Killswitch (14 page)

She gave Sandy a hug, then pulled back to look at her. Sandy's uniform shirt was torn on one sleeve and stained with dirt, grease from the parking-loader in the Prasad Tower, and several other things she couldn't identify herself. The boots were worse, though she had remembered to wipe her feet. Then Anita saw the cast on Sandy's left wrist and hand.

"That didn't happen on the way home," she remarked.

"No," said Sandy, "that was the first attempt on my life today. That was just guns and explosions, I can handle that. The second was the killswitch."

"I figured as much when you called," Anita said with concern. "What happened?"

Anita's friend Pushpa came out of the bedroom midway through the beginning of Sandy's explanation, then delayed them further by insisting on fetching Sandy a makani juice drink, and then both women sat and listened to the whole story.

"You're sure it was the killswitch?" Pushpa asked when she'd finished. "It knocked you unconscious, that sounds more like an infiltration key. Considering you're still here."

Her broad, brown face was creased with serious concern. Pushpa was the other half of the Raj-Bhaj partnership, both in business and life. Anita's friend since early school, Pushpa was slightly chubby, plain and understated. She now wore a dark blue salwar kameez, and her long, black hair was tied into a single plait down her back. Everything about Pushpa was sensible and practical. Between the two of them, they combined divergent personalities into a single, impressive operation that had made Raj-Bhaj Systems one of the most successful small-scale network operations in Tanusha.

"The infiltration key is a part of the system," Sandy said quietly. "Fast access, fast execution. Ari warned me about it last night. I downloaded a breaker circuit this morning just in case; it would disconnect that entire part of the network if I was infiltrated. Knocking me out in the process, but shutting down the network before the killswitch could activate."

"So you're saying that you owe your life to Ari," Pushpa said flatly.

"Yeah," Sandy sighed. "Bummer, huh?"

"Wouldn't wish it on my enemies," Pushpa replied. "He's on his way over, hope you don't mind."

"No avoiding it, I suppose." And she finally managed a faint smile at Pushpa past the deadpan. Pushpa smiled back that same faint smile reserved for private jokes. Many of which involved her old friend Ari.

"And you're certain it's someone in the government trying to kill you?" Anita pressed, far more wide-eyed about the situation than her partner.

Sandy sighed again. Ran her good hand through her dishevelled hair, and leaned back fully in her chair, stretching her stiffening spine. "I'm not certain about anything, 'Nita. Except that it's very hard to infiltrate Canas security. I can't do it, you guys can't do it ..." Pushpa gave a faint, conceding shrug ... which was a lot, coming from her. "And probably if we all pooled resources with a full dozen of Ari's old friends, we still couldn't do it. Which means it probably wasn't an infiltration."

"Someone was just following orders," Pushpa murmured, eyes momentarily distant. Then snapped back onto Sandy with intent focus. "Then what about this big blowup in the maintenance bay?"

Sandy shook her head slowly. "I'm sure I have no idea. It was certainly pretty fucking ambitious, and required inside military knowledge and contacts. So I'm thinking the Fleet's gotta be in there somewhere. It was also pretty poorly executed ... which could still be Fleet, they're into big-bang combat, none of this fancy sneaking around, it's beneath them. Mostly."

"Seems to me someone would have to be pretty angry to cause all that damage," Anita remarked. "Maybe it was more of a political statement. Maybe getting you was just a bonus for them."

"No shortage of people who hate the CDF," Pushpa agreed.

Sandy waved a dismissive hand. "So they blew my thumb off, big deal. I'm not as worried about that. It's the killswitch I can't defend myself against. If someone in the government wants me gone, and they've got that code ... well."

Anita and Pushpa's stares were sombre. As CDF second-incommand, she was a government employee. A part of the system. If people higher up the system possessed the ability to erase her from the scene through the network alone, bypassing a GI's best natural defence-her combat skills ... the silence said it all. Remaining anywhere within that system was a near-guaranteed death sentence. And until she knew which elements were trying to kill her, and why, it would be unwise in the extreme to let anyone within that system know where she was. Even loyal, trustworthy people might be monitored in ways they themselves didn't fully appreciate. Of all Sandy's inbuilt instincts, survival was foremost among them, and CDF/CSA protocols on such matters be damned.

"Buggered if I was going to let that ambulance fly me to a hospital of their choosing," she muttered then, reflecting for the first time. "Restrained and drugged. Fuck, that's what scares me-they should know me better, I don't like being restrained, least of all in a medical situation. It was like some total, outside ignoramus was giving the orders on where to take me and how to handle me ... where the fuck was Ibrahim? Or Krishnaswali? Vanessa doesn't have command authorisation or capacity to intervene there even if she wanted to ... but those two do. Couldn't they have figured what was happening, and how I'd react? The whole damn thing just feels like ... like a setup."

Now she was scaring herself. She could see from Anita's expression that she wasn't alone in that. Pushpa just looked very, very serious.

"You ..." Anita began breathlessly. "You don't think Ibrahim was involved?"

"No, I don't think that at all." She took a deep breath. Damn it, the combat-reflex wore off, and now the emotion came in a rush that threatened to reduce her to shakes. "It's just that the evidence tells me I sure as hell can't rule it out."

Ari was late, of course, arriving three hours later in a swirl of black coat and boots, darkened by brief exposure to the rain that was still falling gently outside. He strode across the wide penthouse floor toward where Sandy lay back on a reclining leather chair, hooked into various of Anita's processor systems by the slim connector cord in the back of her skull. Anita sat at her custom-designed, semicircular table, surrounded by monitor screens, a headset and goggles removing her from the immediate world.

"Hi, 'Nita!" Ari said loudly as he came over. "Don't startle, it's just me!"

"Ari," Anita replied just as loudly to hear herself above the plugs in her ears, "you could learn to be polite, you know, and ask to be admitted."

"No," said Ari, "you see, that's the first Tanushan rule of etiquette. Never ask for anything, just take it."

He bent over Sandy to kiss her on the cheek. The customary Ari Ruben worry, Sandy was surprised to see, was not evident. Just calm, businesslike concern. And he reached into his coat, pulled out an automatic pistol, and handed it to her. Sandy took it, checked the safety, dechambered a round and removed the magazine with rapid, reflex motion. It was nothing fancy-a Rohan-9, similar to what CSA Investigations used. Uplink targeting with armscomp interface and ID ... though this one's ID was blank, ready for her to imprint her own signature. She checked it all with a brief uplink, sighted along the lasertargeting, found it millimetre precise against the penthouse's far wall.

"You realise that it's a violation for a CSA or CDF agent or officer to carry any weapon without formalised signature ID?" she remarked.

"That's ... that's interesting." Ari scratched his head, a characteristic fidgety mannerism. "I actually realised, on the way over here, that all reality is the dreaming of a single subjective consciousness of which we are all a part in the broader cosmos."

"I like my realisation better," Sandy said flatly. "It's, like, relevant."

"Uninspired," Ari said with a distasteful shake of the head. "Unimaginative."

Sandy tucked the pistol into the pocket of the black jacket Anita had lent her. "Where'd you get it?"

"Why do you always want to talk shop?"

"Ari ..." Warningly.

"Sandy." Firmly. "Don't worry about it, I've got it covered. The less you know the better."

"The better for who?" Sandy muttered, gazing out at the night-lit glow of misting rain above the broad, flat bend of river. Gentle currents stirred the mirror surface, and the drizzle brushed a faint layer of static across the perfect, multicoloured reflections. Above, the overcast sky glowed shades of red, orange and white that became increasingly difficult to separate as she shifted visual spectrums. A grey overcast night was rarely grey, over Tanusha. Just as brown river waters were rarely brown, and clear, starry skies were rarely full of stars.

"Better for whom, my petal," Ari corrected, moving to look over Anita's shoulder. "Speak like a civilised person, not like a grunt."

"I am a grunt."

"Only in bed." Beneath her headset goggles, Anita grinned. Ari gave her a gentle whack on the headset. "What happened, 'Nita?"

"Whatever it was," Anita replied, "it went through her defensive barriers like butter. See here ..." she pointed to one of the display screens, "... that's all League network code. Even if you haven't upgraded for a couple of years, it's still a solid wall to any Federation infiltration basecode yet invented."

"I do upgrade," Sandy replied, gazing out at the vista of lights. "I've got my own evolution formulas, I play with things occasionally. Borrow stuff from here and there to keep it fresh, sometimes invent my own. I wasn't infiltrated because my barriers are obsolete or anything."

"And you borrow stuff from Rhian, don't you?" Ari added. Sandy knew him well enough to recognise the note of disapproval immediately.

"Rhi's fine, Ari. She gets the latest League codes, it's more compatible."

"For someone who defected from the League, you've become very unquestioning of League assistance lately."

"You're not the only suspicious person in the galaxy, Ari," Sandy replied. "I check everything."

"It had to be League code," said Anita, flipping up her goggles to gaze at the actual readout displays, abandoning the mobile viewpoint for a moment. "And it doesn't seem to have left any traces that I can see. Nothing we can give you that might give warning."

"Which means I'm vulnerable pretty much everywhere," Sandy confirmed. "If they know it's me, and can establish a two-way connection, I can get killed."

"Well ..." Anita chewed on her lip, thinking it over. "Theoretically maybe. But a breaker code that powerful can't just operate off a mobile or independent source. And GI barriers are still incredible ... I mean shit, I'm looking at your schematic here, Sandy, and considering that it's all League military-grade code supported by the most powerful neural interface known to biotech science, I'm totally screwed if I can see any way past it. Even independently designed League code work would struggle. No, in order to cut through these kind of defences so quickly, whatever that infiltration code was must have been designed on a parallel-track with your own network barriers, Sandy ... and those had to be designed at the time you were being designed. Your brain, I mean ... well, that is the only part of you that really counts. I mean, the one that makes you different from other GIs. Special. You know what I mean."

At another time, Sandy might have raised a semantic argument. "Sure," she said instead.

"You're saying," Ari said with a frown, "that she was initially designed, from conception, with a pathway integrated into the basecodes of her network defences that would allow for ... for ... instant infiltration?"

"Of a parallel-designed infiltrator, yes," Anita said with a short, certain nod.

"Don't make a poison without an antidote," Sandy said mildly. Ari and Anita just looked at her.

"Anyway," Anita resumed, "assassins can't just launch killer infiltrators blind down the network, unless they're very messy. And if these guys are political, then they can't afford to make too many mistakes, right? So they'll need to absolutely, clearly identify you. So the first thing we can do is confuse your ID signature, change your communication codes, that kind of thing. Make them wonder if it's really you, that should make them think twice.

"The other thing is that you shouldn't stay uplinked to the same connection for too long, that's just asking for them to find you. And be aware of the signatures around you-like I said, an infiltrator this powerful must operate off a powerful hardware system. Those big signatures are the ones you look out for, I doubt you'd be in danger from smaller systems. But if connecting to a smaller system, make sure it's not proxy-rigged or otherwise location-tracked to another, foreign system. That could just be bait, to lure you out."

"Or," said Ari, "you could hark back to the many, many centuries of human civilisation when people didn't have direct neural uplinks, and just not use them. People did manage it, I'm told, for entire lifetimes without going insane or withering mentally away ..

"They're lying," Anita retorted. "History's always written to make past ages look quaint and romantic. Life without neural uplinks must have sucked, Ari. You of all people should know that."

Pushpa emerged from the bedroom, pushing loose straggles of dark hair back into place. "Hi, Am"

"Hi, Push. What's the neighbourhood look like?"

"No sign of it yet, news has yet to hit the media." She folded her arms, stopping at Ari's side to gaze at the hemispherical arrangement of screens. "I'd say you've got three hours, maybe four, tops. That long for the media to do their research, and then go basically nuts."

Ari looked concerned. "Why so soon? What's out there?"

"Independent reports of some commotion up the top of Prasad Tower," said Pushpa, with a critical eye at Sandy's reclining seat before the broad windows. "Some security guards chasing a blonde woman into the carpark mechanism."

All three of them raised their eyebrows at Sandy. Sandy gazed out the windows.

"Then someone several net-loggers presumed to be the same woman leaping from the top of the carpark exit," Pushpa continued. Eyebrows raised higher. "And then I did a broad sweep that found someone chatting about, like "holy shit, this person fell out of the sky and landed on our express elevator coming down the side of Prasad Tower this evening! Then jumped off and ran away as we reached the ground!" Several more clever people appeared to be putting two and two together. Straight humans don't jump out of towers very often. And live, anyway."