One last check to see the corridor remained clear, then Vanessa ran in, meeting Ari at the ambush cross-corridor, Ari tapping his ear then pointing outward, indicating his jamming had worked; no one else had heard these two go down. No, three, Vanessa saw as she ducked into the side room where Rhian was dragging bodies, two already in, a third lolling unconscious outside. Ari grabbed that one, then Cai came in from his end of the corridors.
Vanessa checked vitals—two concussions, one severe, and one with a knife in the throat, fast dying and very messy.
“Fucking stupid patterns,” Rhian pronounced, all business as she went through their clothes for anything useful. “Two is standard for that spot, three’s overkill, I had to stretch with the knife or he would have shot me.”
Vanessa checked the dying man’s vitals . . . and found with the position of the knife, missing the jugular, he might yet survive. Maybe. “Fuck it,” she muttered. Killing hadn’t been the plan. Yet.
She glanced at Rhian, ruffling through IDs, gear, passing an ear com to Ari in case he could do something with it. Rhian was a mum now. It had changed her, for sure. But today, she was all combat GI, no doubt still deep in combat reflex. Some things wouldn’t change. Couldn’t.
Cai stood guard at the door, leaving it open. His hearing would detect anyone approaching before they heard anything themselves.
“Rhi, help with the knife. If we get a bandage on it, he might make it.”
“Oh, we’re doing that, are we?” Rhian asked blandly, moving to help. “We’re caring?”
“Fuck it, Rhi, just get the knife.” Vanessa held the head still while Rhian pulled, then used it to slice off some uniform to use as bandage. The man kicked and spluttered, blood bubbling between his lips. “You miss on purpose?”
Rhian pressed the cloth down, then cut more to tie it with, giving no indication she might reply.
“Ricey,” said Ari, fiddling with the ear com, “you got some idea of what Chancelry’s doing down on Pantala?” Vanessa shot him a hard look. “If you were a GI, how’d you feel about the people who were part of that?”
“So we’re doing that, are we?” Vanessa said sarcastically. “We’re going all revenge crazy and bloodthirsty? Or are we doing our fucking jobs?”
Rhian finished tying the bandages, looking a little subdued. Vanessa had never seen Rhian belligerent before, not even in combat. She understood that. But they were all pros, or she and Rhian were, and God knew what Cai was. Pros did it right or not at all, and blood lust only turned you into an amateur. Unless you were Sandy.
The less-concussed man was waking up, groggily. Vanessa pointed her pistol at him, more to get his attention than from any concern. “Hey,” she said. “You awake?”
An awkward nod. His hands felt to his weapons, finding nothing.
“What corporation?” No reply. “Quickly, or I’ll start blowing bits off.”
“Dhamsel,” the man mumbled. Put a hand to his head, wincing. “Hey, who’s doing . . . stop that.”
Vanessa blinked, then looked at Cai. Cai seemed to be concentrating. “You in?” she asked him. Cai said nothing.
“Fucking wireless direct access,” Ari muttered incredulously. “Even Sandy can’t just barrier hack a security pro like that.”
“Who are you chasing?” Vanessa persisted. “Who told you what to chase?”
“Man,” muttered the Dhamsel Corporation man, “I don’t fucking know. I’m just a grunt, yeah?”
“Welcome to the club,” said Rhian.
“Who are you after?” Vanessa snapped, raising her voice.
“A GI! A GI like you, right? You are one, yeah? Can smell the fucking synthetic blood from here.”
“Thinks I’m a GI,” Vanessa said to Rhian.
“Be flattered,” said Rhian. “I always am.”
“Well it’s either you or her,” said the man. “’Cause it’s not him, he doesn’t look like it.” Looking at Ari.
“Well fuck you, too,” said Ari.
“Not him?” Vanessa asked, pointing at Cai. The man looked, frowning, then looked back.
“What are you fucking talking about? Who?”
“Him. There. By the door.”
“I don’t know who you’re fucking with, lady. There’s no one there.”
Vanessa was puzzled for a moment. Then heard Ari mutter, “Oh, no fucking way.” Then her eyes widened. She stepped over the man, who raised hands to defend himself, but she swatted them aside, knelt beside him, grabbed his head and pointed his face directly at Cai.
“There. Look right there. What do you see?”
“See?” The man was now frightened and confused. “What are you trying to pull?”
“Oh, good God,” said Rhian. Rhian was not given to great exclamations of any kind. Vanessa stared at Cai. Cai was still concentrating. Now he seemed to roll his eyes, with a flicker of disgust, and suddenly the man was unconscious again.
“That’s impossible,” Vanessa said flatly. It wasn’t smart to disbelieve what you’d just seen, but she was tired of being baffled. It didn’t suit her. “No one has the technology to do real-time visual override. It’s a technogeek myth, the holy grail of Ari’s crowd. It barely works on undefended subjects with a week’s preparation, sure as hell not real-time against a conscious security pro working for an arms corporation.”
Cai shrugged. “Well then, there you are. It’s not possible. We’d best move before their friends notice they’re missing, I’ve got most of his files. We can do some good things from here.”
And suddenly she saw it. Why Ari was so in awe of this man. What could make all this impossibility possible. She’d just seen him do something no human technology could allow. No human technology.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she exclaimed, angry at herself for not having seen it sooner. “You’re Talee.”
Silence in the room.
“So where are the tentacles?” Rhian asked. Vanessa nearly laughed.
Cai sighed. “No, I’m human. But humans didn’t make me. Talee did.”
“Why?” Vanessa demanded. It was all very fascinating, but there were people trying to kill her and she was more interested in the tactical applications. “What’s your mission?”
“Scout,” said Cai. “Recon. I can make myself invisible to heavily uplinked individuals; there aren’t many places I can’t go.”
“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” said Ari, fingers pressing the bridge of his nose, wincing. “We should all just shut up and . . .”
“No, it’s all right,” said Cai. “I’m allowed to make myself known in extreme circumstances, I deem that . . .”
“No, just shut up for a second,” Ari interrupted, walking between them. “Please. I’ve been saying for years GI brain tech is so obviously not human, no one believed me, not even Sandy . . . in fact, especially not Sandy . . .”
“Because you’re a paranoid conspiracy theorist,” Rhian said helpfully.
“. . . and we just shouldn’t talk about it,” Ari continued, “because this blows everything out of the water. This is why League will fucking blow Droze off the map if they find out Sandy knows, they’ll nuke this station too, just to get us, if they know we know. This knowledge is dangerous, do you get that?”
“So what do you want to do?” Vanessa demanded. “Pretend we don’t know? I’m not a big picture strategist like you and Sandy, I just know what I know. And I’m going to use it to kick some ass!”
Ari rolled his eyes. “Damn, could you use some subtlety just once? I’m going to have to say it out loud, aren’t I? What if this guy . . .” jerking a thumb at Cai, “. . . would rather commit suicide and take us all with him rather than let that secret get out?”
Everyone looked at Cai. Cai looked faintly affronted. “Do I look suicidal?”
“Does anyone?” said Rhian.
“Well if you argue like that,” said Cai, “then there’s nothing I can do to convince you. You’ll just have to trust that I’m not. Quite honestly, I’m
not that sort of guy. And neither are my employers.”
“Maybe they should be,” said Ari, with sinister intensity. “Maybe even they don’t realise just what a mess this is.”
Cai smiled. “I think they do. And it’s worse than you know, trust me.”
“You have backup out there?” Vanessa demanded of him. “Since we’re being honest with each other?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Let’s just say we’re not alone,” Vanessa confirmed.
“Me neither,” said Cai. That gave Vanessa another chill. He was talking about a Talee ship. Somewhere out there, beyond the solar system rim, where the dust and debris of the middle-system dust cloud made for good cover. Spacers told spooky stories about Talee hiding and spying on them. Cai was talking about one that was his friend.
“Maybe yours and mine should get together so we don’t make any unfortunate mistakes.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Cai. “Mine will know exactly where yours is.”
“I don’t doubt,” Ari murmured.
“Great,” said Vanessa. “Your ships can see a pea in orbit from a billion clicks, and you can disappear before a person’s eyes by hacking their brain. If they’re prepared to nuke the station to get us now we know you exist, let’s take it from them first. The bridge is probably the only place we’re safe now, anyway.”
Ari stared at her. “You’re not serious.”
“No I’m not serious,” Vanessa said drily. “I’m just talking because I like the sound of my own voice. Can you see my lips moving?”
“Are you really just going to attack them?” Danya asked.
Sandy sat against a wall before windows in a derelict apartment, fifteen floors up. They were in Whalen sector, ten kilometers southwest of the Rimtown. Here amidst the crumbling urban sprawl they had a mediocre view over Heldig Corporation’s perimeter from four Ks out. Any tower with a better view would have been suspect, and even now Sandy sat low to hide her silhouette in the dust stained window.
“That depends,” she said, peering through the scanner she’d acquired from Kiet’s equipment store. Her own visual zoom was too restricted at this range, particularly at night. A lot of the corporate zone’s lights were off. Clearly they were nervous of surveillance.
“On what?”
“Whether I can find a way in or not.
“Cassandra, I know you’re a top soldier and everything . . .”
“Call me Sandy.”
“But, I mean, these are the corporations.” Danya’s expression was pained. “Even you can’t beat them all. What about all those reinforcements?”
He was right, there were a lot of reinforcements. Shuttles had been landing from God-knew-where—Batu Mehra probably, and Tivu. Even one reentry shuttle, direct from orbit, that had come down on landing pads atop Heldig Corporation’s HQ roof. Pantala was an arms factory world, and there were a lot of weapons here. But after her brush with Chancelry’s defences, Sandy had doubts about the training of the people using them.
“I just need to get in past that kill zone,” she said. “All the heavy weaponry in the world won’t help them in a built-up environment. Once I get in there, they can’t shoot without destroying their own city and their own people.”
“Kiet’s only got about two hundred people. Sandy, there’s tens of thousands in there, plus all those robots . . .”
“I know. We’ll get their command and control, first targets.”
Danya said nothing. Sandy glanced at him. He looked unhappy. Frightened. Sandy thought about it for a moment. Then she realised.
“Hey.” She reached, and put a hand on his knee. “This isn’t a suicide mission. I’m good at this.”
“Nothing good’s ever happened to me without it blowing up in my face and making everything worse,” Danya said bleakly. He gazed at her, with frank honesty. “You’re something good.”
Sandy didn’t know what to say. It was confusing. These kids were amazing. She’d never felt so strongly about anyone so soon after first introductions, save for maybe Vanessa. They saw in her . . . something. A parent figure, perhaps. A protector, certainly. And these were tough kids. They’d seen a lot of people come and go, often violently. They were tough judges, sceptical at best, brutally cynical at worst. She’d seen veterans like that, eyeing the new recruit and concluding he’d be gone within a week. And keeping their distance, because you couldn’t get attached to such people. If they were gone in a week, better they didn’t take any of your soul with them.
Dangerous to be a 50-series GI around such kids. A 50-series GI wouldn’t be gone in a week. She’d exude power, and protection. A kid might yearn for such things, and think to have found them in her.
But a 50-series GI wasn’t cut out to be a parent. She’d avoided it for precisely this reason—Rhian might be able to settle down and adopt, but Sandy had seen this coming. Not specifically, but in general, the collision of two opposing worlds. She was a soldier. A killer for a cause. There’d been a time she’d thought her causes had evaporated, and with them, she’d hoped, her killing days as well. But events had proven that a false hope. And now she had Danya, seeing in her something that she could never be for him, and wishing that she could stop being what she was, because he feared the outcome. Well, so did she. But she feared the alternative worse.
Besides which, she’d never felt stronger about a cause than she did about this one. That didn’t just mean passion, that meant fury. When she got this angry, lots of people died. How could she be that, furious and deadly, and also this . . . this whatever it was that Danya wanted her to be? Motherly? What was she going to do . . . launch an all-out attack on the corporate headquarters of Droze, then return to embrace adopted children with bloodstained hands?
Those two parts of her life, of her soul, had to remain separate. She couldn’t see them blurred, combined . . . the prospect filled her with a dull heart-thumping panic she could not put words to.
A flash lit up the horizon. Then another, close to the first. Sandy looked, zooming on the fireballs, debris raining down. Whatever it was had taken the top floor off a pair of buildings. Then another, five hundred meters from the first two.
“Shit,” she murmured.
“Artillery again?” Danya wondered.
“Yeah. I guess this is why Home Guard don’t pick fights with the corporations any longer.”
Boom, as the sound reached them. And again. Footsteps in the corridor outside, and a burst of short-range transmission—Gunter. He entered a second later, sliding through the half-open door and keeping low across the bare concrete floor.
“We okay?” Sandy asked him. They had directional coms across the city that could be used in short bursts without the corporations seeing them, but they had to know where to point them first. That meant small groups of people who knew where other people were going to be stationed—a security risk, but a necessary one.
“I think so,” said Gunter, peering out the window above what had once been a kitchen bench. “They’re shooting blind. Probably they saw movement. It happens sometimes when they’re on high alert.”
“Yeah, and they kill some people for walking around in their bedroom,” Danya muttered. “Hector’s gonna love this.”
“There are reports of Home Guard following us,” Gunter confirmed. He had a laser com sight mounted on his short rifle, the easiest way of pointing. “We’ve had to warn them off.”
Sandy exhaled hard. “They’re going to give us away. With those UAVs back up.” They’d shot a couple of UAVs out of the sky with missiles, but those missile firings had immediately been targetted by corporate artillery. Their shooters had barely got away in time. A few more civvies killed, Home Guard even more furious, it had become clear they’d have to let the UAVs operate unmolested once more.
“They’ll give you away on purpose,” said Danya. “Like they gave us away in the neutral zone. Spies everywhere.”
“Don’t know about everywhere,” said G
unter. “But some, certainly. With Home Guard against us, we can’t operate freely in this city. The corporations don’t care how many civvies they kill.”
“Which means we have to go in sooner rather than later,” said Sandy. “I think we can do it into Heldig Corporation here. Those networks are pretty invulnerable from the outside; that might change once we get in. But I can see a geometry here between a few buildings that blocks line of sight for their second layer defences, and if we can drop a few missiles into their roads a block or two in, bring down a few walls, cut off mobilisation of those secondary assets . . .”
“Straight explosive entry?” Gunter asked. Perhaps dubiously, but the man’s bland expression made it hard to tell.
“With a diversionary attack. There are ways.”
“And once inside?”
“Go fast straight across Heldig Quarter. We go through the buildings, a few floors up. They can’t stop us without bringing buildings down, we only expose ourselves leaping over roads between buildings.”
Gunter scratched his jaw. “I’ve never done that before.”
“I have. For fast movement in an urban zone it’s the only way to go. Straights can’t do it, so few people have thought of defence against it. Least of all League or ex-League, who’ve never expected attack by GIs.”
“Then all the way to Chancelry? That’s a long way, corridor by corridor.”
“Their defences will diminish further in. And the crossing into Chancelry territory will be lightly defended. They’re not expecting direct attack from another corporation’s territory.”
“What do you figure for casualties?” Gunter asked somberly.
Sandy pursed her lips, still watching the dissipating explosions. Thick smoke now rose, blocking city night lights. “Not light. Conservatively twenty percent, if it all goes well.”
“And not conservatively?”
“Attacking into a vastly superior force means we’ll be completely surrounded,” Sandy answered. “If it doesn’t work, getting out will be nearly impossible.” She took her eyes away from the scanner to look at him. “But I think everyone knows that. If they don’t want to come, no one will think less of them.”
Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire Page 46