Originator (10 page)

“Linked to what?” Vanessa asked with dry scepticism.

“If I knew that, I'd get paid a lot more. Obviously FedInt are linked somehow to Cresta. And Moily's the key.”

“Moily knows nothing,” Sandy replied. “It's his Pyeongwha friends that are the key. Subject A was talking to them, my guess is about NCT.”

“Great,” said Vanessa. “They can swap notes on the most efficient methods of genocide in the modern age.” Again the tension. Sandy thought she could guess.

“Of course,” said Sandy, “the most
likely
explanation is that League killed Subject A, given that he's, you know, friends with people who just succeeded in killing a League moon with a quarter million people on it.”

“Without first finding out what he's doing here?” Ari asked.

“Maybe they already know?”

“No no,” Ari shook his head, quite adamant. “
We're
not sure what he's doing here. Was doing here. No way is League's Intel in Tanusha better than ours.”

Sandy was unconvinced.

“Spec ops meeting in ten minutes,” said Ari. “Ibrahim's office, if you can make it.”

“Why couldn't I make it?” Vanessa asked suspiciously.

“I was talking to the baby,” said Ari. “But you can come too if you want.” Sandy slapped his arm.

The door opened again, and Rhian entered. “Oh, a baby!” She came over, hands outstretched. “Give me the baby.”

Sandy smiled. “What if I want him a bit longer?”

“You
must
give me the baby,” Rhian insisted. “It's compulsive. Baby baby baby baby baby.”

“Rhi,” Ari said seriously, and put a hand on her shoulder. “What have I told you about this? You only came to this room because you knew you'd find a baby here, didn't you? Your addiction can be cured, Rhi, but first you have to admit that you have a problem and learn to say no. Just walk on past that door, Rhian.”

“Baby!” Rhian said plaintively.

Sandy and Vanessa walked a hallway on the third floor, as the top floors where the big meetings would otherwise be held were still out of action with all the construction.

“You okay?” Sandy asked her.

“Oh, you know.” Vanessa ran fingers through her short curls, looking a little like she didn't know what to do with her hands, now that Rhian had commandeered Sylvan for the next half hour. “Hell of a time to be raising twins.”

“It'll always be like this,” Sandy reasoned. “There'll always be a reason for people like us not to have kids, and it's never a good time. But kids are tough, and no kid was ever raised in a perfect environment. That's just human.”

“It's just . . . hell, you know me. I like to work, I like to focus, and this stuff is so important. And now I'm distracted, and I feel guilty for it. . . .”

“I know.”

“And I feel guilty if I'm not distracted
enough
. . . .”

“I know.”

“I mean, it's only the survival of the entire human race. . . .”

“I know.”

Vanessa managed a wry smile. “How completely unsurprising that you also do motherhood better than me.”

“Oh, my kids are easy,” Sandy said dismissively. Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “Well, compared to newborn twins. Mine had been looking after themselves in a warzone for the last five years, all they need from me is love and time. I think you're doing great.”

“I don't feel like I'm doing great.”

“I don't care
what
you feel like you're doing.
I
think you're doing great.”

Vanessa smiled at her affectionately.

Poole walked from the rear of the grounded SWAT flyer to the road in Safdajung District. All around were flashing lights, police vehicles, and barriers to keep back the swarms of locals. Some of the cops had light armour and assault weapons, a new development for Tanusha. Most just kept the crowds back and cast concerned looks over their shoulders at the new SWAT arrivals, as the flyer's engines wound down from their previously ear-shattering howl.

Poole led his new contingent of armoured, helmeted agents to the police command vehicle parked a hundred meters down the road. From there to the river bend, hidden behind looming apartment towers, all had been cordoned off. A lot of these crowding civilians were not just annoying spectators; they were locals directed to leave their comfortable apartments an hour ago, now wondering when they could go home again. Poole spied some children amidst the crowd, holding parents' hands or being carried. Behind the glass front to an apartment lobby, he glimpsed a temporary crèche, bemused cops even now carrying in armloads of stuffed animals and toys for the toddlers playing on the carpet and amidst the expensive leather lounge chairs.

Near the barrier around the police command vehicle, journalists and cameras clustered. The cop by the vehicle side door indicated they could enter. Within was a command station, police sitting at posts, uplinked and watching displays. In the middle of the vehicle, a cleared space for a central table with holographic projection, around which clustered cops and a single CSA Agent—Commander Arvid Singh, head of CSA SWAT.

Cops moved aside as Poole stepped in, retreating up the side aisle to make space. Poole took off his helmet, as did his group, spreading around the table to Singh's left.

“Commander Naik,” Singh said to the senior policeman, “these are Agents Poole, Kiet, Dahisu, and Trong. Agent Poole is mine, SWAT One, the others are from different SWAT teams.” All GIs, of course. Commander Naik studied them warily—the very picture of a senior Tanushan policeman, brown, moustachioed, stocky.

“Agents,” said Naik grimly. “Did they make a mistake by parking over the river?”

On the holodisplay was the maglev line over this bend of the Shoban River in Safdajung District. It ran alongside a road bridge, now empty of traffic, cordoned on both ends by lines of police. Directly in the middle of the river, an eight-car maglev train was parked, its ends nearly spanning from bank to bank. All its lights were off, big windows polarised. The terrorists within had gained command of the train's systems, and police and CSA concurred that it was safer to let them.

“No mistake,” said Poole. “It gives us clear line of sight, but the biggest threat to them is immediate access. If we get in amongst them at close range we can take them apart. Their current position makes that difficult.”

“Difficult or impossible?” asked Naik.

“That depends,” said Poole, looking at Singh.

“We've confirmed they have deadman switches,” said Singh. Naik had no command authority here, despite the police's overwhelming numbers. The use of force on this level, in aid of domestic security, was exclusively reserved for CSA. CSA needed police to clear the streets, get civilians out of harm's way, coordinate emergency services and media, all the things CSA were not equipped to manage. But the cops would only join the shooting if things went seriously wrong.

“Which means they've thought this out,” said Kiet, contemplating the hologram. The view was wide enough to include the nearby towers and thus all the most obvious sniper spots. “We can't just shoot them.”

“That would be hard anyway,” said Singh. “They've shielded their uplinks, we can't reverse hack, so we've no way of figuring where they are in the train. With ten of them the odds of one or more surviving a simultaneous sniper strike are very high, and with all their explosive vests linked, it just takes one survivor to detonate all of them.”

“Eyes inside?” asked Dahisu.

“They've control of the train's systems,” said Singh, seated at the table in full armour. Slim with intelligent eyes and a love of practical jokes, Arvid Singh was not exactly the image of the macho Sikh-warrior beloved in the movies. But, Poole had learned, he was much more effective. “We could probably hack it, but they'd see. It's not wise to underestimate these guys, they're almost certainly former Pyeongwha internal security, their capabilities will be advanced, particularly given their uplinks.”

Because most Pyeongwha citizens used Neural Cluster Technology, of a sort banned in the rest of the Federation.

“What's your plan then?” Poole asked.

“We can use SoundBlast to make that train ring like a bell,” said Singh. “It'll disorient, probably damage eardrums, which in turn affects balance. It won't kill, so the deadman switches are out of play. It should stop anyone from hitting their vest triggers for a good ten seconds.”

“Should?” asked Kiet. Kiet was former League Army. All his previous, extensive weapons experience was lethal. Nonlethals were new to him and regarded with scepticism.

“So we've a ten-second window,” Poole summarised. “To be safe, we should drop that to six.”

“That's up to you,” Singh said pointedly.

“Six?” Poole asked, looking around at his small group. The others thought about it, looking at the hologram. And nodded slowly. “Six seconds.”

“Wait a moment,” said Commander Naik, “there are nearly a thousand civilians on that train, at least sixty children among them. You're going to blow their eardrums out?”

“And in the process save their lives,” Poole replied. “Hearing can be repaired. High explosive leaves a more permanent mark.”

Naik nodded slowly. “I'll alert the hospitals.”

Arvid entered the apartment tower lobby a few minutes later, past a couple of cops keeping guard, and into the main elevator. He shoved tacnet visuals aside long enough to take a call. President Raza appeared on his visor display, looking worried.

“
Commander, I've had your plan explained to me. Are there any other options?
”

“There are always other options, Mr President, but we're all of the opinion here that none of them are as good.”

Raza was Interim President of Callay, as everyone on Callay was “interim” right now. The previous President, Vikram Singh, was under house arrest as his trial for treason continued—the “Trial of the Century,” Callayan media called it, a claim complicated by the even bigger one underway against the previous Grand Council leadership. Raza had been a constitutional scholar at Ramprakash University, plucked from his post by Callayan Governor Thomas for the interim role, the Governor himself having declined the position. All constitutionally feasible, and Raza had been a member of Callayan Parliament for ten years, at one point serving as Attorney General. Arvid remembered him vaguely from then, CSA was at least partially a law enforcement agency, and a lot of senior agents had dealt with Raza before in that capacity and considered him solid. But only vaguely, ten years ago seemed another universe.

“
I'm inclined to try further negotiations
,” said Raza, looking very worried. “
They are talking, that seems a good sign there might be something to gain from further discussion
.”

“Well, that's your prerogative, Mr President,” said Arvid, as the elevator took him up to the penthouse. “But I'm sure your psych experts are telling you the same as ours—this is Compulsive Narrative Syndrome gone crazy, these guys are unredeemable fanatics, and negotiations for them are a tactic to buy time and a means to get their message out for propaganda purposes against the Federal occupation of Pyeongwha. They've no intention at all of actually listening to what we say, and their brains are by this stage structurally incapable of absorbing a pattern-anomalous argument anyway. All the Pyeongwha radicals we've dealt with so far have been unstable; the longer we wait to implement a solution on our terms, the greater the odds one of them will just decide to end it on theirs.”

“
What is your assessment of our chances of success? Doing it your way?
”

For a moment, Arvid mulled which answer to give. The correct answer was that he didn't have enough data to make that judgement—if he'd missed some vital information and it was all a trap, then the chances of success were zero; he just wasn't aware of it. Ditto if these guys weren't as good as their assessment, the chances were more like 100 percent. Professionals didn't deal with odds, they dealt with available options, and when the best available option presented, they took it and hoped.

But politicians worked by a different calculus, and he had to give a number. Well, he told himself, when talking to a politician, pick a political
number. Somewhere between zero and a hundred. “I'd think eighty percent, Mr President.”

Raza still looked worried. And well he should, given the nine hundred– plus people on the train, whose fates all hung on what he decided next. “
Should we call Commander Kresnov?
”

“Mr President, you can do that if you want, but I've worked with Kresnov for as long as she's been on Callay, and I can tell you that she'll say this is a team job, and the inclusion of certain individuals, even individuals as capable as her, won't make any difference. It could even hurt. I have the team I need in place, they've all trained together; putting an outsider in the mix would complicate things unnecessarily.”

The elevator opened on the penthouse, eye-wateringly expensive in Tanushan style, a wide living quarters opening onto wide windows and balcony with river views, many towers beyond, all ablaze with urban light. Arvid walked past several CSA Agents on surveillance, back from the edge, where small units on tripods peered over the railing to compile a complete scan for tacnet. Tacnet's command function showed another twenty such scanners now surrounding the stranded train, on either side of the river, at all heights and angles in case one saw something the others missed.

“
Commander Singh
,” said the President of Callay. “
How long until you're ready to move?
”

“Seven minutes, Mr President.” He crouched on the balcony, flipped up his visor to get a look at the scene with real eyes. Sometimes there was no beating the old Mark I eyeball . . . even if his were technically at least Mark III by now. A commander could become too dependent on simulations. Actually looking at the thing made the brain realise exactly just how hard the thing was they were trying. Hard for normal humans, anyhow. “We will delay if you request it, but as I've said, in the CSA's expert opinion, the longer we wait the greater the likelihood of failure.”