Authors: Joel Shepherd
"
Snowcat, chain of command has been restructured, SIB have been authorised by Callayan C&C to carry full authority over any unit within our jurisdiction. Please stand down
."
Vanessa shut them off.
"Definitely SIB," she said, although the ID already said as much. "Only SIB could talk about an electronic coup like it was a temporary reshuffle." Pushing the controls fully forward, and the aircar accelerated out into open air, a sudden, unobstructed view of wet city suburbs. "Damn. That means the Senate's involved. They've been after Neiland for years. I bet they're ecstatic."
SIBs ... governed by political opposition within the Senate toward the Neiland government. Alarmed, perhaps, at the emergency legislation that had given the CSA such unprecedented power ... which they'd used to override xenophobic caution and include a captured League GI in the investigations. The thought gave her a very, very bad feeling, remembering Hiraki's assessment of Tanushan populist politics, and Ibrahim's calm contempt ... and the SIB had sent a cruiser straight for her within minutes of the takeover being implemented. The bad feeling got worse.
"Vanessa, I've got to get out of here." As the cruiser accelerated toward an adjoining skylane, gathering speed and altitude. "I can't stay with you. CSA and the administration have been protecting me this far ... now it's all come down, all the people who're so scared of me are going to be after me." Past the combat reflex, she felt a rising, irrepressible dread. Given the opportunity, it could rise to panic. She determined not to give it the chance.
"Out of here how?" Vanessa asked, scanning her navcomp display, adjusting viewpoints for possible paths ahead as she steered one-handed. "If CSA Ops comes back on line we can get a phony ID, give these fools the slip. Then we'll..."
"I can't stay with you, Vanessa." Tracking the trailing SIB cruiser on her uplinks to the traffic network. It was closer, but not much. Unless it broke lanes, it wasn't going to catch up — all Tanushan airlanes were the same speed. "Even CSA's not safe any more. Dali's in command. Even Ibrahim can't challenge that directly." Vanessa shot her a hard look.
"Sandy, this isn't the time to go off half-cocked ..."
"I'm not going to let them lock me up, Vanessa," Sandy said warningly, the fear surfacing with a sudden surge, her heart rate accelerating at the prospect. "Not again. Not ever."
Vanessa blinked, stared back at the navcomp screen, then at the passing towers and surrounding air traffic, increasingly obscured as the slipstream streaked rain across the windshield with growing force. The mist was closing in and lightning flashed closer.
"What then?" she said finally. Voice hard and reluctant, conceding Sandy's point. "I can't lose the tail until Ops comes back online to give me some help."
"I'll jump."
Vanessa stared at her. "You're kidding!" Already Sandy was scanning ahead, searching the topographical displays for the landmark she required beneath the present flight route ... found a likely site, locked it in, transferred it to the cruiser's navcomp. It bleeped in reception, and Vanessa stared at it.
"Nice little scenic lake, four metres deep — should be plenty."
"Sandy, for chrissakes, there's not an airlane in Tanusha that goes under fifty metres. If you're gonna hit water from that height you may as well just land on the road ..."
"I could," Sandy cut her off, "but it hurts." Vanessa stared. "And it's too visible." Vanessa kept staring, then back out the windscreen, steering along the new course and muttering under her breath. The lights of a passing tower flashed dimly through the pounding rain. Sandy made certain of the safety and shoved the pistol back firmly into her harness. Zipped up her jacket as far as possible.
"What are you going to do?" Vanessa asked then. Her jaw was tight.
"Keep looking," Sandy replied, securing the interface unit in one pocket and the spare magazines in the other. "I agreed to help Ibrahim catch the people involved in this. As soon as Neiland is reinstated all the old rules will be back again, and I still want my citizenship."
"Cassandra," Vanessa said firmly, demanding her attention. Sandy looked. "Don't do anything stupid. I know you want to catch the bastards who hurt you. I also know that you want to find whoever it was who sent you that message. Don't let it affect your judgment."
Sandy's gaze was fixed and unblinking.
"I've led more combat missions than I can remember, Vanessa," she said. "I'm not prone to letting my emotions get away from me."
"Bullshit," Vanessa said warningly, half watching her, and half watching the course-display on the windscreen. "You're not the same person any more, girl, you said it yourself. You're angry as hell, you're only marginally legal, and you're dangerous enough to pretty much kill whoever you like, if you choose to. You just be damn careful what you decide to do, and think about the consequences. You can come out of this fine if that's how you decide to play it. Or you could end up a fugitive again, and hunted by everyone. Or dead. You just think about what you're really after."
Sandy stared at her. It was, she realised, well worth her consideration. The cruiser banked again, slowly descending.
"I'm not that angry," she said. Even as she said it, she wasn't certain if it was true.
"Sure," Vanessa said sarcastically. "
Sure
you're not. You're so used to attacking everything from logical angles that you don't even realise when you're furious. If it were me, I'd want to rip their guts out. And unlike me, you can actually do that with your bare hands. Sounds pretty romantic sometimes, having that kind of power ... but girl, you can keep it. I don't want that responsibility. You just be damn careful what you do with it."
It occurred to Sandy, as she stared at Vanessa, that she should have had this conversation with her before now. But this was leaving things far too late. And the lake in question was barely ninety seconds away. There was nothing she could say to Vanessa's assertions that would have made any difference — they sounded dangerously like truth. And Sandy had always greatly valued truth.
"Vanessa ..." and she paused, suddenly, unaccountably nervous. Glanced downward briefly. Vanessa was looking to her then back to the nav display, frowning.
"What?" she asked. Sandy looked up reluctantly.
"Are you my friend?" Vanessa looked perplexed. "I haven't had many civilian friends. None that meant life or death, anyway. It'd just be nice to know."
"Why would you think I wouldn't be?" Vanessa replied, still puzzled.
Sandy shrugged, still reluctant. Then, "I thought maybe you were too scared of me. Everyone else seems to be." Vanessa shrugged offhandedly.
"I'd be lying if I said I was never nervous. That's human reflex — you can't blame people for that. But when my intellect has complete control of my reflexes, which sometimes happens, then no, I'm not the least bit scared of you. I have a very naïve faith in human decency, Sandy. I'm not frightened of people who possess it, and it's very obvious that you do." And she smiled.
"And yes," she added, "I am your friend."
"Good," said Sandy. And managed a slight, wry smile past the deadening calm of combat reflexes. Vanessa showed controlled tension, telltale heat smears and indistinct posture shifts. "I'm glad."
"Tough to smile when your guard's up, is it?" Vanessa asked.
"You noticed."
"What are you even seeing right now? Your eyes are too wide."
"Ricey," Sandy sighed, "we really should have talked more when we had the chance. I've got to go."
"Find another lake," Vanessa suggested.
"Can't. The tail will get suspicious if we fly around in circles." Hooked into the navcomp and timing the course. Thirty seconds. Disconnected the seatbelt. Checked the safety on the snub-rifle and placed it on Vanessa's lap. "Better keep this. I can't carry it about town and you won't want to explain why it's missing."
"You need an override for the door?"
"No, I've got it." Accessed the circuits, silencing the alarm as the central lock went dead. Vanessa looked impressed. "Not bad for a glorified pocket calculator, huh?" Vanessa smiled. And extended a hand.
"Good luck. I'll be hearing from you." Sandy grasped her hand firmly. For a brief, intense moment, their eyes met.
"No question. Do a good cover story, huh?" Vanessa's eyes widened.
"Oh shit, I hadn't thought of that!"
"Start," Sandy told her. Mentally keyed into the door function, and with a sudden deafening howl of slipstream the cold, rain-laden wind invaded the comfortable interior, and the cruiser rocked as Vanessa's hands adjusted the control grips. Sandy's linkup counted down, a brief recalculation of falling trajectories at present velocity, adjusted for wind readings ... and jumped.
Lost the link with the cruiser several seconds later, but by then it had ceased to matter. Wind howled and everything seemed to float. A regular human might have found it exciting. Or frightening. Sandy felt little beyond the immediate necessity, and focused on nothing more than keeping herself upright. Vision shift found the lake through the blinding rain, and the surrounding park and the local geography in general, all coming at her very fast. But not too fast. She scanned calmly as she fell and time moved at a crawl.
It was a chain of lakes. Pleasure boats were all under cover. Three forested islands. Landscaped grass and gardens. Some water birds gave heat readings. Nothing human sized.
She allowed herself to spin backward, and spread-eagled herself as steadily as she could, facing the invisible sky. Worst thing a human could do, but best for a GI. And hit with a vicious impact, and lost all sense of everything for a moment.
Came back to her senses, half surfaced, waves frothing from her doubtless enormous entry splash. Took a deep breath, starting to tread water, testing her ribcage. Back muscles, shoulders, buttocks, hamstrings and calves were harder than steel, a powerful, rippling feeling. The back of her skull was stinging numbly where it had whacked the water at several hundred kilometres an hour. Her neck was stiff. She tried to flex as she stayed afloat. Gradually, the hardness dissolved, bit by bit. Melting away, back to regular consistency.
It was probable, she knew, that even spread-eagled she'd hit the lake bottom. She had no way of remembering, but it didn't matter. Her duties had once demanded that she jump from the third-from-top floor of a seventy-storey tower — the only option when the entire floor had been rigged to blow. Her injuries had been minimal then. The car she'd landed on was a write-off.
She could have done it face down too, she mused as she overarmed her way toward the nearby forested island through the hammering rain, but she didn't want to risk her face. Especially her nose. And half-smiled at the vanity.
The water suddenly shallowed and she climbed quickly ashore, moving fast into the cover of trees. Suitably hidden, she scanned the surrounding park. Her entry must have made a huge noise, clearly audible above rain, wind and thunder. Thankfully the park was both large and deserted. It was hardly weather for ducks, let alone people.
Once convinced that she had not been heard, and that her interface, pistol and magazines had survived the impact undamaged, she eased herself into the water on the island's far side and swam for a bit. Then heaved her sodden self over the rocky wall of the lake rim and started walking casually across the grass as yet more thunder rolled and boomed nearby, echoes bouncing off near and distant towers. Water poured from her jacket sleeves and the legs of her jeans. Her shoes squelched on the sodden grass. A pair of ducks eyed her warily from under sheltering wings.
Or she thought they were ducks. Was a Callayan water bird a duck or not? And shook her head impatiently at the irrelevant line of thought. She felt little excitement when the action was happening, but afterwards ... in all truth, she was little more than an adrenalin junkie. Her thoughts danced and flowed pleasantly and her limbs felt loose and comfortable as she walked. She ought to jump out of moving aircars more often. Nothing like it. She brushed wet hair back from her face, and let the falling rain pound it into place as she walked, face tilted toward the darkened sky.
CHAPTER 13
"And she just jumped out?" Seated behind his enormous, dark wood desk, Governor Dali looked perplexed. Evidently, Vanessa thought disparagingly, he hadn't considered it possible that someone should choose not to heed his instruction.
"Yes sir." Vanessa stood calmly before the desk, hands clasped behind her. The Governor's senior aide stood to Dali's side, frowning darkly. An African of short, sturdy build, his beard was incongruously thick. Vanessa thought she ought to remember his name from one briefing or another but couldn't. Typical of her political attention span.
"And you made no attempt to stop her?" Dali's voice was melodiously incredulous. Long, brown fingers folded on the desk before him. A long, brown face, hair impeccably parted. The suit was stylish and expensive. Everything about him, and his office, was tastefully conservative. In her duty jacket, worn cargo greens and sneakers, Vanessa felt decidedly self-conscious.
She shrugged. "What could I have done?" Dali's perplexion grew.
"I do recall that you are the SWAT commander, Lieutenant. You tell me."
"Nothing, sir." Dali stared at her. Vanessa bit the inside of her lip to restrain a smirk. He looked like an owl.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing," Vanessa confirmed.
"You could have pulled your gun on her," opined the short, bearded aide. His accent was strong. African, but not African-Tanushan. Offworlder. Like Dali.
"But I would not have been prepared to pull the trigger," Vanessa said easily. "She knew that. Besides, I'm not actually sure if the gun would have worked on her. Maybe a shot through the eye ... but the calibre is probably not high enough for her skull. An incapacitation shot elsewhere would only make her angry."
"And so you just let her jump?" Dali seemed to be having great trouble getting his brain around that concept. Bloody bureaucrat.
"Yes sir."
A pause. Dali seemed to be calculating the implications of this new development for his schemes. And not, by appearances, doing a very good job of it. He looked highly disturbed.
"Where exactly," said the aide, "did she jump?"
"I don't know exactly." Further incredulity. Vanessa smothered another smirk, this one more difficult than the last. "She scrambled the navcomp. I couldn't see where we were because of the rain. And besides, my attention was elsewhere."
"Where else, precisely?" asked the aide with dark suspicion.
"On asking her why she was jumping."
"And what did she say?"
"That she believed you were going to detain her. That she wished to continue with the investigation. She has bad memories of detention. As you could imagine."
"Lieutenant Rice," Dali interjected, leaning forward in a very concerned, very earnest manner, "you do realise that with circumstances being as they are, I myself am now the Acting President of Callay and Tanusha? And that as such, you are obliged to carry out my instructions, through your commander Mr Ibrahim, as though they had come from President Neiland herself?" Vanessa blinked.
"Yes, of course," she said. Meeting his eye with a mild, unbothered expression. Dali still looked incredulous. Vanessa wondered how he could maintain that expression for so long.
"I am worried, Lieutenant, that you do not appear to comprehend the full gravity of what has transpired. You yourself swore the oath of loyalty that now binds your actions to the will of this office."
Ain't that a giggle, Vanessa thought sourly. Her expression remained deliberately blank.
"Mr Governor," she said with repressed but building frustration, "the first thing I was taught in training is to only point a weapon at someone if I am prepared to use it. The only people who do otherwise are terrorists." Dali blinked in consternation.
"Lieutenant, surely in your oath you swore to fulfil the orders of your superiors completely and without question? If people were allowed to pick and choose their orders according to personal preference, then where would we be?"
"Even when those orders could at best achieve nothing, and at worst get me killed?" And shut her mouth abruptly, wishing that hadn't come out at quite that volume. Dali's frown remained unaltered.
"We all have our duties, Lieutenant," he told her in a tone of most patronising disapproval, "however unpleasant we may find them."
"I'm going to fuckin'
kill
him," Vanessa muttered to Sharma as they met in the main corridor outside the entrance to the Governor's wing.
"You will have to join the queue," Sharma replied with mild amusement, eyeing the massively armed security by the main doors. "Death threats have passed the hundred mark and climbing. Gamma Team have got this place completely locked down, Five and Seven are on callup ... say, do you really feel like doing security for this guy?"
Vanessa eyed the nearby guards, and the steady flow of traffic through the corridor. ID clearance at the entrance points was particularly tight, even for parliamentary staff. She took Sharma's arm and led the tall Indian woman along the corridor toward the inner courtyards.
"We shall do our duty, Rupa," Vanessa overpronounced in Dali's Indian-English.
"That's very good!" Sharma commended her, smiling broadly. "You're finally learning to speak properly."
"Another triumph for the great Indian cultural conquest."
"For goodness sakes, Ricey," Sharma scolded mildly, "just because you Europeans have been foolish enough to misplace your heritage, you shouldn't take your unenlightened frustrations out on me."
"We didn't misplace anything — it's too big to misplace."
"Of course, darling," Sharma soothed. "Have you looked under your bed?"
Vanessa snorted.
"That's the problem with you Indians, Rupa — a ring in your nose, a chip on your shoulder and a goddamn pole up your ass." Sharma nearly collapsed with laughter and Vanessa had to slow down for Sharma to catch up.
Her purported dislike of things Indian was a fraud and her close friends knew it. The music was wonderful, the food delicious, the people no more or less objectionable than any others ... and the omnipresent sense of style, colour and aestheticism played a dominant role in making Tanusha the fascinating city it was. It was just that there were so damn many of them. And the arrogance of numbers could at times become stifling.
"Not to worry," Sharma said with amusement as they approached the end of the gleaming corridor and the light that flooded the far end, "there's now an Indian bad guy in charge. You'll feel right at home — you can blame it all on him."
"That's not fair."
The corridor opened onto the front of the Parliament East Wing. The cross-corridor ran directly across the front of the building, and the two women paused there, hands resting on the heavy safety rail, and gazed out at the view.
Before them was a transparent shield of reinforced glass many stories high. Just beyond, huge Corinthian pillars supported the front of the building. Vanessa and Sharma were in the eighth-storey cross-corridor. The typically self-indulgent Tanushan architects had designed the entire interior behind the enormous pillars as a cut-away, exposing internal corridors to the outside view, protected by the enormous glass wall in between. Beyond were the Parliament lawns. Off to the far left, and barely visible behind the convergence of pillars, the breathtaking reddish arches and spans of the main Parliament, towering above the wet-green lawns and gardens.
Far across the gardens and the access roads that linked the entire, three-sided Parliament grounds, security staff quartered the lawns and security vehicles cruised the roads. At least one armoured flyer circled somewhere above — Vanessa could dimly hear the familiar keening of multi-poster engines through the soundproofed transparent wall. A crush of vehicles had emerged at one access road, blocked by security vehicles with flashing lights as uniformed personnel with bulky sensor equipment searched each one.
"No," she murmured, "I can't pin this one on the Indians. It's those nasty, good-for-nothing offworlders, Rupa. Can't trust 'em. Ship 'em all home I say. No birth visa, no stay."
Sharma managed a weak smile. And for the next minute they gazed at the commotion across the picturesque grounds, and wondered what the hell it all meant.
"You'd think it would all be very easy," Sharma said after a moment with quizzical irony. "Move the centre of administration from that building," pointing off to the Parliament, "to this building. This is too much fuss. There must be a tac-fix." SWAT slang. Vanessa managed her own weak smile.
Sharma's understatement hit the mark very well. It was chaos. The media were in a state of delighted, gleeful panic. The Parliament the same, only without the glee. Neiland supporters screamed for answers, justifications, explanations for this most undemocratic removal (or temporary sidelining, as the official spin now put it) of the democratically elected President. Her own Union Party were howling outrage, threatening legal action, mass popular uprisings and eternal hellfire and damnation. The Settlers First extremists in the Senate were applauding the removal of an 'out of touch and dictatorial President'. The main opposition Progress Party were not commenting. Neither were the mainstream senators. No wonder, Vanessa thought. They'd helped it happen. They knew about Sandy, as the general public did not. They knew she was helping the CSA in their investigations. They questioned Neiland's judgment following her traumatic recent experience. They questioned what the Federation would have to say about all kinds of things, from Sandy to the investigation into the FIA, and reiterated the dangers of such an investigation, which could uncover too much and cause unbridgeable rifts between the Neiland administration and the Federation Government itself. Such a prospect had politicians of all shades running scared. They feared Neiland's hard line, her practical, no-compromise approach. They wanted her out.
Such were the rumours that now ran through the corridors of power, here in the Parliament complex, and back at CSA HQ, where new lines of command and control were being hastily improvised, and department heads were scrambling for the necessary clearances from their new bureaucratic masters to continue their work. Dali had played the angles. With so many politicians behind him out of fear or for personal advancement, it was difficult to see Neiland getting back in charge any time soon. First a Federation task force would arrive and assess the situation. They would determine if their dutiful little colony had indeed acted against the best interests of the broader Federation, as Dali claimed. Neiland's reappointment would probably follow. But by then the investigation into the FIA infiltrators would have been sufficiently tied up with bureaucratic red tape, and all the incriminating evidence would have been neatly swept under the nearest available carpet.
Well, at least they didn't have Sandy. Vanessa held to that thought, gazing out across the orderly confusion to lawns and gardens that appeared to glow luminescently after the recent rains.
"And I thought this was a democracy," Sharma sighed, breaking their contemplative silence. Urgent footsteps and voices echoed through the corridors behind them. More bureaucratic commotion. Vanessa ignored it. She wished she could ignore it all.
"Not much point in a Governor if he doesn't have override powers," Vanessa replied glumly. "The tyranny of distance. The modern Federation only really came into existence about the time the League was being formed — they wanted to formalise the political structure but needed to keep control of each member world, just in case." It made so much sense at the time. "Governors can't consult with a four-week timelag. They have to be able to act immediately if they reckon the Fed's interests are threatened. But of course the rules were written so long ago that everyone's forgotten them. And they've never been used anywhere, until now. Everyone supposed they were just ceremonial. Symbolic."
"Callay makes history," Sharma said with irony. "Fancy that. Most Callayans don't even read history."
More footsteps in the corridor behind them, but something about these made Vanessa turn. She was only half surprised to see CSA director Ibrahim walking toward them. That he was alone did not surprise her either. Ibrahim needed no guards, and would tolerate no chaperones.
"Lieutenant Rice." Very sombrely, coming to a halt before the pair of them. "Agent Sharma. How is your knee?"
"Um ... very well," said Sharma past her surprise, "fully healed now." She'd damaged an augmentation implant a month ago in training and had reached active duty status just last week, in time for the raid on the FIA who'd abducted Sandy. Ibrahim not only knew the names of all his staff, he also knew their status. Cybernetic memory and uplinks definitely helped, but Vanessa suspected he'd have known anyway.
She studied him now ... as always looking slightly uncomfortable in his dark suit. She was so accustomed to seeing Arabic or Indian men in more comfortable salwar kameez or other traditional garb, she wondered why he felt the suit necessary, besides the formal implications of office. Not a tall man — face to face, she did not need to tilt her head far to look him in the eye. But no less imposing for the lack of stature. His eyes now seemed darker than usual, his gaze more penetrating. He did not, Vanessa thought, have the appearance of a man in a good mood. Ibrahim rarely let his mood show, good or bad. If she could tell, then something was very wrong.
"And how is your other team member, Lieutenant?" Very blandly, and very formally. Not Ibrahim's usual tone, whatever his implacable nature. And he glanced up briefly and to either side, clearly indicating that the corridor was being monitored, or at least that he feared so.
"Recuperating and ready for duty," Vanessa replied. "Very hard at work right this minute, I believe." A monitor would be an automated program, set to alert its users only if key suspicious phrases were uttered. Bland, non-specific conversation was the key. "But then she was always a very hard worker. And very committed. I think she'll be fine." Ibrahim's eyes appeared to flicker in response. A brief, positive gleam, as if a weight had been lifted, a major concern erased. He took a slightly deeper breath than usual before replying.