Killswitch: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 3)

An hour later, they were waiting in an upstairs bedroom. Sandy sat by the French doors that led onto an outside balcony overlooking the main rear courtyard and surrounding gardens. An sat on the bed, gazing at a wall with a familiar, distant expression that meant he was uplinked and monitoring the network. Rain fell steadily, a constant silvery mist in the fall of houselight across the courtyard. Lightning periodically lit the sky, illuminating the outlines of several neighbouring mansions amidst a profusion of trees. After a moment, An’s gaze flicked to Sandy. Studied her profile, the rarely blinking, unerring gaze across the courtyard. Illuminated, now, by a racing flash of blue across the sky. For a long while, he said nothing.

‘When did you realise that it was all wrong?’ he said finally.

‘What was all wrong?’ Sandy’s gaze never shifted from the courtyard.

‘The war. That you were fighting for the wrong side.’

‘I don’t know. It was a combination of many things. I slowly began to discover my own view of the universe, and my own sense of what I believed in. And it just gradually dawned on me that the League’s position on many things was problematic. And after a while longer, that made my position problematic.’

‘But there must have been one single moment,’ Ari insisted sombrely. His tone was more serious than usual. Sombrely, moodily thoughtful. ‘A time when it really hit you. A revelation.’

Sandy shook her head, faintly. Not liking this new mood of Ari’s. She preferred his sprightly, if somewhat cynical enthusiasm. Found it comforting, when things looked bleak, or confusing. She was the one with reason for moody introspection. This reversal wasn’t fair. ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied, trying not to sound evasive.

‘My mother took me to a protest march once when I was little.’ Sandy refrained from giving him a curious glance. Ari didn’t talk about his family often with her. ‘They had them here too, even in Tanusha … you had to go searching, sure, but after Valdez Station was destroyed in the outer system encirclements, you had that, plus the reports of famine where the food supplies failed, that got even some Tanushans out on the streets. And I remember all the slogans and chanting, and wondering what it was all about. My mother said that if they didn’t stop the war where it was, it might end up here.’

Ari shook his head, and shot her a curious, dark look. Thunder rumbled, and separate panes of glass within the French doors vibrated. ‘I still remember thinking how selfish that sounded,’ he said. ‘I mean … I remember …’ and he repressed an exasperated smile, ‘. . . I remember telling her a few years later, when I’d grown up a few millimetres … or shouting at her more likely . . . `you don’t really care what happens to them, do you? Just so long as they don’t die in your general vicinity.’ She, um, didn’t find the implication very amusing … to say nothing of my sisters. God, my sisters.

‘D’you know I got a message from Darla-that’s my eldest sister, the one that’s five years older than me-just the other day, in fact. She said that if I ever became disillusioned with the CSA, given the enormous mess it’d helped dig the planet into, and … and needed a place to stay, well, her home would always be open to me.’ He ran a hand through his untidy hair, exasperated. And, Sandy thought, troubled. ‘I guess it was her way of trying to make peace. She’s an artist, you know, Darla.’

‘You told me,’ Sandy affirmed.

‘Did an exhibition a few months back in one of the small, private places on the subversive circuit … called it `the silent soul.’ All the usual stupid shit about how technology and bureaucracy have killed everything that’s worthwhile about humanity … all these humanist types are like that. Filled with romantic adulation for things that never existed. They were at the big demonstration in Tihber two weeks ago, both my sisters … you know, the big anti-CDF rally?’

‘They weren’t the only ones,’ said Sandy. A gust of wind blew raindrops in a flurry against the glass. ‘The way the Indian humanist community here reveres Gandhi, I’m not surprised the pacifist marches get plenty of people out.’

‘I never signed on to be a soldier, Sandy.’ Sandy risked him a quick, sideways glance. He looked more distant, and more troubled, than she could remember seeing him. ‘I mean, tape-teach taught me to fight, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it … but this … I mean, guns and everything …’ he gestured absently with the pistol in his right hand, ‘… it’s not what I’m about. It never has been.’

‘You didn’t have such a problem two years ago,’ Sandy reminded him. And gazed back out the window.

‘Yeah, and I’ve seen a lot of corpses since then.’

There was a silence, as the last of a distant roll of thunder slowly faded away. Only the rain, falling steadily through the trees, and the omni-present hum of the city itself.

‘Do you want to go on the next protest march with your sisters?’ Sandy asked pointedly.

Ari’s look was faintly incredulous. ‘No! You fucking crazy?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the goddamn pacifists, they don’t know what they’re for! It’s so fucking easy to be against something if you’ve got no clue about possible alternatives … life’s not like that! They’ve got no damn alternative-they know they don’t like war, but they’ve got no clue how else to defend the things we’ve got if other people come and try and take them by force. `You know, well,” and he took on a mock intellectual, protester’s voice, ‘`I got this real problem with gravity, I don’t think it’s morally correct for people’s feet to be permanently bound to the planetary surface . . .’ so fucking what? Do they think the universe cares?’

‘Ari,’ Sandy said as patiently as she could, ‘what’s your point?’

‘My point is that you don’t become a killer overnight and not wonder if it’s worth it.’ Shortly, his eyes dark with intensity. ‘Maybe you can. Maybe your brain already handles that because it’s all you’ve ever known. I’m just a network punk and compulsive socialiser who one day decided he was actually going to be for something, you know? To actually do something rather than just watch other people do it, then bitch about it with friends over coffee. That’s all. I didn’t think it’d ever come to … to this.’

‘I promise you something, An,’ Sandy told him, ‘if we do go up to take the stations back, you’re staying here.’

Ari stared at her for a long moment. Then gave a faint frown, as if in consternation. ‘What, you don’t want me along?’

‘For one thing,’ said Sandy, ‘you’re not a soldier. But besides that, I just won’t let you. It’s enough that I’d have to tolerate Vanessa risking her neck. I’m not having you risk yours too.’

An blinked. A corner of his mouth twitched upward. ‘That’s … that’s really sweet, Sandy. Thank you, I’m touched.’ Then he frowned, and gazed away at a wall, as something else occurred to him. ‘Only now my masculinity’s been offended.’

Sandy smiled calmly, seeing him only from the corner of her peripheral vision. ‘Deal with it.’

An entire five blocks of Canas security network chose that moment to abruptly disappear … Sandy had been receiving uplink feed by relay from An, whose eyes widened a fractional moment before hers did.

‘I don’t fucking believe that … !’ An exclaimed, concentrating hard to try and refind the lost network …

‘Get me com relay!’ Sandy demanded. ‘Keep the channel open, I need to know what’s going on!’

A flood of harsh, panicked voices assaulted her right ear as Ari’s feed came through, Sundaram’s orders securing the perimeter and confirming crossfire zones along all the predesignated approach routes … and Sandy could see, in a flash, any number of ways in which a GI of her own designation and capability could come through the shadows, limiting threats to a pair at a time and eliminating them faster than any merely human opposition could coordinate a response …

‘No, you don’t, you fucking bitch,’ she snarled, snapped open the French doors and went out into the rain, ignoring Ari’s exclamation. She got a foot onto the rail and leaped, straight up to the apex of the sloping rooftop.

‘Commander Kresnov’s on the roof that’s her on the roof,’ she heard Ari’s voice in her ear, ‘don’t fire, she won’t register on your grids ….. She was, Sandy realised, totally out of the local tac-net loop, unable to uplink directly, reliant solely on Ari’s indirect feed, and hoping the panicked S-2s didn’t shoot her by mistake when she did something that no straight human could possibly hope to do. Flat atop the roof apex, rapidly soaking in the rain, she had a good view of the two sections of the mansion’s approach that bothered her most-the driveway from the main gate, and the rear gardens about the courtyard. Her vision made out the telltale outlines of security personnel, strategically positioned and mostly IR-shielded beneath synthetic, waterproof coats, but even that recent innovation for Tanushan security wouldn’t fool Jane’s eyes any more than it did hers … although it might gain any target an extra half-second’s life.

Lightning flashed, turning gardens, rooftop and surrounding wet foliage to brilliant flashing blue. Her vision shifted reflexively, then back, seeking that telltale flash of motion amidst the cover. But doubtless Jane would see her the same moment she saw Jane …

‘Sandy,’ came Ari’s voice in her ear, ‘I’m into the Canas network now … there’s been an internal security override, looks like your friend had access to codes I didn’t even know existed. She couldn’t have initiated that by remote, she’d have to input with a direct feed. The best point of direct access looks to me to be the number twelve property to the north … ‘

‘Yeah, and how the hell did she get in there?’ Sandy formulated in reply, vision-zooming in that direction through the blanket of obscuring foliage, barely able to make out the surrounding property wall, let alone the mansion on that northward property.

‘Well, it’s registered to a Union Party rep named Naji Aziz, who I happen to know is a good friend of Secretary Grey’s, and the rumour mill had accused of improper knowledge of State Department secrets regarding covert communications with FIA representatives … ‘

‘Sure, sure, I believe you. ‘ Sometimes the speed at which Ari’s brain made those subtle, not-so-obvious social and political connections was downright scary. He processed underworld subterfuge like she processed an armscomp calculation. Damn useful though, in the right hands. But risk her neck, on one of his hunches? If Jane got onto the property before Canas specialists could get the network back online, a lot of brave S-2s-and probably unarmed residence staff too, knowing Jane-were going to die.

That realisation made Sandy’s mind up for her before she’d even made a conscious decision to move. She got up and ran, crouched along the spine of the rooftop, as thunder boomed and rumbled nearby. Along the top of the northward wing, dodging a communications array, then hurdling a skylight, she slid to a tight crouch behind a chimney upon the northern edge of the roof. Rifle braced upon her cast-bound left hand, she scanned the stretch of garden in front of the northern property wall at full, multispectrum intensity. Saw movement, abruptly, and shot the location back to Ari … who, in that ago- nisingly slow, stretching moment, cross-referenced the location against his tac-net feed, and shot back to her an unfolding tactical image that demonstrated …

Too late, the target fired, but Sandy was already ducking back as the stone chimney’s north side disintegrated under a volley of highpowered fire. Fire ripped back at the source from multiple locations, alert S-2s replying with admirable precision as the target evaded with one final shot … but Sandy was already moving even as the grenade launcher fired, sliding sideways down the sloping roof, tracking fire one-handed to that last location before Jane could think about mowing down S-2s … boom! as the chimney exploded, and the gardens ripped with crossfire and disintegrating foliage.

Sandy’s sideways slide ceased as her boots hit the gutter, rifle silent for a millisecond as she scanned for a target amidst the chaos. And saw one, dark and nearly IR-invisible, moving wide around the courtyard where the foliage was thickest … a flare-strobe erupted before her index finger could move, momentarily blinding, and she lost the target. Took the opportunity to drop from the roof to the paving surrounding the courtyard, since Jane would also be blinded. She ran to the right, where the verandah fronted onto the courtyard, rifle scanning ahead but unable to sight movement through the thick gardens, as the flare-strobe spent itself, and arced dully toward the ground.

The firing from house and garden paused, a cacophany of terse yells in her ear as S-2s reconfirmed status and position. Doubtless the tac-net was shifting also but she was in no position to see and An couldn’t download anything that size through his relay. She ran forward at a crouch along the mansion’s side, refrained from firing at a sudden low movement ahead, where she didn’t think Jane would be-it was an S-2, crouched low and invisible not far from where Jane must have passed seconds earlier … and a damn clever, self-preserving move that had been.

More fire and yells then from the east wing, and Sandy snapped her rifle around the corner, seeing fire ripping along a garden path and a decorative archway losing pieces … and still Jane refrained from firing, having lost her initiative and now unwilling to disclose her location. It wouldn’t last. Sandy sprinted across the smallest gap from mansion to foliage, and heard Ari’s voice yelling her location and movement to the S-2s-he must have been watching from the bedroom window where she’d left him … which was about to go out-ofview as she dove into the tangled greenery and eastward.

The S-2s must have been paying attention, because no one shot at her, and she ducked and wove between trunks and undergrowth with a sudden impulse for a spot in the corner that her memory told her had a partial view of the eastward wing, and was in moderate fire-shadow from the flanks. She zigzagged toward a large, broad tree with a complicated root system, falling and rolling to a braced firing position past the trunk … and ducked back in the millisecond it took for her vision to process the shape of a rifle, in the suspected location, snap directly her way. Shots sprayed wood in shattered chunks, then a rush of footsteps as S-2 pinned that location from the mansion, rounds zipping and cracking devilishly, filling the garden with flying earth and splinters.

‘Hi, sis!’ Sandy yelled as the firing died down, and Sundaram’s voice could be clearly heard in her ear, asking for Commander Kresnov’s position with evident concern. ‘It’s me, Sandy! Do you like gambling?!’ There was, of course, no audible response. But no audible movement, either, and S-2s guns fell silent, so evidently they didn’t have a target. ‘Tell you what-you better start liking it, ’cause right now I wouldn’t give you one chance in twenty! It’s no fucking fun when they all know you’re coming, is it?! And now they all know roughly where you are, so you can take them out a few at a time, but there’s so many guns pointed at you now, one of them’s bound to get you if you start firing regularly!

‘And now I’m here! Remember what I told you before, about being a good little girl and behaving yourself?! You broke the agreement! That means I’m going to rip your fucking entrails out! So unless you like the idea of dying slowly, I’d just turn around and run for the walls, if I were you!’

Water fell in heavy drops from the leaves and branches, running cold rivulets down her scalp and neck. Super-enhanced hearing made out frogs croaking, and bats chattering to themselves in the higher branches, under cover from the rain. Doubtless scared witless by the recent noise. Jane could move silently, but S-2 had enough visual enhancement to spot slow, gradual motion. A fast dash provided greater safety … and would be heard. Jane would wait. Would wait for … a brilliant blue flash, there it was, forking and dancing across the overcast northward sky. Across sixteen to seven kilometres of range, Sandy’s visual reckoning calculated, which meant the small matter of seven seconds until the barrage of sound began. Jane would go for the wall, she judged. Fearless, professional Jane, who lived for her missions and never shirked from a challenge, would suddenly arrive at possibly the first moral calculation of her short life so farthat this particular assignment wasn’t worth her own, needless demise. Not a great victory for the moral conscience, perhaps. But proof, at least, of selfishness … and thus, perhaps, humanity. Maybe.

Thunder crashed and boomed, and Sandy paused that fractional extra half-second in case she’d been wrong … crack! came a shot from the mansion, followed by the unmistakable thud of bullet hitting combat-myomer, and a body rolling on loose earth. Sandy sprinted, and heard the footsteps resume in a rush beyond the descending rumble from the skies. Headed straight for the wall, and Sandy’s mind saw immediately the nearest direct line from that last shot, to a leap over the wall behind the shelter of a particularly thick tree. She darted left, opening that projected angle for a shot on the reckoning that Jane, being Jane, would pause for a parting shot or two as she cleared the wall, to remove several S-2 heads and be gone, just to prove she could … the footsteps ceased with a final spring, and Sandy fired a blind burst through the foliage as she ran, at where that trajectory ought to be … and thought she heard the thud of a second bullet strike, and an untidy, tumbling thud on the wall’s far side.

It was only a little surprising (but extremely annoying) to hear the footsteps resume once more on the wall’s far side, with no apparent lessening of pace. Sandy reached the wall herself, and knowing better than to leap headlong over a blind obstacle, she paused. The racing footsteps continued, and she realised it was going to be an enormous disadvantage if Jane could uplink to a complete local map, and she couldn’t … no sooner had she thought it than An’s uplink connected with an urgent download, which she accessed with a painfully slow assemblage of incoming data. It finally arrived and decoded within a half-second that felt like an age, and suddenly she could see the basic layout beyond the wall-a garden, a workshed, a swimming pool nearer the mansion before a grand patio.

She ran several steps along the wall, then tensed and leaped, angling for a low clearance and descent behind the work shed … shots erupted from the patio as she sailed narrowly over the wall, snapping past her legs, then fracturing tiles upon the workshed’s roof as she landed with a crunch-atop a small fruit garden with plants climbing short metal stakes that would have impaled her, had she not been a GI. So much for topographical intelligence.

The familiar thud of the launcher came as she sprinted for the corner of the shed … the round smashed a window and exploded against the rear wall, which blasted flaming debris over the vegetable garden. Another thud, and she fell flat and away from the shed’s corner before it too exploded, shrapnel peppering her clothes in a series of sharp, painless stings. Rifle shots then peppered that same corner, exploding stonework walls into puffs of dust and splinters Jane knew basic tactics all too well, and saw Sandy’s best firing points in advance. The trajectory of the shots shifted as the source moved along the patio, attempting to open up Sandy’s position behind the wall. Sandy flattened her back to the wall, right arm extended, rifle poised, as the shots whipping past that corner drew steadily closer as their angle decreased …

There came then in the air the thrumming whine of an aircar, a powerful spotlight swinging across the yard toward the patio … it vanished in a thunder of shots from Jane, and the cruiser rocked wildly. Sandy was already moving, an explosive acceleration toward a leftwards garden wall, unleashing fire upon Jane’s position … but Jane was already gone in anticipation, fallen flat and rolling behind a marble balustrade as Sandy’s fire kicked pieces and fragments in all directions. The cruiser’s desperate pilot struggled to pull his machine away from danger … too late, as the launcher thumped again, and the underside of the front field generators exploded. Sandy hit the garden wall with her left side, rifle braced, eyes fixed only on Jane’s position, out of sight behind the balustrade foundation as the cruiser spun wildly away, shedding pieces with a shrieking, vibrating whine of failing lift.

Jane would try crawling on her stomach, she knew. The balustrade went upslope along the paved side of a path above the patio. This was the stalemate of GI-versus-GI combat at this high designation-if one had firing position, the other could not expose herself without taking fire. If Jane so much as exposed a length of her finger, Sandy would blow it off well before Jane could hope to get her own shot off. A grenade was a better option, if she had one, but again, if she exposed an arm in the throwing, she would lose it, and the grenade most likely fall in her lap … or be blown from the sky milliseconds after leaving her hand. But ditto if Sandy ran to a new position that exposed Jane’s cover, the advantage lay with Jane to get the first shot off. Maybe. No better than a fifty-fifty proposition, at least … and GI reflexes being what they were, it was entirely likely they’d kill each other at the same instant. But Jane had been hit at least twice, and maybe more. It must have slowed her, just a fraction of a second. At the speeds Sandy’s brain operated in combat, a fraction of a second was an eternity.

Still the cruiser spun, a sideways, airborne pirouette. The grenade had only struck three seconds ago, and the fragments were still falling. But already, to Sandy, it seemed an awfully long time to wait in one location, watching Jane’s guessed-at position and waiting for the fool of an aircar to hit the ground … hopefully in the neighbouring property, which it seemed to be angling for.

Her uplinks automatically received Ari’s next transmission, and … wham! as the attack codes sliced through her newly repaired defensive barriers, Ari’s desperate yell ringing in her ear as she flung herself back behind the narrowly angled cover of the garden wall. Even as the secondary barriers engaged, halting the killswitch codes just short of their goal, Sandy’s index finger depressed rapidly, spraying fire across the balustrade as she fell. It bought her an extra half second, then Jane’s rounds were ripping the wood-planked garden wall to pieces as Sandy covered in a tight, defensive ball, trying desperately to reorder her uplink barriers as the graphical complexity overloaded her vision, a wall of visual network shifting and flickering as codework attempted to counter the penetrators coming through, delaying enough for yet more modulated barriers to reform behind …

A grenade hit the wall on a shallow angle barely a metre short, burrowing into flayed wood before detonating with a crash of exploding planks and pouring earth. The shockwave knocked Sandy rolling, struggling to bring her weapon to bear, and refocus away from her network chaos before Jane could move across and acquire a clear line of sight … There was a flash of motion, and more shooting from a new angle, a dark rush as Jane leaped away upslope, then crashed through the window of the mansion. Suddenly the attack barrier faltered, its direct link broken. Sandy saw her secondary barriers surge, a swirling mass of rapid-calculating colour and motion. Primary barriers remodulated, adjusting to the threat as they’d been programmed. They resolidified behind the stranded attack program, surrounding it, and slowly strangling.

Network functions abruptly restored themselves as her defensive barriers got on top of the problem, and no longer required the input of external functions-eyesight recovered, then hearing, then a rush of overwhelming sensation as suddenly, she could think clearly again, as if a crushing weight had been removed. She snap-rolled to a firing crouch, shoulder to the shattered planks as dirt continued to pour through the torn hole, and dust clouded the way. A new dark shape streaked across the upper patio, beside where An’s feed had informed her the swimming pool would be, and covered beside the shattered window into which Jane had disappeared.

Rhian, she saw with a zoom of vision, and ran forward, feet digging up clods of earth with the traction as she accelerated. Took a low, flying leap up the garden embankment, over the balustraded path, hit the patio beside the swimming pool and smacked into a controlled collision at sixty kilometres per hour against the wall opposite Rhian … who, she saw, was holding her pistol left handed, with a bullet-sized hole in the right forearm sleeve of her black jacket.

‘Fast, isn’t she?’ Rhian murmured. Typically, they would establish a tac-net and fight as such, tactically linked and coordinating as a single, two-track unit. Now, that was impossible. And speech, in these circumstances, was painfully slow. ‘I got her twice, but she’s wearing armour.’

Against which a mere hand pistol, obviously, would be useless. Probably Rhian’s right arm had been the only visible thing to hit around whatever cover Rhian had been using … and Jane had hit it.

‘Careful of the residents,’ Sandy warned, and they ducked through the broken window together. Broken glass littered the living room, Sandy and Rhian covering opposite sides around the lounge chairs and coffee table, covering opposing doorways by silent reflex. It occurred to Sandy, in a time-stretched flash, that she had no idea who the assigned resident of this house was. All lights were off, normal for this time of night, residents most likely sleeping, safe in the knowledge that Tanusha’s most impenetrable security network would protect them from any eventuality.

Rhian cut through the kitchen, wordlessly heading for the far side of the ground floor in case Jane had gone straight out … only now there was a new sound reverberating overhead, the familiar, rhythmic thrum of hypersonic-bladed fans atop support thrusters. A-9 combat flyers, which meant CDF. Someone must have called.

There came a scream from upstairs, and Sandy shot to the stairwell, hurdling one flight, then rushing smoothly up the next, rifle poised down the tiled hallway beyond. Another scream-a woman’s scream, coming from several doors down. Then sobbing, Sandy’s hearing caught the words … ….. please … don’t hurt him … don’t hurt …’ Then a thud of rifle meeting skull, and a second of a body hitting the floor.

‘Tell the flyers to move away!’ came that cool, familiar voice from down the hall. A new sobbing began-a child’s sobbing. Then the screaming wail, perhaps a three-year-old, restrained by an armed stranger, and seeing now his mother (Sandy guessed) lying unconscious on the floor. Sandy moved closer, gliding on silent feet that held her torso as smoothly poised as if on rails. The rifle sought an angle through the walls, ears and mind in hard calculation to try and pinpoint Jane’s location within the room by the sound of her voice alone. The fans grew to a harsh roar, surely deafening to unaugmented hearing. Doubtless they were in contact with An, and thus trying to contact her.

Ari’s signal, then, in her inner ear … and she took her time, letting her receptor codes analyse and break down the signal key, not wanting a repeat of Ari’s last communication attempt. Movement behind her, then, but preceded by Rhian’s faint call of ‘me,’ Sandy’s hearing automatically placing the vocal patterns as authentic. The child’s screams grew louder, seeming to shift within the room ahead … Sandy immediately pictured Jane, weapon in one hand, child in the other arm, moving from window to window for a view.

‘Cap,’ said Rhian as she arrived alongside. ‘She’s got a child.’ Rhian’s tone betrayed more tension than usual for any GI under combat conditions. Stating the obvious was not usual, either. Unless one were Rhian, faced with a predicament from her very worst nightmares, and needing to articulate … something.

‘You’ve got ten seconds!’ Jane shouted. ‘Otherwise, I’ll do it slowly!’ Sandy smacked her left arm cast across Rhian’s chest before anything suicidal happened. Rhian stared at her, desperately. Sandy accessed Ari’s link, and it unfolded with a strange, unpredictably shifting pattern of uniquely tailored encryption that was not regulation at all, but entirely Ari …

‘Sandy! Look, the line’s secure for now, I’m sorry for last time, I didn’t know she could …

‘I know,’ Sandy formulated silently. ‘Ari, tell the flyer to move away from the house immediately. ‘

‘Doing that.’ Outside the house, the flyer’s engines changed pitch to an ascending roar, then faded as it pulled away.

‘Good,’ said Jane above the screams of her hostage. ‘Now I want a cruiser, on autopilot, to come hovering next to this window.’

‘You hear that?’ Sandy formulated to An, having patched her audio through to the uplink.

‘Got it. You want me to comply?’

‘Yes. ‘

‘Sandy … the CSA doesn’t look kindly on generous negotiations with hostage takers … ‘

‘I know what the handbook says. Just do it. I need events to unfold, An. I want things happening. ‘ Because when they happened, as she’d explained to him before, she was presented with opportunities. All of her combat strategy was based upon that simple philosophy. Keep it moving. Movement makes angles, angles make chances.

‘Doing that,’ Ari confirmed.

‘It’ll take a few minutes to get here,’ Sandy called to Jane. ‘If you kill that kid, you’ll follow.’ Just in case Jane was unfamiliar with how hostage situations worked.

‘That’s why I’ll do it slowly,’ Jane replied, with something that sounded like feigned patience. ‘I know you’re not allowed to let him suffer.’ It was all a technical exercise to her, Sandy realised. That was not unexpected. That she herself could feel such cold, murderous fury, however, while still fully immersed in combat-reflex, was utterly surprising. God knew how Rhian felt.

Rhian made several handsignals to Sandy-she would go downstairs, and up the second staircase, to see if there was a second door into the child’s room from the adjoining hallway. Thus preventing the need to dart across the open door directly ahead. Sandy nodded, once, and Rhian vanished without so much as a squeak of floorboards.

‘Your friend’s not as high-des as us, is she?’ Jane commented above the screams. ‘I can tell. She’s just a little bit slower, a little more predictable. She could have shot for my head, but she didn’t seem to guess I was wearing armour. Not very imaginative.’

Rhian had a hand pistol with limited range, Sandy thought in reply, and couldn’t be sure she had the firepower to penetrate and kill any GI from where she was. She’d been trying to distract as much as kill, and put Jane off her aim by knocking her over, thus firing into the centre of mass.

If Jane got a cruiser, and kept the hostage with her, she’d be immune … and they couldn’t shoot down a cruiser over populated regions anyway. Of course, a cruiser could hardly hide, being so easy to trace through urban skylanes … but then, given the degree to which Jane had demonstrated she could manipulate Tanushan networks, Sandy wasn’t prepared to bet she couldn’t find a way to escape once airborne. Either way, the hostage would be expendable, from Jane’s point of view.

‘Why kill the Secretary of State, Jane?’ Sandy called. Jane seemed in a talkative mood. Perhaps she’d spill something. ‘Unless he knew what you were doing, bringing the Fleet down on our heads? Unless he knew you were going to kill Admiral Duong?’

‘Where did your friend go?’ said Jane, as if the questions had never been asked. ‘I can’t hear her out there.’

‘Sandy,’ came An’s voice in her ear, ‘I’m into the house network-it’s occupied by a cousin of the Trade Minister, apparently she’s under protection after extremist threats of some kind. .. ‘ And she’d chased every Tanushan’s worst nightmare straight into her home. At another moment, Sandy might have sworn and kicked something. ‘I’m … hang on, I’m patching into the bedroom … ‘

‘She’s gone around to the other door, hasn’t she?’ Jane continued. The child’s screams resumed with renewed urgency. ‘I wouldn’t advise that, I might have to start breaking limbs in here. Maybe I’ll start with the mother.’

Another portion of Ari’s uplink feed showed the automated cruiser on its way, nearly a minute distant. And the pair of CDF flyers, holding position half a klick distant-easily within pinpoint weapon range, and too heavily armoured to be bothered by any armament of Jane’s, but unauthorised to fire in heavily populated areas unless entirely certain of a clear shot.

‘She’s maintaining shielded uplink to the room system, Sandy, I’ve got some CSA people onto it but I doubt t h e y can hack her … ‘

‘We’ve got you crossed, you bitch!’ came Rhian’s voice from around the corner, perhaps several metres down the adjoining hall. ‘Give it up, you can’t shoot both ways at once!’

Sandy’s mind, which had been processing several fluid possibilities at once, abruptly froze. There was harsh, desperate emotion in Rhian’s voice. Damn it, Rhi, what are you doing?

‘I can too,’ was Jane’s reply.

‘So let the child go!’

‘Cassandra!’ Jane called warningly. ‘Your simple friend is making a big mistake, and it will be on your head.’

‘Ten seconds!’ Rhian shouted. ‘You can’t get us both, let him go now! ‘

‘Cassandra, rein her in or I’ll start shooting!’

‘Five!’ yelled Rhian. The boy howled, as if in anticipation.

‘Rhi …’ Sandy began, and a single shot cracked within the room. In a flash, Sandy moved, hearing Rhian and Jane moving simultaneously. Another shot, as Sandy rounded the doorframe and dove, but already Jane was gone out the window, glass and frame exploding in her wake even as Sandy’s rifle blazed fire that clipped her departing heels … and Rhian, in that mesmerising, time-frozen moment, was toppling slowly to the floor, a bullet hole in her forehead, just below the hairline. Sandy rolled past the bawling little boy, past the end of the double bed, and rebounded off the wall beside Rhian’s collapsing body, diving explosively for the window. Propped and braced, but Jane had already dropped out of sight below the rooftop rim. Sandy’s hand grabbed the window frame and prepared to throw herself out and after … and then it hit her.

She spun back to Rhian, who had fallen half across the unconscious mother’s legs, bare beneath her nightgown. Blood dripped on the floorboards beneath her lolling head. Her eyes were closed, and body motionless. And Sandy felt the combat-reflex calm dissolve in a rush, as she flung herself to Rhian’s side, and grabbed her.

‘Rhian? Rhi!’ Tears and panic came in a flood, and a horrible, crushing pain that she’d thought, had hoped, had been banished from her life. ‘RHIAN!’ Cradling the slim, limp body in her arms, supporting her head, staring with stricken agony at the lifeless face, eyes searching desperately for any sign of life … but a GI’s pulse was not visible at the jugular, as all blood supply to the brain went through the spinal column.

And Rhian’s eyes flicked open. Sandy’s artificial heart seemed to skip a beat. Several beats, as Rhian gazed at the ceiling, looking slightly puzzled. Then at Sandy. Seeming to realise, then, that she was supported in Sandy’s arms, and Sandy was crying.

‘It didn’t penetrate,’ Rhian admonished her, mildly. ‘I ducked. I didn’t think she’d be that fast, and I knew you were coming in behind, so she wouldn’t have time to finish me.’

As if she’d had it all planned, and Sandy was just overreacting again. Sandy tried to catch a breath, feeling the simultaneous, overwhelming urge to laugh, scream and cry. Stared at the wound beneath Rhian’s hairline-blood welled thickly, but nothing like a straight’s scalp-wound would, trickling slowly to her brow. Beneath, she could see a faint hint of ferro-enamel bone … tough enough to stop many projectiles, but not from a high-powered assault rifle at point-blank range. Unless one were ducking at the time, and moving very fast, and the round struck at a diagonal angle like so … and then she could see the little flap of skin from the ricochet, just behind the main wound.

‘Jane’s getting away,’ Rhian pointed out. ‘Can’t let her take another hostage.’

The truth of that hit home also, as did An’s clamorous signal in her ear, and the middle-distant roar of hyperfans-doubtless her flyer pilots had seen Jane leave and were after her, seeking permission to fire. She kissed Rhian hard on the cheek, leaped to her feet and sprang through the window.

Rhian watched her go, with a faint, affectionate smile. Then put a hand to her head, feeling dizzy. Alongside, the little boy stood at his mother’s side, wailing and sobbing in helpless distress. Rhian moved swiftly to check on the mother-she was bleeding beneath her hair, but the skull seemed intact, Rhian noted with relief. Jane hadn’t wanted her killed, desiring a second hostage. Of course, if that had not been so, there wouldn’t be a head left to examine …

‘Oh, here now,’ she told the little boy, ‘please don’t cry.’ Checking his mother’s vitals as she knew how, with straights, rolling her onto her side and checking that the airways were unobstructed. ‘Mummy’s going to be fine. She’s just sleeping, that’s all.’

She pulled the cloth she always kept for cleaning her pistol from her jacket pocket, and held it to her bleeding scalp with one hand, then gathered the little boy in the other arm, sitting him in her lap as she sat beside his mother. There was a single bullet hole in the floorboards directly beside the mother’s head, Rhian noted with satisfaction. So it had worked. In combat-focus, all GIs were threat fixated. Anything not a threat, would hardly register. Attack had put Jane on the defensive, and she’d been forced to nearly ignore the hostages completely … while continuing previous strategy, to keep both hostages alive, and thus useful, for possible later contingencies. One shot into the floor, to provoke a charge, thus regaining the advantage. Maybe, Rhian thought, those years under Sandy’s command in Dark Star had rubbed off. But Sandy herself had been more cautious. Why?

‘I’m sorry,’ she told the little boy, in that voice she’d learned to speak with, when talking to small children. Enjoyed speaking with, enormously so. ‘We gave you a big fright, didn’t we? My friend Sandy and I, we came in here so fast, and then all that nasty noise? I know, it’s very frightening. I was frightened too. But it’s over now, and the nice ambulance people will be here in a minute, and they’ll take care of your mummy, and then she’ll wake up again and give you a big hug.’

The little boy’s hysteria was fading now, partly through exhaustion, but partly, it seemed, that he instinctively knew that safety had arrived. That pleased her. He clutched to Rhian’s jacket as she held him, crying miserably, but at least no longer panicked and terrified.

‘And don’t you worry about that mean, nasty woman,’ Rhian told him smugly. ‘My friend Sandy’s after her. My friend Sandy’s the most amazing person in the galaxy. That mean, nasty woman’s going to wish she’d never been made.’

Sandy didn’t need to risk an enhanced data-stream from the flyers via Ari to know where Jane was. She just followed the sound of engines in the sky ahead, and the occasional glimpse of armoured flyer through the trees and rain.

‘They’re trying to get permission to fire,’ Ari told her as she sprinted across a garden, then leaped a flying ten metres through the air to land boot-first atop the property wall, shoving off once more to hurtle past foliage, crash land and roll across a paved path then come up running. ‘CSA’s onto it but there’s TV watching, someone’s got some telescopic feeds and I think a few politicians are putting a word in. ‘

‘It’s an A-9, damn it,’ Sandy formulated as she regained velocity, boots skidding on wet grass as she tore across another wide property garden. Passage down the sides of the house itself looked a difficult maze of paths and garden fences, so she leaped for the roof. ‘I know that armscomp’s capabilities, they should get a clear target.’ Hit the sloping top of the two-storey roof and held balance with difficulty, racing up the side. ‘If they get a shot, tell them to fire. ‘

The next stretch of Canas properties were not so large, midsized houses with smaller yards, nestled amidst a profusion of trees. Sandy leaped directly for the next rooftop, crashed through foliage, then rolled across the sloping surface with a clatter of displaced tiles. Cut nimbly across that downslope, leaped to plant a foot on an upper-storey balcony, and used it to shove explosively toward the next rooftop, which was mercifully flat.

‘I’ve got a pilot’s feed right here, Sandy,’ An told her. ‘They’ve got motion fixed, but no heat and hardly any visibility. I think she’s wearing opto-cam. ‘

Well, that figured. She leaped from that flat rooftop onto another, then angled toward the cobbled road and jumped, sailing over the stone wall and barely holding her balance upon impact with the slippery cobbles. Then she ran, flat out along the winding street toward the retreating sound of flyers ahead. Jane would avoid the roads, cutting across yards and over rooftops. If the road stayed straight for long enough, she would gain on her … but Canas roads never did. Rain slapped her face as she ran, and the bends between wet, creeper-covered stone walls were too slippery to take at full speed.

Good opto-cam was not full invisibility, but it was damn close. It didn’t fool multispectrum visual capability entirely, save blocking heat, outline, colour and brightness differentiations … which left a dark, formless shape that blended into any background, and softened the sharpness of motion-sensation. It explained why Jane had been quite so difficult to see in the gardens … although if she’d had a direct line of sight for longer than a fractional second, Jane would have been dead, so it was not surprising she hadn’t noticed. It was one piece of operational hardware that Sandy did not have much experience with-opto-cam was a weapon for thieves and assassins, not soldiers, who operated on the assumption that direct line-of-sight would be acquired by heavily armed opponents, techno-camouflage or not, and thus preferred armour.

‘If it’s opto-cam,’ said Sandy as she powered at speed through another slippery bend, ‘then they can’t fire, not in this neighbourhood. Where the fuck is she?’

‘Approaching the perimeter wall… hang on, we’re almost there, we’ll pick you up.’

Pick her up? She refocused her hearing, and found a third CDF flyer approaching from behind. Another bend in the road, and suddenly there was a groundcar emblazoned with Canas security insignia blocking the way ahead, two uniformed security officers crouched behind with weapons levelled. Sandy skidded to a halt, as both officers yelled at her to stop … damn security was out of the loop again, uninformed as to her identity and location. She ignored their shouts to drop her weapon, focusing instead upon the faint, broken visual feed from the first flyer … it looked like an aircar, zooming in low where no ordinary, civilian aircar should be able to fly. One pilot acquired weapons lock, but had no immediate cause to fire, and unwilling to knock down several tons of airborne machinery over residential housing.

Then the third flyer arrived over Sandy’s head with a blasting downdraft, engines howling as both security officers ducked and held onto their caps. The A-9 Trishul slid into a drifting hover five metres above the narrow cobbled road, nearby trees thrashing in protest, the cargo door descending at the rear to reveal the dim hold lights within. Sandy waited until it found the right position, then leaped, boots smacking upon the metal plates as she grasped an overhead handline and ran forward past the harness-locked cargo master. Immediately the door began closing, and the flyer nosed forward and climbed.

Sandy squeezed between the six armoured soldiers in the rear, and found Ari jammed in beside the command post behind the cockpit, peering at the display screens. The occupant of the command post cast a glance over his shoulder as she approached-it was Hiraki, Sandy noted with little surprise. He always seemed to get himself in the right place at the right time for a fight. He moved to get up.

‘Stay there,’ Sandy told him, grabbing an overhead support and bracing. The display screens showed that the unidentified cruiser was now hurtling away from Canas, two CDF flyers in flanking pursuit. ‘Damn, she got on board?’

‘Yes,’ said Hiraki, and flipped to speakers, considerate of Sandy’s inability to uplink. One Trishul pilot was challenging the cruiser to stand down. Another was in terse communication with CSA HQ, who were trying to hack into its CPU with apparently little success. ‘If we let her have everything, there won’t be enough left to hit the ground.’

Sandy shook her head. ‘There’s always enough left to hit the ground.’

‘We need her dead,’ Hiraki remarked, his businesslike tone as cool and calm as any GI’s. ‘It’s cost-versus-gain, I say we come out on top.’

‘If we kill civvies on the ground,’ Sandy replied, ‘the CDF loses its popular mandate. No popular mandate, no CDF. That’s a loss, Hitoru.’

‘So wait until she’s over a river,’ said An.

‘Now you’re talking,’ Sandy told him. ‘Get me an armscomp track plotted, a single STP at the rear field-generators.’

‘Copy. But I think she might be aware of that.’ Pointing at the display screen, which showed the cruiser staying low, zooming just above the treetops of suburban Tanusha, weaving between the larger buildings in utter disregard for mandatory Tanushan skylanes.

‘Must have removed the navcomp controls,’ Ari muttered. ‘Who’s flying that thing?’

Hiraki handed Sandy a headset, which she fitted, then connected to her insert socket … and the data wall hit her with a rush far more intense than she’d been receiving through Ari’s relay feed. The flyer’s internal network was separate and secure-unhackable, at least in the short term, unlike the broader Tanushan network. Suddenly Sandy had full access to the airborne tac-net, a massively detailed threedimensional picture of Tanushan airspace and the evading cruiser’s low-altitude trajectory.

‘Can we get a telescopic visual from another angle?’ she asked.

‘Tried it,’ said Hiraki. ‘Too much window tint, we can’t see inside.’

Traffic Central was doing a good job of diverting local airtraffic out of the way, although most was well above the minimum ceiling that the cruiser was currently violating. They were headed east now, one flyer on each flank, holding back several hundred metres and slightly above, with Hiraki’s command flyer in the middle, directly behind.

‘Where the fuck does she think she’s going?’ An muttered incredulously. ‘Out to sea?’ Lightning flashed, disrupting the visual. Then the cruiser’s rear, side window shattered, and a large, tubular object appeared, held in the five hundred kilometre per hour slipstream with inhuman strength.

‘Incoming!’ Sandy announced at the same time as five other voices. ‘Countermeasures!’ The starboard flanking Trishul broke away in a rush, transmission breaking up completely as massive countermeasures disrupted all neighbouring electrics … the missile fired, streaking back from the cruiser, then flashed harmlessly past the flyer’s main engine nacelle to detonate alongside.

‘Provocative little bastards,’ Sandy heard the pilot of that flyer murmur, and realised it was young Gabone, who she’d flown to Parliament with the day of President Neiland’s impromptu press conference upon the Parliament roof. Transmissions flicked back to normal with a crackle of dissipating static.

‘Lieutenant,’ called the weapon’s officer, ‘I have a river approaching, no visible boat traffic. ‘

‘Commander?’ said Hiraki. Anyone firing high explosive projectiles within Tanushan airspace made their removal from that airspace an immediate civic security requirement. Doing so while violating all traffic codes, having just launched an assassination attempt upon the Callayan Secretary of State, even more so.

‘Go,’ said Sandy.

‘If you get the shot,’ said Hiraki into his mike, ‘take it.’

‘We should kill her,’ Ari warned. Sandy saw the river approaching, one of the numerous branches on the forested Tanushan delta. The cruiser’s trajectory appeared to be cutting directly across, not leaving much margin for error. Full sensor scans compiled upon tac-net from all three flyers plus river traffic central told that there were no rivercraft on the water that would be put in danger.

‘We need evidence,’ Sandy replied simply.

‘She’ll survive and we’ll regret it,’ said An, staring hard at her from his cramped corner. ‘Blow her apart.’ Tac-net showed the cruiser making a wide, banking course between midsized apartments that loomed thicker as the river approached, the tall, blazing lights of central Asad district ahead. Sandy met Ari’s stare. He was, she knew, watching exactly the same feed as her, on his own uplinks. The cruiser passed the point of no return, and he exhaled hard with disgust.

Gabone’s weapons officer fired, a single, high-velocity, selfterminating projectile from one of the unfolding underside racks. It closed the three hundred metres range in slightly less than two seconds, and blew the rear of the cruiser into thousands of flaming pieces. The cruiser appeared to buck forwards, frozen momentarily against the gleaming vista of city lights, then tumbled and rolled through an arcing, shallow dive … cleared the riverside trees and hit the precise centre of the river with an enormous explosion of water, showered seconds later by flaming wreckage from the explosion.

‘Gold six,’ said Hiraki, ‘maintain a covering position. ‘Gold four, dismount on the east bank, gold one, dismount upon the west.’

Affirmatives came back, Hiraki’s pilot pulling them up into a wide, howling turn as the river approached, engine nacelles angling forward in a broad flare that pressed all occupants hard to the deck. Sandy stood firmly braced, secured only by her cast-bound left hand, rifle braced in the right, staring at the displays on command screens and her own tac-net link. The spray was dissipating, waves from the impact rushing toward the far bank, and crashing against the retaining wall. Flames burned upon the heaving surface of the dark water, and along the east shore of the riverbank, several stunned pedestrians were pausing on a walkway, staring and pointing in disbelief.

Air rushed and swirled through the flyer’s hold as the rear doors opened, the pilot losing speed fast as he came in over the river, sliding sideways toward a green space of private property around an apartment building, where a break in the trees provided an available landing zone. The six soldiers in the rear unhooked their restraints, doublechecking weapons and gear.

‘This is the Commander,’ Sandy spoke into her headset mike, ‘take me directly over the crash site, I’m going in immediately.’

Hiraki deactivated his mike. ‘There’s no visibility in that water, you could be ambushed.’

‘GIs aren’t invulnerable, Hitoru,’ Sandy replied, deactivating her own. ‘That impact must have hurt. I’m betting she’s trapped and probably unconscious.’ On the other side of Hiraki’s seat, An was unhooking himself. ‘You’re not armoured, An, you stay here.’

‘Bullshit,’ said An. But reconnected his harness, with dark frustration. The flyer sank with a final, fast slide to a hard landing, soldiers leaping from the rear as Hiraki cleared his seat and went to join them. No sooner had he cleared the hold than the grass, trees and apartment buildings fell away once more, replaced by dark river waters, and the rippling flames on the surface. An gave Sandy a final tense, worried look before she turned and made her way along the short hold aisle, then paused at the exit.

‘That’s the spot, Commander,’ said the pilot. Below, bubbles and froth stained the dark surface white amidst the flickering, rain-doused flames and floating wreckage. Sandy removed the safety from her rifle, and dove off the edge.

She hit the water head first and with rifle poised, lashing out with left arm and both legs as soon as the water closed on her, driving herself downward with great, propulsive thrusts. The silty dark overwhelmed even a GI’s vision, and she could make out nothing beyond several metres down. But the river could not be more than eight metres deep, and the current was not strong … suddenly she could see the cruiser’s roof, torn and mangled at the rear. She twisted and dolphin-kicked toward a firing position through what remained of the front windshield, but could see nothing within the cabin but crumpled seats. The entire front of the aircar had caved in on impact, forward field gens smashed back toward the passenger compartment. Sandy kicked downward, twisting upside down for a firing angle straight through the compartment. Nothing was visible, and the entire rear of the cruiser was missing. An easy escape route, for any survivor.

She stayed down for a full two minutes, her headset continuing to feed flickering, distorted data from the hovering Trishul overhead, stretching that short-range subnetwork to its limit and considerably impressed at the headset design that somehow managed to continue functioning underwater. There were troops now spread right along the riverbank, weapons trained upon the rainswept, brown surface, looking for any sign of movement. A flicker of tac-net voices revealed even that some of the late-night pedestrian wanderers were volunteering to keep watch, spreading up and down the banks even as another two flyers arrived on scene, and disgorged more troops onto the banks, and more flyers began moving up- and down-river. And Ari’s voice, then, telling several questioners that a GI could hold breath for better than ten minutes if needed, thanks to a variable bloodstream chemistry that was highly self-contained when needed, and thus able to withstand all kinds of unfavourable environments.

Sandy went several hundred metres up and downstream herself, exhaling most of the air from her lungs as she went to reduce buoyancy, but found nothing. No lost weapons, personal items or articles of clothing, no recent impression on the bottom to disturb the soft, weedridden mud, no faint trace of GI plasma staining the uniform brown of the water. And when she finally, despairingly informed all along the riverbank on the tac-net that she was about to surface, it was with the dark, sinking feeling that she’d made a great and terrible mistake.