Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour Read online

  Since she did not need a suit to deal with the heat outside, she was in her preferred outfit. That was an Ultraskin leotard that Ella had designed for her. It had one arm and was largely translucent, showing most of her body. There were also Ultraskin stockings and heavy, armoured boots. She was not wearing her customary gun belt, but she would be when they went to do the survey.

  ‘Thanks,’ Aneka said. ‘I get the general idea. It’s nice to be appreciated.’ She slipped past him, heading for storage and he carried on toward the mess.

  The shower was running when Aneka got into the room where storage crates took up one side and a portable bathroom unit took up the other. The unit was self-contained, recycled the water it used, and handled waste management, which all made life far easier than it could have been. However, it was a cramped fit in there and the lighting was poor. Most of them left the outer door open unless they were using the toilet. Through the frosted Polyglass shower screen, Aneka could see a female shape and it looked too tall to be Garlan’s girlfriend, Bicks. The water cut off suddenly and the screen opened.

  Sure enough, it was Rice, the team’s very bored biologist. She was above average height, and had better than average looks. Her hair was long and platinum blonde, her eyes were icy blue, her body was fit and smoothly muscled, and she had large, firm breasts, and yet Garlan had not given her the same looks he had favoured Aneka and Delta with. Rice was clearly not at all interested. She had been brought along in case there was any life on the lifeless, volcano-strewn rock. Life normally seemed to find a way to develop whenever it possibly could, but not on Farrington’s World.

  ‘Hi,’ Rice said. ‘You want this?’ She indicated the shower and then picked up a towel to dry herself. Most Jenlay were not at all shy, and Rice was no exception.

  ‘I figured a shower might freshen me up before I have to go out again,’ Aneka replied. She had not yet figured out whether Rice was not into Garlan, not into men, or not into sex. The second would have been mildly unusual, but not unheard of, the last would have made her almost unique.

  ‘I’ll be out in a second.’

  Nodding, Aneka began pulling her boots off. ‘You know, if you’d be more comfortable, I could probably fly you back up to the Hyde tomorrow.’

  ‘No… Tempting as it is, and useless as I am for my specialisation, I may as well stay and try to be useful. I’m as good with scientific equipment as most here, better than some.’ She looked up and gave Aneka a slight grin. ‘And I’m good eye candy. Not that you don’t have that covered yourself. Besides, Indaia’s interesting to talk to.’ She put the towel to one side and stepped into some light slippers before leaving the cubicle carrying a light, Nusilk wrap. Slipping the wrap on, she leant up against a crate to watch Aneka undress, not bothering to tie it closed.

  Aneka reached a conclusion. ‘What’s your problem with Garlan?’

  ‘He’s a shoo.’ The word meant ‘pig’ in Rimmic. Core Jenlay used it as an insult, but then so did the Rim Worlders. ‘I dated him for a few months last year. And then I found out he was spending his time with Trudy whenever he claimed to be working late. I wouldn’t have minded sharing if he hadn’t kept it secret.’

  ‘Can’t be fun being stuck here with him.’ Naked, Aneka climbed into the shower cubicle and started the water.

  ‘Less fun for him. Trudy never found out about me. I’ll leave you to it since there’s no room for two.’

  Aneka shook her head as she heard the door open and close. Jenlay barely ever considered the idea that someone might not be interested, even if some of them had a more active libido than others.

  ‘Al, would you get me a connection to the Hyde?’ she asked in the silence of her head.

  ‘Connected,’ Al replied almost immediately.

  ‘Jansen to Garnet Hyde,’ Aneka said, her thought transmitted through her own internal radio to the base’s communications rig and so up to the orbiting spacecraft.

  ‘Hi, Aneka,’ Shannon’s voice came back almost immediately. Obviously the blonde pilot was on duty at the moment. ‘What can we do for you?’

  ‘Just checking in. How’s the mapping going?’

  ‘Smoothly. That is one topographically boring rock. Lot of young, fairly low mountain ranges, and there’s the volcanos, I guess, but the surface gets recycled too much to be very interesting and we’re seeing no signs of anything living.’

  ‘Yeah, we have a very bored biologist down here. I offered to take her back up to you, but she wants to stick around and try being useful.’

  ‘Shame, she’s gorgeous.’

  Aneka laughed aloud. ‘You have Drake to keep you entertained.’

  ‘Uh-huh, and when we’ve wrapped the high-def maps I plan to let Aggy deal with keeping us in orbit and abuse our solitude outrageously.’

  ‘Don’t be mean. My partner’s back on New Earth.’

  Shannon’s chuckle barely made it over the channel, but it sounded distinctly dirty. ‘Go see Monkey and Delta. She may look a bit shy, but she’s a minx once she gets going.’

  ‘Right… Call you if anything happens. Jansen out.’

  Aneka was not going to do as suggested. Monkey found her attractive, sure, but he was still not interested in her in that way. His father had told him so many stories about Xinti combat robots that he still thought he might freak out if he went to bed with one. Not that she was really worried about missing out. It would make getting back to Ella that much better.

  Turning off the water, Aneka opened the cubicle and found herself a towel. A cup of coffee and a little time relaxing in her room and she would be ready to go set up Indaia’s equipment. The shower had helped, but right now the coffee seemed like a really good idea.

  ~~~

  ‘What does this thing do?’ Delta asked as she helped Aneka manhandle the large central emitter unit into position. Monkey was busy positioning the four satellite receivers, which were significantly smaller and lighter.

  That the women were doing the heavy lifting might have been considered odd, even in this day and age. Morphologically, the sexes could still be differentiated in a similar manner to the way Humans were in Aneka’s original time. Men, on average, still had greater upper-body strength in particular. Aneka and Delta were hardly average; Aneka was basically a robot and Delta had grown up on a heavy-gravity world.

  Basically, Delta was an Amazon. Tall and heavily muscled, she was a pretty girl with a rather cute face which belied her physique. These days she wore her auburn hair long, which worked far better for her, and she wore push-up bras to compensate for the effect of thirty years of high gravity before leaving her home world. She was not quite the perfection of beauty that you expected to see from a core world citizen, but Monkey thought she was beauty incarnate.

  ‘Basically,’ Monkey said, ‘it’s a sonar system. Normal sonar uses audible frequencies or ultrasound; this thing uses infrasound, very low frequencies. That’s why the emitter is so big.’ Monkey was of a relatively slight build, especially compared to his two female companions, but having Delta living with him had resulted in a number of changes, including some increase in muscle mass. He still wore has dark hair as something of an unkempt cap, and he still sported a valiant attempt at a goatee beard, but his expression these days tended to be more content than unsure.

  ‘So it sends low frequency pulses into the ground and detects the returns, and that maps different density regions in the rock,’ Delta said, voicing her thoughts as she worked out the operating principle.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka confirmed. ‘Indaia has come up with some sort of novel focussing system which lets the pulses go deeper.’

  ‘And the receivers are a new design too,’ Monkey added. ‘She thinks she can get about a twenty per cent increase in resolution over previous versions.’

  Delta and Aneka were carefully lowering the emitter into place over an area of ground they had previously cleared of debris and rubble. ‘Won’t the pulses mess with Adams’ seismometers?’ Delta asked.

  �
�Actually, Indaia’s using them as extra sensors; basically they create a synthetic aperture that raises the resolution of her kit, and the pulse returns can be filtered out pretty easily.’

  Delta giggled. ‘I bet Adams is still iffy about it.’

  ‘He wants the data Indaia’s system can give him, so he has to put up with it,’ Aneka replied. ‘That’s why she’s here. She’s a bit of an oddity for a Torem, being interested in geology and planets, but she’s good at what she does.’ She checked the level on the emitter, made a couple of adjustments, and nodded. ‘I think this is ready. How are you doing, David?’

  ‘Uh… That’s the last receiver and it’s now… Yeah, it’s showing as active.’

  Aneka nodded. ‘Jansen to Indaia. We’re ready to activate your emitter.’

  ‘Thank you, Aneka,’ the reply came back almost immediately. ‘I am receiving telemetry from the receivers. Please activate the emitter.’

  Aneka flipped open the Molly guard over a switch, shifted the switch up, and then dropped the guard back into place. ‘Emitter is active.’ There was a slight pause and then Aneka heard it, a sort of throb in the air around the device. ‘Seems to be working,’ she said.

  ‘You heard something?’ Indaia asked.

  ‘My hearing has a broader range than normal.’

  ‘Yes, I’m just surprised that there was enough leakage on the surface for you to hear it. I shall have to work on that. It is an… inefficiency. Everything appears to be working. You may return to your well-deserved rest.’

  ‘That we will do. Jansen out.’ She looked around at Monkey and Delta. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll offline now and you two can sleep when I get up.’

  Monkey gave a shrug. ‘You’re not only the boss, but you’re also the one working her ass off here. We can work with that.’

  7.9.528 FSC.

  The mining town of Farrington’s Drift had once been the home of around forty thousand colonists, mostly miners, but also farmers, housewives, shopkeepers, and children. It had been established in 152 FSC and, for nine years, it had worked to establish itself. Mining there had just started to get to the point where they could start paying back the loans that had been used to build the place, and then it had gone dark.

  ‘Back in those days,’ Grumand said as Aneka swung the shuttle in a circle around the town, ‘colonies would fail and no one really worried too much. The banks had insurance against that kind of thing. Mounting an operation to check for survivors was considered pointless, especially since the planet was known to be volcanically active.’

  It did look a lot like a volcanic event had eliminated the town, but it was something of a weird one. On the north side was a crater, maybe twenty metres in diameter, now cold and black. Another crater, slightly smaller, could be seen on the east, and there was a wide crack between the two which, from the looks of the lava flows, had actually been a vent fissure.

  ‘Two craters and a vent?’ Aneka said. She glanced at Primly, sitting at the sensor station on her right. ‘Isn’t that a bit unusual?’

  Primly was staring at the monitors, but he apparently recognised that the question was addressed to him. ‘You’re assuming that those were all one event… Though I admit that the flow patterns suggest they were. It’s unusual, but not impossible, and I am here to study the rather peculiar tectonic activity this planet exhibits.’

  ‘Good point. Do you have what you need?’

  ‘Yes, I can’t get better data without samples.’

  ‘All right.’ Aneka picked a flat spot near the largest structure and shifted the shuttle toward it. ‘Delta, you’re with Mark. Lidia, you want to wander around with them or come in with me and Nate?’

  Rice stepped into the cockpit, already in her heat suit, which had the prerequisite of all good Jenlay garments: it was tight. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘There’s no life on any of the other lava fields on this cinder, maybe there’s something in the buildings.’

  ‘Cockroaches,’ Aneka suggested.

  ‘Those things are everywhere. If there aren’t any I’ll be surprised.’

  ‘Huh. Everyone remember your masks,’ Aneka reminded them. ‘You probably won’t notice anything more than a bad smell at first, but the atmosphere here will eat your lungs if you breathe it for too long.’ She put the shuttle down smoothly, checked it seemed stable, and then shut down the antigravity system.

  The ground floor levels of the buildings had been entirely submerged by the lava flows. On the sides facing the craters the flow had banked up, covering the second floor windows, but some were still visible on the other sides, all of them covered over by heavy metal shields.

  Aneka examined one of these, grunted, and dug around in her pack for a plasma torch. ‘Should be able to cut our way in,’ she said. ‘I go first once we’re through. I know you’re a Scout, Nate, but on this mission you’re my responsibility.’ She activated the torch and a white hot ‘flame’ of plasma began playing over the metal. It was bubbling in under a second.

  ‘I am not going to argue with a woman holding a plasma jet,’ Grumand replied. ‘Shouldn’t you be wearing goggles for that?’

  ‘My eyes have glare protection built in. Delta, you okay out there?’

  ‘Sure,’ Delta replied over the suit radios. ‘I’m thinking of bringing David back here on vacation next year. Long days, warm weather, lots of black lava ropes all over the ground.’

  ‘It’s typical of young basaltic lava flows,’ Primly stated. ‘It would have been hot when it hit the town, upwards of fifteen-hundred Kelvin. Very fluid. That’s why there are splashes high on the walls.’

  ‘The Plascrete held up well,’ Aneka commented. There was a clang as the window shield dropped away. ‘Okay, we’re in. Delta, keep in touch.’

  The Polyglass inside the shield had cracked and fallen in, probably due to the heat, but there was no sign of any lava inside the room. There was also no light. Aneka took a box from the back of her belt, opened it, and sent a cloud of tiny glowing robots in through the window before drawing one of her two pistols and following them.

  The room looked like it had been an office. There was a desk and chair, a work console sitting on the desk. Everything seemed intact. No real sign of heat or fire damage marked the furniture, though the interior paint on the outer wall had bubbled at the bottom.

  The office door opened with a squeal; the hinges rusted by a few centuries of exposure to the acidic atmosphere. Outside the corridor was dark, but even less damaged than the office.

  ‘Okay,’ Aneka said, ‘so the lava flows in and engulfs the town.’

  ‘That seems to be what happened,’ Grumand agreed.

  ‘But they had to have had some warning, and even if they didn’t, the interior of this place seems fine. People could have survived inside the buildings. All the shutters were closed. There was no evidence of anyone leaving after the event.’

  Grumand was quiet for a second as he checked another room. ‘I admit that does seem strange. I suggest we check the ground floor. The few files we have on this place suggest the main mining office was down there. There could still be records, maybe some intact computer equipment.’

  Aneka nodded. ‘Lidia? Any sign of life?’

  ‘Webbing,’ Rice replied. ‘Structure and composition is identical to the silk made by Earth spiders. Imports, and I’m not seeing anything that originated the webs.’

  ‘No cockroaches?’

  Rice barked a laugh. ‘Not yet. Give them time.’

  They found a stairwell toward the end of the corridor and Aneka sent the firefly bots ahead of them to check the way. The stairs looked solid, but then Plascrete could handle centuries without decaying. There were examples of it on Old Earth going back to before the Xinti War which still had structural integrity. There was still no sign of lava, so they headed down. Aneka was just about to go through the doorway at the bottom when Rice stopped her.

  ‘Wait…’ The biologist had swung her torch into a corner under the stairs. The
re was a blackened patch of Plascrete there, along with a few scattered pieces of something that looked like shell. Rice dropped to one knee and took a sample container and tweezers from her belt. ‘Looks like we found the ’roaches, or what’s left of them.’ She held up a partial wing case, which looked like it had come from a big cockroach. The rear end of it looked as though it had been seared away. There were a couple of oddly shaped rocks among the shells; almost like fossilised dung, or worms, they were elongated and twisted, almost extruded, and shiny black in colour.

  ‘It looks like someone set a ’roach bonfire,’ Aneka commented. ‘Is that a laser burn, or…?’

  ‘Looks more like it came into contact with a very hot surface,’ Rice replied, dropping the shell into her container.

  ‘There was a really old movie about cockroaches that could start fires by rubbing their legs together.’ Aneka looked down at the blackened patch of Plascrete. ‘I don’t think they roasted themselves doing it.’

  ‘Does make me think,’ Grumand said. ‘Some of the old Plascrete mixes, when they got really hot, they would outgas toxic fumes. The polymers used were a little unstable. Modern ones don’t do it, but when this place was built… It’s a possibility.’

  Aneka turned back to the door. ‘Trapped in here and poisoned, wonderful.’ She stopped, frowning at the door. The bottom few centimetres of it had been eaten away by something. As the fireflies dropped down to that level for her, she could see scorch marks on the paint. ‘Something weird happened here,’ she said, and then pushed through the door.