Killswitch (7 page)

"That's what I wanted to suggest," said Ari. "Get her in for a check-up. Because my contact wasn't sure, Sandy. Very sure about you, but not the others. You were always the greatest risk, though. They knew that. And you did defect, so really, they were right to worry."

"Oh, they were right about lots of things," Sandy muttered. "I hate those fucking bastards. I might be a soldier, but I'm a person too. They had no fucking right."

"Sandy." Ari climbed from the bed and came to her in the dim light. Took her hands in both of his, and gazed earnestly into her eyes. "Are you hearing me now? Be careful, it's not just physical threats I'm talking about. The network could get you too. Keep your barriers up."

Sandy frowned at him in suspicion. "How long have you been running around after this?"

"A while," said Ari. Sandy kept gazing at him, questioningly. Ari sighed in exasperation. "Sandy, don't you get it? I care about you. I care about you a lot."

"Once upon a time you thought I was a fascinating little project of yours," Sandy said reproachfully. Not really knowing why she said it, even as she spoke. But she was angry. And alarmed, and looking for a secure foundation.

"Sure, maybe I did think that once," Ari conceded with an offhanded shrug. "But I'm past that now. I mean seriously, you're not the only one who's grown up in the last two years. I like you. The rest of it just doesn't matter to me." And put a hand to her chin, tilting her gaze when she proved reluctant to meet his gaze. Raised his eyebrows at her, seeking her acknowledgement. Sandy sighed, and embraced him.

Sandy came downstairs at six thirty the next morning, a little late following her shower, and found that Jean-Pierre was dangling from the small chandelier above the open kitchen. Vanessa stood on the bench by the stove, her uniform unbuttoned in typical early morning disarray, and held her hands up to the chandelier, making appealing, chirping sounds. A big pair of round eyes peered anxiously over the rim, dexterous little feet clinging nimbly to the frame.

"Jean-Pierre! Come on, baby. Jump, Jean-Pierre, Mummy will catch you!" The bunbun turned back and forth with clever grips of its toes, seeking another option.

"How in the world did he get up there?" Sandy asked, straightening her shirt collar beneath the open jacket as she entered the kitchen and began arranging a meal of muesli and fruit around Vanessa's feet.

"It's what they do," Vanessa complained. "They climb trees and sleep in the high branches. Jean-Pierre! Look, it's not that far! I'll catch you! "

"Why is all Callayan wildlife so irredeemably stupid?" Ari asked, coming fast down the stairs in a descending rhythm of black boots.

"He's not stupid!" Vanessa protested. "He's just a little daft." And tried chirping at him again.

"He'll poop on your head," warned Anita from the lounge sofa, where she was jacked into her portable terminal, doubtless checking on her morning network scan. She'd slept in the guest room again-her job being what it was, she could pretty much work from anywhere. Sandy finished pouring muesli, and Ari anticipated her reach for the fruit bowl, grabbing a ripe majo off the top and tossing it hard at her. Sandy caught it with an effortless snap of the wrist, and began peeling it with a rapid motion of knife-blade against thumb.

"I mean seriously," said Ari, preparing his own bowl with curious glances upward at the stranded bunbun, "we could at least have a few genus of flesh-ripping carnivores ... maybe a poisonous flying reptile or fire breathing fish or something."

"Yeah, that'd work," said Sandy with amusement, chopping the fruit with eye-blurring flashes of steel.

"Instead we get ... that." Ari pointed disdainfully up at the chandelier. "Behold all you tiny humans, the pinnacle of the Callayan food chain. He is the bunbun, hear his mighty roar." Jean-Pierre fixed him with a golden-eyed, reproachful stare within an adorably cute, furry brown face.

"There's more worthwhile things in evolution than teeth and claws," Vanessa retorted.

"I mean we can't even eat them," Ari continued, "they're all fur and bones. I tell you, it's just as well humans arrived on this planet when we did, the local wildlife certainly wasn't going anywhere without us."

"How do you know?" Sandy replied. "Bunbuns have opposable thumbs, maybe there'd be a great bunbun civilisation here in another ten million years if we'd left them alone." Leaping to seat herself on the opposing bench, eating her muesli and watching as Jean-Pierre leaned precariously over the rim of the chandelier, nose twitching as he stretched toward Vanessa's outstretched hands. Then the chandelier shifted and swung, and Jean-Pierre scrambled back to a safer perch.

Vanessa clasped exasperated hands to her hips. "Maybe we could tempt him down with some honey?" Glancing at Sandy with great earnestness, seeking her opinion. Sandy shrugged as she chewed, struggling to hide her amusement. It seemed a curious predicament for two of Callay's most senior soldiers.

"I'll get him down for you," suggested Ari, reaching for the gun holster inside his jacket and withdrawing a black automatic pistol.

"Ari!" Sandy scolded. Over on the sofa, Anita fell over laughing. Vanessa glared. Ari shrugged offhandedly, and reholstered the pistol. Rhian came down the steps with a blur of rapid feet. Sandy did a fast double-take, as did Ari-Rhian wore tight denim jeans and a very fashionable cut-off shirt tied into a bow below the breastbone, leaving her tight stomach suggestively bare. She moved with a spring beyond her usual energy, positively cheerful with a broad smile for them all.

"Good morning!" And, with a glance up at Jean-Pierre's predicament, "Major Rice, if you don't mind me saying so, your animal appears to have a very small brain."

"He keeps his mouth shut," Vanessa retorted, "which is more than I can say for some."

Rhian moved swiftly over, and sprang effortlessly off the ground. In mid-air one hand grasped the chandelier, the other pried Jean-Pierre expertly from his perch, then landed with a gentle thump, the startled bunbun now clinging to her arms in bewilderment.

"Ari, handpass!" She moved to play on, football style, faking the handpass then spinning away, going for a pretend bounce behind the dining table, followed by a drop kick ...

"Give!" called Vanessa sternly, jumping down from the bench and striding over, hands outstretched. Rhian grinned and placed JeanPierre onto the dining table. The bunbun ran nimbly on furry legs across the table and leaped into Vanessa's arms. Vanessa cuddled him and made cooing noises as Jean-Pierre tried to plaster her face with his little tongue.

"That animal's so cute it's sickening," Ari observed around a mouthful of breakfast. "You know, Ricey, if you'd treated your men that well you wouldn't be single."

"Sandy," Vanessa commanded, "silence the boyfriend." Sandy extended a foot from her seat upon the bench, and pushed Ari in the shoulder. "Men like you are the reason four legs and a tail suddenly became attractive." Ari clutched at his heart, dramatically.

"At least she didn't say men like you are the reason she started sleeping with women," Sandy offered.

"You haven't started sleeping with women," Ari retorted.

Sandy smiled. "Give it time." With a playful glance at Vanessa above her next mouthful of breakfast. Vanessa grinned back, trying to keep Jean-Pierre's searching tongue out of her ear.

Ari blinked. "Well I guess that won't bother me too much, provided I can watch."

"That's a nice outfit, Rhi," Anita called over from the sofa. "What's the occasion?"

"I have a day off today," said Rhian, beaming. "Major Ramoja has us all on duty rosters, and today's my free day."

"I haven't had a full day off in weeks," Vanessa sighed.

"I'm going to do some shopping," Rhian continued, "then I'm going to Denpasar to see the big wildlife enclosure, then to Patna to see that Festival of the Sun they keep showing on the news, that looks really nice ... then I'm going to a football game in Santiello in the evening."

"You really like football, don't you?" Anita asked, resting chin upon her hand, elbow upon the sofa arm, gazing with obvious fascination. "Sandy's never gotten into sports, she says there's not a sport invented that's a technical challenge for a GL"

"She's right," Rhian agreed. "I just like being at the game. Everyone's so excited, and the crowd roars and waves banners, and the players all hug each other when they kick a goal. It's fun."

"I guess I just like my cultural events to mean something deeper," Sandy reflected around a mouthful. "Physical performance might be a big deal to a straight, but I just can't get excited about it. It's too easy."

"For you, maybe," said Rhian. "You have to learn to empathise better with straights."

And Sandy just stared at her, incredulously. Vanessa grinned, and Ari shook his head in smiling disbelief. Jean-Pierre struggled to be free of Vanessa's arms, bounding to the ground and trotting toward the familiar scent of Anita, who lowered a hand for him to sniff.

"It's strange," Rhian continued, apparently unaware of the minor commotion she'd caused, "I checked a database on the history of football, but when you go back far enough, most of the references are to a different sport entirely-one with a round ball and the players don't even use their hands."

"Oh that's soccer," Anita said, highly amused as Jean-Pierre tried to grasp her fingers with his tight little hands, and lick them. "Football began in India, and they got so huge they spread the sport around the world and it took over from soccer a few hundred years ago as the biggest football code."

Ari made a loud, quizz-show-buzzer noise to the negative. "Wrong," he said. "Football began in Australia, it was called Australian football. It was inspired partly by Gaelic football from Ireland, and partly by a game the Australian Aborigines played. India borrowed it from them sometime in the twenty-first century."

Rhian frowned. "I've never heard of Australia."

"Big, empty, boring place with lots of stupid furry animals," said Ari around another mouthful. "Lot like here."

"Rhi," said Sandy, fixing her friend with a solemn gaze. "Before you get going, could I ask you to do something for me?"

Ari also gazed at Rhian, the humour abruptly replaced by calculation. "Of course," said Rhian. "What would you like me to do?"

CHAPTER FOUR

HE ride over to HQ was not a pleasant one. Vanessa fumed all the way, although precisely what she was upset at, Sandy couldn't say.

Rhian simply sat in the backseat of the armoured government cruiser, and gazed out at the spectacular aerial view of passing towers on a carpet of green urbanity, gleaming bright in patches beneath the slanting rays of the morning sun. Here and there the sunlight flashed on the surface of one of the many tributaries of the Shoban Delta. The air seemed thick with morning haze, typical midsummer humidity rising off the wet trees and damp ground, darkening the sun to a deep, luxuriant orange in the eastern sky.

Sandy landed the cruiser on the exclusive pad atop the main CDF building of the broader CSA compound-facilities would be much better, they had been promised, when the CDF had its own compound, somewhere out in the brand new Herat district currently under construction beyond the outermost of the city's existing inhabited zones. Herat was also the location for the new Grand Council buildings, centred about an enormous structure whose size, when completed, would dwarf even the Callayan Parliament building. There was a Fleet Command building under construction somewhere out there too. No doubt certain indignant Fleet admirals thought that highly presumptuous.

She was walking across the rooftop pad with Vanessa and Rhian when she received a call.

"Hello, Commander," came a youthful, enthusiastic voice in her inner ear. "I've been arranging your itinerary for the day and prioritising departmental requests. Would you like an immediate rundown or would you prefer to wait until the office?"

"I think that can wait, Private Zhang." Truthfully, she had her own automatic programs in place that sorted much of the scheduling and priorities for her. And she could access all of that remotely without any help. Her new secretary, however, was young, bright eyed and eager to be useful.

"Yes, Commander. I've taken the liberty of redirecting your incoming calls and mail away from staff, which takes some load off them. I've also identified and return-contacted seventy per cent of those incoming calls and given them alternative channels to go through-most of them are interdepartmental, they've got no real business bothering you at all with their problems. "

Sandy blinked in surprise, walking to the door of the rooftop foyer, flashing ID from her uniform pocket to the invisible scanners. She hadn't been aware she could tell half of her callers not to bother her. No doubt they hadn't wanted her to know, least it remove their access to her office. Maybe young Private Zhang would have his uses after all.

"Thank you, Private, I appreciate that. " The decorative foyer beyond the glass doors was a mass of interlocking security systems, mostly invisible to the unaugmented eye. She, Vanessa and Rhian headed for the stairs. Two suited men engaged in conversation turned to starepartly in recognition of herself and Vanessa, Sandy reckoned, but also partly at the sight of three very attractive women, one of them wearing most un-martial attire, her stomach bare and slim curves exposed. Rhian flashed the two men a smile as they descended the stairs. Sandy repressed a smile of her own at the two men's expressions, wondering if anyone, on first acquaintance, would guess correctly which of the three was not a GI. "Was there anything else?"

"Ah, yes, Commander, five minutes ago you received an urgent request from Sergeant Rajan for assistance with the new slash four weapon pods in maintenance bay five. Apparently there's a problem only you can solve. "

That didn't surprise her-until she'd placed the order for them, no one else in the CDF had even heard of the new slash-fours.

"Tell him I'll be down immediately, put my paperwork on hold. First thing to know if you're going to be my assistant, Mr Zhang fieldwork comes first."

"Yes, Commander." There was no mistaking the worship in the young man's voice. She disconnected the link, with a faint sigh of disbelief.

"Ricey," she said as they reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs, "could you take Rhi to medical and make sure she's introduced properly?"

Vanessa frowned at her, walking fast and tense. "You're not coming?"

"Raj wants some help in bay five, I'll be back before the scans are finished."

Vanessa looked less than impressed. "Sandy, you're going to get this checked out properly. I'm not going to let you just ignore it ... they put a fucking kill mechanism in your head, Sandy, and you're acting like it's not a big problem."

"Vanessa, I'm not going to put my life and my job on hold every time some new panic arises."

"This isn't just any fucking panic, Sandy!"

"I said I'll be there." Very firmly. Vanessa looked exasperated. Rhian watched on, curiously. "I'm a GI, this kind of crap just goes with the territory."

"I'm warning you, Sandy, you're not half as invulnerable as you think you are."

Sandy held up her hands. "Not now, Vanessa. Take care of Rhi, I'll be there soon."

She took the next right-hand turn, striding fast. Telling herself that she really didn't need Vanessa's kind of well-meaning hysteria right now. Vanessa worried far too much. The last time she'd caught a cold, Vanessa had called around frantically to various biomedical specialists and branches, asking after various expert opinions on synthetic immunology until finally convinced that it wouldn't be fatal. Vanessa treated her artificial nature as if it was some kind of condition, one that needed to be fought and overcome at every opportunity. Sandy didn't want to be treated like a sick child every time some inevitable complication arose. And it troubled her that Vanessa didn't seem to understand that yet.

Bay five was dark and full of shadows. Sandy walked along a ferrocrete aisle, past tall, stacked crates and idle lifters, headed for the patch of bright fluorescence ahead. The din of activity faded behind her. To one side loomed the hulking shapes of combat landmates, humanoid arms hanging limply.

"Raj!" she called as she walked, looking for the sergeant's usual spot, wedged in between crates, up to his elbows in hi-tech innards beneath the sole ceiling light. There was no reply. She reflexively uplinked to the building network, and found nothing, just static. The network seemed to be down. Not surprising; all of these lower maintenance bays had until recently served other purposes, and the hardware had only been recently rewired to the secure, interactive standards required for military-scale weapons. There had been glitches galore. She kept walking ... and saw the laser tripwire activate a split second before her shin passed through it.

She leaped as the explosion hit her, blasting her into the crates on her left in a spray of metal debris, the blurring crash of heavy impact, the rush of heat on skin. Through the swirl of flames, she sensed movement, and sprang into an explosive roll as high-velocity fire shredded the spot where she'd been, scrambling into an accelerating sprint as the fire tracked her from point-blank range. And saw, in that time-dilated rush of motion, a squat, menacing shape upon a pair of birdlike legs, twin rotary cannon for wings, each spinning with a roar of flames and fury. An AMAPS-12.

Sandy leaped to her right as fire clipped at the tail of her uniform, sailing upward over the row of crates and equipment ... and felt/saw the second targeting system acquire her from the bay's far wall. She twisted in midair, a desperate contortion as a second burst of fire snarled, echoes yammering off ceiling and walls, fire ripping past ... she reached and caught the trailing edge of a cargo crate as it sailed past below, snap-tumbling her trajectory downward just as the second burst thundered, and fire ripped the space where she would have been. Something hit her shin hard and she tumbled to the ferrocrete floor with a barely controlled crash. Flattened herself against the crate, pulling the automatic pistol from her thigh holster, for what little good it would do, and considered her options.

She was now crouched in the next aisle along the maintenance bay floor, between stacked rows of crates and equipment. From the aisle she'd just left, low-toned and dull in the lingering time-stretch of combat-sense, she could hear the first AMAPS stepping from its hiding place within an empty crate, with heavy, rhythmic thuds of metal-shod feet. From against the far wall to her left, similar sounds, as the second AMAPS stalked along the wall to a firing position down this aisle. Her pistol would cause little damage against an Auxiliary Mobile Anti-Personnel System-that armour did not come with weak spots that a mere handweapon could exploit. Barehanded she was far more confident ... but clearly the entire bay was rigged, even now she could hear the main entry doors grinding closed. Clearly the plan was to trap her in here, with these two mobile killing machines. Assuming there were only two. Likely there would be more smart-triggered explosives planted at strategic locations. Probably the maintenance bay's entire sensor grid was now tracking her ... all of the receptors were down, and she received no feedback on her own uplinks. The implants in her skull were not powerful enough to penetrate the thick ferrocrete without a booster. It was a good plan all right. She was alone in here.

The footsteps to her far left came suddenly louder. The second AMAPS appeared with an elegant brace of weight-bearing leg-joints, and swivelled its smooth-nosed torso with alarming speed to point down the aisle. Sandy dashed through a gap between crates opposite as fire shrieked and clanged down the aisle, ripping a four-wheeled cargo loader to pieces, forklift, tires and leather driver's seat pinwheeling down the aisle like pebbles. At the end of the gap between the stacked crates, Sandy realised that there was no way out, and that whatever was in the crate stacked above, it was heavy enough that it didn't move when she pushed full-force.

Jump-jets roared over the advancing clang of the second AMAPS's footsteps, then a heavy thud-the first metal monster had landed on top of the row of crates over which she herself had jumped. Sandy sensed tightbeam communication, and knew the second machine was telling the first where she was.

Machine-gun fire tore into the crate above her head with an unholy racket, Sandy scrambling backward as the occasional round tore through the crate, and hit the underside above her head. She put both hands against the crate blocking the far end and pushed, artificial muscles straining at maximum intensity, her feet scrabbling for grip. The crate remained unmoved. Something exploded and crashed inside the crate above-if its contents were high explosive and detonated at this range, Sandy knew she was dead, GI or not.

She gave up trying to move the container, and instead holstered her pistol and sledgehammered a fist straight through the metal. She got her hands into the hole, and pulled with everything she had. Metal bent and tore with a rupturing shriek, as the skin of her hands also tore, painlessly ... she kicked and made a lower foot-hole as well, which gave her more leverage. The hole became wide enough for her shoulders, and she got her arms through and pulled the rest of her body after with more brute power than acrobatic grace, and found herself wedged into a narrow space between the container wall and stacked boxes of ammunition. Heavy footsteps thudded closer. If the AMAPS fired into this crate, the explosion could take out half the bay.

She scrambled up, over the ammo boxes, wriggling through the cramped, blind space beneath the top of the storage crate, sending boxes crashing and clanging aside in her haste. Reached the far end of the container, slithered down into the narrow gap between ammo boxes and the crate side, and braced her feet and back as best she could. She pushed, maximum exertion, straining tension ... the piled ammo boxes at her back could move no further, and the crate side was as hard and solid as one would expect of an interstellar shipping container.

Sandy's entire body contorted, legs forcing inexorably outward, muscles condensing to a consistency far beyond that of most combat alloys. The container side shrieked, then clanged loudly, as the entire top and left side welding burst free, and light poured in. She leaped for that gap, grabbed the jagged edge and threw herself out, falling to half-roll on the ferrocrete floor.

Heavy cannon fire tore into the container from the end she'd entered, a shrill roar of disintegrating metal. Sandy was up and running at full speed along the aisle, finding that it ended abruptly to the right where that row of CDF shipping containers suddenly ceased, and there were instead a number of newly acquired light armour vehicles awaiting integration into CDF ranks, and, oh holy shit, she hoped whoever was behind this mess hadn't rigged one of the tanks as they'd rigged the AMAPS ...

A massive explosion shook the bay, Sandy riding the impact into a forward dive and roll as debris ricocheted at deadly velocity, followed by secondary explosions cracking like firecrackers at Chinese New Year ... Sandy raised her head beside the last of the right-side storage crates, her brain in overdrive, and surveyed the row of light tanks on the open square of floor in the maintenance bay's far corner. The damn AMAPS were powerful enough for limited operations, but they weren't incredibly bright-Federation legislation prevented the installation of any sentient Al in a military unit's CPU, even the League hadn't been keen on the idea of city-levelling hovertanks with sentient free will. Like any non-sentient computer, the AMAPS were very bad at guessing. After all, the cargo crate probably contained ammunition, that would possibly explode if fired upon at close range ... but then if there was also the very high possibility that the crate also contained the AMAPS' target, and the AMAPS' entire existence revolved around the elimination of that target, then surely the risk of an explosion was justified? League software programmers Sandy knew had been very impressed with their risk-analysis and awareness simulations, the usual set of amorphous calculations that she entirely failed to trust ... how could one mathematically calculate "risk" as an objective concept, after all, in a mostly random universe? Her own brain, or that of any sentient, was vastly superior to any nonsentient computer at calculating such vague, abstract concepts, but still she struggled. The AMAPS, now no doubt flat on its back and badly singed in the continuing explosions, was now possibly reflecting (if AMAPS could reflect) that the bright-eyed little techno-geek who'd programmed its CPU hadn't known half as much about the universe as he'd thought he had.