Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield (27 page)

She went to see the one surviving wounded CSA Agent, and to the bodies in the morgue—she'd already paid condolences to the friends of the others who'd died, but hadn't yet had time to see the bodies. She felt it especially incumbent upon her as senior in SWAT, given SWAT were the ones who usually took the casualties and were not shy reminding Investigations, Intel, and other suits of that fact. These nine suits had stood up to high-des GIs with no armour and average weapons and augments, and paid the predictable price.
Had
stood
, review of security tape had shown, and fought, when others better knowing the odds might have run.

SWAT acknowledged now with an honour guard at the morgue door, two troopers in full armour at attention, beside the growing pile of flowers, mementoes, and other symbols of unknown personal value, about the photographs of the nine dead that were propped against the wall. A football, a fancy pen, a gold ring. A necklace. A mouth organ. So many stories, all suddenly ended. In the seven years she'd been on Callay, she'd come to appreciate how non-GIs weren't born soldiers, as she and her kind were. There'd been a time in the League when she'd never really thought about it, just assumed that soldier was a type of life that people just had.

Being here, she'd come to realise it was a choice, and that these agents had once been regular civilians like everyone else, children in the schools, young men and women wondering at their future prospects. No one forced them to choose, and yet they did, even knowing what it might cost them. Sandy had seen similar shrines in the League for dead GIs. No family mourned them, just their squad mates, a photograph on a wall, a few pictures of favourite things. A few messages of affection or loss. From synthetic minds struggling to comprehend what it meant, in the wider scale of things, that a life should be lost that was made to be lost, and should merely have been accepted as such…but somehow wasn't. If GIs were made to die, why did it hurt? Why grieve at all?

She recalled the shrine at a briefly empty bunk of a soldier of hers—Tan. John Tan. He'd liked cats, in the way some people liked cats, photographs of funny cats, silly cats, cats hiding in shoes, cats sleeping in odd places. Not that he'd ever actually seen a cat, besides the occasional station master's moggy, the only people of sufficient rank to keep them on stations, certainly no one on a ship was allowed. And so his photograph on the bunk had been joined by pictures of cats, and a stuffed cat of his, a rare personal item with shipboard luggage restrictions. Hell of a summary for a life, a curious affection for an animal he'd barely known. League didn't do religion much among civilians, sure as hell no one in high command had wanted GIs getting religious, fear of what might happen should GIs wonder at the existence of a higher moral power that exceeded even League Command. And so John Tan had passed, like so many others of his kind in that awful fucking war, without really knowing who he was except that he liked cats, and was a very poor chess player, and
had a funny laugh—no service, no honour guard, not even a grave because GI bodies were valuable and full of expensive parts that would be recycled.

She stood now before the nine photographs of the CSA's fallen and knew that
this
was what the League had stolen from her and her kind. Dignity. Meaning. Choice. These men and women had made a choice to be here, and in dying here, gained dignity. Their deaths had meaning, because they'd known for what they risked and fought. If she stood for anything, and fought for anything, it was this, signified by these slowly growing shrines against the morgue wall, and the two SWAT troopers at hard attention, weapons angled sharply at the ceiling.

Sandy had never really gone for ceremony, perhaps because she'd always felt the hollowness of it all, back in League. But now she stood before the photos, central to all, and went to full attention and saluted
hard
. And held it with moist eyes. Fellow agents and family around her saw with approval. There's Sandy Kresnov. She's one of us. She put her arm down and nodded to them all. Then she walked back to her life and hoped that she would not need to do this too many more times. It seemed an unlikely wish, but even so, at least here, in this life, even loss made some kind of sense.

When she got back to Vanessa's bedside, a doctor gave good news—all of Vanessa's vitals were continuing to stablise, and she'd likely wake up on her own in an hour or two. Sandy sat with her for a while, with Phillippe and Svetlana, but a doctor wasn't happy with three in the ward, and Phillippe should certainly be here…and he and Svetlana seemed to be enjoying each other's company. So Sandy left them to it and went next door to Amirah's ward.

Rhian was there too. She was holding one of her twin girls, Sunita, who was fast asleep—the CSA sometimes relaxed the family attendance policy, especially in med ward, so it would work more like a regular hospital, and employees could spend time with wounded friends without worrying about family left at home. Amirah was asleep too, hooked up to life support, having undergone surgery to remove all the rounds. Sandy could see her jaw was patched and her forehead. One arm above the covers had another three patches. Presumably she was like that all over.

“Wow,” she murmured. “How many holes?”

“Fifty-three,” said Ari. “We'd all be dead without her, even Ragi; we didn't get the net collar off him fast enough otherwise.” Ari seemed particularly
affectionate toward this girl, Sandy thought. Certainly she was very pretty. And funny too, and smart, very socialised for a new, young GI.

“There wasn't enough space to fall back in that place,” Rhian observed. “She had to hold ground, and that meant taking fire. She did it well.”

“And she was hitting them too or else they'd have been more accurate and she'd be dead,” Sandy surmised, well knowing that kind of combat, GI to GI. Even she'd have taken hits. But not so many, and half the CSA's dead would still be alive, at least. But that wasn't Amirah's fault, she was the designation she was, and had done magnificently with what she had. Sandy walked to Amirah's bedside and sat on the mattress edge.

“The doctor didn't want us in here,” said Danya. He sat with Ari, between the bed and the windows overlooking the compound. “But Rhian said GI brains were different; you don't like peace and quiet.”

“No,” Sandy agreed, holding the girl's hand. She was drugged, of course, muscle relaxant the only way you could operate on GIs. “I remember waking up after some procedure in the League, I hated the quiet, I couldn't focus, kept slipping away. Asked for some buddies to come in and play movies and music, that was much better.”

“GIs are social,” said Rhian, gently rocking her little girl. “Odd side effect of so many combat impulses, but there you are. All those impulses have to latch on something, silence drives us crazy. Hopefully if Ami wakes a bit she'll hear us and know she's not alone.”

“Did you sleep with her?” Sandy asked Ari. Meaning Amirah.

She could see in Ari's eyes the pause, wondering whether to lie. And concluding, correctly, that it gained him nothing. “Um, yes. She's, um, persuasive.”

Sandy smiled. “Good. She's a good girl. And I can personally attest that sleeping with newly arrived GIs is a great way to make them feel at home.”

She and Ari gazed at each other for a moment. She was almost hoping for some jealousy, but predictably there wasn't. She'd thought once that jealousy might be a sign of advancing mental maturity, but it seemed that she just really didn't do that…so what the hell, why hope for something that everyone said was intensely unpleasant?

She glanced at Danya. She'd almost expected him to be uncomfortable. These were the kinds of life complications he was mostly unfamiliar with. But
instead he just smiled a little and put his hands in the air. “I'm thirteen,” he said. “No comment.”

Sandy's eyes flicked to Rhian. “Danya, would you like to hold Sunita?”

Now
there was caution in his eyes. He shook his head. “No.”

Rhian looked a little hurt. “No?”

“Babies make me nervous. Kiril was that age when the crash happened. Younger even. Svet was five.” The hurt faded from Rhian's eyes. “They both nearly starved. I had to keep them fed. I nearly died trying, so many times. I'd hear him crying because he was hungry, and…” He looked down at his hands, twisting and fidgeting between his knees. “I still hear him sometimes. That's when I wake up sweating.”

Rhian looked sad. “I had a bad experience with a child once. When I was a League soldier. But it's not the kind of thing you just live with, Danya. It's the kind of thing you overcome.”

She got up and held out her sleeping little girl for Danya to hold. His enthusiasm was underwhelming, but Rhian was accepting no refusal. Danya held the girl and still clearly knew what to do, how to cradle her head on his arm. Rhian leaned close, hand on Danya's shoulder.

“This is a different place than where you're from,” she said. “She'll never be truly hungry. If she cries it'll be because it's time for her feed, or she's tired, or she's filled her nappy. No one's going to try and kill her, and if they ever did, I and all my friends would kill
everything
in our path to stop it, ourselves as well if necessary.” It was imagery that Rhian, unlike most mothers, would find intensely comforting. “Look how peaceful she is.”

Danya looked. And still looked awkward. Like the sight of that little sleeping face brought back too many memories, all at once. But evidently not all of them were bad, because he did not give her back.

“Her mother nearly died today,” he reminded Rhian.

“She did,” said Rhian, nodding. “But her birth mother's already dead, back in the League, and she got a second chance, like you. There's no room for pessimism with family, Danya. You of all people should know that.”

Danya said nothing. And looking at him, Sandy knew that that just opened up a
whole
can of worms. Danya didn't do optimism
or
pessimism, he did realism, hard, cold, and nasty. Pessimism was no help, but optimism got you killed, so he went for something in the middle, something that black-and-white,
straightforward Rhian would probably never understand and was not wired to.

“
That's great, Rhi
,” Sandy uplinked to tell her privately. “
You're good with him. But I think that's enough, huh?
”

Rhian looked up at her and smiled, and returned to her chair. Her eyes again fixed on her sleeping child. Trusting or not, Sandy could read GI body language better than anyone, and Rhian was poised to be there in a flash. And go through walls to do it.

“Where's Ragi?” Sandy asked.

“Not sure,” said Ari. “Safer that way.”

“He's free? With this network?”

“Limited. He's volunteered to some monitoring and controls; he knows we're nervous.”

“Cai could shut down traffic control in a minute or two, I'm sure,” said Rhian.

“Ragi's not Cai,” said Ari. “But he's something similar, no question. Sandy, we could use your help with him.”

“Why? He's nothing like me.”

“Takawashi made both of you.”

Sandy snorted. “Takawashi made me the same way that the president of a nut company makes peanuts. He's an administrator, bureaucrat, and self-promoter. The
system
grows and packages the peanuts.”

“Sandy,” Ari tried again, “it's kind of important that he comes to like us…”

“A point I made very strongly to Ibrahim, Chandi, and company just now. I don't need to be personally involved in every escaped GI's life. You guys are doing fine without me, and if he needs other GI friends, well, I'd think he should feel quite close to Ami after this. It doesn't always need to be me, Ari. I have other priorities.”

She glanced at Danya, holding the baby. Ari exhaled and looked skeptical. “Well, speaking of your other priorities,” he said, “let me take Danya out some night or even a weekend. He's a self-sufficient guy, he's not going to be happy just being taken care of all the time. I can show him the real Tanusha. My Tanusha.”

Most mothers would have been horrified at the thought. Ari's Tanusha
was not a place parents willingly let their thirteen-year-old children wander into.

“You'd do that?” she asked. “You have the time?”

“Well, no, technically I never have the time. But I do what we all learn to do, we involve people who matter to us in our work, we make an overlap.” With a glance at Rhian, still watching her sleeping child. “He can come on the job with me for a bit, nothing dangerous, just meet some people, see the sights. Call it work experience.”

Danya's look was hopeful. Sandy smiled at him. “Don't even need to ask you, do I?”

Danya shrugged. “I'm glad you're my guardian, Sandy,” he said. “But we both know that some things I'm not going to ask permission for.”

“Well, then thank you for being polite and asking,” Sandy said drily. He and Ari had spoken of this already, she was certain, in her absence. “Make a time. Explaining to your brother and sister why you can go and they can't will be
your
job, understand?”

“Been giving them bad news all my life,” said Danya, unworried. Sunita stirred in his arms, writhing and shifting. He bounced her a little, with long-remembered reflex, and cooed to her gently. The little girl settled and went on sleeping. Rhian and Sandy exchanged a glance and a smile.

And looked up at the new figure appearing in the doorway. Male, broad-shouldered, head recently shaved. Poole, in a rough shirt and jeans, like he'd been out in the wilds somewhere. Which he had.

“You're back,” Rhian observed.

Poole nodded. “Just talking to my buddy Kiril. He's convinced…get this,
absolutely
convinced, that Doctor Kishore's green jelly snakes taste better than the yellow ones.” He walked to Amirah's bedside.

“I've watched media debates on security policy that contained nothing so profound,” Sandy told him.

“My problem is I always found jelly snakes more interesting than security policy,” Poole admitted, looking down at Amirah. “She's going to be okay, yeah?”

“Yeah. How was Callay?”

He'd been touring, looking at the wildlife, climbing mountains, and diving reefs. Looking for whatever qualified as inspiration for Poole.