Originator (3 page)

“Just hold a moment,” she said, as tacnet informed her of known FedInt cruisers heading on suspicious courses near Subianto. “Hello, Cody, could you and a few friends stabilise this for me? It's very important.”

“Of course, Cassandra,” replied the AI. Cody was an old friend—not an FSA employee, but willing to help and possibly the only entity on Callay who could stabilise a grid this big. And it violated several standing regulations, the FSA not liking AIs in security matters because their loyalty was impossible to psych-profile. “Do you think this might be related to the Talee?”

“I think that's quite possible, Cody,” she said. He was fascinated by Talee. Who wasn't? “Let's have a look.”

She set the parameters and activated the trace-and-map . . . it was insane, far too much information even for her, but the processing power was there at least. Probably the Tanushan power grid would register a slight uptick on consumption, just from this matrix alone. She hoped they didn't blow a fuse. To cross-reference every real-time visual feed onto Subianto Stadium with facial recognition on the two men sitting in section M, seats 81 and 82, and loop it through FSA tacnet's interface while juggling multiple simultaneous encryptions. . . .

It had taken her nearly a year to design the thing, little tinkerings in her few quiet moments. A year ago, her own uplinks couldn't have processed even this much monitoring capability. But for now, she saw a simplified grid unfolding, three-dimensional, sprawling, and moving in every direction at once . . . and that was nearly too much to handle.

Finally an answer. And when she matched timelines . . . they were off. Time was the hardest thing to simulate, and according to multiple cross-referenced constructs, these two had been sitting in the stadium for .0002 of a second longer than real-time cameras recorded. Net time moving more slowly than real time, as it would with ultra-large constructs. But it took crazy large processing capability to find the mismatch.

“Ari,” she said, “send in your guys.” Shutting down the program to patient mode.

“
Copy
,” said Ari. “
What do you see?
”

“They're not there,” said Sandy, with more thinking curiosity than frustration. “It's a mass illusion. I think the security systems might be the only ones not to see the empty seats. We're being hacked.”

“
Fuck
,” said Ari succinctly. “
Cai's back
.”

“Or his friends.”

On the visual feed, she could see Ari's agents moving down the aisles between seats in the crowd, approaching Subject A and his friend. Stopping alongside, then placing a hand on the African man's shoulder . . . the hand went straight through. Then both men flickered and disappeared. None of the surrounding crowd reacted. So this was an FSA-specific hack. And whoever else was watching, no doubt.

Almost immediately, Director Ibrahim was in her ear. “
Cassandra, I take it this means Subject A was meeting with a representative of the Talee?
”

“Certainly looks that way.” Hell of a time, Cai, she thought to herself. Better hope the media didn't get a lead on this. “Sir, if that's the case, he just helped our person-of-interest to escape surveillance. I know we all agree the Talee are self-interested and not hostile, but we can't just let it go because we're scared of pissing them off. There has to be a price to pissing us off, even for the Talee.”

“
Agreed
,” said Ibrahim. “
I want Subject A brought in, however necessary
.” And disconnected. If you have to break rules to do it, that meant, I don't want to know about it.

“
Well, they were real when they came in
,” said Ari. “
We followed Subject A here, he met the other guy—who we're presuming is Cai until proven otherwise—then they must have gotten up and left at some point, which we couldn't see. Subianto security shows . . . hang on . . . Cai bought that ticket three hours ago, that was just before the game began
.”

“Be nice to backtrack their communications,” Sandy added.

“
Yeah
,” said Ari through gritted teeth. “
Wouldn't it
.” Don't hold your breath, that meant. If that V-strike on Cresta was not a lone event, if it was just the prelude to many, and now the representative-of-some-sort of the people who'd done it was here . . . she put the thought away. It would not help her here.

The shot hit her cruiser without warning, then more, cracking off the rear
gens. Sandy cut thrust and fell, got it back with a wobbly recovery, her panels red with alarms and aware she had a fresh breeze on her face that shouldn't be there.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” she replied to the warning shouts, zooming and triangulating fast on tacnet's auto sniper-track for the source . . . three possible cruisers, and dear god, fifteen possible rooftops, so much for narrowing it down. “Anyone get that? Tacnet won't give me a fix.”

“
Sandy, you're listing
,” Vanessa observed. “
Better ditch that thing
.”

Sure enough, the cruiser was dropping its left side, generators struggling to match output, nothing a few corrections could fix. “Copy, just get beneath me.”

She was on the farther side from the stadium now, away from the point of attack—if it came from a tower, she was now out of range, and none of the three possible cruisers were following. Of course it could be a coordinated hit, but that had to involve cruisers, setting up a sniper crossfire around the stadium was crazy difficult on such short notice. FSA vehicles were now streaking in pursuit of the three cruisers, and checking out those towertops . . . but they didn't have the numbers. Where was the CSA help?

She stopped tracking the situation long enough to pop the door as Vanessa steered her cruiser underneath and to one side. Wind blew in, not much, she was nearly hovering . . . she leaned to recover her bigger weapon from under the rear seat, locked the cruiser's course on auto, then stepped out. She fell five meters onto Vanessa's rooftop, then swung over the edge through the window Vanessa had opened for her.

“Hey babe,” said Vanessa, closing the window and powering the cruiser in the direction of those redlit towers on tacnet, quite used to such unorthodox means of entry by now. “Just dropping in?” She was chewing gum, her habit when the tension came up.

“That was League,” said Sandy, quickly loading and prepping her rifle in the passenger seat. On tacnet, her own cruiser was making an emergency landing at a nearby transition zone. “That shot cluster was from over a K, GIs for sure.”

“Disable or kill?” Vanessa asked grimly.

“Probably kill,” Sandy admitted. “Too far out for that against a moving target, even with GIs. But they try any closer than that, good chance tacnet will pinpoint them even if they're accurate.”

“Which means they think they know where Subject A is, and they're warning us off.”

“Or leading us astray.” They approached one tower fast, keeping below the soaring rooftop. Wind still blasted the interior, Vanessa keeping the window half-down in case Sandy needed to shoot out of it. Neither they, nor the cruiser's scanners, saw anything preparing to shoot at them. Vanessa orbited, a fast circle about the tower. “Why hit us if we don't have any leads?”

“They didn't hit us,” said Vanessa. “They hit
you
.”

“Without a clear chance of getting me,” Sandy retorted. “It's counterproductive.”

“Unless . . .”

“
Shots
,” said someone. “
Main city grid, Petersham District
.”

Sandy looked and zoomed on the site . . . some street sensor had picked that up, software somehow translating random background noise into gunfire. Five Ks away.

She didn't need to tell Vanessa, Vanessa was already heading that way. “Watch the ambush,” Sandy warned all vehicles. “
Firebird
, get in there first and cover.”
Firebird
was an FSA flyer, a gunship with countermeasures enough to survive most portable missiles, and weapons enough to make red mist of whoever fired them. It would mean a thirty-second delay though, waiting for Firebird to get into position.

“What?” Sandy asked Vanessa, catching that sideways look. “You want to be first over target with GI infiltration teams shooting at us?”

“Cautious in your old age,” Vanessa remarked.

“Thirty seconds won't kill us,” said Sandy. “Impatience might.”

The target area was suburban, low-rise two-storey houses hidden amidst a sea of trees, the occasional mid-rise apartment block breaking the regularity. Vanessa did a circuit rather than rushing in, as other FSA vehicles also held off, or spread on separate leads, or continued checking towers or the three possible flyers.

“
Hello, Sandy
,” came Amirah's voice. “
This is your hourly weather forecast—stormclouds gathering. Lots of downdrafts
.”

“Thank you, Ami,” said Sandy, and disconnected.

“Downdrafts?” Vanessa asked.

“Chief Shin's giving a lot of orders,” Sandy translated.

“Damn,” said Vanessa. “Where the hell does Amirah have her forecasters anyway?” Sandy only raised an eyebrow. Vanessa saw. “Oh. You bugged him. I should have guessed. You bugged the top spy in the Federation.”

“‘Bugged' is a little unsophisticated.” The gunship was roaring in now, underside weapon racks protruding all kinds of lethality, sensors sweeping the neighbourhood. “And it wasn't just me. Let's go.”

“Does Shin know?” Vanessa asked, steering them in.

“I'm sure he does, and I'm sure the bugging's mutual.” Sandy highlighted a rooftop several houses away from the target house. “Right here, please.”

Vanessa dropped altitude, coming in fast over trees and houses, then flaring as they approached the point . . . no less than a hundred kph, knowing Sandy's capabilities better than most. The door cracked, and again Sandy stepped out. Fell, for several seconds, arm out to protect her rifle from impact, then crashed a knee through the rooftiles. Another bill for Federal Security.

She drew no fire and saw no activity, so she came up from cover behind the roof apex, then leapt to the next rooftop, seeing Hong drop to a similar rooftop opposite her, and Kristi to her right. Operating with GIs in Tanusha felt odd but good, and transformed capabilities considerably. Rather than make the leap directly, she dropped to the rear yard beside a swimming pool and crashed through the brick wall with a kick that sent dust and fragments blasting.

Rifle in one hand, she went fast up the side of the house, fishing her headset from a pocket and hooking it over one ear—not strictly necessary but a comfort she'd acquired since League days, particularly the rear-view camera behind her ear. She flashed a glance through a window as she ducked beneath it, then spun around a door corner and smacked it open with a flat hand that broke the lock.

Fast up the hall beyond, as Hong and Kristi came in simultaneously through other entrances, without even a word spoken to coordinate. It took barely six seconds for the three of them to clear the ground floor; no one cleared interiors like GIs. Hong and Kristi flashed upstairs to repeat the process there, leaving Sandy to consider the mess in the kitchen.

It had been a man, only now the head was missing, and plastered largely over a wall and benches. Three very-large-caliber holes in one wall showed cause. Sandy scanned them, the feed going straight to tacnet, which
immediately analysed the nature and direction of the holes and began figuring trajectories and origins.

“
They had a good fix to make that shot
,” Vanessa observed from somewhere above. There were no windows in the kitchen offering a view from outside, she meant. “
If Cai was with him, it couldn't have been a net-fix. Maybe they had him bugged?
”

Stranger and stranger. Tacnet's add-on functions were identifying the body on the ground as Subject A, ninety-three percent probability. He'd been sitting with Cai (they presumed it was Cai) in the football stadium; Cai hacked the eyes of everyone watching to sneak them out and get them here . . . where he was killed by League GIs? That made sense, League wanted nothing less than their splinter group leaders to spill everything to
anyone
who wasn't League. Cai even less . . . though given the League undoubtedly knew more about the Talee than Federation did, it was unlikely the Talee could learn as much from Subject A as the Federation could. Or could they?

League-versus-Talee games that the Federation had only seen vaguely hinted at? What if the likes of Cai had played this game before with League operatives? And that wave was only now hitting Federation shores?

“
Ten bucks says FedInt fired that shot
,” said Ari, from . . . wherever Ari was now. Chasing leads even Sandy had no access to, no doubt. “
Let's keep the options open
.”

Stormclouds, Amirah said. Dammit. She hated three-sided contests, and this one was fast turning into four sides.

“
Sandy,
” said Hong from upstairs. His feed showed a woman on the ground, a GI to judge by the lack of blood from the recent hole in the back of her head. She lay on the ground beside a bed. A camera pan showed the window broken, glass on the carpet and bed covers—an entry then. No further signs of fight. League GIs would put up more of a fight . . . but the shot was to the
back
of the head.

“Cai was here,” Sandy confirmed. “Or someone of similar capabilities. That GI was netlocked, then tapped in the head. They came in after him.”

“
Or tried to sweep up the mess FedInt left
,” Ari corrected. “
Don't jump to conclusions
.”

Either way, it looked like a Talee-made GI had killed a League GI. Talee had killed League military personnel before, in full view of millions. It shouldn't have been such a surprise. But for one to do it
here
. . .