Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1)

by Joel Shepherd

  "Yeah, me too." And touched the disconnect, manually sending the screen blank. Another moment of silence, as they cruised toward north-central Tanusha. Sandy rolled her head against the chair back, and looked at Ari.

  "No opinion to volunteer?" she asked.

  Ari shook his head, glumly, bottom lip protruding. "Nope."

  "That'd be a first."

  "Let me rephrase that-I'd rather asphyxiate myself with soiled underwear than offer an opinion."

  Sandy snorted, and stared once more out of her window.

  "So," Ari ventured after another moment's silence. "What's up with you and Ricey?"

  Sandy frowned. "What's up?"

  "You've been snapping at each other the past few days."

  "I haven't been snapping at her." Ari raised his eyebrows, eyes flicking meaningfully back to the dash monitor. "Okay, that was my first snap. Mostly she's been snapping at me." And it suddenly worried her that Ari had noticed. Maybe she'd been right to worry about it before, and it hadn't just been another attack of social insecurity. Maybe she should call Vanessa back, and apologise? "Why do you think?"

  "Ah ... I'm not answering that." Decisively.

  "Worse than soiled underwear?"

  "Much worse," said Ari.

  Sandy sighed.

  CHAPTER

  ri's idea of low visibility, secure accommodation for the night turned out to be a mega-rise fly-in hotel. They left the cruiser for the automated parking to handle, got a booking at the upper lobby with one of Ari's many IDs, and took a room just one floor down from the parking bay.

  Ari made calls and net-scanned while Sandy showered, then took his own shower, leaving her free to sit on the bed in a moment of solitude, and gaze out through broad, five-star windows and the brilliant city beyond. She wished she could talk to Vanessa, but dared not use the uplink. Besides, Vanessa would most likely be sleeping. And things were a little more complicated there than she was used to. It frustrated her, that complication, right now when she most needed Vanessa's insight. And she wished she possessed the insight herself to know what the problem was. But she didn't ... and never really had.

  It would have been easy to become frustrated with Vanessa, for dumping it on her right now ... but Vanessa was lucky to be alive, and understandably upset at recent events. But Sandy couldn't believe it was that simple ... could Vanessa now feel truly uncomfortable with her simply for being a GI? Not after all they'd been through.

  She was very lucky, she told herself instead, that Vanessa were alive at all. It terrified her, that close call. Somehow, despite the dangers, she'd never truly felt that Vanessa was at risk. She was so cool, so professional ... almost a GI, in fact, in the degree of confidence Sandy had become accustomed to placing with her in all things operational. But that was stupid too. GIs could survive things that straight humans couldn't. On top of all their skills, GIs had a margin for error. Vanessa did not.

  And fuck it, when was she going to finally get wise, and stop making stupid assumptions about her environment and her life? Every time she thought she'd finally gotten on top of this new life of hers, something else happened that shattered all her carefully constructed truths. It was becoming alarming-not just the inevitability of the events, but the depths of her own naivety.

  Ari emerged from the bathroom in his white hotel robe, dark hair damp and scruffy, and sat down at her side. Copied her pose, gazing out at the vast expanse of light and colour.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "That Takawashi's not telling all he knows." Ari nodded, but said nothing. "I mean, what the fuck's he doing here anyway? I think Ramoja's trying to find this GI as much as we are. Maybe he wants to cover the League's arse on something. Takawashi got sent to help."

  "Wouldn't help the League much if it turns out a GI they had some hand in murdered Admiral Duong," Ari pointed out. "It wouldn't quite re-start the war, but it wouldn't help."

  "Maybe." Ari slid across to kneel upon the bed behind her, and began massaging her shoulders. They were tight, as always at this hour, and his fingers moved with the assuredness of two years famil iarity. Or less than two years, she thought vaguely. She and Ari hadn't started sleeping together immediately after their first meeting. Despite their continuing, deepening friendship and mutual curiosity (or in Ari's case, fascination), it had taken three months for her to finally lose her natural suspicion of his motives, and invite him to bed. Ari had been pleased, but no more than that. Partly, he was just too confident a young man to start turning cartwheels at any female invitation, having had plenty of previous experience. And partly, his interest in her truly hadn't been that kind of sexual obsession. Or not mostly, anyhow.

  It didn't bother her. They were comfortable together, and it was convenient. Had been convenient then, too, for them both-for her, because there were very few men who considered themselves her equal who weren't terrified of her, or otherwise unattracted to her ... and for him because he was always busy, always preoccupied by other matters, and simply lacked the time or inclination to spend the attention on a woman that most women demanded. She sometimes wondered if that was all it was-convenience. At times, it felt a hell of a lot more than that. At others ... well, for all their closeness, Ari remained secretive, and occasionally distant.

  "Don't try to change him," Vanessa had warned her, when they'd first started sleeping together. "That's the most basic rule of civilian relationships, Sandy-we learn it real early, but you might not have heard it yet. Don't think he'll change as soon as he's with you. He won't." And she'd been right, again.

  "I keep trying to think of this GI," said Sandy, feeling her shoulders slowly relaxing into his firm, squeezing grasp. "It doesn't make sense. First she tries to kill me with the killswitch, then she spares Vanessa and leaves a message for me to contact her."

  "So now you don't think she was just bullshitting?"

  "Oh hell, I don't know." Air traffic hummed by on a near skylane, running lights flashing. Nearly soundless past the windows. "Maybe she knows. Maybe she knows her ... relationship, to me. Maybe she's curious."

  Ari massaged for a while in silence, working his way carefully down her spine to the small of her back. "Can a high-designation GI kill civilians and feel no remorse?" he said then.

  "I don't know," Sandy murmured. "I couldn't. If what Takawashi says about her age is true ... well." She didn't need to finish the sentence. Ari knew only too well the implications of a preformed mind, as opposed to a randomly evolved one.

  "Ramoja's got reports of your early years of service," he said instead. "He liberated them from Dark Star files. They said you showed remarkable care to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants even then."

  "I know," Sandy said mildly. "I broke into all those files while I was still there. It scared me, when I was older, that I couldn't remember much of my life in my earlier years. I had to know what I'd done. It was a relief to read that."

  "I bet." Ari's thumbs probed where buttock and hip joined, a point of frequent discomfort for her. Sandy repressed a wince. "What about tearing a couple of civilians apart with bare hands? Workmates that she might have gotten to know over a couple of weeks, at least, when she was working undercover?"

  "That's what I was thinking," Sandy said quietly. "I don't know how it's possible for her to be stable. She's executed her gameplan pretty well so far, infiltrated a civilian tech company for cover and probably code-access, then helped set up a bunch of extremist patsies to take the blame for Duong. That's an awful lot of lateral thinking, even if she was just following instructions from higher up. She still had to pass the interviews at Sigill Technologies, for one thing. It doesn't make sense-she's too damn smart to be a drone, and too fucking murderous to be that smart."

  "An employee Intel interviewed said she was calm and pleasant," said Ari. "No apparent sense of humour, no personality quirks ... just mild, understated and professional."

  "I've been described that way."

  Ari planted a kiss on to
p of her head. "Not by anyone who knows you."

  "I'm calm," Sandy replied. "Most of the time. Control comes with the psychology, I'm sure. I'm goal-oriented, but only when I want to be. Maybe ... hell, I don't know. Maybe we're not that different."

  "Oh, shut the fuck up," Ari rebuked, and gave her a sharp cuff across the top of the head. "Please, bring back the calm, logical Sandy-this one's suddenly gone all morose and pitiful."

  Sandy didn't reply. And found a moment to hope that Ari wasn't cheating on her with other women-if he was getting accustomed to whacking his girlfriends about the head, some without ferro-enamelous skulls were liable to hit him back.

  "You've never been the places I've been," she replied. "Nor done the things I've done. That's not yours to judge."

  "Sandy." Ari rested both hands upon her shoulders. "I've killed people too. Two years ago, with the shit going down, several times I found myself the only thing standing between terrorists and the people I was supposed to protect. It ..." and he took a deep breath. "It's horrible. And I'm ... I mean, the CSA instructors told me I had natural aptitude and everything, and even in the circles I moved in before the CSA, it's not like I'd never seen blood before ... but I had a hard time coping with that, for a while.

  "But people die, Sandy. People die all the time, the universe is this ... this enormous process, and we're just wheels in the machine. At first, I found that just ... so fucking depressing. But, you know, the more I thought about it, the more it made a comforting kind of sense. I mean, I'm a part of something bigger. The process, you know? I chose the side of order, and those damn lunatics ... well, they chose anarchy, or ... or ballroom dancing, or some other horrible, violent extreme."

  Sandy repressed a smile. "And ... and d'you see?" Ari continued, with building force, hands tightening upon her shoulders. "It's not just me that killed them, all this ... this stuff about personal responsibility ... well sure, I mean, personal responsibility's important, modern civilisation would disintegrate without it, to say nothing of. .

  "Ari," Sandy interrupted gently, "you're wandering."

  "Sure. Sure." With a flustered attempt to refocus his typically undisciplined thoughts. "Where was I?"

  "Personal responsibility. Wheels in the machine."

  "Oh, right. I mean, am I making sense?" Sandy flash-zoomed in on his reflection in the windows, gazing over her shoulder. It was a face that seemed made for intensity, with the dark brows and deep, dark eyes. An intensity forever undercut with unpredictable, irreverent humour. "Personal responsibility is a selfish, self-centred notion. We ... we feel guilty because we always think everything's about us. When in fact it's not, none of us are in control of those circumstances, we're all a part of something so much larger, and ... and just like when any two forces of nature collide, there's damage, and suffering. But no one ever blamed an earthquake for being immoral, or a meteor shower, or some flesh-tearing reptile on a planet with interesting wildlife. Yet that's what we are. Just another part of the natural order."

  "That sounds dangerously like a belief system," Sandy murmured, as his hands resumed massaging her shoulders and neck. "Whatever would all your underground friends think?"

  "Well hey, you know, I'm working toward mysticism, slowly ... I read in a magazine there's nothing quite so impressive to Tanushan women as a man whose mind is as expansive as his penis."

  "I've yet to see evidence of that."

  A brief pause. "No, actually, now that you mention it, me neither."

  "So you killed four people, Ari. They were in the process of trying to kill other people at the time, and probably would have died some other way if you hadn't been there, but even so, that's terrible. I wish you'd never had to do it. But it doesn't bear any moral comparison with what I'm responsible for."

  "Responsible?" Ari's voice was disbelieving. "How can you be responsible when you weren't given any choice in any ..

  "Phrasing," Sandy said quietly. "Simple rule of civilisation-you do something, you're responsible for it. No, it's not fair. But that's the whole point. Do you know how many people I've killed?"

  A silence from Ari. He brushed loose hair back from her ear. "I never thought to ask," he said at last. "I didn't think you were counting."

  "I don't know the real figure because I didn't see the final results of all the rounds I fired," Sandy replied, distantly. "But I know it's more than five hundred. Straight humans. Mostly young, I think. Almost entirely combatants, at least in direct combat. Indirectly, who can say?"

  Ari had nothing to say to that. She turned to face him, and knelt opposite on the bed. His eyes were concerned. Worried, even.

  "I agree with you," she told him. "I had no choice. Until I was about eleven, I wasn't aware there even was a choice. That's the League's fault for making me what they did, and I've never forgiven them for it. I never even signed up. I was just born into it, and that life was the only thing I'd ever known.

  "But it doesn't change the fact that I did it. Not someone else. Me." She searched his eyes, seeking ... something, she didn't know what. Understanding, perhaps. But how was that possible, when she did not entirely understand herself? "I'm past crying about it. I've done that. And I think a part of me never stopped crying, and never will. So many people died in that war, and I can't see that tears will bring any of them back.

  "But I have to find this GI, Ari. I have to find her, and stop her. Maybe she's not as bad as Takawashi says. Maybe she's just like I wasyoung, brainwashed, and not knowing any better. Maybe ... I don't know, maybe I can salvage something of myself from all this, something of that time in my life. Know where I come from, maybe. Make sense of it all."

  Her eyes hurt. That was unexpected. She glanced aside, trying to control it, and mostly succeeding. When she looked back to Ari, her eyes were damp.

  "But one thing's for sure, Ari. I swore to myself a long time ago all those lives I took, however innocent I was in the taking, they can't all be for nothing. All those young men and women, who should still be alive today." A tear slipped down her cheek. "I owe them that. I owe them to try. Even if it takes a lifetime."

  Ari left shortly before dawn, reassuring her that it was nothing serious, just another one of his numerous Tanushan contacts on his uplink. Sandy's uplinks remained disconnected, and she had to take Ari's word for it. She lay in bed for a while after Ari had dressed and departed, pondering the curiously empty sensation within her mind. Like a missing limb, she reckoned. And she recalled reading of a time before synthetic replacements when those who had lost limbs, and lived out their lives as such, had told of a "phantom limb syndrome," where they could still feel basic sensation, and even pain, from nonexistent nerve fibres. Data-withdrawal did something similar, and at times her stream of consciousness would abruptly break, darting off to access some piece of information that turned out not to exist.

  She slept for another hour, rose to order breakfast on the hotel intercom, then showered once more to get her hair back into place-at its present length, if she slept directly after a shower, it stuck out like a bunbun nest the following morning. Then she sat on her bed, crosslegged before her breakfast tray, and watched the latest news on the TV ... which was also a strange experience, as her lack of uplinks compelled her to simply sit and watch, with no data-adjuncts pulled off the broadcast data stream, no clarifying tidbits, no graphical illustrations, no random searches for associated information. Up until now, she hadn't even realised how much she did such things, without noticing.

  Secretary General Benale, the newscast said, had departed Tanusha for Nehru Station. Apparently, to no one's great surprise, he felt safer there. Probably the fact that numerous previously moderate Callayan politicians had referred to him as "colonial scum," in front of reporters, had reinforced this perception

  "Given that the Secretary General has repeatedly failed to condemn the Fifth Fleet's imposition of a full blockade, " the TV reporter said to screen, "and has in fact appeared to almost condone it in some references, there can be little
doubt now as to the sympathies of Earth's political leaders at this time . . . "

  She flicked channels-manually, another strange inconvenienceand found a panel debate of academics and others seated around a table.

  "... no doubt at all in my mind," a white-bearded man in Arabic robes was saying, "or indeed in the mind of any impartial observer, that the murder of Admiral Duong was nothing more than a pretext staged by certain pro-Earth forces, for the Fleet to impose a full blockade upon our world, and therefore upon the hopes and aspirations of the two-thirds of all the Federation's people who do not presently reside upon Earth itself ... "

  "No, I'm not challenging that assessment, Mr Rahmin," the moderator cut in, "I merely ask what the purpose is? I mean, if the motivations are that transparent, what long-term advantage is there to Earth? This whole episode will only increase anti-Earth sentiments throughout the rest of the Federation, surely ... or even the anti-centralisation sentiment on Earth itself such as in the USA?"

  Mr. Rahmin and the other panellists were unable, in Sandy's opinion, to provide a satisfactory answer to that one. They were too rational, she reflected as she munched on a fresh piece of fruit. They based their assertions upon the assumption of a rational universe. But war, Sandy knew from experience, and the concepts of loyalty and belonging that drove it, were certainly not that. They were gut instincts, primordial as the urge for sex, or the roar from a football crowd when someone was spectacularly injured upon the field.

  And perhaps, she thought further, that was where the problem lay. The conflict between the League and the Federation had begun as a contest of ideas-ideas of progress, morality, and conflicting visions for the future of the human species. But it had degenerated from that relative high ground into a conflict of baser instincts, us-versus-them, the enlightened against the morally challenged.