Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘In war, Lieutenant, there are sacrifices.’

  ‘Really?’ Ella asked, her eyes still on the, now worried, soldier. ‘What sacrifices have you made?’

  ‘I’ve sacrificed thousands of…’

  ‘No, not what you’ve had other people sacrifice for you. What have you, personally, sacrificed for this? Your humanity? I doubt you had much or you wouldn’t have done this. Your dignity, maybe?’

  Pierce let out a growl. ‘None of you have the stomach for what needs to be done. Get out of my way, I have a ship waiting.’

  ‘Gwy,’ Aneka said aloud and in a sickly sweet voice, ‘would you please take out that gunship?’

  Pierce’s eyes widened and the building shook as somewhere above them something exploded. Pierce staggered, his hand slipping and his pistol moving away from Elroy. Aneka moved, her own pistol pulling into her stomach as she stepped sideways and aimed through the gun’s camera. A single shot broke the air and Pierce’s skull opened up in a burst of blood and bone.

  ‘I have disabled the gunship, Aneka,’ Gwy said, her tone calm. ‘Its control room is destroyed. Do you wish me to finish it?’

  ‘No, that’ll be good enough.’ Aneka looked at the second man, who was now standing there with his hands up. ‘Get on the radio and tell your people to give up.’ She got a nod in reply.

  ‘So what now?’ Ella asked.

  ‘We get out of here as soon as possible and head for Corax. Ape’s going to need help.’

  Corax.

  The clamshell armour Ape had was a little tight and he was not used to it anyway. They had given him an enormous light support weapon to carry around and it certainly did what it was supposed to, but it was heavy and drew power from a pack on the back of the clamshell. He was uncomfortable and hot, and he felt very, very clumsy beside his lithe guardian, but they were winning!

  They had dropped into the spaceport after the Banfry’s guns had opened a couple of the hangar doors in a manner which was going to require extensive repair. The suppression weapons on the drop ships had done a good job of holding down the men trying to defend the place and it had taken no more than half an hour to secure the port and ship more troops down from a couple of other ships that Robart and he thought they could trust. They got reports of some ships engaging others in orbit, but the rebel vessels were outnumbered and had fallen quickly.

  Then they had marched out across the town and their opposition had run a paced retreat ahead of them, backing up toward the tunnel which led out to the military base two klicks to the west.

  ‘I don’t like this.’ The voice was that of John Brod, leader of the Marine contingent on the Banfry. He had been a little reluctant to let Ape come along, but his Captain had been adamant. ‘This is going too easy.’

  ‘That’ll change soon,’ Leeforth replied. ‘Through this pressure door and we hit the tunnel. It’s more or less two kilometres of dead straight, unobstructed kill zone and we have no idea what they’ve got at the far end.’

  ‘Right,’ Ape said. ‘Hold here. We need some intelligence before we proceed. That sounded like a Captain-like thing to say, right?’

  ‘Really strategic, Captain,’ Brod replied. ‘All units, hold position. Techs, we need that door unlocked, but do not open it.’

  ‘Gibbons to Admiral Banfry,’ Ape said, ignoring the comment.

  The comms officer answered. ‘Captain. We’re secure up here. How are things down there?’

  ‘Secure, but we need information on the state of the base and the tunnel leading to it.’

  ‘The base appears to be entirely in rebel hands, sir. We don’t think they have prisoners. Everyone over there who isn’t one of them ran or was killed.’

  ‘Disposition?’

  ‘Hard to tell, too much rock. The tunnel is deeper than the base itself. We can’t give you anything about that.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Ape turned to Brod. ‘Strategic, but not very useful.’

  ‘I guess we do it the hard way,’ Brod replied. ‘I want cover in front of the door,’ he snapped out on broadcast. ‘Boxes, cases, anything that’ll stop casual laser fire.’

  It took them ten minutes to assemble enough cover that the Marine was happy. There were metal cases at the front with plastic crates at the back. It seemed excessive to Ape, but he trusted his military officer. Brod had everyone take cover behind the crates and then gave the order to open the doors. Slabs of metal a metre thick slid away into the walls and Brod used the HUD camera on his rifle to look down the tunnel.

  ‘They’ve got the doors at that end open,’ he said. ‘They’ve set up portable blast shields, but… I’m not seeing any signs of anyone manning them. I don’t like this.’

  ‘You said that fifteen minutes ago,’ Ape pointed out. ‘We can sit here or we can go look.’

  Brod nodded. ‘Fire teams one and two, flanking positions on the door. Three and four with me. The rest of you, hold position until I give the all clear.’

  Men moved to the sides of the big pressure doors, and more men appeared beside Brod, Ape, and Leeforth. Standing, they moved out from behind their cover. Leeforth had her rifle trained down the tunnel as they moved and it was that which saved them.

  ‘Take cover!’ she yelled as she saw men appearing at the far end. Her right arm slammed out, catching Ape and pushing him sideways just as a beam of incandescent, white light blazed between them. Ape staggered out of the line of fire, his balance thrown out by the added mass around his upper body. He turned and…

  Leeforth was lying on the ground, half hidden by a crate and about a metre away from where most of her arm was lying in the dust on the Plascrete floor. She was not moving. Ape let out a roar, stepped around the door, and pulled the trigger on his gun. The beam he fired was not quite as powerful as the one which had felled Leeforth, but it had to be doing some damage, right? He wanted to do damage. He wanted to kill and maim, and…

  Something very strong grabbed the back of his clamshell and yanked him clear of the doorway. He struggled, but he was turned and slammed up against a wall, his rifle torn from his hands.

  ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed, Gibbons?’ Aneka shouted at him. ‘David would dismantle me if I let you die, arsehole. And when Judy wakes up she’d want you revived so she could kill you herself.’

  ‘She’s not dead?’

  ‘Why don’t you people ever use the stupid transponders you’re fitted with?’ Letting him go, Aneka turned.

  Ella and Cassandra were crouched over Leeforth. Cassandra was spraying something gelatinous over the stump of Leeforth’s arm to seal it and Ella was injecting something into her.

  ‘She’s unconscious,’ Ella said, ‘and in shock, but she’ll live.’

  ‘You two get her back to Gwy,’ Aneka ordered. ‘Gwy, medical emergency. Prep the sickbay for a patient with massive limb trauma.’

  ‘Initiating sickbay protocols now, Aneka,’ the ship replied.

  ‘But…’ Ella began, looking at the tunnel, even if there were a number of rapidly disintegrating packing cases in the way.

  ‘I’m not going down there either, love. It’s a death trap.’ She looked at Ape. ‘Do they have hostages?’

  ‘As far as we know, everyone over there is dead or shooting at us.’ Ape’s face was grim through the faceplate of his helmet.

  ‘Right. Those are pressure doors, right? How fast do they shut?’

  ‘Emergency protocol is five seconds.’

  ‘Too slow.’ She holstered her left pistol and then unclipped the magazine from the right. ‘Tell them to close them.’

  ‘We can’t just leave them down there!’

  ‘No plans to.’ She snapped another magazine in place. ‘Close the doors.’

  When the huge, metal doors were no more than a metre apart, Aneka fired three rounds through the gap and, a second later, there was a resounding clang as the doors shut. She turned, pulling the magazine out of her gun.

  ‘Three pistol rounds are not going to stop them from–’ Ape beg
an.

  ‘Ape,’ Aneka said, ‘you’re going to need a new base.’

  The ground shook and there was the sound of falling rock from beyond the pressure doors. And Aneka kept on walking.

  Downtown Yorkbridge, 27.3.531 FSC.

  Aneka sat in the studio in a chair beside Kevin Greenwald who had been persuaded to return to CFM for this one event which had been billed as The Great Debate and was turning out to be something else.

  Greenwald had wanted Winter sitting beside him, but the set had been set up as a round table with Greenwald facing the audience and his ‘guests’ on either side, and his choice would have meant Aneka having her back to part of the audience. She had vetoed that on security grounds and then she had stared the big star down until he agreed. No one had yet made the connection that if ‘Xenia Winter’ was assassinated a new copy would appear the following day, identical down to the hair follicles.

  Aneka had not said much. Winter was her usual, calm, smooth self, answering questions and making points where she could, but the cameras were largely fixed on the other two people at the table: Representatives Brittany Usher and Donald East. Usher was in the isolationist camp and very vocal about it. She was, Aneka had been informed, trying her best to move up the ranks and get Frederick Isherwood’s position at the top of the Yorkbridge pile. East was similarly low ranking, but he had a lot of business interests with high-tech companies and did not want to see the opportunities afforded by Shadataga falling by the wayside. That was not his angle, but it was his main motivation.

  And the two of them had been yelling at each other for the better part of thirty minutes. Greenwald was dropping in the odd inflammatory comment and wearing a smile which indicated his ratings would be astronomical. Al had access to the channel subscription data: more or less the entire planet was watching these two bawl at each other.

  Winter was annoyed. Aneka could tell, though she doubted anyone else would have noticed the tiny markers. Actually, Aneka thought that Winter was fuming, but just giving off enough annoyance that Aneka could see it. Well, if Winter was angry, Aneka was reaching boiling point.

  ‘If the war with the Herosians tells us nothing else,’ Usher shouted, ‘it tells us that the Jenlay have to look out for themselves. We can’t trust anyone else. The Torem ran and hid rather than meet their obligations…’

  ‘What it tells us,’ East responded, shouting louder, ‘is that we need to work harder to stand up for what the Federation was meant to represent. The ideals it was founded on. Harmony, trust, mutual…’

  ‘The Federation?! The Federation!’

  Aneka’s fists clenched. Winter noted the motion and pushed her chair back from the table. Greenwald was too busy watching his guests fighting to notice so when Aneka stood, her chair clattering backward across the stage, he was a little surprised. Aneka’s fists slammed down on the table so hard one of the legs buckled.

  ‘Enough!’ she roared in a voice which had caused involuntary bowel movements in cadet soldiers. Silence fell for a split second as the entire room stared at her.

  She snapped around, her finger in Greenwald’s face. ‘You take that shit-eating grin off your face now or I’ll ram your teeth so far down your throat you’ll be eating with your arse.’ She turned to Usher before Greenwald could respond. ‘And you. What the fuck are you on? You were a power-hungry moron when you got the job on the FSA Oversight Committee. You sat there and let yourself be flattered by a man who was working for the Herosians and you gave him anything he wanted because it felt like you had power. And now you’re jumping on this isolationist stupidity to get your boss’ job. Listen, if “aliens” hadn’t decided to help you idiots when the war started, you would be dead. The Guardians who came here from Old Earth, they aren’t Jenlay, but without them this city would be a parking lot. Without me and the AIs on Shadataga, the war would still be going on. Aliens won this for you and now you want to ignore that because you are fucking stupid. Understanding stops wars, Representative, and if you cut yourself off from everyone else, you’ll understand nothing.’

  East was grinning, but that changed when Aneka turned her gaze on him. ‘You can stop thinking you’ve got my vote. I know damn well you’re only worried about losing out on the university. Where were your fucking ideals when you were voting for anything Pierce and his cronies wanted? Where were you when the travel controls on the Herosians and Torem were being voted in?’

  Aneka turned, swinging an arm out toward the audience, and the people watching at home. ‘All of you. You all just sat there and did nothing. Oh, except for the ones who stood outside the Herosian embassy demanding the delivery of terrorists who didn’t exist. None of you even bothered to think about it. None of you questioned any of it. You were scared and you switched your brains off and went with the tide. The Herosian data network was offline. All of it. They hadn’t a clue what was going on on the next world and you believed they were running spies, and insurgents, and bio-weapons programmes across half the galaxy? You’re supposed to be more intelligent than that!’

  She drew breath and Greenwald started to move. Winter fixed him with a glare which made him sit back in his chair.

  ‘So you’re all sitting at home,’ Aneka went on, ‘saying, “oh, she’s not talking about me because I didn’t believe it,” and if you’re not thinking that now, give it a month and you will be. You’re blaming the Administration, the FSA, the Navy, and those groups have been partially responsible. The people who were most responsible will be put on trial. But this is your fault. All of you. All it takes for evil to flourish is that good men stand by and do nothing, and you all stood by and did nothing while a few brave people who you’ve disowned, or are ready to, fought this and stopped genocide. Many of those people are in the FSA and the Navy. Senator Elroy has been trying to stop you all doing stupid things all this time and you’re ready to kick him out. Yes, I’ve seen the polls.’

  She glowered at the nearest camera, the anger dissipating. ‘Fuck it. I don’t know why I’m bothering with you people. I’m going to find something useful to do, like washing my hair.’ Turning, she stormed off across the stage.

  Winter rose serenely to her feet behind her. ‘I believe that concludes this interview,’ she said, and walked after Aneka.

  ‘Did I just fuck up?’ Aneka asked in a sour tone when Winter had caught up.

  ‘Of course not. You did exactly what I’d hoped you’d do. Quite eloquently, I thought.’

  ‘What you hoped…?’

  ‘We both know I don’t need a bodyguard, Aneka.’

  ‘So you wanted me there because they’d wind me up and I’d have a tirade at them.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be a diplomat. I can’t say things like that. Neither can Jackson. You, however, are just a civilian, and both an adopted Jenlay and an outsider.’

  ‘Think it worked?’

  ‘We shall have to see. The table buckling was a very nice attention grabber, so I think it might.’

  ‘Huh.’ There was a pause and then, ‘I am going to make hundreds of holographic clones of you on the firing range and use a machine gun on them.’

  ‘That seems fair,’ Winter allowed.

  New Earth Orbital Transit Station Two, 1.4.531 FSC.

  Aneka watched as Stephen Teldarian greeted his sister and Melissa. There was a lot of hugging and some of it seemed somehow wrong, inappropriate, but that was drowned out by the sadness. Melissa’s sister had been one of the victims of the experiments on Eshebbon. Their friend, as well as their servant, Butler, was dead. Their home would forever be the place which had been invaded by masked men with guns.

  Teldarian had been found in a cell in the secret laboratory at the back of Corax’s port. Pierce had kept him there trying to replicate the Xinti hardware from what evidence they had managed to gather from the destroyed frigate.

  Daniella and Melissa had just been brought back from Wormhole Junction. Now they would leave and try to regain some semblance of a life.

  Aneka watche
d them, but she watched from a safe distance. Ella was off somewhere doing something administrative for her mother and Aneka had wanted to see the arrivals coming in through the wormhole and from Corax where the Beryum patients were finally being let out. The station was pretty busy, in fact, so when Aneka turned and saw the child standing near one of the walls looking around uncertainly, it was not entirely surprising.

  The girl was blonde and thin, and small, maybe six or eight years old, and dressed in a short, white, rather utilitarian dress and sneakers. There was a doll hanging from her left hand, a weird looking thing somewhere between a bear and a unicorn, which Ella had said was from a popular children’s programme. Her left arm was in a metal brace, presumably recovering from a break.

  Aneka walked over and crouched down beside the little girl. The girl looked back at her, not scared, or worried, just a little perplexed.

  ‘Hello, I’m Aneka,’ Aneka said.

  ‘Hello,’ the girl said, ‘I am Mizzy.’ She had a bit of an accent, and Aneka made a guess.

  ‘Are you lost?’ Aneka said in Rimmic.

  ‘No, but my Mom is,’ the girl replied. ‘She says I should speak Federal here.’

  ‘Well, this is easier and we won’t tell her. So, your mother’s lost?’

  ‘We came over from the big station, with Deena, and we were supposed to be going to New Earth, and I got separated, and she’s lost. So is Deena.’

  ‘Is Deena your sister?’

  ‘No. Deena was on Beryum and she helped me, and her mommy and daddy are gone, and Mom said that Deena should stay with us because she was like my sister now, and that’s okay because Deena got hurt when she helped me and she’s nice.’

  ‘I see. And what’s your Mom’s name?’

  ‘Donna. Donna Tuft. I’m Mizzy Tuft.’

  ‘Al…’ Aneka said silently.

  ‘I am requesting her location from the station systems now,’ Al replied.

  ‘Well, Mizzy Tuft, let’s go find your Mom, shall we?’ Lifting the girl up, Aneka placed her on her left shoulder and turned in the direction Al was indicating her mother could be found.