Originator (44 page)

“So how do you want to do this?” asked Jane. And everyone looked at Sandy. Sandy thought about it, looking about at the huge, old stadium. Rome had done this kind of thing. Formed factions, which did their own thing, and to hell with central command. It brought the empire crashing down, eventually. Too many emperors, too many generals. Too much unilateral action could pull the Federation apart. But if it had to be done, the price of inaction would be far worse.

“We need ships,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Captain Reichardt,” said Rhian. “Poor guy, he's already sick of us.”

“Only thing Federation Fleet's more scared of than League Fleet is hostile Talee. This I know for a fact, they've done all studies on it. And they're not shy about using force.”

“Against Talee?” Rhian wondered.

Sandy nodded. “Well, that's our next challenge. Convince them.”

“Without Ibrahim?” asked Amirah, worried.

“With him, if possible,” said Sandy. “But the fastest way to bog this down is to go through channels. FedInt will hate it. Provisional Grand Council will hate it. A lot of the member worlds will hate it. There'll be a debate, and you
know how long that takes, across the Federation, with the Grand Council officially offline until we get a new constitution. We're leaderless right now, there is no decision-making apparatus working. It's up to us.”

“Isn't it always,” Poole said sourly.

Sandy saw Amirah looking troubled. “Ami? If we had to keep secrets from Ibrahim . . . is that going to be a problem for you?”

Amirah looked up. “Well, yes,” she said frankly. “You really don't think he'd join us?”

“Right now he thinks we could have a civil war if we rush off unilaterally like this.”

“Could we?” asked Amirah pointedly.

“Maybe,” Sandy admitted. “Or we could sit here and let the League commit suicide and take us with it, or let the Talee walk all over us thus inviting future attacks to come. I'm sick of asking Federation permission to do the right thing. This is our fight, us GIs. If the Federation won't support the right thing, what's the use of a Federation anyway?”

She looked at Hafeez. “Next, we'll need guaranteed League help, once we get there.”

Hafeez smiled. “I can't do that sitting in my cell.”

Sandy awoke as the ward door opened and light spilled in. Uplinks showed her it was just after three in the morning. Full tacnet of the FSA compound showed all security points alert and responding. It was Cai's upgraded system, but even so, she cracked her shoulder, that old injury that still popped as only she knew how; Ibrahim had told her that a similar injury had worked for him. The sensation was familiar enough to convince her.

The silhouette in the doorway was male, squat, bull-necked. Captain Bursteimer. She blinked and hefted her rifle as she rose from the chair in the corner of the ward. On the second bed slept Danya and Kiril, alongside Svetlana. Dodger curled on the floor; Kiril had wanted him on the bed, but the asura liked his personal space and now raised a wary muzzle to peer at the light.

Sandy closed the door behind her and moved several steps away. “Leo! When did you get back?”

“Just now, straight off the shuttle.” He looked tired. “Talked to Ibrahim, then came here.”

“Ibrahim's still here?”

“Yeah, lots of folks didn't go home.” He nodded to the doorway. “How they doing?”

“They're okay. But we can't go home until we're sure there aren't any more Talee infiltrators here, and HQ's the safest place. How did the chase go?”

“Caught up with the surviving ship at DQ-849, where he proceeded to jump somewhere else. We sent local fleet after it and came back here. I hear you're looking for a ride to Pantala?” And to her questioning look, “Togales told me, on the shuttle down a few hours ago.”

“You tell Ibrahim?”

“He's not my boss.”

“Who is?”

Bursteimer grinned. “Um, well, there's this little old Sikh guy who runs a coffee stall on Nehru Station, I think he's top of the line right now.”

“Yeah,” Sandy sighed, running a hand through her messy hair. Ever since the Battle of Nehru Station six years ago, Fleet had never really gotten its chain of command figured out. Fleet Captains were autonomous by necessity, and during the war, that autonomy had grown way too large. Nehru Station had been the first big split in Fleet's ranks, Operation Shield the second. Now it was anyone's guess.

“Constitution says it's the Defence Ministry, but the Defence Ministry collaborated with the Office of Intelligence Directorate in implementing Operation Shield, and then the Grand Council was stood down and the constitution suspended,” said Bursteimer. “Which means it's the Provisional Grand Council, but who the fuck listens to that little prick Ranaprasana?”

“I don't think he's a little prick, I think he's just over his head.”

“I didn't ask what you thought,” said Bursteimer, smiling. A typical enough response from Fleet. “So that leaves Ibrahim, but lots of Fleet don't like his politics. . . .”

“Yeah, he's been mean to Fleet Captains,” Sandy interrupted drily. “They hate that.”

“And Fleet HQ is just a bunch of old salts who should have retired years ago and who are supposed to do what the GC says . . . did I mention the GC's been suspended?”

Sandy exhaled and leaned her head back against the wall. Closed her eyes for a moment.

“Hey,” said Bursteimer gently. “How are
you
doing?”

“I'm fine.”

“You know, I could end up in the infirmary for saying this, but I got this sneaking suspicion you're not actually as tough as you let on.”

She looked at him for a moment tiredly. Bursteimer liked her, it was obvious. Probably had a crush on her. He wasn't that attractive, and his manner was usually more irritating than charming, but she'd learned not to disrespect offers of friendship from anyone in her business.

“I don't ‘let on' anything,” she told him. “It's just me.”

“Well, y'know, if you need a shoulder to cry on, mine's available.”

“You're a couple of years late,” she told him wryly. “I used to do casual sex with equal ranks and superiors. But now I've got kids and I got all respectable.”

“Damn,” he said. “But you're a good mother. And you put your kids above everything, and that's pretty awesome.”

“Kiril got abducted on Droze because of me,” she said quietly. “His connection to me made him a target. Now the tech in his head made them all targets. Sometimes I think they'd have been better off on Droze without me.”

“Hey.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “You're the best thing that's happened to those kids. Droze is a hellhole. You got them out.”

“They were so lucky to survive this one. And Talee assassination squads aren't ever going to leave them alone.”

“They will,” Bursteimer promised. “We'll make them. You need a lift to Pantala? You got one. Reichardt agrees, and we're canvassing others. It'll take a while yet, we have to be subtle, can't talk to anyone who might turn around and tell PGC or FedInt. But hostile Talee are the biggest Fleet nightmare there is, and the war was one giant lesson that deterrence is the only thing that works, again and again, for thirty years.”

It was like Sandy suspected. She nodded. “How would you feel about some League Fleet help?”

“Not great, why?”

“Got an ISO senior commander real interested. Share Talee tech, work the attack together.”

Bursteimer scratched his unshaven jaw. “I just chased a damn League cruiser across space no League cruiser's got any business being in. Now you want me to buddy up with him?”

“Maybe. Thing is, our ISO boy will need a ride back to the nearest concentration of League Fleet ships, real soon. And real fast.”

Bursteimer looked unhappy. “If they don't want us there, you'll be giving them advance warning.”

“If Takewashi was right, Talee will be stripping Pantala of all the original source technology that gave the League GIs in the first place. I think that'll be priority over another Federation incursion.”

“You're giving them Talee tech,” Bursteimer disagreed. “They might not care anymore.”

Sandy shook her head. “Our tech is just network tech. Theirs is inception, and potentially the key tech to stopping the League from going insane, the stuff in Kiril's head. There's no comparison.”

“Didn't Takewashi have his own stash?”

“And Talee are probably hitting that too. But he was using Pantala to do all the research he wasn't allowed to do at home, like putting it into the heads of kids. So chances are he doesn't have what matters. Pantala's the place.”

He thought about it. “Need to have a talk to my fellow captains. Then I'll get back to you.”

“You got protection down here?”

That got his attention. He frowned. “Who from?”

“Talee or FedInt, but probably not in that order.”

“Right. I'm not down for long, I'll sleep on the shuttle and get some bodyguards.”

“Don't leave this HQ without them,” Sandy warned. “Are they at Balaji?” He nodded. “Call them out here, someone might have seen you come in and hit you on the way out. Combat flyers only, assume a hostile environment.”

“Got it.” He looked a little nervous. Fleet Captains weren't much used to ground threats. “Damn. Was safer fighting that fucking cruiser.”

Sandy smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Now go,” she said, while he was still getting over his surprise.

“Yes ma'am,” he replied, smiling broadly, and left with a jaunt in his step.

“You know it doesn't mean anything?” she called after him. “We don't do romance, it's just a kiss.”

“Sure sure sure,” he dismissed her, striding merrily away. And burst into song around the corner. Sandy grinned, shaking her head. And opened the
ward door, unsurprised to find Danya there, who had obviously listened to the whole thing.

“Aren't you worried someone heard you?” he said, looking up at the corridor ceiling and walls.

“Jammed it,” said Sandy, tapping her ear. “You hear everything?”

He nodded. And glanced after Bursteimer. “You like him?”

“Not like that,” she reassured him. “Like I said, it's just a kiss.” Danya looked unconvinced. “Hey, I like kissing men sometimes. Get used to it.”

“You could do better,” Danya opined.

“Oh, what would you know,” Sandy retorted, and grabbed and kissed him repeatedly as he protested.

Amirah arrived at the southern gate on foot, before Gandhi Circle, where wide lawns and pavements about the traffic circle made an ideal place for frequent protests to assemble before the Grand Council building and the directly adjoining FSA HQ. The crowd crushing in this morning was ridiculous; surveillance estimated at least a hundred thousand, thronging all the way back up the streets of downtown Montoya, clogging traffic back to the maglev station and beyond.

Before the high steel fence a line of police in riot gear made a wall, backed by vehicles and armoured walkers. She stepped out amongst them now, amidst the yells and chants, and was shown by an officer the way to a police car now on the edge of a swarm of people. There, several senior police negotiated with protest leaders and a crowd of media, all bristling cameras and lights, now turning her way as she approached. They swept forward, blocking her way so that she had to step and shoulder her way through, as the noise assaulted her ears and the beating of drums made her reflexes jump, vision tingeing red as combat reflex descended around her like a veil.

“Agent Togales!” the senior cop shouted above the noise. They all knew her by sight, all the cops and media. She hadn't been a Federation civilian long enough to know if she found it disconcerting or not. “It's getting a bit tense, the protest leaders want a statement!”

“About what?” She was rare for a GI in that she was a good public talker and that normal people didn't confuse her like they did so many of her com-patriots. Indeed, she often felt more at home among the “normal” people than she did among her own kind. But big protests like this
did
confuse her, group thinking and group emotion were alien to most GIs, making the organic crowds more machine-like than the synthetics, to her mind.

“About the attack! They're saying it's a cover-up!” Amirah refrained from rolling her eyes. The FSA, like most security organisations, did most things in secret. Everything
was
a cover-up. What did they want her to do about it?

But Ibrahim had told her to come out here and “do something,” which was an unnerving amount of faith to have shown a combat GI for doing something other than killing people. She pointed to a journalist by the police car bonnet. “Diggi! Want an interview?”

Digvijay Chaula blinked at her, then pushed around the car to get to conversational range. “An interview? What, before all of them?” Amirah nodded. “You don't just want to read a statement?”

“Yeah, 'cause that won't look at all authoritarian.” With cheerful sarcasm. “I have to be seen answering questions—you ask some questions, I'll answer.”

“Hey!” said one of the protest leaders. “He's a journalist, not a protestor! Why not talk to an actual protestor?”

“Because you guys suck on camera,” Amirah said lightly. “Trust me, I'm doing you a favour.” Digvijay leaped into action, uplinked and talking fast to his producers, while whipping out a comb for his hair. “Right, we're going to need some amplification. . . .”

“We've got drones up,” said the senior cop, “they do audio. Where do you want to do this?”

Amirah looked around, but there were no platforms, nothing obvious that could be used as a stage. No statues or fountains in the traffic circle, as security codes feared it could give cover to snipers. But over by one of the Grand Council gates was a big police van, three times taller than the cars.