Crossover (13 page)

Thiaw blinked. Doubtless he'd heard it all hypothesised before. To hear it direct from someone who knew ... the cameras were recording. Everything she said was being recorded. In this room, everything always was.

"Now the FIA have abducted me. Whole stacks of research right there. I'm experimental, obviously. Something of a gold mine for them, I'm sure." She took a deep breath, not liking where these conclusions were logically taking her. "Only in doing so they've brought the CSA down on their heads. Their mission could easily have been compromised. The way they planned it, with the whitecoats you captured, it looks like they figured being caught was inevitable. Which means they're prepared for it. Which means they'll start shutting things down before the CSA gets to them, now that the CSA knows where to look. When the mission gets compromised, there's a withdrawal procedure. It's what the Intels call an MEK application ... Most Extreme Kind. If it gets activated here, in this city, you'll know about it. Believe me. If the League's here too, I'd look for something heavy. Possibly GIs. But I'm just guessing, I've never been involved with anything like that myself. My superiors kept me well away from covert stuff ... probably they were worried I'd be contaminated by too much civilian contact and wouldn't want to fight any more. And they'd have been right too."

Thiaw stared at her for a long moment. Rafasan too. No one spoke.

Then, "Heavy?" Thiaw asked, cautiously. "You think the League has a presence here too? For this ... this escape clause? How heavy?"

"The FIA would be orchestrating it," Sandy replied tonelessly. "They're the ones with the inside knowledge. As for how heavy ..." She shrugged. "... it's the FIA. Go figure."

"The FIA are ... are ..." Rafasan waved a beringed hand in search of the appropriate term. "... well, they're not exactly civilised, and I know they've been out in the dark for a long time, what with the war and the secrecy legislation enforced over such wide distances and dubious regulatory mechanisms ... but, I mean, they're a legal entity!" With some indignation, although at precisely what, Sandy could not tell. "Surely there are
some
limits on their behaviour?"

"Ms Rafasan," Sandy said dryly, "I've been privy to things that go on in areas of space no Federation official ever sees reports on or is encouraged to care about. You'd be amazed. Truly amazed, I assure you." The assertion met with no response. Outside the room, Sandy was certain there would be commotion, calls being made. Doubtless a whole further mass of officialdom would descend on her in short order. Well, at least she'd done something. Tired of being drugged and prodded, she'd kicked back. Now let them panic, she thought darkly. She only hoped that throwing the proverbial shit so directly at the fan did not spray too much of it back into her face. But it was a civilian city. Anything seemed possible.

"There," said Dr Djohan, cutting away the last bandage from around her knee. Probed and prodded at the joint for a moment, tapping the kneecap experimentally, fingering recently separated skin. It would show him nothing that sonic-mapping had not already displayed through the bandages, Sandy knew. He then stood back to examine her from a greater distance, arms folded with some satisfaction. Flat on her back, fully restrained and totally naked, Sandy was not entirely sure exactly what he was looking at.

"Can I get up now?" she asked mildly. Djohan actually blushed. She saw it on heat scan.

"Yes, yes, of course." He rapped himself absently on the head and stepped quickly to the door on his small legs. Sandy watched him go. Strange little man, she thought, partway between sarcasm and curiosity. The door closed behind him, locks snapping. A moment later the restraints automatically released and she eased herself up on the bed.

Her joints hurt. Most of her did, a dull, aching, multi-level pain. She stretched a leg out before her and looked at it. There was a clear red line about the knee, around the top of the kneecap, raised in a small ridge. She touched it. Probed with both hands. Nothing hurt. Everything was more or less where she remembered it to be. The underside tendons were sore and twinged unpleasantly when she flexed. Her other knee was much the same.

And it hit her, suddenly, what had happened ... she squeezed her eyes shut, very hard, attempting to fight off the surge of horrid memory. She had been a special forces soldier. She had seen terrible things in the war. Operating theatres were not strange places to any GI, least of all one with her experience, for both battlefield injury and surgical upgrade as League biotechnology had improved. She recalled the familiar, antiseptic stench, remembering previous occasions when she had smelt the same ... she had to cope with it. She had no other choice but to cope. She was a GI, after all, and unlike a regular human she
could
deal with such things. Physically, at least. Mentally ... was another question. But she knew her physical nature. She knew she could endure, and recover. She knew that even the physical scars would be gone in time. She held to that thought with firm determination and resolved to be what she was and do what she knew best. To be a soldier, and cope.

The procession of CSA interrogators had receded at last, finally convinced she had nothing left to tell them. Which was good, because she didn't. She stood now, legs wide apart and cautious of her balance, before the apartment windows. She ached. A strange, all-over ache that throbbed and pulsed through her very bones. That was good. Very good, in fact — it meant that the systems were knitting together once more, responding to each other as any organism's would in full health. If she shifted balance from one leg to the other too fast she would get a shooting pain through a knee, or a hip, sometimes racing with electric reflex up her spine and shoulders. But that was good too. Dr Djohan told her so. And she believed him.

Outside, it was another stunningly clear, blue-skied, sunny day. She was located, she'd gathered, in the district of Largos, just south of mid-western Tanusha. One district looked more or less like another, however. Only the bends in nearby river tributaries and the location of distinctive building landmarks told the difference. Her building was just beyond the periphery of a business-district hub, she'd gathered, but facing outwards. Before her sprawled an unobstructed view across open, low-density suburbia swathed in spreading greenery. Several kilometres beyond, another hub, a rising cluster of buildings haphazardly flanking a huge, gleaming mega-rise. Mid-rises sprawled about more built-up urbanity, following a river course, and another soaring mega-rise, then gave way to suburbia again. And on and on the patterns stretched, across all the visible cityscape. There was a lot of cityscape visible. In Tanusha there always was.

The questioning had been intense. She reflected over the day's interrogation, since her revelations to Thiaw and Rafasan yesterday. Evidently she'd made some people nervous. And right that they should be. But even
she
did not know what was coming. If anything. It was all a mystery to her too, this covert ops — as she'd told Thiaw and Rafasan, and all subsequent interviewers, she only knew as much as she'd gathered from a distance. And a disinterested distance at that. She'd had better things to worry about back in Dark Star. Like keeping her team alive from one mission to the next.

She needed to move. Desperately. Thankfully, someone had set up an exercise bike further along the windows for exactly that purpose. She slipped carefully out of her bathrobe and into the comfortable tracksuit that that same person had thoughtfully slung across the bike seat, then climbed on.

She was still pedalling a half hour later when Naidu walked in.

"Cassandra," he announced, loudly over the noise of the African rhythms thumping from the stereo, "I need to talk to you."

"Sure." Leaning on the handlebars, legs going round in steady circles in time with the rhythm. "Turn the music down if you like." Naidu went and did that — some straights had hearing augmentation, she knew, but it usually failed to reach her extremes. The music faded and Naidu walked back over. He looked as rumpled as ever, jacket open, longish hair straggling about the collar. Age was of course always difficult to tell, thanks to technology. She judged he could be at least eighty. He had that slightly worn, weathered look about his broad, brown features. He stopped by the sofa, arms folded as he gave her a critical looking-over.

"How are you feeling?" She managed an absent shrug, still pedalling.

"Sore. I'm nearly fully flexible again, just a little slow. Miracles of League engineering and all that." A corner of Naidu's moustachioed mouth twitched, recognising, she reckoned, that jab at Dr Djohan. "Itches like buggery. I'm sure I'd heal faster if I weren't full of drugs too."

"Dr Djohan assures me otherwise," Naidu replied, with understated irony, deep in his throat.

"Don't get any closer," Sandy said with bland disinterest, still pedalling, "I'm just a half hour away from my next repressant shot. You know how I get then — all slavering and bloodthirsty." Naidu just looked at her a little reproachfully, restraining a smile. A full day of interrogation on suppressant shots (self-administered, of course) and a constant wary armed guard had worked on her temper. "Are there any innocent virgins in the CSA? I eat those, you know. Three a week, when I'm not dieting."

"No," said Naidu, with that expressive flick of the head that was peculiar to Indians, she'd noticed. "I'm afraid the CSA is the wrong organisation to be looking for innocent virgins. Particularly Intel." The bike wheel whirred, forcing looseness back into her legs. It felt good just to be moving and free of bandages. And she needed the exercise, like any normal human. Her heart was beating again for one thing, with great, thumping beats that felt suspiciously like relief. Blood flowed. Temperature built up, a warmth upon her brow. After so long it felt wonderful, and well worth the occasional, inexplicable shooting pain.

"Cassandra, some of our agents discovered an apartment a couple of FIA agents appear to have been using as a part of their network. No arrests, they're far too slippery for that. Bat we did find a pair of very non-standard weapons there. Tobra twenty-twos, and forty full mags. Full works."

More information. She'd been granting information to anyone who asked for the last full day. The implications scared her, when she thought about them. Generally she tried not to. She could only trust that it would get her somewhere and not merely land her in even greater trouble. She sighed, still pedalling. "What do you want to know?"

"Do you have any knowledge, in your field experience, of the FIA having cause to use the Tobra? Or anything of that magnitude of firepower?"

"The FIA have about twenty branches that I know of," she said wearily. "You probably know them better than I do — this is just League Intel reports I read. About five are field branches. Two are effectively special ops. Only one officially exists."

Naidu nodded. "I know, Green Section are the registered lot. We understand they're actually more of a training and development base for the main black ops, but even we don't know what
they're
called. They're labelled in our reports as 'FP' — it's an ironic acronym for FIA 'Foreign Policy'. It can also stand for 'Fascist Pigs'." Sandy made a face at that — League Intel had much the same opinion. "We think it's almost certain that it's this FP branch that we're up against here. But none of our Intel are very clear on their operating procedures. We thought you might be."

No. She wasn't. Not really. Just one damn report she wasn't supposed to have read, and whatever 'clause Z' was ... drastic, she remembered thinking. And the FIA had Tobras in town. Her mouth was suddenly drier than usual. It had only been speculation before. Now it seemed suddenly real.

"There's only a few instances I can definitely say I had experience with them," she said finally. "They're very good. But Tobra twenty-twos — that's not a covert weapon, that's an assault weapon. You can't exactly hide it in your pocket."

"Exactly," Naidu said grimly, arms folded tightly. "They may have acquired it here, or they may have brought it with them."

"Not through customs, surely?"

"No. If you were planting a covert team on Callay, how would you do it?"

"Well..." The old mental reflexes were unfolding, like an old, creased sheet-map long disused but still perfectly functional. "... What's this solar system's defence grid like? A place as important as Tanusha, you'd think it'd be pretty solid?"

Naidu grimaced, a pained twist of pepper-streaked moustache. "Private system. No separate military function, it's all integrated ... high quality as far as it goes, but... well, you'd know the 'but' with any integrated system. Callay never came under direct threat during the war — it's too far away. The very idea is unthinkable."

"Jesus." Sandy was staring at him in genuine disbelief. "But, I mean, it's a good system? I've seen the technology here. It's as good as anything I've ever seen in League, and they've got some killer systems."

"It definitely deters casual raiders. But it's Federal security codes, Cassandra. Fleet security for any solar system is a Federal matter — all military is Federal. Individual worlds don't have anything independent. So the FIA..."

"Of course." Her legs continued pumping, her attention now entirely elsewhere. "Like a knife through butter. So they came in, landing somewhere out there in the wild, and hiked in to Tanusha, weapons and all. No customs."

"No customs. We don't know what else they brought, besides the Tobras. We don't know how many agents or weapons. We can't monitor their activity because all their communications are tapped into the local network, which is heavily shielded from government monitoring, because that is the grand Tanushan code — free enterprise, free communication, minimal government interference. Now you see the scale of the problem."

She did indeed. It was crazy. How crazy?... that depended on one thing.

"Now you just need to know what they need the Tobras for. Have the whitecoats talked?"

"No," said Naidu, with frustrated resignation. "They claim not to know anything more. Just that it was an operation to gather data on you. How they knew you were here, and what the data was for ... they say they don't know. And we can't threaten them to make them talk, they don't fall under our legal system — as Federal agents in an FIA operation, they're automatically answerable to Federal law. We can't do a thing."