“I mean, if it didn’t work, and they took casualties, we’d basically have their tech. And we can reverse engineer, and suddenly humans are catching up with Talee, and they’ve lost their edge on us . . . just after having pretty much declared war on us.”
“There’s only one way that it makes sense,” said Sandy. Rhian looked questioning. “If they thought Cai was already giving us all that tech anyway. Whether they attacked us or not. Then they’d have nothing to lose.”
“But . . .” Rhian frowned, puzzled. “But that would mean Cai was their enemy from the start. Not their representative like we thought.”
“Yeah,” Sandy agreed. “But he’s not one of ours, he’s clearly Talee-made. Makes you wonder what actually happened in their second catastrophe. How they actually wiped themselves out, and who actually survived it.”
“You think . . .” Rhian’s one good eye registered shock as it came to her. Damn, she’d gotten so much smarter in the past five years, Sandy thought. It made her happy for all synthetic-kind that it was possible, given a long enough, and full enough, life. “Oh shit! What if the Talee didn’t survive their extinction event? What if only their synthetics did?”
Sandy nodded. “Like if organic humanity wiped themselves out, and GIs were the only ones left.” Rhian stared at a wall, trying to take that in. “In which case, think about it. Would we bring them back? If we had enough tech and enough DNA to do it?”
“You think . . . you think organic Talee are the creation of synthetics? That synthetic Talee brought back their organic creators from extinction?”
“And are now wondering if it was such a good idea,” Sandy said grimly. “We can’t be sure, but it’s worth considering. Certainly there’s a big division between synthetic and non-synthetic Talee, and the synths seem to have been running a lot of their foreign policy until now. This would sure explain how that ended up happening. I bet you anything that was what Cai was—the representative of synthetic Talee, not the organics. Only in this case, the synths aren’t the copies, they’re the original. And what if they laid down some laws to the straights when they brought them back, like ‘you guys will always be more numerous than us because you reproduce so much more quickly, but synthetic rights will always be determined by synthetics alone.’”
“Damn right,” Rhian murmured. “That’s what I’d do.”
“Which is why Cai was so offended by these fucking drones sent after us. Organic Talee wouldn’t have been allowed to make synthetics, synths would have reproduced themselves. Like we were doing briefly on Pantala, at Chancelry.”
“And now they’re having a falling-out,” Rhian finished, “synths against organics. And the organics thought Cai was trying to get humanity onto his side, the synth side, and panicked.”
Sandy skimmed the net briefly on her way to FSA HQ’s interrogation rooms. Tanusha was in chaos, and everyone had been told to take the day off. There was too much speculation flying around to follow without a concerted search, but some of it seemed alarmingly accurate. “Talee net attack” would have been laughed at not long ago, but now it seemed quite prominent, discussed with seriousness by leading experts on various media. The Tanushan tech sector knew what was possible and impossible with today’s technology, Federation and League, and what they’d just seen was the latter. Impossible for humans, anyway. It didn’t leave many options.
Then came the observations that FSA and CSA had been targeted hard, that there were riverfront homes on a wilderness stretch of northern river ablaze where the infiltration matrix had acquired FSA military assets, presumably chasing someone to kill them. Others were connecting Takewashi’s ship’s arrival in-system, and rumours it might have been carrying someone the Talee were chasing. The breadcrumbs were everywhere, and Tanusha’s techs aboveground and below were too smart not to follow them. This genie was well and truly out of the bottle, and humanity would never be the same.
She ID’d past heavy security doors, then into a corridor where fully armoured FSA troopers stood guard. Beyond a window, several armed agents were interviewing a man shackled to his chair, tubes in his arm. Sandy entered without asking if it was okay, pulled up a chair and sat on it backward, arms crossed on the backrest. The interviewing agents stared at the breach of protocol. The interview subject gazed back at her, unsurprised. Brown-skinned, handsome, broad. A combat GI, currently drugged and restrained to safe levels. And matching exactly the description that Raylee had given, of the GI who had shown up in her apartment, and fed her tall tales about FedInt.
“Name?” she asked him.
“Hafeez.”
“Designation?”
“Forty-four and change.”
“Commander,” said the interviewing agent, “if you don’t mind, we’re in the middle of . . .”
“This is more important,” said Sandy.
“I don’t think it’s that . . .”
“Get out,” Sandy told him and his companion. Flicked her eyes to the door and back, a stare that would take no argument. “Now.”
They got up and left. This was not technically her field, nor was this her accustomed part of headquarters to be giving orders in, but still she outranked them.
“You being treated okay?” Sandy asked.
Hafeez looked down at his cuffs and the tubes in his arm. Sedative, that kept a GI’s synth-alloy muscles from contracting to critical mass. He shrugged. “Sure. Nothing unexpected.”
“I’ve been right where you are now,” she said. “I always ask.”
“You’ve never been right where I am now,” Hafeez corrected. “A prisoner of the Federation, while still loyal to the League.”
Sandy nodded, conceding. Smart, this one. It wasn’t surprising. “You’re ISO?” No reply. “Of course you are. Why not run when you had the chance? Before FSA arrived and took you and your people prisoner?”
“We’re not all prisoners,” Hafeez corrected. They had five of them. Which five, and how many more were still loose in Tanusha, they didn’t know.
“You’re the leader?” Sandy asked. No reply. “Okay. I think you got caught because someone needs to see how the FSA reacts from the inside. And in case someone like me wants to talk about things League would like to talk about. Like Pantala. Takewashi said there were others on Pantala like my boy Kiril. With that same new-gen tech in his head that the Talee are so scared of. That they warned Takewashi years ago they’d kill him and everyone around him if he started playing with. Know anything about that, Hafeez?”
His stare told her he did. “Go on.”
“His uplinks work,” said Sandy. “My boy’s. He’s seven years old, and they were automatically decoding Talee active transmissions and nullifying them.” His stare widened, just a little. This was why GIs should always interrogate other GIs—a straight might miss it. “They’re not supposed to work this well in kids. I haven’t noticed any bad side effects yet; they might happen, but so far nothing. Takewashi thought they could overwrite League’s uplink problem. New tech, replacing all the existing tech that’s causing League straights to go crazy and kill each other.”
A hammering on the window. Sandy looked and saw Hando on the other side, in the observation room, lights switched on so she could see him. He beckoned to her; the interview was over. They didn’t want her discussing this stuff with a League GI. Sandy ignored him.
“I have the key,” she said as calmly as she could. “The key to saving the League’s ass. Possibly the Federation’s too, if we end up in a V-strike war with the League. Unfortunately this key is lethal to the Talee, or they think it is. They’ll do anything to eliminate it. Only they is a little bit more complicated than we knew, isn’t it, Hafeez? What do you know about it?”
Hando burst through the door. “Commander!” he said angrily. “This interview is over!”
Sandy barely looked at him. “Either you go outside,” she told the FSA’s second-in-command, “or I will put you outside.”
There were advantages to being known not to bl
uff. Hando stepped back out, a hand to one ear, no doubt formulating wildly. There was only one higher-ranked person he could go to.
“Speak fast,” she told Hafeez. “We may not have much time.” Hafeez’s jaw tightened. Sandy guessed at the difficulty. “Let me start, so you don’t have to worry about revealing this particular secret. Talee ships are all piloted by synthetics, aren’t they?” There was as little reaction as she’d expected. But it was there, if you knew where to look. “I’ve seen some tape, of the coordination in those manoeuvers. A Federation Fleet tape. I’m sure League Fleet has far more experience. However the organic Talee psychology works, I can’t see how any organics can pull those manoeuvers, with that coordination. But for synthetics it might be possible, sharing off a common calculation matrix.
“Which means synthetic Talee pretty much run Talee foreign policy, because foreign policy is run by the people in the ships. We know about their dual catastrophes, Cai told us, and I’m sure League’s known for a lot longer. But Cai didn’t tell us why synthetic Talee seem to run everything, where policy toward humans is concerned. My running theory is that the synths were the only survivors of the last catastrophe and haven’t trusted organics since. Given what the organics have gone and done here in Tanusha, it looks like they might be right about that. It also explains why Talee policy toward us has been so sensible and cautious until now, before turning abruptly insane. Organic Talee are deadly unstable. We’ve just never dealt with them before, only the synths.”
Hafeez leaned forward as far as his manacled hands would allow. “What are you offering?” he asked.
“If Takewashi’s right,” said Sandy, “Pantala will be under attack right now, news just hasn’t reached us yet. Kiril’s tech originated in Droze, in Chancelry Corporation, after Takewashi loaned it to them. That’s a far bigger target than Kiril, he’s almost an afterthought by comparison. Whatever their ships, I don’t think the synths have the balls to fight their own people over humanity. Clearly the organics have ships too, probably a lot more ships—they just haven’t been allowed to use them near us.
“I’m offering cooperation. Federation and League, together, to save Pantala and to give the Talee organics a butt whipping they won’t soon forget. And to share this new tech, if we succeed, with all of the League and keep everyone sane.”
Hafeez sat back in his chair, considering her. More than slightly amazed. “You have Talee tech. Cai gave you a whole bunch, you’ve got a bunch of their GI-infiltrators’ bodies, and Tanushan tech can reverse-engineer anything. If you help us, you’ll have to share that with us too. We won’t survive long against Talee warships without it.”
Sandy nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. I doubt we can replicate their uplinks for a long time, the hardware will be technological generations ahead. But Cai knew enough pure software patches to . . . well. It’ll completely change everything everyone thinks they know. And while it doesn’t put us on their level, it puts us close enough that they can’t just wipe us out by ‘magic.’”
Because every sufficiently advanced technology will look indistinguishable from magic to those less advanced, a wise writer long ago had said. Everyone who knew infotech knew that quote. Prior to Cai’s intervention, Talee tech had been magic to humans. No longer.
Sandy entered Ibrahim’s office at Hando’s heels and saw Amirah for the first time since the fight. The girl was uplinked, racing through data on newly safe networks, hair falling roughly about her face. She disconnected as Sandy entered and gazed at her tiredly—the thousand-yard stare of a veteran who had seen one too many horrible things. Amirah never used to have that look. Sandy hugged her.
“I’m so glad your kids are okay, Sandy,” Amirah said with feeling. “I was really scared for them.”
Sandy believed her and kissed her with feeling. She felt so proud of her fellow GIs. Many of them had died, for nothing more than a sense of civic duty. They weren’t so long in Tanusha that they felt connected to it like she did, but they volunteered anyway, out of concern for others, and the unquenchable optimism of the newly arrived.
Amirah left on other business, and Sandy stood before Ibrahim, choosing not to sit, as he was only leaning against the edge of his desk, while Hando glared from the side.
“You don’t make the Federation’s foreign policy,” Hando told her.
“Neither does the FSA,” said Sandy. Her uplinks showed her Svetlana, unwaking in her ward, with Danya seated alongside, holding her hand. And Kiril, still with Ragi, now impatient and tired with something. “The Grand Council does, and the Grand Council is out of action. Someone has to make foreign policy, and I’m putting my flag in the ground.”
“You can’t just . . .” Hando began, and broke off as Ibrahim held up his hand. Ibrahim looked tired. Being in forced VR for all that time could be wearisome, like sleep deprivation, Sandy understood.
“You’re right about the Talee,” he said. “We have to hit back, or this will become a habit for them. Cai’s death is unfortunate, we can’t be sure exactly how far the Talee synthetics will be prepared to go to oppose their own kind, and to restore their preeminence in Talee foreign policy.”
“We can’t even be sure that’s actually the situation!” Hando protested.
“But I can’t sanction this attempt of yours to co-opt League GIs to get the entire League onboard,” Ibrahim continued. “Asking League to invite and collaborate full-scale Federation military intervention in League territory seems foolhardy. The last time we intervened at Pantala it nearly restarted the war.”
“I’m not asking League Gov to sanction it,” Sandy said flatly. “I’m asking League GIs to sanction it.”
“League GIs follow orders,” said Ibrahim, eyes lidded with that familiar, wary intelligence.
“Right,” said Sandy. “Who else is there from the League chain of command on Callay? This guy Hafeez in our holding cell might be the highest-ranking League operative on the planet.”
“‘Might be’ is not a lot to go on.”
“ISO have put high-designation GIs in charge before. He says he’s a forty-four series, but he’s probably lying. He said ‘forty-four and change.’” Ibrahim’s always-arched eyebrows arched a little more. “That’s a very old expression, from the days of a cash economy. ‘Change’ is what was left after you’d paid for something with a larger denomination. Most GIs just aren’t interested enough in abstract sociologisms to go searching for vocabulary there. I picked some up because I watched old movies and read old books. League makes that hard because League doesn’t like old stuff. It’s available, but it’s not fashionable.”
“You’re going to trust an enemy GI with Federation foreign policy because he watches old movies?” Hando seemed quite agitated. It only convinced Sandy more of her present course.
“I think he’s probably another fifty or fifty-one, like Mustafa,” she continued. “I just get that sense, I was running speech-rec as we were talking, and it spiked in all the right places. ISO trust their high-des operatives, and if they’ve got more like Mustafa, and we know they do, Callay’s exactly where they’d use them. Which means Hafeez is effectively the rank of a League carrier captain. Maybe a bit higher.”
“Cassandra,” Ibrahim said carefully. “I understand what you’re saying, and it’s a nice idea. I’d like nothing more than to put differences with the League behind us for a common cause. But consider the Federation’s present political situation. . . .”
As Ibrahim spoke, Sandy’s uplinks showed her Kiril, abruptly upset and shouting something at Ragi. On the verge of tears. Sandy uplinked, something she wouldn’t have dared do before yesterday.
“Kiri. Kiri, it’s me.”
“Sandy?” He was speaking aloud at his end, Ragi looking a little surprised. But only a little, because Ragi would have known anyway. “Sandy, where are you?”
“I’m in a meeting with Director Ibrahim. I’ll be with you in a minute. I love you.” The linkup was broad width, transmitting far more than just wo
rds, and she thought hard on that feeling, with no real faith that it would work. But a faint glow came back, and her heart beat a little faster.
“I love you too. I’m okay, I’m not upset.”
“I know. Just be good with Ragi for a few minutes, okay?” Some mothers she’d heard sweet-talked their kids a lot more, with “brave boy” and “good boy” and “sweet boy.” She didn’t know how to do that; her brain didn’t process platitudes, and, like his siblings, Kiril wouldn’t appreciate being patronised. She’d always thought she was lacking something before, as a parent, that she couldn’t do such things. Only now was she coming to realise that she truly didn’t need to, and that her kids didn’t want some mythical, perfect parent—they wanted her.
Ibrahim’s explanation finished, she’d been listening with the other side of her brain—the expected thing about the Federation being ill-prepared to take collective military action anywhere, with the mess the Grand Council was in. And the firm expectation that FedInt would block it anyway, especially if it was being led by FSA.
“I understand,” she said. A silence followed.
“Cassandra,” Ibrahim said carefully, “I must warn you of the dangers of any unilateral action on your part. I know you think the current conflict between FSA and FedInt to be trivial—I must assure you it is not. You don’t know everything that I know. Promise me you’ll keep your head down for a change.”
“I promise,” said Sandy.
“But he told you to keep your head down,” Ragi formulated as she strode down the hall in medical. “Are you going to keep your head down?”
“Fuck no,” said Sandy. “Physical assembly’s going to be too difficult, but I want everyone together, and soon. We need to talk about this properly, all us synthetics.”
“Sandy . . . you’re not planning an insurrection of artificial people against organics are you?”
“No, but we’ve a bunch of things we need to get done, and I absolutely refuse to put them through the process, because the process right now is broken. We don’t need process, we need results, and GIs are the only ones who can deliver it. Once we have results, we can present it as a fait accompli.”
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