Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1) (5 page)

She walked along the shore, sand plastering her wet feet, and headed for the ranger's bungalow on stilts that overlooked the beach from the height of a neighbouring dune. Surfers gathered about. Boards, clothes and towels, and carry bags for a day trip or longer. She walked among them, dripping, getting looks from many of the men as she went. Broad shouldered and somewhat less than tall, she was hardly the long, leggy, wand-like surfie-girl ideal. But broad shoulders came with broad hips, and compact, lithely muscular curves, pronounced enough, as Vanessa said, to take your eye out.

Sandy knew very well what she looked like in a wetsuit. She'd been told often enough lately. And in a city where the predominant skin colour was brown, and the predominant natural hair colour was black, attractive blonde Europeans got more than their fair share of attention.

She reached her bag where she'd left it on the sand, shouldering it without bothering to check the possessions-here among the surfer community, no one worried about rare urban concepts like common theft. Besides, no one stole stuff in Tanusha. The very idea was beneath majority criminal contempt. There were so many infinitely more valuable things to steal in Tanusha than the contents of surfers' carry bags.

From the beach it was a fifteen minute walk through scrubby dunes and along a pressed-earth road to the small park designated for flyers. Groundcars parked haphazardly along a roadside that was definitely not equipped for auto-control, wearing ruts off the road shoulder. Sandy recalled one of the locals saying recently that the council had wanted to build carparks to accommodate all the traffic, but the locals wouldn't stand for it. Scrub turned from low bushes to trees as she walked along the roadside, board under one arm, and the most hi-tech thing she could see was the solar panel atop the public toilet, near the mouth of the path that led to the camping ground. Sandy had long decided she liked it better this way, all natural bush and sand, a fresh breeze blowing and the roar of surf upon the air. But she kept a careful eye upon the occasional groundcar that rolled past on its way to or from the major western freeway ten kilometres off-out here, all cars drove on manual, a skill Tanushan drivers rarely practised. Despite the onboard computer assist, away from the urban central network several still managed to end up nose first into trees.

The flyer sat upon a rectangular, grassy clearing off the roadside behind a line of tall trees, one of an angled line of other flyers. It was already humming in the pre-flight mode she'd initiated with a mental uplink. She stowed the board and climbed to the driver's seat without bothering to remove the wetsuit from her lower body. Engines thrummed within the nacelles, and the ground fell away below ... the field with its row of parked flyers, the road to the beach, then the white, rippling dunes, a pale line before the turquoise ocean, broken in white, frothing lines ... all laid out below, the short distance she had walked, map like.

Sandy gazed regretfully at the ocean for several lingering seconds, at the churning white froth of a break, at a big swell looming further out, a glimpse of a surfer, plummeting joyfully along that advancing wall of ocean swell ... She re-angled the thrust and banked away from the ocean, heading inland and gaining altitude.

Rajadesh passed below, a single main street, some basic buildings and side streets, holiday accommodation and not much else. Beyond, and all about, the trees grew thick, green and profuse. To the left, the glittering tangle of waterways that made the Shoban River Delta. At a further distance to the right, the looming peaks of the Tuez Range, a bare, rocky spread of tall, broken landscape. Above, the broken grey cloud seemed near enough to touch, scudding by at noticeable speed as she angled the nacelles to cruise. Spread before them, and seeming quite close at even this low altitude, was the forest of tall, reaching towers that was Tanusha. Like a forest of gleaming sticks beneath a dull and broken sky. It spread for many kilometres to either side, towers too numerous to count. One of the greatest, monolithic civilisations in all human history. Home.

The skylane brought her into Tanushan airspace at .86 kilometres, four hundred metres above the uniform Tanushan height for mega-highrise. Towers sprawled in clusters in every direction, central regions fading to suburbia and back again, and the sky was alive with a profusion of air traffic. Sandy recovered her makani juice from the little refrigerated glovebox where she'd been saving it, and took a long sip. Offhandedly decided to interface through a local connection, high bandwidth receiver. A fast reception and in, zooming through a section of regional infrastructure network as her eyes and hands effortlessly followed the lane ahead.

Scanned on a range of securitied levels, searching for telltales, anything with that certain scent about the codes ... sipped again at the makani juice, flying one-handed as she waited. Rush of data, freeform and tangible, network branches sprawling in an orderly, tangled mass ... click, right there. She zoom-scanned and focused, there was a feeder-monitor of some description attached to one of the central control relays, part of the air traffic grid. Put there to monitor something, obviously. Small system, to escape curious attention. A fast probe showed it as official. Illegal to hack, not to mention difficult. A quick push further, through linkages open only to her ... and caught the active trace ... there was something about the diversion flows, the way each key linkage was siphoned off through fancy accesses ...

Which meant ... she did a further quick break-and-enter, using a series of coded combinations that would have frightened certain security types if they'd known she possessed them ... and found the connection, and the data trail, and the spot to which it all pointed.

She turned about in her seat and looked. Could see, a brief glimpse through the rear-side window past the nacelle, a small spot among many such spots, cruising innocently on a parallel skylane. A fast flashzoom through the gap between nacelle and window-side-a Chandara Falcon, large cruiser, darkened windows. A type commonly used by government agencies. Three point one kilometres away, with a clear monitor-fix upon her flyer.

It annoyed her no end. She accessed another, more familiar code, and awaited an answer. Got one, several seconds later.

"Sandy?"

"Hi, Ricey," she said, racing ahead on a separate link, checking out her assigned flightpath. "Are you on call?"

"I just got out of my car I'm at the apartment, thought I'd better change. What's up?"

"I'm in a flyer on the way back from Rajadesh Beach, and I'm being followed. Chandara Falcon, no identifying marks, just over three clicks away but they've got a jobby monitor somewhere in the local airgrid infrastructure. It's feeding to them direct."

"Official?" Vanessa sounded concerned.

"It looks that way, but I can turn orange if I decide I'm a pumpkin. I was wondering if I should run a trace."

"Hell no. Run a fix and throw it priority over to Ops. They'll nab him and ask some questions. "

"Even better." She smiled, doing that in a flash, full position and fix data, straight into CSA Ops, where the traffic rider ought to be receiving some very interesting information right about ...

"Hello, Snowcat, this is Ops," spoke a formal, unrecognised voice in her inner ear. "Your queried vehicle is black flagged. Do you require further assistance?"

A "black flag" meant government. More than government, it meant official, authorised, and not to be messed with. Sandy took in a deep breath through flared nostrils. The texture of golden light upon a gleaming tower shifted shade to pale-heat-light amid a darkening curtain of infrared. Independent movement highlighted, cruising aircars, a beckoning awareness, precursor to targeting-vision. The vibration of engines thrummed with enriched texture upon her eardrums, unveiling whole new shades and levels of sound and complexity.

She thought about taking it higher. Thought of contacting Ibrahim and putting the question to him directly. He'd told her the SIB were watching her. She hadn't thought it meant a tail on her surfing trips. She hadn't thought it would include a tail this blatant at all.

But there was a time and a place for such inquiries. Her instinct told her that this was neither.

"No. Thank you, Ops." She changed frequency, upped her encryption, and reconnected the old hookup.

"Sandy? Shit, is this another of your key-grade encryptions? This stuff gives me a headache. "

"Tough. Ops says it's a black flag." Pause on the other end. Sandy's own readings showed the Falcon still with her, feeding off the air-grid fix. Her right index finger felt jumpy, the strain feeding through her hand, back up her arm. The redness had not left her vision.

"Well, you did kind of expect it," Vanessa pointed out.

Sandy made up her mind, reflexively slipped half-tranced into attack mode, and infiltrated the air-grid monitor through her connection.

"That I did," she replied shortly, eyes unsighted as she found the trailing aircar's defensive barriers. Broke them with her best combina tion and released a killer-cell, military-level code destroyer, a selective virus that fed on complicated software. Many years of League military ingenuity did their job and the Falcon's civvie ID beacon gave a shrill, panicked screech, and died.

"But," she continued, seeing a clear wobble show up on her nav- scan, "I've decided that I've had enough of being tailed. It's a clear security risk to me and my broader circumstances, don't you think?"

"Obviously," Vanessa agreed. "Someone unofficial could imitate a black flag, or use their surveillance as a cover. You want me to talk to Ibrahim?"

"Not necessary." The Falcon, Sandy registered through her own links, was being queried by central flight control as to their lack of ID beacon, and their erratic flightpath. The Falcon gave their flag ID. And announced a flight emergency. Flight systems failure, massive systems malfunction. Backups operational, they were headed ... somewhere. It didn't register on the flightpath. Sandy reckoned that with their systems down, she might be able to infiltrate far enough to find out that one, too. But she didn't want to push her luck. "I just nuked them."

"Subtle," Vanessa said dryly. Then, "Shit. Oh well, makes things a bit exciting, I suppose."

"That's the Dark Star concept of surveillance, Ricey. If you don't know where the bastards are, send them a mail bomb and watch where the smoke rises."

"This is a flammable environment, Sandy. Everything burns. "

"Not me," Sandy told her, taking another sip of her drink. "I'm resistant. Didn't you know?"

"I could have guessed." Still dryly. "Since you're airborne, you want to give me a lift?"

Vanessa came jogging across the landing pad to the rear of her apartment building, two gearbags bundled under her arms. Tossed both in through the open rear door, and climbed in the front, up beside Sandy.

"Hey-ya." Looked at Sandy's wetsuit-clad lower half, loose arms tucked between her back and the seat. The doors closed, and Sandy fed on the power. "Good waves?"

"Excellent waves." Throbbing vibration, and the flyer heaved off the pad. The rooftop awning flapped in the downdraft, above empty rows of car space. Sandy noted Vanessa's government cruiser, alone in her spot. Next to Sandy's vacant space. Rows of garden ferns rippled and waved, dropping away below as they gained altitude. "They ought to be just about perfect right now."

"Oh well, we all have our sacrifices to make." Vanessa stretched. And silenced the blinking panel light by buckling her seatbelt. The apartment building's approach lane began to turn horizontal, and Sandy angled the engines once more. The rooftop slipped away below, giving way to now familiar neighbourhood roads beneath a spreading canopy of trees.

Further down Tago Road were the stores at which she now did her shopping, and got takeaway when it suited her. Further on still, beyond the Leung Street intersection, was the Santiello swimming complex, rectangles of blue water in a break in the trees, surrounded by decorative green gardens. In the opposite direction, Romanov Park, sports ovals about a central garden of lakes and drooping native willows. Beyond, the Subianto Stadium, grandstands looming in the middle distance.

Suburban Santiello. Vanessa had lived here for the past four years, and liked it. The only serious highrise was over to the south-east corner, where the Lantou Tower loomed skyward, and the cross-streets converged into full-on mega-density downtown. But mostly, Santiello was mid-to-low density suburbs, residential living, and an eclectic mix of architecture that largely did what it pleased. Some complained of a lack of ethnic-chic ... but for the odd mosque or church ... but Sandy thought it little to complain about. And Vanessa declared that she did not want to live in a postcard.

It had been Vanessa who had suggested Sandy take an apartment near her own. In the same building, as it turned out, that being specialised for government employees. And it had made certain official, bureaucratic types happy that the reliable, security-approved and "rising star" (a term she hated) SWAT Lieutenant Vanessa Rice was living next door, and taking care of her. Making sure, Sandy had supposed, that she did not assault the occasionally noisy neighbours, disembowel the somewhat coarse-mannered grocer on Tago Road, or, as Vanessa herself had suggested, bring home bevies of pretty, innocent Tanushan boys to molest in her apartment at her leisure. God save her from bureaucrats. And social conservatives in general. And representatives from the Ministry of Social Justice and Welfare. Those most of all.

"How did lunch go?" Sandy asked, remembering. The airlane climbed toward a merge with a lower altitude lane. The flyer cruised ahead, engines fully swept, as towers loomed in a sky scattered with traffic.

"Awful," said Vanessa, quite pleasantly. "Just awful. I've never been so glad to receive a callback in my life." Vanessa, Sandy had noticed, was prone to exaggeration. "I swear, I have the most obnoxious relatives in Tanusha, did I tell you?"

"Many times."

"My aunt-in-law ... good grief, ninety-four years old ... is suing her surgeon for some pointless hearing enhancement she had done two weeks ago-she claims it's given her insomnia. She can hear the bats squeaking to each other in the trees outside the bedroom."