Aneka Jansen 7: Hope Read online

  ‘Would they have had to report it if they’d killed her?’

  ‘A disposal request record would have been filed and I would have been able to find a corresponding record of incineration. They keep exceptionally good mundane records. No such records exist, however. Equally, no report of an escaped slave has been filed with the police. There is no record of an investigation in this area. No attempt has been made to look for her.’

  ‘This just gets more complicated. Okay, we know that she was being treated as someone of “special interest.” They get her here and put her in slavery. They don’t appear very upset when she possibly escapes. I mean, after listening to the goings on in that house for a couple of days, I don’t think there’s some secret torture lab under it.’

  ‘Agreed. They had her here for a reason. Observation, perhaps. They expected her to escape, perhaps even assisted her in some way. Certainly not reporting it would reduce the chance of her encountering problems while leaving.’

  Aneka nodded, even if the action was mainly for her own benefit. ‘So… She would go to the spaceport and steal a warp-capable ship.’

  ‘But if they are covering her tracks for her, it is unlikely that a stolen vessel would be reported.’

  ‘True… Ah, but on the other hand, this kind of thing is going to take organisation. It has to be their intelligence people working on it. Do we have any idea which branch this Commander Arundal works for?’

  ‘I have not determined that.’

  ‘Right, not a priority. We’ll retrieve the gear and then I think we should go pay a visit to the naval station.’

  ‘That,’ Al said, sounding resigned, ‘is going to require more effort.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re the best.’ Aneka climbed to her feet and activated her nanosuit. It was once again time for stealth.

  ‘Thank you for your vote of confidence.’

  ~~~

  It had taken Al a couple of hours to forge orders for Ensign Curtis to work on one of the antenna arrays on the roof of the communications building. Most of that, it seemed, had been little to do with security.

  ‘You would not believe the health and safety forms!’ Al complained as Aneka checked in through the main security gate. ‘“I have read all regulations for working above three metres.” “I will be wearing a gravity support harness at all times when working within three metres of a three-metre drop.” Proctologists must have a field day with these people.’

  ‘A gravity harness isn’t going to be much use for a three-metre fall anyway.’

  ‘Of this I am aware. Apparently the Pinnacle are not.’

  ‘They started applying all the health and safety regs to the Army while I was in it. Not sure it saved anyone, but it certainly made things more tedious. I kept wondering when they’d declare rifles too dangerous to have in the vicinity of soldiers.’

  ‘Ah, well, if you were a man, it would be a twelve-metre drop. Women are delicate. I’m sure you’re acutely aware of this blatant fact.’

  ‘I swear this bunch are going to turn me into a feminist.’

  Rooftop access was not an issue, given that Al could hack the locks, and the antenna array she was supposed to be working on was in the middle of the roof, nowhere near any drop of greater than three metres. There was a slight breeze at this height, but that just seemed to make things warmer; the planet had a distinctly tropical climate, a little too clammy for Aneka’s tastes, but she thought it would have made a good holiday resort.

  ‘If it were not crawling with Pinnacle?’ Al suggested.

  ‘There’s that.’ She hooked in through her ‘diagnostic terminal’ and Al went to work.

  It took around fifteen minutes of digging before he found what he was looking for. ‘They give her a nice, juicy, fairly obvious target to steal. A light transport which had supposedly just had an engine refit and was due to be taken out for a trial run. There’s confirmation of her leaving the spaceport and she was tracked as far as orbital insertion to the local moon. After that the ship was found drifting and investigation showed that she was no longer aboard.’

  ‘What? Where did she go?’

  ‘They seem to have been expecting that. The record says “capture by Kade cannot be confirmed but is highly probable.”’

  ‘Kade. That was the name of the pirate they thought we might be back on that station.’

  ‘Yes, the captain of the Hope of Sanctuary. Coincidence?’

  ‘I hate coincidences. Can you find anything else out about this Captain Kade?’

  ‘An extensive list of crimes. Terrorism is at the top, but that seems to encompass a variety of sins. There is also a list of known associates. I’m downloading everything I can find. All the orders regarding Ella seem to be coming from the same location. It’s a naval facility on a planet called Ranson.’

  ‘You think we’ll find out what the Hell they’re up to there?’

  ‘I think it is our best option, but it means going far deeper into Pinnacle space.’

  ‘At this point, I don’t think that makes much difference.’

  Gwy, 22.11.559 FSC.

  ‘Captain Anastasia Kade, or the best composite image the Pinnacle have been able to get from retrieved video.’ Al was doing show-and-tell on what he had obtained from the Pinnacle databases, and he had found a full-height simulacrum of the pirate.

  ‘Ella’s going to be drooling,’ Aneka said.

  ‘I believe she will,’ Cassandra agreed. ‘She does bear a remarkable similarity to you in many respects. The hair is longer, obviously.’

  ‘You mean blonde, long legs, big tits?’

  ‘I was not going to go into details. I assume her morals are somewhat less worthy?’

  ‘Difficult to tell from the Pinnacle reports,’ Al replied. ‘They are, after all, the victims of much of her depredations. They don’t record any attacks on non-Pinnacle vessels, but from the amount of things she has attacked belonging to them, it seems hard to believe she hits many other ships.’

  ‘So, she has a bee in her bonnet about the Pinnacle,’ Aneka said. ‘Can’t say I blame her, but that outfit is just… A sword I can understand in close confines on a ship. The gun looks out of place, but some people just like old stuff. She looks like she should be in some sort of Playboy pirates special.’

  ‘Building a reputation,’ Cassandra said. ‘She’s going for the dashing pirate look. She means to have people on her side.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Al said, and the image changed. ‘And next up we have a woman believed to be her senior officer. Her name is Trin, and she’s a Felix. Every image of her shows her covered in blades and little else.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka said, smirking at the image. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘This is Lanyon. He’s a Polymelian, an engineered race meant for hard labour. Tough, strong, and with four arms. Lanyon is believed to handle supplies for the Hope.’

  ‘We’re going to have to rescue Ella soon. Otherwise she’ll be walking bowlegged for the rest of her life.’

  ‘You know,’ Cassandra said, ‘she was calming down quite a lot, right up until the Devor incident. She might not end up in bed with all of them.’

  Aneka nodded. ‘Not at the same time anyway. Any more?’

  ‘There’s one other noted, but he’s not named and they have no image data. It’s believed she has a technical genius of some sort. Her vessel appears to use some Xinti technology which would require someone quite bright to integrate into an old Pinnacle vessel.’

  ‘Nothing on the location she operates from?’

  ‘Not as such. I believe that they know where it is, but they keep their information highly compartmentalised. No one on Ariadne needed to know, so it was not there. Ranson should give us the answer.’

  ‘Gwy? How long until we get there?’

  ‘Approximately seven days, Aneka,’ the ship replied.

  Aneka sighed. ‘Well, at least she’s probably not in any danger now.’

  Gwy, Ranson System, 29.11.559 FSC.

  �
��This is not good,’ Aneka said softly. She was looking at the system schematic Gwy had managed to compile so far, and already it was looking like a really tough job to get to somewhere where they could grab the data they needed.

  ‘I have to agree,’ Gwy said from beside her. ‘They appear to be worried about cloaked vessels. They are running multiple high-definition scans of the space around their stations more or less constantly. I believe they have actually constructed stations for the sole purpose of doing so. My screens are good, but it is not improbable that we would be detected were we to go too near.’

  ‘Right. Okay, you’re on sensor duty. Pull out all the stops, every trick you have. Al, you’re on ECM, take the load off Gwy while she concentrates on sensors. Cassandra, see what you can do about data analysis on whatever Gwy finds.’

  ‘Of course, Aneka,’ the android replied. ‘What do you plan to do?’

  ‘Lie on the bed feeling useless until I’m needed. If Ella was here, at least I could bring her coffee.’

  ‘If Ella was here, we would not be.’

  ‘It’s a valid point.’

  2.12.559 FSC.

  ‘The resolution of the images is now sufficiently high that we will be able to identify buildings,’ Gwy said. ‘The surface complex is extensive, but at this distance getting clear definition of function is impossible. I have managed to map the entire sensor network, and Cassandra and Al have been analysing it for weak points.’

  ‘And we have some,’ Cassandra said. ‘There are several quite deep valleys on the surface which would provide sufficient cover from surface sensors, but they are covered by an orbital station.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like a weakness,’ Aneka commented.

  ‘The planet has quite a dense atmosphere making orbital scanning less effective if we take it slowly. However, Al estimates that our chances of discovery are still higher than he would like.’

  ‘Given that discovery would bring a very large contingent of naval ships down on our heads,’ Al put in.

  Aneka sighed. ‘Do we have a target?’

  ‘There we have better news. There is a facility on the outer edge of the complex which is showing abnormally high EM readings for its size. It does not appear to be a communications facility, so we believe it to house computers of some form. It so happens that one of the valleys ends close to that facility. It does look heavily fortified, however.’

  ‘Okay… So we need to reduce our chance of discovery, and we’re going to need a distraction, something to keep them from looking down while we go in. It’s going to have to be hit and run, I think… Give me a schematic of the target site to start off with. Focus on getting as much visual detail as you can on that building.’

  ‘I may be able to resolve more with further observations,’ Gwy said, ‘but atmospheric interference makes that difficult.’

  ‘Do what you can. I’m going to lie here and consider tactics. This has to be doable with a bit of thought.’

  3.12.559 FSC.

  Aneka pushed off from Gwy’s airlock and glided through empty space towards the much larger bulk of the tanker.

  ‘I am really starting to feel like déjà vu is getting a little common around here.’

  ‘We do seem to be repeating ourselves,’ Al replied, ‘but the plan is sound and we will need to wait several days to try again, and the trajectory may not be as favourable then.’

  ‘I know.’ Her hands and feet met with the hull of the ship and she began making her way to the airlock close by. ‘You’ll get the door?’

  ‘Of course. Gwy is reporting a three-man crew, all on the flight deck. There are no indications of them noticing our arrival.’

  ‘I kind of doubt their sensors are designed to spot a single person appearing out of nowhere, even if we aren’t cloaked. And I don’t think we need to worry about them spotting us. Let’s set Racine for stun rounds. I’ve no wish to make the casualty figures on this higher than necessary.’

  ‘It seems unlikely that we will have that luxury on the surface.’

  ‘I know. That’s why not killing these three is going to make me feel a little better. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few heads, but still…’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be “eggs?”’

  ‘An egg by any other name…’

  As the airlock cycled, Aneka took a canister from her belt and primed it before slipping Racine from her holster and checking the load. The gas was supposed to render the average humanoid unconscious in seconds, but you could never tell, especially when dealing with engineered subspecies.

  ‘There is still no indication that they have noticed our entrance,’ Al commented. ‘I have tapped their security system and silenced it, just in case. The flight deck is forward approximately eighty metres. Turn left out of the airlock.’

  ‘Is the flight deck door locked?’

  ‘Not now, no.’

  ‘Huh, of course. Start uploading our new flight instructions. We might as well get things moving.’

  ‘We do have plenty of time. Once set, the vessel will take some ten hours before reaching its target.’

  ‘Good point. That’s going to be a boring wait. Okay, wind down the air circulation in the cockpit. Hopefully if you take it down slowly they won’t even notice.’

  A minute later, as Aneka set the gas canister and opened the door, Al said, ‘Air circulation ceased.’ Aneka took in the three men starting to turn towards the door, threw the fuming canister in and closed the door again.

  ‘Thirty seconds, you think?’

  ‘That should be plenty of time.’

  ‘And you did remember to lock out their communications?’

  ‘I did, but they are out of sight of any station anyway.’

  ‘Which is why we’re hitting them here. You might as well start that upload now.’

  ‘It’s on its way. I have also requested that Gwy begins docking procedures.’

  Aneka checked the time. Fifteen seconds or so. ‘Right. Then we load these guys aboard Gwy, sedated, set a full-power burn, shut everything down and wait for it to hit the sensor station. We have a ten-thousand-tonne missile to take out our observation problem and they’ll be running around like hyperactive rabbits trying to figure out what happened.’

  ‘As I said, it’s a good plan. Assuming it works.’

  ‘Plans always work as planned, until they don’t.’

  ~~~

  ‘This plan appears to be going to plan,’ Al said.

  ‘Now you’ve gone and jinxed it. How long until impact?’

  ‘Atmospheric interference is making detection of the tanker difficult,’ Gwy replied. ‘Assuming that there have been no deviations during the slingshot, thirty-eight seconds.’

  ‘Okay. Cassandra? Are you ready?’

  ‘Engines are primed,’ Cassandra said from the flight deck. ‘Course is laid in and we are both prepared for the necessary rapid manoeuvring required.’

  ‘Good. Just like we tried in the simulation. Let Gwy handle the details and you make sure we’re not getting out of bounds. We want to stay as low as possible until the last minute.’

  ‘I know. Al, you be careful with that avatar. We can’t replace it out here and I’m probably going to need some hugs after this is over.’

  ‘I shall endeavour to return without so much as a bullet hole,’ Al replied, smiling. He was busy checking over the heavy machine gun he was going to be carrying. It was a devastating weapon and Aneka hoped it was going to see little use. The plan was going far too well for that, however.

  ‘Sensor scans have ceased,’ Gwy announced. ‘I am registering a fairly large explosion in high orbit.’

  ‘Let’s move it,’ Aneka ordered.

  The acceleration was barely perceptible, and it cut off entirely after a couple of seconds as they reached the maximum safe velocity Gwy could reach and maintain sufficient control in the narrow confines of the valley they were flying through. It seemed to take far too long to reach the far end, but Aneka’s chronomet
er told her it was just over ninety seconds.

  ‘Perimeter wall in sight,’ Cassandra announced.

  ‘Firing main canon,’ Gwy added.

  ‘Drop in ten seconds.’ The outer door of the airlock opened, the view outside swinging violently around as Cassandra turned the ship side-on to the hole in the thick wall around the base. Debris was still falling and the noise of wind and echoing detonation was loud.

  ‘Go,’ Aneka said, jumping clear of the ship. She waited for Al to join her before adding, ‘All right, clear the area, dump those men and sweep back. Hold for our call.’

  ‘Understood,’ Cassandra responded. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Always.’ Aneka began running for the breach, Al on her heels. They were not operating the software War had built for a full fireteam, but Al’s ability to coordinate his avatar with Aneka was pretty amazing anyway, given that he operated the remote drone from within her.

  There were men running from the building, but Aneka launched a plasma grenade round into them, and Al’s gun finished off what remained standing. Another plasma round demolished the entrance they had come through and the pair ran for the corridor within.

  ‘Their response time is quite good,’ Al commented.

  ‘They were possibly put on alert when the station was taken out. We need to know where we’re going. Have you got time to hack their network.’

  ‘Probably, but Gwy’s telemetry as we approached put the heaviest concentration of electrical activity fifty metres ahead and to the right.’

  More guards appeared and Racine peppered them with hypervelocity needles. ‘Place to start then. If that’s not it, it may give us a spot to hole up and search from.’

  ‘A working plan. I am having some trouble with their network as the encryption is quite good.’

  ‘Will you be able to work the door?’

  ‘Unknown.’

  They turned a corner and three more guards died in a burst of automatic fire. They had been standing in front of a heavy-looking door. ‘Well, I hope so, because I think we’d bring the building down trying to blast through that.’