. Except that it replicates human brain synapse activity almost precisely, as well as various chemical responses, and can integrate with synaptic implants almost seamlessly. Exactly how this particular implant works, I could not say ... although maybe elsewhere on Callay or in the Federation there are experts who may know more, especially now that contacts between League and Federation are accelerating, at least a little. What it does, however, is clear enough."

He pressed another few buttons on the hand control, and suddenly one large, long filament among many turned red. It seemed almost organic, branching out at various points like a creeper sprouting leaves, integrating into the synaptic fibres around it. But now that Sandy looked at it, it seemed too big, too long and too thick compared to the other shorter, less organised strands.

"From what I can see from the readings," Obago continued, "it seems to be made from a material variant of something called ceta- velar-alloy, which is related to ..."

"I don't need to know what it is, Doc, just what it does."

"Well, simply speaking, once activated by an external trigger, it turns white hot and explodes. There's a little organic battery charge up one end, enough for a boost that activates a chain reaction. It will kill you more or less immediately, give or take a few seconds."

"Can you remove it?" Sandy asked quietly.

"No." Obago shook his head, with absolute certainty. "I sincerely doubt even the best League people could remove it, it's too tightly embedded. Doing so would certainly cause irreversible brain damage. At the very least it would leave you paralysed."

Sandy took a deep breath. And looked at Rhian. Rhian looked back. And gave a small, wry twist of her lips.

"I guess they were more scared of you than me," Rhian offered.

"Can't imagine why," Sandy murmured. "I'm harmless."

CHAPTER FIVE

HE took the cruiser home at 5 PM that evening-very early by any senior official's standards. Stuck at her desk, all operational readiness procedures on hold due to the investigation and recovery, she'd come to feel like a spare wheel, fending off endless queries and expressions of relief from fellow soldiers that she was okay. Which was nice, on the one hand ... especially the flowers, the box of chocolates, and the three bottles of wine and scotch various of her friends had found time to have sent to her office. It was nice to have people in the CDF who genuinely cared for her as a person, and to hell with her rank or other political circumstances. But sitting there all day while the CSA investigators insisted she couldn't continue her usual routine of field tests, training and integration exercises until they'd swept all the equipment bays for clues, and constantly bombarded by condolences for a tragedy that hadn't actually happened (hey guys, look, I'm actually still alive) had finally gotten to her. Well, she hadn't had an early working day for over a month now, so she figured she was due.

Canas was nearly ten minutes flight time from HQ. It presented her with her first truly free time to think, as the afternoon sun burned bright yellow in the west, and lit the glass sides of passing towers to blazing, vertical spires of light. She felt, Sandy decided, somewhat uneasy. Tense. Moody, even. The cast about her left wrist and thumb pressed hard upon the control wheel, her partially immobile fingers unable to manipulate the buttons. Bullets ripping past. The roaring thunder of high-velocity steel. It had been very close. She'd had innumerable close calls before, at various stages of her life. Most of those she'd written off as professional hazards, and simply dealt with. This one felt different. It wasn't what she'd been expecting from this life. Her new life. And they'd gone after her, specifically, because she was Sandy, and not simply another soldier in a war zone. This one was personal, and she found that profoundly unsettling.

And why the hell hadn't they used the killswitch? It didn't make sense, first Ari's warnings that someone was after her, and the related information about the killswitch ... or she'd assumed it was related. Certainly Ari had. Maybe whoever had made this attempt hadn't known about the killswitch. Or hadn't had the capability to access it. Or maybe, crazy as the thought had seemed when she'd first had it, this was just a warning? It was poorly organised for one thing-her moment of greatest weakness had been directly after the first mineblast, when she'd been surprised, unbalanced and blown off her feet. But there'd been only one AMAPS in a position to directly benefitit had missed, and from there she was always a good chance, being what she was, and having friends in close proximity. The rest had been strung out, like an obstacle course. Although a significant rearrangement of assets in the bay would have raised suspicions. Maybe there hadn't been a choice. So why take that option then, with those inadequacies? Surely they must have guessed that any ambush attempt on Cassandra Kresnov had to be almost completely watertight to have a reasonable chance of success? Maybe this one hadn't been expected to succeed. After all, the slick nature of the infiltration, and the sloppy execution of the actual ambush, simply failed to mesh.

It would surely all make more sense if she had some idea who had tried to kill her. There were of course the usual stock of Tanushan religious radicals who had never ceased their strenuous objections to the presence of a murderous, soulless GI in any position within the CDF, let alone a senior commander. But clearly Ari was right in saying this attempt had taken a great degree of inside knowledge-knowledge such radicals were highly unlikely to possess.

More likely were the pro-Earth factions, either indigenous or imported, who saw her as the embodiment of all that was wrong with the direction Callay, and therefore the Federation, was now headed in. But then why remove her? Surely her presence actually helped such people, at some level, because it made their reformist, progressive enemies look bad. Kill the GI, and the pro-Earth conservatives would only make themselves look bad, and lend sympathy to their enemies. Something there didn't make sense.

Then there were two other, shadowy options-Federal Intelligence Agency operatives, or the League's ISO, the Internal Security Organisation. The FIA, of course, was undergoing a massive overhaul after the calamitous directorship split of the previous year. Half the senior directors still had not been found, mysteriously vanished into space, it seemed ... or being sheltered by those with an equal interest in keeping certain skeletons firmly in their closets. The rest were in closed trial on Earth, much to the disgust of the collective Federation body politic, and even some on Earth in famously discontent nations like the USA, who demanded all trials be made public. Many of the FIA simply hated GIs. Many no doubt remained who suspected her of devious power trips, having gained the Neiland Administration's trust. Probably they'd reckon they were doing Callay and the Federa tion a favour in seeing her dead. But it seemed an awful lot of effort, considering the FIA's other problems.

Remnants of the old League government seemed a far more likely bet. Sandy knew where many of their skeletons were buried, and they doubtless knew that she knew. Probably they'd know she had a good friend who worked for the League Embassy in Tanusha, an Embassy that was, of course, run by the new, reformist League administration, with its comparatively cordial relations with the Federation. Probably the old guard suspected that she knew things that could damage them, if and when the new administration found out. But she'd already imparted many such secrets, and the new administration had been in power for nearly three years now ... it only seemed new, given where the League had come from, politically speaking. Why wait this long to silence her, after the damage had surely already been done? Unless there were other political machinations in the offing, back Leagueside? Perhaps someone from the Embassy would soon come calling with some new questions for her consideration.

Sandy swore lightly to herself, steering gently to remain within the computer-generated skylane through the towers. Further ahead the afternoon thunderstorm was looming, massive thunderheads towering ten thousand metres tall, gleaming a bright shade of yellow in the afternoon sun and regularly flashing blue as lightning discharged in staccato succession, like gunfire on a colossal scale.

To make it all worse, she'd had no one to really talk to all day. Rhian had offered to stay around, but Sandy had insisted she make the most of her day off, and so Rhian had gone. Doubtless many had considered that strange, considering Rhian had also faced mortal threat ... but Sandy knew her old comrade well, and knew it would take more than a little exchange of fire to dampen Rhian Chu's spirits. And of course as third-in-command, Vanessa's role was more concerned with personnel than Sandy's, and so she'd been very busy reorganising duty rosters and training schedules in the new chaos that had descended, and hadn't shown any sign of wanting to talk to her anyway, in their few brief contacts of the day. Sandy knew Vanessa was upset at something, but she still failed to understand the reaction. She was the one who'd nearly been killed, after all. And Ari, of course, had been out of contact all day.

Ari. The thought brought on a sigh. Sometimes it seemed that they just couldn't stop arguing. It was unexpected. She'd always assumed that a good, long-term, sexual relationship meant less arguments, not more. But then, as Vanessa had countered when they'd discussed it, who else was going to sustain her interest over the long term? Someone who agreed with her all the time? A "yes man"? She'd had enough of that back in the League, from soldiers under her command, or non-GI officers under instruction not to contradict her unless absolutely necessary. And she'd found that boring and disappointing in the extreme.

As Vanessa said, she loved a good argument. It was one of the major things she could get, here in her new civilian life, that her old League life had not provided. She found differences of opinion stimulating. She loved learning new things, even if they contradicted old understandings. And An's ability to surprise her, to make her challenge her previous assumptions, and to simply make her laugh, was probably the primary reason she found his company so stimulating. That, of course, and that devilishly sexy crooked grin that he used knowingly upon her to predictable effect. Yes, they clashed frequently on matters of ideology and style. It was sometimes frustrating. But then, she simply didn't see how it was possible to have all the good things, without also taking her fair share of the bad.

An absent-minded skip across her uplink monitors shot back a mass of highlighted points ... there was a massive demonstration prepared for tonight in Velan district against the Fleet blockade, organisers were expecting at least half a million protesters. Secretary General Benale had held a major press conference on his tour of Tanusha, urging the Grand Council to reject the "undue influence and interference of the Neiland Administration." Fleet Admiral Duong had made a brief statement, rejecting calls from extremist Earth factions for the blockade to become official Earth policy until Callay and its supporters in the Federation abandoned their "ultra-progressive manipulations of the Grand Council apparatus."

"The Fleet is not blockading Callay," Duong now said as she opened that file, and watched his stern, shaven-headed visage upon her internal vision. The rank on the Fleet uniform collar was plainly evident, shiny badges gleaming against the stark metal backdrop of what Sandy guessed were his private quarters. The Fleet Admiral's eyes were the hard, calculating eyes of a man who had seen many battles, and lost many friends, yet had only had his convictions strengthened by his experiences. Sandy had met such people often, and distrusted them always. Her own wartime experiences, of course, had caused her precisely the opposite reaction. "This is a security operation, no more, no less. These are precarious times. The centre of power in the Federation is being relocated, and reconstructed. This is a time of great vulnerability for us all. The Federation constitution tasks the Fleet with the protection of the Federation and all its assets. That is what we shall do."

Sandy considered Duong's hard, unwavering eyes as the cruiser's navcomp took her into a gradual descent, and wondered at what thoughts might be passing through the mind behind them. A determination to uphold Earth's preeminence within the Federation, certainly. A distrust of the selfish, fractious colonies. But also, apparently, a sense of moderation, backed by the faultless discipline of a lifetime soldier. Surely he could not be enjoying his present role. He'd made himself into a politician, a lightning rod for the opinions of Earthbased extremists and colonial progressives alike. And the word was that he did not get along with Secretary General Benale at all, whatever their apparent political similarities.

She landed the cruiser on the yellow-striped transition zone inside the tall, stone wall that marked the outer perimeter of the Canas high security zone. The cruiser came down in a gentle hover-and-bump of heavy tires, Sandy largely ignoring the process to watch some children playing football on the green field beside the high wall and transition zone.

Canas security was in the house when she made her way up from the basement parking garage. She waited while they conducted their final sweeps-uniformed men and women who specialised in network security, and were tasked with the upkeep of all security systems within the Canas area. In the kitchen she discovered Jean-Pierre had wedged himself on top of the cupboards near where the stairs ascended to the upper floor, gazing wide-eyed at all the strangers invading his house. He recognised Sandy and began a relieved, plaintive chirping.

"Just wait," Sandy told him, pouring herself a makani juice first, then climbing the stairs halfway to stand level with the kitchen cupboards. She leaned over the rails, extending her free left arm, disregarding the wrist cast. Jean-Pierre gathered his supple limbs, gave a coiling wriggle, then leaped across the intervening space and onto the extended arm, little hand/feet grasping as tightly as millions of years of tree-climbing evolution had intended. Sandy held him comfortably against her shoulder, heading back down the stairs and sipping the drink from her other hand, wincing as Jean-Pierre tried to clean out the inside of her left ear.

"I'm sorry," said a security tech at the bottom of the stairs, gear packed in hand boxes, evidently headed for the door. "We didn't mean to scare him, he just ran up there in a flash and wouldn't come down."

"He's not a very courageous animal," Sandy said with a smile.

"That was a pretty impressive leap," countered the tech, with a glance up at the gap between cupboards and stairway.

"Oh, he's fine jumping sideways," said Sandy. "They do that all the time in treetops. He just doesn't like jumping down. Falling's against his instincts, I guess." As Jean-Pierre twisted about to fix the security tech with a reproachful, golden-eyed gaze. "Say hello to the nice security man," Sandy instructed the bunbun. "I won't have xenophobic tree climbers in my house."