Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (23 page)

“No,” said Sandy. “For threatening to take my team away. I kept them alive. If I hadn’t done it, one of them would have, only messier, and gotten caught.”

Obango nodded warily, not really understanding. Civvies never quite understood how cheap life got in war.

“Anyway,” Sandy continued, “even if they suspected, I was too damn useful when they used me properly for them to ditch me. That and some of the research guys like Takawashi had too much invested in me. So the war kept getting worse, and finally Recruitment got so scared of the investigations that would happen in the peace, and the fact that the general public didn’t know that GIs as advanced as me even existed, their heads were going to be on the blocks. So they had my team eliminated, made it look like a Federation victory. But you know all that.

“What I never told you was that in the process of going AWOL . . . well, I killed a few people. To get into the League systems, check out a bunch of data. Clear a way out for myself. In doing so, I found some reports on Tropez Station. Recruitment had shut it down a year earlier. It was too expensive, you see. They were winding back GI production and employment anyway, in preparation for the peace; there were too many of us. And now they had to save money, rehabilitating GIs is expensive, so they just shut it down. And all the patients there. It had become a recycling facility. Live, wounded GIs would come in one end, and spare parts would come out the other. So my buddy Jonti, a few others I knew who’d gone there since . . .”

She took a breath. Wiped her eye, and sipped her drink. Oh God, thought Vanessa, barely daring to breathe. She knew what came next. In some things, to her at least, her friend had become quite predictable.

“Those recordings of Jonti were just sims, visual constructs. They’d studied his mannerisms, figures of speech, and the programs had put it together. Could have fooled his mother, if GIs had mothers. And I’d been sending messages to a guy who’d been dead a year.

“I didn’t go straight to the Federation. I got out at a crazy station with twice the ship traffic it was designed to handle, whole waves of refugees coming through . . . I stole a limpet, hitched a jump on several big ships, then waited until I found one heading for one of the Tropez mining systems. I went to Tropez rehab station, of course. They let me in, thought I was something else—you know how good I do fake IDs. I got on board, and I cleaned the place out. Then I rigged their reactors to blow, and left. Fleet records here have a few mentions of a League facility lost at Tropez, cause unknown. That was me. I suppose we can update that intel now.”

More silence. Vanessa could hear frogs croaking in the CSA compound gardens outside.

“How many?” Ibrahim asked.

“Oh they’d automated most of it by then,” Sandy said dismissively. “Just enough to keep up appearances in the lobby. Twenty-two, all Recruitment employees.” Another sip. “Plus about a hundred GI regs and a whole bunch of automated defences who were protecting the place. Put there in case a Federation raider tried to take them. Bad publicity that would be. But they weren’t expecting one little limpet ship with a four-crew capacity to be a threat.”

“They used GIs to defend a GI slaughter house?” Chandrasekar asked incredulously.

“Yeah, regs,” Sandy said drily. “They’re regs, they do what they’re told. They’ll shoot their own wounded if ordered, I’ve seen it. Sometimes they’ll shoot themselves.”

“A hundred is a lot, even for you,” Vanessa said quietly.

“Yeah,” Sandy sighed. “Probably the worst fight I was ever in. I gave myself one chance in fifty.” She paused. “Guess I underestimated myself. But I had some holes in me when it was over. Bit of a mess. I made a few of the surviving techs help patch me up. Then locked them up, and left.”

“Blowing the station behind you?” Chandrasekar asked. Sandy nodded. “After those people helped you? Civilians?”

“Yes,” said Sandy. “Recruitment. Manning a slaughterhouse. Several thousand GIs, easy, lots of higher designations among them. Mass murderers, every one.”

Chandrasekar leaned forward, very serious. “But, Sandy. Defenseless civilians? Who’d surrendered, then helped you when you were wounded?”

“Not by choice,” Sandy said coldly. Dammit Chandi, don’t go there, thought Vanessa. But he was too far away for her to warn with a glance. And being Chandi, would probably ignore her.

“Cassandra,” he pressed, “you’re accused of being a monster. Now, we know you’re no monster. I’ve seen your compassion so many times. But you’re asking us to defend you from these terrible charges on the grounds that what you did was actually justified, and I’m just trying to understand . . .”

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” said Sandy. “I’m telling you what happened. Whether you feel that makes me worthy of your defence is entirely up to you.”

“Fine, just help me to understand how . . .”

Vanessa saw the snap coming just before it happened. “Because they’re my people!” Sandy snarled at Chandrasekar, with more venom than Vanessa had ever seen her use. Her eyes blazed, and Chandrasekar shrank back into his chair in shock. “And if you murder my people, you’re gonna fucking die!”

Deathly silence. Sandy sipped her juice, not missing a beat. That was almost as scary as the temper. It wasn’t an outburst. There was no fast recovery, no recognition of something gone wrong, no apology. As though the fury had always been there, just below the surface.

“Anyhow,” she said, in a much the same, though calmer, tone. “That’s my story. You’re going to want to discuss it, and say things you’d probably prefer I wasn’t here for. That’s okay. Take your time.”

She slipped off the bench, and walked. Her path detoured past Vanessa first, extending a hand. Vanessa took it. It wasn’t an apology so much, just a reassurance. “I know you understand,” it meant. Vanessa nodded slowly to herself as Sandy walked to the door, and closed it behind her. She did understand quite well.

Chandrasekar let out a short breath. “Damn it,” he said softly. “I’ve never been scared of her before today.”

“Rest it, Chandi,” said Vanessa. “I’d have done the same thing.”

He looked at her, frowning. “Would you really?”

“Absolutely. Without even having to understand what those years were like for her, I know I would. CDF may have folded, but I’m still technically a soldier. If anyone did that to my guys, I wouldn’t care who they were. I’d have killed them.”

“No chance of a trial out there,” Obango added.

“Sure, but that’s not it,” said Vanessa. “It’s just soldiers in war. I don’t like doing this to you, Chandi, but I will say it—unless you’ve been there, you don’t know. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for my guys. If anyone hurts them . . .”

“Most of those the station at Tropez killed weren’t her guys, going by what she said,” Chandrasekar countered. “Just this one friend of hers, Jonti.”

“Which brings in the rest of her life at that point,” said Vanessa. “She wanted so badly to believe in the League cause. Every soldier wants to believe in what they’re fighting for. But her real investment was in the guys she fought with, not her commanders, not the big picture. And those commanders treated her guys like shit, and threw them away like toilet paper. The resentment built for years, she was trying to justify it back and forth in her own head for a long time, and then when it finally dawned on her that everything up to that point had been a lie . . .” she sighed. She didn’t like getting into this with Sandy too much for a reason.

“Well can you imagine the guilt?” she finished. “She’s not just mad at the League for what they did to her and her people, she’s mad at herself for not figuring it out sooner. Look, she’s my best friend in the whole world, and I know her as the kindest and most generous person . . . but that’s all wrapped up in some very dark stuff. She deals with it wonderfully, almost all of the time, but it’s still there, and even I don’t go prodding around in there without invitation. If she’s got issues, you can hardly blame her. And unlike all of us, she really is death on legs, and getting mad enough to kill is not just a hypothetical for her.”

“Well, I’ll be real careful, then,” Chandrasekar murmured.

“No that’s not it at all,” Vanessa snapped in frustration. “She wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head, and you know it. It’s just that there are a lot of people in her immediate environment who attack and try to hurt her in one way or another, and she has to be very restrained most of the time. When she finally does get a real enemy she can hurt, it’s almost a relief. She’s not scared of getting hurt herself, she’s scared that like the last time, she’ll miss something that will cause her friends to get hurt. She tries to protect everyone but she doesn’t always know how, and that scares her, because the last time in the League, a whole bunch of her friends died because she didn’t figure out what was going on quickly enough. Which is why she hasn’t spoken of Tropez Station until now, not even with me, because she can’t bear recalling how this horrible thing was going on under her nose all that time, and she didn’t pick it. People who threaten her friends just make her furious. That’s as angry as she gets. And that’s what you just saw.”

Three days of listening to Callay newsfeeds on the way to station convinced Ari that he should avoid Balaji Airport on the way down, and go via Gordon instead. He abandoned the FSA Agents at Nehru Station as they took a runner out to their spaceplane and a direct way down. His own flight would give him a twelve-hour layover; it was the earliest available on short notice.

He checked into a hotel with rucksack and luggage, not accustomed to travelling heavy and despising space travel in general. That last gravity shift had left him more than queasy. A robo porter wheeled his bags up three levels, then along the narrow hall to a little room with noisy ventilation and no windows. Ari had never been an especially outdoorsy person, but now he was desperate for some sunlight. Space was so incredibly big, but every room you stayed in while travelling through it was claustrophobically small.

Locked in his newest cell, he opened a line down to the surface. Check messages? Shit no, he didn’t trust orbital uplinks for a second. Everything was filtered. Still, he could call people. He called Ibrahim. Ibrahim was busy, wouldn’t be available for a while, could the secretary take a message? He tried Chandrasekar instead, no more luck. Ibrahim, the newslinks had told him on the way in, was being promoted to FSA Director. Working with the FSA of late, Ari knew he should be delighted—the FSA might actually start working properly now. But Ari was Callayan through and through, and the thought of the CSA without Ibrahim filled him with dread. Chandrasekar was being moved up to Director. That wasn’t so bad . . . but hell of a big pair of shoes to fill. Hell of a big pair.

He contacted Naidu instead.

“
Ari, dear boy,
” said Naidu, looking rumpled and deadpan as usual on the vidphone. “
You’re back, are you?
”

“In orbit.”

“
Wonderful, good for you. How’s space travel suiting you?
”

“Fucking hate it. Where is everyone?”

“
Chaos down here Ari, everything’s in a state.
”

“So what’s new?”

“
Quite a lot actually. The old man’s in Parliament for confirmation hearings, Chandi’s doing all the paperwork, there’s war crimes trials upcoming, we’ve appeals pending, I’m up to my neck in lawyers and we’ve journalists literally hunting us around the grounds.
”

“Sounds great,” said Ari. “I’d like to speak to Sandy. Is she around?”

“
Haven’t seen her. Not taking calls lately, can’t say I blame her.
”

“Is she okay, do you know?”

“
About the war crimes nonsense?
” Naidu’s expression was all disdain. “
Absolutely. Complete beat-up, nothing to it. But as you might imagine, she’s not making herself available, and we’re facilitating that. How was Pyeongwha?
”

“Frightening,” said Ari. “Tell Ibrahim I need to speak with him at the earliest, in his capacity as either FSA or CSA Director, either one’s important.”

“
Will do,
” said Naidu.

“Oh, another thing,” said Ari before he could sign off, “why aren’t you being considered for CSA Director? I mean, you’re senior to Chandi.”

Naidu smiled. “
I’m old, Ari. Being old, I’m quite happy to stay in my little garden and prune the roses, so to speak.
”

“You’d have made a good Director.”

“
So will Chandi,
” Naidu said firmly.

“We’ll see. See you tomorrow.”

“
Yes, and Ari? Don’t let the journalists grab you on the way in, yes?
”

Ari slept for a while, then woke to take the shuttle. A trip up to the core, more weightless time as the crowd of civvie passengers was loaded, then a very bumpy reentry ride down. At Gordon he went through customs like everyone else—though his fancy passport did let him skip the queue—collected priority luggage and wheeled it straight for the taxi stand. There were media waiting in arrivals, for whom he didn’t know. But him they ignored—they’d tried to do stories from time to time on Commander Kresnov’s mysterious lover, but Ari valued his anonymity on par with his testicles. It had been one of several points of friction between them, when she’d wanted to go out, and he’d refused for fear of attention. She wanted to be a normal girl and have fun. He appreciated that. But normality had never been high on his own list of priorities.