Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield

by Joel Shepherd

  Sandy walked to the bed. Poole had stuffed a lot of bandages into Kiet's mouth to stop the bleeding. To her alarm, Kiril was here, handing Poole more bandages and tearaways from the neighbouring bench. He had them arranged in little piles, quite neatly. Surely she had to send him away…but then, he'd been helping Poole for over a week now, around cases more injured than this one. GI injuries were never quite as messy as straight humans’, nor did they cause quite as much pain. Where else would she send him, with the regs locked up for fear of counter rebellion, and the HQ under further threat of attack?

  Dahisu and Asma were also here, two of Kiet's best friends, and they weren't leaving for anything. Rishi too, de facto leader of the Chancelry GIs.

  “Dahisu tackled him before he could shoot,” Poole explained. “Gun went off, not a clean shot.” Dahisu said nothing, eyes dark. “He lost a few teeth, tongue cut to hell. Piece out of jawbone, cheek. Maybe he'll talk again with surgery, but it'll take more than I've got.”

  Asma was staring at her furiously. Dahisu wasn't. He looked maybe Filipino, brown and Asian, longish hair completely non-regulation. Asma looked Sudanese, blacker than black. GIs and ethnicity. Sandy sometimes wondered why they weren't all made more racially generic, instead of these matching features and names. Socialisation perhaps, and empathy with regular humans.

  Sandy searched for Kiet's signal on uplink. He was there, dormant. Sandy connected but got nothing. She pushed past Poole and stood over him. His eyes were closed, so she slapped his cheek. Eyes slitted open. She connected again.

  Click. “You idiot,” she told him. “Of all the dumb solutions, this is the dumbest.”

  “You never tried it?” Slitted eyes fixed on her, as though he knew something. Had someone told him?

  “Yes.” She wouldn't lie. If truth mattered anytime, it mattered now.

  “Then shut up.”

  “My reasons were better than yours.”

  “Like what?”

  “I got tired of being the cause of one too many massacres.”

  “Good people?”

  “Bad people,” she corrected. “Federal Intelligence Agency, when it existed.”

  “That's a worse cause than mine. I got a bunch of good people killed.”

  “No,” Sandy formulated. “I was trying to stop killing. I had this dream I could have a peaceful life. I dreamt that my creators couldn't actually dictate my life, that I could be free to choose. But it turned out I couldn't, because being what I was made people hunt me, and kill my friends, and my dreams all evaporated into pain and loss as far as I could see.

  “You never tried to stop being what you are. You like being what you are. You're quite happy to blast whatever gets in your way. And you were right, the reason I delayed so long in trying to save the other GIs was that I didn't see a way to do it yet. Maybe they all would have died anyway, my plan or yours. Killing yourself doesn't help anything, it just adds one more body to the pile.”

  “It was my idea.” Quietly. “I was sure it would work. We're so strong, when we're angry. We took Chancelry HQ, I mean, it was amazing. So I arranged another uprising, we used our contacts there…and now they're all dead.”

  “And now you're quitting.” Sandy stared down at him, eyes hard. “The GIs here are only a fraction of it. There's so many more, in the League. Increasingly many in the Federation. You've fallen at the first hurdle, but you've learned from it. The whole race is still yet to run.”

  “And what can you do? What can you possibly do for us, leashed to your Federation?”

  “Kiet, look at me.” He looked, pain-filled eyes above a mouthful of bloody bandages. “Leashes run both ways.” Deliberate pause, staring at him. “Just watch. You'll see, I promise.”

  “Sure.” Bleakly. “I'm not going anywhere.”

  Svetlana could tell it was one of Janu's trucks from the lights, glaring in the dark street. Still there was no power, no streetlights or glowing shopfronts, but that only made it easier to hide by the verge, against some stacked wheels out front of an auto repair shop. She had to be fast, the cold was closing in, and the wind whipping dust down the street—shopkeepers and others along this stretch of Aurangzeb were moving everything inside for the night, grinding down the shutters. Blue light danced and flashed in the sky to the east, the promise of a storm. Soon this street would be deserted. It was this truck or never.

  No one saw the small shadow in the dark, flitting from the piled wheels as the truck passed. No one saw that shadow clinging to the rear fender as the truck bumped along the road, unilluminated save for the glaring front lights. It pulled up in front of Janu's yard, and the guards gave it the walk around, failing to see the shadow roll under the stationary truck, then grab axle and exhaust and let herself be dragged the short distance inside Janu's shop.

  Internal lights then, run from a generator somewhere. Svetlana lay on her stomach beneath the front wheels and peered around. That front axle had nearly cost her fingers when the driver turned the wheel; she hadn't understood what the mechanism would do. It made her mad at herself, for not knowing—you had to know stuff, or the lack could hurt you.

  It was a warehouse, unsurprisingly. Piles of crates and boxes, and cleared space for tables where men and a few women were preparing things. Loading and packing, often talking, music playing over speakers. The place smelt of exhaust, cigarettes, and various, probably illicit, things she couldn't identify.

  The driver got down from his cabin, talked with someone, walked around to the rear of the truck. Svetlana looked around three-sixty, moving as little as possible. When she thought everyone was in the right positions, she moved, a fast dash for stacked boxes. The move brought no alarm, and she kept moving, fast and crouched down an aisle.

  Here boxes were stacked on shelves. In gaps through a shelf, she saw movement, and paused as someone walked by on the other side. Pressed herself low, ready to roll under the nearest shelf if anyone appeared up the far end of the aisle. No one did. She thought of the gun but realised that holding it would be stupid—if she got into a firefight here she was dead, these guys all knew guns far better than she, besides which she needed two empty hands while sneaking.

  The far wall was air-conditioning ducts, which were sometimes good for sneaking, but these had no way in, just bolted to the wall. She stayed low between ducts and shelves until she could see the work space where boxes were being unpacked. These looked like plastic containers of some sort. Shampoo bottles. Janu smuggled shampoo? It was rare enough. She and Danya had had fights over shampoo; she liked it and Danya said she didn't need it, so she'd stolen some and didn't tell him. Of course he'd found out, he always did. And no matter how angry he got he always forgave her.

  She moved when it felt right, when the music was loud and a few packers were distracted with conversation, just floated in the shadow near the wall, headed for the next corridor. That revealed a stairwell inside a doorway, which she took, because obviously Janu would be on an upper floor, if only because it bought him extra seconds if anyone attacked.

  The next corridor up was lit also. Svetlana walked quietly along a wall, pausing when she heard voices. They came from up ahead. Someone was standing in a side doorway, back to the hall, talking. Svetlana edged into a near doorway and waited. They were men, and their conversation was…nothing interesting. Names she didn't recognise. Gossip. So Janu hadn't let Danya go, was holding him in here somewhere against his will, and his men thought it so unimportant they were talking about something else entirely.

  Anger was good. Anger helped her forget how scared she was. But fear was all relative anyhow. In Svetlana's life, fear of doing something dangerous for food only lasted until the pain in your stomach was so great you were more scared of that than you were of the dangerous thing. After a while, learning to overcome that fear became preemptive—you didn't wait until you got hungry to do the dangerous thing for food, you did it before you got hungry, because you knew if you didn't, you'd just end up where you were before. After a while,
it became habit, and you got used to doing dangerous things because you had to, because there were no good options, only bad and worse.

  Svetlana was so much more scared of losing Danya than she was of being hungry, she couldn't have put it into words. Danya always knew the bad options from the worse ones. Sometimes he could even find a good one. There were only two things in Svetlana's life she loved more than herself, and both were brothers. And this brother in particular kept her alive.

  Janu was talking in the next room. Danya sat and stared out the window. Janu's office was makeshift; the room had probably once been a standard office for some logistics company long gone with the crash. Now it was converted into Janu's head office: a big desk, some shelves, a few pictures. A man with a gun sat in a nearby chair, watching him.

  They'd have gone after Svetlana, Danya knew. He thought desperately of something he could do, anything, to get her a warning. The gun in the man's hand looked big and cold. Currently it rested in his lap, but if he tried anything stupid, that would change. Svetlana was smart—about short-term things, probably smarter than he was. She could see and solve the immediate problem immediately. Planning for things beyond tomorrow, she struggled with. She'd see Janu's men coming, Danya was sure of it. They'd not catch her too. Please God.

  Janu reentered the room with a final dismissal of whoever he was talking to. He strolled, this man in a suit, neck undone. An unremarkable-looking man, dark-skinned, middle-aged, with serious, bug eyes. He pulled a thin, custom cigarette and lit it.

  “Don't be scared, boy. Companies won't hurt you.”

  Danya said nothing. Hurt, won't hurt, it was all tactics at this level. Like in any game, tactics changed as opportunities presented themselves.

  Janu offered him a cigarette. Danya ignored it. “You should try one. I smoked my first when I was younger than you. Gave me a taste for the finer things.” Danya thought it smelled like someone had caught a rodent and set fire to it.

  Janu pulled up a chair and sat, with an offhanded gesture. “It's nothing personal, boy. Just business. You're right, I don't normally do business with the corporations. But this here, this is a whole new game. You're hot material. I don't hold onto material this hot, not for anything. You'll burn me. So I do a deal. It's someone else's problem.”

  “You know why the corporations want me?”

  Janu blew smoke. “Leverage over Kresnov. She's alive you know. In case you were wondering. Her last attack on the other corporations failed though. For some reason, someone thought the best leverage against her was you. What can you tell me about that?”

  “We're her friends. She doesn't like people who hurt her friends. She's pretty much the most dangerous GI ever made. What does that tell you? About this being safe, what you're doing?”

  A flicker in Janu's eyes. A consideration. Respect, perhaps. “Fair enough, boy. Fair enough. But Kresnov's stuck in Chancelry HQ, and she can't teleport through walls. And I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just doing a deal.”

  “Handing me over to people who will kill me if they have to, to stop Kresnov.”

  Janu held his hands wide. “Hey. I'm sorry. If I cross the corporations on something this big, I'll have ten artillery rounds through my roof any time soon. You think I'm going to suicide for you? Doesn't work that way, boy. You made a mistake coming here. You want to find your brother, that makes you wooly-headed, yes?”

  Damn, it did, Danya thought through gritted teeth. Stupid stupid. He'd wanted that so badly, he'd convinced himself that these other things were true, that it turned out were not. Getting played by other people was one thing. Playing yourself was the worst, the most dangerous. He almost never did it…save where Kiril and Svetlana were concerned. His judgement wasn't sound then. But usually he knew that, and compensated, like a drunk compensating for listing balance.

  “You didn't need to tell the corporations I was here at all,” he bit out.

  “My call,” said Janu. “Too late now, they're coming. Maybe Home Guard will make a problem though.” He tapped the cigarette. Burning rodent-smelling ash fell into the tray. “There's a good chance you'll live through this, if you're smart. So I'll tell you something for free. You know what I did, before I became a businessman? Before the crash?”

  Danya said nothing.

  “I was an economist. That means I was an expert, in economic transactions, the fluctuations of prices and goods in an open market. An academic, if you will, I taught at Paulson University on Wade, then I came out here to teach on the frontier. I was idealistic, you see. The frontier was the new direction of humanity. It was where all the new economic theories could be tested. And of course, I arrived here just in time for one of the biggest economic calamities of modern human history.

  “What I do here, none of it's personal. And if you care too much, and let that get in the way of your judgement, you're finished. This here is just another form of economic distribution. The crash was just a transition, you understand that? And in truth, I think I'm better at this form of economics than the other one. This one is more pure. Fewer rules.”

  “You had a wife,” Danya said, remembering.

  Janu nodded, distantly. “Until the crash, I had a wife. And a kid. She'd have been nearly your age. Nothing's fair, boy. Remember that. The game makes its decisions for us.”

  Until someone like Sandy comes along, Danya thought, and single-handedly upsets the biggest game in town. He decided he didn't believe it. People could make their own game. If they had enough leverage. But few people did.

  Somewhere out beyond the doors, something went pop! Then pop!pop!pop! Janu and the armed man looked at each other, an instant of wide-eyed alarm. Shouts and yells then from outside. The popping got louder, graduating to full-fledged bangs that rattled anything loose. Janu rushed behind his desk for a drawer, and the armed man stood, covering the door. Something smacked a wall.

  The door opened, and something sailed through it. The armed man fired, splintering the door. Danya dove at the man's back, knocking him sprawling. The grenade went off, an impossibly loud noise with flashing light and smoke, and Danya struggled to clear his head and vision to climb on top of the sprawled man before he could bring his gun to bear.

  But the man recovered faster, and threw him off. BangBang! And the man fell as he'd been trying to get up, just went, like a puppet with its strings cut. And here through the smoke walked a small figure with AR glasses and a backpack, a pistol in both hands held like the ungainly steel contraption that it was. And firing, firing repeatedly, eyes wide and staring. Janu went down, with whatever he'd been trying to get from his desk.

  Oh my God, Svetlana, what have you done? Second thought, we have to get out of here right now.

  “Svet, let's go!” He grabbed the fallen man's pistol, tried to ignore the widening pool of blood on the floor, and went for the door.

  “No, Danya, not that way! This way!” Svetlana was going for the windows.

  Danya opened the door anyway and saw the room beyond. Two more bodies, one struggling to crawl, on hands and knees, hacking up blood. Screams of pain from somewhere farther beyond. For a moment, he stood frozen in horror. Svetlana?

  “Danya! Come on!” She yanked the window, and when it wouldn't budge, fired at it. The gun clicked empty. She swore, reaching quickly to her pocket for a new mag. Her hands barely even shook. Reloaded, she fired two shots, careless of whoever might be living on the other side of the road, then reversed the pistol and hit the shattered glass with the butt. It collapsed, and she scampered through, onto the verandah rooftop outside.

  Danya followed, with a look at Janu slumped against the wall behind his desk, a stupidly awkward pose, head lolling, eyes blank. Nothing's fair, huh?

  Out onto the verandah rooftop, now there were shouts rising from the road below. Svetlana was running ahead, looking for a way down…no, she'd spotted a way down, a truck parked ahead, she could jump onto its roof and…

  Danya saw running lights of something flying, low and fast above ne
arby rooftops. An eruption of flares and a fast-banking manouver told it was under fire. Counter-fire from somewhere else and a huge explosion on the ground a block away.

  “Svet, move, move!”

  She leaped, nimble-footed onto the top of the truck, then onto the cabin, and Danya followed as a corporate flyer roared overhead, lights blazing in a hurricane of downdraft. Another followed it, and as Danya followed his sister onto the cabin, then with a thump down to the road, crazy heavy gunfire tore Janu's corner of the road to bits and kicked up a huge cloud of dust. Not aiming at them, Danya realised—aiming at anyone on the road who might be shooting skyward.

  Svetlana was already running down the road, keeping to one side, weaving amid parked vehicles, streetside stalls, and whatever else had not yet been rolled away, seeking cover. Danya ran hard and caught up, surely if the flyer wanted them dead they'd be dead, at this range they didn't miss much, and these two were low, so much lower than they usually dared to fly.

  Svetlana reached an alley and ducked up it. It was narrow, blocked in parts by pipes, half-crumbling walls, and junk. Another alley, and then a ground-level window to a basement. Svetlana fell and rolled inside. A light thud as her feet hit the ground inside.

  “It's okay!” she called up. Danya followed, a tighter squeeze. Inside was a horrid old washroom, sink and toilet long unused but smelling rank all the same. Svetlana led them to a corridor then paused, gun held in both hands, looking anxiously back at Danya. “What do you think? They won't put people on the ground around here?”

  Corporations usually avoided it, not wanting prolonged shootouts at point-blank range. Even with corporate superiority, they lost people doing that, or got them wounded, then they needed to be rescued, and then the rescuers got wounded…a big mess. Often they'd do it with GIs, who were far better at close quarters and were more expendable, but lately the corporations had stopped trusting their own GIs. Small wonder.

  “I don't think they'll risk it without GIs,” Danya concluded. “But they might. Svet, are you okay?”