Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  Friends? Not all of them were. “Well, it varies on a case by case basis. I’m not a lawyer, so I really can’t say anything worth listening to about their prospects. But I’m confident that the system will give each of them a fair hearing.”

  “A number of prominent commentators have accused the presence of GIs in Tanusha as being responsible for a rise in violence. After the shooting in Denpasar last week in which seven people were killed, there’s a lot of fingers pointing at GIs and those who sponsor their asylum claims as promoting a general culture of violence which might inspire some unstable people to violent acts.”

  Oh dear God. “Well firstly,” she said with entirely commendable calm, “not all GIs have a combat designation. We weren’t initially even created with combat in mind. That came later with the advent of the League-Federation War. A number of those GIs currently seeking asylum in Tanusha are non-combat designations. Secondly, I think that murder is a very serious charge, and we should level charges of murder against actual murderers.”

  “But if GIs are all peaceful, why are the vast majority of them, including yourself, taking up military or paramilitary jobs after gaining citizenship here?”

  Un. Fucking. Believable. “Surely being a soldier doesn’t necessarily make one violent?” She was almost able to keep the scorn from her voice, as she mounted the steps to the security entrance. Almost.

  “Thank you, Commander,” the girl called after her. Her repressed smile showed what she thought of such unsophisticated logic.

  “Hello, Commander,” said the sympathetic security guard as she handed over her guns for him to register and hand back. “Sorry about that. She got the press pass from someone in the public affairs office. Nothing we can do.”

  “Dear fucking God,” Sandy replied. “I think my IQ just dropped ten points.”

  Chandrasekar was already in the Intelligence Committee room, waiting for things to start. He gave her a sardonic look as she picked her way through System Ambassadors and clusters of attendant staff, greeting those she knew with a smile and a handshake.

  “You came prepared, I trust?” he said as she reached her seat at his side. The raised eyebrow was for her jeans and jacket as much as her lack of briefing papers, but she was always active duty, and formal attire for women sucked, so it was her habit to flaunt the dress code and come in “native,” as some called it.

  “Can I borrow a comb?” she asked, taking her seat. Chandrasekar immediately produced one, only to see from her grin that she was teasing. The CSA’s Investigations chief was always exceptionally well groomed, with big, vid-star hair and neat moustache. He scowled, and put the comb away.

  The Grand Council Intelligence Committee was where the Federation’s senior government officials were briefed on the Federation’s most secret and sensitive matters. People took their seats, Ambassadors at the oval tables, staff against the walls behind. The decor was nice, polished wood and big leather chairs, but there were no windows, and absolutely no media or public access of any kind. This was the most secure room in Tanusha. There weren’t even security cameras in here. Sandy’s uplinks were completely blank; nothing registered on any frequency. Cybernetics ensured that records were kept, of course, but even those implants were fully registered with building security, and all recordings shared and documented after each session. Any of those recordings that showed up in any place they shouldn’t would launch an immediate high level investigation, which could easily land an offender in prison or worse.

  Chairman Ballan got the session underway with the usual procedurals, during one of which Sandy spoke up to announce to all present that she was armed at the table, as was Deputy Chandrasekar. A pointless announcement, but procedure demanded it.

  “Good,” said Ambassador Honiker from Argos System. “I always feel safer when you are.”

  Sandy enjoyed the Grand Council Committees far more than Callayan Parliament Committees of late. Grand Council politics were more benign, for one thing. There were no parties, only loosely defined factions that varied from issue to issue. Each of these ambassadors’ native constituencies were many light years away, and while media from each of their worlds were present to apply pressure, the ambassadors themselves were mostly not elected. As bureaucrats rather than populists, they were not prone to the kind of political showboating that had caused Sandy so much grief on Callay.

  The resulting atmosphere was not so charged with factionalism and grandstanding, debates were more sensible and leisurely, and people in general more friendly and collegial. And yet, for all the lowered temperature, the stakes here were far higher than most matters discussed in the Callayan Parliament. That building represented just one world of a hundred and forty-three million. This building and its ambassadors represented the entire Federation, now twenty-seven-billion-plus strong.

  This session was on New Torah. Sandy told them what she knew, with no mention of Mustafa, then Chandrasekar joined in with accumulated background on New Torah’s seven systems and four inhabited worlds, and which of its so-called governments were doing what to whom. Then, there were questions.

  “Commander Kresnov,” said Chairman Ballan. “You yourself aren’t just a policy analyst, you’re a policy executor, in the security field at least. If I can put it that way.”

  “That is one way to put it,” Sandy conceded wryly. Some others smiled.

  “So I think it might be useful, in this location where we can discuss actions and consequences so freely, to discuss options. If I were to ask you for your policy recommendation on New Torah, what would it be?”

  “Aggressive intervention,” said Sandy. “Immediately.”

  “You’re aware of the many consequences of that policy, of course?”

  “Of course. And I don’t want to make light of them, the consequences would be very serious. I don’t need to explain them to anyone here. All of you have had careers in government far more diverse than my own specialty. But my specialty requires me to focus on the consequences of not intervening.

  “Firstly, there’s the ship-building capability. Now, a Fleet Captain would give a more expert opinion than mine, but I’m pretty sure most of them would say the same thing—New Torah’s so-called governments are little more than crime gangs, and the prospect of crime gangs with military starships is simply unacceptable. The League should be told that either they deal with it, or we will.”

  “Wouldn’t the League be a more likely target than us?” another ambassador asked.

  “Maybe,” said Sandy. “But that’s like hoping the predator eats someone else instead of you—maybe it will, maybe it won’t. The definition of security is not leaving things to chance, hope is not a viable security policy. Secondly, crime gangs are attracted to money. You’ve all seen the briefings detailing New Torah’s increasing involvement into Federation trade, businesses and technology. We’re far wealthier than the League, especially now, and we’re probably more naive of the risks. If I’m a Torah crime gang looking for easy profits, I come here. With a starship that can achieve approach velocities so high it can kill continents.”

  “They’d never use that,” said someone else. “Crime gangs are safer than religious or ideological radicals. They’re rational actors because we can always kill them back, and they do care if they die. They won’t commit suicide.”

  “Yes,” Chandrasekar added, “but hell of a way to start a protection racket.”

  Grim nods around the table.

  “Thirdly,” Sandy continued, “there’s synthetic biology, GIs in particular.” She took a breath. “Now I can’t claim objectivity here, not even close. But I think the arguments are compelling whether objectively made or not. New Torah makes GIs. There’s an argument for humanitarian intervention right there, but I’m not naive enough to suppose that the suffering of an unknown number of artificial people will warrant direct intervention where the suffering of millions of natural, organic humans has not.

  “But New Torah has starships now. Eduardo got to Callay. He
was supposed to perform some covert function, we don’t know what, but evidently he was a strong character who bravely resisted his masters’ crude attempts at programming, and died for it. We might not get so lucky with the next GIs. We’ve already had one new generation GI, whom you’ll know from previous reports went by the name of Jane, who was utterly programmable. New Torah doesn’t have that technology yet, but they might acquire it. GIs in the wrong hands can do a lot of damage. We’ve all seen it happen in this city.”

  “We do have quite a few friendly GIs now as defence,” someone else answered.

  “Sure, but I can’t defend you against everything. I can only fight GIs once I know they’re here, and sometimes I’ll only know that after the damage has been done. And even I’m not invulnerable. A bad intelligence breach could put me in real danger, particularly from GIs in Tanusha that I’m not prepared for.”

  Or a simple sniper, she could have said. She wasn’t bullet proof, only bullet resistant, and if the caliber was big enough, and she didn’t know it was coming, she was as dead as anyone else. But even in this secure room, she wasn’t about to start announcing her weaknesses in public.

  “And further,” she added, “and this is by far the most dangerous point of all, GI technology is not static. I’m the most advanced combat GI so far, but I’m twenty-two years old now. League didn’t work on the technology beyond me for political reasons mostly, and for the fear that I wouldn’t turn out to be loyal, which was proven a correct fear. So maybe I am the final say in GI psychology, because at least I’m stable—Jane was the other way of doing it, but the book isn’t written with her any longer. She had to evolve further before we’d know one way or the other.”

  Which was, of course, why Sandy had let her live, when she had assuredly deserved to die. Or that’s what she told herself.

  “But if New Torah starts pressing that technology forward once more, taking it beyond where the League basically stopped, then the whole ball starts rolling again, and we’re back where we were when the Federation declared war on the League. Artificial humanity is potentially reconcilable with organic humanity, I think, although that solution is yet to be written. Perhaps that’s the chapter we’re writing here on Callay, with myself and the other refugees.

  “But artificial humanity is not reconcilable into civilised human society when its direction is controlled by a bunch of brutal crime gangs who are only interested in using their fighting abilities to advance their own monstrous criminality. That’s my greatest fear. Artificial humanity is capable of the same wonders and joys of life as regular humans. But New Torah will turn us into monsters, to the point that one day the only thing we’ll be good for is extinction.”

  “How many do you have?” Sandy asked Allessandro Ballan after the briefing. A staffer brought her lunch: a bowl of very decent pasta and a glass of red. They were in Ballan’s office, just the two of them, his staffers occupying the rooms outside. From here they had a view through polarized glass onto the inner courtyard of the Grand Council Assembly building. Circular walls and offices rose high around the garden below, thick with native trees. In the garden’s center, a large skylight made a glass ceiling for the Assembly chamber below. Sandy had personally protested that architectural choice—any assault team had outside access directly to the core of the building, rendering the entire complex vulnerable, to say nothing of the damage that could be caused by an attack with heavy weapons. She’d been assured the high tech defences would guard against either eventuality, which was bullshit, and she’d nearly written an editorial to a news service saying so, when no one else would listen. But the Tanushan media, she’d learned from long experience, were not her friends.

  Ambassador Ballan followed her gaze, and smiled. “Still concerned for the Assembly’s safety?”

  “My FSA team could be in here in ten minutes,” she said flatly, eating pasta at the office table. Ballan received his own bowl, and joined her. “I’ve got it all documented for the aftermath: how I protested, how the CSA backed me, how we were overruled, everything. The investigation will find it useful.”

  Ballan chuckled. “You’ve become very cynical in your old age.”

  “I keep getting accused of that. I think the word is ‘experienced.’”

  Ballan was the ambassador of Nova Esperanca, a world of eight hundred million situated close to League space. That proximity had put Nova Esperanca front and center in the war, giving Ballan a strong security background. He was well respected, and a natural choice for Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

  “Currently,” he answered her question, “we have thirty-six. We need sixty percent of member worlds, there’s fifty-seven of those at present, so we need thirty-four.”

  “Slim margin,” Sandy murmured.

  Ballan nodded. “Of course, it will be a priority vote, so it might take a while.” Meaning that Ambassadors would have to consult with their home governments before voting. That could take up to two months. Voting to authorise assertive military policy against New Torah was not a non-priority matter.

  “So it should pass?” Sandy asked.

  Ballan shrugged. “Never certain. But most likely, yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we convene a policy cabinet on the issue, and all the member worlds will select whomever they feel most qualified to represent their interests. Much like the war against the League. Only we hope it shall not be so serious this time.”

  “Won’t the member worlds all have some kind of domestic vote first?”

  “Oh, no,” said Ballan dismissively, around another mouthful. “We’re not voting to authorise a war. Only to move to a potential war footing, in the hope of dissuading both the League and New Torah from current actions. I personally doubt it will go any further than that; the League cannot afford our displeasure now. We’ll twist their arm, and force them to deal with New Torah themselves.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “Bridge, crossing, the old cliché.”

  “So if we had to take more aggressive action,” Sandy pressed, “it could take more months to be authorised. And then we probably would need all the member worlds to have their own separate vote . . .”

  “Some of them would demand it, yes. Others not.”

  “And in the meantime we’d just have to hope New Torah doesn’t see all this going on, and decide to hit us first.”

  Ballan gave her a look of heavy-lidded concern. “It would rather solve the debate.”

  “Wouldn’t it,” said Sandy, with displeasure. “At what cost?”

  Ballan sighed, forking more pasta. “There is another issue that could derail us. The action on Pyeongwha has occurred very close to this new vote, and some of those worlds who voted against it are still smarting from their defeat . . .”

  “Even despite what we found?” Sandy was too wise by now to be incredulous. This felt more like contempt than incredulity.

  “Some worlds do not like a strong Grand Council taking military action against member worlds,” Ballan said reasonably. “Callay itself is one such world, having voted against the action only to lose the vote, to the displeasure of President Singh.”

  “Trust me,” said Sandy, “I noticed.”

  “It’s simply not the Grand Council that many people envisioned and wanted. The institution was supposed to be benign, but then came the war. Now that the war is over, people wanted it to return to their original vision, an institution of peaceful compromise. Instead, we find ourselves taking one aggressive policy decision after another.”

  “And because of everyone’s reluctance,” Sandy added, “something like six hundred thousand people on Pyeongwha have died when it could have been stopped.”

  “Is it up to six hundred thousand now?” Ballan murmured, aghast.

  Sandy nodded. “It was industrial scale. We’ve found another six facilities so far. Their records indicate they were going at a solid forty thousand a year this year. It had been escalating upward for the last few
decades. It started off as just a handful of murders a year, then grew exponentially. Kind of like NCT itself.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible, does it?” Ballan gulped his wine.

  “Oh, I think it does,” said Sandy.

  “Perhaps you’re less naive than I.”

  “Or perhaps when you’re the product of an industrial war machine like I am, and you’ve then seen the people who created you treat this wonderful creation like something they scraped off their shoe, you realise that with human civilisation, pretty much anything is possible.”

  Ballan smiled faintly. “Having seen the abuses you’ve seen, it’s a wonder you’re not a pacifist.”

  “Having seen the abuses I’ve seen,” Sandy replied with an edge, “it would be a wonder if anyone could remain a pacifist.”

  Ballan nodded thoughtfully. “So tell me this,” he said. “The Federal Security Agency. You’re a member of both it, and the Callayan Security Agency. Can this continue?”

  “Right now we don’t have a choice. The FSA is new, and while there’s plenty of intel analysts and desk jockeys, they’re short of serious muscle. We’re still recruiting, but there’s always been a shortage of good paramilitary people on Federation worlds, and from there the next step up is Fleet. And a lot of Fleet Marines don’t really like the FSA because of all the old CDF hands like myself and Vanessa who shot up a bunch of Fifth Fleet people five years ago.”

  “To say nothing of all the former-League GIs now in the FSA as well,” Ballan added.

  “Exactly. So if the FSA is to have an arm with muscle, that can carry out strikes independently of Fleet, we’re really stuck with ex-CDF and CSA people, because there’s not enough of the others yet to fill the numbers. And if we strip all those people out of the CSA at the same time, the CSA’s left with nothing, and with all the threats on Callay at the moment, that’s not feasible. Thus, we’re all working two jobs.”

  “It’s just that when we moved the center of the Federation from Earth to Callay,” Ballan explained, “we swore this kind of blurring between the Federal government and the local would end.”