Crossover: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 1)

‘Tell Sandy I miss her.’

She stood before Director Ibrahim’s desk in his personal office, fully armoured but for weapons and helmet left outside. Under the harness and compression feedback, she knew she was beginning to stink, but there hadn’t yet been an opportunity to change. Vanessa stood at ease beside her, watching with curiosity.

‘Sandy being yourself,’ Ibrahim said with a gesture. His eyes were narrowed but otherwise expressionless. If he was irritated at the interruption to his massively overloaded schedule, it did not show.

‘Yessir.’ A deep breath. ‘My team called me Sandy, for short.’ And Vanessa had at some point or other adopted the same name. When had that happened?

‘And you have no reason to suspect the Tetsu AI — Cody?’

She blinked herself back to the present moment.

‘Nossir. In the brief exchanges we had, Cody seemed all above board.’

‘He’s got no record,’ Vanessa added. ‘His design schematics are first rate, his psyche evaluations give him a continuous record of triple-clearance — his last evaluation was thirteen weeks ago. And he used a regional direct channel to contact her, so I was able to register the linkup myself from the driver’s seat. He seems textbook, by all indications.’

Ibrahim thought about it, deep brown eyes burning with intelligence. The office was surprisingly spartan — simple, efficient and functional. Any view from the window was obliterated by grey sheets of rain. There were the predictable flags on the walls and photographs on the desk, but the rest was bookshelves, a terminal with interface equipment and some framed photos on the walls. A tall, leafy plant by the door looked shamefully extravagant. Sandy wondered if it felt guilty.

‘Who,’ Ibrahim said then, ‘do you think it could be? Specifically.’ Some question that was.

‘I don’t know, sir.’ She felt slightly dizzy, standing there, in a way that had nothing to do with recent exertions. It was a wild, crazy possibility. One she’d been more than half expecting, logically. As had Ibrahim, having seen the reconstruction sim of the Parliament attack, and drawing the same conclusions about its origin that she had. She was good at that. Being logical. There was a natural disconnect, in her brain, between logic and emotion. Something she’d learned, she was sure, rather than been designed with. But to have it actually happen, to be confronted head on by the terrible, wonderful, earth-shaking possibility… her head spun and her knees felt weak. ‘I still don’t understand how it’s possible that one of them might be alive. I saw the Intel reports. Secret ones that I wasn’t supposed to see — I hacked into them. It was very comprehensive. The entire target was detonated with all of them aboard. The whole thing was one big GI trap, and they were all on board when it blew. That’s what the reports said, and I can’t conceive of how they could be wrong.’

‘I understand that, Cassandra,’ Ibrahim replied patiently, ‘but the question remains — who do you think it could be? Assuming that at least one of them did survive?’ The question shook her. Assuming … good Lord, did he realise what he was asking her to do? It was no simple hypothetical, not for her. It was too painful.

‘I’m not sure, sir.’ Her throat was unaccountably tight. It made her voice waver just a little. She didn’t think either Ibrahim or Vanessa would miss it. ‘It could have been any of them.’

‘But only from your team?’

‘Yessir. No one else called me Sandy.’ No one else would have dared.

‘You don’t have to ‘sir’ me in this room, Cassandra. This isn’t the military.’

Deep breath. Strange that now, after the raid and dressed head to toe in battle armour, the old reflexes should start returning to her. She gave an affirmative nod. Ibrahim frowned, considering her closely. For a moment she suspected he might offer her a seat, and maybe a glass of water.

‘The message suggests someone particularly close to you,’ he said instead. Unable to pass up a position of advantage, Sandy reckoned. Her estimation of the man rose another notch, however she might have wished things otherwise. ‘Particularly considering the potential jeopardy in which his or her mission may have been placed by contacting you. Which of them particularly might have left such a message for you?’

‘There were several.’ She really, really didn’t want to talk about it now. Helping Ibrahim to find them … he had the resources to help her do it, and thus she’d agreed to the deal. Now the debt was due. He wanted answers, about them, about whoever it might be, out there on the run. And she was no longer certain that his priorities and hers coincided. ‘Chu. Mahud. Tran. Raju. Dobrov … maybe.’ Not really the affectionate type, Dobrov. Certainly Sergei wasn’t. She doubted ‘Stark’ had ever had a thought that sentimental in his entire short life.

‘So you were close with quite a few of them, then?’

‘A few of them, yes.’ Ibrahim paused, considering that.

‘Sexual relations?’ he asked then. Sandy thought she could see where that was going.

‘Sir, I wouldn’t want you to be misled — sexual relations among Dark Star GIs indicate very little, emotionally speaking. We fucked pretty much everyone.’ Ibrahim’s lips pursed slightly, as if restraining a smile. And he nodded his understanding.

‘But even so,’ he persisted, ‘some sexual relations are more significant than others, yes?’

Sandy nodded. ‘Definitely … but I’d be very reluctant to characterise any of my relationships with my troops in the manner you’re suggesting. Sex was recreation. It was affectionate, definitely — maybe even more than that on occasions — but then sharing a game of cards can be affectionate too. I was never ‘in love’ with any of my troops, if that is your meaning. And they were simply not capable of reciprocating, however much they liked me. The concept was largely beyond their comprehension.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

There was something about the way the question was phrased, so mildly put, that gave her another cold chill. But…

‘Yes, very sure,’ she said, as firmly as she could manage. ‘I spoke with them about similar things on many occasions, feeling them out, seeing how much they understood or were able to learn.’ She took a deep breath, wondering how to make him understand. And decided she was up to her neck at this point anyway and should take the plunge.

‘My guys enjoyed having sex with me, certainly — they’d damn well queue up for it, actually. It was my reputation, you see — they respected me so damn much, because I was their ideal of soldierhood and selfless service to the League. Sex was an opportunity for them to express that respect… they equated it with affection, you see, it’s all the same thing among GIs. They don’t discriminate much between different kinds of emotions — there’s just good, bad and indifferent. But that’s as far as it went.’

‘Damn hard life, girl,’ Vanessa commented from her side. Sandy nearly smiled. Threw a grateful glance Vanessa’s way, and saw her faint amusement.

‘Irritating as hell, sometimes,’ she replied. ‘They all wanted so damn much to please me that I wasn’t allowed to do anything in return … nothing more annoying than a guy who doesn’t know what he wants.’

Vanessa shook her head. ‘Jesus, some people will complain about anything.’

Sandy bit her lip to keep the smile in check. It didn’t seem the right time for levity. But she couldn’t help but be thankful to Vanessa for trying.

Ibrahim just looked at her. Possibly a little annoyed, Sandy thought, by Vanessa’s intervention, mild though it was. A show of support when he was trying to be firm.

‘Cassandra,’ he said then, leaning his full weight back into the chair as he considered her. ‘You’ve been very honest with me in all our direct dealings thus far, and I appreciate that, I truly do. I know this is difficult for you.’ Sandy couldn’t help but tense, sensing what was coming.

‘But I want you to answer just one more thing for me, as honestly as you can.’ Pause, deep brown eyes gazing directly into hers. ‘If this were in fact one of your old squad-mates, would you feel a conflict of interests?’

‘In what sense do you mean sir?’

‘In the sense that you continue to feel greater loyalty towards your old comrades than you do towards Callay and the CSA.’

Sandy locked stares with him. His brown eyes hawk-like. Her jaw nearly trembled, but she tightened it with a hard clench, refusing weakness. Not now. Not before a man of such obvious capability, who would assuredly put all personal interests well behind the necessities of duty. And who homed in on the core of every issue with the accuracy of a tac-suit armscomp.

‘Sir, I can’t lie to you, and you wouldn’t believe me anyway. Obviously, if any of my old team are here in Tanusha, I feel obligated by emotion and duty to help them. I believe that I can best do this by helping them to escape their present circumstance and join me here in Tanusha.’

‘To defect.’

‘Yes sir.’ The wrong reflex, she remembered again. Right now, she didn’t care. She was what she was, and it came naturally.

‘Do you think this likely?’ In a calm, even tone that suggested neither disbelief nor hope.

‘I do, sir.’ With a calm nod. The armour held her posture firm and kept her body language invisible. She was grateful for it. ‘I’ve told you that my comrades respected me enormously, especially my opinions. And that the League murdered … at least some of them.’ God, she just wasn’t sure, she no longer knew for certain, and for a brief moment the confusion threatened to throw her head into a spin. ‘If there were any survivors, it could only be one or two.’ With as much certainty as she could muster. Hoping she was wrong. But in hope, too, lay danger.

‘And you believe you can convince them?’

‘Yessir. I can’t go back to the League. I’ve passed on too much information to you now, for one thing. That makes me a traitor. I’ve no loyalty to the League anyway. I never did have. I don’t believe in their cause, or their ideals, least of all their war. That’s why I’m here now and not there. And that being my situation, my only chance in helping my comrades … would be to find them and convince them to change sides.

‘Sir …’ she cut in before Ibrahim could reply, ‘… they weren’t bad people at all. My guys.’ With creeping desperation. Wanting to lean forward on his desk, shove it into his face … but that did not seem wise, under the circumstances. ‘I actually liked them, if that recommendation means anything to you. Not all of them, maybe, but some of them … They’d never do anything indecent or uncivilised, I swear it. And their loyalty was never so much to the League … they served the League because it was all they’d ever known. They understood very little of the actual reasons behind the war, and cared even less. Their loyalty was far more to me than to the League, it always was. I believe it still is now.’

‘The deaths of twenty lower-model GIs in the Parliament attack seems a pretty clear indication of where her loyalties are not,’ Vanessa said quietly. It was a brave thing to say, Sandy knew, given the circumstances. Ibrahim’s impassive gaze shifted to the other woman. A faint tilt of the head, as if to concede the point. With tangible relief, Sandy felt the knot in her stomach unwind a notch.

‘And those lower-model GIs,’ he resumed, eyes returning to her own. ‘You appear to have had little sympathy for their plight.’

‘There wasn’t very much to feel for, sir. I didn’t socialise with them because they generally didn’t socialise.’ Deep breath. ‘They had blank stares. They gave … give … single syllable answers to questions. I’m sure you get the picture.’ Ibrahim nodded.

‘It’s the existence of the lower models that forced me to question the wisdom of League biotech policy in the first place,’ she continued. ‘They had a nasty habit of reinterpreting their orders into the most simplistic, linear execution possible. It got a lot of them killed, but that wasn’t the problem — the problem was that where civilians were concerned, or collateral of any kind, they’d often just go straight through it rather than take the extra trouble. I had shouting matches with command about it. I told them that regs — that’s what the lower models were called — that regs shouldn’t be used around civvies, but command’s idea was that regs should be used in preference to human soldiers wherever high losses were a probability. League didn’t have the manpower to sustain losses, as you know — that’s why GIs were invented in the first place.

‘So no, I didn’t shed many tears over dead regs — my unit called them dregs. They don’t value their own lives very much, as the attack on the President shows. And so I find it hard to value theirs, particularly.’

It was, she knew, an important factor in her own intellectual awakening. Her guys hadn’t liked the regs much either, but the straights frequently hadn’t made the distinction between her and them. A GI was just a GI, many had said, and they regarded her accordingly.

It had been alarming that otherwise intelligent, sensible people had failed to make the distinction between her intelligent, thoughtful, creative self and a GI reg. It made her question who she really was. What a GI was and was meant to be, and for what purpose. And what the hell good was a fascination with music and books when your only life’s purpose was to fight and kill? Something about that situation had failed to make sense. She had wondered why.

In hindsight, she should have reached the conclusion that she had much, much earlier. But her guys had needed her. Where would Tran have been without someone to answer her questions? Mahud, without someone to iron out his occasional neuroses? Stark, without someone to rein in his occasionally dangerous, single-minded impulses? And Raju, who was so damn good in bed that it just wasn’t funny, and who she sometimes missed like crazy, partly because of that and partly because he was just such a nice guy…

She missed him now … and suddenly wondered if the message had in fact been from Raju, if he was in fact here in Tanusha right at this minute. And wanted very badly to see him smile again, the way he often did at one of her jokes during a liberty, and have him tell her she was funny and smart, and show her just how he thought of her by inviting her to his bunk and driving her nuts for half an hour … the old routine.

Dear God, she actually missed it. She’d sworn she never would, but here she was, pining for it all back before any of this crazy, complicated, painful business had ever happened. Had she been wrong to dream of a better life in the first place? Had that been unreasonably selfish or just dangerously misguided? She was, after all, just a GI. Pain, violence and loss had been her lot in life. Possibly there was nothing else, and the GI regs were actually the smarter because they accepted their fate and didn’t torment themselves with impossible, futile dreams that would only end in tragic disappointment.

Ibrahim’s gaze shifted to the far wall for a lingering moment, lips faintly pursed above his sharp goatee. Considering. Sandy felt the knot in her stomach rewind itself, a slow, painful tightening.

‘The reports I’ve had back from Tetsu so far indicate some significant progress,’ he said. ‘Your own name was mentioned prominently by Agents Tuo and Naidu, whose opinions I greatly respect.’ Again he fixed her with his calm, dark gaze. ‘You appear to have made yourself very useful… Mr Tuo in particular has requested future access to your experience. He believes you may have much additional knowledge that could be of use across a range of other network-related issues. But that can wait for another day, and another crisis.

‘I’m keeping you with Lieutenant Rice for the time being … you have no experience with investigations, and I need to put you somewhere you feel comfortable, in a familiar environment. Further, the two of you seem to be on each other’s wavelength to some extent.’ He looked at Vanessa. ‘Would that be a correct assessment?’

Vanessa nodded. ‘I think so.’ Gave a brief, appraising glance at Sandy. ‘She’s drastically overqualified for this line of work, and I’m not entirely sure I should be the one giving her orders in any combat situation … but I’ll be happy to keep her on with us, if that’s what you require.’

‘It is. Lieutenant Rice, take her home, and both of you get some rest. I might have allowed you to stay on at the Tetsu site with the investigators if it hadn’t been for Milanovic’s suspicion and the imminent arrival of a number of SIB investigators … attached to the Senate, you’ll remember,’ with a significant glance at Sandy, ‘and therefore outside the CSA’s command structure. I would rather not have Milanovic knowing of your identity at this moment, Cassandra … and to be blunt, the SIB are a security risk. Have nothing to do with them. Your authority rests with the CSA, not the SIB and their political masters. That is an order.’

‘Yessir.’ More politicking. She wondered how an apparently practical man like Ibrahim dealt with such things on a daily basis. It seemed impossibly frustrating, not to mention counterproductive. ‘When will I be needed again?’

‘Soon enough, Ms Kresnov.’ With sombre certainty. ‘Soon enough.’

‘He knows more he’s not telling us,’ Hiraki said from the back seat of the cruiser. Rain spattered across the windshield, streaking in the slipstream. A dark, wet tower glided by, lines of ground traffic moving slowly along rain-darkened streets below. Trees and parks a thick, dark green, now sodden. Dark clouds still loomed low overhead, a deep grey ceiling above the reaching towertops.

‘He’s the boss. That’s his privilege,’ Vanessa replied from the driver’s seat — a different cruiser this time, taken from HQ reserves. Evidently the investigators they’d taken the last one from had been perturbed that their own had reclaimed it. ‘If you don’t like it, get promoted.’

Silence from the back. Singh had taken a different route home following their delayed debriefing with the rest of SWAT Four. Hiraki came along because some enterprising pair from Investigations had borrowed his CSA-issued transport without asking … there was a shortage, the present crisis having stretched every department’s resources well beyond the planned-for limit. Public transport, Vanessa informed him, could get him home within ten minutes from her apartment. Hiraki had snorted. SWAT did not use public transport, Sandy gathered. It offended rapid-reaction sensibilities. She pitied the pair of investigators when Hiraki caught up with them again.

‘How’s CSA’s working relationship with the SIB?’ she asked, stretching her legs within the comfortable cargo-greens someone had found in her size. The casual ops-jacket too was warm and comfortable, if old and somewhat tattered. Darker rectangles coloured the shoulders where old unit patches had been removed. She wondered absently whom it had belonged to.

‘What working relationship?’ Hiraki commented from the back. Sandy glanced at him. His expression showed deadly contempt.

‘That bad, huh?’

‘Worse,’ said Vanessa, watching the navscreen. ‘We’re not on speaking terms.’ Sandy didn’t know what to make of that. Vanessa saw her expression and gave a crooked grin. ‘Yep, I feel the same way — it’s a ridiculous situation. But that’s politics.’

‘What’s so bad about the SIB?’

‘It depends on the year,’ said Hiraki dryly. ‘Right now the President has political problems with the Senate. Union Party has no majority there. Independents have the balance of power. The SIB report to the Senate. It is supposed to be a safety measure to keep the lines of Command and Control separate from the CSA’s. The result is that the SIB end up the political tool of the President’s opponents. Which is why Ibrahim had to remove you from Tetsu before they got there. I’m sure they know about you by now, given that their masters on the Security Panel do. I’d bet they’ve already expressed their displeasure about your inclusion in the CSA’s investigations. They’re already unhappy that the emergency legislation has put most additional powers into the CSA’s hands and not their own. Anti-biotech senators will be breathing down their necks where you are concerned. I’m sure there would have been trouble had you stayed at Tetsu.’

Sandy stared out at the glisteningly wet, grey city, trying to take it all in. A separate law enforcement agency being led around by the nose by knee-jerk political factions? That did not sound very safe.

‘Hitoru’s the political pundit around here,’ Vanessa explained. ‘I always said politics attracted the most dangerous people.’ Sandy glanced back at Hiraki. He appeared complimented, smiling openly.

‘But the CSA can keep a lid on it, right?’ she asked Hiraki. ‘They’ve got emergency powers. Surely the politicians will be too preoccupied with finding the FIA to worry about me? I mean, there’s a crisis here.’ Hiraki’s smile grew broader. When some people smiled, Sandy had noticed, it softened their expression. Hiraki only looked more dangerous. He was, she remembered Vanessa’s assessment before the Tetsu raid, SWAT Four’s most effective pure combat soldier. Yet he followed politics. Her curiosity ratcheted up another several notches.

‘Never underestimate the capacity of populist politicians for stupidity.’ Sandy leaned around further, not liking the sound of that at all.

‘They can’t all be populists, surely?’

Hiraki just looked at her, deadly amused.

‘Cassandra. This city runs itself. An organ of commerce, of flawless planning. Like a work of art. Look around you.’

She looked. A pair of soaring towers gliding past. A bend of wind-swept river beyond. Green suburbs. Clustered highrises giving way to urbane suburbia, and back to highrises again. Organised disorder. Predictable unpredictability. The belt servo gave her a sharp, protesting tug. She tugged back. The servo screeched and quit tugging.

‘Nothing much happens here,’ Hiraki told her. ‘People worry far more about their children’s school grades and where to eat for dinner than the big issues of politics. The city was designed with precisely that in mind. And if the politicians cannot connect with the voters on issues of substance, they will resort to issues of less substance. Populism. Emotionalism. Occasionally even extremism. It is the Utopia conundrum. Disconnection from reality. I pray that Heaven is nothing like the Utopia the Christians and Muslims believe it to be. The human species is simply not equipped to cope with such boredom. We should go mad. The evidence is sitting in the Callayan Parliament.’

Sandy shot a hard glance at Vanessa, not at all happy with that assessment. Vanessa sighed.

‘It’s not that bad. Hitoru’s such a pessimist, but he’s got a point.’ Which, if intended to comfort, failed miserably.

Another minute of cruising the turbulent, gusty skylanes, and they began to descend. A wide, decelerating curve around one tall tower, losing altitude, roadways and a ground-level neighbourhood sliding past below, glimpses of modern architecture beneath a sprawling patchwork of wet trees. Some mid-sized buildings ahead then, taller than the surrounding single-residences, but dwarfed by the nearest towers. The navcomp trajectories turned away in front, leading them in.

Sandy peered out at the neighbourhood, scanning the layout as they lost height. Not a historical reconstruction, but aesthetically modern, as only Tanushan planners knew how. Streets connected gridwise, walkways and parks, blurring perimeter boundaries, a meandering stretch of lightrail, a maglev line stretching by in the near distance, a station stop by the looming side of a sports stadium. A stretch of main street sliding below the window, thoroughfare traffic, fancy shops and people out walking … pleasantly low-key, and gleaming in water slick grey beneath the overcast sky.

Then the buildings were coming up to one side, and the cruiser came around in a near hover, revealing a parking space on a lowered section of roof sheltered by a simple stretched awning. Vanessa guided them in on manual-assist, found a parking spot by a cream-white Boxer with stylish rear fins. Sandy noted that all the vehicles looked similar though.

‘Government apartments,’ Vanessa told her as they got out, hefting sports-bags filled with gear and gesturing toward the variously parked aircars — big, powerful and stylishly well appointed. ‘All government employees here, the whole building. Good for security. Keeps the rents down too.’

In another city, Sandy reflected as the cruiser’s doors whined shut and locked, government employees would never have to pay rent on government accommodation. Not so in free-market Tanusha, though. Although wages were generally high enough that ‘budget accommodation’ was something of a local oxymoron. Tanushans didn’t have budgets, they had expenditures.

‘Are all the SWAT guys here?’ she asked as they walked across the covered tarmac, cold wind pulling at clothes and hair, bags hefted over their shoulders.

‘No, they’re all over the place … bad security to have everyone together. More important is that people generally want to choose where they live, it’s a perk of the job. I chose here.’

Vanessa walked with a slight natural swagger, Sandy was noticing. Controlled energy, tending toward exuberance if it weren’t for the discipline. Vanessa, she guessed, had probably been a real handful in her childhood. And repressed a smile, trying to imagine Vanessa as a child.

The unit minder let them in with the required thumb and retina scans, Sandy passing a more than casual eye over the security arrangements as they walked down the main corridor. Vanessa saw her looking and made a wry face.

‘Nothing an RPG couldn’t solve,’ she said. ‘But at least we get a warning.’ Sandy nodded, tuning through local frequencies and links. In the age of modern assault techniques and enhanced personnel, it was about all that civilian security measures were really good for — compelling an attacker to use forceful, explosive means of entry and thus give warning to the target. As Vanessa said, no armourplast door was going to hold against grenades. Walls and ceiling were little better … and laser technology was rather useful these days.

Unsurprisingly, Vanessa’s room was on the top floor near the landing pads, convenient for fast response. And it was nice, too, she thought as she deposited her bag by the central table. A big room, with wide windows leading onto a balcony, sofas and a TV. Vanessa heading to the side kitchen and going through the fridge.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she called as Hiraki settled onto the sofa with the ease of familiarity. ‘I’ll get us some brunch … I hope you like Chinese.’

‘The people or the food?’ Hiraki asked from the sofa. Vanessa gave him a reprimanding look over the refrigerator door. Private joke, Sandy thought, strolling to the windows and stretching.

Only ten storeys up, but the view over the neighbourhood was lovely. There was a big, amazing-looking church with tall spires rising well above the trees. And a mosque nearby with patterned domes. A further cluster of taller apartments with rooftop parking. A sports field, puddled and sodden, lakes and gardens adjoining. And everywhere there were trees, a thick green carpet of them, overlaying houses, roads and gardens alike.

‘What’s this place called?’ Sandy asked, nurturing her rekindled curiosity with an effort. It took her mind off other things.

‘This is Santiello,’ Vanessa replied, putting food containers into the microwave. ‘That’s Ranajit over that way,’ pointing out past the church, ‘and Mananakorn over to the right there,’ pointing across. ‘Junshi’s back behind you.’

‘Problem neighbourhood,’ Hiraki added, stretched out very comfortably on Vanessa’s sofa. ‘Junshi, I mean. Lots of Chinese gambling and black market trading. Triads.’

‘Crap,’ Vanessa retorted. ‘Hitoru’s just a redneck. I think Junshi’s quite nice.’

‘Seven gang murders last quarter,’ Hiraki replied, unperturbed.

‘Out of a population of a hundred thousand, that’s not so terrible.’ Vanessa rummaged for cups, some other appliance grumbling behind her. ‘So long as it’s only other gang members they kill, who cares?’ Emerged from the kitchen with three cups, steam rising.

Coffee, Sandy realised as she accepted the cup gratefully. Took a welcome, hot sip, feeling herself unwinding, just a little, standing before the windows and taking in the view. Lightning flickered somewhere not far away. Second storm front, Sandy reckoned from the direction.

Vanessa settled herself before the phone in the corner with a heavy sigh and dialled an automatic number. Sipped her coffee while it connected. In profile, her nose was slim and slightly pointed at the end. With her attractive wavy, short brown hair recently washed and falling loosely, and her pleasant brown eyes, she looked about as far from the typical civilian notion of a SWAT unit commander as was possible.

‘Hi Sav,’ she said as the call came through and a man’s face appeared on the screen. Brown skinned and handsome, Sandy noted.

‘Vanessa,’ he said. A note to his voice that reflected neither surprise nor joy. And Sandy turned away, an offer of privacy. Hiraki, she noted, made no such gesture.

‘Just called to say I’m fine, everything went great, no dramas.’

‘Good.’ He nodded unenthusiastically. ‘That’s good. Those your squad-mates with you?’

‘Yeah, they’re just having a coffee. How’s work?’

‘Fine. Everything’s great, no dramas.’ It sounded somewhat tense. Sandy glanced at Hiraki, lounged comfortably in the sofa, looking uncharitably amused. On him, the expression looked like a knife slowly drawn from its sheath.

A few minutes later Vanessa disconnected. Slumped backwards with a deep sigh, gazing reluctantly at the blank screen. Still standing, Sandy decided it safest to remain silent. Many civilian relationships remained beyond her understanding.

‘You’re only going with him because he’s hung like a donkey,’ Hiraki commented mildly, ‘you said it yourself.’ Vanessa shot him a dark look.

‘I was drunk, you moron.’

Hiraki’s smile grew broader, and sharper.

‘The LT’s boyfriend doesn’t like her work,’ he explained lazily to Sandy. ‘He’s old-fashioned. Doesn’t find armour very sexy. I think Rupa would say, ‘sexist fucker’.’ Sandy recalled Rupa Sharma from the raid … tall, lean and pragmatically unadorned, usual for an Indian civilian woman. Very unlike the glamorous, decorative-types she’d seen. You couldn’t generalise about anyone in civilian society, she was realising.

‘I thought they were selectively drowned at birth these days,’ she murmured, sipping her coffee.

Vanessa turned the dark look on her. ‘Jesus,’ she muttered, ‘no fucking privacy around here.’

Sandy shook her head faintly. ‘Ignore me. I’m not in a good mood.’

‘Two of us,’ Vanessa replied, staring back at the blank phone-screen.

‘You could always divorce him again,’ Hiraki offered.

‘Just shut up.’

Rain lashed down. Sandy stood outside on the balcony, partly sheltered by the building as the wind howled and blew. Gusted, cold and hard at her face, tossing hair. Nothing of the view was visible, totally hidden behind impenetrable walls of rain. Lightning flashed the greyness to blue, vivid and sharp. Howling gusts blew everything sideways in sheets.

She felt both lost and found. Numb to anything but the roaring wind, cold and ferocious, and the sudden crackle and boom of thunder, a buzzing rattle on the windows behind her. Such awesome power. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the storm, neither rejoicing nor dreading, merely … there. Accepting. Like a welcome long-lost companion.

Vanessa and Hiraki were inside, warm and dry. But she … she belonged out here somehow. On the outside, in the cold, where the storm thrashed and howled with a fury that was not rage but identity. The storm held no anger, no intent, no purpose — it merely did what it did because that was what it was. A storm. And Sandy understood exactly what that meant. She’d been there.

She knew that one of her people was here, just felt it for a fact, bone deep. Here in Tanusha, on the other side of events. One of her squad-mates. The number of possibilities was not large. Out there somewhere in the storm. She wondered what he, or she, was doing. Why he was here. How he had survived. And, most troubling of all, if she had abandoned him, leaving as she had.

She remembered being told. Remembered it as vividly as the attempt on the President’s life yesterday … had it only been yesterday? Events and traumas, one on top of another, the images mixed and recurred in her brain with no regard for chronology. But the deaths of her team held a special place amid her memories of horror.

It had taken a great effort to keep her from killing Colonel Dravid when he told her, simply smashing his head to pulp against the nearest bulkhead. That had passed, replaced by grief and loss and the most helpless, soul-destroying loneliness she had ever imagined. If not for her books, and her music, and her passionate interest in things non-martial, she was certain she would have suicided. In a world where even her own side had never entirely trusted her, there had been nothing and no one else to care about. They had been her life. In the physical, tangible environment in which she spent her days, they had been all there was.

She had known it was no accident. Had even suspected something of the sort, thus her earlier warnings to them, trying to prepare them for something that they would not believe if she came straight out and told them. Old things that she had been gathering over the last few years, on and off, but in that last year in earnest — Intel reports, interdepartmental communiques, briefings, news feeds, technical and political analyses and various other intelligence sources that stretched well beyond the immediate concerns of her profession.

It had created a picture, piece by piece, that meshed with much of what she knew from her own tactical analyses of the unfolding war and the nature of many of her targets. The League’s use of GIs, and the reasoning behind it all. The juggling of factional interests by the League Parliament. The salves to various interest groups. The concerns of an administration only one year from new elections, for whom the war had not gone well, and who were facing the ignominious prospect of a treaty and a permanent ceasefire with none of their stated goals achieved.

The cessation of hostilities would mean that the security legislation, which had kept so much of the military’s activities from public scrutiny, would be null and void. Already there had been debates about reintegration, soldiers coming home, the creation of new jobs and new lives for the veterans. And for the GIs … obviously the GI regs were good for no other life and had no desire to leave the military, which was their home. With the veterans returned to civilian life, lower-model, mainstream GIs would continue to account for a significant portion of the armed forces, maintaining a vigilant watch for the day when the League needed to mobilise again.

Of the higher models there had been very little mention. There were very few of them, after all. Just her own team of sixteen, and five others like them. Casualties had gone unreplaced for six months by that point — replacements had simply stopped arriving. Her squad had been down to eleven, including herself, when everything ended. Several others had been less fortunate. And two … two had mysteriously vanished — departed on raids and never returned. Sandy had never received what she considered a credible explanation for the disappearances. They had made her suspicious, to say the least.

And had started her wondering what would happen if they attempted to reintegrate higher-model GIs back into civil society. The civil rights groups would panic, would demand constant surveillance, psychiatric examinations, personal locators … like a group of released criminals. The same watchdogs of the League citizenry who demanded the construction of GIs in the first place, to safeguard the great and noble dreams of the civilisation, and against all the earnest arguments of academics, moralists and freethinkers who argued that you couldn’t realise ideals of freedom by creating an underclass of slaves, while the majority progressives had argued that you could, and that the overbearing, blind conservatism of the Federation monolith had forced such actions on them, and it was that or allow the League to go under … some choice, for the breeding pit of idealist extremism that the League had become, in those heady, prewar days.

Had the war been won, perhaps things would have been different. League politicians, and the general populace, might have recognised their indebtedness to those beings that their technology, and their stubborn insistence on freedom of action, had created. But the war had been lost, or at least the Federation had achieved a stalemate, precisely as intended. And then … what to do with the GIs?

The public assumption had been that there were no precisely human-level GIs … the statutes governing GI creation dictated a less than fully developed nervous system. Many suggested this was a kindness, that a GI should genuinely enjoy his work and not be troubled by the enticements of possible alternatives. Sandy knew this to be hypocrisy. They only wanted to keep their creations under control. Which was why she was such a secret, and why knowledge of her model type was strictly limited, and why every straight who worked in close consultation with her had to pass a half dozen psych tests and be sworn to utter secrecy … most of the people she passed in the corridors of a carrier had no idea exactly what she was. And she, of course, was not allowed to tell them.

She had often wondered why. A casual, musing thought, once upon a time, when her brain was not otherwise occupied by more important, military matters. But her misgivings had grown as her interests had grown, and her hobbies … and, yes, her sexual appetite. Merely curious at first, then thoughtful, then sceptical. And finally, after what she now readily acknowledged had been far too long, downright suspicious.

GIs were a means to an end League citizens might feel proud of the technological achievement, and perhaps even grateful to their creations for the job they did, but no one wanted to live next door to one. GIs would help secure the League’s golden future. That was the only goal that mattered. No one worried about what happened to the tools once the job was finished. But with the ceasefire looming, many of the legislative barriers that had shielded the League populace from knowledge of her existence would have come under threat. And her troops, although not designed to her creative standards, were still beyond the publicly admitted threshold. They themselves had not been aware of this, being conscious of little beyond their own narrow world — civilian life and politics had been mostly beyond their ready comprehension, and therefore beyond their interest.

What would a government do whose decisions had allowed GI creation to go beyond the prescribed limits? And why had there been only one of her type constructed in the first place?

Lightning flashed, bright and near, lighting up the sky. Sandy gazed unblinking, her retinas adjusting automatically to the flash. Probing with numb, self-destructive determination into this most sensitive problem of her own existence while the thunder crashed and boomed and the very building seemed to shake beneath her feet.

GI construction was difficult, yes. Particularly the brain. Imprint models were followed, but detail was a hugely technical matter. Lesser detail was achievable with reliable results. Greater detail was another matter. Truly human-scale detail … extraordinarily difficult, particularly with all the required enhancements and linkages that would allow her to function effectively in her predesignated role. It must have taken them thousands of tries. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Perhaps millions. But it was achievable, obviously, and she was the proof. And if they’d truly wished for more like her, in specialised roles, then they could have accomplished that. But they had not.

Sandy suspected dissention within upper-level League command. Had occasionally caught the faint whiff of displeasure in a regional commander’s orders overturned, or sideways promotions, or rumours of strained relations between particular officers whose politics she had become astutely accurate at guessing.

She herself had been controversial. Her backers had wanted more like her, but settled for what they were given — compromise, the stuff of politics. And so she remained a unique test subject as much as a functional element. Probably they had expected she would not exceed the average GI lifespan by anywhere near as much as she had, thus saving them the embarrassment of ever having to admit her existence. But her talents for survival had exceeded even the highest expectations and 14 years from her inception, she remained stubbornly, inconveniently alive.

Even in peacetime, though, secrets remained — particularly in the years, even decades, directly following a conflict in which neither side had genuinely disarmed. She could have remained. One soldier alone was not much trouble to hide from the prying eyes of civilian watchdogs and regulators. But five fully rostered and fully operational experimental model GI teams?

Safer if they died in combat.

She felt cold now, standing on the balcony of Vanessa’s apartment. Cold in a way that had nothing to do with the howling wind.

She could have done something. She’d seen it coming, after all. And yet here she was, alive, while they were not. Before that raid she’d known, but even then hadn’t felt entirely certain, even knowing her own logical, tactical capabilities, and feeling every alarm bell ringing … she remembered the feeling well, even now. She should have stopped it. But her own guys would never have believed her, and there was no order, no chain of command through which she could have worked that would have achieved the desired result. She had no say in selecting objectives, only in how to achieve them once selected.

She had known, and done nothing. And had never realised the consequences until she’d lost everything. Leaving the League, betraying all that her life had been up to that point, had seemed so easy then. So why not before? Dammit, she should have told them, pleaded with them in private, and once she’d convinced them, orchestrated a mutiny, or a rebellion…

Unthinkable, even now. She was fooling herself to think that it could ever have happened, tormenting herself unnecessarily. But it did nothing to change the fact that she was alive and they were dead, and she felt responsible. More than responsible. She felt guilty.

Please God let one of them still be alive. Just one. She wanted it so badly that it hurt.

Another rattle on the glass behind her, but this time it was the door opening and closing, then Vanessa was standing beside her. A good ten centimetres shorter, though she herself was barely 170. Dark hair tossed about in the wind, arms wrapped around herself for warmth.

‘Either you’re madly in love with chaos,’ Vanessa said loudly over the storm, ‘or you’re having some very dark thoughts.’ Sandy searched but had no reply available. ‘Want to talk about it?’

‘Can’t.’ A small sigh. ‘Sorry.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘What’s the difference?’

Vanessa looked at her critically. ‘You know, for a glorified pocket calculator, you can be pretty stubborn sometimes.’ Sandy blinked. The corner of her mouth twitched briefly. Thunder rumbled again, then boomed, a deep bass vibrato.

‘Where were you born, Vanessa?’ Vanessa paused, seeming surprised at the question.

‘Hospital five Ks from here.’ Frowning, face framed by gusting dark hair. ‘Why?’

‘And you don’t remember anything about it?’

Vanessa thought about it, then half grinned, looking puzzled.

‘Us straights can’t remember back that far, Sandy. Brain’s not developed enough, never stores anything it takes in. What about you, you remember anything from when you were … whatever you were?’

‘Nup. Not a thing. I don’t remember most of my training, and only bits and pieces of my first … maybe five years in actual combat. My first real memories are of killing people.’ A sideways glance. ‘You believe that?’

‘Damn.’ Vanessa was staring. ‘That’s unbelievable.’ Crackle and boom of thunder, followed by more lightning. The flicker of blue light was continuous now, only the intensity varied. ‘And despite all that you still managed to turn out a basically decent person. How about that?’

‘Why do you think I’m decent — you barely know me?’

‘Hey, I’m a SWAT leader. My character judgment’s not perfect, but it’s better than most.’ Glaring with good-natured intensity. A common expression for her. ‘You wanna argue with me?’

Sandy exhaled hard. ‘I’m better than some straights, I’ll give myself that much credit.’

‘You saved the President’s life,’ Vanessa interjected somewhat sarcastically. ‘You hadn’t killed or even hurt anyone while you were AWOL … I don’t know how many straights would be able to say that much if they had your capabilities at their disposal for a year.’

Which was interesting. She hadn’t thought of that.

‘From what my briefing reports showed,’ Vanessa continued with that aggressive, slightly exasperated smile of hers, ‘you’ve been pretty much travelling around the place, meeting people, playing tourist, trying to earn an honest wage, touring art galleries and screwing pretty much anyone who’s not female.’ Sandy couldn’t help but smile. ‘More’s the pity.’ The smile grew a little broader.

‘And maybe it’s stupid of me,’ Vanessa continued just as forcefully, ‘but I just don’t find you very intimidating.’

‘Maybe I’m slipping,’ Sandy suggested wryly.

‘That,’ Vanessa said, levelling a finger at her, ‘is exactly what I’m talking about.’ Sandy looked away again into the storm, smile fading. Aware that Vanessa was still watching, looking puzzled.

‘I don’t remember anywhere near as much as I should,’ Sandy said, voice barely carrying above a resounding boom of thunder very near by. ‘Tape softens the memories, disconnects them from the emotions.’

‘Right,’ Vanessa said, nodding, ‘everyone gets that. Every time some cop in a downtown precinct has to shoot some gangbanger, they get tape to help the trauma. No shame in that — it helps them get on with their lives. Hell, it happens so rarely here, there’s no comparison to what you’ve been through.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sandy replied. Vanessa blinked as lightning lit the near sky. Sandy’s eyelids never flickered. Boom and crash, rolling onward as if tumbling down a long slope. Faded, overlapped by another, more distant rumble. ‘I don’t know how much I really need it. I go into a different state when I’m in combat. I process so much information. I suppose you’d call it surreal. I don’t think it ever really impacts me emotionally like it might a straight human.’ Pause. ‘Killing people, that is.’

Vanessa brushed hair from where it stuck to her lips. Staring, with evident concern.

‘And that bothers you?’ she asked.

‘It fucking scares me,’ Sandy replied, still gazing outward, arms folded, her shoulder harness tight beneath her jacket. ‘We still have ethical debates about the overuse of trauma tape. People say that as human beings we’re supposed to suffer trauma, that it makes us learn and improves our behaviour. So imagine what I am.’ Pause for more thunder. She made no effort to brush the hair from her face. ‘I’ve personally killed hundreds. And it deserves a hell of a lot more trauma than I’ve ever suffered, tape or no tape. I’m quite certain of that.’

She turned to look at Vanessa.

‘So you tell me,’ she said, ‘am I decent? I don’t bloody deserve to be.’

Vanessa shook her head, vehemently.

‘That’s bullshit, Sandy. There are people on both sides who’ve been in exactly the same situation. It’s no one’s fault. You’re just better at it than they are. And beating yourself up about it means just one more life gone to waste. The situation killed them — personal responsibility means squat.’

‘At what point did that line get drawn?’ Sandy asked. Staring at Vanessa, her gaze unblinking, despite knowing that it made most straights uncomfortable. ‘I know I’m not legally responsible for anything I did early on — I can’t even remember it. At that age, GIs just do what they’re told, no choice at all. But later on? Even when I knew the cause was pointless and possibly immoral? I was having doubts for three full years.’ Pause to let that sink in. ‘That’s a long, long time to keep fighting for something you’re not certain you believe in any more.’

Vanessa exhaled hard, staring out into the blinding grey veils of rain.

‘You did it for your guys, didn’t you?’

Sandy glanced down. The cold feeling was stronger than ever. And she didn’t know from where this sudden need to confide had come from, except that it seemed like the right time, and Vanessa was the first non-bureaucrat she’d been able to talk with about it. Vanessa was the closest thing to a fellow soldier she was likely to find in this entire, civilianised city.

She nodded reluctantly.

‘When there’s a lot at stake,’ she said quietly, ‘then some things just don’t bear much questioning. You know?’ Looking up, meeting Vanessa’s brown, concerned eyes. Hopefully.

Vanessa nodded. ‘I know. And you might think it’s weird, but it’s that kind of imperfect logic that gives me hope for you, Sandy. If you were emotionally and logically perfect, you’d scare the hell out of me. I don’t like people like that. The people who allow some damn concept of technical logic, or honour code, or whatever they call it, to come before their gut instincts …’ and she rapped herself hard in the midriff with her knuckles, ‘… those are the ones I’m scared of.

‘The people I like are the ones who agonise over things. Who get affected. Who care, Sandy, that’s what it comes down to. You care.’ Vanessa shivered, wrapping her arms more tightly about herself. ‘Hell, if you didn’t care, you’d be sitting inside where it’s warm, and not dragging my skinny butt out here into the cold to see what’s wrong.’

‘You didn’t have to come out,’ Sandy said, not unkindly.

‘Bullshit I didn’t. You’re in my team now. I’m your squad commander, remember?’ Sandy nodded, considering that. ‘So come inside, huh? Before some lightning bolt turns the end of your life into the ultimate anticlimax.’

Sandy smiled. It would be a damn silly way to go, after everything else. Vanessa put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed.

‘If it means anything to you, I actually like you.’ Sandy looked at her in surprise. Vanessa looked very sincere. And she felt a sudden, unfamiliar emotion and her throat was suddenly tight again, but for a different reason. ‘And it’s not just ’cause I like girls, either.’ Sandy smiled, painfully. Put a hand on Vanessa’s.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to hug a gay woman if you don’t want to,’ Vanessa said slyly, ‘but I’d recommend it.’ Sandy’s smile grew broader, and when Vanessa put her arms around her, she returned the embrace gladly enough. Vanessa was small, and not at all broad, but she didn’t feel particularly delicate either.

Sandy took a deep breath. The embrace felt nice, in the way that she’d always enjoyed such affectionate gestures, rare as they’d been. And she decided that all her concerns could wait another hour or two. Everything could wait. She let the breath out, feeling measurably better.

‘So,’ she said with forced playfulness, ‘you think I’m sexy, do ya?’

‘Don’t tease,’ Vanessa retorted against her shoulder. ‘I’m very vulnerable.’