Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘They sent detailed sensor logs. I could have one of the techs…’

  Winter waved away the suggestion. ‘If we had the raw data they might be able to find something, but I doubt it. A frigate isn’t equipped to do that kind of analysis. It’s a shame the Delta class isn’t equipped with a shuttle. Well, this is an interdiction operation. Their orders under these circumstances are that no one goes down to that planet; anyone coming up is to be arrested. They are authorised to use deadly force.’

  ‘You don’t want to send an extraction team?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And that team should be arriving here in four days. I’ll need you to arrange some paperwork for me…’

  New Earth Transit Station One, 9.1.526 FSC.

  Aneka was annoyed. The Brigantia had arrived over an hour ago, docking with one of the two giant space stations in geosynchronous orbit over New Earth, and she had wanted to be off the ship and hugging Ella as soon as was humanly possible. Instead she had been told to stay in her cabin until ‘someone from the Administration’ arrived.

  Most of the crew had disembarked. Scotts was in the engine room, going over the systems in preparation for an inspection by the engineers who would be refitting the ship after its brush with death. Anderson was in her cabin with Daventry going over all the mission reports and filing the last one to cover their flight back to New Earth. None of them had time to chat, so Aneka just sat in her room and fumed.

  When the door chimed, she more or less screamed her response. ‘Finally! Come in!’

  The woman who stepped through the door was a total unknown for about half a second. She was tall, long in the leg, tanned, and of course attractive. The long legs were enhanced by red thigh-high boots with spiked heels. Her face was kind of narrow, but her cheeks gave it more fullness, cushioning the hard edges. She had moderate breasts, but it seemed like her nipples were fighting a rear-guard action to push through the short, red dress, with mesh sides, that she was wearing. Her hair was short, wavy, and the kind of dirty-blonde colour Aneka’s had been before the Xinti had got hold of her, and the eyes were dark, though Aneka thought they were more like indigo than brown or black. She did not look like anyone from the Administration, and the ID pulse Aneka received almost immediately sort of confirmed that.

  ‘Miss Jansen, I’m Elaine Truelove, Lieutenant Commander with the Federal Security Agency. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  ‘Well, you have, would you mind telling me why?’

  ‘No ma’am. I’m here to take you to the person who’s going to tell you why.’ She turned slightly. ‘Get Miss Jansen’s bags, take them straight to the Pegasus.’ She stepped aside and two very large naval officers walked in, heading for Aneka’s two cases which were sitting on the bed.

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ Aneka began.

  ‘Miss Jansen,’ Truelove said, ‘we really don’t have time to argue. Please come with me.’

  Aneka wanted to punch her, but that was going to get her nowhere. She followed the blonde out of her cabin instead.

  ~~~

  It was as they were walking down the second or third corridor Truelove had led her down that Aneka noted the small plastic plugs near the base of the girl’s skull, mostly hidden by her hair.

  ‘You’re a cyborg?’ Aneka asked.

  Truelove’s hand went to the back of her neck. ‘Yes, ma’am. Most people don’t notice.’

  Aneka shrugged, though Truelove could not see it. ‘Doesn’t bother me, obviously. I just don’t expect to meet them in this society. What do those do?’

  ‘There’s a fibre optic cable port and two chip slots. They connect into a computer in my skull. I can load various things in through the slots, mostly databases, but I can equip various programs in there that help in my work.’

  ‘Just the computer, or is anything else electronic?’

  ‘Just the computer, ma’am.’

  ‘Could you stop calling me that? Aneka is fine.’

  ‘No, ma’am, not while I’m working. If we went out for a drink I’d be happy to call you Aneka, but otherwise you’re ma’am, ma’am.’

  ‘Right… What exactly is your job, Truelove? Great name, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. I’m Winter’s personal assistant.’

  Yeah well, it figured that this had to have something to do with Winter. ‘How come I’ve never met you before? She usually just appears like she’s been teleported and makes my life complicated personally.’

  ‘You’ve never needed to meet me before,’ Truelove stated before stopping at a door and hitting the button beside it.

  The office was small, one of the ones set aside for the use of visiting military personnel. The furniture was stark and metallic, and sat behind the desk was Winter. The head of the FSA was wearing one of her grey skirt-suits with a sheer, white blouse, which meant she was going to be all business. She was not especially tall, her hair was a short bob of blonde, and her face, while attractive, had the quality of being sufficiently average that most people failed to recognise her, even after meeting her once or twice. The most telling thing about her was her eyes; they were a bright blue, and very pretty, but it was the way they seemed to hold a lot more age than her body showed that was the shocking thing.

  ‘I hear you’ve been learning to pilot a spaceship,’ she said by way of introduction.

  Aneka frowned but said, ‘Uh, yeah. It was something to do on the flight and Lieutenant Prentice was willing.’

  ‘How’s that going?’

  ‘She seems to think I’ve taken it all in… Look, Winter, much as I love these chats I’m kind of anxious to get down to the surface and reacquaint myself with Ella.’

  Winter nodded to the seat opposite her. ‘Sit down.’ She was not going to take no for an answer, so Aneka sat. ‘While you were away, the university received a request for assistance from one of their corporate benefactors. Some translation work. Old Earth material which they were having trouble understanding.’ Aneka felt her artificial digestive system sinking. ‘Since Doctor Gilroy was needed here, and Miss Narrows is a little better at spoken English anyway, she was the one who went to Eshebbon where Hayward Pharmaceuticals has a research facility.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Aneka muttered.

  ‘Indeed. When we got the report on your visit to Sapphira, I sent a frigate to retrieve Miss Narrows.’

  ‘Great, when’s she due back?’ Somehow, even as she said it, Aneka was quite sure it was not going to be that easy.

  ‘Four days ago we got a status update from the Delta Lantilla. They can’t raise the surface.’

  ‘You’ve sent something else then? I know the Deltas don’t have shuttles, but you’ve sent something else to get her out?’

  ‘No, I’m sending you.’

  Aneka’s fists clenched. ‘You’ve wasted four days…’

  ‘During the summer,’ Winter interrupted, ‘using the Garnet Hyde’s engine as a guide and with a bit of help from Aggy, we built a test bed ship for a new class of frigate we’re hoping to build. Frankly, at the moment, it looks like we need a better power system to make it viable, but the ship’s sitting in dock waiting for you to take it out.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘It’s basically a big engine with a lot of sensor gear. There’s room for a pilot, but there’s a cabin which can support two people, and it has anti-grav. You can fly it in, land it, get Miss Narrows out… and it’s got twice the warp rating of a Delta class. You can be at Eshebbon in five or six days.’

  ‘Is it armed?’

  ‘Defensive ECM only. If you need fire support the Lantilla is still in orbit and it can handle light ground bombardment. Frankly, I’m not expecting any resistance you can’t handle. You go in there with FSA authority, no one there is going to be stupid enough to shoot at you.’

  ‘When can I leave?’ Aneka asked, getting to her feet.

  ‘Truelove will take you over there now. I’ve just finished yelling at people to get the flight clearances. One thing… It’s a prototype. We�
��d like it back in one piece.’

  ~~~

  If the Pegasus had been designed as a modern, up-to-the-minute ship, Aneka might have had more trouble with it. She had watched Shannon and Drake fly shuttles and the Garnet Hyde before, and the controls were significantly different from those on the Brigantia. Prentice had said that the more direct, joystick-based flight controls gave better handling in combat, but that it was basically that the Navy was full of Luddites who stuck to older methodologies. Not that she had used the word ‘Luddite.’

  As it was, since the Pegasus was a prototype for a frigate, Aneka felt quite at home as she piloted the vessel out towards her warp entry point. It was even equipped with the same antimatter torch engines as the Brigantia.

  ‘Pegasus to New Earth Control,’ she said as the console told her there was fifteen seconds before she should engage the warp drive, ‘requesting warp clearance.’

  ‘Pegasus, this is New Earth Control. You are cleared for warp through to Eshebbon.’

  Aneka cut off the radio and watched the counter. ‘Hang on, Ella, I’m coming.’ Then she hit the warp engage switch.

  FScV Pegasus, Eshebbon System, 15.1.526 FSC.

  ‘FNf Delta Lantilla to FScV Pegasus, please respond.’

  Aneka tapped the key on the arm of her flight chair which opened the radio connection. ‘Delta Lantilla, this is the Pegasus. Can you give me a status update?’

  There was a slight delay; the two ships were still several tens of thousands of kilometres apart as Aneka took the powerful little ship in towards planetary orbit. ‘Captain Julian DeMarco here, and you’re Miss Jansen according to your ident. I was expecting… someone else. Nothing’s changed. We’re still reading unknown activity on the surface and there’s been no radio contact.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. This thing has a great big sensor array that’s supposed to be used for making sure it’s not pulling itself apart in flight, but it should be able to make a higher definition sweep of the site. I’ll do one orbit over the facility and then I’m going in.’

  ‘Affirmative, Miss Jansen. Good luck.’

  Aneka killed the connection. She was probably going to need some luck; she had never landed a hundred tonnes of spaceship on a planet before.

  ‘It has anti-gravity,’ Al pointed out. ‘Operating it within a gravity well is no different from operating it in open space.’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t hit a planet in open space.’

  ‘You could always tell Winter that it jumped out in front of you.’

  ‘Uh-huh…’

  Putting the ship in low orbit was easy enough at least. Tell the computer the point she wanted to orbit over and then follow the directions on the heads-up. She inserted over the north pole giving her about a quarter of an orbit to get the sensors ready to scan the ground. The array was not much different from the one on the Garnet Hyde. She had never had to operate that, but she knew the principles well enough. Setting the scan took her a couple of minutes and then it was just a case of waiting for the results.

  ‘If Ella was with us this would be a lot easier,’ she commented.

  ‘If Ella was with us would not need to do it.’

  Aneka checked the time. ‘Should have inserted closer to the target.’ Al did not reply; okay so she was being impatient, but Ella was down there and possibly in trouble.

  Thirty slow minutes passed before she was interpreting the results. Well, the ship’s computer and Al were doing most of it. The computer was less help than it might have been; the analysis software she had available was heavily physics oriented, designed for studying the warp field around the ship. The Garnet Hyde had much better software for topology and biological analysis. Luckily, Al was good at map-making so she had a relatively detailed, if only external, schematic of the two facilities. The other data she was getting was a little harder to figure out.

  ‘I’m seeing various humanoid shapes moving around on the surface,’ Aneka mused aloud. ‘They seem a little cold for Humans though.’

  ‘The surface temperature is low,’ Al pointed out. ‘Below freezing, in fact. Anyone on the surface would be wearing insulated clothing.’

  ‘Yeah… but then why are they on the surface? According to the data Winter gave us, it’s a biological research centre. They can’t be doing large-scale biological research on an ice block, can they?’

  ‘I would say not impossible, but unlikely. The full complement of the facility is four hundred and twelve. There are over seventy bodies visible on the surface.’

  ‘They’re out of radio contact and some of them are on the surface… quite a distance from the buildings. A fire…? At both sites? That doesn’t make sense. They study diseases, an outbreak?’

  ‘At both sites?’ Al repeated. ‘The two sites are a significant distance apart, isolated to prevent one event affecting both.’

  ‘Huh.’ Aneka’s fingers moved quickly over the console and the virtual displays reconfigured back into flight controls. ‘We’re obviously not going to find out from up here. We’re going in.’

  Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

  Al had been right; with the anti-gravity system online the Pegasus handled like a dream, even a dozen metres above the surface of the planet. The main difference was the air resistance; the thrusters had enough power to shift the craft against it, but turning was a little more sluggish. The streamlining helped. The ship was a smooth, dart-shaped craft, even though it did not really need to be. Aneka had the feeling that someone had wanted the Pegasus to look fast.

  She set the ship down on one of the three landing pads just south of what had been designated the Alpha facility. There was another craft on the ground nearby, a shuttle, and she turned the ship’s sensors on it more or less on a whim. The results were immediate as the Pegasus’ analysis software came into its own.

  ‘Internal structural damage,’ Al commented.

  ‘Yeah. That’s the right sort of blast size for a class-three grenade.’ She pushed her seat back and got to her feet. ‘All right, we’re going in loaded for bear.’

  ‘I don’t think bears are going to be an issue, but I feel we should discuss you wearing more armour.’

  ‘No time.’ Aneka strapped her gun belt in place with its two machine pistols, Bridget and Clara, in thigh holsters. Bessie, her heavy blaster, was strapped into a holster attached to her right boot with setaestrip: not pretty, but functional. She did not have a name yet for the huge sniper rifle, but that was slung over her shoulders. Settling her load a little, she nodded and headed for the air lock. ‘Show time, Al.’

  ‘Electronic warfare suite is ready. No sign of external radio activity.’

  Aneka started the cycle on the airlock. ‘As soon as we’re out, seal the ship. Do we have anything indicating where we should make entry?’

  ‘There are no plans available for the buildings. If we can pick up a local network I may be able to obtain more information.’

  The outer hatch opened and Aneka moved out, down a short staircase which unfolded from under the door. The air was, as Al had said, freezing: three below zero according to her skin sensors. Her body, capable of operating in much lower temperatures, ignored the cold as she looked around, took stock, and started towards the buildings nearby.

  There was no sign of anyone initially. Aneka doubted anyone went outside in this weather unless they had to, but then that did not explain the bodies she had seen moving about. She was halfway along the icy Plascrete pavement when she spotted a group of people about a hundred metres away. There were three of them, crouched over something on the ice. Something about them seemed off, but at this range, even with the telescopic zoom on her eyes at maximum, she could not really tell what they were doing. She was considering getting closer when Al spoke.

  ‘We have an hour and forty minutes until dark, and the ship’s sensors are reporting a band of snow coming in from the north-west. We should keep moving.’

  Aneka started walking again. ‘Any luck with the local net?’ Her h
ands dropped to her holsters, undoing the straps. There was something about the way the three people had been moving…

  ‘I have a connection,’ Al replied. ‘It’s not good, but the signal strength is improving. I’ve begun breaking their security.’

  ‘Good. I can see a door up ahead. If all else fails I’ll use…’

  Aneka stopped as the figure of a woman moved out onto the path in front of her from behind some block of machinery. She was tall with short, thin, blonde hair, not the usual attractive body Aneka expected to see in Jenlay. That was not the problem, however. The woman was naked aside from what looked like the remains of a T-shirt hanging around her neck and one, torn, running shoe. Zoomed in, her skin looked dull, lifeless, and her eyes were dead. She looked towards Aneka, her lips twisted into a wild grin, and then she was charging towards her, arms reaching out with clawed fingers.

  ‘That is not normal,’ Al commented.

  Aneka did not reply. Her pistol was in her hand and she was firing; three rounds, so close together they sounded like a single shot, hit the woman’s left knee, shattering bone and searing tissue. The woman fell, crashing onto the snow and ice, shook herself, and then started pulling herself forward.

  ‘The fuck… Lady, just stop!’ Aneka raised her pistol again, aiming this time for the woman’s head.

  The woman looked up, opening her mouth and letting out something which might have been a word, but sounded more like an animal trying to mimic speech. One hand reached out and gripped the toe of Aneka’s boot. Aneka squeezed the trigger and Bridget reduced the woman’s head to Swiss cheese.

  ‘You know, crazy as this sounds, she looks kind of like a zombie.’ Aneka raised her eyes and saw six more figures moving towards her from the buildings. They did not shamble, or groan. In particular they lacked the feature of moaning ‘brains’ as they walked towards her, their pace quickening, but they looked like they had spent the last few days in a morgue freezer and the cold was not bothering them despite the fact that the most any of them was wearing was some badly torn sweat pants. ‘They,’ Aneka amended. ‘They look like zombies.’