Crossover: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 1)

The Callayan executive courtroom was more or less what she’d expected. It was small, bare and functional, but not in any way that suggested insignificance. Quite the opposite. It was simplicity born of security, tight, hard and impenetrable. There was no seating for an audience, or for a jury. Three judges sat behind a bench of plain, smooth wood, faces cast in blue light from the inset monitor screens before them, below line-of-sight. All were reading, studying. None spared her so much as a glance.

Preparing, Sandy noted. Listening to feeds from outside audio sources, scrolling through legal files, intelligence updates, accessing technical and medical analysts, and — no doubt — various political advisors and go-betweens. Seated alone on her single, barely cushioned chair, Sandy allowed her gaze to wander along the blank, featureless walls. Security shielding prevented her from pinpointing the telltale emissions of the surveillance cameras, but she guessed there would be at least ten or twelve individual units in a court like this one, covering every conceivable angle.

People were watching. Important people. She thought she could guess who.

Shan Ibrahim, chief of the Callayan Security Agency. His deputy … she scanned her memory to retrieve that elusive name … N’Darie. Ulu N’Darie. Their department heads, all four of them. Names followed. And Benjamin Grey, the State Security Chief, and his aides and seconds. Politicians, unlike the CSA, who were civil servants. She’d seen enough in the League to know the difference.

And then there was Katia Neiland, most prominently. Most prominently of everyone, in fact. It was a good bet that the Callayan President would be watching in person, whatever her tight schedule.

Security advisors, and their various key insiders and connections. The Secretary of State, Yu Weichao … no, he was on a diplomatic visit several lightyears away. The ministers for Internal Security and the Armed Services and their aides.

And finally, Confederacy-Governor Dali. The thought gave her a mild but thoroughly unpleasant chill. Dali was the central Confederacy Government’s representative on Callay. He was the communication conduit, the mediator, the bearer of the central administration’s stamp of approval. Officially, he wielded no power, and resided in the Federal Embassy with his numerous staff. Officially, he was just another ambassador, despite the fancy title with its imperial-hangover overtones. But in the corridors of power, people who mattered knew better.

All the organs of power. All of the shadowy, distant people of whom she had only been aware in the abstract … all here, watching her. And the information would be recorded. People in the Federal Administration would see those tapes. All the way up to the top.

Capable as she was, Sandy could scarcely conceive of the scale of the predicament in which she was caught. Her mind was spinning, trying to take it all in. She felt numb.

The judge in the middle looked up at her. The woman to his left leaned back in her chair. So, it was beginning.

‘I, Supreme Court Adjudicator Sandeep Guderjaal, declare this closed session open,’ the judge intoned. ‘Records will indicate that the time is 10:23 local, and clearance is registered triple A.’

Sandy sat alone in the middle of the room before the judges’ bench, wrists manacled in a heavy, triple-reinforced brace, legs bare from the calves down beneath the white robe she wore. A man from CSA Intel had given her a pair of slippers to wear on her bare feet. They were too big, but they were warm. She guessed they might be his, Intel had been nice to her, on and off. There were techno-geeks in Intel, it was obvious. Their interviews had been long and frequent, and she had answered their questions as best she could, mostly. Some of the interviewers had been very friendly, particularly the men. It had surprised her, and it had given her hope. Only a little, but any hope at all was a precious thing.

‘So,’ the central judge said, studying her, a slight crease to his forehead, as if surprised to look up from his contemplation and find that he was not alone. ‘You call yourself Cassandra Kresnov, do you?’

‘I don’t call myself anything. My name is Cassandra Kresnov.’ Her voice remained hoarse, but it was clear enough in this bare, silent room. If she listened hard enough, she fancied she could hear the faint whirr of air conditioning. Beyond that, nothing.

‘In this courtroom,’ said the woman to the right, ‘you should address each panel member as Your Honour. Will this be a problem?’ Her eyebrows raised expectantly. A derisive retort would have released some tension.

‘No, Your Honour,’ Sandy said instead, meeting the woman’s gaze.

‘And you do realise why it is that you are here?’ the same woman asked.

Sandy nodded. ‘My case falls within the guidelines of several articles of State Security law,’ she replied. ‘CSA must have judicial approval in order to proceed with … whatever it is that they might wish to do with me.’

‘That is more or less correct, yes. How does that prospect make you feel?’

‘Nervous.’ A short, heavy silence.

‘Why does it make you nervous?’ Sandy held the woman’s gaze. Then allowed her eyes to stray about the room. And to one side, as if indicating the guards who stood against the wall behind her. Back to the woman.

‘Because I feel I have a lot to fear. I’m hoping that you can tell me otherwise.’ There was no immediate reply. The woman looked down at her screen.

‘Captain Kresnov,’ said the man on the left. He was a big, stern-looking man. His look was serious enough to be almost menacing. ‘What are you? How would you describe yourself?’

A deep breath. It hurt her gut, and pulled tight at her bandages. ‘I suppose the simple answer is that I am an artificial human being, Your Honour.’

‘Designed for what purpose?’ Trap. Sandy felt her stomach tense. Her throat was dry again. She wished she had a table on which to rest a glass of water.

‘I feel I should remind you that the original design purpose does not necessarily correlate with the precise nature of the finished …’

‘Just answer the question, please. What did your designers have in mind when they made you?’

‘Money, probably.’ The man’s face darkened.

‘Are you not prepared to answer the question?’

Sandy took a breath. ‘I was created to be a soldier. As you well know, Your Honour.’

‘But you’re much more than that, aren’t you?’ The man’s tone was hard, darkened by some unnamed emotion. ‘Your official designation is GI for General Issue, but your unofficial League designation is HK, isn’t it? GI-5074J-HK. Can you tell me what the HK stands for?’

Sandy stared at him. ‘Do all Supreme Court judges waste time with rhetorical questions?’

‘HK,’ the man continued forcefully, ‘stands for Hunter Killer. Does it not, Captain Kresnov?’

‘It does, Your Honour. But someone else invented that label, and its relevance …’

‘Someone else invented you, Ms Kresnov. Someone else invented you for the sole purpose of killing as many of us flesh and blood human beings as technologically possible, didn’t they?’

Sandy blinked slowly. Her nerves were settling surprisingly fast. Her vision fixed unerringly on the big, square-jawed man with the ruddy face. Eyes half-slid unconsciously into infrared, tuning through the spectrums. Targeting.

‘And so the next question, Your Honour, is how should I achieve this objective that you have set for me?’ Very calmly.

‘Please explain what you mean,’ Judge Guderjaal cut in before the big man could respond. Sandy’s gaze did not waiver even a fraction.

‘I mean that creating the perfect ‘killing machine’ has been attempted before, in a literal, technological sense. But most artificial intelligences cannot tactically coordinate and process abstract data on the same level as humans. The robot soldiers I’ve seen in perhaps a dozen TV programs and movies since I’ve been a civilian in reality are little more than cannon fodder.

‘I am not a ‘killing machine’ I was designed specifically to think laterally and creatively, well beyond the level of basic abstraction. The only biomechanical entity known to humans that can achieve this is still the human brain. My brain is a copy, an imprint, of the original article. I have the tactical skills required of a soldier, but as an automatic side-effect I also have emotions, and personality, to the same extent as any person in this room. In fact, I do not believe I could be the tactician I am without that emotional input. That is my creative side. Without creativity, I’m just a target.’

‘You mean to say,’ the woman asked, ‘that emotions such as fear are actually of assistance to your combat performance? I’m not certain that that makes sense to me.’ Suspiciously.

Sandy looked at her, vision still tracking. Closed her eyes softly, restoring normal vision. Took another deep breath. Don’t let the combat instincts take over, she told herself. Don’t intimidate them. Be harmless.

It wasn’t easy.

‘I have good control,’ she replied. ‘I process a lot of data in a combat environment. I tend to get lost in it, and the fear does not register. But then, many human soldiers have reported precisely the same thing.’

‘How many people have you killed?’ the big man asked her coldly. Sandy’s train of thought was diverted for a brief instant, wondering at his allegiances, his connections, his supporters. Wondering who it was that the datalink in his ear and the comp feed on his bench were connected to, outside the courtroom. They were feeding him information even now. And probably, she realised, he would be trying to get a particular response from her, later to be used for his own purposes. Or theirs.

‘I have no idea.’

‘No idea? You, the product of the highest technological capacities the human race has ever devised, have no idea? Is your memory deficient, perhaps? Your recording processes damaged during recent events?’

Sandy blinked slowly, her eyes calm, blue and steady. ‘That is four questions, Your Honour. Shall I answer each of them individually, or take them as one single rhetorical outburst?’

The man’s gaze deepened to a glare. ‘How many people have you killed, Captain Kresnov?’

‘I believe I have already answered that question. I said that I had no idea. My accurate recollection of events is limited to those matters that I find necessary or helpful. A bodycount will serve neither purpose.’

‘You don’t feel that the lives of the people you have killed are worth your bothering to recall?’

‘I am quite certain I did not say that. I said I do not find those recollections helpful to my present situation. On the contrary, I find them extremely disturbing and depressing.’

‘You don’t look particularly disturbed or depressed from where I’m sitting, Captain Kresnov.’

‘Respectfully, Your Honour, as a supreme court judge, you should know better than to judge by mere appearances.’

The big man continued to glare at her, eyes hard within the shadows of his brows in the dim light. Sandy shifted spectrums slightly, saw hot blood pulsing in his neck veins, spreading through his temples and cheeks.

The female judge interrupted. ‘You were operating with Dark Star for nine years, is that correct?’ Sandy tuned back to standard visual, looking at the woman. She had light brown skin, black hair and a prominent nose. But not Indian. Arabic, Sandy guessed.

‘That is correct, Your Honour. I joined when I was five at the starting rank of lieutenant, was made captain when I was six and went AWOL when I was fourteen. That was one year ago.’

‘And over that nine-year period,’ the woman continued, ‘how many operations did you personally conduct?’

‘Twelve as a lieutenant, nine of those as second-in-command. Seventy-eight as captain.’

‘And in how many of those operations did you come into direct contact with the enemy?’

‘Approximately half, Your Honour.’

The Arabic woman’s frown was slightly quizzical. ‘Approximately?’

‘Definitions of ‘direct contact’ vary, Your Honour,’ Sandy explained. ‘Kills can be made in an operation without the other side’s commanders being entirely aware of it. Degrees of contact vary. I estimate that on approximately forty-five occasions direct contact did occur. But I leave out of that total several instances open to variable interpretation.’

‘Either way, Captain, that’s rather a lot of firefights, wouldn’t you say?’

Sandy nodded slowly. ‘Yes, Your Honour. It is a lot.’

‘You are good at firefights, I presume? You handle yourself well?’

Sandy nodded again, this time reluctantly. ‘Yes, Your Honour.’ She sensed no overt animosity from this woman. And yet Sandy had no doubts of which judge she found most intimidating, between her and the big man to the right.

‘I see.’ The judge briefly studied the screen before her. Blue light played across her tanned features. ‘You and your assault team coordinated through neural linkups, did you not?’

‘We did, yes.’

‘I’d imagine that given your other physical, sensory and psychological advantages, this single unit coordination must have made your team extremely difficult for most mere human soldiers to oppose effectively, in a combat situation. In fact, it seems to me that your unit would have almost an unfair advantage. Would you agree with that assessment?’

Another reluctant nod. ‘That is the design purpose of most military technology, Your Honour.’

‘Indeed.’ A pause. The woman continued to read off the screen before her. Sandy’s mind raced over the possible implications of what she was asking. Or what she might be reading from the screen before her. Intelligence, no doubt — mostly military. Intelligence on Dark Star. Then she looked up, her expression mild and purposeful. ‘Will I have heard of any of these operations?’

If your security clearance is as high as I think it is, Sandy thought, you can read about any of them whenever you wish. But she didn’t say it. And said instead, after a moment’s thought, ‘My unit was very active around Goan just three years ago.’

‘Which operations exactly?’

Sandy shook her head, wearily. ‘For the same reasons I gave to my CSA interviewers, I refuse to give any answers regarding my past military operations that are any more specific than those I have already given.’

‘Your continued refusals to cooperate have been noted, Captain,’ the big man said coldly.

‘I’m very happy to respond to any questions directly relating to Callayan security,’ Sandy continued, addressing the Arabic judge as if her compatriot had never spoken. ‘My wartime record is a matter for Federal Intelligence, however, and does not directly involve Callayan security issues at all. I fear that sharing wartime information at this moment might entangle me directly in a lot of Federal politics I’d really rather avoid at this time. I appear to be in deep enough water as it is.’

Guderjaal in particular, she noted, appeared to concede that argument. She guessed that, in his position, he knew a thing or two about Federal politics. He leaned forward, elbows on the bench before him, and looked at her from under serious, underlit brows.

‘What have you done here, Captain?’ he asked, changing the subject entirely.

The question caught her off guard. ‘Your Honour?’

‘Here in Tanusha. What have you done here since you’ve arrived?’

‘Well…’ Still puzzled. ‘I believe my job interviews have already been documented by the CSA agents …’

‘No, no.’ Guderjaal shook his head with a faint trace of impatience. ‘Aside from your work. Hotel records show that you spent a great deal of time away from your room, more time than would have been required merely for your interviews. What information we have gathered about FIA activities indicates that your tail was first obtained while visiting the Tanushan Gallery of the Arts. Do you like art?’

Guderjaal had thrown her completely. It was not the line of questioning she had expected in this place. Her pulse rate accelerated and she forced herself to calm, remembering the sensor plug and the monitor readings. Civilian judges, civilian law, Federation concepts. At any second, she was in danger of straying far out of her depth in these treacherous, unfamiliar waters. It scared her.

She blinked, forcefully refocusing her attention. ‘Yes.’ Unable for a brief moment to keep the puzzlement from her face. ‘Yes, I do like art.’

‘Why?’ She blinked again. Guderjaal seemed perfectly serious. He had a live, cooperative GI before him. Command level, at that. An unmissable opportunity. Fear flared, and she forced it back down. The judges, however, all looked at their monitor screens, as if on cue.

‘This line of questioning disturbs you?’ Guderjaal asked, looking up through narrowed eyes. It was the sensor plug. It was reading her reactions. It was unpleasant and invasive and there was nothing she could do about it.

‘This entire courtroom disturbs me, Your Honour. Your probe in the back of my head disturbs me. Everything, in fact, about the past few days disturbs me very, very much.’ Her voice, which had been rock steady, now held the faintest of quavers.

‘Why do you like art, Captain Kresnov?’ Guderjaal was evidently not in any mood for mercy. His eyes bored deep, like the hidden lenses, laying her bare.

‘I don’t know.’ She took a deep breath. Focusing. ‘Does anyone know why they like art? I’m sure you don’t either.’

Guderjaal nodded, as if accepting that answer. Or at least, she realised, it was now logged on tape. That was all they wanted. A taped, recorded reference of responses. Content was secondary. ‘So you visited the art gallery. What else did you do?’

Sandy shrugged, forcing herself to relax further. ‘I went sightseeing. It’s a beautiful city.’

‘You claim to have had sexual encounters with straight humans. Did you do so here in Tanusha?’ Sandy stared at him. Remembering, suddenly, a claim she had made, talking with Vanessa. God, the ultimate xenophobia trigger. Not Vanessa’s fault, that admission. But it had all been on tape.

‘On one occasion, yes.’ Lying was not a safe option. She had no idea how far the FIA’s surveillance of her had stretched, and how much of that surveillance the CSA had since recovered. If they caught her lying, in this environment, it would mean trouble. ‘A one-nighter.’

‘And he, of course, assumed you were a regular human?’ Sandy managed a faint shrug. Uncertain of just how ridiculous this was going to get, or how worried she ought to be about it.

‘Of course.’

‘This sounds to me like callous dishonesty, Captain.’ Guderjaal’s tone was deeply disapproving. ‘Do you always behave in such a predatory fashion?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ Very bluntly.

‘Misleading your partners with your cover story, luring them unknowingly into a sexual encounter with a person who is not, by your own admission, even legally human? Do you think this particular young man would have chosen to perform this act with you had he been fully aware of your true nature?’

‘I could not presume to speak for him, Your Honour. But I can assure you, even with such prior knowledge, it is impossible to tell the difference.’ She paused, her gaze very direct. ‘You would not be able to tell.’

For the first time, Judge Guderjaal looked slightly unsettled. To his right, the Arabic woman may well have smiled. Or maybe not. ‘You feel no remorse at your deception?’ he asked after a moment.

‘No one was hurt,’ Sandy replied. Utterly bewildered at the line of attack. ‘Ignorance is a key element in all one-night stands.’

‘What if he was a conscientious objector to League biotech? What if he had lost a relative in the war and hated GIs?’

‘Then I probably did him a favour.’ Stares from the judges. Sandy shook her head faintly. And said, because she could not help herself, ‘Your Honour, if more people had sex more often with more different kinds of people, the universe would be a better place, I’m sure of it.’ It certainly made sense to her. She had no idea why more civilians didn’t agree with her.

‘Why is it that you even possess such appetites, Captain?’ the Arabic woman asked. ‘Are they not inconvenient, considering your line of work?’

Sandy exhaled shortly. ‘As I have explained in previous interviews, my own nervous system is in function no more and no less an imprint or copy of your own. Sexual urges are a side-effect of this replication in exactly the same way that emotions and personality traits are. Yes, they are sometimes inconvenient. But to remove them is to upset the psychological balance. Sexual urges relieve tension and stress, among other things. Without them I would be incomplete, and that would jeopardise the efficiency with which I complete my duties.’

‘And why are you human-like at all, Captain?’ Guderjaal asked curiously. ‘I’ve heard artificial intelligence experts argue that the entire GI concept is flawed, that by imitating humans, League biotechnologists have in fact limited the capabilities of their creations.’

Sandy nearly rolled her eyes. Not that old crap again.

‘Your Honour … experts deal with theory. The rest of us live in the real world.’ Again a smirk from the Arabic judge. ‘In theory, they’re right, of course. In reality, experimental models are incredibly expensive and a perfectly workable model already exists — that being a normal human being. GIs are the most financially practical option, they can integrate with the existing military infrastructure without the need for major adjustment, and they don’t scare the political conservatives as much as some less-human creation would … to the extent that there is such a thing as a political conservative in the League. I’m just a human copy. Structurally, I’m just like you, nervous system included. I’m just made of different stuff.’

‘I put it to you, Captain,’ the big man said, ‘that your nervous system is nothing at all like my own. My nervous system does not have upward of seventy-five meta-synaptic implants and sensory branches to handle nearly a seven hundred percent additional load of combined sensory data input beyond what a normal, unaugmented human can handle.’ He was reading from the screen before him as he spoke, eyes hard and determined in the wash of blue computer light. ‘My nervous system does not have an integrated motor-skills function that is clearly biomechanical and focuses all synaptic reflex response into such a narrow perimeter field as to guarantee a completely machine-like precision in the execution of all physical activity. My own nervous system is far more erratic and imprecise in its execution of learned-response reflexes, I assure you. And neither does my nervous system possess what appears to be a dedicated data-storage/processing centre in the primary short-term memory sections that would appear to serve primarily to enhance the visualisation, recollection and computation of rapidly unfolding and chaotic tactical situations, such as are frequently found on a battlefield.’ He looked up. ‘Do you deny that your nervous system possesses these non-standard characteristics, Captain Kresnov?’

Sandy shook her head. ‘No, Your Honour.’ She could not argue those points. She was only happy that he’d missed a couple.

‘And most, most importantly,’ the man continued, still looking at her, ‘my nervous system developed, grew and evolved naturally from a state of immature childhood to what it is today. My experiences were random, controlled only by the systematic nature of my city-bred environment, and the troubles to which my parents went to expose me to certain kinds of stimuli. I am a random personality. If I had a clone made of myself, and raised in exactly the same manner, it is nearly statistically impossible that it would turn out to be exactly like me in every degree. The randomness makes it so.

‘Your nervous system, Captain Kresnov, had no such developmental process. You came into the world fully formed and structured in most respects, except for your lack of direct worldly experience. This experience was replicated on tape, to be fed into your brain with a precision completely unknown in everyday experience, and completely lacking that random, unpredictable quality that has shaped each and every one of the 57 million people who live in this city. Your developmental experience, Captain, was constructed, purified and controlled by the agencies of League military science in order to create exactly the finished product that we see sitting here in this courtroom today.

‘You, Captain Kresnov, are purpose built, and purpose designed, by the will of a government that has already shown the greatest disrespect for the most basic of human dignities and moral values. I put it to you that you are, and have always been, exactly what they wanted you to be. This, when combined with your evident martial capabilities, should fill any sane, law-abiding citizen of Tanusha or anywhere within the Democratic Confederacy, with dread.’

Sandy gazed blankly at the front of the judges’ bench. There was no identifying symbol on the front of that bench, as she had seen in the courtroom TV dramas. Just bare wood, plain and functional.

She could see where this was headed. The cameras were rolling. The spectators had gathered. The various sides and interests would have their say. This was more than a trial. This was a hearing, where positions could be set out, opinions stated, recorded and marked for future reference. These people here before her, these judges — they were the mouthpieces, nothing more. This entire courtroom was little more than a glorified, camera-infested soapbox. Or a pulpit.

And so … what was the debate all about? This man was arguing … what? For her unsuitability for integration into common society? For her continued incarceration? She knew from Naidu and CSA Intel that the judges had viewed all her interview tapes, and had been briefed on what she’d revealed of League and FIA biotech machinations. She knew there was a push from sections of the CSA, particularly Intel, to keep her on Callay, where she was useful.

They hadn’t told her how much resistance that concept was meeting in the corridors of political power. Somehow they had always found a way to be evasive when she had asked. Now she was coming to understand why.

She looked up and found all three judges awaiting her response. The cameras were rolling.

‘Then why am I here?’ she answered the big man’s assertions very softly. The big man shifted in his seat.

‘That is what we are here to determine,’ he replied.

And that, Sandy nearly replied, is bullshit. But she didn’t say it. She didn’t want to frighten anyone.

‘Ten to fifteen years ago,’ she said instead, ‘what you describe may well have been true. I ask you to understand that ten to fifteen years can change a person beyond recognition, particularly when lived at the intensity that I have experienced. Those, more than the foundation tapes that you describe, were my formative years. That was my childhood.’ She paused, as the thought crystallised in her mind for the very first time. And looked Judge Guderjaal calmly in the eye.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I have grown up.’

There was a pause. Glances dropped to monitor screens. Attention diverted, briefly, receiving a fresh input of data. Sandy sat and watched, shoulders and back beginning to ache from the sustained upright posture. The bandages felt especially tight about her middle, restricting her breathing. She recrossed her legs, settling herself to wait. The Arabic woman looked up first.

‘Your childhood has been filled with the horrors of war, Captain Kresnov,’ she said. ‘For most of your life, you have known only violence, and violent death. You claim that this formative experience has made you a better person. How can this be?’

‘I know the true value of life.’ Sandy’s voice was very quiet. ‘I know the true value of beauty. Judge Guderjaal asked me earlier why I liked art. I think that I like art because it has little purpose other than the simple pleasure of its own existence. I do not mind political art, but I prefer simple, pleasurable art. A great comedic writer named Oscar Wilde once said that all the best art was essentially useless. I think I agree with him.’ There was a brief, slightly mortified silence.

Judge Guderjaal leaned forward. ‘You are familiar with Oscar Wilde?’ Disbelievingly.

Sandy gave a faint smile. ‘I discovered ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ in a Naval library archive when I was nine years old. At the time, I had never laughed so hard in my life.’ Which was, she realised as she said it, not saying very much. But it was true.

‘Your superiors allowed you access to such works?’ Guderjaal seemed to be having great difficulty with this.

‘The League military structure is not the fascist dictatorship that Confederacy propaganda might have you believe, Your Honour. I was an officer among other officers, some human, others augmented like myself. Our every thought was not war, death and destruction. We had our entertainments, like any military. Most watched the vids, or did VR simulations, direct interface or otherwise. I roamed the library archives.’ Another faint smile, mildly self-deprecating. ‘I’m rather well read, actually.’

‘Then you would know Shakespeare?’ Guderjaal pressed. ‘The Ramayana?’

Sandy nodded. ‘Yes … and Pushkin, and Tagore, Narayan and the Mughal poets from your own culture too, Your Honour.’ Guderjaal blinked in utter astonishment. ‘I used to quote lines, occasionally, in my periodic general reports. Confused the hell out of the psychs, I’m sure.’

‘A chimpanzee can read Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde, Captain Kresnov,’ the big man interrupted. ‘Understanding them is another matter.’

Sandy blinked, somewhat taken aback. ‘Your Honour, if manners maketh man, as someone once said, then I am surely more human than you.’

The Arabic woman grinned outright, repressing it with difficulty. Guderjaal just looked at her, eyebrows raised high, as if lost in thought, or a sudden realisation. The big man merely glowered.

‘Captain Kresnov,’ he said after a moment of narrow-eyed reflection, ‘I do not doubt your sentience. I doubt your right to exercise it.’

Sandy’s eyes narrowed in return. ‘My right?’ she said disbelievingly.

‘Your right,’ the judge repeated, firm and hard. ‘Callay is a civilised world, as are the other worlds of the greater Federation. Our respective constitutions are founded not only upon the responsibility of the State toward the individual, but the responsibility of the individual toward the State. Some individual freedoms must be sacrificed for the good of the whole. For this reason, ordinary civilians cannot own or purchase weapons without special permits, about which there are rigid regulations. For the same reasons, ordinary civilians cannot gain surgical augmentations beyond a certain level, because some of those capabilities may legally qualify their own bodies as lethal weapons.

‘But you, Captain, you are a lethal weapon, with or without firearms. There is no single part of you that has not been designed with that single purpose in mind.’

‘Your Honour …’ Sandy began.

‘Tell me what my current body temperature is, Captain,’ the man continued. ‘Tell me now.’

Sandy’s lips pursed to a thin line. The other two judges watched impassively. She tuned her vision, shading to reds, golds and blues. ‘From what I can see, it’s thirty-seven point two five degrees.’

‘Good. Where did I last have surgery, of what you can see?’

‘You have broken your left collarbone. It’s an old injury, fully healed.’

‘Except for the faintest of joins and blood vessel displacements where the residual effects of bio-engineering have lowered that region’s ambient blood temperature, yes. I broke it playing football when I was twelve. How many residual energy emissions do you perceive currently operating within this courtroom?’

Sandy shook her head, her jaw firmly set. ‘The shielding is too strong.’

‘I did not ask you to judge their strength, Captain, merely to give a number.’

‘Your Honour …’ looking exasperatedly at Guderjaal.

‘Please answer the questions, Captain,’ Guderjaal said. Sandy exhaled hard.

‘More than ten.’

‘Such modesty, Captain. You know very well there are in fact sixteen, don’t you?’ She gave a flat, disinterested shrug. ‘And finally, please show the court your little trick with your trigger fingers? Both, if you please, since you are ninety-nine point eight percent ambidextrous.’

Sandy stared at him. Angry. It showed in her eyes, despite her control. To his credit, the big man appeared not to notice.

‘Whenever you’re ready, Captain.’

Reluctantly, Sandy raised both arms, wrists bound before her and tightly encased. Spread the fingers on both hands. And moved both index fingers in a hard, tense reflex. They blurred back and forth so fast as to vanish before the naked eye. And she stopped, resettling the brace on her white-robed thigh. The other two judges were watching with eyebrows raised. Sandy continued to stare at the big judge, totally unimpressed.

‘At that speed,’ he said, ‘I’m reliably informed that you could empty a twenty-five-round pistol clip nearly as fast as an automatic assault rifle — all twenty-five rounds in less than a second. Provided you did not wear out the trigger mechanism first, that is. And at a wild guess, I’d suppose that all twenty-five rounds would pass more or less through the same impact hole, wouldn’t they Captain? Even from range.’

‘And your point is?’ Sandy asked.

‘My point, Captain, is that you are dangerous. That particular index finger reflex has no other purpose than to assist you in the operation of modern firearms. It does not exist on any of your other fingers. It is a custom design, specifically tailored to suit your purposes.

‘And I need not remind my colleagues of the reinforced alloy blast door that you ripped from its hinges during your headlong flight from the FIA agents with only five well-placed kicks. You possess skills and capabilities that no member of any civilised society should possess, even its soldiers. Here in the Confederation there is legal precedent for this. The laws of the Confederation make every effort to uphold the notion of ‘humanity’ as more than just a word, and to preserve it against the encroaching tide of synthetic technology.

‘You, Captain Kresnov, clearly fall outside of this definition. The very act of your creation was an insult to the morals and principles that Confederation law holds dear. In a truly civilised society, Captain Kresnov, you would not exist.’

The big man was clearly far, far more than mere threat and bluster. He had succeeded in doing something that she had not thought him capable of. He had frightened her.

Again, the judges glanced downward. They were monitoring her fear. Doubtless expecting some explosion of mindless violence, despite the drugs, the restraints and the guards nearby with their stunners.

‘You may well be right,’ she replied instead. Her voice was not holding out so well now — hoarse, and with a hint of a quaver. She needed a drink. ‘Don’t think that I haven’t thought of that.’ She paused. Feeling their eyes upon her. Studying her. Not for the first time, she wondered what they saw, or thought they saw.

‘But here I am. I had no more say in my own creation than any of you did. I exist. I am sentient. And given the chance, I would claim before the highest ideals of your legal system that I do, in fact, have rights.’ Deathly silence. She fancied she could even hear the guards behind her as they breathed. ‘In what brief time I had to myself in your city, I was enjoying life. I searched for a job, a job I would have done extremely well had I got it. I saw some sights, and enjoyed the art gallery. Once I threw a football with some children. And once I made love.’

She looked at the three of them, one after another. Her eyes were hurting. Not leaking … just hurting. ‘I have no desire to hurt anyone. And I have no political motivation left. I am no danger to anyone or anything. And it is your fear, not my reality, that makes you think otherwise. I only wish to be left alone.’

‘Captain …’ Guderjaal broke off, glancing down at his screen. And back up again, his expression sombre. ‘Given what you are, and where you are, that hardly seems likely. Does it?’

‘No.’ Her voice broke, and she recovered it. ‘No, Your Honour. I don’t suppose it does.’