Originator (23 page)

“Say, where'd you learn to speak fluent bullshit?” Vanessa wondered,
quick-scanning up side corridors as they passed, small legs at nearly a jog to stay ahead of Reichardt.

“Academy,” said Reichardt. “They run a special course, along with brown-nosing and ass-licking.”

“Aren't those kind of the same thing?” Poole wondered from the back.

“Well,
you'd
have failed,” said Reichardt. They turned left onto a junction corridor, past station security watching them warily. No one saluted—on duty they didn't have to, but Ari thought it was more than that. Fleet, so united during the war, remained riddled with factionalism. Reichardt was as loathed by many as he was loved by some.

“
Captain
,” came Ndaja's voice, “
we're docked. Two minutes to unseal, we'll be on scene in seven
.”

“Copy, LT.”

At the next junction more security were blocking the way, several with face masks. A station officer stepped forward to Reichardt, a hand raised.

“Captain, we've a pressure drop in Section 14 A through D, pressure doors are down.”

“Open them, we'll risk it.”

“Sir, I must insist you detour to Level Three rearside, that will take you through . . .”

Reichardt pulled his pistol and levelled it at the officer's head. “Open the doors. You have five seconds.”

The officer paled and hurried to comply. Station security stared wide-eyed. Vanessa and Tuli watched them intently. Any twitch toward their weapons would see them gunned down well short of firing, and they all seemed to know it. Ari recalled those constitutional arguments claiming that the mere presence of GIs in one security institution but not in others upset the fundamental power balance. Damn right it did.

The heavy doors opened to a wail of sirens. Reichardt holstered his pistol. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Carry on.”

They walked fast, Poole walking half-backward to keep all in sight. Trying his reflexes would be just as much the death sentence as with Vanessa and Tuli.

“What if there really is a pressure drop?” Ari wondered.

“Then the whole station will absorb the pressure difference for a few
minutes and there might be a slight breeze to ruffle your curly hair,” said Reichardt. “Fucking amateurs.”

Ari didn't ask if Reichardt would have pulled the trigger.

They exited onto station docks opposite Takewashi's berth, a wide, cold expanse of curved steel decking. A glance each way up the sloping horizon showed no pressure doors down, no sign of emergency or depressurisation issues. Gathered around the main access tube to the newly docked ship were station personnel and several dark suits. They turned now to see Reichardt approaching with his small group.

“
Marks left
,” Vanessa formulated on tacnet audio. Tacnet highlighted several watching suits along the inner left wall, another behind a dock transport two berths down, scattered personnel in between. Tuli and Poole could put bullets on those marks in a split second if required; Vanessa, only a fraction longer than that. Still Ari wished Sandy were here—she could do it in several directions at once, almost doubling her killing arc over even high-designation GIs.

“
Marks right
,” Poole added, highlighting targets that way. They formed out, three killers, open on the dock with guns still pointed at the plating but ready to come up at the slightest provocation. Ari and Boyle continued behind Reichardt, up to the berth.

“Agent Raman,” said the lead FedInt, empty-handed and palms out. That was smart. “FedInt wasn't provided with any explanation of your purpose here, Captain?”

“FOG claiming jurisdiction on Fleet authority, on behalf of FSA HQ.”

“Ah.” Raman scratched his nose. “Would have been simpler if you'd said that from the start.”

“But so much less fun.” From up the sloping docks, a vehicle came humming, dodging working runners and pedestrians. On its back, Lieutenant Ndaja and four more armoured
Mekong
marines.

“Director Boyle,” Boyle identified himself, though the FedInts doubtless knew that. “Chief, League Affairs. We get first dibs.”

A dry smile from the spook. “Ranaprasana doesn't think so.”

Sandy sat in the command chair of SO1 and watched the operation unfold. The shuttle carrying Takewashi was arcing about on final approach, through
multiple looming thunderclouds. SO1 circled Balaji Spaceport, an hour's flight from Tanusha. Two other FSA flyers flew support patterns, and drones made low passes over jungle and farms between here and the city outskirts.

FedInt agents were accompanying Takewashi also, by Rana prasana's order. It made everyone nervous. Word was that Takewashi had shut up completely upon seeing those tensions for himself and was now not talking to anyone. The four GIs who had accompanied him were coming down on another shuttle. All noncombat designation, all female. Voluptuous, the word was. Subservient. It made Sandy want to smack Takewashi around even more. A few of her male non-GI colleagues were more amused at her reaction than at Takewashi's companions. “Feminism” had never been her thing—it presumed a degree of identification with mainstream Federation gender roles that she simply didn't possess. But this, she understood. And had some satisfaction that Vanessa might smack him around for her on the way down.

In the meantime, she had to keep Takewashi alive. The weather was poor, flight control showed the shuttle bounding in the thermals on the approach. Ari would hate that, being as disenchanted with flying as with space travel. Vanessa would probably be asleep. Or pretending to be, while keeping an eye on the FedInt agents on the shuttle with them. Rain swept across green forest in sweeping grey veils, hiding the nearby mountains. Such pretty country, across the northern continent. So little of it she'd gotten to see, even now. Her life was the city, and her rural recreation was the beach.

The shuttle landed, a cloud of white smoke from the tires. Another ten minutes until transfer to a flyer. Then a secure transmission from Ari.

“
We have confirmation of new FedInt agents on standby at shuttle docking. Request clearance for removing Takewashi clean, if we have to
.”

“
You have clearance
,” came Ibrahim's reply. “
Just try to make sure it doesn't come to that
.”

Because Takewashi might provide the first clue what the hell was going on in the League, and who killed Cresta, and why. Well, PRIDE killed Cresta, that much seemed certain . . . but the GI who broke into Raylee's apartment said FedInt leaked them the information they needed to do it. Which jibed with Captain Reichardt's assessment of Cresta's considerable defences, and that it had to have been an inside job. FedInt could have done that. But then,
it seemed to Sandy, so could ISO, or League Fleet, or any other combination of League forces. So why the suspicion on FedInt?

Because FedInt had been around a long time, came the obvious reply. All through the war. FedInt had even used GIs, granted them by Takewashi for one, experimentals he simply wanted to see granted life when his own authorities refused to allow it. FedInt had done deals and dirty tricks, including with people in the League. Former League President Balasingham had been involved in a lot of these old games, and certainly FedInt had dealings with him and his agents. Some said that over a thirty-year war, the stalemate had begun to drag on both sides, leading to a lot of backdoor conversations about who might concede what, if some theoretical deal could be reached. Many had agreed, for a long time, that a military solution was impossible. And then League had begun to lose, changing everyone's minds. But not before a lot of secret exchanges, carried out by Intel organisations of both sides, that could conceivably have gotten various leaders executed for treason.

Secrets big enough to kill an entire moon to cover up? League had been keeping one damn big secret—that synthetic humanity, the signature achievement of League independence and free thought, had actually come from the Talee. It undermined all League pride and credibility on issues they'd gone to war over and lost millions of lives . . . enough that they'd tried to nuke Droze rather than let the secret get out. That, and the other secret, of how all League was now going nuts, thanks to the widespread use of that technology in uplinks that they didn't truly understand.

It all seemed to fit. And now the League GI told them it was FedInt behind Cresta's destruction. Or told Raylee, anyway. Who just happened to be Ari's girlfriend, and Ari was a somewhat conspiracy-prone guy who hated FedInt with a passion . . .

She connected to Amirah as the flyer bumped through heavy turbulence, grasping a handle above the command chair. “Ami, what's the weather forecast telling you?”

“
Lots of activity
,” said Amirah. “
Doesn't look good at all. I think Shin might try something
.”

“Against
us
?”

“
We're making him look bad. We got Takewashi before he could, and if we have
sole access to that intel, FedInt's at a real disadvantage. FedInt has its own politics, Shin's position won't be secure if that happens. He has to be under pressure
.”

Dammit, thought Sandy. The gnawing discomfort got worse. “Ami, does this seem odd to you? This FedInt killed Cresta theory?”

“
Well, it doesn't really matter if it seems odd, what matters is that it's credible, and in the absence of more information we have to act on all credible intel
.”

“But that's just the problem, the absence of more information is because the only people who could give us that information are FedInt.”

A short pause from Amirah. “
The old man seems pretty sure
.”

“Ibrahim's been burned by FedInt before, he has to defend himself. But that's the problem, we're locked into institutional opposition, and after a while we stop thinking. It's just reflex. And I've done that before, Amirah. I did that when I was a soldier in the League. It was just the way things were—League were good, Federation were bad, that was my reality. I don't want to do that again.”

A longer pause from Amirah. Sandy tightened the seat buckles harder as the turbulence got worse. From the back, one of her troops complained to the pilot.

“
It is a bit strange
,” Amirah admitted. “
I didn't want to say anything, but it's a lot of faith to be putting in the word of a League GI, our enemy, who has every reason to lead us astray and make us fight each other
.”

“Thanks, Ami,” said Sandy, and reconnected to Rhian on the shuttle. “Hi, Rhi. How's things?”

“
Rolling to berth now
,” said Rhian. “
Watching FedInt agents pretty close. Sandy, are we sure these are the bad guys?
”

“Go on.” Her heart was thumping a little harder now. This had been a theory of hers for a while—GIs not thinking so much like straights. Could this be the moment when it proved not only true, but useful?

“
Look, I don't like FedInt either. But killing Cresta? It's convenient that we can't prove it, don't you think? And we can't just ask them if they did. We know someone helped PRIDE kill Cresta . . . but maybe PRIDE had inside sources of their own. They're a League insurgency, insurgents have spies, right? What if they've tricked us into suspecting FedInt, and right now we're falling for it?
”

“Are Ari and Vanessa convinced?”

“
I think so, yeah. That's kinda why I didn't say anything
.”

“Yeah,” Sandy said grimly. “That's becoming a recurring thing.”

She called Poole, on SO5. “
Sandy, I don't like this
,” he told her as soon as she raised it. “
We're doing this on the say-so of an ISO agent? You remember what happened the last time you trusted an ISO agent?
”

Sandy ran her eye over the listed assets grounded at the spaceport . . . five flyers, all unarmed transport. Three previous shuttles, currently at various stages of refuelling. She was in charge of this part of the operation, but she wasn't in
control
—the setup was largely out of her hands, and that made her uneasy.

“Ari,” she tried again, “update please.” No reply. Her link was good. She just wasn't getting a response. Spaceport control was showing a flyer's engines running at a nearby hangar. Taxiing, the visual showed. More ground vehicles moving near the shuttle. What the . . . “Tacnet propagation,” she announced as the network went tactical, shutting out all external sources. “We have a situation, I'm not getting a response from inside the shuttle, all units . . .”

“
Nothing
,” came Arvid Singh from SO2. “
I get no response either, something's going on
.”

“SO1 is on fast approach,” said Sandy, sending that uplink signal to her pilot. A sudden crush of Gs as the flyer powered up and turned hard, directly toward the runways. Full weapons came up, an active scan across the entire spaceport . . . Sandy kept a close eye on spaceport defences, remembering an incident seven years ago at Tanusha's main public spaceport, but FSA had full control of spaceport defences and the networks that controlled access, network superiority being the one thing they were guaranteed of against FedInt. “Amirah, get me Chief Shin, right now.”

They were several kilometres away, and on this angle the shuttle, nosing up to berthing gantries, was blocking their angle on the taxiing flyer. But if she took personal fire control of a missile, she had enough visual sources to loop it in by eye.

“
Sandy
,” came Arvid, “
if they're making a getaway, they're using that flyer to do it
.”

“I know,” said Sandy, as turbulence tossed them again, harder this time, at speed. “I'm not shooting unless we're under fire.”

“
They incapacitated our agents inside
. . .”