Crossover: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 1)
: Chapter 6

The wheelchair glided down corridors, rubber wheels squeaking around the corners. A blindfold obscured all vision. She could sense the movement on either side, could hear the footfalls of accompanying guards, measured and lightly shod. The drugs held further perception back, a dimming fog drawn about her senses.

com-gear. She could sense that clearly, registering the coded frequency bursts at regular intervals. A clear fix was beyond her but it was there, and heavily coded. It triggered old reflexes. Wrists flexed against restraints, bound firmly in her lap. Ankles similarly bonded so her thighs touched. Immobilised and blind, she was wheeled helplessly down invisible corridors amid watchful armed security who spoke only in electronic code.

Into an elevator, a soundless pulse as the doors closed. Silence. A pulse of sharp energy nearby. Positional beacon. Tracking their upward flight to an outside monitor. Then slowing.

Stopped, and they were out. She could feel a cool breeze on her face, its source distant, further ahead. Getting nearer, and then they were outside, and the breeze was strong, snatching at her hair and drying her lips. A whine of engines, thickly reverberating. Data flowed strongly, sensory, authorial, Intel and autos… signals scattered through her drug-dimmed brain without care for order.

The engine whine grew very loud, right alongside where something was blocking the wind. The wheelchair stopped, and the blindfold came off.

Sandy blinked, eyes adjusting to the glare. It was a rooftop landing pad, many stories above the ground. A forest of similar-sized mid-level buildings about them, the local mega-rise soaring massively to one side, nearly a half-kilometre tall, marking the centre of the Largos district. Alongside on the pad, the smooth metallic flank of an aircar, open drivers’ doors swung skyward, a suited man leaning down to talk with the driver above the engine whine. Inside, a quick glimpse of lean manual controls, all moulded handgrips and polished, lighted displays, the aesthetics of function.

Keys worked at her chair restraints, which came smoothly away.

‘Up, please,’ one of her escorts said. The foot rests dropped and the toes of her shoes were suddenly touching the ground. She wriggled forward, and managed to stand, moving slowly. The aircar’s rear door cracked open at seamless joins, swinging upwards.

‘You all right?’ the other guard asked her. It was one of her regular CSA guards from the room, and he sounded concerned. She nodded slowly, sliding another sideways glance to the driver’s seat and the controls there. Fancy car. Government, no doubt.

And turned, a casual shuffle of bonded feet, to look beyond this aircar and across the broad, open space of the landing pad. Several more aircars parked nearby, engines whining and doors open. Five more, in total. Milling security in dark suits, rigged for network. Her eyes narrowed slightly, hair whipping across her brow in the freshening breeze.

Why so many vehicles for such a simple trip across town?

‘Get in,’ her other escort instructed. Sandy turned her head slowly and gave him a long, hard look. Reflective sunglasses glared back at her, expressionless. ‘Get in,’ he repeated, waiting by the open door, fingering a familiar looking control in his hand.

‘Please,’ the other guard added, smiling faintly. Sandy favoured him with a slight, gracious nod and shuffled around to slide backwards into the car.

The interior was sleek leather. Spacious, she noted with mild relief, stretching her legs. Muscles strained momentarily against the ankle restraints. Without the drugs, breaking them would have been simple. With them, her muscles failed to solidify to critical tension. The restraints held, comfortably.

‘Stiff?’ her guard asked, sliding onto the seat beside her.

‘A little.’ Not being able to stretch properly didn’t help. Relaxed again as the second guard got in on the other side, her left. The doors swung down behind them, locks clicked and suddenly there was silence.

‘So that you know,’ that man said without preamble, ‘any sudden move on your part, and I’ll hit this button.’ Gesturing with the small, black device in his hand. ‘It activates the shock sequence on the probe in your input socket. It will knock you senseless.

‘In the unlikely event that you did overpower us, this entire rear compartment is sealed.’ Gesturing around them. The drivers up front were isolated behind a smooth, transparent shield. Despite appearances, Sandy knew it was very, very strong. ‘They’ll gas you, and us along with you. And the car can be flown on remote if necessary, even if the drivers were coerced. CSA don’t deal in hostages, period. If you took one of us hostage, the others would act without concern for oar safety. We all understood the risks when we joined.

‘Do you understand?’

Sandy didn’t even bother looking at him. She was much more interested in the goings on outside. The guard sat back, content that his point had been made.

More activity up front, people getting in and doors swinging down. Some glances at her car from nearby personnel. The driver began touching controls and the display screens flickered with graphical response. Smooth vibrations through the leather seating and backrest.

Suddenly it hit her.

‘This is the President’s convoy, isn’t it?’ No immediate response from either side.

Then, ‘What makes you think that?’ From her friendly guard.

‘The President’s the only one who warrants a security presence like this,’ Sandy replied, watching curiously, ‘except for foreign dignitaries, and there aren’t any here right now. If you put this show on for anyone but the President, people would ask questions. You’ve just hidden me in the President’s regular convoy.’

‘You can believe whatever you like,’ said the man on her left. ‘It makes no difference.’

So which one was the President? That was her next thought. Not the lead car, and not the rear car. Other than that, it could have been any of them. A lot of effort for a Senate Security Panel hearing. More bureaucracy. She seemed mired in it, a never-ending circus of interviewers and department interrogations. What to do with her when news reached the official Federation heads? The sane ones — meaning anyone but the FIA, who doubtless hadn’t told anyone official what they were up to.

Callayan officials certainly hoped not. Callayan rights had been violated. If it was tracked back to official Federation complicity, all hell would break loose. She figured that that was one piece of information many Callayans would happily do their utmost to avoid replaceing. The calamity would be too great. Separatist movements within Callayan society were not to be encouraged — even the Progress Party lived in fear of them, she’d gathered, and they were supposed to be the most ‘League sympathetic’ ideologically. Get rid of the GI. She provokes too many questions. Hush it up, let it pass, and we’ll take out our grievances with the Federal Government committee in a month when it arrives in person to examine these developments. In private. All Federal-level politicians lived in terror of the spectre of the League. That, they claimed in shrill voices, was what happened when separatists have their way. Conflict, mad scientists, ideology out of control. Separatism must be defeated, and don’t mind the mess.

So she was not expecting much encouragement from her meeting with the Senate Security Panel today, but rather an interrogation designed to create plausible excuses to get rid of her, ship her off to Federation jurisdiction. Earth. Where the FIA’s influence was strongest. She did not want to contemplate it. Not at all a hopeful scenario.

Up ahead the first car was lifting. Signalled communication, coded frequency and tracking. Another car began to rise as the first moved out, accelerating slowly out into open sky.

Then their own. A smooth throbbing vibration, the landing pad dropping gently away below, faces of attendant security turning upward to watch. And easing forwards, the tower wall abruptly plunging away beneath them, breathtakingly. Out then, beyond the highrises of Largos and over the green of lower-density suburbs … she stared left, and saw how the highrises had clustered to follow yet another bend of a Shoban delta tributary, huddled buildings arcing to follow that gleaming trail of water. The rivers broke up the Tanushan topography, made it unpredictable … a stray tail of towers here, a cluster there, a junction at a river fork, an alignment for multiple bridges and calculated traffic flows. Her windows were large, and she could see a long way. Flying at altitude was a whole new experience. And the sheer, visual spectacle was simply stunning.

She thought to look up ahead, where the next aircar in line was travelling one hundred and sixty-five metres in front. Gliding left now as they picked up speed, rounding the architecturally curious, curve-side of the next mega-rise tower, the pivot of some unknown hub-district, their driver’s hands tilting slightly on the controls to follow. The tower side glided past — a transparent side atrium ten stories tall with gardens and hanging plants. Tanusha was full of such curiosities, and the perspective was breathtaking. Then fading behind, the car straightening, the forward screen showing their airlane prescribed in a lighted, gridwork passage in the sky ahead.

‘Haven’t you seen Tanusha from the air before?’ her guard asked.

‘No.’ She shook her head, faintly. Still staring. Sunlight reflected from the towers, visible beams spilling through the clouds, angled lines of light amid vertical highrise. Trees below. Air traffic curving by, a spattering of moving dots, like small birds amid tall forest trees, their trajectories unnaturally smooth and full of curves. ‘It’s beautiful.’

It was indeed beautiful. The towers went on for ever. Another slow turn to pass another tower, and still more beyond. The clouds made a ceiling, broken by the wind, fractured sunlight spilling through. Fifty-seven million people. For the first time since her arrival Sandy found herself confronted by the sheer size of the place.

Tanusha was simply monstrous, in every dimension. A gleaming jewel in this half of human space. A treasure of unimaginable proportions. A generator of wealth on a scale that the human species had never before seen. It was awe-inspiring. And, in the same moment, frightening.

‘How’d you come to arrange the President?’ she asked her guard. He shrugged.

‘We arranged it. She makes occasional stops at all kinds of government posts. It’s no big deal.’ No doubt they wished to make it appear that way to any outside observers. Just another Presidential flyby. Nothing to arouse suspicion that there was anything in that particular building that required a separate security presence. Just include her in an existing one. The guard spared her another glance. ‘The monitors read your dosage as marginally beyond parameters. How do you feel?’

‘Fucked,’ she murmured, gazing out at the passing towers.

‘I’m sorry. It can’t be any fun.’

‘No, it’s not.’ And left it at that as the car banked again, the driver’s hands moving on clear manual control. It was a tightly controlled manual, though, fixed within safety parameters. A security measure. If every car was auto, then the system was vulnerable to attack. Constant, regulated manual control solved the problem of vehicles falling from the sky if the system crashed.

Both guards remained silent. Sandy was glad. It meant the replication counter she was running through her interface was working, and no one suspected it for anything more than it looked like — drug suppression. In truth, she hadn’t felt so clear-headed in days. Their fault for not doing their homework. It took some effort though.

A particularly large tower loomed self-importantly to their left, multiple wings tapering to a glass-domed summit. The Tanushan Trade Centre. Probably the most expensive piece of real estate in the human galaxy. It looked the part. Sandy focused briefly, and found a com-net simply jammed with constant transmission, a living flow of banded waves, like a giant river.

Another building was the central bank — a more austere, unostentatious building by Tanushan standards. And the giant names soaring by atop their massive structures of glass and steel — corporate names, names recognised through all of human space. Nearly governments in their own right, some of them. Nearly nations.

She saw at least one big biotech name she knew. And suffered a cold shiver. What was their interest in this? Had any of the database the FIA had compiled on her ended up in one of those buildings, hidden in some secret sub-bracket within the manifold data-storage systems? They were what it was all about, ultimately. Technology. Profit. Corporate leaders of course denied any laws were broken. But all tech corps were hives of independent-thinking groups — that was where the innovation came from. No single boss knew everything that happened within his organisation. And how did you stop innovators from innovating? Profit-seekers from being profitable? A losing battle, the League said. But then the League said a lot of things. ‘We shall win the war’ foremost among them. Neither side, it seemed, had a monopoly on truth. Both competed fiercely, however, for a competitive edge in bullshit.

They were losing height, she realised then. Glanced through the transparent shield in front, and saw the flight path display winding gently downward around another pair of looming towers. An altitude display ticked downwards, slowly unravelling. An aircar cut by close overhead, very fast.

‘Do they ever leave their lanes?’ she asked her guard, indicating overhead with her eyes.

‘No. If you try to fly outside the parameters, not only does the autopilot take over, it appears on the screen of some cop monitor in some office. Tamper with the parameters and you could end up in jail.’

Sandy nodded slowly, watching the car’s reflection suddenly running parallel alongside. Then gone as the tower passed. Open space ahead then, and a massive, low structure looming up before them. Everyone knew that building, even those who lived many, many lightyears away. With its architecture harking back to an earlier time, with grand arches, domes and spires … it was unmistakable.

It was the Callayan Parliament. And for some strange reason, she hadn’t got around to seeing it earlier, when she was taking in the sights. Maybe the trappings of power reminded her of too many sinister possibilities.

The flight path dropped further. Lower buildings below gave way to green parkland and trees, winding paths and glints of water. Glimpses of people out strolling as they cruised by overhead — the Parliament botanic gardens, nearly as famous as the building itself. Far ahead, the faint speck of the first convoy vehicle was curving around, still descending, towards the rear of the building’s right wing.

Sandy gazed at the building as they neared, a red-brown sandstone structure, impossibly large for such primitive materials. It was modern underneath, obviously. Perhaps ten storeys high with great arching balconies supported by columns opening onto grassy lawns, the famous gardens beyond. The roof domes were perhaps Islamic by inspiration, although the teardrop windows and deep, earthy finish were more specifically Indian. The rest was colonial European, with alternate influences everywhere, baffling and pleasing the eye.

Such were the grand symbols of power that the first settlers of Callay had built, reflective of their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Callay was a new world, and Tanusha was its capital, but in their hearts and souls the Callayan settlers had never forgotten their roots. In the League, they built great, modern edifices of grandiose, imaginative, totally original design within which to house their elected representatives. All semblance of historical nostalgia was to be purged, a new beginning made, a fresh start, free of all the historical ills that had plagued the human species.

Not here, or in the Federation generally. The great domes and reddish arches rose magnificently above the brilliant green lawns, a triumphant pronouncement of all that humanity had achieved, built, created and brought with them, out among the countless stars. In the League, history was a page in a textbook. In the Federation, it was everyday life, rich, varied, ever-present and celebrated at every available opportunity. And Sandy knew, in that moment, exactly why she’d come here and abandoned the place of her creation. And she knew why, whatever the difficulties, she could never go back.

The side wings, workplace of much of Callay’s civil service, sprawled out below. The aircar turned steeply left now, presenting a stunning view of pillars, domes and open lawns out of the left side window.

Sandy looked ahead as they levelled out, saw that the first two aircars were already down on the broad sprawl of landing pads below, a third making its approach. The pads were atop another impressive structure, arrayed in a broad rectangle across the top of the rear-wing building’s nearside flank, which loomed impressively above an outdoor arrangement of gardens, pools and tennis courts …

Some strange frequency signals then, and the co-pilot’s head jerked upwards as if in surprise … old reflexes jumped, and Sandy’s heart missed a beat. The guards on either side had stiffened, leaning sideways, scanning the skies.

‘What’s happening?’ Sandy demanded, forgetting herself for a moment. The pilot’s hands shifted, the engine throbbing beneath them as the car changed attitude. Scanned hard out the windows, vision snap-shifting in unconscious reflex. Only towers. Ahead, people were running, one car preparing to lift again, the other aborting its approach …

In the front seats, the pilot was shouting something, but she couldn’t hear what. Her pulse was pounding now, a familiar hard calm settling as the car rebuilt its speed … realising only too well this was the only time a Presidential convoy would be vulnerable. It fitted too, too well…

‘Incoming!’ she shouted then as a flame trail erupted from up ahead …

‘Fucking hell!’ from her left, and a violent twist from the pilot, throwing them all sideways.

‘Five bogies!’ Sandy announced, tracking that launch to the five widespread bodies on high V approach, hurtling out of nowhere. A huge double flash from the landing pads, someone’s frightened voice yelling, ‘They hit the fucking President!’ then a very nasty tracking signal that had Sandy grabbing hard for the handles overhead.

‘Brace yourselves guys,’ she said calmly, pressing hard with her feet into the forward shield, ‘that incoming’s got us totally nailed.’ A wild, downward manoeuvre threw them against the restraints, her companions fumbling wildly for their handles as the tracking signal suddenly dopplered, badly, and getting worse extremely fast. Then everything blew up.

… A wild nightmare trapped amid smoke and flaming wreckage, rushing wind and tumbling, falling, over and over … a brief glimpse of rushing green grass and landing pads … wham!!! everything smashed forward. Bounced, tumbling over with a violent, terrible momentum, then bang!!! hit something else and spun around.

Sudden awareness, a horrible, crushing pressure, bending her neck … realised she was upside down and twisted violently, limbs tangled with what might have been wreckage, and might have been other limbs. Something was burning, the smoke filled her nostrils. A last heave tore her legs free, curled and sprawled beneath hard pressing leather, someone’s bodyweight pressing into her side, trapping her further. Her brain snapped into gear with an electrifying jolt. The car was upside down, and she was lying on the ceiling. Everything had been flattened, and the seats were trying to crush her from above. Beyond the immediate vicinity of the rear seat compartment she could see nothing. She didn’t even know if the front of the car still existed.

There were sounds from outside, explosions and gunfire, very distinct. She had to get out.

Twisted around with a desperate, trapped wriggling, grabbing the body by the suit lapels and pulling around … he was dead, there was blood everywhere.

‘Cassandra!’ The other guard, in pain and sounding trapped. ‘Cassandra, wait …’ Definitely in pain. A massive explosion nearby, vibrations through the wreckage. ‘Don’t move …’ Thunder of crossfire, rounds smacking ferociously off the sides, everything shaking.

Sandy pressed herself past the guard’s body, found a small space to see out from. Landing pad beyond, a scattering of wreckage. An armoured flyer landing, crossfire ripping every which way, scattering crazily off the tarmac, a door gun traversing to fire back … more shots hit them, and the entire wreck shuddered and rocked as she ducked back.

‘Get my cuffs off and I’ll get us out of here!’ she yelled at the CSA man. She couldn’t see him, unable to turn about further.

‘I can’t…!’

‘Are you hurt?!’ whumph!! A grenade hit them, shockwave blinding, wreckage tearing. For a moment she couldn’t see for the smoke. ‘Are you hurt, dammit?!’

Something fumbled at her ankle cuffs, and her legs were suddenly free. She shoved a knee hard upward, straining against the drugged weakness, then a crunch as something gave way and she could turn, wriggling about sideways.

‘Wrists!’ she yelled at the agent — he looked in bad shape, face covered with blood, but she had no time to ponder it, got a brief look out the shattered window beyond, saw the pad perimeter, walkways and barriers rapidly getting cut to hell, things burning ferociously beyond.

Her wrists came loose, and she slithered forcefully over the agent, tearing his heavy calibre pistol from the shoulder holster, then ammo from the pocket, the man protesting weakly, a hand pawing her arm … good thing about the calibre, if this was what it looked like, she was going to need it.

‘Stay here!’ she told him, and slithered out the shattered window opening.

Rolled flat on the tarmac, rounds zipping past, the full roar of battle assaulting her eardrums. Heard another grenade shot and covered instinctively, exhaling hard as the shockwave hit and the ruined car lurched aside. Shrapnel scattered and she was up, target scanning through the covering smoke.

Two flyers, larger than standard aircars. Troops in defensive positions, military patterns, gone straight through the side doors and into the building where the fighting was corridor by corridor. Between them was another aircar, burning furiously. Bodies of security personnel. On her exposed side, surviving security were pressed to the walls, five of them, returning fire where they could.

The screaming whine of engines brought her head snapping about, a flyer arcing about to one side, level with the pads. Fire erupted from a door mount — KW-laser cannon flaring staccato blue light that blew across the security’s remaining positions, bodies falling amid flames and erupting masonry.

Sandy sprinted away from the grounded flyers and toward the walkways and barriers of the pad perimeter, the airborne flyer twisting about to acquire her as she raced across its path, angled her right arm out at full sprint and spraying ten rapid shots from the corner of her eye, blowing the door gunner’s head off. Fire cut past from behind, shattering transparent barriers ahead — she threw herself, hit shoulder first and smashed through in a scattering of broken shards.

Quick crouch to gain her bearings, heavy rounds streaking across the pad in pursuit, past her ruined car … more shattering barriers and she ducked and rolled, three times, propped up and fired four quick rounds to drop two of three runners headed for her car, the third diving for cover. The airborne flyer was twisting to acquire her with the other side gunner — she killed him too, five rounds through the right eye from fifty metres.

She ran, burning wreckage on the pads beyond these to her right, and more people shooting, then into the building and what would have been the reception foyer in saner circumstances — patterned tile floor and corridors off to the sides. Used the smooth tiles to come to a sliding halt on her rear, back pressed to a side wall. Quick check of the magazine — sixteen rounds left — chack! Levelling that arm back the way she’d come, scanning the corridors around — bang! as a pursuer grenaded his approach for cover, then two figures diving through the smoke … she dropped them with a rapid volley whilst barely looking their way, which gave her the warning to dive-roll explosively left as someone burst around a left-hand corridor and sprayed that spot with bullets, Sandy already returning fire from a left-handed tile-slide, up and still shooting as the body snapped backwards, and blew his partner three metres down the corridor as the recoil thumped comfortingly through her arm.

Quickly recovered his weapon, scooping left-handed while emptying the pistol’s remaining rounds down the corridor to keep it clear. Saved a last pair for the wounded man at her feet, two shots point-blank to the head, necessary precaution with GIs. Sidestepped the corridor mouth, pumped a grenade from the newly acquired rifle into an adjoining corridor, then another back the way she’d come. Then she ran.

She was not frightened. She saw no people, only targets. Her world held no straight lines, only the shifting stains of colour and movement, heat and vibration. Everything blended together. Everything made sense. Pieces fit into place, like a giant, moving puzzle. The corridors, landing pads and intervening walls seemed abstract, as if seen from a distance, or in a VR sim. And within it all, she was now confident that she knew what was going on. Someone was trying to kill either her or the President, or both. That narrowed down her options, because she could take care of herself. The President was another matter.

They hit the convoy during landing with a mobile attack force — the only way it could be done, considering the nature of permanent ground security. How they had got so far, and past the Parliament perimeter systems, was something she did not have time to ponder. Equal forces down on both landing pads, one airborne to provide cover … ten troops in each flyer besides the crew, that meant forty on the ground.

She had seen where the convoy cars had landed. Knew how the security would be stationed, and how they would react. And most importantly, she knew how the attack would go, if she had planned it herself. The relevant question was simple: if she was going to screw up her own attack plan, what would she do?

When the attacking craft had first broken standard flight patterns, Shigeru Mishima had failed to believe what his security posts, defence grids and his own eyes were telling him. This state of disbelief lasted a touch over five seconds. Those five seconds proved fatal.

Mishima was head of Security detail Alpha. There was no detail more important than Alpha. Alpha meant the President, and Mishima was the best that the Callayan Special Service had to offer. His capacity to handle technical detail down to the last micro-digit on his command override frequencies was nearly inhuman, even for rare augmentations of his type. And his capacity to handle his job, while simultaneously juggling all of these details, had got him his position as the President’s senior bodyguard.

Mishima ran a tight ship. He tolerated no oversight among his juniors, no matter how small. On this particular day, the Parliament Building’s aerial defence grids had been functioning perfectly. All transgression coding had been altered and secured according to the random numerical programming that Mishima himself had provided. Emergency interlink channels with all security, administrative and legal units throughout Tanusha, and over all Callay, were fully established and locked out.

His people were On. They were focused. They had left no procedural, technical or conceivable stone unturned. And so, when his feeler networks had relayed an air-traffic control alert regarding five Andra-model transport flyers suddenly breaking away from established airlanes at a number of random points, Shigeru had made a microsecond judgment of the possible reasons.

It may have been a hardware-related problem — the model of all five bogies was identical, making a manufacturer-specific cyber-glitch seem entirely possible. And then there were various hitches and cyber-echoes the controller systems had been suffering at the interface levels recently — electronic figments of the system’s own imagination emerging from cyberspace as object reality.

Even when it became plain that they were diving at the Parliament Building in a loose but rapidly assembling formation, Mishima had hesitated. Stickler for detail that he was, he simply could not perceive of the incredible range of factors that would need to have been manipulated in order for this to actually be an attack. Without the knowledge of those factors, he was dealing with an unknown quantity. In order to take effective counter-measures, he had taken the time to assemble those factors in his mind.

It was a full five seconds later when he realised that not only did he not have that time, he had never had that time to begin with.

Code Red was issued, effectively activating every security measure in Tanusha, right down to the lowliest police officer on his downtown beat. The President was grabbed, and rushed inside at a sprint. The grounded aircars, Alphas One through Three, began to lift to draw attention and possible fire. Alpha Four had aborted landing, accelerating and evading. Alphas Five and Six changed to intercept. The ground security grid went up, armed and active. It should have meant death to anything airborne and unidentified crossing the perimeter.

Everything went wrong. The security grids failed to recognise the attacking flyers as Threat ID Positive, and did not fire. The first incoming rounds destroyed Alphas Two and Three on the pads. Alpha One was riddled by door-cannon fire ten metres off the edge of the building, exploding in the utility personnel car park below. Alpha Four was struck by a homing projectile which blew the front end apart and sent it skidding into a tumbling collision with the wreckage of Alpha Three. With no fire support from the grids, Alpha Team’s small arms had little effect on the armoured flyers, and the mounted weapons had cut them to pieces. Mishima was inside before that happened, sticking with the President while his men were slaughtered outside, fulfilling their oaths as they’d sworn they would.

Additional pad security was armed only for escort and watch duty, not for an armoured frontal assault with air support. Two landers grounded on each of the two main pads, disgorging heavily armed and armoured troopers who moved in precise, military patterns. As Mishima ran with the President and her remaining personal guard through the inner corridors, listening to the helpless, panicked shouts and screams of the outgunned, outprepared Parliament internal security staff, he knew very well who was after him. It could only be Dark Star. Only Dark Star could have got this far in the first place. And his estimations of what they might be after altered yet another notch.

Inside was chaos. Frightened staffers ran every which way, bulldozed and flung aside by the running wedge Alpha team had formed around the President, half carrying her as they rushed down the corridors while the forward and rearguard support yelled at staffers to evacuate to the ground floor. Behind them was shooting, and things exploding. The whole building shook, bits and pieces fell from ceilings, screaming, panicked staff colliding in doorways, blocking the exits.

Alpha Team found a deserted office three levels down, bundled the President in and began securing their perimeter. Her senior advisor, Aw Sian Thiaw, had been accompanying her in the convoy car — he crouched near the corner in which she sat, hovering protectively, face drawn and frightened.

‘Thiaw,’ Neiland gasped, watching the frantic activity of Alpha Teamers running out of corridors, weapons ready, covering approach points and shouting in an unintelligible code that sounded like tactical geometry. The hastily fitted vest was very tight, restricting her breathing. ‘Thiaw,’ she grabbed his arm hard, ‘what are we doing here, why don’t we go to ground level and get out?’

‘They’ve got transports, they can cover ground level.’ Swallowed hard, eyes darting about, a crash of overturning desks and cabinets. ‘They’ll come up and meet us in the middle. We need to buy enough time for Central Security to reach us, or SWAT — they’re only down the road.’ He grabbed her hand, tightly. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll nail these fuckers. We just need a few more minutes.’

‘Thiaw, for Christ’s sake, what about the staff?’ Neiland was panicked, red hair sprawled in disarray, eyes wide and wild. ‘They’re heading downstairs, they’ll get run over …!’

‘It’ll buy us some time. We just need a few minutes…!’

‘No!!!‘ Leaping to her feet, starting forward as Thiaw grabbed her, bodily restraining her as she screamed, ‘No fucking way do we leave them to die!’ Fighting him desperately. ‘Mishima! You fucking get them back here! Don’t you fucking dare …’ Umph! Another body hit them, knocked them to the ground, pinning her.

‘Ms President!’ the man shouted in her face, pinning her from above. It was Johnson, Mishima’s second. ‘We don’t have time for this bullshit! We’re going to keep you alive, and that’s it! Do you hear me! I’ll break your damn legs if I have to, but you’re going to do what we say! That’s final!’ Neiland stared up at him, stunned.

Johnson pulled himself off her, ripped a pistol from his belt, grabbed Thiaw’s hand and stuffed it in. ‘Last resort,’ he told him, eyes blazing with controlled fear and adrenalin. ‘If you use it, make sure it’s them you’re hitting.’ Thiaw nodded wordlessly, eyes wide, and Johnson darted off.

‘Oh my God.’ Neiland was sitting up again, huddled, shaking and terrified, her voice quavering. ‘This can’t be happening, this just can’t be happening…’

Gunfire snarled nearby, answering pops, then an explosion that made everything rattle. More commands from Alpha Team members down the corridor, suited and crouched, guns levelled and searching with muscle-trembling intensity. Mishima was nearby, crouched, talking fast into his throat mike. More gunfire, and screams. Shots intensified, a two-way firefight, rattling explosions and more shooting. Still the screaming.

Neiland whimpered, still shaking. Five steps up the corridor the ceiling exploded, and everything vanished under flying debris and smoke. Then gunfire exploding all about, shattering the senses. Someone grabbed her arm and hauled, half carrying her through the chaos and screams. Blue lightning ripped through the side wall, turning all to exploding flame.

Running then through the next doorway, Johnson dragging her like a sack of grain as she tried to replace her feet to assist, vaguely aware that people were following, fighting a retreat. Into another, bigger room with scattered desks across an open floor and windows that let in the sunlight, running hard as Johnson dragged her nearly to the far wall, then shouts of warning and throwing her flat and sprawling, bullets striking about with impossible force, splintering desks and kicking over chairs, return fire answering and then it was on, and hell broke loose for the second time.

Neiland scrambled on hands and knees to the wall beside a filing cabinet and stayed down, Johnson crouched behind a splintered desk and returning fire with the remainder of Alpha Team, a deafening roar of small arms fire. One man fell into a wall painting and collapsed over the pot plant below, leaving a bloody smear down the white wall behind. The glass partition to the adjoining executive office disintegrated beside Neiland’s hiding place, the conifer-timber door kicked open by multiple strikes. Johnson lurched backwards in a spray of blood as a terminal screen exploded. Neiland screamed, and lunged forward to where he’d fallen as a grenade went off and blew everything to hell, knocking her flat.

Johnson was up and shooting again left-handed, right arm dangling as dark shapes leapt through the smoke, guns blazing. An Alpha Team woman made a defiant dive for new cover amid a tracking hail of fire, popped up to return fire and was blown back two metres into a bookshelf that collapsed on her. Another stood his ground, refusing to cover, dropping one attacker and wounding a second before a third blew his guts out. Neiland scrambled backward over shattered glass, into the exposed executive office, watching in a mesmerised, unnatural calm as Johnson covered long enough to reload with his damaged right hand, then up again to keep firing. He was still shooting when the shots found him again, and what remained of his bloody corpse thudded limply to the ground.

Suddenly silence. Neiland huddled backward, beneath the big desk of the executive office, staring through the wall-to-ceiling frame where the window had once been and across the shattered main office, desks and chairs askew, obscured by drifting smoke. Johnson’s body barely three metres away in a thickening pool of blood. Time slowed. Each heartbeat, each passing moment, lingered to eternity.

A human figure appeared, cradling a heavy rifle. Looked at Johnson. Looked at her. And raised his weapon.

And vanished as the ceiling exploded for the second time, debris collapsing in a confusion of smoke and dust. Too stunned to cover herself, Neiland stared straight into the confusion, and saw something dark and human-sized fall straight down through the opening. Gunfire roared in rapid, staccato bursts, a fast, dark shape that moved like a ghost in the wind.

A brief moment of chaos, and the room was suddenly empty. A burst of fire from down a corridor, moving away. And another, and a thud like a body falling.

Moving suddenly of her own accord, Neiland was scrambling out from under the desk and into the main office, feet crunching over broken glass. Looked wildly about at the destruction, the sprawled, bloody corpses … saw several new ones with large weapons. One’s head was mostly missing. Another had a fist-sized impact hole through the chest.

Her stomach churned and she was suddenly on her knees, vomiting helplessly. Her head spun. Nothing seemed real. None of this could possibly be happening, and in her mind it refused to register. Another painful, stomach-cramping retch. And gasped, desperate for clean, clear air. A deep breath, gasping, her ears ringing, nausea passed for the moment. Eyes unfocused, seeing only a blur.

And began to come clear again. On a pair of bare feet and grey track suit leggings. Stared, not having heard the arrival. The owner of the feet crouched alongside, and Neiland looked up, hardly daring to breathe. Untidy blonde hair, burning blue eyes. Cassandra Kresnov. The GI. The one whom all of her closest advisors were telling her to sentence to bureaucratic hell.

‘You okay?’ Kresnov asked her. It was unthinkable that anyone should sound so calm in the midst of this nightmare. Everything was insane. She managed a faint nod, unable to speak. ‘Are you going to be all right here? There are some people I’d like to kill on the lower floors — they were shooting running civilians, last I saw.’

Utterly serious. There was no malice in her voice, only a statement of fact.

‘Be my guest, please,’ Neiland rasped. ‘Kill them all.’

The GI nodded. ‘Thank you, I will.’

More shooting from downstairs, then, before she could get up. An explosion shook the floor. The GI listened, expressionless but for a slightly raised eyebrow, as if hearing something of mild but not enthralling interest.

‘Hmm. Reinforcements just got here. No point now, they’d just shoot me into the bargain. And they’ll be down on the roof in another minute.’

‘Who will?’ The Presidential mind was refusing to function. The Presidential mind was registering a wetness between her thighs, and a warmth that just had to be urine. The Presidential mind didn’t care.

‘SWAT, if I recognise the signature. They started taking out the flyers two minutes ago — you were probably too busy to hear. I’ll stay here and make sure no stragglers get flushed this way.’

Explaining herself calmly as she knelt in firing position on the floor, covering the ruined, bullet-ripped corridor entrances. Sitting helplessly on her knees, Neiland stared at her. The right forearm and hand, now gripping the trigger handle, were red with blood. Her white T-shirt was torn and bloodstained. And she was utterly, utterly calm.

Neiland got to her feet, swaying slightly. Staggered through the strewn wreckage to the first of her Alpha Team men, replaceing him messily, unpleasantly dead.

‘Don’t bother,’ Kresnov said from behind her. ‘There’s no one alive in this room but us. I can tell.’ Neiland stared down at the dead man. Lim, she remembered his name was. His face was intact, young, Asian and handsome. So young. Oh God. Tears blurred her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kresnov added.

Neiland fell to her knees by the body of the young man named Lim, whose first name she had never learned, never thought worth bothering to learn, although she saw him nearly every day, every time she travelled certainly… She cried without restraint, while the GI who by all rights should want her dead guarded the corridors to her back, and waited for the fighting downstairs to stop and help to arrive. She was still crying when the confused thud of heavy boots sounded in the outside corridors, and Kresnov called out. Laid her weapon down on a desktop in full view, and stood, hands on her head.

Armed figures burst in, weapons levelled. Took in the scene.

‘Down on the ground!’ one of them yelled at Kresnov. ‘Now!’ Kresnov complied, as calmly as before.

‘It’s the President!’ shouted another one, rushing forward and shouldering his weapon while the others covered him. ‘We’ve found her, we’ve found her!’ Crouching alongside, then, in awed concern … ‘Ms President, are you hurt?’

‘It’s the fucking GI!’ another shouted as Kresnov’s hands were bound behind her back. Planted a boot on her shoulders, pressing the gun barrel to her head … ‘I should blow your fucking brains out right now, you fucking bitch!’

Neiland staggered to her feet fast, rounding on the troopers who were suddenly gathering around where Kresnov lay face down on the floor, weapons held ready. Too fast. Everything faded, and noises dimmed.

‘Bind her feet man, she’s fucking dangerous!’

‘Don’t move, bitch!’ The thud of a boot landing, hard. And again.

‘Ms President?’ someone spoke very clearly from nearby as everything else faded away.

It was the last thing Neiland heard before she passed out.