Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Chance we’ll have to take. We’re not getting past them any other way that doesn’t involve a lot of noise. After that… Perimeter guards, two pairs which is not enough. We can time our entry to avoid them. Go in cloaked to the building wall…’ She scanned over the low, Plascrete structure. ‘There’s roof access if we can… huh, there’s a ladder on the south side. Must be a fire escape. It’s nice to know they considered health and safety in their secret base of mass destruction.’

  ‘I admit,’ Al said as Aneka began to make her way forward, moving boulder to boulder as she closed on the minefield, ‘that I find this mode of operation rather more enjoyable than carrying a machine gun into battle.’

  ‘You were pretty good with that thing. I’m going to start teaching you to use weapons properly when we get this mess cleaned up.’

  ‘And I would appreciate that, but this is how I was designed to operate and I find it more pleasing than more direct action. Like this, I feel like part of a carefully tuned whole, rather than one component in a team.’

  ‘Huh.’ There was silence for a few seconds and then Aneka said, ‘It’s an interesting notion though. We could probably rope Ella in. If we all ran software to synchronise our efforts, the three of us could take on just about anything.’

  ‘You would put Ella in that position?’

  ‘Not if I could avoid it, but there have been times when avoidance isn’t possible. A good offence isn’t always the best defence, but when given no choice I’d rather we were the best offence ever.’ She paused, glancing out from behind the low rock she was hidden behind. ‘Are we close enough?’

  ‘I’ve already started hacking the nearest mine.’

  A marker appeared in-vision showing the position of the bomb he was working on. Two guards in Marine armour were walking past. Aneka estimated two minutes until they were far enough away that they would not see her crossing. If she had to wait for five minutes, the next pair might see her…

  ‘Mine disarmed,’ Al stated, interrupting her train of thought. ‘They are standard anti-personnel weapons, visual and vibration sensors, with a range of thirty metres. Be careful of the one to the left.’ Another marker appeared, this one with a thirty-metre circle around it marked on the ground. Aneka checked where the guards were, cut in her shield and cloak, and started across the space to the building.

  Here there was light, but the large spots which illuminated the building had been fitted to cover areas people were expected to be in and that left large areas in shadow or darkness. Still, Aneka took the ladder carefully, making sure that she made no sound as she climbed up to the roof and made her way to what did seem to be an emergency exit doorway set in the middle of the flat roof. Al had the locking mechanism hacked inside of a minute and they climbed down another ladder and into something like a vision of Hell.

  The room was, roughly, square with a door taking up one corner to the north. There were various instrument panels and control displays on desks around the centre, but the outside walls were all taken up by cells containing what had once been Herosians.

  Herosian chucks looked worse than Jenlay ones. The flesh was pulled back from their mouths revealing sharp, yellowed teeth, pointed and vicious. Their eyes were also yellowed, except for the bloodshot quality. Their claws looked longer and the loss of body mass gave them a horrifically skeletal quality. Herosians were carnivores: these things were cannibal carnivores, and they all looked hungry.

  ‘I’m glad they can’t see us,’ Al commented.

  ‘I suspect they’d make a lot of noise if they could.’ Aneka went to the door, hitting the open button and hoping that did not set the creatures off. They appeared to ignore it and there was no one in the corridor outside. ‘Left or right?’ Aneka mused.

  ‘The northern side of the structure had windows. I believe we want the southern end.’

  ‘Good point, but left or right?’

  ‘I doubt that matters.’

  Aneka went left. The corridor turned left again and then went south through what looked like the main entrance hall and into a whitewashed area which looked like it might contain labs, and perhaps the holding cells for the prisoners. She had gone another ten metres before she found the unmarked door with the two guards on the opposite side of the wall. She could tell by the heat signatures that they were facing into whatever was on the other side, and you did not guard a door like that unless you were aiming to keep things inside the room.

  Raising her arms, she lined her palms up with the heads of the men on the other side of the wall, determined range, set her force weapons, and released. The two guards fell to the floor as random fluctuations of gravity tore apart their brains from the inside. It was probably a fairly quick way to go and Aneka was not going to lose any sleep over it, especially after she saw what was on the other side of the door.

  The white corridor was lined with cells. Many of them were empty, but blood on the floor of several suggested that they had once been occupied and the inhabitant had met with an untimely end. The inhabitants who were still there looked weary, thin, and some of them were bruised or cut. They sat or lay on their beds and did not move even when Aneka dropped her cloak as she walked past.

  Until she reached one cell where the naked girl on the inside looked up and then darted forward, rushing to the transparent wall and banging on it. Aneka recognised Daniella immediately, though the girl was thinner than she had been and her skin was paler. Her fists hammering on the Polyglass produced barely any sound on the outside.

  ‘Al, can you open the cells?’

  ‘I have negotiated the control mechanism.’

  ‘Open this one.’

  Daniella stepped back as the wall in front of her sank into the floor. ‘Stephen sent you to find me?’ Daniella asked almost immediately.

  ‘He wanted me to find you,’ Aneka replied, nodding. ‘It’s taken a while. Sorry.’

  ‘I don’t even know where I am.’

  ‘Eshebbon. I doubt you’ve heard of it. We need to get you out of here.’

  ‘Melissa’s here. We… Olivia wasn’t there when they did the last test on us.’

  ‘Right… Let’s see who else we have.’

  There were eighteen survivors, five of them Torem who could barely stand without their exoskeletons. Aneka was not sure how many there had been to start with, but she guessed there were a lot more than thirteen Jenlay taken to experiment on. She looked around at the scared people, all of them hoping they were about to get out of this somehow, but wondering why a single woman was there to rescue them. Taking out her left hand pistol, she started swapping the magazine.

  ‘All right, we’re leaving, but it’s not going to be as easy as walking out the door. There are soldiers out there who will try to stop us. I’m going to take care of that. Your job is to get out through the main entrance and head away from the building. You will be met by some ships which will take you out of here. I need some of you Jenlay to help the Torem and anyone who can’t walk well. Stick together and you’ll get out of this alive.’

  ‘How are you going to stop all the guards?’ one of the men asked.

  Aneka smiled. ‘Believe me, I’ll manage it for long enough that you can break out. You go out of here, turn right, and then straight up to the main entrance. It’s on your left. You give me two minutes to clear the way and then you come out. Don’t run, but move as fast as you safely can. If you leave anyone behind, anyone, I will shoot you myself. There will be some things coming down to cover you to the ships. They have guns, and they’re big and scary, but they’ll be shooting at people in uniforms. Don’t worry about them, just keep going. And, lastly, it’s below freezing outside and you’re all naked. Don’t dawdle when you get out the door.’

  ‘Who are you, lady?’ the man asked.

  ‘Don’t you recognise her?’ Daniella replied. ‘That’s Aneka Jansen.’

  Aneka shrugged as she turned toward the door. ‘I changed my hair. Two minutes, then you follow.’ Silently she added, ‘S
ignal Gwy. Make sure you include the mines in the data.’

  ‘Done,’ Al replied. ‘Alarms are sounding in the northern part of the station. We can expect a warm welcome.’

  ‘I figured, put the shield up, no cloak.’ She stepped out into the corridor, saw two Marines running toward her, and cut across them with a stream of needles. Beyond, in the entrance and the corridor behind it, more men were running toward her. One stopped to drop to his knee and take aim. Aneka did not wait for him, raising her left hand pistol and firing it. One round, aimed at the floor in the middle of the entrance hall. Superheated, ionised gas blossomed out in an explosion of light and sound, and then cold air rushed in through the shattered doorway.

  ‘That is one way to open the door,’ Al commented. ‘I am detecting around thirty identity transponders in the corridor beyond.’

  Aneka started forward, firing plasma rounds into the mass of men as she went. Laser beams lanced out at her, many of them missing, some splashing harmlessly against the force screen surrounding her. There were screams. Al patched through the radio chatter from the Marines, and Aneka heard orders being shouted as the AI decrypted the signals.

  ‘What’s she using?’

  ‘I don’t know but it’s lethal!’

  ‘It’s one woman, shoot her!’

  ‘The rifles are having no effect!’

  ‘Grenade!’

  Aneka saw the weapon arcing toward her, raised her right hand pistol, and fired, shooting it out of the air.

  ‘Oh f–’ There was the roar of detonation and a backwash of heat as the grenade blasted through the troops.

  Her left pistol dry, Aneka moved to one side of the hall using the lull the explosion had caused to switch out the magazine. ‘How are we doing?’ she asked.

  ‘The drones are approximately thirty seconds out. The prisoners should be leaving in about sixty seconds if they follow your instructions. There are troops coming this way from the factory, but our reinforcements should be able to handle those. We need to clear another fifty-two metres of corridor to be sure the prisoners are safe.’

  ‘I love having you on hand for this. Let’s get started.’

  Stepping out of cover, Aneka began to advance. Her pistols fired as she identified targets through the smoke and men fell, chests ripped open by a hail of needles. Beams lanced out at her, hindered by the smoke, but still hitting more in the confined space and closer range.

  ‘Shielding at ninety per cent,’ Al announced after a couple of seconds.

  ‘Let me know when it gets to fifty.’

  ‘They will still be in little danger of penetrating at that point.’

  Aneka fired, taking out a pair of men standing too close together. ‘Yeah, but fifty sounds like a nice number. How much further?’

  ‘Thirty-eight metres.’

  ‘Any heavy weapons?’

  ‘Not here. They are bringing something up from the factory.’

  ‘Let the drones handle that.’ She kept moving and firing. It was not exactly challenging work. Her pistols were more than a match for the armour the Marines were wearing and she never missed. They could fire all they liked, but all they did was cause pretty light shows on her force screen.

  ‘Retreat to position beta.’ The order came through the radio channel the Marines were using and the men ahead of her began an ordered, but rapid, retreat around the corner.

  ‘They will be waiting for us,’ Al said. ‘Concentrating their fire in the hope of breaking through.’

  ‘Would it work?’ Aneka asked, more from curiosity than any desire to find out. She was swapping magazines again.

  ‘That would depend upon how many rifles they can bring to bear.’

  ‘Yeah, well, not going to give them the chance.’ She put her hand and pistol around the corner, the camera under the barrel showing her the ranked troops waiting for her twenty metres down, near where she had come in. Five rounds fired down the corridor and she pulled back just before explosions shattered the silence and the wall of heat roared past her.

  She paused, taking a few seconds to swap out the empty mag. ‘Any sign of life down there?’

  ‘I am detecting no transponders,’ Al stated.

  ‘Time to leave then.’ She turned and ran back down the corridor.

  There were five transport pods on the ground inside the ring of mines. The ex-prisoners were struggling toward them as best they could over rough ground in the cold covered by five massive robots. Each was modelled after a Xinti war chassis, large, heavily built, very powerful, and armed with a scaled-up version of Ella’s antimatter rifle. They stood in a line between the pods and the troops trying to get up from the factory, throwing out blasts of anti-protons which exploded into annihilating energy on contact with men, machines, or the ground.

  Aneka began helping the prisoners, carrying the weaker ones to the pods and pushing them inside as the others hurried as best they could. With the last of the people loaded onto one of the transports, Aneka turned, drawing her pistols again.

  ‘All right, clear out. Ella, pick up when you’re ready. Call in the strike.’

  Gwy materialised out of thin air over their heads, turret guns opening up on the troops below as the robots retreated to a pod to leave.

  ‘I’ll call it in when you’re aboard,’ Ella’s voice replied, sounding tense.

  ‘Now, love. We’ll have plenty of time to get clear and I don’t want anyone escaping the system.’

  ‘Okay… prepare for a very hot extraction.’

  ~~~

  ‘The surface facility is under attack, sir,’ someone said and the Captain of one of the cruisers in orbit over Eshebbon turned, looking at the displays beside his command chair.

  ‘Let’s get ready to respond. Power to the main guns, and…’

  A shudder ran through the ship as though something had grabbed it and pulled, jerking it out of its normal flight path.

  ‘What in Vashma’s name was that?’

  ‘We’re reading… unusual gravimetric distortions about two thousand metres off the port side… I’ve never seen… Gopi! Ships!’

  Something very large, bristling with weapons, emerged from nowhere. One second there was nothing, and then there was a vessel, a warship, and it was not alone. Two more of the huge ships appeared even as swarms of far smaller vessels began to deploy from the first one.

  ‘Never mind the surface,’ the Captain yelled. ‘Get me firing solutions on those ships!’

  ‘Missiles launched!’

  ‘We’re having trouble getting weapons lock on anything. They’re jamming our active systems.’

  ‘They’re firing on us!’

  And that was when one-hundred gigajoules of gamma radiation tore through the cruiser’s hull as if it were tissue paper.

  ~~~

  Aneka stood on the virtual flight deck and watched as four ten-kilotonne, antimatter-catalysed fusion warheads impacted the facility she had just left. Glare filters cut in, reducing the light to something you could actually look at, but that just made the devastation more obvious. A huge ball of energy was expanding out from the impact points of the missiles, reducing everything in its path to vapour.

  ‘Good riddance to it,’ Ella said as Gwy climbed away from the explosion.

  ‘“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,”’ Aneka said, her voice soft.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s something the guy who set off the first nuclear bomb on Old Earth is supposed to have said. A quote from a religious text. I’ve never really seen a full-scale nuclear explosion before. It’s… kind of beautiful.’

  ‘If you don’t think about what it’s doing.’

  Aneka turned and looked out into space. ‘Are we clear?’

  ‘The drone warships from Shadataga have eliminated the heavy warships in orbit,’ Gwy told them. ‘Several of the frigates have escaped. Apparently they realised their position was hopeless.’

  ‘Okay, well… Let’s rendezvous with the Hyde and get out of here.
I kind of wish they had just blown up the system. I never want to see that planet again.’

  ‘Then can I have a hug?’ Ella asked. ‘A real one, with real bodies?’

  Aneka gave a soft snort of a laugh. ‘Then you can have a hug. A real one, with real bodies, and kissing. There’s going to be kissing too.’

  Shadataga, 14.3.531 FSC.

  Aneka opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling of the apartment’s bedroom. After the events of the last few weeks, she had decided to run a sleep cycle beside Ella, in bed, in the quiet, ‘to let her systems have a chance to recuperate.’ Al had pointed out that it was unnecessary, but she had said it was and he had not argued further. There was one system she had which needed to rest now and then: sometimes what you really needed was just to turn everything off for a while, to not feel anything. This was one of those times.

  The victims of Eshebbon’s second attempt to create the ultimate viral weapon were on the station at Wormhole Junction, in the hospital facility. None of them seemed to be suffering ill effects beyond slight malnutrition, dehydration, and sleep deprivation, but the AIs wanted to keep them under observation for a day or two while their bodies were repaired.

  Aneka had walked through the sickbay area checking on them before flying back to Shadataga, and that had been when she had heard the little group of Torem talking. They watched her walking past and one said something with a tone which suggested awe. She knew no Torem, but aboard the station Al had access to the linguistic libraries the AIs had collected. It meant the translation came after she had walked past them and she had no desire to turn back.

  ‘Vashma sent an angel to liberate us,’ he had said. ‘An Angel of Death.’

  It had echoed with the way she was feeling, and shutting down for eight hours had been her way of avoiding worrying over it. Now it came back and she closed her eyes again, her left fist tightening against her thigh…

  ‘Nnn…’ The groan from her right told her Ella was awake. ‘You up… no… good…’