She took the cruiser home at 5 PM that evening-very early by any senior official’s standards. Stuck at her desk, all operational readiness procedures on hold due to the investigation and recovery, she’d come to feel like a spare wheel, fending off endless queries and expressions of relief from fellow soldiers that she was okay. Which was nice, on the one hand … especially the flowers, the box of chocolates, and the three bottles of wine and scotch various of her friends had found time to have sent to her office. It was nice to have people in the CDF who genuinely cared for her as a person, and to hell with her rank or other political circumstances. But sitting there all day while the CSA investigators insisted she couldn’t continue her usual routine of field tests, training and integration exercises until they’d swept all the equipment bays for clues, and constantly bombarded by condolences for a tragedy that hadn’t actually happened (hey guys, look, I’m actually still alive) had finally gotten to her. Well, she hadn’t had an early working day for over a month now, so she figured she was due.
Canas was nearly ten minutes flight time from HQ. It presented her with her first truly free time to think, as the afternoon sun burned bright yellow in the west, and lit the glass sides of passing towers to blazing, vertical spires of light. She felt, Sandy decided, somewhat uneasy. Tense. Moody, even. The cast about her left wrist and thumb pressed hard upon the control wheel, her partially immobile fingers unable to manipulate the buttons. Bullets ripping past. The roaring thunder of high-velocity steel. It had been very close. She’d had innumerable close calls before, at various stages of her life. Most of those she’d written off as professional hazards, and simply dealt with. This one felt different. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting from this life. Her new life. And they’d gone after her, specifically, because she was Sandy, and not simply another soldier in a war zone. This one was personal, and she found that profoundly unsettling.
And why the hell hadn’t they used the killswitch? It didn’t make sense, first Ari’s warnings that someone was after her, and the related information about the killswitch … or she’d assumed it was related. Certainly Ari had. Maybe whoever had made this attempt hadn’t known about the killswitch. Or hadn’t had the capability to access it. Or maybe, crazy as the thought had seemed when she’d first had it, this was just a warning? It was poorly organised for one thing-her moment of greatest weakness had been directly after the first mineblast, when she’d been surprised, unbalanced and blown off her feet. But there’d been only one AMAPS in a position to directly benefitit had missed, and from there she was always a good chance, being what she was, and having friends in close proximity. The rest had been strung out, like an obstacle course. Although a significant rearrangement of assets in the bay would have raised suspicions. Maybe there hadn’t been a choice. So why take that option then, with those inadequacies? Surely they must have guessed that any ambush attempt on Cassandra Kresnov had to be almost completely watertight to have a reasonable chance of success? Maybe this one hadn’t been expected to succeed. After all, the slick nature of the infiltration, and the sloppy execution of the actual ambush, simply failed to mesh.
It would surely all make more sense if she had some idea who had tried to kill her. There were of course the usual stock of Tanushan religious radicals who had never ceased their strenuous objections to the presence of a murderous, soulless GI in any position within the CDF, let alone a senior commander. But clearly An was right in saying this attempt had taken a great degree of inside knowledge-knowledge such radicals were highly unlikely to possess.
More likely were the pro-Earth factions, either indigenous or imported, who saw her as the embodiment of all that was wrong with the direction Callay, and therefore the Federation, was now headed in. But then why remove her? Surely her presence actually helped such people, at some level, because it made their reformist, progressive enemies look bad. Kill the GI, and the pro-Earth conservatives would only make themselves look bad, and lend sympathy to their enemies. Something there didn’t make sense.
Then there were two other, shadowy options-Federal Intelligence Agency operatives, or the League’s ISO, the Internal Security Organisation. The FIA, of course, was undergoing a massive overhaul after the calamitous directorship split of the previous year. Half the senior directors still had not been found, mysteriously vanished into space, it seemed … or being sheltered by those with an equal interest in keeping certain skeletons firmly in their closets. The rest were in closed trial on Earth, much to the disgust of the collective Federation body politic, and even some on Earth in famously discontent nations like the USA, who demanded all trials be made public. Many of the FIA simply hated GIs. Many no doubt remained who suspected her of devious power trips, having gained the Neiland Administration’s trust. Probably they’d reckon they were doing Callay and the Federa tion a favour in seeing her dead. But it seemed an awful lot of effort, considering the FIA’s other problems.
Remnants of the old League government seemed a far more likely bet. Sandy knew where many of their skeletons were buried, and they doubtless knew that she knew. Probably they’d know she had a good friend who worked for the League Embassy in Tanusha, an Embassy that was, of course, run by the new, reformist League administration, with its comparatively cordial relations with the Federation. Probably the old guard suspected that she knew things that could damage them, if and when the new administration found out. But she’d already imparted many such secrets, and the new administration had been in power for nearly three years now … it only seemed new, given where the League had come from, politically speaking. Why wait this long to silence her, after the damage had surely already been done? Unless there were other political machinations in the offing, back Leagueside? Perhaps someone from the Embassy would soon come calling with some new questions for her consideration.
Sandy swore lightly to herself, steering gently to remain within the computer-generated skylane through the towers. Further ahead the afternoon thunderstorm was looming, massive thunderheads towering ten thousand metres tall, gleaming a bright shade of yellow in the afternoon sun and regularly flashing blue as lightning discharged in staccato succession, like gunfire on a colossal scale.
To make it all worse, she’d had no one to really talk to all day. Rhian had offered to stay around, but Sandy had insisted she make the most of her day off, and so Rhian had gone. Doubtless many had considered that strange, considering Rhian had also faced mortal threat … but Sandy knew her old comrade well, and knew it would take more than a little exchange of fire to dampen Rhian Chu’s spirits. And of course as third-in-command, Vanessa’s role was more concerned with personnel than Sandy’s, and so she’d been very busy reorganising duty rosters and training schedules in the new chaos that had descended, and hadn’t shown any sign of wanting to talk to her anyway, in their few brief contacts of the day. Sandy knew Vanessa was upset at something, but she still failed to understand the reaction. She was the one who’d nearly been killed, after all. And An, of course, had been out of contact all day.
An. The thought brought on a sigh. Sometimes it seemed that they just couldn’t stop arguing. It was unexpected. She’d always assumed that a good, long-term, sexual relationship meant less arguments, not more. But then, as Vanessa had countered when they’d discussed it, who else was going to sustain her interest over the long term? Someone who agreed with her all the time? A ‘yes man’? She’d had enough of that back in the League, from soldiers under her command, or non-GI officers under instruction not to contradict her unless absolutely necessary. And she’d found that boring and disappointing in the extreme.
As Vanessa said, she loved a good argument. It was one of the major things she could get, here in her new civilian life, that her old League life had not provided. She found differences of opinion stimulating. She loved learning new things, even if they contradicted old understandings. And An’s ability to surprise her, to make her challenge her previous assumptions, and to simply make her laugh, was probably the primary reason she found his company so stimulating. That, of course, and that devilishly sexy crooked grin that he used knowingly upon her to predictable effect. Yes, they clashed frequently on matters of ideology and style. It was sometimes frustrating. But then, she simply didn’t see how it was possible to have all the good things, without also taking her fair share of the bad.
An absent-minded skip across her uplink monitors shot back a mass of highlighted points … there was a massive demonstration prepared for tonight in Velan district against the Fleet blockade, organisers were expecting at least half a million protesters. Secretary General Benale had held a major press conference on his tour of Tanusha, urging the Grand Council to reject the ‘undue influence and interference of the Neiland Administration.’ Fleet Admiral Duong had made a brief statement, rejecting calls from extremist Earth factions for the blockade to become official Earth policy until Callay and its supporters in the Federation abandoned their ‘ultra-progressive manipulations of the Grand Council apparatus.’
‘The Fleet is not blockading Callay,’ Duong now said as she opened that file, and watched his stern, shaven-headed visage upon her internal vision. The rank on the Fleet uniform collar was plainly evident, shiny badges gleaming against the stark metal backdrop of what Sandy guessed were his private quarters. The Fleet Admiral’s eyes were the hard, calculating eyes of a man who had seen many battles, and lost many friends, yet had only had his convictions strengthened by his experiences. Sandy had met such people often, and distrusted them always. Her own wartime experiences, of course, had caused her precisely the opposite reaction. ‘This is a security operation, no more, no less. These are precarious times. The centre of power in the Federation is being relocated, and reconstructed. This is a time of great vulnerability for us all. The Federation constitution tasks the Fleet with the protection of the Federation and all its assets. That is what we shall do.’
Sandy considered Duong’s hard, unwavering eyes as the cruiser’s navcomp took her into a gradual descent, and wondered at what thoughts might be passing through the mind behind them. A determination to uphold Earth’s preeminence within the Federation, certainly. A distrust of the selfish, fractious colonies. But also, apparently, a sense of moderation, backed by the faultless discipline of a lifetime soldier. Surely he could not be enjoying his present role. He’d made himself into a politician, a lightning rod for the opinions of Earthbased extremists and colonial progressives alike. And the word was that he did not get along with Secretary General Benale at all, whatever their apparent political similarities.
She landed the cruiser on the yellow-striped transition zone inside the tall, stone wall that marked the outer perimeter of the Canas high security zone. The cruiser came down in a gentle hover-and-bump of heavy tires, Sandy largely ignoring the process to watch some children playing football on the green field beside the high wall and transition zone.
Canas security was in the house when she made her way up from the basement parking garage. She waited while they conducted their final sweeps-uniformed men and women who specialised in network security, and were tasked with the upkeep of all security systems within the Canas area. In the kitchen she discovered Jean-Pierre had wedged himself on top of the cupboards near where the stairs ascended to the upper floor, gazing wide-eyed at all the strangers invading his house. He recognised Sandy and began a relieved, plaintive chirping.
‘Just wait,’ Sandy told him, pouring herself a makani juice first, then climbing the stairs halfway to stand level with the kitchen cupboards. She leaned over the rails, extending her free left arm, disregarding the wrist cast. Jean-Pierre gathered his supple limbs, gave a coiling wriggle, then leaped across the intervening space and onto the extended arm, little hand/feet grasping as tightly as millions of years of tree-climbing evolution had intended. Sandy held him comfortably against her shoulder, heading back down the stairs and sipping the drink from her other hand, wincing as Jean-Pierre tried to clean out the inside of her left ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ said a security tech at the bottom of the stairs, gear packed in hand boxes, evidently headed for the door. ‘We didn’t mean to scare him, he just ran up there in a flash and wouldn’t come down.’
‘He’s not a very courageous animal,’ Sandy said with a smile.
‘That was a pretty impressive leap,’ countered the tech, with a glance up at the gap between cupboards and stairway.
‘Oh, he’s fine jumping sideways,’ said Sandy. ‘They do that all the time in treetops. He just doesn’t like jumping down. Falling’s against his instincts, I guess.’ As Jean-Pierre twisted about to fix the security tech with a reproachful, golden-eyed gaze. ‘Say hello to the nice security man,’ Sandy instructed the bunbun. ‘I won’t have xenophobic tree climbers in my house.’
The tech extended a hand. Jean-Pierre grasped cautiously at a finger, and sniffed. The man smiled, looking slightly puzzled, and surprised, from the bunbun and back to Sandy. Sandy sipped her drink, and pretended not to notice. Nearly everyone who met her for the first time in a nonmilitary setting gave her that look. Particularly when she was holding and talking to a cute, furry household pet.
The security team departed and Sandy let Jean-Pierre out into the garden, where a number of tall trees soared from the lush undergrowth, and gave him plenty of exercise and freedom. She watched for a moment on the front decking as the nimble, furry shape clambered quickly up a tall trunk with precise holds and bounds. He could run away any time, certainly there were plenty of wild bunbuns of various species throughout Tanusha … no doubt Jean-Pierre met and associated with them often, particularly the lady bunbuns. But bunbuns were highly territorial creatures, and grew very attached to their place of birth and home. Like most well-treated, domesticated bunbuns, he came home every time.
Ironic, she reflected as she climbed the stairs to her room with her drink and a slice of fruitcake from the fridge, that it was easier to domesticate smarter animals as pets than stupid ones. Unless you counted livestock or fish as pets, which she didn’t, personally. Livestock only licked your face if they found something edible on it. Real pets did it because they liked you. Poor bunbuns, though. Just smart enough to stay, but not smart enough to leave. Like GIs, she’d said to Rhian, once. But Rhian, of course, hadn’t gotten the joke.
Consciousness was elusive. She drifted beneath the surface of lucidity, gazing at the ripples and roaring foam … like waves, viewed from below. Perhaps she was at the beach. At Rajadesh, or one of her other favourite surf spots. And if she reached with one foot, and found the sandy bottom firm against her toes, she could push off and break the surface into the sunlight and clean, fresh breeze above. And one of the regulars would be cruising past … maybe Peytr Lipinski, or maybe Tabo with his round, cheerful black face, and compliment her on a nice ride, and wonder if perhaps she’d come to drinks at the beach party they were having that weekend …
A high, cruising whine above the crashing surf. The sand felt unstable … a bump of turbulence. Memories triggered, reflexes … damn, she was dreaming. She wasn’t on a beach at all. The realisation came as a mighty disappointment. Above her swam the lucid surface, a refraction of sunlight through a watery depth. The cruising whine remained steady. Then voices, and the noise of someone moving equipment. A rattle and bump of turbulence, disorienting. She knew that feeling well enough. She was airborne.
Finally her eyes flicked open. She was staring at a low ceiling. Her vision was clear enough, thankfully, and when she moved her eyes, she could see medical equipment to her side. There was someone over there, someone wearing a medico’s white coat, adjusting equipment. Gravity tilted once more, g-forces pressing faintly against her back. So she was lying down. In an airborne vehicle. Surrounded by medical equipment. Aerial ambulance. Someone must have tried to kill her again. But the most disturbing part was that she couldn’t remember a thing.
‘What happened?’ Her voice was small, yet clear enough. That was good, she knew from past experience that when the meds shot her too full of drugs, her voice was usually the first thing to go.
‘Commander?’ There was a woman leaning over her, in the whitecoated uniform of a Tanushan ambulance officer. ‘Commander Kresnov, how do you feel?’
‘I don’t know yet. Tell me what happened.’ Jean-Pierre. Abruptly she felt worried for him, and was relieved to remember letting him run up the tree in the backyard-twenty metres over the house, he should be fine.
‘We’re not sure what happened, Commander. Canas security alerted us after they responded to a personal alarm from your room. We got there within five minutes of their call, Canas security said they’d found you passed out on the floor. They said you’d been subjected to some kind of network attack, some foreign assault virus had penetrated your barrier networks and immobilised you. They physically disabled the house’s network to disconnect it.’
There had been Canas security personnel in her house, Sandy remembered. One had let Jean-Pierre sniff his fingers. She’d checked out the house’s network herself many times, as had some of the brightest brains in the Tanushan techno underground, who knew where all the hidden pitfalls and shortcuts were located. So it stood to reason that whoever had tried to kill her had done so through the agency of Canas security … who guarded all the most important people in Tanusha, and were invulnerable to infiltration. Sandy moved her arm, and found that it was restrained.
‘Why am I restrained?’
‘I’m sorry, Commander, Canas security said you were thrashing around some when they found you. I didn’t particularly want to share the back of an ambulance with a thrashing GI.’
‘Fair enough. I’m okay now, let me out.’
‘I’m really sorry but regulations won’t let me. I’ve been instructed from the top, they say not to risk it.’
Sandy wasn’t sure of her own reaction. The calm felt decidedly like combat-reflex. The surreal dislocation was probably drugs. God knew what they’d shot her full of. All she knew for sure was that she didn’t want to ask anything more that might alarm anyone. She had a mental checklist in her head, now, and she needed to check off some items. And she realised, in that slow, unaccustomed state, that she wasn’t receiving any data through her uplinks. That was another question she didn’t want to ask. Maybe they’d think she was getting upset.
‘We’re going to CDF compound, aren’t we?’ As calmly as she knew how to ask.
‘Um, no …’ the ambulance officer was now reaching for something, adjusting it out of her field of vision, ‘. . . we’re headed to the Lloyd Hospital. They have the best biotech surgeons there, they’ll know best how to make sure you’re okay.’
‘I think it’s a better idea to get back to Doctor Obago at the CDF. He’s my regular physician. He’s gotten to know my medical situation better than anyone else in the last two years.’
‘We’ll definitely consult with Doctor Obago,’ the ambulance officer reassured her. And lifted into sight the implement she’d been adjusting-a hypospray, filled with fluid.
‘I’m fine,’ Sandy said, her voice hardening. ‘I don’t need another damn shot.’
‘No offence, Commander, but I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘You’re very self-assured for a simple ambulance tech.’ She tensed her arm, seeking critical muscle function, and felt only the faint twinge of reaction. The arm remained loose, the restraints hard and firm about her forearms, synthetic straps, far harder than steel. The ambulance officer smiled.
‘Trust me, Commander, I’m uplinked to some very knowledgeable experts in the field of GI physiology. The shot is prescription.’
Sandy focused inward, as hard as she could. Remembering what muscular tension felt like. The secret was not tension. It was to relax … relax … She breathed deeply, closing her eyes. The officer’s hypospray was a small, low-powered pocket size. It gave her a little extra time.
The ambulance officer touched the hypospray to Sandy’s bare arm, and Sandy felt the faint sting of pressure. Then a puzzled pause from the officer.
‘Hmm, that’s funny. It’s not going in.’ Another faint pop against her skin. ‘It’s leaving a mark on your skin, so the hypo’s not broken. Very funny.’
‘Hysterical,’ Sandy agreed. Tension erupted in her right arm, and she unleashed it with a bang! that shook the stretcher as the arm restraint tore clear away. And caught the startled ambulance officer by the front of the white coat. ‘Stick me with that again and I’ll impale you with it.’
Bang! as she ripped her left arm free, releasing the stunned medico to reach for the cord at the back of her head and rip it clear … barrier restrictions evaporated, and suddenly the rush of network data flooded her mind in graphic, three-dimensional relief. A picture of their present location-they were almost precisely over central Tanusha, where Shi- nobu district blended into the broad Balikpapan Nature Park. Lloyd Hospital was in central-southern Tanusha, still five minutes’ flight time away. Sandy sat up to undo the straps about her ankles.
‘Commander, what the hell are you doing?’ The medico had flattened herself warily to the side of the ambulance, eyes wide with alarm. Sandy ignored her, finished with the ankle straps and moved to the reinforced window at the front of the cabin, where the ambulance driver was staring back at them with some alarm, speaking rapidly into a headset microphone. Sandy hit the window with an open palm to disperse the impact of the strike, and it crashed explosively inwards as the driver ducked to his side. The resulting gap was large enough to crawl through, which she did, headfirst, and climbed into the empty passenger seat alongside the driver.
‘Commander!’ The driver was clearly alarmed. ‘We’re just on our way to hospital, what do you think you’re doing?’ As Sandy stuffed the fractured dividing window back through the rear frame where it wouldn’t get in the way. ‘There’s no need for any alarm, Commander … I think that latest attack might have disoriented you in some way. Please try to think on what you’re doing.’
‘Relinquish the controls,’ Sandy told him, uplinking to the ambulance’s CPU and scanning its projected course ahead toward the hospital. The Tanushan central traffic network kept a careful eye on all emergency vehicles, had them priority-registered on the airborne net …
‘I’m sorry, Commander, but I just can’t do that.’
Sandy hit him, the heel of her palm to the thick part of the skull above the ear. The driver lurched sideways against his belt, then slumped in his seat. Sandy felt for pulse and breathing as the medico in the back made a startled exclamation of shock and fear.
‘Check on him,’ Sandy told the woman. ‘I didn’t hit him hard, make sure he’s not hurt.’ Her uplinks accessed the navcomp, overriding the old course and setting in a new one. Traffic Central tried to query, and she overrode it with a CSA priority code. The medico leaned through the open rear window frame, feeling at the driver’s throat and skull, stopping his head from rolling about.
‘Commander,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘I think you’re panicking. You should stop and think for just a moment. Whatever you think is going on here, I assure you, there’s nothing …’
‘Just shut up or I’ll hit you too,’ Sandy told her. Truthfully she didn’t like hitting straights if at all avoidable-the risk of a brainsplattered windshield was only theoretical, and in practice a hell of a lot less than that. But whatever the remote odds of a momentary loss of muscle control, she still didn’t like doing it. The next fork in the new trajectory arrived, and Sandy steered the ambulance into a gentle left-hand bank with the passenger seat controls, following the string of aligned rectangles that projected up on the front windshield. The new course swung toward what the navcomp identified as Prasad Tower, a four hundred metre tall mega-high-rise that soared above the surrounding clutter of mid-sized towers in central Chattisgarh.
‘Hello 875,’ came the ambulance controller’s voice over the cockpit speakers, ‘we read that you have altered course, please explain. ‘
Sandy ignored it, uplinking instead to the Prasad Tower’s presence on the network, studying its layout, its security features, its occupation demographics. The tower’s top levels were occupied by a VIP parking bay, beneath the rooftop landing pads for flyers and other larger airborne vehicles. A query light blinked upon the ambulance’s com system. Another pressed upon her inner consciousness, her uplink software immediately tracing its origin back to somewhere within the CSA. She ignored that too. Lights blinked upon Prasad Tower’s landing pads, the occasional vehicle arriving or leaving from the parking bay beneath … early evening traffic, late workers headed home. About half of the tower’s massive glass sides were illuminated from within.
Her monitoring software informed her of nearby government vehicle trajectories altering toward her. She counted four. The nearest was less than a minute away. The tower’s landing control had her slotted now, the windshield display rectangles stretching ahead to match up with the broad opening in the tower’s side. Sandy began the landing cycle, automated systems deploying wheels, repulsor engines throbbing as their velocity slowed … and then the ambulance passed into a floodlit cavern of ferrocrete, the landing systems directing the vehicle to a yellow-striped temporary park beside the main conveyer belt park, as was procedure for emergency vehicles. Wheels touched and she shut down the engines, ducked under the unfolding side door, and out into the echoing, gusty bay. She realised she was still wearing her CDF uniform, and hastily unbuttoned the jacket, tossing it onto the passenger seat.
She ran swiftly toward the through-passage ahead as another cruiser came in for a landing behind, its lights blazing her running shadow large upon the opposing wall. Then into the broad ferrocrete passage, hearing the clank and hum of the parking bay mechanism echoing through the walls above the throbbing whine of aircars. Her uplinks informed her that the next cruiser approaching the entrance bay was an official, black-flagged government vehicle, the exact identity of which remained ominously blank despite her probes.
The passage opened onto the exit apron on the other side of the building. A number of people were waiting on the raised footpath alongside the vehicle conveyer belt, finding their transport waiting in line, nose to tail. A pedestrian crossing light blinked red, advising her not to cross the apron … Sandy ignored it, ducking and running past the departing end of a cruiser that lifted from the conveyer belt, hovering its way toward the exit. The repulsor field prickled her skin and made hair stand on end as she ran onto the pedestrian platform, and up the adjoining rampway that descended to the occupied, working floors below. It was a long platform, and she had barely started down it when a pair of dark-uniformed security guards appeared at the far end, stopped, and stared at her.
Sandy swore, reversed course and ran back up the ramp, shoving past several surprised suits as she did a U-turn and ran back along the line of office workers waiting for their cars. People stared at her as she passed, ducking several times as people moved to their vehicles on the conveyor belt, doors gull-winging upwards to let them in. The additional commotion in her wake told her that the two security guards were after her at speed. The waiting platform ended, and Sandy leaped down onto the conveyor belt, past the front of one emerging cruiser, then into the dark, mechanical cavern within. Above the entrance, clearly written in bright, red letters were the words: DANGER! MACHINERY IN OPERATION. DO NOT ENTER.
There was no room on the conveyor to squeeze past the next cruiser, so Sandy ran over the top of it, ducking beneath the low overhead as she did. Her vision spectrum-flashed on combat mode, making out the descending platforms ahead that loaded the cruisers onto the conveyor, and the various laser measurement beams that criss-crossed the passage, monitoring the position of all objects moving within. The next platform descended into the unloading mouth, a sleek, expensive cruiser resting within. The mechanism clanged to a stop as she approached, walking to hold a steady place upon the conveyor, and glancing back to see if the security guards were following. And restrained a faint smile to see the two guards waiting until the last cruiser had cleared the conveyor mouth before entering, so as not to stomp bootprints over its shiny windshield. But then, she pondered, private security were locally employed, and would have to answer to some stiff-necked suit in management for such infringements.
Another mechanism whined, and the cruiser on the lift platform rolled gently forward, comfortably matching velocity with the conveyor belt. Sandy walked up on the bonnet of that one too, rolling gently over the roof, then hurdling the rear field generators with one hand. Behind, the two security men edged past the tail of the previous cruiser and came running up the conveyor belt toward her. Sandy stepped onto the empty aircar cradle just as it thumped into motion once more, descending to allow the next cruiser above to slot into place. The two security guards arrived too late, and she spared them a sardonic wave. From the astonished looks on their faces, she reckoned they recognised her-no surprise that, there weren’t many people in Tanusha who didn’t these days.
‘Ma’am?’ one of them shouted to her above the whining mechanism. ‘Ma’am, what the hell’s going on?’ Then the platform descended into total blackness. Even past the deadening calm of combatreflex, she was touched. ‘Ma’am,’ he’d called her-an anachronistic expression that had somehow lingered in Tanusha when it had long since died on other Federation worlds.
The platform then emerged into the main storage facility of the parking level, and moved sideways along its tracks. The tail ends of aircars were passing, each locked into a storage cradle. Sandy peered into the dull machine-light, eyes adjusting to the gloom of a totally automated environment where human sight was not required. The entire broad space, comprising perhaps three standard building storeys and all the space to the opposing wall, was storage racks for aircars. The huge space, echoing with shrill mechanical whines and clanks, was spanned by a series of vertical racks, like those slotted into an oldfashioned beehive. Along each of these racks were a series of vertical mechanisms-a chain of aircar cradles that rotated when one of its occupants was loaded or unloaded, cruisers descending on one side, and ascending on the other. At the very top, a cruiser would be deposited onto separate platforms that ran along the length of the racks.
Even as Sandy pondered the design, her own sideways-moving platform slowed to a halt, locking into place. There, a cruiser was waiting, its owner having called it up. The separate, twin conveyors upon which the cruiser’s tyres rested began to move in unison with those on Sandy’s platform. Sandy climbed onto the advancing bonnet of the aircar, rolled across its roof, and dropped onto the carrier platform atop the main storage rack. Its cruiser unloaded, the carrier platform took off along its railings, building shortly to a considerable velocity.
Ahead, Sandy saw several rotary chains in motion, and fell flat as the platform whizzed beneath several cruisers being rotated directly overhead, with a clearance of barely half a metre. It whined to a halt, in line with a new rotary chain that cranked empty cradles up one side, overhead, and then down the other … Sandy got up, crouching, and glanced around. Along this railing, her present platform only went halfway-at the other end another platform trundled away from her to the far wall, laden with another cruiser. She spared a glance down at the tracks themselves-they were just side rails housing magnetic runners. Directly beneath was empty space, a straight drop of three storeys.
Abruptly, the lights came on, a massive, staggered flickering of several hundred fluoros that darted randomly across the broad ceiling. The next cradle in her platform’s chain was laden, the cradle’s mechanical arms holding a cruiser in a careful grip, moving sideways now and threatening to push her off the platform. Sandy leaped, and grasped the empty cradle arms of the next chain along, swinging above empty space. Hearing at maximum enhancement, she could hear voices above the crashing, whining mechanical echoes. Location was difficult, but she figured they were looking for her. The floor would be an obvious location. And the walls. Which meant that the best way to stay out of sight …
She swung gently forward, and dropped between three sets of empty cradle arms to land on a cruiser’s roof. From there, another cruiser was directly in line, and she leaped to that one, then through a gap between two more. The next chain along was moving down and so she waited until the next occupied cradle came level, and leaped gently onto that rooftop. A fast glance ahead at the approaching side wall showed a maintenance walkway halfway up, with a security guard moving slowly along, peering intently. At this angle, she was exposed, and flattened herself spread-eagled to the cruiser’s smooth rooftop, unwilling to move as the rotary chain took her toward the ferrocrete floor. Her cradle reached the bottom of the rack, went sideways one car-width, and stopped.
Sandy nearly swore. To one side now, close enough to be heard above the echoing racket of machinery, came the sound of boots on ferrocrete. The cruiser she was lying on was now suspended barely a metre off the ground, which put her rooftop at barely two and a half. To her left, then, she could see the security guard’s head, looking one way and then the other as he made careful progress up the aisle between racks, gazing up at the towering, tight-packed aircar berths above. Damn it, if he turned around at just the wrong moment, and looked at just the right place …
An overhead whine made her look up. Directly beneath the giant, three-storey rack, she could now stare straight up the inside, between ascending and descending walls of occupied and empty cradles. And directly overhead ran the central platform, headed now back to the wall with a newly loaded cruiser bound for downstairs. In three seconds it would pass directly overhead. Three storeys …
Swiftly and silently, she swung her feet beneath her, achieved firm purchase atop the cruiser’s roof, and assumed a tight, bunching crouch. Leg muscles at optimum, Sandy fixed her eyes directly on the underside of the platform, and snapped her legs straight with a controlled release of accumulated tension. She shot straight upward between the two walls of aircars, and found she was approaching too fast. Twisted in mid-air to get a knee up as well, and hit the underside of the moving platform with a hard thud, hands grasping at the rim of an underside crossbeam, then swinging freely beneath as the platform continued upon its way toward the far wall. Leaping upwards was always an imprecise art, even for a GI. Particularly having been pumped full of drugs the names and effects of which she did not know … it was easy to miscalculate the degree of muscular tension required to rendezvous with a singular point in space precisely. Although she figured her limit to be about six storeys. Theoretically, she had enough power in her legs to leap high enough to catch low-flying aircraft, if she could hit them. Midaltitude flying aircraft, even-her own body weight was insignificant beside the potential energy in the quantity of synth-alloy-myomer she had in her thighs and calves. But the physics of leverage meant that whatever their power, her legs were simply too short to impart the required velocity on her body to clear higher than thirty or forty metres.
After all, she reckoned with a faint, ironic smile as she hung beneath the advancing platform, structurally, at least, she was only human.
The platform stopped at the wall where the adjoining platforms ran sideways, and began transferring that cruiser on board. To her left as she hung, Sandy could see directly along the midlevel engineering walkway, and several security guards gazing out over the cluttered scene. The nearest was not more than six metres away. She hand-overhanded her way to the side of the platform furthest from him, and quickly hauled herself up. She stayed flat, and rolled under the cruiser on its new platform, peering out between its wheels as the new platform took off sideways, then began descending again toward the ferrocrete floor. Again the descent took her within a few metres of another security guard at floor level, then blackness.
Finally the platform thumped to a halt, light now spilling in from the other end, and the cruiser moved forward onto the final conveyor belt, and its waiting owner in the parking bay beyond. Sandy simply crawled forward, keeping the cruiser above her, and lay flat upon the conveyor belt as it passed out of the ferrocrete passage and into the harsh-lit bay beyond. She could see no security guards or suspiciously waiting suits, just the usual row of commuters waiting on the platform beside the conveyor for their rides to arrive. A further uplink scan of the Prasad Tower vicinity showed her a state of yellow security alert, several orbiting aircars and some seriously encrypted transmission traffic from various unidentifiable sources.
The conveyor belt was segmented, of course, and her own segment cruised up behind two more aircars ahead into which passengers were currently climbing. Sandy performed a quick roll beneath the aircar ahead, hearing and feeling the throbbing whine overhead, and the prickling sensation through her hair … the repulsor field wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, but then they’d said that often enough about a lot of supposedly safe, advanced technology over the centuries. She rolled to alongside the raised commuter platform, and ducked onward at a low run. Those waiting all appeared to be gazing in the other direction, waiting for their vehicles to emerge along the conveyor, and no one seemed to notice her sudden appearance.
Sandy ran straight for the exit … if she was lucky, one of the government suits would have left his cruiser at an emergency parking bay, all ready to be digitally hotwired. If she was really lucky, maybe a CSA cruiser-she still had plenty of CSA codes available, and knew numerous ways into that network undetected. A commuter cruiser took off past her with a throbbing, low pitched howl, headed for the broad, rectangular opening that led to open air, nearly half a kilometre straight up. On the painted stripes beneath one side wall, Sandy saw there was indeed a government cruiser sitting, and ran to its door.
‘Commander!’
She spun, and found a man in a dark CSA suit just ten metres behind, pistol in hand. Anil Chandaram, a familiar enough face around Investigations. One of their seniors, in fact. He was frowning at her now, with no small degree of puzzlement, a gusting warm wind tossing at his hair, his suit jacket billowing out behind him. ‘Commander … what the hell are you doing? Who are you running from? I’m your friend!’
Past the deadening combat-reflex, Sandy found herself biting back a curse. Well, it had been a good try. And she had to try, if she wanted to live beyond the next couple of days. Something on the Tower schematic caught her mental eye. Multiple express elevator shafts, running straight up and down to one side of the opening outside. Another cruiser throbbed past, accelerating slowly toward the opening, running lights flashing off the walls.
‘Anil!’ she shouted above the noise. ‘Don’t follow me! They’ll say I’ve gone nuts! I haven’t, I’m entirely sane and I know exactly what I’m doing! Tell them that! Look into my eyes now, and then you tell them that, when you see them.’
Chandaram stared at her, orange running lights flashing across his handsome brown face, frowning disconcertedly.
‘Commander, I don’t …’
Sandy turned and ran, straight for the exit. For a brief moment, the vast expanse of nighttime Tanusha sprawled before her, a carpet of multicoloured lights and towers, the horizon stained a brilliant orange against the black of the sky, and below, the clustered surrounding towers that stretched up the flanks of the soaring Prasad Tower … the lip of the exit arrived, and she leaped, straight off the edge.
In that time-slowed moment, the first thought that came was how amazingly beautiful it was-the maze of streets between towers below, brilliantly lit with neon and traffic. Then the tower’s side began rushing past, and the wind began tearing at her face and clothes, and she realised that even a GI, and particularly one with long-standing, deep-seated structural damage like her, was going to get hurt hitting the ground at terminal velocity. The express elevators ran down the side of the building to her left … she folded her arms back, and leaned toward that direction as the roaring wind grew to a deafening gale, and the tower side began rushing past at truly alarming velocity.
One elevator car was rushing by even now, too close, and she went hurtling past it, angling her trajectory to come in closer to the speeding tower wall. The second was descending below-they went from top storey to bottom at over a hundred kilometres per hour, she knew, and were something of an attraction for joyriders who enjoyed the half-gravity sensation on the way down. But now it was getting close alarmingly fast. As was the ground.
She spread-eagled, catching as much of the wind as she could with her arms and legs, trailing the fingertips of her left hand along the wall at over three hundred kilometres per hour and feeling the burning friction. An updraft almost threw her balance at the last moment, but she steadied with a plunging lurch like a falling leaf, and crashed onto the dome-top of the racing elevator with an almighty bang! as her hands caught hold and her skull smacked a melon-sized crater in the glass. Within the elevator, about twelve passengers yelped and leaped, staring upwards in fright. Her left, cast-bound hand slipped, and for a moment she dangled right-handed from her fingerhold on the upper frame. Still the wind roared, but without the previous intensity, as the descending capsule overtook several slower elevators on the parallel lanes. Sandy gave a calculated heave with her right arm, throwing herself upward and spinning about so as to seat herself atop the hurtling car, and gazed down at the broad, paved thoroughfare that led to the atrium entrance below. To her left, beyond the edge of that paving, were lush green gardens, split by footpaths and park benches.
The elevator began to slow, the wind gradually lessening as ground features became clear, people walking, shadows cast by a multitude of lights, groundcars passing on the near street, a queue outside a nearby nightclub. Sandy gathered her feet beneath her, calculated distances, and leaped hard outward. For a short distance, she soared, then crashed through thick tree-fern leaves, snapped a branch, then crashlanded in bushes, rolling as best she could in the entanglement. Struggled her way out to a lamp-lit footpath through the greenery and ran, dodging past a couple of startled pedestrians on the path, thankful that Tanushans, like city dwellers everywhere, almost never looked up.
