Part 9 (1/2)
More footsteps were running up. Vanessa's engine was fading down, and more aircars could be heard in approaching hover from around about.
”Get out of the way!” shouted a new woman's voice. The cop stood up. ”SIB! You! Put the gun to one side now, and get up slowly.” Sandy looked up. It was one of the two SIB women from back at the car wreck. On the surrounding frequencies, clamorous queries were calling for information. Someone nearby was hovering low. She hoped they didn't collide. Unless it was with those b.l.o.o.d.y SIBs.
”This man just blew up the riverside back in Derry,” she said mildly. ”Don't you think you'd be better off pointing your gun at him instead of at a registered CSA agent?”
”Shut up and put the gun to one side! NOW!” The woman was joined by her partner. Both pistols trained on her face. They looked very serious. And very scared, she thought. And the absurdity was no longer quite so amusing.
There was a heavy clacking sound from the other direction. Both SIB women looked up. Sandy glanced carefully about.
”You've got five seconds to stop pointing those guns at my partner,” Vanessa said from the other end of a ma.s.sive SWAT-issue a.s.sault rifle, ”or I'll blow you both into very small pieces.”
At this range, Sandy's links had a clear sense of the weapon's powered armscomp, ranging ominously. Both women stared at the lean, dark muzzle. At the mean, beautiful face of its wielder. Two male cops stood by in utter silence, and offered no comment.
”We can't just a” one of them blurted, and stopped as Vanessa raised the rifle to her shoulder and sighted manually down the barrel.
”One,” she said.
Double-click, both pistol safeties went on, both pairs of hands were raised, and both women placed their pistols carefully on the ground.
”Don't ever f.u.c.k with SWAT,” Vanessa told them. Her voice was nearly trembling. Sandy had never seen her so furious. ”Ever. You got that?”
Two nods, slow and careful.
Sandy got up, amid the standing, unmoving SIBs, the cops, and the very slight, very angry and ma.s.sively armed SWAT lieutenant. The air throbbed with hovering aircar engines, a ma.s.s of blinking running lights flared off the building sides and lit the dark river waters in a brilliant, multi-coloured display. She handed the stunned young man to the cops. Then scooped up both the SIBs' pistols. Lifted them casually to eye level, and broke the trigger mechanisms, one after another, with a hard compression of her thumb. Metal and plastics shrieked and popped, very loudly. Then Sandy handed them back to the two SIB agents, who took them with reluctant, trembling hands.
And she paused a moment longer, staring them curiously in the face. She saw the fear there. The pale faces, the dilated eyes. A s.h.i.+ft to infrared showed blood pulsing very fast, hearts racing. She was between them and Vanessa's cannon. It wasn't Vanessa they were scared of. And she shook her head, with faint amazement.
”What d'you think I'm going to do?” she asked incredulously, over the whining racket of hovering air traffic echoing off the surrounding buildings and out over the water. ”You think I'm going to hurt you?”
There was no reply. Just a couple of pale, staring faces, listening to her voice, but not hearing a thing. Sandy repressed a wince of disbelief.
”What's wrong with you people? Why do you just refuse to get it?”
”They'll never get it, Sandy,” Vanessa said from behind, her voice hard. ”Some people are just like that.”
Sandy turned and looked at her, ignoring the two SIBs entirely. ”Someone has to get it.”
”I get it. That's enough.”
Sandy gazed at her for a long moment. At the small, dark-haired lieutenant in the obligatory patchand-pocket-lined ops jacket, hair tossed in a gusting breeze, rifle now lowering along her forearm grip. Flaring light from many aircars lit her face from many angles. Her dark eyes were smouldering. And honest, beyond the anger. Watching her.
”Yeah,” Sandy murmured, beneath the echoing whine of many hovering aircars, shouts, running footsteps and approaching sirens. ”I suppose it is.”
The guard on duty outside Senate Chamber 5-C looked nervous as Sandy and Vanessa arrived from down the long, echoing hallway. For a brief moment, Sandy thought he was going to ask for their weapons. Or her weapons, more likely. A long, flat stare convinced him otherwise, and he opened the doors instead.
A broad waiting room, polished wooden floor, grand paintings and furniture. Filled with waiting agents, politicos, advisors and civil set-vants, most deep in discussion or engrossed in ongoing dialogue with their portable terminals. All fell silent as the new pair entered. Footsteps soft on the broad carpet, then squeaking on the wood before the door. The door handle clacked, deafening in the sudden silence. And drowned, abruptly, by the harsh exchange of voices from the room beyond.
Senate Chamber 5-C was like the Senate Hearing Chamber in miniature. Seven senators were seated behind a long, wood-panelled bench. Before the senators, seats for the accused. Although, Sandy thought as the adjutant closed the doors behind them, they probably didn't call them that. Half of the argument stopped as they came in. The other half lingered, in forceful self absorption. Sandy walked the aisle through the small seating gallery and stood before the accuseds' benches. Vanessa joined her. The last argument died a surprised, fading death. Senators, officials and agents stared at them. Sandy stood at ease, and felt decidedly unimpressed with the entire situation.
”Agent Kresnov,” she announced flatly, ”reporting as ordered.”
”Ms. Kresnov.” The head senator blinked. Reorienting his brain, evidently, away from the recent argument. Several senators regained their seats. Most were staring. To Sandy and Vanessa's right, Ulu N'Darie, CSA second-in-command, was scowling furiously. Another woman, tall and blonde, folded her arms and looked stonily unpleasant. Izerovski, Sandy remembered, with less than glee. The head of SIB, in her natural, political environment. Oh Joy.
Then she spotted Naidu among the other agents scattered about and felt a little better.
”Ms. Kresnov,” Izerovski said coldly, ”where is your guard?” Sandy just looked at her. Waiting for that cryptic remark to be more fully explained. There was no hurry.
”I'm her guard,” Vanessa said. And Sandy reconsidered the wisdom of letting Vanessa do the talking.
”You, Lieutenant Rice, are most certainly not a suitable guard. You are her partner. You have demonstrated yourself to be nearly the threat to peace and civil security tonight that she has. I have two good SIB agents in hospital, each with severe gunshot wounds to both legs, and the shooter is walking free about the corridors of power, fully armed by the look of her, and accompanied by her partner in crime. Senators, this is a disgraceful indication of the depths to which CSA policy regarding this particular individual have sunk-she is utterly out of control, and the CSA ..
”You grandstanding, twofaced f.u.c.king liar!” N'Darie exploded.
”a And the CSA,” Izerovski continued loudly, ”are so completely lost and desperate in their present messed-up situation that they've just given her the keys to the castle, and this is the result a”
”Who caught the d.a.m.n bomber, you lunatic?” N'Darie retorted. ”SIB's only contribution is to open fire in a public s.p.a.ce upon the one person genuinely attempting to apprehend the suspect a ”After she caused a major traffic accident in which three innocent civilians were needlessly injured, and refused to account for her activities when requested a ”So she needs to report her every movement for SIB's approval, even when the d.a.m.n SIBs haven't a lucid clue what the h.e.l.l's going on?”
”That's exactly right, Ms. N'Darie. By order of this here panel of senators, she does need to report her every movement to the SIB, and I've now got two good agents in hospital who will gladly tell you why!”
”You don't get it, do you?” N'Darie stood barely taller than Vanessa, small, black and compact. At that moment, she seemed much larger, as if swelling with rage. ”Your agents owe their lives to this woman!” Pointing at Sandy with a trembling finger. ”Any CSA agent under an unprovoked attack is fully authorised to kill in self defence. She refrained-does your tiny, manicured brain comprehend that much? She shot to wound, when she was perfectly ent.i.tled to blow their f.u.c.king heads off, and that's far more restraint than I've seen from your people whose only provocation was that she didn't tell them what she was doing, which they by all indications wouldn't have understood anyway, because all you G.o.dd.a.m.n SIBs are just too f.u.c.king STUPID!”
The room exploded, a yelling racket above the repeated hammerings of the chairman's gavel.
”Bit of bad blood here?” Sandy suggested, formulating internally.
Vanessa raised an eyebrow, as little perturbed by the racket as Sandy. ”No worse than one of my family reunions.”
Sandy smiled. ”Remind me never to meet your family.”
”You never do, you're always surfing. ”
Under repeated a.s.sault from the chairman's gavel, the noise began to recede. Another few whacks, and it died completely.
”Wish I was surfing now, actually,” Sandy remarked.
”I wish you were surfing, too. ”
”People!” The chairman's dark face was angrily disapproving. ”Remember where you are!”
”They do,” Vanessa muttered, ”that's the d.a.m.n problem.”
Sandy noticed an SIB agent's head turning in their direction, eyes curious, sensed a faint pulse of pa.s.sive frequency scan a ”We're hawked, better keep the conversation verbal. You know the emergency freq. ”
”Gotcha. ” Vanessa disconnected.
”Ms. Kresnov,” said another senator. Kier, his name panel read. Seated two chairs to her right, facing her-that side was Union, including the chairman. Except for the very end-he was Democrat, one of the minor Senate parties. Even worse. ”Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
”I suppose that depends upon what I'm asked,” Sandy said mildly. The woman alongside, Senator Zhu, was staring, greatly disconcerted. Well, Sandy supposed, this was most likely the first time any of these senators had seen her at this range. She wondered what Zhu found most disconcerting-her good looks, or her mere proximity.
”Why is she even armed?” the Democrats senator interrupted, as if reading her thoughts. Senator Rafael, Sandy read. Lean and darkly bearded, of uncertain ethnicity. He sounded alarmed. He looked alarmed, eyes wide and nervous lipped.