Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart Read online

  Steel Heart

  An Aneka Jansen Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2013 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Title Page

  Part One: Cold Comfort FNf Delta Brigantia, 12.11.525 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, New Earth.

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  University of New Earth.

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 13.11.525 FSC.

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  21.11.525 FSC.

  University of New Earth, 26.11.525 FSC.

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility, Eshebbon, 7.12.525 FSC.

  FNf Delta Brigantia, Sapphira System, 8.12.525 FSC.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  Arlyn, Sapphira, 9.12.525 FSC.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  Arlyn.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  Arlyn.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility, 10.12.525 FSC.

  11.12.525 FSC.

  FNf Delta Brigantia, 14.12.525 FSC.

  Hayward Beta Research Facility, 15.12.525 FSC.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility, 17.12.525 FSC.

  New Earth, 20.12.525 FSC.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility, 24.12.525 FSC.

  25.12.525 FSC.

  26.12.525 FSC.

  FNf Delta Brigantia, 1.1.526 FSC.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  New Earth, 5.1.526 FSC.

  New Earth Transit Station One, 9.1.526 FSC.

  FScV Pegasus, Eshebbon System, 15.1.526 FSC.

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  Part Two: The Way Home FScV Pegasus, 15.1.526 FSC.

  16.1.526 FSC.

  18.1.526 FSC.

  19.1.526 FSC.

  22.1.526 FSC.

  New Earth Transit Station Two.

  23.1.526 FSC.

  24.1.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, New Earth, 25.1.526 FSC.

  Tristar Township, 26.1.526 FSC.

  FScV Garnet Hyde, 27.1.526 FSC.

  University of New Earth, 29.1.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 1.2.526 FSC.

  2.2.526 FSC.

  University of New Earth.

  Downtown Yorkbridge, 5.2.526 FSC.

  University of New Earth, 9.2.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 10.2.526 FSC.

  University of New Earth, 12.2.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 13.2.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge North Beach, 16.2.526 FSC.

  University of New Earth, 17.2.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  Odanari, 19.2.526 FSC.

  20.2.526 FSC.

  21.2.526 FSC.

  22.2.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 23.2.526 FSC.

  University of New Earth, 24.2.526 FSC.

  Barnard City, New Earth, 6.3.526 FSC.

  7.3.526 FSC.

  8.3.526 FSC.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 10.3.526 FSC.

  11.3.526 FSC.

  Part Three: Walking on a Moon FScV Garnet Hyde, 25.7.526 FSC.

  23.7.526 FSC.

  25.8.526 FSC.

  26.8.526 FSC.

  28.8.526 FSC.

  Titan.

  29.8.526 FSC.

  30.8.526 FSC.

  2.9.526 FSC.

  Part Four: Manu Dei FScV Garnet Hyde, 6.9.526 FSC.

  7.9.526 FSC.

  8.9.526 FSC.

  9.9.526 FSC.

  Old Earth, 10.9.526 FSC.

  11.9.526 FSC.

  12.9.526 FSC.

  13.9.526 FSC.

  14.9.526 FSC.

  16.9.526 FSC.

  17.9.526 FSC.

  London Ruins, 17.9.526 FSC.

  18.9.526 FSC.

  19.9.526 FSC.

  Prime City, 6th August 3186.

  London, 20.9.526 FSC.

  Prime City, 6th August 3186.

  London, 21.9.526 FSC.

  Prime City, 7th August 3186.

  Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

  Prime City, 7th August 3186.

  Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

  FScV Garnet Hyde.

  Prime City, 7th August 3186.

  FScV Garnet Hyde, 21.9.526 FSC.

  Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

  Prime City, 7th August 3186.

  8th August 3186.

  Aldershot Camp, 22.9.526 FSC.

  Part Five: The New World Prime City, 22.9.526 FSC; 8th August 3186.

  FScV Garnet Hyde, 23.9.526 FSC.

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Part One: Cold Comfort

  FNf Delta Brigantia, 12.11.525 FSC.

  The wall in front of Aneka was full of stars. Technically it was the wall in front of the current flight crew of the frigate she was on, the Delta Brigantia, but they were now about half an hour from their destination and the captain had wanted their advisor up on the bridge. Aneka considered that a wise move.

  They were flying into the Negral system, something of an oddity as far as star systems were concerned. There was one planet left, a gas giant on the outer edge. All the other worlds there had been pulled apart; planetary engineering on a grand scale done in order to do something even more amazing. Negral’s brown dwarf star had been crushed until the matter it was made of had collapsed into ‘strange matter,’ a soup of quarks with incredible density. The residents of Negral lived on a huge space station in orbit around the most powerful source of energy ever created artificially. Or they had.

  A little over a month earlier, Aneka had watched a video message from Negral which had seemed to show a Xinti battleship closing in on the station. The Xinti were supposed to be dead, every last one of them. Since they had kidnapped Aneka, scanned her brain, and turned her into a high-tech ghost in a robot body, she was not exactly mourning for them, but if they were back then the galaxy was in trouble. The Brigantia was going to find out whether that was actually what had happened.

  ‘Lieutenant Baron,’ the captain said, her gaze shifting briefly to the man sitting forward of her and on the left. ‘Sensor systems on full passive scan.’

  Baron’s hands shifted over the controls on his console. In front of him, and on the sphere of displays around the captain, images shifted and changed as the ship’s sensors changed from navigation to tactical mode. ‘Full tactical analysis active, Captain.’

  Commander Marilyn Anderson, the captain of the Delta Brigantia, shifted in her seat. It was not exactly a seat, more a harness which held her upright and stable, but still allowed her to turn in all directions to view her all-round, panoramic space vista. In combat the idea was that the ship’s captain could see everything around their vessel. Right now the sphere was semi-transparent and Aneka could see her. ‘We’re almost at the point where we meet up with the light that left Negral when the attack happened. The sensors aren’t good enough to get details at this range, but if there was a big enough battle then we’ll see some evidence of it.’ She turned forward again, watching the displays.

  ‘What are you expecting to see?’ Aneka asked.

  ‘Probably nothing much,’ Anderson replied. Aneka frowned as the ultrasonic whine from the ship’s very powerful warp engine grew louder. ‘A few flashes of light…’ The whine grew, threatening to make the captain inaudible. ‘…gamma emissions from that big cannon of theirs.’ She glanced back again. ‘Frankly I doubt there’ll be much…’

  The ship lurc
hed violently and Aneka was thrown forward against the captain’s sphere, catching herself only because her reflexes were enhanced and her balance system was artificial. The forward screen was a blaze of brilliant light for a fraction of a second before it went entirely black and the flight deck was plunged into darkness.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, New Earth.

  Ella became aware of her surroundings and the fact that she was awake. She was in her apartment, in her bed, and Aneka was not there. The absence of her girlfriend had been the first thing she had thought of every morning since Aneka had left, and it was the last thing she thought of when she got into bed at night. She was quite sure that many of the people who knew her thought that she was just missing the sex, but she knew different. If she wanted that, there were plenty of people willing to supply it more recently than when Aneka had gone away. No, Ella was missing Aneka, just her presence.

  With a sigh she climbed out of bed and padded towards the bedroom door. She needed a shower to clear her head before she went into the university.

  As the water washed over her, she wondered whether Aneka missed her too.

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  In the second or so before the emergency lights cut in, Aneka wondered whether she was ever going to see Ella again. Then the dull red light turned the darkness the colour of blood and people started to move, and then she had other things to think about.

  ‘Any injuries?’ The barked question was a good sign as far as Aneka was concerned; Anderson worried about her crew before she worried about her ship.

  ‘Bruises from my harness. That’s about it.’ That was Prentice, A-Shift’s pilot.

  ‘Be glad you’re not male,’ Hughes said. He was the gunnery officer. ‘I’m glad I’m not speaking in a falsetto.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Baron added, ‘but I’ve got absolutely nothing here. Sensors are all down. As far as I can tell the computer’s offline.’

  ‘Did we drop out of warp?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Aneka supplied. ‘I can’t hear the engine.’ She frowned. ‘It got a lot louder just before… whatever that was. Only time I’ve heard anything like it was when we went into Sapphira, and that was from gravity turbulence.’

  ‘We can worry about why later,’ Anderson said, turning herself around. ‘Right now I need to know what the state of my crew and my ship is.’ She hit the quick release on her straps then pushed on the back of the, now entirely transparent, Polyglass sphere. A section shifted a few centimetres and then stiffened. ‘Damn thing…’ Aneka put her fingers into the gap and pulled, cybernetic muscles and high-power motors making short work of levering the hatch upward. ‘Thanks. You know first aid, right?’

  Aneka nodded, let the captain exit and then allowed the hatch section to fall back into place. Whatever normally kept it out of the way when not in use apparently needed power. ‘Part of the basic facilitator training.’

  Anderson pulled open a panel on the rear wall of the room and took a large, white briefcase out of the space behind it. ‘Good. You’re with me. The rest of you stay here in case the power comes back on. We’re dead in the water near a potential combat hot spot. Stay alert.’

  There was a manual unlatching system for the door, which was kept locked normally, and then Aneka had to drag the thing open to let them out. ‘Is the power supposed to go out like this?’ she asked once they were out into the corridor beyond.

  ‘No, but we haven’t lost the reactor. Artificial gravity is still working, so we have power, it’s just not getting through to a lot of systems.’

  ‘Life support?’

  Anderson looked around as if trying to judge the state of the air. ‘Not that that’ll worry you too much. Life support has back-up power. As long as it’s not damaged we should be fine.’

  ‘I can survive for a while without air, but not indefinitely. I’m not indestructible.’

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t need to find out how long.’

  The bridge was in the forward section of the ship, deep inside it behind a lot of armour, electronics and weapon systems. The walk to the habitation section amidships was not long, but then they had to manually open the door at the end of the access corridor. As soon as it was open a couple of centimetres they had help from the other side.

  Ensign Lisa Cole’s pretty face grinned at them from the other side. ‘Captain, am I glad to see you. What happened?’

  ‘As yet unknown. Is anyone injured?’

  ‘Philip came down off his bunk pretty hard,’ Cole replied. ‘Alison’s looking after him. Couple of bruises otherwise. Chance went down to engineering. He was worried about Lieutenant Scotts.’

  ‘Walker’s got a first-aid kit?’ Cole nodded a reply. ‘All right, everyone’s to stay in the bunkrooms for now. We’re not sure what state life support is in. Jansen, let’s get down to engineering.’

  It did not take too long. Engineering technically started just past the habitation section where the huge, toroidal warp drive that normally gave the frigate quite exceptional speed wrapped around the central corridor to the engine room. Basically the room was there to house monitoring equipment and give access to the warp drive, reactor, and the twin antimatter torch engines at the very rear. Aneka had not been terribly keen on being that close to that much antimatter, but she had been assured that containment failure was almost never a problem.

  Chance had managed to get the door open. The handsome young man was kneeling over an older, but not by much, man who was lying on the floor near the rear bulkhead. Chance was his surname, but a lot of the crew called him that anyway because, according to Prentice, he would chance his luck on any woman he liked the look of. Right now he looked concerned, and the reason was probably the burn on Scotts’ arm.

  ‘Captain,’ Chance said as he heard them approach. ‘Can’t wake him, and…’ He indicated the burn.

  Aneka planted the first-aid kit down beside Scotts and opened it up. Her eyes scanned the contents, her accelerated brain taking in the inventory with just a glance. ‘I’ll take care of him.’

  ‘Good,’ Anderson said. ‘Chance, let the woman work. Currently you’re our only functional technician. Damage assessment, Lieutenant.’

  Chance got to his feet while Aneka produced a fine-bladed knife from the kit to cut away the burned remains of Scotts’ ship-suit sleeve. ‘I haven’t checked everything, Captain,’ he said, ‘but Brad got that burn from there.’ He indicated one of the panels on a side wall that had blown out. ‘We’ve lost one of the circuit breakers entirely and a load of the other ones have tripped. I can get most of them back up easily, but we’ll need to replace that one, and it’s one of the feeds to the warp drive.’

  Anderson winced. ‘If it blew out like that…’

  ‘Could be damage to the drive, yeah.’

  Aneka did her best to ignore them. She could worry about the drive later. Focus on the patient… ‘Al,’ she said inside her head, ‘could you interface with his ident-chip and check his vitals?’

  ‘Of course, Aneka.’ The voice was soft and male, and it sounded to Aneka as though its owner was standing right beside her, but Al was an artificial intelligence running on a computer in her chest somewhere. He had been put there as a support system, and that was exactly what he was. Aneka was not sure she could do without him anymore. Right now he was using their internal radio system to query a transponder implanted under Scotts’ collar bone. Mostly it served as a universal identity verification device; every Federal citizen had one. It also had bio-monitor functions. ‘He struck his head when the panel blew out. No signs of concussion. He is showing signs of mild shock.’

  Aneka pulled a small spray can from the kit and began coating Scotts’ burn with a layer of blue, plastic-like material. Around her the conversation was going on uninterrupted; her conversations with Al took fractions of a second compared to the rate of normal speech.

  ‘It would be useful if we can get the sensors online, and the computer restarted,’ Anderson said. ‘Everything else can s
tay down until you’ve checked the engine.’

  The synthetic skin in place over the wound, Aneka took another container from the kit, took off the cap, and jabbed the exposed needle into Scotts’ shoulder through his suit. The nice thing about bioplastic was that it would repair the hole pretty quickly. The vial emptied into Scotts’ blood stream; pretty soon the drug would be speeding up his body’s own repair processes.

  ‘At least I only need to open one panel,’ Chance was saying as he did so. Behind it were two heavy lever switches, both of them in the down position. A red light over each indicated that there was power coming in and not going out. ‘Computer’s back-up supply must’ve failed,’ he muttered as he pushed the two levers up and the lights went green. ‘We should have internal comms too,’ he said just as the speakers in the room screeched and then settled into Baron’s voice.

  ‘Bridge to Anderson. Captain, the sensors are coming back up, so is the computer. We’ll have a damage and situation report in about two minutes.’

  Anderson looked down at Aneka. ‘Can you back Mister Chance up while he checks the drive?’

  ‘I can probably drag his smoking corpse out of the access tunnel if needed,’ Aneka replied as she jabbed a second hypodermic into Scotts, this time in the neck.

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ Chance said.

  ‘I’m going up to the bridge to see what trouble we’re in,’ Anderson said, heading for the door. ‘Give me a report as soon as you’re out.’

  ‘Will do, Captain.’ Chance turned, heading for a corner of the room where there were metal rungs set into the wall leading up to a hatch. ‘Do me a favour, Aneka?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘If you’re going to wake him up, save it until after I’m out. He hates it when people climb around in his engines.’

  ‘How’re his vitals?’ Aneka asked silently.

  ‘Holding steady. The analgesic is helping with the reaction to the burn. His blood pressure is holding and his breathing is now normal.’

  ‘Yeah, I can do that,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘You need me to do anything.’