Originator

by Joel Shepherd

  Cops moved aside as Poole stepped in, retreating up the side aisle to make space. Poole took off his helmet, as did his group, spreading around the table to Singh’s left.

  “Commander Naik,” Singh said to the senior policeman, “these are Agents Poole, Kiet, Dahisu, and Trong. Agent Poole is mine, SWAT One, the others are from different SWAT teams.” All GIs, of course. Commander Naik studied them warily—the very picture of a senior Tanushan policeman, brown, moustachioed, stocky.

  “Agents,” said Naik grimly. “Did they make a mistake by parking over the river?”

  On the holodisplay was the maglev line over this bend of the Shoban River in Safdajung District. It ran alongside a road bridge, now empty of traffic, cordoned on both ends by lines of police. Directly in the middle of the river, an eight-car maglev train was parked, its ends nearly spanning from bank to bank. All its lights were off, big windows polarised. The terrorists within had gained command of the train’s systems, and police and CSA concurred that it was safer to let them.

  “No mistake,” said Poole. “It gives us clear line of sight, but the biggest threat to them is immediate access. If we get in amongst them at close range we can take them apart. Their current position makes that difficult.”

  “Difficult or impossible?” asked Naik.

  “That depends,” said Poole, looking at Singh.

  “We’ve confirmed they have deadman switches,” said Singh. Naik had no command authority here, despite the police’s overwhelming numbers. The use of force on this level, in aid of domestic security, was exclusively reserved for CSA. CSA needed police to clear the streets, get civilians out of harm’s way, coordinate emergency services and media, all the things CSA were not equipped to manage. But the cops would only join the shooting if things went seriously wrong.

  “Which means they’ve thought this out,” said Kiet, contemplating the hologram. The view was wide enough to include the nearby towers and thus all the most obvious sniper spots. “We can’t just shoot them.”

  “That would be hard anyway,” said Singh. “They’ve shielded their uplinks, we can’t reverse hack, so we’ve no way of figuring where they are in the train. With ten of them the odds of one or more surviving a simultaneous sniper strike are very high, and with all their explosive vests linked, it just takes one survivor to detonate all of them.”

  “Eyes inside?” asked Dahisu.

  “They’ve control of the train’s systems,” said Singh, seated at the table in full armour. Slim with intelligent eyes and a love of practical jokes, Arvid Singh was not exactly the image of the macho Sikh-warrior beloved in the movies. But, Poole had learned, he was much more effective. “We could probably hack it, but they’d see. It’s not wise to underestimate these guys, they’re almost certainly former Pyeongwha internal security, their capabilities will be advanced, particularly given their uplinks.”

  Because most Pyeongwha citizens used Neural Cluster Technology, of a sort banned in the rest of the Federation.

  “What’s your plan then?” Poole asked.

  “We can use SoundBlast to make that train ring like a bell,” said Singh. “It’ll disorient, probably damage eardrums, which in turn affects balance. It won’t kill, so the deadman switches are out of play. It should stop anyone from hitting their vest triggers for a good ten seconds.”

  “Should?” asked Kiet. Kiet was former League Army. All his previous, extensive weapons experience was lethal. Nonlethals were new to him and regarded with scepticism.

  “So we’ve a ten-second window,” Poole summarised. “To be safe, we should drop that to six.”

  “That’s up to you,” Singh said pointedly.

  “Six?” Poole asked, looking around at his small group. The others thought about it, looking at the hologram. And nodded slowly. “Six seconds.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Commander Naik, “there are nearly a thousand civilians on that train, at least sixty children among them. You’re going to blow their eardrums out?”

  “And in the process save their lives,” Poole replied. “Hearing can be repaired. High explosive leaves a more permanent mark.”

  Naik nodded slowly. “I’ll alert the hospitals.”

  Arvid entered the apartment tower lobby a few minutes later, past a couple of cops keeping guard, and into the main elevator. He shoved tacnet visuals aside long enough to take a call. President Raza appeared on his visor display, looking worried.

  “Commander, I’ve had your plan explained to me. Are there any other options?”

  “There are always other options, Mr President, but we’re all of the opinion here that none of them are as good.”

  Raza was Interim President of Callay, as everyone on Callay was “interim” right now. The previous President, Vikram Singh, was under house arrest as his trial for treason continued—the “Trial of the Century,” Callayan media called it, a claim complicated by the even bigger one underway against the previous Grand Council leadership. Raza had been a constitutional scholar at Ramprakash University, plucked from his post by Callayan Governor Thomas for the interim role, the Governor himself having declined the position. All constitutionally feasible, and Raza had been a member of Callayan Parliament for ten years, at one point serving as Attorney General. Arvid remembered him vaguely from then, CSA was at least partially a law enforcement agency, and a lot of senior agents had dealt with Raza before in that capacity and considered him solid. But only vaguely, ten years ago seemed another universe.

  “I’m inclined to try further negotiations,” said Raza, looking very worried. “They are talking, that seems a good sign there might be something to gain from further discussion.”

  “Well, that’s your prerogative, Mr President,” said Arvid, as the elevator took him up to the penthouse. “But I’m sure your psych experts are telling you the same as ours—this is Compulsive Narrative Syndrome gone crazy, these guys are unredeemable fanatics, and negotiations for them are a tactic to buy time and a means to get their message out for propaganda purposes against the Federal occupation of Pyeongwha. They’ve no intention at all of actually listening to what we say, and their brains are by this stage structurally incapable of absorbing a pattern-anomalous argument anyway. All the Pyeongwha radicals we’ve dealt with so far have been unstable; the longer we wait to implement a solution on our terms, the greater the odds one of them will just decide to end it on theirs.”

  “What is your assessment of our chances of success? Doing it your way?”

  For a moment, Arvid mulled which answer to give. The correct answer was that he didn’t have enough data to make that judgement—if he’d missed some vital information and it was all a trap, then the chances of success were zero; he just wasn’t aware of it. Ditto if these guys weren’t as good as their assessment, the chances were more like 100 percent. Professionals didn’t deal with odds, they dealt with available options, and when the best available option presented, they took it and hoped.

  But politicians worked by a different calculus, and he had to give a number. Well, he told himself, when talking to a politician, pick a political number. Somewhere between zero and a hundred. “I’d think eighty percent, Mr President.”

  Raza still looked worried. And well he should, given the nine hundred– plus people on the train, whose fates all hung on what he decided next. “Should we call Commander Kresnov?”

  “Mr President, you can do that if you want, but I’ve worked with Kresnov for as long as she’s been on Callay, and I can tell you that she’ll say this is a team job, and the inclusion of certain individuals, even individuals as capable as her, won’t make any difference. It could even hurt. I have the team I need in place, they’ve all trained together; putting an outsider in the mix would complicate things unnecessarily.”

  The elevator opened on the penthouse, eye-wateringly expensive in Tanushan style, a wide living quarters opening onto wide windows and balcony with river views, many towers beyond, all ablaze with urban light. Arvid walked past several CSA Agent
s on surveillance, back from the edge, where small units on tripods peered over the railing to compile a complete scan for tacnet. Tacnet’s command function showed another twenty such scanners now surrounding the stranded train, on either side of the river, at all heights and angles in case one saw something the others missed.

  “Commander Singh,” said the President of Callay. “How long until you’re ready to move?”

  “Seven minutes, Mr President.” He crouched on the balcony, flipped up his visor to get a look at the scene with real eyes. Sometimes there was no beating the old Mark I eyeball . . . even if his were technically at least Mark III by now. A commander could become too dependent on simulations. Actually looking at the thing made the brain realise exactly just how hard the thing was they were trying. Hard for normal humans, anyhow. “We will delay if you request it, but as I’ve said, in the CSA’s expert opinion, the longer we wait the greater the likelihood of failure.”

  “Commander, please hold for a moment.”

  Great, thought Arvid, measuring distances by eye below and trying to reconcile them with what tacnet showed him, with all its electronic certainty. Another thoughtful politician. “The problem with these guys,” his previous commander and mentor Vanessa Rice had told him, “is that they spend their whole career arguing some perfect model of civilisation, and when they’re dumped in a position of genuine power, they discover it’s all a fucking mess and they can’t make a decision because it doesn’t look like anything they thought they knew.”

  No good and bad decisions, buddy, Arvid thought, just bad and worse. Now hurry up before you pick worse by default. Tacnet showed him units in position, everything centering on the train. You’d struggle to coordinate something like this, with regular humans. With GIs, new capabilities emerged, not just on the individual level, but on the tactical and systemic.

  Green came two minutes after the all-clear. Poole leapt from his rooftop, jumpjets kicking in as the suit powered into the night sky above the river. The kick was nothing like the 10G boost from an assault hopper—these were little modular add-ons to regular armour—but thanks to hopper practise, everyone knew how to use them.

  Halfway toward the train, the riverside sniper cannon fired, high explosive, shaped charge calculated to hit the curve of the train’s tubular roof at a precise angle. Poole cut the jets and fell toward his projected opening . . . with a flash multiple explosions ripped the train, sideways force directing the metal to peel up and out, a spray of shrapnel across black river waters, and arcing skyward, away from the train interior. Visuals indicated high-intensity vibrations as SoundBlast hit, a double smash to eardrums in the train, nausea and vomiting to follow.

  Poole’s jets fired, his opening matching perfectly, and hit the hole at a tidy 90 kph. Caught the ragged edge of the roof with an armoured fist, rifle in right hand, a cluster of passengers across open floor and seats below . . . and here an armed and vested man on the floor, Poole put a bullet in each leg and one in an arm, twisting from the dangling arm to find another, but an entry farther up shot that target first, and the next target along was on top of civvies giving no clear shot.

  Poole dropped, bounced, and scrambled amongst screaming, writhing bodies, switched ammo-feed and shot out a window with hollowpoints designed for the purpose, grabbed the terrorist and threw him out. The vests had been identified as limited range, if a wearer’s heart stopped when he hit the water, the twenty-meter range would limit detonations to one.

  He searched for more targets and found none—all down. Six were still on the train though. “Can’t cover all six,” he said tersely. “Two more overboard.”

  Dahisu and Kiet grabbed one each, both wounded, and tossed them out. Several seconds later, explosions from below. Human “rights” observers would be troubled by that, but fuck them, even wounded a human bomb could self-detonate, and hostage safety came first. The deadman switches precluded uplink triggers, luckily, though these guys had probably discounted the latter, given Tanusha’s known ability to reverse hack uplinks.

  “HQ, target green, move the train now.” Immediately the train began to move, terrorist-imposed restraints wiped out, the carriages headed for the nearest station a kilometre away, where emergency services were clustered waiting. Poole grabbed a wounded terrorist, twisted his good arm so he had no chance at the two-handed trigger, and dragged him up the train, yelling at bewildered, deafened civilians amidst the smoke and wind to get down the other end of the train, gesturing with his free arm. They swirled past him as he went the other way, upstream against the flow, some carrying screaming children, others holding up frightened friends, family, and elderly and all commendably functional, considering how all his training emphasized the possible hysteria. Terrified and in pain, but functional, perhaps knowing instinctively what had just happened, and the reputation of Tanusha’s new security assets, and having confidence that their chances of survival were now pretty good. The way they looked at him as they passed suggested as much—relief, astonishment, even worship, mixing with the fear.

  As the train reached the station, they had all the targets piled at the train’s far end, cuffed and twisted irrespective of injuries, guarded by Dahisu and Trong, ready to put more nonfatal holes in them if they more than twitched. Poole stood in the long space of open, tubular train between human bombs and clustered passengers down the far end, weapon away, and took off his helmet in hope of inducing a calmer reaction.

  “Medical!” he yelled at the passengers, in the hope maybe half of them could still hear something. He pointed with both hands to the approaching platforms, then to both of his ears. “Go with the medics! All good, all safe!”

  And gave them a double thumbs-up. And was absolutely astonished when a few of them, fearful, nauseous, and injured, gave him a thumbs-up in return, some with ferocious approval, others with tearful relief and gratitude. It gave Poole a feeling he’d never had before at this intensity. He didn’t know quite what it was. But suddenly, he felt unbelievably, addictively good.

  There were cries of relief when the platform arrived, swarming with medical personnel, police, stretchers, and wheelchairs. The train stopped, and they poured off, into the organised confusion of helper and victim, then out toward the exits and broad stairways to where the streets below were filled with flyers, cruisers, and ground ambulances, a cacophony of flashing lights and motion.

  Leaving four calm GIs, standing alone on a big empty maglev train, contemplating the four pathetic, bleeding wrecks piled up at the end in a growing pool of their own blood. One of them whimpered.

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Trong.

  Intelligence Director Naidu strolled in off the platform, rumpled like an unmade bed, belly out, tie askew. He walked to the captives and regarded them with a quizzical, unsympathetic eye. “Only four?” he asked.

  “You can go looking for the other six,” Kiet suggested. “Might be a few bits floating downstream.”

  Naidu adjusted his belt. “Very well,” he said. “It will do. Nice job, by the way.”

  “Thank you for noticing,” said Poole. “How about a raise?”

  “Oh dear boy,” said Naidu with wry wisdom. “Among the many formidable opponents you will face, internal auditors and paymasters you will find among the very worst.”

  The briefing room was circular, an auditorium with a holoprojector in the middle, at the bottom of the bowl, surrounded by ascending rows of seats. Sandy sat on the bottom row, stretching as usual, relieving a myomer hip twinge. With her around the circle sat Steven Harren, Reggie Dala, and Abraham Yusef. Their three-person agency now had more than three people in it, Sandy understood, but no more details were forthcoming. Neither did the agency now possess a name. In that absence, those who knew they existed had given them one—SuperPsych. It was meant to be ironic, and amusing. Instead, Sandy found the whole setup rather creepy.

  But only as an institution, because Steve, Reggie, and Abraham were actually very nice. “Sandy, are you sleeping with Rami Rahim?”
Reggie asked her now, slyly. Reggie’s professorial suit was cut a little more stylishly than Sandy remembered from just a year ago and looked very good with her long African braids. Reggie was a professor of some standing at a major Tanushan university, as was Abraham.

  “No,” Sandy said mildly, pulling her right elbow back behind her head, right leg stretched out hard for maximum effect. “We flirt so much in the interviews, we don’t need sex.”

  “Yeah,” said Reggie, “well, I was thinking, after your last interview with him . . .”

  “It’s a game,” said Sandy. “Rami’s a performer. And his ratings are down twenty percent since last year, so he needs every boost. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Strange that a guy who helped save democracy should actually lose ratings,” said Steve. Steven Harren was small, young, and blond. He dressed like a businessman but looked about half his thirty years. One of Tanusha’s infamous tech whizzes, he was uplinked even now, dark glasses on despite the dark room, no doubt doing all kinds of fancy things on uplinks while he waited for the meeting to start.

  “By helping to remove two democratically elected governments?” Reggie countered. She was comfortably old enough to be Steve’s mother and sometimes took on the tone. “I’m surprised the backlash wasn’t larger.”

  Sandy made a face. “It’s not a political thing. Rami was Mr Partytown. Now he’s a partisan, a part of the establishment. Not that he actually is, he’s pretty vicious about us sometimes, but that’s how he’s perceived. It’s uncool.” She gave up on her right side and began stretching the left.

  “So who are you sleeping with, Sandy?” asked Steven.

  “My kids’ imaginary friends,” Sandy said drily. Reggie laughed, with the amusement of an older woman who knew. “Are you looking at porn, Steve?”