"I'll decide what's enough here, thanks ..."
"I'll tell you," came a new voice from down the adjoining hall. Rhian appeared at the corner, as Ramoja gave a frowning look over his shoulder. Rhian's head was bandaged, and she wore a loose, grey tracksuit, very unlike her usual, glamorous self. The front was unzipped, in the manner of someone recently out of bed, and her feet were bare. She steadied herself against the corner, and gazed at the small group gathered in the entrance hall. Her gaze, Sandy thought, appeared slightly unsteady. "I got into their files," she told Sandy. "There's lots of stuff about Takawashi. It wasn't the Major's fault, Cap. Nor Mr. Yao's. They were under orders. But they knew Jane was going to kill Admiral Duong, and couldn't stop it because Takawashi's faction had instructed them not to."
"That's enough, Lieutenant!" Ramoja barked. Behind her left shoulder, Sandy could all but feel the female reg begin to tense.
"Takawashi was very excited about Jane," Rhian continued, walking upon weary, bare feet across the expensive Indian carpet. "He said she appeared to exceed any of his expectations. Apparently his superiors were very excited. I got the impression they said something that referred to mass production and new League rebuilding strategies, but I couldn't be sure. Maybe someone in the CSA can tell."
Rhian stopped in front of Ramoja. Ramoja gripped her shoulder with a firm hand. "Lieutenant Chu," he said. The effort in his voice, to keep calm and controlled, was evident. "You've been shot in the head. You're still under partial sedation. I think you should go back and lie down. The doctor said your skull had been well and truly rattled. Do you understand?"
Rhian blinked at him, almost dreamily. "Do you remember what you said to me a few days ago, Major? That you knew my loyalty was divided, and how you thought I should take some time to think about it? Well, I've thought about it."
Sandy simply watched, barely able to breathe. Combat-reflex was attempting to impinge upon her vision, and the throbbing ache in her thumb was receding.
"Rhian," said Ramoja, in a softening tone. There was real affection in his voice, whatever the evident strain. A comforting surety. Charisma. "Rhian, I know how much you like Tanusha. I know how much you love Cassandra. Truthfully, I've always expected that you would wish to join with her in service of Callay and the Federation one day-honestly, I'll show you my reports to ISO command, I predicted that one day it would happen. But now should not be that day, Rhian. This is the wrong moment. This would cause complications. And you owe us more than that, Rhian. You owe us more, for everything we've given you, for all the tolerance we've shown in letting you keep on in our service despite knowing that your true loyalties were shifting. You can't do this to us. It wouldn't be right."
Rhian frowned at him for a long moment. Slim and apparently vulnerable, before her CO's athletic, square-shouldered build. That, like so much about Rhian, was deceptive. Then she looked at Sandy. Sandy just waited. She knew she could not intervene. She had recruited one of her old team mates into Callayan service before, so eager had she been to be reunited. That eagerness had killed him. Of course, Vanessa insisted otherwise, but ... well, she just knew that she could not intervene again. The choice had to be Rhian's. Nothing else would work.
"Wouldn't be right," Rhian repeated, as if to herself. "What's right?"
Ramoja smiled. "Ah, Rhian. Always asking the right questions."
"I'm serious," Rhian persisted. Ramoja's smile faded. That wasn't like Rhian, to challenge so directly. "What's right? Is it right to treat GIs as a tool to win wars? I like being a soldier. I'll fight for a cause I believe in. But now Takawashi's faction want to make GIs who don't have any cause? Who just do what they're told?"
"That's always been the case, Rhian," Ramoja said warningly. "You know that. The League's survival has depended on it, however unpalatable the policy."
"Well, sure," Rhian conceded with a faint shrug, "but I mean, regs are regs." With a faintly anxious glance at the reg standing behind Sandy's shoulder. Sandy doubted she was offended. "We're so much better at fighting than them. I remember you saying once that we had a responsibility to protect everyone back in the League. But don't we have a responsibility to protect everyone here too? And everyone everywhere else? I don't see how an army of ten thousand Janes makes anyone safe, here or there. I think there's just a few people doing this to serve themselves. I think they need to be stopped."
"And we can do that, Rhian," Ramoja soothed, putting the other hand upon her opposite shoulder. "I agree with you. But we can do that from here. Within the system, where we have access to those who matter."
Rhian shook her head, adamantly. "No. I'm a soldier. I don't like diplomacy much. I think you stop people by stopping them. Like this." And she made a wall with one hand, and a fist with the other. Smacked the fist into the wall, definitively. Her eyes searched Ramoja's face, in search of understanding, but found only concern. "I don't mean killing them. But if that's all they understand, you have to at least threaten it. It's like a bluff. Like in a game of cards. If you don't mean it, then it's not worth doing. I've seen the diplomacy here. I don't think it's working. No one stopped Takawashi, did they? I want to stop him. I think I can do that better with Sandy than I can here."
Ramoja took a deep breath. "Rhian, you made an unauthorised access of Embassy storage. I can't let you walk out of here with that information. That would be stealing League secrets, and I know you know that's wrong."
"And we helped get Callay blockaded," Rhian replied calmly. "So where does that leave us?"
"I won't allow it, Rhian."
Rhian took Ramoja gently by both wrists, and removed his hands from her shoulders. Ramoja performed a fast reversal, but in a blur of motion Rhian was faster, and retained a grip on his forearms. Ramoja stared in consternation.
"Mustafa," said Sandy, in the slow, profound stillness of combatreflex. "Don't do it. ISO commissioned you. You're a good soldier, but you're Intel, not Dark Star."
"Major, please!" Yao backed two steps along the wall, bumping into a decorative cabinet. "Let her go, we can discuss the protocols later ..."
"Rhian," Ramoja said reasonably, "I'll let you go if you first void your memory storage of the data files you stole."
"It's Callay's right to see them," Rhian replied, just as reasonably. "It's well within Callay's natural security parameters."
"You're not a lawyer, Lieutenant. That's not yours to decide."
"You're not a lawyer either."
The GIs' respective stances were unmistakable, feet subtly positioned and posture squared. Undrugged and healthy, Sandy would have bet on Rhian any day-tape-teach was supposed to negate the need for practice, but Sandy knew better. Experience in any skill made a huge difference, even for GIs, and particularly in free-form, unpredictable skillsets like combat. Rhian's combat experience was vastly superior to Ramoja's, despite their similar (Sandy suspected) ages. But Rhian was drugged, and dazed.
There came then the light, fast thudding of footsteps. GIs-too fast and lithe to be straights. Sandy recognised the tactical disadvantage immediately, with a reg at her shoulder, and made three rapid feints of shoulder, foot and head within a split second, tangling the reg's more predictable reflex responses. The final left elbow struck within that blur of motion, the GI's head snapping back with a force that would have decapitated a straight, then crumpling to the ground unconscious. And, reg or not, Sandy made a mental note to apologise later-she simply couldn't afford that presence at her rear when her front required full attention.
Neither Ramoja nor Rhian so much as moved an eyelid, gazing at each other with a strange silent intensity. Rhian's slim hands held Ramoja's forearms. Ramoja made no attempt to remove them. At GI speeds, starting postures were hardly crucial. What mattered was what happened next. Five GIs in plain fatigues appeared from the cross corridor, weapons levelled down the entrance hall. One darted forward to pull Ambassador Yao back, out of the firing line.
"No weapons," said Ramoja. "No one is going to fire in here. I forbid
it." The GIs put their weapons away without a moment's hesitation, so as not to hinder their movement. That, the nuances of posture, plus the way their eyes took in the scene, told Sandy that they were all regs. Sandy opened an uplink to an external, presecured network point, and opened a shielded channel. Made contact, gave a simple command, and disconnected.
"Rhian," she said then. "Let's go."
"Cassandra," Ramoja said mildly, "I am warning you." Ramoja fancied himself a hotshot soldier. Which he was. He'd disarmed her once, on their first meeting, in the attic of an organised-crime gambling den-she'd been overenthusiastic and underprepared, and he'd been waiting. Given what she was, he'd been very pleased with himself. She walked up to him now, slowly, and stopped alongside.
"You're not holding any cards here," she told him, very calmly. "You know there's only one way to stop us from leaving."
"I know," he said. And from there, further words were pointless.
It happened almost too fast for even a GI's brain to register, except that one moment everyone was standing dead still, and the next everything was a blur, Ramoja and Sandy grappling through a series of rapid holds, reverses and counterreverses, balance shifting through an uncontrolled spin as each sought the advantage. They crashed into a wall, Ramoja using the impact to shift grips, which Sandy anticipated with an angled slide of forearm to forearm as her foot slid and body weight shifted ... and suddenly she had the leverage. She swung, crashed Ramoja headfirst into the wall, the grip sliding easily to a momentarily uncontrolled arm which she brought down across her knee with enough explosive force to snap anything.
Following the loud crack! she spun to confront the rest of the entrance hall ... and found Rhian dropping the last, unconscious reg with a spin-kick to the head. Four other bodies lay sprawled across the floor, two still conscious but with fractured limbs. Wall plaster was cracked and holed in places, and the wooden table at the hall's end was upended and broken, the porcelain vase smashed on the floor in shattered pieces about the peacock feathers. Somehow, that sight, more than anything, filled Sandy with an overwhelming sense of regret.
One of the injured regs was reaching for a fallen weapon. "No shooting!" shouted Ambassador Yao desperately, from the safety of his corner, having wisely backed well away. "You heard the Major, no shooting!"
The reg relented, forestalling Sandy's reach for her own pistol. She looked at Rhian. Rhian now did look dizzy, her right hand rigid with discomfort-no doubt from Jane's other bullet wound. But her friend's gaze held steady enough when their eyes met.
"Flamboyant," Sandy remarked, meaning that last spin-kick.
Rhian shrugged. "I never knew where all that combat drill had come from until I came here." Kung fu, she meant. Rhian had discovered it shortly after her arrival on Callay, and quickly become fascinated. "So that's where it comes from," she'd said with amazement, meaning her basic, strictly practical Dark Star training. And Sandy recalled her own amazement, upon first becoming a civilian, that food could be "cuisine," and clothes could be "fashion," and sex could be "love making." That's where it comes from, she recalled realising, with similar amazement.
And she smiled. "Let's go," she said. But Rhian paused, moving on soft, bare feet to where Ambassador Yao stood stunned and helpless. To his credit, he did not flinch when Rhian stood before him, regardless of the display of inhuman power that had preceded. Whatever his faults, Callayan-style GI-phobia did not number among them.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Yao," said Rhian. "I didn't want to do it this way. You deserve better." And she kissed him on the cheek, then padded to Sandy's side. Ramoja was levering himself upright, moving to block the way. He held his right arm with the left hand. The elbow was badly hyperextended, and the entire forearm flopped uncontrollably, the fingers dangling. From the look on his face, Sandy reckoned the pain had not yet penetrated the combat-reflex.
"Don't be stupid," Sandy told him. "You couldn't beat me with two arms."
"You won't get past the yard," Ramoja said impassively. "The defences will stop you."
Sandy ignored him, walking past without bothering to guard her back-with her and Rhian, and Ramoja's one arm, he'd never touch her if he tried. She opened the door, and went to the top of the short steps that led down to the driveway parking, beneath the Embassy's front pillars before the door. Behind those pillars and across the gardens, she was not surprised to see the dark shapes of more GI security, automatic weapons levelled at the doors.
Some of those guards turned, then, as the sound of flyer engines grew louder above the usual background airtraffic hum. And then, emerging above the roof of an opposing, low building, there appeared an A-9 flyer. Another appeared further to the right, hovering low past the beautiful spire of a Hindu temple, its intricate carvings alive in a wash of light from below. A few early-morning pedestrians stared upward at the menacing shapes overhead, engines howling, unfolded weapons bays and underslung cannon directed with obvious intent toward the Embassy grounds.
Sandy turned to confront Ramoja, as he emerged from the doorway behind, eyes sweeping the scene. "We've got camera feeds recording all of this," Sandy told him, above the howl of engines. "It'll go straight to the news networks if you fire or stop us. Rhian is now claiming asylum. Under the Federation security Act, any League military figure claiming asylum will immediately come under Federal forces protection. Even GIs." Since very recently, anyhow. Her case had achieved that much amendment to the regulations, at least.
"You're standing on League territory," Ramoja replied impassively, clutching tightly at his useless arm.
"Attempting to keep Rhian in custody against her will effectively makes her a political prisoner. We don't tolerate the holding of political prisoners in League embassies." The look on Ramoja's face told her the obvious-he knew it was bullshit. But the overriding security imperatives had to be justified somehow, even through acts of clear hypocrisy. So long as it got the job done where required, Sandy didn't care. "If you restrain us, we'll shut down the Embassy. If you shoot us, we'll flatten it. Callay's grown up, Major. Bureaucratic protocols don't stop us any more. We do what we need to. You get in our way, we'll crush you, protocols or no protocols. And you know I don't bluff."
Ramoja gazed at the hovering, deadly Trishuls beyond the perimeter fence. No doubt his vision was attuned enough to see the underslung cannon centred precisely upon his chest. Preprogrammed and accurate to GI-standards, it alone could take out half the GIs in the yard in a matter of seconds. His partner, no doubt, would take out the other half, coordinating via tac-net to avoid wasteful overlap. Each was too heavily armoured to worry much about small arms, and the Embassy's defensive personnel were not allowed anything heavier.
Sandy turned, and walked down the stairs. Rhian kept to her side. Together they walked across the driveway parking, beneath the Embassy's front pillars, and then along the central path across the front lawn, beneath the beautiful, shadowing branches of native trees.
"You think he'll shoot us?" Sandy asked Rhian, casually as they walked.
"The League needs this embassy," Rhian said thoughtfully, her bare feet soundless upon the wet gravel beside the soft crunch of Sandy's boots. Still the rain was falling. And she'd forgotten her raincoat. That was stunning ... or would have been, in any other mental state. Probably it was right to leave it behind, it would have gotten in the way-but still, she could not recall having actually outright for gotten anything before in her life. An, no doubt, would be intrigued. Takawashi too. "Would Callay really shut down the Embassy?"
Sandy nodded. "For a few years at least. No League access to the Federation capital."
"He won't shoot us then," Rhian said confidently. And sure enough, at the end of the path, the GI guarding the gate actually opened it for them manually. "Thank you, Cristophe," Rhian told the reg, pleasantly. "And good luck to you."
Cristophe's return gaze was uncomprehending.
"They're not that bad, you know," Rhian said to Sandy as one of the Trishuls manoeuvred above the ro
ad, and began to lower itself down, the rear bay door slowly opening. Traffic along the road fronting the Embassy had mysteriously ceased, but given the CDF's integration into central Tanushan networks, a simple traffic reroute was hardly difficult to perform. "The regs there. They're smarter than regs I've known. Cristophe actually laughed, once."
"I wish they'd made him so he could laugh all the time," Sandy replied.
"Me too." They walked along the centre of the wet road, becoming steadily damper in the falling rain. The growing howl of engines drowned regular conversation, but a basic tone-filter adjustment allowed them to hear each other, at least. Upon the sidewalk to the left, a couple of elderly women, with transparent raincoats over colourful saris, stood staring at the Trishul, hands over their ears. Despite all Tanusha's noise regulations, no one had yet figured out how to make a hovering Trishul quiet. Sandy waved to the two women, in the vain hope they wouldn't file a complaint. Tanusha being Tanusha, she doubted it would work.
"Did you mean what you said back there?" Rhian said as they walked up the ramp at the rear, wet hair blasted with the instant blowdry of the rear stabilising thrusters.
"Which bit?"
"About Callay crushing anyone who got in its way."
Sandy signalled to the crew chief within the cramped hold, who said something into his helmet mike. Sandy and Rhian took overhead holds, braced for familiar movement. "Did I say that?" Sandy asked with a frown.
"Yes, you did."
Sandy made a glum half shrug. "Maybe I did."
"Did you mean it?"
"Why do you ask?"
Rhian thought for a moment. The flyer's engines thrummed with power, more of a roar than a howl, here within the relatively soundproofed interior. Clouds of blasting water vapour swirled past the open hold door. "I suppose it just sounds very military," Rhian replied. "I hadn't thought civilian societies worked like that."
Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel Page 37