"Based on extremely sound reasoning," Djohan retorted. "Have you any idea what she is capable of?"
"Capability doesn't equal intent, Doctor. Do you want what she knows or not? Because if you keep looking at her like the caged lab rat, she'll keep looking at you like the evil bloody scientist with the big syringe."
"Your point is well taken, Lieutenant," Dr Djohan said coolly, in a manner that suggested he no longer had time to stand around and humour this small, excitable SWAT grunt, "but I am in no position of authority to recommend such a course. If you don't like it, I suggest you take it up with someone else. Good day." And he strode off, white coat-tails flying.
Vanessa glared at Naidu. "Well, who the hell is in authority?" Naidu only shrugged. Vanessa folded her arms and glared back toward the door. The whole thing was stupid. She felt claustrophobic enough to sympathise with the GI. Naidu watched her slightly from beneath raised brows, until she spared him another smouldering look.
"You were saying," he said, "that you hadn't noticed how pretty she is?" Vanessa snorted.
"Get a hold of your rampaging imagination, Rajeev," she said disparagingly as she strode toward the outer door, "you'll split your pants."
Chapter 4
The Callayan executive courtroom was more or less what she'd expected. It was small, bare and functional, but not in any way that suggested insignificance. Quite the opposite. It was simplicity born of security, tight, hard and impenetrable. There was no seating for an audience, or for a jury. Three judges sat behind a bench of plain, smooth wood, faces cast in blue light from the inset monitor screens before them, below line-of-sight. All were reading, studying. None spared her so much as a glance.
Preparing, Sandy noted. Listening to feeds from outside audio sources, scrolling through legal files, intelligence updates, accessing technical and medical analysts, and—no doubt—various political advisors and go-betweens. Seated alone on her single, barely cushioned chair, Sandy allowed her gaze to wander along the blank, featureless walls. Security shielding prevented her from pinpointing the telltale emissions of the surveillance cameras, but she guessed there would be at least ten or twelve individual units in a court like this one, covering every conceivable angle.
People were watching. Important people. She thought she could guess who.
Shan Ibrahim, chief of the Callayan Security Agency. His deputy ... she scanned her memory to retrieve that elusive name ... N'Darie. Ulu N'Darie. Their department heads, all four of them. Names followed. And Benjamin Grey, the State Security Chief, and his aides and seconds. Politicians, unlike the CSA, who were civil servants. She'd seen enough in the League to know the difference.
And then there was Katia Neiland, most prominently. Most prominently of everyone, in fact. It was a good bet that the Callayan President would be watching in person, whatever her tight schedule.
Security advisors, and their various key insiders and connections. The Secretary of State, Yu Weichao ... no, he was on a diplomatic visit several lightyears away. The ministers for Internal Security and the Armed Services and their aides.
And finally, Confederacy-Governor Dali. The thought gave her a mild but thoroughly unpleasant chill. Dali was the central Confederacy Government's representative on Callay. He was the communication conduit, the mediator, the bearer of the central administration's stamp of approval. Officially, he wielded no power, and resided in the Federal Embassy with his numerous staff. Officially, he was just another ambassador, despite the fancy title with its imperial-hangover overtones. But in the corridors of power, people who mattered knew better.
All the organs of power. All of the shadowy, distant people of whom she had only been aware in the abstract ... all here, watching her. And the information would be recorded. People in the Federal Administration would see those tapes. All the way up to the top.
Capable as she was, Sandy could scarcely conceive of the scale of the predicament in which she was caught. Her mind was spinning, trying to take it all in. She felt numb.
The judge in the middle looked up at her. The woman to his left leaned back in her chair. So, it was beginning.
"I, Supreme Court Adjudicator Sandeep Guderjaal, declare this closed session open," the judge intoned. "Records will indicate that the time is 10:23 local, and clearance is registered triple A."
Sandy sat alone in the middle of the room before the judges' bench, wrists manacled in a heavy, triple-reinforced brace, legs bare from the calves down beneath the white robe she wore. A man from CSA Intel had given her a pair of slippers to wear on her bare feet. They were too big, but they were warm. She guessed they might be his, Intel had been nice to her, on and off. There were techno-geeks in Intel, it was obvious. Their interviews had been long and frequent, and she had answered their questions as best she could, mostly. Some of the interviewers had been very friendly, particularly the men. It had surprised her, and it had given her hope. Only a little, but any hope at all was a precious thing.
"So," the central judge said, studying her, a slight crease to his forehead, as if surprised to look up from his contemplation and find that he was not alone. "You call yourself Cassandra Kresnov, do you?"
"I don't call myself anything. My name is Cassandra Kresnov." Her voice remained hoarse, but it was clear enough in this bare, silent room. If she listened hard enough, she fancied she could hear the faint whirr of air conditioning. Beyond that, nothing.
"In this courtroom," said the woman to the right, "you should address each panel member as Your Honour. Will this be a problem?" Her eyebrows raised expectantly. A derisive retort would have released some tension.
"No, Your Honour," Sandy said instead, meeting the woman's gaze.
"And you do realise why it is that you are here?" the same woman asked.
Sandy nodded. "My case falls within the guidelines of several articles of State Security law," she replied. "CSA must have judicial approval in order to proceed with ... whatever it is that they might wish to do with me."
"That is more or less correct, yes. How does that prospect make you feel?"
"Nervous." A short, heavy silence.
"Why does it make you nervous?" Sandy held the woman's gaze. Then allowed her eyes to stray about the room. And to one side, as if indicating the guards who stood against the wall behind her. Back to the woman.
"Because I feel I have a lot to fear. I'm hoping that you can tell me otherwise." There was no immediate reply. The woman looked down at her screen.
"Captain Kresnov," said the man on the left. He was a big, stern-looking man. His look was serious enough to be almost menacing. "What are you? How would you describe yourself?"
A deep breath. It hurt her gut, and pulled tight at her bandages. "I suppose the simple answer is that I am an artificial human being, Your Honour."
"Designed for what purpose?" Trap. Sandy felt her stomach tense. Her throat was dry again. She wished she had a table on which to rest a glass of water.
"I feel I should remind you that the original design purpose does not necessarily correlate with the precise nature of the finished ..."
"Just answer the question, please. What did your designers have in mind when they made you?"
"Money, probably." The man's face darkened.
"Are you not prepared to answer the question?"
Sandy took a breath. "I was created to be a soldier. As you well know, Your Honour."
"But you're much more than that, aren't you?" The man's tone was hard, darkened by some unnamed emotion. "Your official designation is GI for General Issue, but your unofficial League designation is HK, isn't it? GI-5074J-HK. Can you tell me what the HK stands for?"
Sandy stared at him. "Do all Supreme Court judges waste time with rhetorical questions?"
"HK," the man continued forcefully, "stands for Hunter Killer. Does it not, Captain Kresnov?"
"It does, Your Honour. But someone else invented that label, and its relevance ..."
"Someone else invented you, Ms Kresnov. Someone else inv
ented you for the sole purpose of killing as many of us flesh and blood human beings as technologically possible, didn't they?"
Sandy blinked slowly. Her nerves were settling surprisingly fast. Her vision fixed unerringly on the big, square-jawed man with the ruddy face. Eyes half-slid unconsciously into infrared, tuning through the spectrums. Targeting.
"And so the next question, Your Honour, is how should I achieve this objective that you have set for me?" Very calmly.
"Please explain what you mean," Judge Guderjaal cut in before the big man could respond. Sandy's gaze did not waiver even a fraction.
"I mean that creating the perfect 'killing machine' has been attempted before, in a literal, technological sense. But most artificial intelligences cannot tactically coordinate and process abstract data on the same level as humans. The robot soldiers I've seen in perhaps a dozen TV programs and movies since I've been a civilian in reality are little more than cannon fodder.
"I am not a 'killing machine' I was designed specifically to think laterally and creatively, well beyond the level of basic abstraction. The only biomechanical entity known to humans that can achieve this is still the human brain. My brain is a copy, an imprint, of the original article. I have the tactical skills required of a soldier, but as an automatic side-effect I also have emotions, and personality, to the same extent as any person in this room. In fact, I do not believe I could be the tactician I am without that emotional input. That is my creative side. Without creativity, I'm just a target."
"You mean to say," the woman asked, "that emotions such as fear are actually of assistance to your combat performance? I'm not certain that that makes sense to me." Suspiciously.
Sandy looked at her, vision still tracking. Closed her eyes softly, restoring normal vision. Took another deep breath. Don't let the combat instincts take over, she told herself. Don't intimidate them. Be harmless.
It wasn't easy.
"I have good control," she replied. "I process a lot of data in a combat environment. I tend to get lost in it, and the fear does not register. But then, many human soldiers have reported precisely the same thing."
"How many people have you killed?" the big man asked her coldly. Sandy's train of thought was diverted for a brief instant, wondering at his allegiances, his connections, his supporters. Wondering who it was that the datalink in his ear and the comp feed on his bench were connected to, outside the courtroom. They were feeding him information even now. And probably, she realised, he would be trying to get a particular response from her, later to be used for his own purposes. Or theirs.
"I have no idea."
"No idea? You, the product of the highest technological capacities the human race has ever devised, have no idea? Is your memory deficient, perhaps? Your recording processes damaged during recent events?"
Sandy blinked slowly, her eyes calm, blue and steady. "That is four questions, Your Honour. Shall I answer each of them individually, or take them as one single rhetorical outburst?"
The man's gaze deepened to a glare. "How many people have you killed, Captain Kresnov?"
"I believe I have already answered that question. I said that I had no idea. My accurate recollection of events is limited to those matters that I find necessary or helpful. A bodycount will serve neither purpose."
"You don't feel that the lives of the people you have killed are worth your bothering to recall?"
"I am quite certain I did not say that. I said I do not find those recollections helpful to my present situation. On the contrary, I find them extremely disturbing and depressing."
"You don't look particularly disturbed or depressed from where I'm sitting, Captain Kresnov."
"Respectfully, Your Honour, as a supreme court judge, you should know better than to judge by mere appearances."
The big man continued to glare at her, eyes hard within the shadows of his brows in the dim light. Sandy shifted spectrums slightly, saw hot blood pulsing in his neck veins, spreading through his temples and cheeks.
The female judge interrupted. "You were operating with Dark Star for nine years, is that correct?" Sandy tuned back to standard visual, looking at the woman. She had light brown skin, black hair and a prominent nose. But not Indian. Arabic, Sandy guessed.
"That is correct, Your Honour. I joined when I was five at the starting rank of lieutenant, was made captain when I was six and went AWOL when I was fourteen. That was one year ago."
"And over that nine-year period," the woman continued, "how many operations did you personally conduct?"
"Twelve as a lieutenant, nine of those as second-in-command. Seventy-eight as captain."
"And in how many of those operations did you come into direct contact with the enemy?"
"Approximately half, Your Honour."
The Arabic woman's frown was slightly quizzical. "Approximately?"
"Definitions of 'direct contact' vary, Your Honour," Sandy explained. "Kills can be made in an operation without the other side's commanders being entirely aware of it. Degrees of contact vary. I estimate that on approximately forty-five occasions direct contact did occur. But I leave out of that total several instances open to variable interpretation."
"Either way, Captain, that's rather a lot of firefights, wouldn't you say?"
Sandy nodded slowly. "Yes, Your Honour. It is a lot."
"You are good at firefights, I presume? You handle yourself well?"
Sandy nodded again, this time reluctantly. "Yes, Your Honour." She sensed no overt animosity from this woman. And yet Sandy had no doubts of which judge she found most intimidating, between her and the big man to the right.
"I see." The judge briefly studied the screen before her. Blue light played across her tanned features. "You and your assault team coordinated through neural linkups, did you not?"
"We did, yes."
"I'd imagine that given your other physical, sensory and psychological advantages, this single unit coordination must have made your team extremely difficult for most mere human soldiers to oppose effectively, in a combat situation. In fact, it seems to me that your unit would have almost an unfair advantage. Would you agree with that assessment?"
Another reluctant nod. "That is the design purpose of most military technology, Your Honour."
"Indeed." A pause. The woman continued to read off the screen before her. Sandy's mind raced over the possible implications of what she was asking. Or what she might be reading from the screen before her. Intelligence, no doubt—mostly military. Intelligence on Dark Star. Then she looked up, her expression mild and purposeful. "Will I have heard of any of these operations?"
If your security clearance is as high as I think it is, Sandy thought, you can read about any of them whenever you wish. But she didn't say it. And said instead, after a moment's thought, "My unit was very active around Goan just three years ago."
"Which operations exactly?"
Sandy shook her head, wearily. "For the same reasons I gave to my CSA interviewers, I refuse to give any answers regarding my past military operations that are any more specific than those I have already given."
"Your continued refusals to cooperate have been noted, Captain," the big man said coldly.
"I'm very happy to respond to any questions directly relating to Callayan security," Sandy continued, addressing the Arabic judge as if her compatriot had never spoken. "My wartime record is a matter for Federal Intelligence, however, and does not directly involve Callayan security issues at all. I fear that sharing wartime information at this moment might entangle me directly in a lot of Federal politics I'd really rather avoid at this time. I appear to be in deep enough water as it is."
Guderjaal in particular, she noted, appeared to concede that argument. She guessed that, in his position, he knew a thing or two about Federal politics. He leaned forward, elbows on the bench before him, and looked at her from under serious, underlit brows.
"What have you done here, Captain?" he asked, changing the subject entirely.
Th
e question caught her off guard. "Your Honour?"
"Here in Tanusha. What have you done here since you've arrived?"
"Well..." Still puzzled. "I believe my job interviews have already been documented by the CSA agents ..."
"No, no." Guderjaal shook his head with a faint trace of impatience. "Aside from your work. Hotel records show that you spent a great deal of time away from your room, more time than would have been required merely for your interviews. What information we have gathered about FIA activities indicates that your tail was first obtained while visiting the Tanushan Gallery of the Arts. Do you like art?"
Guderjaal had thrown her completely. It was not the line of questioning she had expected in this place. Her pulse rate accelerated and she forced herself to calm, remembering the sensor plug and the monitor readings. Civilian judges, civilian law, Federation concepts. At any second, she was in danger of straying far out of her depth in these treacherous, unfamiliar waters. It scared her.
She blinked, forcefully refocusing her attention. "Yes." Unable for a brief moment to keep the puzzlement from her face. "Yes, I do like art."
"Why?" She blinked again. Guderjaal seemed perfectly serious. He had a live, cooperative GI before him. Command level, at that. An unmissable opportunity. Fear flared, and she forced it back down. The judges, however, all looked at their monitor screens, as if on cue.
"This line of questioning disturbs you?" Guderjaal asked, looking up through narrowed eyes. It was the sensor plug. It was reading her reactions. It was unpleasant and invasive and there was nothing she could do about it.
"This entire courtroom disturbs me, Your Honour. Your probe in the back of my head disturbs me. Everything, in fact, about the past few days disturbs me very, very much." Her voice, which had been rock steady, now held the faintest of quavers.
"Why do you like art, Captain Kresnov?" Guderjaal was evidently not in any mood for mercy. His eyes bored deep, like the hidden lenses, laying her bare.
Crossover Page 8