"They're trusting you, Cassandra," Vanessa said earnestly. "They know they're not going to get cooperation out of you until you feel accepted. They're putting you on the team. So yes, that logically means arming you. I mean hell, you're dangerous enough without weapons. They'd drawn a line on just releasing you before. Now they're crossing that line, they reckon they might as well go all the way."
"No more politicians leaning on the CSA to block me out?"
"They've been overriden." With evident pleasure, a gleam in her eyes. "It's no longer a matter for politicians. This is where the professionals come in. On emergency legislation, we can tell the politicians to go jump."
Sandy sighed, a short, reluctant heave of robed shoulders. They felt stiff, aching with unreleased tension. Vanessa waited for a reply.
"What'll I do?" she asked eventually. Reluctantly.
Vanessa shrugged. "Help. Anyway you can. Who knows? Cassandra ... this city just fell to pieces. Psychologically. It's chaos out there, the media's going completely crazy, there are lunatics on all fringes preaching war and insanity ... This is the party town, Cassandra. This isn't a political hotspot, people aren't political here. No one realised there was a problem ..."
"What is the problem?" Sandy asked. Wondering if they knew yet. Or if they'd guessed.
"Well, Ibrahim's guessing it's your precious 'escape clause'. Only it doesn't appear to make any sense ... unless they were after you, but post-analysis doesn't indicate that at all. He'll be along to talk to you about it shortly. He thought he'd give you a chance to rest for a half hour first."
Sandy ran both hands hard through her hair, trying to clear the lingering fog from her brain. She did not yet feel entirely steady on her feet. She felt disoriented. Being asked to make commitments ... She wasn't entirely sure what she felt. Or where her loyalties lay. Or if she had any loyalties at all. The deal sounded like progress. Technically. She'd told them about the escape clause, and now, unhappily, something appeared to have come of it... and that, she guessed, had done her credibility no end of good. No more drugs, no more restraints ... trust. Or something like it, if only motivated by panicked desperation. But she wanted ... hell, she didn't know what she wanted.
Perhaps it would be enough, she thought, to know that these people were worth helping. The CSA, Tanusha and Callay more broadly. They had yet to do anything for her. She was uncertain if they ever would, unless their own immediate concerns were at stake. She looked at the angular, snubbed weapon in the lieutenant's hand, and wondered if she would ever feel whatever it was that one needed to feel in order to commit oneself to such obligations. Service was her habit—was, perhaps, her truest nature. It was certainly the reason she existed. But she wanted more. More than the unthought reflex, in the Parliament ambush, to protect those obviously in the right from those obviously in the wrong. Then, she hadn't had time to think it through before acting. She wanted to know she could think, and still act, aware of all implications. She wanted to know it was worth it.
"What?" Rice asked, watching with dark, sombre eyes.
"I don't know." She shook her head wearily. "I don't know why this is happening. I don't know if it's my fault, I don't know if I owe anyone here anything, I don't know what I ought to do about it. I don't know, Vanessa. I just... don't know anything."
Vanessa considered her for a moment. Turned and placed the Chesu back on the sofa. "Look," she said, folding her arms tiredly, "we've got some clothes for you in the other room ... and some other things. Why don't you get dressed, we'll have something to eat and we can talk for a while. About Tanusha. And other things."
Sandy blinked, wondering, as she gazed at Vanessa, just how much she understood of what she was feeling. Vanessa raised an eyebrow, waiting.
"Fine." She managed a small smile. "Food would be good."
* * * *
The food, in fact, was excellent. The Presidential Quarters had its own staff, divided into housekeeping and catering—Alpha Team took care of all security regarding the President, including household security. One staff member brought them dinner on laptop trays, with the same careful presentation afforded genuine VIP guests. Outfitted in her new, comfortable jeans and CSA regulation heavy leather jacket, Sandy marvelled at the tray setting, with silverware, separate little magnetically adhesive bowls for sauce and spices, and a main meal of steaming Thai curry, one of her many favourites. And crisp, steaming spring rolls with soy sauce dip ... she loved spring rolls.
"I could get used to this," Vanessa commented on the sofa opposite, devouring a mouthful of her spaghetti. "Ever since I met you, I've been moving up in the world. I haven't been waited on since my honeymoon."
"You haven't been here before?" Sandy asked.
"Here?" Incredulously. "Hell no. SWAT-rats don't get found in places like this. The closest I've got to political power before was when the Vice President gave me my university degree ... but that was Abdul Hussein, he was several administrations ago."
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-six." Winding up another spaghetti mouthful around her fork. One of the household staff put another log on the open fire, sparks showering up the 'chimney'. "Graduated fifteen years ago. Want to know what I studied?"
"Mmm." Sandy nodded past her mouthful.
Vanessa smirked. "I did an MBA." And popped the full fork into her mouth.
"You wanted to get into business?" Sandy asked with amazement. Vanessa nodded, chewing heartily. "How well did you score?"
"Uh-uh," Vanessa waved a finger at her reproachfully, "don't cast aspersions upon my academic achievements, young lady, I was third in my year ... that's at Jayasankaran University too, that's prestige for you. I had about twenty headhunters chasing me then, big firms too. I'd be rich if I'd stuck with it."
"Why didn't you?" With fascination, her meal temporarily forgotten. Even the shock of recent ground-shaking events faded, in such surroundings, in company she was admittedly beginning to find of increasing interest. Not forgotten. Just postponed. If she hadn't learned that skill early, in Dark Star, she would have gone insane long, long ago.
"I did, for two years. One of the least emotionally satisfying things I've ever done. They're a pack of self-centred bastards, I'm telling you ... it's this city, they have their corporate ladders, their damn expensive dinner parties, trophy girlfriends and boytoys ... they don't talk about anything but work. They've got their own little egocentric world. They spend their entire lives immersed in this trivial bullshit and nothing touches them. After two years I was climbing the walls."
"But why SWAT?"
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "You know," she said, jabbing her fork for emphasis, "that's the really weird thing ... When I was young and stupid, I just thought I wanted independence and power. You know, I reckoned I'd make a stack of money, buy my own stuff, sleep with whoever I wanted ... y'see I'd always been over-independent if there's such a thing, had screaming rows with my parents since before puberty even, that kind of thing. If you'd suggested SWAT or even CSA to me when I was in school, I'd have laughed in your face—I thought authority only existed to give decent people the shits.
"Then I saw the alternative. There's a broad section of people in this city that just don't give a shit. War with the League? That's lightyears away, doesn't affect anyone here, who cares? Spreading underworld activity? Natural side effect of liberal-market policies, just grin and bear it. I mean, it's not like I thought business circles would be full of humanistic enlightenment or anything, I just didn't realise they'd be that hollow. And I didn't realise how activist I actually was until I went somewhere where I was starved of it ... it drove me mad. So I started looking around for ways to get involved in things that actually interested me ..." Pause for a sip of her drink. "... and I soon discovered that the only major organisation that has any real influence over issues I thought were important was the CSA. So I joined."
"Just like that?" Sandy was still gazing, chewing slowly on her food.
Vanessa smiled crookedly.
"Just like that. That's my motto. I'm not much on deliberation."
"They wanted people with MBAs?"
"Sure, financial crime's the ten-headed monster here, not to mention someone has to figure out their own budgets. Only I'd listed martial arts, scuba diving and general sports among my proficiencies, so they gave me the full physical and found reflexes and coordination in the top two percentile, so they sat me down and politely asked me if I'd ever thought of SWAT. So I thought, heck, accountancy, tax evasion, special weapons and tactics, what's the difference?"
Sandy actually managed a grin, much to her surprise. "You ever regretted it?"
"Sure, heaps of times. Like today. But the day after, I always find myself feeling kind of proud that I'd been there, however horrible it'd been at the time. I need that ... I need to feel I actually matter, that I'm doing something useful, whatever it is. I didn't really realise that until I went into corporate business. I didn't realise just how useless ordinary people can get. And ... God, there are times I just feel so superior to all of them." She grinned at Sandy, an abrupt flash of lively energy. "It's a huge ego thing but I love it. We have these public open days sometimes. You get all these suited wonders coming and gaping when we show 'em armour drills and demos. I ran into an old business acquaintance there once, real popular bigshot, queen of the in-crowd ... we spent fifteen minutes chatting about all the things I'd done since then, and all the things she'd done, and Christ—she walked away from there feeling absolutely, totally inadequate, it was wonderful."
Sandy took another mouthful, still smiling. And sighed. "I wish we'd had a few open days. We rarely got to see civilians."
Vanessa frowned. "You got leave, didn't you?"
"Sometimes. My team didn't think much of civilians. Never understood my fascination certainly. And there wasn't anyone else to go with ... GIs needed monitors, too."
"Even you?" Vanessa asked with a deeper frown.
"I don't officially exist, Vanessa. Regular GIs needed it—officials said they might get confused, it was for their own good. And no one wanted to admit how different I was, so I got treated like the others. With apologies, of course."
"Must have been tough."
"I suppose." She swallowed another, thoughtful mouthful, and washed it down with some hot tea. "I didn't think about it much until the last few years. It was just life, I hadn't known anything else. And my team was more important than anything straights might do. I was with them mostly."
"Where are they now?" Vanessa asked. Sandy's eyes flicked up briefly. Met Vanessa's curious gaze for a moment. She didn't want to tell Vanessa now. It was the wrong moment, and Vanessa was not an analyst. She would leave it for Ibrahim. And besides, it didn't answer Vanessa's question. She turned her attention back to her meal.
"Dead," she said softly. "All dead." There was a silence, filled only by the crackling of flames in the fireplace, where the new log was burning nicely. The warmth was pleasant on her face, even at this range.
"How?" Vanessa asked. Not 'I'm sorry' or 'how tragic', Sandy noted. Vanessa was not certain if such comments were fitting. Vanessa would not bullshit her. She appreciated that, as much as she had appreciated anything since she'd been in Tanusha. She sipped at her tea, and released a deep breath. And told Vanessa something that she had not been willing to divulge to any investigator up to this point.
"My superiors had them killed," she said quietly. "All but me." She looked up, in that silence that followed. Vanessa looked shocked. And she was the wrong personality, Sandy guessed, to make a good actor.
"What happened?"
"The war was winding down," Sandy said quietly. "My commanders separated me from my team—put me under the knife for an upgrade while my team was sent on a new mission under a different captain. It was the first time in five years any of them had been on a mission without me. They never came back."
She closed her eyes. Memories assailed her. Arguments with Colonel Dravid, a ferocious shouting-match. She'd broken his desk, smashed it clean into two pieces. Never before in her life had she snapped like that. It had been a revelation to her ... and to Colonel Dravid too, she had no doubt.
Dravid, who had always been civil enough, in a distant kind of way. A Fleet Man to the soles of his shiny black shoes. No way had Dravid volunteered for administrative duty over a bunch of steely-eyed killer-skins. With the others, he was cool, direct and totally devoid of emotion. With Captain Kresnov ... the same, only tentative.
Sometimes, Sandy could have sworn he was frightened of her. But then, every officer behaved differently around her. With some it was simple curiosity. With others it was sidelong looks and nervous, unthinking finger-tapping. Dravid hid it well. But after so long, and so many administrators, guardians, commanders and seniors-in-general, she could always tell.
She remembered Dravid's face, white and trembling with anger and fear, threatening her with court martial. Which would have been funny if she hadn't been so furious. Try explaining a court martial to her minders. To the platoon of navy psychs who analysed her debriefing reports. To the biomeds who tested her reflexes and upgraded her functions. To Captain Teig, who sometimes invited her up to bridge level for dinner and conversation—often politics, or books, or music, or of places Teig had visited in her long navy career.
They couldn't court martial their multi-billion-dollar test subject. They had far too much riding on her. But they were evidently concerned by her sudden lack of emotional restraint. Her outburst earned her a fast trip to Lieutenant-JG Ghano's couch.
"How does this make you feel?" he'd asked when she'd explained the reasons for her fury. For a psychologist, Ghano was not at all bad. He did not patronise ... much, anyway. He was direct. He even had a sense of humour. And he was Sandy's personal shrink, since she found all the others so annoying.
"How the fuck do you think I feel?" she'd retorted. "It's a fucking light metals ore-refinery, Sevi. Why do they need my team to hit a damn ore-refinery? Do they think the Federation will collapse because they suddenly don't have enough foil covers for their microwave dinners? The target selection doesn't make sense!"
"Sandy, Sandy ..." Sevi Ghano had held up his hands, as if to fend her off. "I'm not a strategist, Sandy. I don't know what to say about that..."
"Oh come one, since when am I wrong? They fucking designed me. They should damn well know what I'm capable of, and I'm telling them they're wrong!"
"They designed me?" Ghano had looked pained. "Sandy, that sounds like seriously retrograde thinking to me. You know perfectly well that no one designed your thought processes, you're as much an individual as me or anyone else on this ship." Deathly silence from his patient. "Now I'm a smart guy, I can see you're upset. You don't usually get upset like this. It's more than just the target selection, isn't it?"
"Of course it's more than the target selection." Shortly. "Intra-orbital insertions are dangerous, whatever the pinheads say." Pinheads were the intelligence number-crunchers. Mission planners—mathematicians, mostly. And every grunt's favourite target for derision and contempt. Algebra warriors. Armchair generals. Pinheads. "My team hasn't operated without me for five years. I need to be with them."
"Sandy, do you or do you not need that surgical upgrade?"
"It can wait!"
"The meds don't think so."
"When they start leading the assaults," she snapped, "then they can tell me about it."
"These are some of the most experienced, decorated, well-trained special ops soldiers in the League, Sandy," Ghano had implored her. "And most of that quality is because of you, and what they've done with you, and what you've taught them. You better than anyone should know how good they are. Do you really think that they're so vulnerable without you?"
"It's my call, dammit!" Harshly. "It doesn't matter what the fuck the stupid mission objective is—it's my team, and it's my call! They've got no business interfering like this."
"Sandy." Gently. "This isn't like you. You're usually so full of praise for your gu
ys. You talk about them like they can walk on water." Was that what he thought? Was that really what he thought? "What's troubling you? For the last year you've been tense, you've been moody... is it because of the way the war's going? It's not the end of the world, you know—we're not going to have to surrender anything. And no one blames you for anything at all. You've done magnificently. The League couldn't have achieved anything like it has without you and your guys ..." Sevi Ghano was a nice guy all right, but sometimes, like all the others, he mistook her for a child.
"You're way off target, Sevi." Blandly, and utterly unhelpful. Ghano had sat on the couch beside her. Brushed affectionately at her hair, smoothing her brow.
"Tell me what's the matter, Sandy." His hand rested upon her cheek, smooth and warm. "You'll feel better if you tell me, I promise. I want to help you, I hate seeing you this upset." And he'd leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.
"Blatant manipulation," she'd murmured. Ghano had grinned at her, leaning close.
"Of course." Another kiss, this time upon the lips. Rarely one to refuse an invitation, Sandy had responded.
They'd made love, first on the couch and then moving to Ghano's bunk, as they had numerous times before. It was hardly a regular patient/psychologist relationship, Sandy knew. And she further knew that with Ghano it was mostly because he and the entire psych department dedicated to her study knew that she—and most GIs, come to that—had precious little compunction about whom she screwed, never having been socialised in the art of being picky. Nor taught a common-sense reason to say no. And GIs were nothing if not logical... and in that sense, she was just like the others. Which was not to say that Ghano didn't like her—he did. And obviously he enjoyed having sex with her ... everyone else did, and she had a reputation to uphold. But mostly, he did it because it was the best way to get information from her. She knew this, and in those comfortable, lingering minutes that followed, she usually didn't disappoint him.
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