"Weather looks bad today, Philip," he said over the keening engines, "I want Eagles Five and Six on five-minute standby for the duration, recovery turnaround asap."
"I'm already on it. You've got the frequencies?"
"I have." He gave Hayland a pat on the arm as he walked past, headed for the nearest SWAT unit. Lieutenant Vanessa Rice sat on the deck, talking to one of her troops—Agent Devakul, Ibrahim saw—rifle propped butt down at her side, and nearly as tall as she was, seated. Saw him coming and rose smoothly to her feet, mirrored by the others, a whining clatter of armour and heavy weapons.
"How much sleep did you get?" was his first question, glancing about to include them all in his query.
"They got six hours, average," Rice replied. Her attractive, fine features looked incongruously delicate above the solid bulk of her armoured shoulders. "I had about three, but hey, that's my lot in life."
"Poor baby," said Agent Sharma from nearby. Rice smiled. She looked subdued, Ibrahim thought, eyeing her critically. Subdued, but relaxed. The other teams looked tense, businesslike. SWAT Four looked quite calm by comparison. Ibrahim knew very well that Rice could take much of the credit for that—her team adored her and followed her positive example with relentless dedication. Today, he needed them. He needed people whose loyalty he could rely on. He trusted Rice. Her priorities were moral more than technical. Today he needed that of his closest people more than he ever had before.
"You're good for it?" he pressed.
"Wouldn't be here if I wasn't," Rice replied. Ibrahim gave her a smack on one armoured arm.
"You're in Eagle One with me. Load up." SWAT Four moved out with barely a comment, and Ibrahim walked on to the next team, doing the circuit. A minute later N'Darie intercepted him as he strode toward his flyer.
"Chief, I've just had a message straight from Dali. He wants direct uplink access, says he needs to be kept abreast of any new developments." Another man might have cursed. Ibrahim thought about it for a moment as they walked, readjusting the com-interface at his belt then rezipping his navy-blue CSA jacket.
"Tell him we are concerned about the integrity of all outsourced links," he said then, half shouting over the engines. "Tell him we have evidence that throws that integrity into doubt and we're concerned about leaks. Give him secondhand reports by the minute, as he requires. No direct access." N'Darie frowned, walking fast to keep up.
"And when he protests?"
"Quote him regulations," Ibrahim said blandly as they passed the port nacelle. "Any regulations. And for Allah's own good sake, say nothing of Kresnov or her information source. Imply nothing, suggest nothing." N'Darie nodded her complete understanding.
"I'll keep everything as tight as I can. This won't be easy."
"No," Ibrahim agreed as they reached the rear doors, "it won't be at all easy. We shall do the best we can." N'Darie left, and Ibrahim climbed the rear ramp into the main hold where SWAT Four were already hooked in and waiting.
It was, Ibrahim was well aware, a most delicate set of circumstances. By far the most delicate of his professional career, and probably of the CSA's entire history. He knew that the quarry was about to act. It was both a problem to be solved and an opportunity to be exploited. But the present commander-in-chief was most likely a part of the problem, and his aides were almost certainly directing the quarry personally, whether Dali knew of it or not. How to conduct an operation against the interests of the Acting President and not let the Acting President know about it? It would not, as his second had stated, be easy.
He sank into the command chair with a sharply exhaled breath. Did his restraints, ran his bank of display graphics through a systems check, as about him the rest of the command crew did similar, announcing various systems' status and safeing their connections.
The FT-750 was a bigger flyer than those used on SWAT's standard operations, with extended range and payload plus impressive multi-role capabilities. SWAT Four had room enough for weapons-drill amid the harness straps and storage lockers toward the rear. The front half was pure Command and Control, multiple observation posts, systems interface, communications, surveillance, all run by their regular people, familiar faces beneath headsets and eye-wear, bathed in screen light. CSA flyers had been on standard patrol above the Tanushan skylanes every hour since the attack on the President. No one on the ground would notice the change. This was just another standard rotation ... only the payload was somewhat altered.
Surrounded by the familiar competent preparations, Ibrahim allowed himself to reflect upon the circumstances that had brought him to this moment. It was so very easy to forget the convoluted history that lay behind the recent turbulent events. Of the two great powers of humanity, and their differing perceptions of what it meant to be human. The League, believing in science as the saviour, charting a new direction for the species. They were the self-appointed trailblazers. The visionaries. The ones who had attained a new enlightenment, out among the new worlds, the new frontiers of human civilisation. They had escaped the shackles of Earth-bound conservatism to pursue their vision far from the intellectual censorship of the Federation. For the great minds behind the League, a ban on scientific research and development was akin to a ban on subversive political ideologies. It was censorship, plain and simple, and they steadfastly believed in intellectual freedom in all its varied dimensions. For its preservation, no cost was too great.
And then there was the Federation. The League accused Federation worlds of being mere puppets of Old Earth, children clutching to the apron strings. But that, Ibrahim knew, was a massive oversimplification. In the Federation, cultural roots remained critical. One only need spend a few days in Tanusha, walking among the historical recreations of its many districts, to see the importance Tanushans placed upon remembering the old, preserving it, living it. The future was not complete without a past. And without a clear understanding of one's past, there could be no clear perception of one's future.
Ibrahim could recall with great clarity the various lines and verse from the Koran, and even the Afghani and Iranian folk tales, that his parents had read to him when he was a boy. The tales of morality, of purpose and human dignity. He did not believe such things were insignificant. He did not believe it was right or good for any human society to erase such things from its collective memory and start anew. The path had been walked upon for thousands and thousands of years. There was no 'new beginning' There was only the next stretch of path, winding ever onward, building the future upon the foundations of the past.
The League, of course, saw this as a clear sign of flawed intellect. Culture, they reasoned, was so frequently the prison walls within which reason was trapped. And like missionaries of old, they spread their word, the word of reason, to where it was most needed. Knowledge, before which the old ignorance and superstitions would dissolve like ice beneath the summer sun. They were the enlightened. It was their mission and their purpose to bring their enlightenment to all of humanity. And once they saw the light, surely, surely reason and logic would follow.
Even now, as the rear doors closed, and the engine noise faded to a muted whine, Ibrahim had to suppress a shudder of disgust. He was by nature so very, very wary of a Great Cause. There had been people of his own religion, and from his own region of the Old World, who had once had a Great Cause of their own. They had not been so different from himself in many ways, had believed many of the same things and shared the same tastes and values, but with no sense of tolerance or moderation. Their Great Cause had brought much bloodshed and suffering, and all these hundreds of years later their legacy was not one of pride, but of shame.
The League also believed in a great many good, decent things. They were the progressives, the freethinkers, the radicals of their day. History favoured such people. They had brought great change, and great innovation, and the present was all the greater for their inspiration. But now, Ibrahim believed, the pendulum had swung too far. The Great Cause had become merely an ideology, and ideology, Ibrahi
m knew only too well, was the antithesis of reason. He was student enough of history, especially that of his own cultural roots, to know that for a very certain fact.
And it was Kresnov, he thought now, who had brought it all into focus for him in these recent, difficult days. Kresnov, who supposedly represented the pinnacle of the League's technological advancement. She was theirs, in body if not in spirit. And yet she had abandoned them, after they had abandoned her. They valued what Kresnov was, but they did not value her. Nor did they value the others of her kind, her friends among them.
It was the Cause. In the face of a Great Cause, the individual was always the first to suffer. The Great Cause consumed individuals as a Southern Plains tornado consumed trees. It did not matter that the Cause was in the name of humanity itself—any such mass ideology, even that conducted in the name of individual rights and freedoms, would sacrifice anyone and anything to further its own grand purpose.
The contradiction was, as always, quite stunning. Especially when this adventure was carried out in the name of logic and reason. But that was not the worst of it. Most ironic of all, to Ibrahim's mind, was that Kresnov was far more akin, in spirit and personality, to the Federation than ever she had been to the League. She questioned the questioners. She sought to understand the Cause. To dissect and examine the ideology, the reasoning that had given birth to her, the Cause that was her own very existence.
Seeking her roots, she had found them here, in a place that would never have seen fit to create her in the first place. Had found a welcome of sorts. People who acknowledged her individuality, however much it frightened them. Individual rights, after all, were the main grounds upon which the Federation opposed GIs in the first place—all sentient beings had inalienable individual rights, and so the creation of a being whose innate abilities extended beyond what society's rights were prepared to grant another individual ... would be an automatic breach. The Federation believed all people were equal. To create a person who was both more equal (with enhanced capabilities) and less equal (with predesignated social roles) threatened all the shared values upon which the Federation was based.
That any GI was an individual and had rights was something that most Callayans, and Federation people generally, would concede, however reluctantly. That was the greatest irony of all. The League championed Kresnov because she was 'good for humanity', but ignored her humanity in the process. The Federation opposed Kresnov because she was 'bad for humanity', but in doing so nonetheless recognised her as a real person.
This insight left Ibrahim in no doubt of which side he was committed to, heart and soul. And it made him realise, in a sudden flash of clarity, that he did not oppose the existence of those like Kresnov because it was 'bad for humanity' but because it was bad for Kresnov. He felt great pity for her. Hers was not an easy lot. She had never had any choice but to be what she was, and it quite simply was not fair. He did not hate her for the great destruction she had doubtless wrought upon members of the Federation in her past. He only wished that she could one day find some peace, and the happiness that she so obviously craved. She was in the right place for it, that was certain. And here, unlike in the League, she would never be asked to do anything that another human would not do herself.
Equality. It was the oldest of human ideals. And those who forgot their past were doomed to forget why it had become such a grand ideal in the first place.
The rising engine roar cut into Ibrahim's thoughts as, with a deep thrumming of thruster fans, the flyer lifted smoothly from the pad.
"I just hope our GI's got her head screwed on straight about her buddy," Agent Chow said over local intercom, the flyer rocking slightly as it climbed clear of the surrounding buildings. There were no windows along the fuselage, but everyone had taken this trip so often that it made no difference.
"Don't sweat it," Vargas replied, eyes fixed on his monitor bank. "She's the only hook we've got right now, just go with it."
"No backup either," Chow muttered. "I don't like it."
"She'll be fine," came Rice's voice, switching from her usual TacCom frequency. "You can trust her—she's a pro."
"Her professionalism isn't my problem," Chow replied. "I just want to know the same thing I always want to know if we're working with someone new—when the shit goes down, whose side is she on?"
"I said you can trust her," Rice repeated firmly.
"LT, this is her long-lost buddy here," Chow retorted as the thrust changed direction, acceleration building. "She may like us plenty, she may be trustworthy as hell, but if that were your best friend with his head on the block, and you had to choose us or him, what would you do if you were her?"
Silence from Rice. Chow was a complainer by nature, but on this occasion he was right. They all knew it.
"Then let's just make certain it doesn't come down to a choice," Ibrahim told them all very calmly. He didn't mind constructive conversation on the job. And there had been so little time to prepare, his people's minds were still catching up with the issues at hand. "The goal is to get them both out of this alive and healthy. As long as our goals remain concurrent, we're all on the same side. That's the task."
* * * *
At that moment, the subject of controversy on board Eagle One was figuring out the intricacies of Tanusha's road rules.
Sandy was on a motorcycle. Her cashcard had given her ample credit for the rental and her CSA badge had convinced the rental operator of her competence. That she'd never ridden one before in her life was a minor detail she had neglected to mention.
She was cruising now along a highway that her link-access map identified as Rama Five, ablaze with streetlight in the near-dawn. The bike was simple enough to ride—it was a Prabati W-9, hydrogen powered, large, comfortable and lightweight. Navscreen indicators gave a constant head-up display across the low windshield, a 3D projection that interfaced with the helmet visor. Warning indicators informed her of the relative positioning of surrounding traffic, cars behind, to the sides and ahead, with highlighted warning zones and projected movements ... motorcycles were, Sandy had discovered from the rental operator, a bone of contention among Tanushan city planners.
All road traffic was, of course, regulated. Highway and freeway travel was an entirely hands-off affair. Manual operated only on back streets, and even there rarely, all speeds and trajectories monitored on the central grid. Motorcycles however, unlike cars, would fall over if driven by remote. They needed to remain under rider control at all times. Many planners, the rental operator had told her, wanted them banned from Tanusha ... 'road toll' was an expression that provoked horror and disgust in the planning department. More people were killed in Tanusha each year by lightning strikes than traffic accidents. But most of those deaths, the planners pointed out, involved motorcycle riders and pedestrians.
Sandy leaned through a gentle 100 kph turn, eyeing the road ahead through the alert-sensitive display, trajectories and ranges shifting unobtrusively across her visor. Repressed an amused smile at the regulatory overkill. All those silly graphics just got in the way. She could calculate everything she needed with plain vision. She gave the throttle a gentle nudge toward the 110 kph ceiling, a sudden break in power transmission, the engine whine abruptly fading as the buffers cut in. She didn't like it. Fortunately the bike had an independent CPU with interlink barriers, which would last about three seconds if she wanted them gone. She hoped she wouldn't need it, but she was not in the habit of taking chances with equipment.
Crackle of mild static on audio ... she winced slightly as the encoded frequency locked in, a brief, squeezing pressure.
"Cassandra," came Ibrahim's voice, internal audio, direct input to her eardrum. It always sounded slightly strange on an unfamiliar frequency, through an unfamiliar code. "We have your bike on traffic-scan, you're doing the near side of legal down Rama Five, left lane, Hammersley District, confirm?"
"That's me," she replied aloud, voice muffled to her own ears in the helmet. Silent replies took prac
tice, and vocal ones had the same result. "The speed buffers look a little vulnerable on this thing, just make sure the cops don't start chasing me if I have to break them."
"I copy that, we'll kill the alert if it comes, but we don't want to tell anyone directly who you are in case we're being hacked ... nothing will make bad guys more suspicious than an on-duty CSA agent on a motorcycle."
It was good thinking, Sandy thought. Like it was good thinking to barrier-monitor the dealership she'd taken it from under CSA identification. The dealer had seemed like a decent guy, but if he flapped his mouth they'd cut him off. Ibrahim's team knew this city's network far better than she did.
"Any word yet from Angel?" Angel was her idea—Mahud's codename. She wondered if he'd appreciate the humour. And thought no, probably not.
"He's still on standby," she replied, edging into a convenient space in the right lane, flash of sensor warning as she crossed the dividing line. Wind roared and flapped at her jacket, pressing her body.
Mahud's situation was tricky. He was alone. He didn't know where his 'team-mates' were. It was not his operation—he was only along for the ride at this point. When he was wanted, he would be sent to a set of coordinates. What happened then, when and how the team would reassemble from their scattered, covered positions throughout the city, was up to someone else entirely.
Sandy thought she knew who. Remembered cold, hard eyes, shoulder-length dark hair. A pistol levelled at her chest. "Get out of this one, Skin." The interviews they'd conducted on those FIA personnel they'd captured had revealed nothing ... they claimed Federate business and spun a conveniently simple story about tracking a dangerous League fugitive for 'security reasons' that CSA personnel could not be privy to under the regulations ... and claimed, obviously enough, to be working alone. Whoever that man was, he did not like GIs. Surely he was not happy to be working with one.
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