Crossover (9 page)

"How much do you know?" Vanessa whispered, half in shock, her eyes wide. For the briefest of moments, a faint smile touched the GI's lips.

"... not enough to scare you. Just enough to know you from a vegetable. But that's enough ..."

Vanessa stared at the GI.

"... and Vanessa? I know all about the League's biotech infiltration policies, I even helped on a few of the implementations. They do have ties with Callayan biotech firms, I know that much. Encryption here is lax, freedom of network information and all that — it lets the underground shuttle things around out of sight, but you already know that. I never learned the names. But penetration into major Tanushan BT firms is at least eighty percent — that's from League Intel reports I read three years ago.

"... no, my being here has nothing to do with it. I knew it was the best place for software, and I wanted a good job. I made such a good civilian. I was better at that than I was even at soldiering ..." With faint humour. "... and none of it explains the FIA. Although I do know of a few FIA secrets about their own secret research into very illegal biotech that most Feds won't know. Would you like me to tell you?"

Vanessa stared. Turned and looked once over her shoulder, at the cameras there, recording everything. Imagined Naidu, Djohan and half a dozen other Intel operatives gathered about the monitor screens next door, leaning forward in tense, nervous anticipation, biting fingernails. And she turned back to the GI, patiently waiting.

"Yes," she said. "Yes please."

It was an hour before she emerged, blinking wearily, and wondering if Sav would still be awake. Her husband had become increasingly tired of these late nights. The hopeful part of her mind pictured him asleep and unworried. The realistic part showed him awake, watching TV and grinding his teeth between repeated glances at the time. Naidu and others were clambering out of the monitor room as the secure door shut behind her, Naidu looking very pleased, his eyes alive and smiling.

"Vanessa." He grasped her small hand in his broad one and shook it repeatedly. "I think you have the wrong line of work, Lieutenant, you should be in investigations. You were superb ..." Pause to take a deep, disbelieving breath. "I don't know how much you know about League biotech policy or the FIA, but some of that was just... explosive. This is
really
going to keep us busy. Of course, I don't need to remind you that nothing you heard in there is to leave this building ..."

Vanessa waved him away wearily, detaching her hand from his and strolling tiredly across the floor. "You should know better, Rajeev. I'm a grunt. I have the attention span of small winged insect." Massaging her face, feeling somewhat unsteady, for reasons that went well beyond the mere lateness of the hour. "Call me again if you need me."

"She's growing on you, I see," Naidu said, with the glint of a mischievous smile. "She
is
very pretty. For a European." Which was facetious too, that a GI should even be credited with an ethnic identity beyond the cosmetic. She frowned at him, as more Intel filed past from the monitor room, deep in hand-waving discussion, examining their copious notes and oblivious to anything else.

"I am still married, Rajeev," she retorted in dry humour, "I'm still in the middle of my five-year heterosexual cycle. It's not due to end for another thirty months.
Then
talk to me about how pretty she is." Naidu looked dubious.

"Lieutenant," white-coated Dr Djohan interrupted with a perky, pleased smile. He shook her hand rapidly. "An excellent job. You appear to have established a level of interconnection with her that I hadn't expected possible for a human. Well done. You do realise, of course, that had you tried to remove her restraints I would have triggered a sedative dose from the monitor booth. I had a finger on the button the whole time, so have no fear, you were never in any danger ..."

"Don't you think that's missing the point?" Vanessa said sharply. Djohan frowned, cocked his small brown head.

"And yes, how so?"

"Does trust actually occur to you as a concept?"

Djohan's frown remained. He blinked rapidly.

"She is a GI, Lieutenant. My own personal opinion is that the arbitrary application of human psychological concepts to a non-human is fundamentally flawed and potentially dangerous, and so ..."

"Then what the hell was going on in there?" Vanessa demanded, pointing back toward the closed door. Another pause of rapid blinking by Djohan.

"I would say that you did manage to establish a degree of mutual understanding, Lieutenant. Considering the fundamental similarities in your professions, I don't consider that to be particularly improbable ... but I would be very hesitant to ascribe the description of 'trust' to the interaction, merely because she did choose this time to share some of her information, much to her own benefit, I might add ..."

"Jesus," said Vanessa, and turned away to stretch, running her hands through her short hair in fuming irritation, "if we left the world to doctors and technicians, it'd be in a real bloody mess, wouldn't it?" She turned back to the puzzled Dr Djohan. "Here's my advice: if you want cooperation out of her, take off those restraints. And take that damn monitor plug out of the back of her head — that's gotta be shitting her."

"Lieutenant ... I fear you fail to understand just how dangerous this particular GI is ..." Pointing a sharp finger back at the door. "You heard what she said, and it appears to be true from her degree of intellectual and linguistic response to abstract concepts. She is an experimental GI with an advanced capability to process lateral thought, and that makes her dangerous to the most
extraordinary
degree..."

"I disagree!" Angrily. "I think it makes her ten times
less
dangerous!"

"That in itself is a very dangerous assumption, Lieutenant. This is not a human being to be judged according to human values ..."

"You think
I'm
not dangerous?" Incredulously. She had no idea why she was so mad. At that moment it failed to matter. "I'm not an entirely natural human either, doctor. I have interface and physical enhancements, not to mention my training. Dammit, I could kill both you and Mr Naidu there right now if I chose to, with my bare hands, and there's not a damn thing you could do to stop me. So why aren't you scared of me, huh?"

"You're CSA. You are sworn to serve and protect the citizens of Callay, like me."

"She's not League," Vanessa retorted, pointing at the door. "She left them. She's now giving up their secrets or what she knows of them. There's no evidence she's done anything bad while she's been here. We've got her records, we know where she's been, what she's done ... she's been trying to find a job, she's gone sightseeing. She's very unlikely to be a spy since she could easily have gone for a higher security level job if she'd chosen, with those qualifications..."

"Well, we don't actually know that," Naidu cautioned.

"Give her the benefit of the doubt, why don't you?" Incredulously. "Face it, there's no reason to suspect her other than that she's a GI ... it's bias, it's discrimination..."

"Based on extremely sound reasoning," Djohan retorted. "Have you any idea what she is capable of?"

"Capability doesn't equal intent, Doctor. Do you want what she knows or not? Because if you keep looking at her like the caged lab rat, she'll keep looking at you like the evil bloody scientist with the big syringe."

"Your point is well taken, Lieutenant," Dr Djohan said coolly, in a manner that suggested he no longer had time to stand around and humour this small, excitable SWAT grunt, "but I am in no position of authority to recommend such a course. If you don't like it, I suggest you take it up with someone else. Good day." And he strode off, white coat-tails flying.

Vanessa glared at Naidu. "Well, who the hell
is
in authority?" Naidu only shrugged. Vanessa folded her arms and glared back toward the door. The whole thing was stupid. She felt claustrophobic enough to sympathise with the GI. Naidu watched her slightly from beneath raised brows, until she spared him another smouldering look.

"You were saying," he said, "that you hadn't noticed how pretty she is?" Vanessa snorted.

"Get a hold of your rampaging imagination, Rajeev," she said disparagingly as she strode toward the outer door, "you'll split your pants."

CHAPTER 4

The Callayan executive courtroom was more or less what she'd expected. It was small, bare and functional, but not in any way that suggested insignificance. Quite the opposite. It was simplicity born of security, tight, hard and impenetrable. There was no seating for an audience, or for a jury. Three judges sat behind a bench of plain, smooth wood, faces cast in blue light from the inset monitor screens before them, below line-of-sight. All were reading, studying. None spared her so much as a glance.

Preparing, Sandy noted. Listening to feeds from outside audio sources, scrolling through legal files, intelligence updates, accessing technical and medical analysts, and — no doubt — various political advisors and go-betweens. Seated alone on her single, barely cushioned chair, Sandy allowed her gaze to wander along the blank, featureless walls. Security shielding prevented her from pinpointing the telltale emissions of the surveillance cameras, but she guessed there would be at least ten or twelve individual units in a court like this one, covering every conceivable angle.

People were watching. Important people. She thought she could guess who.

Shan Ibrahim, chief of the Callayan Security Agency. His deputy ... she scanned her memory to retrieve that elusive name ... N'Darie. Ulu N'Darie. Their department heads, all four of them. Names followed. And Benjamin Grey, the State Security Chief, and his aides and seconds. Politicians, unlike the CSA, who were civil servants. She'd seen enough in the League to know the difference.

And then there was Katia Neiland, most prominently. Most prominently of everyone, in fact. It was a good bet that the Callayan President would be watching in person, whatever her tight schedule.

Security advisors, and their various key insiders and connections. The Secretary of State, Yu Weichao ... no, he was on a diplomatic visit several lightyears away. The ministers for Internal Security and the Armed Services and their aides.

And finally, Confederacy-Governor Dali. The thought gave her a mild but thoroughly unpleasant chill. Dali was the central Confederacy Government's representative on Callay. He was the communication conduit, the mediator, the bearer of the central administration's stamp of approval. Officially, he wielded no power, and resided in the Federal Embassy with his numerous staff. Officially, he was just another ambassador, despite the fancy title with its imperial-hangover overtones. But in the corridors of power, people who mattered knew better.

All the organs of power. All of the shadowy, distant people of whom she had only been aware in the abstract ... all here, watching her. And the information would be recorded. People in the Federal Administration would see those tapes. All the way up to the top.

Capable as she was, Sandy could scarcely conceive of the scale of the predicament in which she was caught. Her mind was spinning, trying to take it all in. She felt numb.

The judge in the middle looked up at her. The woman to his left leaned back in her chair. So, it was beginning.

"I, Supreme Court Adjudicator Sandeep Guderjaal, declare this closed session open," the judge intoned. "Records will indicate that the time is 10:23 local, and clearance is registered triple A."

Sandy sat alone in the middle of the room before the judges' bench, wrists manacled in a heavy, triple-reinforced brace, legs bare from the calves down beneath the white robe she wore. A man from CSA Intel had given her a pair of slippers to wear on her bare feet. They were too big, but they were warm. She guessed they might be his, Intel had been nice to her, on and off. There were techno-geeks in Intel, it was obvious. Their interviews had been long and frequent, and she had answered their questions as best she could, mostly. Some of the interviewers had been very friendly, particularly the men. It had surprised her, and it had given her hope. Only a little, but any hope at all was a precious thing.

"So," the central judge said, studying her, a slight crease to his forehead, as if surprised to look up from his contemplation and find that he was not alone. "You call yourself Cassandra Kresnov, do you?"

"I don't call myself anything. My
name
is Cassandra Kresnov." Her voice remained hoarse, but it was clear enough in this bare, silent room. If she listened hard enough, she fancied she could hear the faint whirr of air conditioning. Beyond that, nothing.

"In this courtroom," said the woman to the right, "you should address each panel member as Your Honour. Will this be a problem?" Her eyebrows raised expectantly. A derisive retort would have released some tension.

"No, Your Honour," Sandy said instead, meeting the woman's gaze.

"And you do realise why it is that you are here?" the same woman asked.

Sandy nodded. "My case falls within the guidelines of several articles of State Security law," she replied. "CSA must have judicial approval in order to proceed with ... whatever it is that they might wish to do with me."

"That is more or less correct, yes. How does that prospect make you feel?"

"Nervous." A short, heavy silence.

"Why does it make you nervous?" Sandy held the woman's gaze. Then allowed her eyes to stray about the room. And to one side, as if indicating the guards who stood against the wall behind her. Back to the woman.

"Because I feel I have a lot to fear. I'm hoping that you can tell me otherwise." There was no immediate reply. The woman looked down at her screen.

"Captain Kresnov," said the man on the left. He was a big, stern-looking man. His look was serious enough to be almost menacing. "What are you? How would you describe yourself?"

A deep breath. It hurt her gut, and pulled tight at her bandages. "I suppose the simple answer is that I am an artificial human being, Your Honour."

"Designed for what purpose?" Trap. Sandy felt her stomach tense. Her throat was dry again. She wished she had a table on which to rest a glass of water.

"I feel I should remind you that the original design purpose does not necessarily correlate with the precise nature of the finished ..."

"Just answer the question, please. What did your designers have in mind when they made you?"

"Money, probably." The man's face darkened.

"Are you not prepared to answer the question?"

Sandy took a breath. "I was created to be a soldier. As you well know, Your Honour."

"But you're much more than that, aren't you?" The man's tone was hard, darkened by some unnamed emotion. "Your official designation is GI for General Issue, but your unofficial League designation is HK, isn't it? GI-5074J-HK. Can you tell me what the HK stands for?"

Sandy stared at him. "Do all Supreme Court judges waste time with rhetorical questions?"

"HK," the man continued forcefully, "stands for Hunter Killer. Does it not, Captain Kresnov?"

"It does, Your Honour. But someone else invented that label, and its relevance ..."

"Someone else invented
you
, Ms Kresnov. Someone else invented you for the sole purpose of killing as many of us flesh and blood human beings as technologically possible, didn't they?"

Sandy blinked slowly. Her nerves were settling surprisingly fast. Her vision fixed unerringly on the big, square-jawed man with the ruddy face. Eyes half-slid unconsciously into infrared, tuning through the spectrums. Targeting.

"And so the next question, Your Honour, is how should I achieve this objective that you have set for me?" Very calmly.

"Please explain what you mean," Judge Guderjaal cut in before the big man could respond. Sandy's gaze did not waiver even a fraction.

"I mean that creating the perfect 'killing machine' has been attempted before, in a literal, technological sense. But most artificial intelligences cannot tactically coordinate and process abstract data on the same level as humans. The robot soldiers I've seen in perhaps a dozen TV programs and movies since I've been a civilian in reality are little more than cannon fodder.

"I am not a 'killing machine' I was designed specifically to think laterally and creatively, well beyond the level of basic abstraction. The only biomechanical entity known to humans that can achieve this is still the human brain. My brain is a copy, an imprint, of the original article. I have the tactical skills required of a soldier, but as an automatic side-effect I also have emotions, and personality, to the same extent as any person in this room. In fact, I do not believe I could be the tactician I am without that emotional input. That is my creative side. Without creativity, I'm just a target."

"You mean to say," the woman asked, "that emotions such as fear are actually of assistance to your combat performance? I'm not certain that that makes sense to me." Suspiciously.

Sandy looked at her, vision still tracking. Closed her eyes softly, restoring normal vision. Took another deep breath. Don't let the combat instincts take over, she told herself. Don't intimidate them. Be harmless.

It wasn't easy.

"I have good control," she replied. "I process a lot of data in a combat environment. I tend to get lost in it, and the fear does not register. But then, many human soldiers have reported precisely the same thing."

"How many people have you killed?" the big man asked her coldly. Sandy's train of thought was diverted for a brief instant, wondering at his allegiances, his connections, his supporters. Wondering who it was that the datalink in his ear and the comp feed on his bench were connected to, outside the courtroom. They were feeding him information even now. And probably, she realised, he would be trying to get a particular response from her, later to be used for his own purposes. Or theirs.

"I have no idea."

"No idea? You, the product of the highest technological capacities the human race has ever devised, have no idea? Is your memory deficient, perhaps? Your recording processes damaged during recent events?"

Sandy blinked slowly, her eyes calm, blue and steady. "That is four questions, Your Honour. Shall I answer each of them individually, or take them as one single rhetorical outburst?"

The man's gaze deepened to a glare. "How many people have you killed, Captain Kresnov?"

"I believe I have already answered that question. I said that I had no idea. My accurate recollection of events is limited to those matters that I find necessary or helpful. A bodycount will serve neither purpose."

"You don't feel that the lives of the people you have killed are worth your bothering to recall?"

"I am quite certain I did not say that. I said I do not find those recollections helpful to my present situation. On the contrary, I find them extremely disturbing and depressing."

"You don't look particularly disturbed or depressed from where I'm sitting, Captain Kresnov."

"Respectfully, Your Honour, as a supreme court judge, you should know better than to judge by mere appearances."

The big man continued to glare at her, eyes hard within the shadows of his brows in the dim light. Sandy shifted spectrums slightly, saw hot blood pulsing in his neck veins, spreading through his temples and cheeks.

The female judge interrupted. "You were operating with Dark Star for nine years, is that correct?" Sandy tuned back to standard visual, looking at the woman. She had light brown skin, black hair and a prominent nose. But not Indian. Arabic, Sandy guessed.

"That is correct, Your Honour. I joined when I was five at the starting rank of lieutenant, was made captain when I was six and went AWOL when I was fourteen. That was one year ago."

"And over that nine-year period," the woman continued, "how many operations did you personally conduct?"

"Twelve as a lieutenant, nine of those as second-in-command. Seventy-eight as captain."

"And in how many of those operations did you come into direct contact with the enemy?"

"Approximately half, Your Honour."

The Arabic woman's frown was slightly quizzical. "Approximately?"

"Definitions of 'direct contact' vary, Your Honour," Sandy explained. "Kills can be made in an operation without the other side's commanders being entirely aware of it. Degrees of contact vary. I estimate that on approximately forty-five occasions direct contact did occur. But I leave out of that total several instances open to variable interpretation."

"Either way, Captain, that's rather a lot of firefights, wouldn't you say?"

Sandy nodded slowly. "Yes, Your Honour. It is a lot."

"You are good at firefights, I presume? You handle yourself well?"

Sandy nodded again, this time reluctantly. "Yes, Your Honour." She sensed no overt animosity from this woman. And yet Sandy had no doubts of which judge she found most intimidating, between her and the big man to the right.

"I see." The judge briefly studied the screen before her. Blue light played across her tanned features. "You and your assault team coordinated through neural linkups, did you not?"

"We did, yes."

"I'd imagine that given your other physical, sensory and psychological advantages, this single unit coordination must have made your team extremely difficult for most mere human soldiers to oppose effectively, in a combat situation. In fact, it seems to me that your unit would have almost an unfair advantage. Would you agree with that assessment?"

Another reluctant nod. "That is the design purpose of most military technology, Your Honour."

"Indeed." A pause. The woman continued to read off the screen before her. Sandy's mind raced over the possible implications of what she was asking. Or what she might be reading from the screen before her. Intelligence, no doubt — mostly military. Intelligence on Dark Star. Then she looked up, her expression mild and purposeful. "Will I have heard of any of these operations?"

If your security clearance is as high as I think it is, Sandy thought, you can read about any of them whenever you wish. But she didn't say it. And said instead, after a moment's thought, "My unit was very active around Goan just three years ago."

"Which operations exactly?"

Sandy shook her head, wearily. "For the same reasons I gave to my CSA interviewers, I refuse to give any answers regarding my past military operations that are any more specific than those I have already given."