Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1)

by Joel Shepherd

  Which worked for a little while, of course, while the war was on. But now, the organs that ran the Federation had begun to define themselves by war and conflict. War had given them meaning and purpose. War had brought them together, and made them strong. And now, what would the Federation become, without conflict? They needed it. Not technically, and certainly not economically, although there were elements of both. But emotionally, as surely as the netwave addict needed his daily shot of hallucinatory code. Admit it or not, they were hooked, and they'd do almost anything to avoid losing control of their precious Fleet.

  It would be two weeks before the people of Earth even heard about the actions of the Fifth. Another two weeks for comment or orders to return. Maybe the Grand Council would give the order to stand down ... or as seemed more likely in these days of political gridlock at the highest level, maybe not. In the meantime, the Fleet could strangle the Callayan economy all they pleased. It wasn't a state of affairs that any presidential administration should be prepared to tolerate. Sure as hell the CDF wouldn't, if she had anything to do with it.

  The doorbell rang. Sandy frowned, pausing in midbite. With no uplinks, she had no way of knowing who was on the other side. Perhaps it was room service again-Ari had said he was going to leave her something at the service desk. But yelling out a question would not do-the person on the other side might only be attempting to discern whether she was actually in the room. If he was going to find out, she'd rather he did so in person.

  She slid off the bed, tightened her robe and pulled the pistol Ari had given her from its holster on the bedside table. Considered peering through the eye hole, as she approached the door, but decided against it. GI eyesockets were reinforced at the back with light myomer, but if an attacker knew GIs well enough to know the required calibre ... She tucked the pistol into the pocket of her robe, grasped the handle lock firmly, then thumb-pressed the release and opened a fraction in one fast move.

  It was All Sudasarno, frozen in midfidget with his neck tie.

  "Cassandra?" His eyes flicked down. "Is that a gun in your pocket?"

  "That's supposed to be my line," Sandy quipped. Sudasarno looked puzzled. Sandy took that response as a fair sign that he was not being coerced by armed persons behind the doorframe (very few inexperienced civilians gave any response to anything superfluous, with a gun pointed at their head) and she reached out and yanked him quickly inside the door. Closed it, locked it, and dragged him further into the room.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" she asked, eyes hard with mild alarm. "How did you know where I was?"

  "I have, um, sources." Sudasarno readjusted his suit lapels from where she'd pulled them out of alignment. And glanced at the halfeaten breakfast upon the bed. "I'm sorry, did I catch you at breakfast?"

  "Tell me how, or I'll hurt you."

  Sudasarno gave an exasperated, youthful smile. "Look, Sandy ... I'm really sorry I snapped at you the last time we talked, I'm not normally like that, I assure you ..."

  Sandy grabbed him once more, one hand upon the belt, the other by the shirt, in a flash lifted and thumped him back against the wall beside the TV. His head hit the decorative wall painting, pain adding itself to stunned disbelief upon his youthful face.

  "Sudie," she told him, gazing upward as she held him effortlessly suspended, "you've just put both of our lives in danger. Tell me how you found me, or I swear I'll be forced to start breaking bones until you do." His eyes fixed on hers with disbelief. "I swear it."

  "Your ... your car's bugged ... I mean Ari's car. The cruiser."

  "Who bugged it?"

  "I ... someone who works for Secretary Grey, I'm not sure ..." and saw the narrowing of her eyes, "... look honestly, I don't fucking know! Sandy, you're hurting me! My belt ..."

  "Who monitors the bug?"

  "Kalaji ... he ... he works for the Secretary." Desperately. "Sandy, I needed to know where you were! I was instructed to keep in contact with you and now you won't answer your uplinks ..

  "Your calls least of all, I don't want to get fried." She dumped him back down. Sudasarno gasped, grabbing his belt and loosening. Sandy turned to where she'd left her clothes last night, neatly stacked for easy dressing, placed the pistol upon the bed and untied her robe.

  "What do you mean `my calls least of all'?" Sudasarno protested. "Sandy, I work for the President, I'm no threat to ..." And stopped with a gulp as Sandy dropped the robe before him and began dressing quickly.

  "There's been a lot of things happening in this city lately that couldn't have happened without some real senior help," Sandy said darkly as she pulled on underwear and pants-the same clothes as yesterday, unwashed, and too bad if they smelled. "My bet is Secretary Grey's department's involved; as Secretary of State he's certainly got all the resources and talents at his disposal."

  Sudasarno looked incredulous. "You're accusing Secretary Grey of...?"

  "I'm not accusing him of anything," Sandy snapped, pulling on her shirt and jacket. "I'm saying there's a better than even chance that his department's been infiltrated. Which means that you're not the only person who could have found out where I am."

  She tucked the pistol and holster into the pocket of her jacket, and grabbed a last handful of fruit from the breakfast tray, stuffing it into her mouth and chewing powerfully. Grabbed a bewildered Sudasarno by the arm and hauled him to the door.

  "Ever done a basic combat course?" Sandy asked around her mouthful as she grasped the latch, releasing Sudasarno's arm to hold the pistol within her pocket. "Escape and evasion?"

  "Sure." He nodded. Past the light brown skin, he looked a little pale. "After the Parliament Massacre they were compulsory."

  Sandy swallowed her fruit. "Then you'll know the basics. If I say `down,' you get down. If I say `run,' you run. Don't crowd me, don't grab me, don't obstruct my field of fire. Got it?"

  He nodded, very nervously. "Got it. Sandy, who do you think ... ?"

  "And save the questions." With a firm stare. Sudasarno shut up, swallowing hard. Sandy yanked the door and slid through, just enough to double-check both ways along the hall. Then gestured quickly to Sudasarno, who followed, shutting the door behind him. A man appeared down the end of the long, door-lined hall. Sandy remembered the shades in her pocket, and put them on ... it looked suspicious to be wearing them indoors, of course, but not extravagantly so in fashion-obsessed Tanusha. And dark hair or not, she didn't want to risk being recognised just now.

  The man approaching was wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. Of Indian appearance, plus athletic build and stride. Shorter than the average, as with most GIs ... Sandy flashed her vision to infra-red, and registered the heat shades of his body ... and found them normal for a straight human.

  "He's okay," she murmured to the nervous Sudasarno. Of course, it didn't guarantee he wasn't a hostile, it just meant she could handle him in a split second without having to pay him too much attention in the meantime ... They walked past, barely making eye contact. Natural enough in any big city, Sandy had long ago gathered.

  "I have a cruiser," Sudasarno said in a low voice as they approached the end of the corridor.

  "Not safe," Sandy replied in a similar tone. Snapped a quick look both ways at the T-junction, then led him right, toward the elevators. "Might explode the moment you start it up."

  Sudasarno stared at her. "Hold on ... why am I suddenly a target? Hell, why am I even coming with you ... no one's after me, just you!"

  "And if they make an attempt on me now, and you survive, you'll be able to join the dots right back to whoever planted that bug."

  "Well, hey, I can do that right now ..." From his suddenly distant gaze, Sandy guessed he was connecting an uplink, probably to call for help. She grabbed his arm as they walked, warningly.

  "Don't," she told him. "A GI can monitor the entire hotel network. If you make any kind of call, she might assume help's on the way and attack immediately."

  They arrived at the elevators, and Sandy pr
essed the upward call button. The corridor in both directions remained empty, as her hand remained fixed about the pistol grip in her pocket. Unable to access the network, she felt blind. She wasn't going to have any advance warning if attacked this time. The temptation to just briefly access an uplink was extreme, to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond. But it was a glimpse that could cost her her life.

  The elevator arrived, and they rode it up two floors to the hotel main lobby. There were people around, patrons and bellhops, and automated luggage trolleys that trundled cautiously across the carpet as new arrivals came in. Sandy surveyed the surroundings coolly as she and Sudasarno walked toward the service desk at one end of reception ... "Don't gawk around," she told him, "you'll draw fire." And to the lady at the service desk, "Hello, I'm Asma Goldstein, I believe my husband left me something?"

  "And what was his name?"

  "Dori Goldstein." And handed the lady a credit card ... with Tanushan registration, it passed for multipurpose ID. And she found time to reflect that it wouldn't have been so easy if Parliament had managed to pass the Citizens' Card bill, but even after recent horrors, the Callayan public weren't quite ready for mandatory, all-purpose ID cards. Evidently quite a few of them had read Orwell. Or maybe they just knew what Ari always told her-that hackers and forgers were so competent these days, a comprehensive ID system would only work against petty violators, while the big players continued to go where they liked throughout Callay in total anonymity. After a moment of searching beneath the desk, the hotel lady found a small handset and placed it on the counter.

  "There you are, compliments of Mr. Goldstein."

  "Thank you." It was a mobile phone, Sandy reckoned from the look of it-they weren't very common in Tanusha, filling just a niche in the electronic gadget market. She departed, pulling Sudasarno after her. "Don't stare around!" she told him in a low voice. "This is a terrible ambush spot, even this GI seems to have some idea of covert activities. The target environment's not primed, she'll have no advance plan or surveillance. Very tricky if she wants to get away."

  They headed past the broad stairway leading to the upper carpark, headed instead for the outer wall express elevators. There were glass doors and polished surfaces ahead, and at extreme, motion-sensitive visual enhancement, Sandy could see just about everything in the lobby that she needed to see. Or nearly.

  "You're posing as Ari's wife now?" asked Sudasarno, as if trying to distract himself from the situation.

  "One of many conveniences. You don't think I look Jewish?"

  "Not enough for the Tanushan Jewish community." Glancing about once more, anxiously. "They're pretty conservative in a lot of places, don't intermarry much, try to keep the bloodlines intact. The scourge of genetic dispersal, and all that." As a political advisor to the President who tracked voting trends would surely know. And he spared her a glance, taking in the dark hair and shades, the dark jacket, and the effortless poise of her stride. "Frankly, Sandy, I think you're a Jewish mother's worst nightmare."

  "And how do you figure that?"

  "Because you're an Indonesian Muslim mother's worst nightmare too. If I took you home to meet my mother, I'd be disowned."

  Sandy managed a faint shrug past the deadening calm of combatreflex. "Sure, but it'd be worth it for all the great sex, huh?"

  "Spoken like someone who doesn't have a mother."

  "Don't rub it in."

  None of the four express elevators were presently docked. Sandy and Sudasarno waited to one side of the gathering crowd before the elevator doors, confronted by a vast panorama of Tanushan morning cityscape beyond the glass walls.

  "Shit," Sudasarno muttered under his breath as the tension began to get the better of him, "I can't believe this is ... are you sure?"

  "Sudie," Sandy said calmly, gazing straight ahead and covering both ends of the hallway with her peripheral vision, "in my business, there's no such thing as "sure". If you don't play the odds, you'll die. You'll notice I'm still alive, and I plan to stay that way."

  "Why the express elevator? Couldn't we have taken the smaller ..."

  "We'd have to change halfway, and if a GI's locked into the local network, she might be able to hack that elevator car, make it stop where she wants it. Express elevators are pretty much unhackable."

  "We're not endangering these people?"

  "It's a civilian environment," said Sandy. "Everyone's endangered no matter what we do. That's the bitch of these FIA arseholes." One trusted that even an FIA-raised and bred GI had enough civility not to fire into a car full of civilians. One trusted any hostile act would wait for a better opportunity, to ensure she got away. But if the mind in question was as cold as Takawashi had suggested ... Well, in that case, who was safe anywhere?

  The car arrived. Sandy waited until the last of the small waiting crowd were in, and then followed with Sudasarno. It deprived them of a view, standing by the doors as the group of perhaps thirty people jostled to grasp the side railings, and gaze out at the breathtaking vista of morning cityscape beyond the transparent shell of the elevator car. Sandy took a casual hold of one of the leather straps upon the ceilingto-floor synthetic ropes that were arranged in a circle within the car. Sudasarno did likewise, as the doors closed with a final, warning bell, and a friendly voice announced on the intercom (in English and then Mandarin-the most common tongue of non-English-speaking tourists) that the express elevator would fly down the side of the tower at a hundred kilometres an hour, and internal gravity would be reduced effectively by a third. Some children clutching to the outer railing, and staring half a kilometre straight down, squealed in delighted anticipation. Another little boy howled in distress, clawing at his mother's leg. Sandy thought briefly of Rhian, and smiled, faintly.

  "I hope no one lands on top of us when we're halfway down," a nearby tourist with some unidentifiable off-world accent remarked. People laughed. Sudasarno gave Sandy a wary sideways glance, which Sandy chose to ignore. The car began to descend, with a gathering rush of muffled sound. As gravity grew steadily lighter, and the tower wall began to rush by at blurring speed, Sandy felt the strange, surreal sensation of time appearing to slow. The natural-light colour and texture of the surrounding people, their clothes and hair and skin tones, vanished into a blur of bodytones, temperatures and flash-registered motion as an eyelid blinked, or a parent grasped a child's hand more tightly.

  And she turned her head, sharply, to find one humanoid shape amidst the crowd that was not moving, nor grasping tightly upon a rail or strap, nor even admiring the view. Female, about her own height, and gazing straight at her. Of a cooler, nonbiological body temperature. No visible pulse at the jugular.

  Sound ceased to register. All extraneous information flows stopped. There was just her, and the other GI, standing perhaps three metres apart with stares locked. No move was made. Slowly, Sandy phased her vision back to regular light, overlaying that imagery on top of the hairtriggered, combat hues. The other GI's eyes were pale blue, her shortish hair a light, straw-blonde, protruding beneath a baseball cap. She wore comfortable cargo pants with thigh pockets, and a light, waterproof jacket over a T-shirt. The collar on the jacket was raised. From behind, that plus the cap would block any clear perception of body temperature. At least one pocket of jacket and pants appeared to bulge with weight, the exact nature of which was difficult to tell-you could do so with straight humans, because weapons were heavy, and posture altered just minutely to compensate. A GI's posture was rarely so affected.

  There was a child, clasping his father's hand, directly alongside the GI. Gazing outward and down, in the opposite direction. Sandy realised she couldn't move. A GI on hair-trigger reflexes might have weapon in hand and be pulling the trigger, before a conscious decision to change her mind could register. Two GIs, facing each other, suffered from a mutually reinforcing "no return scenario" ... as they'd called it, studying such phenomena in Dark Star. It had been a purely hypothetical scenario, then. Two GIs, facing each other ... impossible, since t
he League was the only side to produce or deploy GIs. But the scenario was a constant in training, where the first move, once made, was far too fast for the conscious mind to easily halt ... and when reinforced by the reflexive response of the opponent, the momentum toward the kill-shot became unstoppable. The other GI might be merely shifting weight, or turning her head to look another way ... if it triggered a draw, the other GI had to retaliate. Had to. And a firefight in a crowded elevator car would be a disaster. Unarmed combat would be even worse.

  She was dimly aware, then, that Sudasarno had asked her a question. She moved the tip of her little finger, just a fraction. The GI's gaze did not alter. Nothing did. Sandy accelerated the motion, moving the entire little finger, then ever so slowly allowing all the fingers on her left hand, grasping the leather strap, to join in. She had no other notion of what to do if the GI drew, or otherwise attacked, than to attempt to grab and restrain her from lashing around, hopefully saving thirty innocent tourists from being smeared all over the car's interior. Perhaps she could smash a hole in the transparent wall, and leap out, thus depriving the GI of a motivation for violent action. Somewhere in the distant background of her hearing, a child squealed laughter ... the tops of smaller towers were passing now, gravity was low, and it was doubtless very exciting.

  Slowly, her entire hand moved, a part of that gradual, flowing motion. Then, without any sudden movements, or rapid extensions, she extended the arm, and grasped Sudasarno's suit lapel as best she could, with the thumb still immobile and bound. Still it was steely strong.

  "Don't move," she said calmly, just loudly enough to be heard above the hum of descent, and the babble of excited children. No one was paying them any attention. "Don't say a word, don't move, and don't panic. If you can do that, we'll be just fine."

  Sudasarno neither moved nor spoke. Sandy guessed he was summing up the situation, although she could not turn her head to see. She could imagine well enough his eyes following the rigid line of her stare, and realising who the object of attention must be. And the terror that would follow. Dimly, past the combat-focus, she realised she was mad at herself. Should have taken the stairs. Should have called for an air-taxi. Should have done anything other than lead to this standoff, in a crowded elevator, where the very people she'd sworn an oath to protect were going to be the first to die, if something went wrong. But the first step to lessen risk was to remove yourself from the situation. And she'd done that, the fastest way she'd had available. It had been the right thing to do. Hadn't it?