Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (24 page)

The taxi cruiser charged his card some obscene fee and lifted him off the ramp, forest green sprawling away from the spaceport perimeter below. Ahead, across all the horizon, hundreds and hundreds of towers, and air traffic so thick it looked from this distance like mist. Home.

He checked messages on the way in, and got overwhelming thousands. Just too damn popular, he thought, sifting through the masses. Mostly friends and business, which with him was often the same thing . . . a few ex-girlfriends, a few potentially new ex-girlfriends, a handful of death threats, the usual. A bunch of very interesting leads, people who needed to be researched, others begging to be arrested . . . it frustrated him that he’d been away for so long and hadn’t been able to deal with it. Like a gardener returned from a long absence to find the hedges untrimmed, the grass knee-high, weeds and dead leaves everywhere. Travelling was so overrated, he’d be quite happy if he never left Tanusha again.

He searched all the network for Sandy, and found not a trace. He tried all the tricks, all the encryption codes, all the hidden markers and trail seekers . . . nothing. Very few people as network-active as Sandy could just disappear like that, not from him, not in his city. She really didn’t want to be found.

That left one obvious route. He locked into the CSA’s network, past the usual multitudes of querying barriers, then into SWAT and more barriers, and found SWAT One was on deployment in Ludhiana. As active CSA he had codes that could break into even active tacnet . . . which was up, he found, and he dialed into their coms. And called. And called.

It disconnected.

“Oh, come on, Ricey,” he exclaimed. “Don’t beat me up, this is important.”

He tried again. Vanessa would see the indicator light, would know who was calling. Again it went dead.

“Fuck.” Girlfriends would stick together. He’d have to take more direct action.

SWAT One was deployed around a large demonstration in Ludhiana District’s main park. Or rather a series of demonstrations, Ari thought, flashing ID at ground level security and taking the elevator of a parkside building to the top. The building had rooftop gardens, like many flat-top towers in Tanusha, their coupolas emptied of their usual tea garden patrons, and Ari walked a path to the edge of the rooftop. There on the edge sat several figures in deadly powered armour, rifles strapped to their backs, observing the crowds in the park below with graphically enhanced vision.

Ari identified the smallest, walked up behind and tapped a shoulder. “Go away,” said the armour suit.

“No,” said Ari, and tapped the shoulder again. Vanessa turned on him, flipped up her visor and regarded him sullenly. “Hi,” he said. Vanessa still looked sullen. Ari held up the flower he’d picked from the garden, hopefully.

Vanessa sighed, took it and hugged him. In bone-crushing armour, that wasn’t exactly comfortable. “Hey,” she said. “Just get back?”

“Yeah.” She resumed her seat—a chair from the tea garden—and resumed her vigil. “Fun demonstration.”

“Oh, hysterical. See this group over here?” She pointed to a far corner of the park, on the roads about which were a lot of police vehicles and flashing lights. “Callayan nationalists, demanding the FSA be abolished. This group over here,” she pointed again, “in the middle, they’re protesting biotech and GI immigration, it’s like one of those two for the price of one deals. And here nearest us, they’re demanding war crimes perpetrators be punished, because violence is bad, apparently. Naturally, they began throwing things at the poor bloody cops an hour ago.”

“It’s good to be home,” said Ari. “So who called SWAT?”

“Whole bunch of death threats, Feddie nationalists threatening Callayan nationalists, pro-biotech anarchists threatening the antis . . . that’s your crowd isn’t it?”

“Oh, hell yes, where’s my black bandana?”

“A few threats looked viable . . . hang on.” She clicked on her mike. “Rani, can you just check that fourth floor window, on my grid fix now? I can see movement. Yeah, just keep an eye on it, get a cop to climb some stairs and check on it.” She pointed to a chair alongside, and Ari sat. Vanessa commanded this rooftop and all those surrounding; one didn’t do anything without permission. “You looking for Sandy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Personal or professional?” Her visor was back down, sunlight glinting off a mean visage, voice a little tinny on the speakers. She wasn’t doing it deliberately to distance him, more that she had advanced visuals in that visor, and needed to see. Mostly.

“Never done a good job of separating those two in my life.”

“Me neither. You can’t have her back, you know.”

“I . . .” Ari frowned, not really knowing what to say to that. “I know.”

“I mean, I think I know why you left.”

“You do?”

“Ari, you were obsessing about Pyeongwha for the best part of a year. You think it’s your business. You think all this stuff is your business. You get pissed when people mess it up because you’re not there, and they don’t do as good a job as you do. So you took it on yourself to save a planet, and relationships get in the way. You’ve never been a relationship kind of guy, anyway. I was amazed you lasted that long.”

Ari ran a hand through his hair. “Hmm.” She was half right. “Where is she?”

“Plus, you worried about what you’d find, and that that relationship in particular meant you’d lose your objectivity.” Okay, Ari conceded, more than half right. Sandy was right, Vanessa had missed her true calling as a psych. “So I’m pissed at you, sure, but I forgive you too, because I was there on Pyeongwha, and that was hard, what you did. So I sympathise, but I’m telling you all the same, you can’t have her back now Pyeongwha is over.”

“Well, firstly,” said Ari, “Pyeongwha isn’t over, not by half. And secondly, who says I want her back?”

The visored, armoured face turned to look at him. “I do, because I know you, and every other girl will seem boring to you after her.” Well now you’re just projecting, Ari nearly said, but refrained. Vanessa returned her gaze to the crowds below. “And I won’t let you. She doesn’t, you know, emotionalise this stuff like we do. Non-GIs. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. And just because it doesn’t affect her in the same way it affects a non-GI, she knows you’re not a GI, so she’s wondering what you were feeling, and why she wasn’t important enough to you, and it’s confusing and complicated. She doesn’t need this right now, so don’t even try.”

“Look, you’re a good friend to her,” Ari tried. “And I hope you’ll want to remain a good friend to me, whatever else happens. But there’s also business. I need to talk to her about Pyeongwha; she has insights into that stuff. Where is she?”

Ari had always thought surfing would be hard. He hadn’t expected that the hardest bit would just be paddling out through the waves. They hadn’t looked enormous from the shore, but lying flat on his hired longboard, they towered over him. A wall of foaming water rushed into him, tipping the board up, then upending him. He struggled back on top and resumed paddling, only to be knocked off by a second one while he was still getting his breath back. He swallowed some water and coughed madly, losing breath, while more broken waves sent him back toward the beach. Great, now he was back where he’d started.

He tried again. He was fit—partly from the combat exercises that he’d become very good at since living with Sandy, Vanessa and Rhian had made them seem like a good idea—and partly from the standard micro augments that accentuated every bit of exercise and made it count for triple. The two women he’d been with since leaving Sandy had been suitably impressed . . . which he had to admit he’d enjoyed, because living in a house with three of the Federation’s most dangerous women had been enough to knock any man’s ego down a few pegs. It had been nice to rediscover that by regular male standards he was pretty buff. Just not buff enough to impress those three. Or maybe they’d just enjoyed teasing him, whatever.

But fit or not, several minutes later, he was still struggling. He rolled under another wave, resurfaced amidst the churning wash, and found he’d gone another twenty meters backward. How the fuck did surfers do it? A man could drown out here.

Suddenly someone was beside him, wet blonde hair and lean, bare arms.

“Hang on,” Sandy told him, with undisguised amusement. “Just get on board and kick, watch out for my feet.” She grabbed his board’s nose one-handed, and kicked and paddled hard. There shouldn’t have been enough leverage, but her feet were truly thrashing now, with power that Ari was pretty sure would break his arm if he stuck it in. Watch out for the feet indeed. Soon they were really moving. He only got dumped three more times, and was rewarded each time by her laughing at him.

Finally they were out past the break, him gasping for air as he sat up. “Well I guess I deserve that,” he wheezed, and coughed.

“And far more.” But she was smiling. Makeup and fancy clothes looked great on some girls, but Sandy looked best like this—natural, hair wet, eyes alive. It was summer, the ocean currents too warm for wetsuits, so she wore boardshorts and surfer’s top—a rashie, he remembered some called them, Australian slang like a lot of sporting terms. Ari thought she looked pretty damn good in more traditional swimwear too, but in this kind of surf, they’d get torn off.

“You’re a dill,” she told him. That was Australian for idiot. “It’s a fairly big day today, and you’ve never even sat on a board.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Looks good on you though,” she added, as he wobbled a little on his board. He rode far higher in the water than her, his longboard buoyant, her short board submerged.

“Why aren’t you working?” he asked.

“Who says I’m not?” She nodded toward the shore. Ari looked, and saw a strong black man powering toward them on a short board. Every undergrounder who was anyone knew Mustafa Ramoja on sight. For a lot of them, he was an even bigger hero than Sandy, whom some considered a sellout for having abandoned the League.

“Ah,” said Ari. “Hello Mustafa!”

“Hello Ari,” said Mustafa, smiling. “How was Pyeongwha?”

“Wonderful. Real garden spot.” He caught Mustafa’s glance at Sandy. “Oh, did I intrude on something? Excellent.” He waited, all ears.

“Your news first,” said Mustafa.

“You wouldn’t find my news interesting.”

“I am an intelligence agent. I assure you I would.”

“Ari,” said Sandy, “Mustafa’s currently at odds with the League government. The whole ISO is.” Ari raised his eyebrows at her. Then at Mustafa. Mustafa sighed, as though not particularly happy she’d said that. “If you wanted to talk to me about NCT, Mustafa might actually be able to help.”

She gave the other GI a long, hard look. Ari frowned, looking from one to the other. What was going on?

He decided to take a chance. “Well, look, this is not the place to go into detail, with my head full of salt water. It’s just that . . . well, I think Pyeongwha NCT is based upon one of the previously unused GI development methods. Brain development. Which means that if New Torah is reactivating some of that tech like we think, it could be real trouble.”

Neither GI replied. They bobbed in the swell, and the cool breeze felt a nice contrast to the warm sun. Houses perched on a nearby rocky bluff. Flickwings circled, reptilian birds, searching for fish. It was really nice out here, Ari decided. This part of surfing he liked. It was just the paddling, the waves and the . . . well, the surfing, that he loathed.

“He’s useful,” Sandy insisted to Mustafa. Mustafa looked dubious.

“Useful for what?” Ari ventured. Between these two, the insecurity was back—they were both so beautiful, effortless and smart. Why would Sandy want to be saddled with a regular human like him anyway, when she could have men like this?

“Mustafa has a plan,” said Sandy. Mustafa did not silence her. “Or rather, the ISO has a plan. For intervening in New Torah.”

Ari blinked at her. “Against the wishes of the League government?”

Sandy nodded. “Yes.”

“And involving Federation Intelligence assets? The FSA?”

“And CSA, yes.”

“Why? Why not do it themselves?”

Sandy smiled at Mustafa. Mustafa scowled. “Because the Federation currently has more high-designation GIs trained for this sort of irregular operation than the League does,” she said cheerfully. It was pretty funny, Ari had to concede. “And if this is going to work, they’re going to need us.”

“A blind drop?” Ari said dubiously.

They sat on temple steps as the waves crashed upon the shoreline, and ate fish and chips from a nearby vendor. Flickwings swooped and squealed across the sand as the sun set behind them, and the sky faded to a dark turquoise. A few people strolled or jogged, or came up the stairs to attend evening prayers within the temple. Within, between rowed pillars, priests led a sonorous drone of song and chiming bells, and flame torches flickered.

“We need reconnaissance,” said Mustafa. Several women coming up the steps gave him long looks. Ari was comfortable enough without a shirt, but reckoned that if he were built like Mustafa, he’d find excuses to take it off more often. “We can’t do anything without it.”

“You’re telling me that after . . . what is it, a hundred and twenty years of settlement, the ISO has no intelligence assets left in the Torah systems?”

“On the outer systems, yes,” said Mustafa, about a mouthful of fish. “On Pantala, not really. Nothing useful.”

“And how is that?”

Pantala was the Torah Systems’ only heavily inhabited world, though even that population was sparse. It was the central base of Torahn economics and government, where all the major corporations were based. Its capital city was Droze.

“The corporations control the Pantalan infrastructure,” said Mustafa. “That’s what we need intel on. Corporate loyalties are strong. If you’re not in a corporation, you’re just a settler. Their lives are cheap, and they’ve no access to anything. Those assets we did have amongst them were few, and mostly eliminated.”

“But you can’t just infiltrate a corporation with outsiders,” said Ari.

“No.”

“So you’ll have to infiltrate the settlers, and infiltrate them with someone capable of bridging that gap between settler and corporation. Someone with expertise in infiltrating hard targets.”