Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire

by Joel Shepherd

  Phillippe talked his way sweetly past the hotel security admitting people into the bearpit, as CSA called such VIP hotel gatherings.

  “Good,” Vanessa formulated, sipping coffee. “Someone will scan you pretty soon, they’ll check your face and net-trace. Go to the bar, someone will come to you.”

  He did that. She looked about her establishment, refocusing past net vision. Lots of people, mostly office workers out early, doing afternoon errands, working on portables. In another hour the rush would start, then it would get really crowded. Quite possible that someone’s security was here with her, friendly or otherwise—this place had a good view. CSA control had the whole region’s network locked down, and any odd transmissions would be spotted. The bad guys didn’t have that luxury.

  Phillippe’s feed showed a woman in a low cut dress, smiling and shaking Phillippe’s hand. Pretty, blonde, European. Sophisticated. Big tits, once again.

  “Steady, boy,” said Vanessa. “You do realise this feed is following your vision?” With adjustments for wobble and rapid movement, of course, or she’d get motion sick. The blonde girl finished introductions, and led Phillippe away from the bar and through the crowd. Backless dress. Nice ass. Swaying, back and forth, back and forth . . . Vanessa grinned. “You and me are going to have a little talk when this is over.”

  She wasn’t going to get a reply from him. He wasn’t as good at internal formulation; it took practise and higher level upgrades than he possessed. She’d only hear him when he spoke. The girl made an introduction to someone . . . audio wasn’t great either, but Vanessa heard “Assistant Secretary to the Under Secretary,” which was good. Phillippe was making progress. Soon he’d be passed up the chain. Already, some higher League spook would be receiving notification and putting Phillippe on his schedule. A drink was pressed into his hand, and small talk ensued.

  Vanessa passed time scanning the hotel network. She was nowhere near as fast at this kind of thing as Ari, to say nothing of Sandy, but as she made her leisurely way around the complex bundles of pulsating lines and graphical representations, she could clearly see how the CSA’s constructs had integrated themselves into the hotel’s information matrix. There was a lot of traffic going in all directions, of course, most of it oblivious—lots of business travellers doing their work, tourists relaxing on high-end VR, complex webs of information branching like micro-roots off a tree, spreading into the surrounding maze.

  CSA tacnet had a useful function, tracking all hotel in and outflows, so she used it, seeking a couple of useful parameters she was familiar with from spending so much time with GIs lately. Almost immediately she had a hit, zoomed on it, and became concerned.

  “Central, what is this? Is this a GI signature?”

  It was always the worry, with League operatives. League GIs weren’t allowed off embassy grounds without special clearance. Mustafa had one, but Mustafa was ISO, and ISO weren’t on good terms with this party at the Ahimsa Hotel. Not all League GIs were ISO, of course—in fact, Mustafa was quite rare. But not many of the rest were cleared for this kind of intel work.

  The signature disappeared. Vanessa frowned, searching fast.

  “I’m sorry Jailbait, repeat that last?” came Central’s reply.

  “Someone’s processing seriously fast in there,” said Vanessa. “Third floor, room by the elevators.”

  “We’ll have someone check it out.”

  Vanessa had no doubt they would, but it gave her a bad feeling. League software. Sandy occasionally pulled out some nasty tricks that had the best Federation people shaking their heads in disbelief. Not so much superior software as different, as all League and Federation infotech had diverged over the many decades and light years of estrangement. Like two separate species of the same animal evolving on separate continents, given enough time they wouldn’t look too similar at all. The best Federation work, particularly Tanushan work, gave League specialists the shits, as they had nothing to counter it with. Ditto League functions in Tanusha.

  She set up an analysis function and began entering parameters. Full VR would have been faster for input, but she didn’t want to be seen typing the empty air at her table before the windows. Sandy would do this in a microsecond, she thought with exasperation. Phillippe’s group had been joined by someone else—a woman, older. More handshakes. Personal assistant to the Under Secretary, no less. Big fan of European classical, had no idea it was so popular on Callay given the preference for South Asian classical.

  Vanessa would have bet her eyeteeth this was an agent. Personal assistant was an ideal position—a multi-purpose organiser with contacts everywhere. But she didn’t want to make Phillippe anxious, so she said nothing.

  She finished with the parameters, and activated. Scans ran for a few seconds, then a reply. Fuck. Her eyes widened. Was something wrong with the system?

  “Central, I just ran a scan on the hotel’s intra-networks. Inputs and outputs don’t match.”

  Pause from Central. “Hello Jailbait, please explain?” He didn’t sound very interested, the usual way with Intel network specialists dealing with SWAT grunts. Although her call sign probably didn’t help. It was an internal joke in SWAT: small and cute, she was 42 years old but was still asked for ID at clubs.

  “Network inputs and outputs in a closed building system have to match, right? These don’t match, it’s like they’re running a much larger, enclosed system in there somewhere.”

  “Jailbait give me the parameters of your scan, I’ll double check it.” No doubt thinking the SWAT grunt had stuffed it up. Vanessa sent, and waited. Pause. “That’s very interesting,” said Central. Puzzled. Puzzled wasn’t good. “Someone should check that out.”

  Vanessa walked in. She bypassed the bearpit completely, with its well dressed crowds and awful lobby music, and headed straight for the elevators. She was armed, of course, as she was every day now, on duty or otherwise. These days, you just never knew when you were going to need it, and she felt nearly naked without the pistol weight against her ribs.

  She went up to the third floor, the first major floor above the high ceiling of the lobby. There was a sky bridge here across the side of the lobby, and she walked straight, heading for convention rooms on the far side, where hotel staff were setting up chairs and refreshments for some later function. A few of them glanced at her. Probably there were League security disguised here somewhere, but Vanessa didn’t care. They knew they were being watched, and she didn’t care if they knew. Someone might vis-scan her face and connect it to her husband downstairs, but fuck it. Sandy had long ago taught her that nervous enemies were preferable to confident ones.

  She walked through convention rooms, then into a new hallway. Nothing. She headed for the bathrooms off the hallway. Where would you set up some kind of separate matrix? Not from the guest rooms, those had too many points of ingress for back hacking. One of these lower rooms then. Internal vision showed Phillippe being led to a smaller back room. Plenty of people around, and the new room looked to have better drinks, and food. And here was the Under Secretary himself, a cheerful black guy delighted to make Phillippe’s acquaintance.

  Great way to meet everyone in Tanusha, Vanessa reflected as she checked first the men’s, then the women’s bathrooms. Set up in a big hotel for a day or two, and let everyone come to you in informal circumstances. Chaotic security environment, hard to keep track of everything, not like these one-on-one meetings they usually did that were so easy to spy on.

  She headed on to the gymnasium, then the swimming pool, then the outer patio deck overlooking crowded Patna streets. Nothing.

  Tacnet showed her an agent was coming to help her. Good, they’d cover more ground more quickly together. She walked to the hallway junction and sure enough, there was one of the hotel staff who’d been helping arrange the banquet in the other rooms. They made eye contact on approach. Obviously it was a CSA Agent—an attractive woman, slenderish, dark hair tied back in a serviceable bun, wearing hotel uniform. And her stride
was . . .

  Vanessa went for her gun—they both did—then flung herself sideways, shooting and rolling, coming up in a crouch beside the wall still shooting, somehow still alive as the GI took bullet after bullet, slumping against the wall, weapon sliding from her hand. Vanessa got up, walked forward, and unloaded the rest of her magazine into the GI’s head point blank. Her pistol was large caliber, for precisely this purpose, and made a real mess.

  Then it hit her. Holy fuck I went head to head with a GI and lived. It must have been a Reg.

  “Red, Red, Red!” she was yelling on open channel even as the thoughts occurred to her. “Full Red, come in shooting, we’ve got GIs!”

  She sprinted down the hallway, exchanging magazines, then slid into cover alongside the next corner and peeked around. Bullets sent her ducking back, too inaccurate to be another GI . . . she back handed her pistol low around the corner, armscomp gave her an internal-vision flash of the target and she fired, sending him ducking and running. She saw other hotel workers running, at least one might have been League, but her husband was downstairs in this and she wasn’t waiting.

  She did what Sandy would have done, and went straight at them, only slower, shooting as she came. One tried to hit her and died, others dove behind tables as glasses and plates exploded, and those who didn’t shoot back really were hotel staff, she figured, and shot the woman leaning about a table for an angle. No GIs, these; they died quickly.

  She took off again, past panicked and screaming staff, straight for the balcony level overlooking the lobby below and the bearpit party. Without looking, she hurdled the side and fell seven meters through the air. Someone half broke her fall and went flying as she rebounded backward and rolled through an impact that might have killed her, unaugmented. Phillippe had been taken to the back rooms, she recalled . . . this way.

  She charged through the pandemonium of shouting, running, huddling guests, straight arming anyone who got in her way like a footballer breaking tackles, bowling them over. Someone in a tuxedo took a shot at her, missed, and she blew half his head off. Not a GI either.

  Hotel security wisely ran away rather than confront her, and she charged into a hallway to the adjoining rooms and kicked open the first doorway she saw. Ducked back, but drew no fire, and slipped quickly inside.

  Here were several people in reclining chairs. Lying still and silent. About their necks were VR collars, plugging them in. Bearpit guests. Serious VR. GIs in the hotel, running some massive-depth VR matrix as only GIs could from a mobile setup without hardwire support. It all hit her fast and hard, what the League was pulling here, right under everyone’s nose. Data retrieval, big time. Brain jacking. Something like what Sandy had pulled in the President’s Office, only bigger, chasing after people who knew anything about what Sandy and the FSA/CSA combine might be up to on New Torah.

  None of these people were Phillippe. Someone appeared in the doorway and nearly died for it, but it was just a terrified guest, looking for safety.

  Vanessa tore past him, into the hallway, and kicked in the next set of doors, spinning aside as this time she did draw fire. She wasn’t in the habit of carrying flash-bangs on her day off so she improvised, angling her pistol around the corner, unable to get an angle on the shooter but looking up. Armscomp vision sighted nicely on the silly hotel chandelier, which she blew from its base. It fell with a crash, possibly hitting someone, as she ducked and rolled in, shot the shooter twice, then swept the rest of the room as she came in properly.

  Here were two more guests unconscious in reclining chairs, and Phillippe, dazed and blinking. “Vanessa?” He stared up at her, bewildered. “What’s going on?” Then he saw the body on the floor, and paled.

  “Fuck it,” Vanessa muttered, crouching to peer into his eyes, checking pupil dilation, reaction. “You’re in pre-immersion hypnosis, somehow they cracked these fucking barriers, it shouldn’t be possible.”

  There was shooting out in the lobby now, agents were busting in, removing obstacles the easy way. Shouting nearby, and running footsteps. They’d try to retrieve the data, transmit to the network before the CSA arrived.

  “We have to get out of here!” Vanessa snapped. “Move, move!” She grabbed him and tried to haul him to the second entry doorways to this room, but Phillippe was dazed and stumbling. Movement in the first doorway; Vanessa threw him flat and shot through the door at the first man, who barely ducked away in time. She crouched low as return fire came past the doorframe, emptying her second magazine as she slithered sideways toward her husband, shoving him towards the second doors again as bullets cracked and fizzed about.

  She reloaded as Phillippe made a dash for the doors, got one open, which she sprang through and past him to clear the hallway beyond. Someone peered around a corner ahead, and she blasted the walls to dissuade him. Bracing against the doors on the opposite hallway wall gave her a better angle, but then one of those doors shoved abruptly open, sending her sprawling. Phillippe leaped at the new arrival, who knocked him aside, only to be hit by Vanessa in an eye blurring co-mingle of interlocking limbs, bodies twisting for leverage as they spun about, and then something abruptly broke, with a horrid snap louder than a branch breaking.

  Bodies fell to the ground, Vanessa shoving the oddly right-angled torso off her and coming up shooting to keep the man at the hallway corner back.

  “Yeah that’s right, you piece of shit!” she yelled at him. “Come and get some!”

  Someone shot him from further up the adjoining hallway, and he stumbled into Vanessa’s field of fire. Vanessa took his legs, he fell, screaming, and writhed.

  “Commander Rice!” she yelled at the footsteps of approaching agents coming up the adjoining hall. “Me and one friendly, but this hallway is not secure!”

  They peered at her, fast and professional in suits with handguns, then rushed on to secure the rest of the floor. No one was trusting tacnet; everything had to be checked visually.

  Phillippe was staring at her, slumped against the hallway wall. Vanessa realised the moisture on her cheek was blood, not hers.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him, suddenly worried that his pale expression might betray some injury.

  “Fine,” he said hoarsely. “I’m fine.” His eyes strayed to the big man she’d nearly broken in half, clinging to his back like a jockey on a horse. The man was still alive, trying to breathe through a shattered diaphragm. The look on his face as he died was beyond horrifying. “Oh, God. Should we help him?”

  “Sure,” said Vanessa, and shot him.

  She didn’t need to. The guy had maybe thirty seconds left, if that. She wasn’t sure why she did it, so cold and brutal. More CSA agents rushed past, checking their hallway, moving on to the next. Their shouts and calls filled the air as they cleared one space after another with reassuring speed.

  Phillippe stared at the body, eyes filling with tears. He looked at her, and reached for her hand.

  “Vanessa, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I put you in danger. I was stupid, I thought it was a game. Oh, God, I’m sorry, I nearly got you killed. Look what you had to do to save me.”

  That was what bothered him, not the blood, not the dead man. The fact that he’d been trapped in enemy hands, and she’d had to charge through them to get to him.

  Now she was tearing up. “I’d do it again. I love you.”

  “You won’t have to,” he told her, with firm earnest. “No more silly hero stuff from me. I’m out. You’re the professional, I’ll do whatever you say.”

  Vanessa took a deep breath. Phillippe might come to regret that decision too, she thought.

  SWAT One’s flyer picked Vanessa up from the Ahimsa Hotel rooftop. It was a relief to get away from the place, the swarming agents, police and media, the many people requesting directions and information she was neither prepared nor willing to give.

  “Sitrep,” she said whilst stripping to her underclothes before her team of assembled grunts. Visuals came in on her headset visor: displays of Tanusha,
the location of all SWAT units, some known League targets, some others located only by guesswork.

  “Everyone’s up,” came Captain Arvid Singh’s voice. “Twelve teams, three more on standby. We’ve got two hundred and forty-six confirmed League entities we want detained, forty of them are possible hostiles. The cops are taking the lead and our ground guys are going after the more significant ones. And we’re closing down the League Embassy, all power and communications. SWAT Three and Nine are taking up perimeter positions now.”

  So that was two of her teams pinned down at the Embassy, Vanessa noted as she stepped into her armour suit in its rack, and began buttoning up. The others were all airborne save for the three standbys, which usually meant they were having trouble recalling troops on leave, and hadn’t gotten off the ground yet.

  “Copy Arvid, give me two minutes to soak this up, then I’ll take command.”

  “Copy Ricey, two minutes then you have command.” It was her procedure. Stupid to have a commander issuing orders straight from the first second when she hadn’t had time to absorb the scale of this yet. If anything happened in the next two minutes, Arvid would make the call.

  An important message light was flashing, and she opened it. “Why did they shoot at you?” came Director Chandrasekar’s voice. “A high risk intel operation is one thing, but why defend it with force?” Given the consequences for Federation-League relations, he meant.