‘We’ve got trouble,’ Sharissa said, appearing at Truelove’s side with a carbine in her hand. ‘Marines coming in the gate and the perimeter sensors have tripped.’
‘Pierce!’ Part exclaimed. ‘He knows. He’s tracked me…’ He pulled himself up straight suddenly and his voice went calm. ‘Get that out of here. Get it to whoever needs to know. I’ll delay them here as long as I can. I assume you have escape plans?’
‘We do,’ Sharissa said.
‘Use them.’ He turned and walked down the short path to stand and wait for the troops.
‘We already are.’ Sharissa grabbed Truelove’s arm and pulled her toward the lounge where Janna was waiting with two visors similar to one she was already wearing. They put them on.
‘Minefield is up,’ Janine stated, her words punctuated by a distant explosion. ‘And apparently functional.’
Sharissa gave a nod. ‘All right, everyone knows the idea. The mines won’t detonate if we’re near them. When the smoke goes up we’ll have about five minutes to clear the area.’
‘Is smoke enough?’ Katelyn asked.
‘This is some high-tech brand the Shadataga people cooked up. It’ll block sight, infra-red, low-ultraviolet, even lidar, but those visors should let you see, even if it looks a bit odd. Stay low, keep moving, and stick with your partner. Dillon? You’re sure you’re okay with that pistol?’
‘As long as I don’t have to use it I should be fine,’ the big man said. ‘I might throw up a bit if I do.’
‘Preferably, don’t. Either of those things. But just in case…’
He nodded a reply and took Katelyn’s hand.
‘Popping smoke,’ Truelove said.
Outside the house, the yard and several hundred metres of the land beyond the wall began to fill with dense, white smoke which seemed to sparkle in the lights from the buildings.
~~~
Gareth Part stood and watched as three armoured troop carriers pulled into a defensive formation in front of the house. His back was straight and he was putting all the years he had of growling orders at subordinates into looking like the authority figure he was supposed to be.
Thirteen men disembarked from the carriers, one of them wearing lieutenant’s insignia moving forward a little faster than the others with a blaster in his hand.
‘Gentlemen,’ Part said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Admiral Part,’ the lieutenant said. ‘We need you to stand aside, sir. We have orders from…’
‘I’m Core Fleet Admiral, son,’ Part stated. ‘Your orders…’
The lieutenant raised his gun and fired. It was set to stun and Part collapsed as his nerves were set on fire by high-voltage electricity.
‘Not anymore,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Move in by squads. We want the FSA people alive if possible, but the others are expendable. Under no circumstances is Agent Truelove to be killed.’
~~~
Dillon crept through the smoke as fast as he could while making sure Katelyn was still with him. According to the navigation display on his visor, they were likely to hit the edge in another fifty metres and, so far, they had encountered no blinded soldiers. That was perfect as far as he was concerned.
Off to their left, maybe a hundred metres away, there was a loud detonation. Someone had got too close to a mine. Aneka had told them about the things when she had been laying them. There were not huge numbers of them out there, just enough to make it hard to get near the house. They were similar in design, she had said, to ones used since her time. Back then they had been set off by pressure or a trip wire, but the new ones had multi-spectral sensors, were semi-intelligent, and just about undetectable. When triggered they tossed a cloud of bomblets into the air, effectively widening the area of effect by a factor of ten and making the primary plane of detonation happen at about head height.
A tug on his arm brought Dillon’s attention back to the present. Katelyn was indicating a figure standing ahead of them, just outside the smoke. Frustrated by the mines and the obscuration, the Marines had set out to encircle the area. It left them thin on the ground, but he could see others, dimly, close enough that they were going to have to go through one or risk two spotting them when they broke cover.
He looked at his partner and then at the pistol in his hand. She squeezed his fingers and nodded, and Dillon raised the pistol. As his finger closed on the trigger a display activated in his visor showing the targeting point. He squeezed the trigger, just as Aneka and Sharissa had shown him, except that that had been a simulation and this was a real person. There was a crack and a pulse of white light burst from the muzzle. Brilliant white light exploded where it hit the man’s back. It seemed incredibly loud, but the other two men guarding the perimeter seemed to be used to explosions going off periodically and stayed put.
Dillon gave a tug on Katelyn’s arm and they started moving, almost running, for the gap in the cordon.
The weird thing was, as they passed the fallen soldier lying face down with a gaping hole where his back had been, that Dillon realised he was not going to have to worry about throwing up. Would the guy in the armour have cared if it was him running past their bodies? No. So why should Dillon care about him? Sometimes you had to do bad things for the right reason. He thought he had heard Winter say it at some point, and she was right.
~~~
Lieutenant Howard watched his tech working on the house’s computer with growing frustration. The place had been empty and dark by the time they had swarmed in, guns at the ready. Outside was just thick smoke which their supposedly state-of-the-art optics could not penetrate. There were at least eight men down back there, taken down by mines which had been placed in the area. And to top it off…
‘It’s useless, sir,’ the tech said. ‘The entire thing’s been wiped. Some sort of virus. Maybe they can extract data back at base, but I’m guessing it’ll take a lot of work and get fragments. It hasn’t just been deleted. They used some sort of encryption and overwrite system. I’ve never seen anything this sophisticated.’
Howard gave a grunt and walked outside, tapping a panel on his sleeve to initiate a call. ‘Howard. They got away. It was well planned and they’ve wiped any evidence they had here. We got Part.’
Pierce’s voice replied, sounding as though he was restraining anger. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. Return to base. Some agents will retrieve the Admiral from you on arrival.’
In High Yorkbridge, Jason Pierce disconnected the channel and allowed himself a moment to reflect on what he might do to the lieutenant who had failed him. Something subtle, obviously, but crippling to his career.
Then he tapped in the last of three codes which got him past the security system of the planet’s communications network. He could not allow Truelove to use anything Part had given her. She needed to be isolated. He tapped a button on the screen and a message popped up.
Confirm shutdown of New Earth Wide-Area Wireless Network?
‘Of course I want to do it,’ Pierce snapped. ‘Would I have gone through all that if I didn’t want to do it?’ He stabbed the confirmation button.
Norden Forest, 18.2.531 FSC.
They had food and water. There was a nanofabricator with a supply of suitable materials to manufacture the former, and a vapour collector which could provide plenty of the latter. They had a tent with a camouflage coating which made it effectively invisible to pretty much every form of sensor the Navy had. They had weapons, sentry systems designed to warn them of anyone searching for them, and even a few changes of clothes.
What they lacked was communications.
‘The entire network seems to be down,’ Janine said after trying, again, to get any form of link to Winter up. ‘I don’t know about hard lines in the city, but outside it everyone uses wireless and it’s out.’
‘Pierce,’ Truelove grumbled. ‘And I bet he’s putting it down to Herosian sabotage.’
‘Before we get too wound up about this,’ Janna said, her tone calm, ‘perhaps we should find out
what Part actually gave you.’
Sharissa cracked a grin. ‘Believe it or not, I’m the level-headed one in our relationship.’
‘You’ve never had a daughter to raise, love,’ Janna replied. ‘Once Ella was her own woman, I got to let go of all that responsibility. It doesn’t mean I can’t be pragmatic when it’s needed.’
‘Touché.’
Grinning, Truelove dug the data slug Part had given her from her pocket and lifted it to one of the ports on the back of her neck. ‘Well, let’s see what we have,’ she said, and plugged it in. ‘Okay, running virus and Trojan checks. All seems okay… We’ve got… files. Audio transcripts of meetings. Project planning files for… Beryum, the terrorist unit, and something called Aqua Regia. Part said something about that before he started with the hyperbole. Hang on…’ Then she went very silent, her eyes slowly widening.
‘You okay, Elaine?’ Janine asked. There was no reply and she reached for the data plug.
‘It’s okay,’ Truelove said quickly. ‘It’s just… You know about the virus they were experimenting with on Eshebbon? The one Ella was involved in?’
‘I’m too well aware of that incident,’ Janna commented.
‘Well, Pierce found the data on it in the FSA databases. He’s had a team working on modifying it for months. They’ve got a working variant that doesn’t affect Jenlay, but it does work on Herosians.’
‘That confirms who let the original strain loose on Sapphira,’ Janine commented.
‘It’ll kill… thousands,’ Sharissa said.
‘That would be an extremely conservative estimate,’ Truelove countered. ‘The original disease was engineered as a self-replicating, self-spreading bio-warfare agent. Drop it in enemy territory and they start feeding on each other. The only reason it never got used is that it’s too good. It killed the research team that made it, and then the team who found it. You saw what it was doing on Sapphira. Part wasn’t exaggerating, this could wipe the Herosians off every world they’re on. Oh gopi!’
Everyone looked at her. No one asked, but everyone was asking the question.
‘Well… the good news is that we’ve got time. They’re building a production facility. It won’t be operational before the seventh.’
‘And the bad news?’ Sharissa asked.
‘They’re working on engineering a Torem strain. If we don’t stop them, the Jenlay will be all that’s left.’
High Yorkbridge, 19.2.531 FSC.
Gareth Part opened his eyes slowly, trying to work out what had happened and where he was through a miasma that could only be drug-induced. He had been hit with a stun shot from a blaster. He vaguely remembered that. Someone had, apparently, sedated him after that and now…
The room was blank, uniformly grey in colour, and it had one piece of furniture: a metal chair to which the Admiral had been very securely fastened. He pulled at the restraints a couple of times, more out of hope than any belief that he might free himself. Where was he going to go if he got free? There did not even appear to be a door…
There was the sound of a door opening behind him. Footsteps. Two sets, one heavier than the other and those ones continued longer. The person making them walked into sight. He was dressed in the uniform of a Marine and looked as though he could bench-press a car.
‘There’s no point in trying to get free.’ The voice came from behind him. Part recognised it.
‘Pierce? What in Vashma’s name are you doing?’
‘I’m actually here to ask you the same question. You gave information to Agent Truelove. I want to know what information you gave her. This, very large, Ensign is going to hit you until you have told me everything you know. Some people would use drugs, machines, all sorts of clever electronic devices, but I believe in the tried and true methods. So, violence it is.’
The Ensign flexed his hands, drew back a fist, and swung. It felt a lot like being hit in the jaw with a sledgehammer.
Gwy, 20.2.531 FSC.
‘This is Gwy to Sapphira Control, come in please.’ Aneka had tried a couple of times to get a response, but there was no point in giving up until Ella was finished using Gwy’s sensors to scan the surface.
‘Sapphira Control, we are responding to the medical emergency you reported. We have vaccines aboard to assist you. Please respond.’
‘This is bad,’ Ella said. Technically, Ella’s projection into the flight deck environment said it; Ella was upstairs in the cabin with a cable plugged into her neck. ‘I’m getting almost nothing in the way of life signs from the surface. The orbital facilities are running on minimal power for some reason.’
Aneka looked out at the planet they were speeding toward. ‘That’s Sapphira Vista, right?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘We’ll swing around and do a sweep over Arbonatura. Larger population, quite spread out. We may have more luck there. Gwy, give me a low-orbit insertion path, please.’ Ahead of her, a series of rectangles appeared, projected into space for her to follow into orbit. Their course adjusted immediately to thread through the first of them.
‘You know,’ Ella said, ‘she could just do that for you.’
The obsidian avatar appeared between them, smiling brightly. ‘But I like being directed by Aneka. Or you, Ella. Something about being at the command of another… It makes me feel… tingly.’
‘We’ve got a submissive warship,’ Ella said, grinning.
‘You know, that would worry me under pretty much every other circumstance I can think of,’ Aneka replied. ‘Orbital insertion… now. We should be coming up on Arbonatura in… thirty-eight seconds.’
Ella turned back to the screens she had arranged in front of her to handle the sensor readouts, her thoughts translating into changes in the scanning parameters.
‘This is Gwy…’ Aneka began, and then changed tack. ‘This is Aneka Jansen to anyone on Sapphira. We are responding to your medical emergency. We have vaccines against the disease. Please respond.’
Static. Or…
‘I am detecting a radio transmission,’ Gwy announced. ‘It is weak and operating in a very high-frequency band which would require line of sight. Yes, it is in a three-millimetre wavelength range which would also suffer from atmospheric absorption. Turn left three degrees, Aneka.’
‘I’m getting more heat sources below us,’ Ella said. ‘There are some living people down there. It looks like the more spread out population did help.’
‘I have managed to get a better lock on the signal,’ Gwy said.
‘Represent… survivors in secure… university. Please… Shaw we have… secure location… help.’
‘Anthony Shaw?’ Ella asked as fragments of message repeated.
‘Sounds like it, and we’re headed for Chance, but that’s a repeating loop, not a live broadcast. They could be…’
‘Don’t say it. If it turns out they are then we’ll find someone else, but until we do there are survivors there and we need to go help them.’
‘A positive outlook, Ella,’ Gwy commented. ‘It is important in a situation like this. I will activate the shields and turret guns.’
~~~
Chance was one of the oldest developments on Sapphira and it had always looked to Aneka like something out of one of those movies set in Everytown America. The buildings were Plascrete, not wood or brick, but it had that Middle America feel to it. She had liked the place. It felt like home.
Now it looked like someone had recast it in a horror movie. The streets were largely deserted, aside from a few people who shambled rather than moving with a purpose. The chucks, though now Aneka definitely thought they should be called zombies, had taken up residence. How anyone had survived in the town was a miracle. Assuming, of course, that anyone had survived in the town.
She swung Gwy in over the university campus, hovering over the grassy area in front of the main building, half her mind on the view through the turret cameras. So far it was fairly quiet; the chucks, it seemed, did not associate a spaceship with food.
‘I’m reading… somewhere around thirty heat signatures inside the building,’ Ella said. ‘Too warm to be chucks.’
‘That’s a good sign.’ A thought opened a channel to the speakers in the cabin. ‘Cassandra, you’re on medical case duty. We’re going down.’ She did not, of course, need to tell Al what his drone would be doing.
They went out from the airlock with Aneka in the lead, both hands holding pistols which she swept out in search of targets as soon as she was on the ground. She had her sniper rifle slung across her back, but it was not needed at the moment. Al followed her with a huge rifle. He was not exactly skilled in using it, but his frame could handle the weight and the thing spewed out a hundred rounds of hyperdense darts a second: there was no need to be accurate when you were firing that much ammunition. Cassandra came next with a pack on her back containing medical supplies, and Ella brought up the rear with a smaller rifle, one of the antimatter blaster designs the Xinti had favoured for open warfare.
‘On the right,’ Aneka said.
Al was already turning. His rifle began to shred the group of chucks coming their way before they were within a hundred metres, and then Ella let off a shot from her gun which blew one chuck apart and used his remains to lacerate three more. Aneka fired off a burst from her right-hand pistol without even looking around and the only chuck still standing lost his head.
The door of the picturesque building they had landed beside opened and Anthony Shaw was standing there waving them inside. He looked much the same as he had the last time Aneka had seen him. He was a little slimmer and he was looking tired. The bright, blue eyes which had been there were looking duller, like they had seen things he would rather forget, and there were worry lines showing across his brow.
‘Miss Jansen, Miss Narrows,’ he said as soon as they were inside and the door had been re-barred, ‘I really didn’t expect to see you here.’
Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame Page 17