Crossover (27 page)

Dear God, she actually missed it. She'd sworn she never would, but here she was, pining for it all back before any of this crazy, complicated, painful business had ever happened. Had she been wrong to dream of a better life in the first place? Had that been unreasonably selfish or just dangerously misguided? She was, after all, just a GI. Pain, violence and loss had been her lot in life. Possibly there
was
nothing else, and the GI regs were actually the smarter because they accepted their fate and didn't torment themselves with impossible, futile dreams that would only end in tragic disappointment.

Ibrahim's gaze shifted to the far wall for a lingering moment, lips faintly pursed above his sharp goatee. Considering. Sandy felt the knot in her stomach rewind itself, a slow, painful tightening.

"The reports I've had back from Tetsu so far indicate some significant progress," he said. "Your own name was mentioned prominently by Agents Tuo and Naidu, whose opinions I greatly respect." Again he fixed her with his calm, dark gaze. "You appear to have made yourself very useful... Mr Tuo in particular has requested future access to your experience. He believes you may have much additional knowledge that could be of use across a range of other network-related issues. But that can wait for another day, and another crisis.

"I'm keeping you with Lieutenant Rice for the time being ... you have no experience with investigations, and I need to put you somewhere you feel comfortable, in a familiar environment. Further, the two of you seem to be on each other's wavelength to some extent." He looked at Vanessa. "Would that be a correct assessment?"

Vanessa nodded. "I think so." Gave a brief, appraising glance at Sandy. "She's drastically overqualified for this line of work, and I'm not entirely sure I should be the one giving her orders in any combat situation ... but I'll be happy to keep her on with us, if that's what you require."

"It is. Lieutenant Rice, take her home, and both of you get some rest. I might have allowed you to stay on at the Tetsu site with the investigators if it hadn't been for Milanovic's suspicion and the imminent arrival of a number of SIB investigators ... attached to the Senate, you'll remember," with a significant glance at Sandy, "and therefore outside the CSA's command structure. I would rather not have Milanovic knowing of your identity at this moment, Cassandra ... and to be blunt, the SIB are a security risk. Have nothing to do with them. Your authority rests with the CSA, not the SIB and their political masters. That is an order."

"Yessir." More politicking. She wondered how an apparently practical man like Ibrahim dealt with such things on a daily basis. It seemed impossibly frustrating, not to mention counterproductive. "When will I be needed again?"

"Soon enough, Ms Kresnov." With sombre certainty. "Soon enough."

"He knows more he's not telling us," Hiraki said from the back seat of the cruiser. Rain spattered across the windshield, streaking in the slipstream. A dark, wet tower glided by, lines of ground traffic moving slowly along rain-darkened streets below. Trees and parks a thick, dark green, now sodden. Dark clouds still loomed low overhead, a deep grey ceiling above the reaching towertops.

"He's the boss. That's his privilege," Vanessa replied from the driver's seat — a different cruiser this time, taken from HQ reserves. Evidently the investigators they'd taken the last one from had been perturbed that their own had reclaimed it. "If you don't like it, get promoted."

Silence from the back. Singh had taken a different route home following their delayed debriefing with the rest of SWAT Four. Hiraki came along because some enterprising pair from Investigations had borrowed his CSA-issued transport without asking ... there was a shortage, the present crisis having stretched every department's resources well beyond the planned-for limit. Public transport, Vanessa informed him, could get him home within ten minutes from her apartment. Hiraki had snorted. SWAT did not use public transport, Sandy gathered. It offended rapid-reaction sensibilities. She pitied the pair of investigators when Hiraki caught up with them again.

"How's CSA's working relationship with the SIB?" she asked, stretching her legs within the comfortable cargo-greens someone had found in her size. The casual ops-jacket too was warm and comfortable, if old and somewhat tattered. Darker rectangles coloured the shoulders where old unit patches had been removed. She wondered absently whom it had belonged to.

"What working relationship?" Hiraki commented from the back. Sandy glanced at him. His expression showed deadly contempt.

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse," said Vanessa, watching the navscreen. "We're not on speaking terms." Sandy didn't know what to make of that. Vanessa saw her expression and gave a crooked grin. "Yep, I feel the same way — it's a ridiculous situation. But that's politics."

"What's so bad about the SIB?"

"It depends on the year," said Hiraki dryly. "Right now the President has political problems with the Senate. Union Party has no majority there. Independents have the balance of power. The SIB report to the Senate. It is supposed to be a safety measure to keep the lines of Command and Control separate from the CSA's. The result is that the SIB end up the political tool of the President's opponents. Which is why Ibrahim had to remove you from Tetsu before they got there. I'm sure they know about you by now, given that their masters on the Security Panel do. I'd bet they've already expressed their displeasure about your inclusion in the CSA's investigations. They're already unhappy that the emergency legislation has put most additional powers into the CSA's hands and not their own. Anti-biotech senators will be breathing down their necks where you are concerned. I'm sure there would have been trouble had you stayed at Tetsu."

Sandy stared out at the glisteningly wet, grey city, trying to take it all in. A separate law enforcement agency being led around by the nose by knee-jerk political factions? That did not sound very safe.

"Hitoru's the political pundit around here," Vanessa explained. "I always said politics attracted the most dangerous people." Sandy glanced back at Hiraki. He appeared complimented, smiling openly.

"But the CSA can keep a lid on it, right?" she asked Hiraki. "They've got emergency powers. Surely the politicians will be too preoccupied with finding the FIA to worry about me? I mean, there's a crisis here." Hiraki's smile grew broader. When some people smiled, Sandy had noticed, it softened their expression. Hiraki only looked more dangerous. He was, she remembered Vanessa's assessment before the Tetsu raid, SWAT Four's most effective pure combat soldier. Yet he followed politics. Her curiosity ratcheted up another several notches.

"Never underestimate the capacity of populist politicians for stupidity." Sandy leaned around further, not liking the sound of that at all.

"They can't
all
be populists, surely?"

Hiraki just looked at her, deadly amused.

"Cassandra. This city runs itself. An organ of commerce, of flawless planning. Like a work of art. Look around you."

She looked. A pair of soaring towers gliding past. A bend of wind-swept river beyond. Green suburbs. Clustered highrises giving way to urbane suburbia, and back to highrises again. Organised disorder. Predictable unpredictability. The belt servo gave her a sharp, protesting tug. She tugged back. The servo screeched and quit tugging.

"Nothing much happens here," Hiraki told her. "People worry far more about their children's school grades and where to eat for dinner than the big issues of politics. The city was designed with precisely that in mind. And if the politicians cannot connect with the voters on issues of substance, they will resort to issues of less substance. Populism. Emotionalism. Occasionally even extremism. It is the Utopia conundrum. Disconnection from reality. I pray that Heaven is nothing like the Utopia the Christians and Muslims believe it to be. The human species is simply not equipped to cope with such boredom. We should go mad. The evidence is sitting in the Callayan Parliament."

Sandy shot a hard glance at Vanessa, not at all happy with that assessment. Vanessa sighed.

"It's not that bad. Hitoru's such a pessimist, but he's got a point." Which, if intended to comfort, failed miserably.

Another minute of cruising the turbulent, gusty skylanes, and they began to descend. A wide, decelerating curve around one tall tower, losing altitude, roadways and a ground-level neighbourhood sliding past below, glimpses of modern architecture beneath a sprawling patchwork of wet trees. Some mid-sized buildings ahead then, taller than the surrounding single-residences, but dwarfed by the nearest towers. The navcomp trajectories turned away in front, leading them in.

Sandy peered out at the neighbourhood, scanning the layout as they lost height. Not a historical reconstruction, but aesthetically modern, as only Tanushan planners knew how. Streets connected gridwise, walkways and parks, blurring perimeter boundaries, a meandering stretch of lightrail, a maglev line stretching by in the near distance, a station stop by the looming side of a sports stadium. A stretch of main street sliding below the window, thoroughfare traffic, fancy shops and people out walking ... pleasantly low-key, and gleaming in water slick grey beneath the overcast sky.

Then the buildings were coming up to one side, and the cruiser came around in a near hover, revealing a parking space on a lowered section of roof sheltered by a simple stretched awning. Vanessa guided them in on manual-assist, found a parking spot by a cream-white Boxer with stylish rear fins. Sandy noted that all the vehicles looked similar though.

"Government apartments," Vanessa told her as they got out, hefting sports-bags filled with gear and gesturing toward the variously parked aircars — big, powerful and stylishly well appointed. "All government employees here, the whole building. Good for security. Keeps the rents down too."

In another city, Sandy reflected as the cruiser's doors whined shut and locked, government employees would never have to pay rent on government accommodation. Not so in free-market Tanusha, though. Although wages were generally high enough that 'budget accommodation' was something of a local oxymoron. Tanushans didn't have budgets, they had expenditures.

"Are all the SWAT guys here?" she asked as they walked across the covered tarmac, cold wind pulling at clothes and hair, bags hefted over their shoulders.

"No, they're all over the place ... bad security to have everyone together. More important is that people generally want to choose where they live, it's a perk of the job. I chose here."

Vanessa walked with a slight natural swagger, Sandy was noticing. Controlled energy, tending toward exuberance if it weren't for the discipline. Vanessa, she guessed, had probably been a real handful in her childhood. And repressed a smile, trying to imagine Vanessa as a child.

The unit minder let them in with the required thumb and retina scans, Sandy passing a more than casual eye over the security arrangements as they walked down the main corridor. Vanessa saw her looking and made a wry face.

"Nothing an RPG couldn't solve," she said. "But at least we get a warning." Sandy nodded, tuning through local frequencies and links. In the age of modern assault techniques and enhanced personnel, it was about all that civilian security measures were really good for — compelling an attacker to use forceful, explosive means of entry and thus give warning to the target. As Vanessa said, no armourplast door was going to hold against grenades. Walls and ceiling were little better ... and laser technology was rather useful these days.

Unsurprisingly, Vanessa's room was on the top floor near the landing pads, convenient for fast response. And it was nice, too, she thought as she deposited her bag by the central table. A big room, with wide windows leading onto a balcony, sofas and a TV. Vanessa heading to the side kitchen and going through the fridge.

"Make yourself comfortable," she called as Hiraki settled onto the sofa with the ease of familiarity. "I'll get us some brunch ... I hope you like Chinese."

"The people or the food?" Hiraki asked from the sofa. Vanessa gave him a reprimanding look over the refrigerator door. Private joke, Sandy thought, strolling to the windows and stretching.

Only ten storeys up, but the view over the neighbourhood was lovely. There was a big, amazing-looking church with tall spires rising well above the trees. And a mosque nearby with patterned domes. A further cluster of taller apartments with rooftop parking. A sports field, puddled and sodden, lakes and gardens adjoining. And everywhere there were trees, a thick green carpet of them, overlaying houses, roads and gardens alike.

"What's this place called?" Sandy asked, nurturing her rekindled curiosity with an effort. It took her mind off other things.

"This is Santiello," Vanessa replied, putting food containers into the microwave. "That's Ranajit over that way," pointing out past the church, "and Mananakorn over to the right there," pointing across. "Junshi's back behind you."

"Problem neighbourhood," Hiraki added, stretched out very comfortably on Vanessa's sofa. "Junshi, I mean. Lots of Chinese gambling and black market trading. Triads."

"Crap," Vanessa retorted. "Hitoru's just a redneck. I think Junshi's quite nice."

"Seven gang murders last quarter," Hiraki replied, unperturbed.

"Out of a population of a hundred thousand, that's not so terrible." Vanessa rummaged for cups, some other appliance grumbling behind her. "So long as it's only other gang members they kill, who cares?" Emerged from the kitchen with three cups, steam rising.

Coffee, Sandy realised as she accepted the cup gratefully. Took a welcome, hot sip, feeling herself unwinding, just a little, standing before the windows and taking in the view. Lightning flickered somewhere not far away. Second storm front, Sandy reckoned from the direction.

Vanessa settled herself before the phone in the corner with a heavy sigh and dialled an automatic number. Sipped her coffee while it connected. In profile, her nose was slim and slightly pointed at the end. With her attractive wavy, short brown hair recently washed and falling loosely, and her pleasant brown eyes, she looked about as far from the typical civilian notion of a SWAT unit commander as was possible.