Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart Read online

  ‘I should be fine, y’know? It’s just a bust wrist.’

  ‘Walker said I should keep an eye on you for the next couple of nights. Listen to your medi-tech.’

  Grant gave a laugh. ‘These beds are more comfortable than the bunks. I think I can live with it.’

  ‘Good. Computer, lights out.’ The room sank into darkness and Aneka settled her head on the pillow.

  When it was Ella sleeping with her she always waited for the little redhead to fall asleep before shutting herself down, and now she waited for Grant to settle. He had a little trouble finding a position he could sleep in, but eventually she felt his body relax and heard his breathing steady. Still she lay awake, looking up at the ceiling, quite visible to her despite the darkness.

  ‘Al, play me Ella’s last message,’ she said silently, her eyes closing.

  A window appeared on the inside of her eyelids, black at first and then replaced by the video message Ella had sent to Sapphira while the Brigantia was on its way there. That had been their last port of call before heading out to Negral, the intention being to avoid going on if the AIs had contacted the Federation during the flight.

  ‘Hey there,’ Ella said. Her voice sounded cheerful, but it also sounded like she was forcing it. ‘I… Huh, I hate leaving messages like this. I’d imagine you’ve seen the message from Senator Elroy. Still no contact from Negral, so I don’t get you back early. Vashma but I miss you!’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘I told myself I wasn’t going to do that and I went and did it inside of ten seconds. I do though.’

  ‘I miss you too, love,’ Aneka replied, even though she knew she was talking to a recording.

  ‘I’ve decided to get my eyes replaced, like Delta suggested.’ She had rallied, getting the cheerfulness back into her voice. ‘Clarion May Detective Series. I know it sounds silly, but they have magnifying optics. I figure that’ll be useful on the job. They have fair night vision capabilities too. They won’t be anything like your eyes, but they’ll be an improvement. Uh, Gillian sends best wishes… So do Kat and Dillon… And Drake and Shannon. They’re back. She’s doing better. Still in therapy, but she’s more like her old self. I think Drake’s still a bit worried about her… Oh, this is getting depressing again. I wanted to be all happy and sound like everything was great, and it’s not because you’re not here and we’re worried about the Xinti and the damn Herosians. They’ve been pushing to send ships out to Sapphira…’ She put her hand over her eyes and stopped again. When she lowered it she was smiling. ‘Look, it’s time for bed here. I’m going to just lie back and think of you, and let the audio record what happens. Maybe you can join in…’

  ‘Stop,’ Aneka thought, and the image froze as the smiling redhead started to dip out of sight of the camera. When the message had arrived Aneka had been a little embarrassed at the rest of the message, even if she had played it the same way and no one else could hear it. Phone sex for the future. Then she had played it back again and she had joined in. Now she might never hear those sounds again, live and with the woman making them. ‘Damn,’ Aneka whispered into the silence of the room.

  Dropping into oblivion had never felt quite so good.

  21.11.525 FSC.

  The plasma torch was an incandescent flare of blue-white in the darkness of space as Aneka played it over the surface of the hull, careful to keep her movements smooth, her pace even. She was, at least, not alone. The radiation levels were down to a more or less normal background level and the crew had been taking it in turns to go out with her, two at a time. Today it was Hughes and Daventry, the ship’s XO, but the important thing was that they were going to be the last party out there. The hull over the sensor array was not perfect, but it was showing less than one per cent distortion, and that was considered good enough that they could fly on it.

  A slight change in the lighting suggested that one of her companions had shut off his torch. A second later Daventry’s voice sounded over the radio. ‘I’m basically done, and my air supply is getting low. I’m heading back.’

  Aneka shut off her own torch, examining the surface in the ‘light’ from ambient radio emissions as well as the visible spectrum. ‘Yeah, I think this is as done as it’s going to get. Gareth?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hughes said, killing his own torch. ‘Hadn’t realised we’d been out this long.’

  ‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ Aneka commented dryly. ‘Let’s get inside and we can see how much good we’ve done.’

  Despite a strong desire to be out of her vacuum suit, Aneka headed from the airlock straight to the bridge. A-Shift was on duty, which meant Baron was on sensors and navigation, and was thus surrounded by people trying to work out whether everything was functioning properly.

  ‘We’re getting a four per cent drop in effective range,’ Aneka heard as she walked in. ‘Distortion is down to point-four-six per cent… This is all looking good, Captain.’

  Anderson straightened up from where she had been crouched near the front of the small crowd of people. ‘Mister Chance, see if you can get us a little more range on the active systems.’ She turned and spotted Aneka. ‘Miss Jansen… frankly we’d probably still be blind if you hadn’t been here. You’ve done a good job.’

  Aneka gave her a sloppy salute. ‘Just doin’ ma job, ma’am,’ she drawled. Anderson looked mildly confused for a second. ‘It’s a bad John Wayne impression… Sorry… You wouldn’t have a clue who that was.’

  The captain grinned. ‘You must get that a lot.’ The fact that Anderson was grinning easily was a good sign. ‘Prentice, swing us around so that we can take a look at Negral. That’s what we’re actually here to check on.’

  Prentice flexed her hands and took hold of the two joystick controls on the arms of her semi-reclined flight chair. The controls on the Brigantia were nothing like the ones on the Hyde, or even the Hyde’s shuttle. Here the pilot used twin control sticks to change attitude and control the various engines. A few short movements of the controls and Aneka heard the thrusters fire once, twice, three times, and the ship had realigned itself three degrees right yaw, seven upward pitch. ‘Should be on target, Captain,’ Prentice said.

  ‘Mister Baron, full passive analysis,’ Anderson ordered.

  ‘Processing,’ Baron said, ‘but… Shari, can you check that alignment?’

  Prentice took her hand from the right joystick and tapped quickly over the keypad set behind it. ‘If your navigation data is right, then my alignment’s right, Ti.’

  Baron grunted and his hands started moving rapidly over the console before him. Aneka watched, frowning. ‘What’s wrong, Ti?’ She asked.

  ‘I’m getting next to nothing in the way of useful data. It’s like the thing’s almost vanished… Very high neutrino readings…. I’m no astronomer, but I’d have thought there should be way more evidence of this thing at this range.’

  ‘That pretty much locks it down then,’ Anderson said, frowning.

  ‘You know what’s happened?’ Aneka asked.

  ‘Theory rather than fact, but you said that the only time you’d heard the warp drives behave that way was flying into a gravitationally unstable region, and there’s the intense gamma-ray wavefront we hit, and now we can’t see the star and we’re getting very strong neutrino emissions. I did some reading. I think that quark star of theirs went nova. Sloughed off a layer as high-energy gamma rays and collapsed the remains into an electroweak star.’

  Aneka frowned. ‘That would have blasted anything in the system to… less than dust, right?’

  ‘Nothing survives being in a system when a nova happens,’ Baron supplied. ‘And that’s a normal nova, not some super-dense stellar eruption.’

  ‘The gravity wave would probably have ripped anything apart that the gamma burst didn’t vaporise,’ Anderson agreed.

  ‘The AIs did it,’ Aneka said, her voice quiet. ‘They blew their own star system up to take out the Xinti who attacked them.’

  ‘They could do that?’ Prentice asked.
>
  ‘Yeah, they could do that. How long before we can get out of here, Captain?’

  Anderson looked at her, at the slightly nauseous look on her face, and nodded. ‘I want everyone fresh for when we power up that drive for the first time. First watch tomorrow. Mister Baron, I’d like as much data collected on Negral’s neighbourhood before then. Arrange it.’

  Aneka gave Anderson a nod and started towards the door at the rear of the room.

  University of New Earth, 26.11.525 FSC.

  ‘No word?’ Ella asked. She was standing at Gillian’s desk, her expression forlorn.

  ‘No,’ Gillian replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean anything yet.’

  ‘It means that Negral is staying quiet for more reason than just a desire to do so.’

  ‘True, but little more than that. The FTL transmitter on the Brigantia doesn’t have the range to reach Sapphira. There’s no point in worrying over it now.’

  Ella grimaced. ‘That’s easy for you to say. I’m worried.’

  Gillian was not really sure what to say. Almost anything would be empty platitudes. ‘Ella, Captain Anderson and her crew are supposed to be among the best in the Navy. Drake has heard of her and said good things. Aneka is a very resourceful woman. They’re going to find out what’s happened and come back to tell us.’ She gave her assistant a grin. ‘And you’ll be there to drag Aneka into bed and not let her out for a month.’

  ‘I know,’ Ella replied. Her smile did not return, which was a bad sign. ‘I just wish…’

  ‘What is it Aneka says? If wishes were horses…’

  ‘We’d all be riding Arabs. I never have understood the reference.’

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  ‘You know,’ Anderson said, ‘we have sufficient supplies that you don’t have to starve yourself.’

  Aneka smiled at her across the mess room table. ‘And I have sufficient supplies of raw materials that I don’t need to eat. Frankly, this stuff isn’t appetising enough for me to want to.’

  Anderson prodded one of the browner piles of mush. ‘Can’t say I blame you. It’s an acquired taste.’

  ‘They’ll be expecting us to have called in by now, right?’

  ‘If we got to Negral and found everything working, yeah. We should be back at Sapphira before they start worrying excessively.’

  Aneka gave a short laugh. ‘Ella was probably worrying the moment I was out of sight. I never asked, do you have a partner?’

  ‘Sure. She’s a thousand tonnes of metal and plastic with a fusion reactor for a heart.’ She looked around at the ship. ‘She’s never failed me, doesn’t bitch about all the time I spend in space, and I won’t find her in bed with the neighbour when I come back to her.’

  ‘That sounds like bitter experience talking, but I won’t pry. I take it interpersonal relations between the crew are discouraged?’

  Anderson shrugged. ‘They aren’t encouraged. There’s nothing in the regs saying people can’t fall in love. Kind of stupid to try to stop it.’

  ‘Didn’t stop them trying in my time.’

  ‘Huh. If one of my senior officers looks interested in someone of lower rank I give them the speech.’

  ‘The speech?’

  ‘Same one I give myself. I might have to send one of these people out to die. I can’t be making decisions based on personal feelings if that happens. They have to realise the same is true of them.’ She peered at Aneka, eyes narrowing. ‘You’ve commanded. Ever fallen for one of your people?’

  ‘Not even when I went private. Did sleep with one. Martial arts instructor. Neither of us was serious about it though. You’ve never…?’

  ‘Even Chance wouldn’t chance that. I don’t have any trouble finding dates when we’re planetside, and I don’t stop this lot hooking up when they need the relief. It’s way better than having frustrated crewmen making mistakes. I have to keep some professional detachment, however. Daventry’s the same, though he’s young enough to think he can still make something permanent work. He’s got a guy named Darren back on New Earth.’

  Aneka chuckled. ‘Ella’d never manage this long without sex. You’ve obviously got more control.’

  ‘No, I’ve got a really good vibrator.’

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility, Eshebbon, 7.12.525 FSC.

  The air was freezing. Not literally: Ella had been on a world where the air was literally a frozen carpet on the ground which vaporised into puffs of gas when trodden on. Eshebbon was nowhere near that cold, but it was sub-zero and the ground was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice. Ella suspected the snow never really melted aside from when robots were sent out to steam clean the pathways.

  ‘We should hurry.’ The voice was that of Andrew Kottigan, the head of security at the station. He had been sent out to meet Ella when the shuttle had brought her down from orbit. ‘Spend more than a few minutes in this temperature and you’ll freeze.’

  Ella nodded, though it was only her face that was feeling the chill. She was still in the ship-suit she had got on Negral and it was keeping her at a comfortable temperature. With her helmet on she would be fine more or less indefinitely, not that she had plans to need that. Kottigan was wearing a heat suit: a thick, thermal bodysuit.

  ‘Why put a research station on a frozen ball like this?’ she asked.

  ‘Security,’ Kottigan replied, ‘and safety. Very limited resources and it’s hard to farm on so it’s never been settled and there’s no indigenous life larger than a microbe. We do research here on some of the most virulent, dangerous diseases ever encountered. If there’s an escape there’s no one here to die except us.’

  ‘Comforting.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Most of the really dangerous stuff is over at the Beta Station. There’s two kilometres of ice between here and there. The stuff they’ve brought you in for is all here.’ He stopped in front of a thick, metal door with a wheel mounted on it. ‘The surface facility here is pretty open,’ he said as he turned the wheel to un-dog the door. ‘There’s a secure elevator down to the labs, but you’ll be up here on your off-time.’

  The door was swung open and they stepped into a small chamber with another, inner door. Not exactly an airlock, more a weather shield. When the inner door was opened Ella could understand why; the temperature inside was easily twenty degrees hotter than outside. Kottigan stopped in the room beyond to start stripping off his suit. Beneath it he was wearing a light T-shirt and a pair of briefs.

  ‘I’ll get you set up with a room and Nayland will be up to sort out your work in an hour or so.’ The man pulled on what looked like sweat pants and then added running shoes. Formality was obviously not a big deal here. ‘You can get comfortable before you need to start.’

  ‘I’m pretty anxious to get going. Sooner I start, sooner I’m done.’

  Kottigan laughed. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be here either if the pay wasn’t so good.’

  He led the way out the rear door of the room and then up a circular, metal staircase into the tower structure above the entrance. Two floors up Kottigan opened another heavy door with a locking wheel and ushered Ella into a room. It was surprisingly comfortable looking. The walls were currently displaying a fairly pleasing scene of a summer day over fields of high, yellow grass, but there was a real window, not high but spanning most of the semi-circular outer wall. The bed was a double, and there was a shower cubicle taking up a corner. The room also had a computer console mounted into a desk.

  ‘This is one of the guest rooms,’ Kottigan told her, ‘for visiting dignitaries and the like.’ He gave her a grin; the heat seemed to have improved his humour. ‘You qualify as a VIP. I’ll tell Nayland you’re here.’ He turned and headed back out, pulling the door closed behind him and turning the wheel.

  Ella checked the door. There was no way to properly lock it, but she figured she had some privacy. She would certainly hear if the thing was opened. She began stripping off her suit. A shower seemed like a good idea and then she would put on some clothes more su
itable for the tropical conditions in the station.

  ~~~

  There were no messages for her. Somehow she had hoped that the Delta Brigantia would have made contact during her flight and Gillian would have relayed the good news. There was nothing, but she had sent a short message back to New Earth saying she had arrived safely. She was wondering what she should do now when the door wheel turned with a squeak.

  The man who stepped into the room was dressed in a white, Ultraskin suit and a Plastex lab coat. Ella wondered briefly whether she should have gone for something other than a T-shirt and shorts. However he gave her a smile, which looked fairly sincere, and moved forward, offering his hand.

  ‘Miss Narrows, I’m Alec Nayland, head researcher here on Eshebbon.’ He was tall, handsome, with a hint of age in his face, but his body was fairly athletic. There was a wisp of grey in his short, black hair which made her wonder whether the age was down to actual age; he would have had to be a couple of hundred years old if it was.

  Ella went through the little handshaking ritual, returning his smile. ‘Mister Nayland, I understand you have some Old Earth records you want transliterating?’

  ‘Alec, please.’

  ‘Then it’s Ella.’

  He nodded acknowledgement. ‘A survey team discovered a facility out beyond the Rim. Some sort of biological research facility with some quite remarkable technology, and some very dangerous micro-organisms. The written records we’ve been able to do a pretty good job of translating, but there are audio logs and videos, and we just don’t have the skill locally to work it all out in enough detail.’

  ‘Luckily enough, we recently came by a really excellent source of information on how to pronounce Old Earth English.’

  ‘Yes… Miss Jansen. I believe she’s your partner.’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Excellent. We’re prepping your clearance now, but it’ll take an hour or so. Please feel free to get some food. There’s a canteen on the floor below. The coffee’s not great, but it’ll keep you awake. Obviously we don’t allow food in the labs. I’ll escort you down as soon as we’re ready.’