Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1)

by Joel Shepherd

  Sandy swore lightly to herself, steering gently to remain within the computer-generated skylane through the towers. Further ahead the afternoon thunderstorm was looming, massive thunderheads towering ten thousand metres tall, gleaming a bright shade of yellow in the afternoon sun and regularly flashing blue as lightning discharged in staccato succession, like gunfire on a colossal scale.

  To make it all worse, she'd had no one to really talk to all day. Rhian had offered to stay around, but Sandy had insisted she make the most of her day off, and so Rhian had gone. Doubtless many had considered that strange, considering Rhian had also faced mortal threat ... but Sandy knew her old comrade well, and knew it would take more than a little exchange of fire to dampen Rhian Chu's spirits. And of course as third-in-command, Vanessa's role was more concerned with personnel than Sandy's, and so she'd been very busy reorganising duty rosters and training schedules in the new chaos that had descended, and hadn't shown any sign of wanting to talk to her anyway, in their few brief contacts of the day. Sandy knew Vanessa was upset at something, but she still failed to understand the reaction. She was the one who'd nearly been killed, after all. And Ari, of course, had been out of contact all day.

  Ari. The thought brought on a sigh. Sometimes it seemed that they just couldn't stop arguing. It was unexpected. She'd always assumed that a good, long-term, sexual relationship meant less arguments, not more. But then, as Vanessa had countered when they'd discussed it, who else was going to sustain her interest over the long term? Someone who agreed with her all the time? A "yes man"? She'd had enough of that back in the League, from soldiers under her command, or non-GI officers under instruction not to contradict her unless absolutely necessary. And she'd found that boring and disappointing in the extreme.

  As Vanessa said, she loved a good argument. It was one of the major things she could get, here in her new civilian life, that her old League life had not provided. She found differences of opinion stimulating. She loved learning new things, even if they contradicted old understandings. And Ari's ability to surprise her, to make her challenge her previous assumptions, and to simply make her laugh, was probably the primary reason she found his company so stimulating. That, of course, and that devilishly sexy crooked grin that he used knowingly upon her to predictable effect. Yes, they clashed frequently on matters of ideology and style. It was sometimes frustrating. But then, she simply didn't see how it was possible to have all the good things, without also taking her fair share of the bad.

  An absent-minded skip across her uplink monitors shot back a mass of highlighted points ... there was a massive demonstration prepared for tonight in Velan district against the Fleet blockade, organisers were expecting at least half a million protesters. Secretary General Benale had held a major press conference on his tour of Tanusha, urging the Grand Council to reject the "undue influence and interference of the Neiland Administration." Fleet Admiral Duong had made a brief statement, rejecting calls from extremist Earth factions for the blockade to become official Earth policy until Callay and its supporters in the Federation abandoned their "ultra-progressive manipulations of the Grand Council apparatus."

  "The Fleet is not blockading Callay," Duong now said as she opened that file, and watched his stern, shaven-headed visage upon her internal vision. The rank on the Fleet uniform collar was plainly evident, shiny badges gleaming against the stark metal backdrop of what Sandy guessed were his private quarters. The Fleet Admiral's eyes were the hard, calculating eyes of a man who had seen many battles, and lost many friends, yet had only had his convictions strengthened by his experiences. Sandy had met such people often, and distrusted them always. Her own wartime experiences, of course, had caused her precisely the opposite reaction. "This is a security operation, no more, no less. These are precarious times. The centre of power in the Federation is being relocated, and reconstructed. This is a time of great vulnerability for us all. The Federation constitution tasks the Fleet with the protection of the Federation and all its assets. That is what we shall do."

  Sandy considered Duong's hard, unwavering eyes as the cruiser's navcomp took her into a gradual descent, and wondered at what thoughts might be passing through the mind behind them. A determination to uphold Earth's preeminence within the Federation, certainly. A distrust of the selfish, fractious colonies. But also, apparently, a sense of moderation, backed by the faultless discipline of a lifetime soldier. Surely he could not be enjoying his present role. He'd made himself into a politician, a lightning rod for the opinions of Earthbased extremists and colonial progressives alike. And the word was that he did not get along with Secretary General Benale at all, whatever their apparent political similarities.

  She landed the cruiser on the yellow-striped transition zone inside the tall, stone wall that marked the outer perimeter of the Canas high security zone. The cruiser came down in a gentle hover-and-bump of heavy tires, Sandy largely ignoring the process to watch some children playing football on the green field beside the high wall and transition zone.

  Canas security was in the house when she made her way up from the basement parking garage. She waited while they conducted their final sweeps-uniformed men and women who specialised in network security, and were tasked with the upkeep of all security systems within the Canas area. In the kitchen she discovered Jean-Pierre had wedged himself on top of the cupboards near where the stairs ascended to the upper floor, gazing wide-eyed at all the strangers invading his house. He recognised Sandy and began a relieved, plaintive chirping.

  "Just wait," Sandy told him, pouring herself a makani juice first, then climbing the stairs halfway to stand level with the kitchen cupboards. She leaned over the rails, extending her free left arm, disregarding the wrist cast. Jean-Pierre gathered his supple limbs, gave a coiling wriggle, then leaped across the intervening space and onto the extended arm, little hand/feet grasping as tightly as millions of years of tree-climbing evolution had intended. Sandy held him comfortably against her shoulder, heading back down the stairs and sipping the drink from her other hand, wincing as Jean-Pierre tried to clean out the inside of her left ear.

  "I'm sorry," said a security tech at the bottom of the stairs, gear packed in hand boxes, evidently headed for the door. "We didn't mean to scare him, he just ran up there in a flash and wouldn't come down."

  "He's not a very courageous animal," Sandy said with a smile.

  "That was a pretty impressive leap," countered the tech, with a glance up at the gap between cupboards and stairway.

  "Oh, he's fine jumping sideways," said Sandy. "They do that all the time in treetops. He just doesn't like jumping down. Falling's against his instincts, I guess." As Jean-Pierre twisted about to fix the security tech with a reproachful, golden-eyed gaze. "Say hello to the nice security man," Sandy instructed the bunbun. "I won't have xenophobic tree climbers in my house."

  The tech extended a hand. Jean-Pierre grasped cautiously at a finger, and sniffed. The man smiled, looking slightly puzzled, and surprised, from the bunbun and back to Sandy. Sandy sipped her drink, and pretended not to notice. Nearly everyone who met her for the first time in a nonmilitary setting gave her that look. Particularly when she was holding and talking to a cute, furry household pet.

  The security team departed and Sandy let Jean-Pierre out into the garden, where a number of tall trees soared from the lush undergrowth, and gave him plenty of exercise and freedom. She watched for a moment on the front decking as the nimble, furry shape clambered quickly up a tall trunk with precise holds and bounds. He could run away any time, certainly there were plenty of wild bunbuns of various species throughout Tanusha ... no doubt Jean-Pierre met and associated with them often, particularly the lady bunbuns. But bunbuns were highly territorial creatures, and grew very attached to their place of birth and home. Like most well-treated, domesticated bunbuns, he came home every time.

  Ironic, she reflected as she climbed the stairs to her room with her drink and a slice of fruitcake from the fridge, that it was easier to domes
ticate smarter animals as pets than stupid ones. Unless you counted livestock or fish as pets, which she didn't, personally. Livestock only licked your face if they found something edible on it. Real pets did it because they liked you. Poor bunbuns, though. Just smart enough to stay, but not smart enough to leave. Like GIs, she'd said to Rhian, once. But Rhian, of course, hadn't gotten the joke.

  Consciousness was elusive. She drifted beneath the surface of lucidity, gazing at the ripples and roaring foam ... like waves, viewed from below. Perhaps she was at the beach. At Rajadesh, or one of her other favourite surf spots. And if she reached with one foot, and found the sandy bottom firm against her toes, she could push off and break the surface into the sunlight and clean, fresh breeze above. And one of the regulars would be cruising past ... maybe Peytr Lipinski, or maybe Tabo with his round, cheerful black face, and compliment her on a nice ride, and wonder if perhaps she'd come to drinks at the beach party they were having that weekend ...

  A high, cruising whine above the crashing surf. The sand felt unstable ... a bump of turbulence. Memories triggered, reflexes ... damn, she was dreaming. She wasn't on a beach at all. The realisation came as a mighty disappointment. Above her swam the lucid surface, a refraction of sunlight through a watery depth. The cruising whine remained steady. Then voices, and the noise of someone moving equipment. A rattle and bump of turbulence, disorienting. She knew that feeling well enough. She was airborne.

  Finally her eyes flicked open. She was staring at a low ceiling. Her vision was clear enough, thankfully, and when she moved her eyes, she could see medical equipment to her side. There was someone over there, someone wearing a medico's white coat, adjusting equipment. Gravity tilted once more, g-forces pressing faintly against her back. So she was lying down. In an airborne vehicle. Surrounded by medical equipment. Aerial ambulance. Someone must have tried to kill her again. But the most disturbing part was that she couldn't remember a thing.

  "What happened?" Her voice was small, yet clear enough. That was good, she knew from past experience that when the meds shot her too full of drugs, her voice was usually the first thing to go.

  "Commander?" There was a woman leaning over her, in the whitecoated uniform of a Tanushan ambulance officer. "Commander Kresnov, how do you feel?"

  "I don't know yet. Tell me what happened." Jean-Pierre. Abruptly she felt worried for him, and was relieved to remember letting him run up the tree in the backyard-twenty metres over the house, he should be fine.

  "We're not sure what happened, Commander. Canas security alerted us after they responded to a personal alarm from your room. We got there within five minutes of their call, Canas security said they'd found you passed out on the floor. They said you'd been subjected to some kind of network attack, some foreign assault virus had penetrated your barrier networks and immobilised you. They physically disabled the house's network to disconnect it."

  There had been Canas security personnel in her house, Sandy remembered. One had let Jean-Pierre sniff his fingers. She'd checked out the house's network herself many times, as had some of the brightest brains in the Tanushan techno underground, who knew where all the hidden pitfalls and shortcuts were located. So it stood to reason that whoever had tried to kill her had done so through the agency of Canas security ... who guarded all the most important people in Tanusha, and were invulnerable to infiltration. Sandy moved her arm, and found that it was restrained.

  "Why am I restrained?"

  "I'm sorry, Commander, Canas security said you were thrashing around some when they found you. I didn't particularly want to share the back of an ambulance with a thrashing GI."

  "Fair enough. I'm okay now, let me out."

  "I'm really sorry but regulations won't let me. I've been instructed from the top, they say not to risk it."

  Sandy wasn't sure of her own reaction. The calm felt decidedly like combat-reflex. The surreal dislocation was probably drugs. God knew what they'd shot her full of. All she knew for sure was that she didn't want to ask anything more that might alarm anyone. She had a mental checklist in her head, now, and she needed to check off some items. And she realised, in that slow, unaccustomed state, that she wasn't receiving any data through her uplinks. That was another question she didn't want to ask. Maybe they'd think she was getting upset.

  "We're going to CDF compound, aren't we?" As calmly as she knew how to ask.

  "Um, no ..." the ambulance officer was now reaching for something, adjusting it out of her field of vision, ". . . we're headed to the Lloyd Hospital. They have the best biotech surgeons there, they'll know best how to make sure you're okay."

  "I think it's a better idea to get back to Doctor Obago at the CDF. He's my regular physician. He's gotten to know my medical situation better than anyone else in the last two years."

  "We'll definitely consult with Doctor Obago," the ambulance officer reassured her. And lifted into sight the implement she'd been adjusting-a hypospray, filled with fluid.

  "I'm fine," Sandy said, her voice hardening. "I don't need another damn shot."

  "No offence, Commander, but I'll be the judge of that."

  "You're very self-assured for a simple ambulance tech." She tensed her arm, seeking critical muscle function, and felt only the faint twinge of reaction. The arm remained loose, the restraints hard and firm about her forearms, synthetic straps, far harder than steel. The ambulance officer smiled.

  "Trust me, Commander, I'm uplinked to some very knowledgeable experts in the field of GI physiology. The shot is prescription."

  Sandy focused inward, as hard as she could. Remembering what muscular tension felt like. The secret was not tension. It was to relax ... relax ... She breathed deeply, closing her eyes. The officer's hypospray was a small, low-powered pocket size. It gave her a little extra time.

  The ambulance officer touched the hypospray to Sandy's bare arm, and Sandy felt the faint sting of pressure. Then a puzzled pause from the officer.

  "Hmm, that's funny. It's not going in." Another faint pop against her skin. "It's leaving a mark on your skin, so the hypo's not broken. Very funny."

  "Hysterical," Sandy agreed. Tension erupted in her right arm, and she unleashed it with a bang! that shook the stretcher as the arm restraint tore clear away. And caught the startled ambulance officer by the front of the white coat. "Stick me with that again and I'll impale you with it."

  Bang! as she ripped her left arm free, releasing the stunned medico to reach for the cord at the back of her head and rip it clear ... barrier restrictions evaporated, and suddenly the rush of network data flooded her mind in graphic, three-dimensional relief. A picture of their present location-they were almost precisely over central Tanusha, where Shinobu district blended into the broad Balikpapan Nature Park. Lloyd Hospital was in central-southern Tanusha, still five minutes' flight time away. Sandy sat up to undo the straps about her ankles.

  "Commander, what the hell are you doing?" The medico had flattened herself warily to the side of the ambulance, eyes wide with alarm. Sandy ignored her, finished with the ankle straps and moved to the reinforced window at the front of the cabin, where the ambulance driver was staring back at them with some alarm, speaking rapidly into a headset microphone. Sandy hit the window with an open palm to disperse the impact of the strike, and it crashed explosively inwards as the driver ducked to his side. The resulting gap was large enough to crawl through, which she did, headfirst, and climbed into the empty passenger seat alongside the driver.

  "Commander!" The driver was clearly alarmed. "We're just on our way to hospital, what do you think you're doing?" As Sandy stuffed the fractured dividing window back through the rear frame where it wouldn't get in the way. "There's no need for any alarm, Commander ... I think that latest attack might have disoriented you in some way. Please try to think on what you're doing."

  "Relinquish the controls," Sandy told him, uplinking to the ambulance's CPU and scanning its projected course ahead toward the hospital. The Tanushan central traffic network kept a car
eful eye on all emergency vehicles, had them priority-registered on the airborne net ...

  "I'm sorry, Commander, but I just can't do that."

  Sandy hit him, the heel of her palm to the thick part of the skull above the ear. The driver lurched sideways against his belt, then slumped in his seat. Sandy felt for pulse and breathing as the medico in the back made a startled exclamation of shock and fear.

  "Check on him," Sandy told the woman. "I didn't hit him hard, make sure he's not hurt." Her uplinks accessed the navcomp, overriding the old course and setting in a new one. Traffic Central tried to query, and she overrode it with a CSA priority code. The medico leaned through the open rear window frame, feeling at the driver's throat and skull, stopping his head from rolling about.

  "Commander," she said, trying to keep her voice steady, "I think you're panicking. You should stop and think for just a moment. Whatever you think is going on here, I assure you, there's nothing ..."

  "Just shut up or I'll hit you too," Sandy told her. Truthfully she didn't like hitting straights if at all avoidable-the risk of a brainsplattered windshield was only theoretical, and in practice a hell of a lot less than that. But whatever the remote odds of a momentary loss of muscle control, she still didn't like doing it. The next fork in the new trajectory arrived, and Sandy steered the ambulance into a gentle left-hand bank with the passenger seat controls, following the string of aligned rectangles that projected up on the front windshield. The new course swung toward what the navcomp identified as Prasad Tower, a four hundred metre tall mega-high-rise that soared above the surrounding clutter of mid-sized towers in central Chattisgarh.