Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘And this is why we have a robotics tech on the team,’ Monkey put in, grinning. He was looking happier, and better fed, than he had done when Aneka first met him. A little more confident too. He was Monkey to just about everyone, only his mother ever called him David. He still wore his hair as a slightly unkempt mass and sported a valiant attempt at a goatee beard. And he was still nowhere near as muscular as his girlfriend. However, especially since Delta had moved in with him, he had started looking like a man who could not believe his luck, and he tended to clam up less around attractive women.

  ‘Indeed,’ Gillian replied. ‘Delta, make sure he does some of the work. Bash and I will be handling Graystone-Collier. Maybe we can get our hands on some of that new ultra-hi-def lidar equipment they’ve been touting.’

  ‘Would be useful,’ Bashford agreed.

  ‘A company called Extreme Measures has offered survival equipment. Aneka, could you look over their catalogue and see what we could use?’

  ‘Sure. They sound like some of the trendy extreme sports companies from my time.’

  ‘They are,’ Bashford replied. ‘However, they do make some hostile environment equipment which could be of use. Some of it is almost military spec.’

  Aneka nodded. ‘I’ll check it out.’

  ‘Drake and Shannon,’ Gillian continued, ‘the Administration wants to see a flight plan as soon as possible so they can run risk assessment.’

  ‘Almost done,’ Drake replied.

  ‘Another… day?’ Shannon suggested. ‘We need to rerun the resource plans.’

  Drake nodded. ‘It’s a long trip and we’re being paranoid.’

  ‘A little paranoia is probably good,’ Bashford commented, nodding his own agreement.

  ‘And that leaves Ella,’ Gillian said, ‘who will be running the coordination here and keeping the various administrations off our backs so we can do our job.’

  ‘You pull the short straw?’ Monkey asked.

  Ella gave him a sour look. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘All right, troops,’ Gillian said, ‘we’ve got work to do. Let’s get on it!’

  Aneka snapped off a jaunty salute. ‘Yes, ma’am!’

  ‘Less of that, young lady, or I’ll put you in the brig.’

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 13.2.526 FSC.

  The head office of Extreme Measures FRC was only three stops north on the subway from Aneka’s apartment building and the look of it from the outside made the company seem even more amateur than the name. The front entrance was down on street level, below the layer of mist which pervaded that part of the city. There was what looked like a hand-painted sign over the door, though Aneka’s edge recognition software picked out features which suggested that the paint dribbles and haphazard-looking letters had actually been carefully designed. There were a half-dozen men and women hanging around outside the place dressed in dark, faux-leather clothing reminiscent of biker leathers and they were actually gathered around something that looked like a motorcycle dreamed up by H. R. Giger. Aneka heard, ‘Da de roofang,’ from the little group as she walked past and gave them a smile. Rim Worlders, probably.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ She heard the voice as soon as she walked into the huge reception room behind the Polyglass doors. ‘You came!’ She narrowed in on a man walking towards her fairly rapidly wearing a bright, neon-yellow T-shirt with Extreme Measures printed across it in red, a pair of knee-length khaki shorts, and bright red running shoes. ‘That is so amazingly fridgy!’ He looked like he belonged on a beach in Hawaii, or on a surfboard just off the beach, probably on the highest wave he could find. Wild blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, attractive, of course, with a tightly muscled body, and a deep tan. ‘I’m Eddie Leverson. The banks call me the CEO of this place.’

  ‘Actually he’s more like the den mother.’ The speaker was a woman, not old, very attractive, but with a far more serious look about her than Leverson had. Her hair was short and straw coloured, her eyes green-blue, and she had less of a tan than Leverson. Her body did suggest that she kept herself fit, however; there was a lot of tight muscle on her frame. Her outfit, shorts and a cropped company T-shirt, somehow worked in counterpoint to her serious expression.

  ‘And this is my partner, Annie Teach,’ Leverson said.

  ‘I’m the chief financial officer,’ Teach told her. ‘I also handle our advertising on an administrative level.’

  ‘And she’s also one of the best free climbers this side of the Rim.’

  ‘On break days,’ Teach put in. ‘Right now I’m all about the advertising. Getting some of our kit on your expedition gets us coverage we could really use. We’ve got good products here, but a lot of people don’t take us seriously because we come out of the sport scene.’

  Aneka gave her a little shrug. ‘My boss said you had some interesting equipment and he’s a pretty serious guy, especially about what he uses in the field.’

  ‘He’s a rarity,’ Leverson admitted. ‘A lot of people look at our customers, see guys into skiing, skydiving, surfing… Then they go talk to a more traditional manufacturer.’

  ‘Okay… Well, what do you have that you think we can use?’

  Leverson started for one side of the large room. It was, it appeared, part reception area, part showroom, part meeting hall for various sporting fanatics. ‘Well, we don’t really know what you’re facing out there, so I figure we’ll give you the tour and you can see what you like.’ He looked back and grinned. ‘We’ll start with Annie’s favourite area…’

  In front of them was a climbing wall and there were several people busy using it. Teach picked up a pair of gloves from a stand and handed them to Aneka. ‘These aren’t something I use, but they’re damn useful for trekking. Gloves, boots, and knee-pads, usually. Based on the reactive setaestrip technology spacers use to keep their feet on the deck in zero-G. You come across something you can’t walk up, stick these on and pretty much anyone can climb a sheer cliff.’

  ‘We’ll need six sets,’ Aneka said immediately. ‘What kind of rope is that?’

  ‘Smart rope? Kind of a niche market.’

  ‘Mostly for people who aren’t so good at tying knots,’ Leverson put in.

  ‘It can be useful for quick ties,’ Teach said. ‘Hasn’t got the loadbearing properties of normal rope, but for climbing that isn’t usually an issue. Basically you can lock off half-metre sections by remote command. Your knots never slip, no matter how sloppy. You can even form them into a makeshift grapnel.’

  ‘We’ll drop a couple of bundles in,’ Leverson said. ‘Like Annie said, it’s niche, but you guys really don’t know what you’re going up against.’ He turned, moving around the room with a bounce in his step. ‘Oh, you’ll love this. I mean, it’s kind of silly, but you gotta see it.’

  Teach rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not too busy, are you? He’ll show you every fridgy gadget we’ve got if we let him.’

  Aneka gave her a grin. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. And he’s right, we have no idea what we’re going to find there. We need to be more flexible than usual so we need to entertain novel ideas.’

  Leverson had a tablet in his hand, his fingers shifting over it. Beside him on a Polyglass stand was a metal box which Aneka thought she recognised. Her swarm dress, and Ella’s, came in a box like that which acted as a charging station and container for the microbots. Sure enough, a swarm of black beads emerged from the box and glided into the air forming a globe above them which then lit up brightly.

  ‘Firefly swarm,’ Leverson said. ‘Basically what you have here is a programmable, mobile light source capable of emitting light in any colour from infrared to ultraviolet. You won’t get daylight levels out of them, but they’ll let you see enough to read.’

  ‘I have a dress which uses this technology,’ Aneka told them.

  ‘Swarm dress?’ Teach asked. ‘I have one too. Eddie likes it.’

  Leverson shrugged. ‘What can I say, she’s got a great body.’

  Aneka laughed. ‘Yeah… How big a sw
arm can the box support?’

  ‘It’ll handle a five square metre swarm.’

  ‘Okay, drop one in. We normally work out of our shuttle, but we may be working at night and these things give a broader light field than a torch. We can fly them into tight areas to give light or send them up high…’

  ‘And this is why I keep saying we should get a trained facilitator on the payroll,’ Teach said.

  Aneka chuckled, her eyes wandering around the room. ‘What the Hell is that?’

  There were actually a couple of large devices on stands nearby, but the one which looked most out of place was a big, black pod with a lot of speedy looking stripes and flashes from the blunt bottom up to the narrower top.

  ‘Oh that,’ Leverson said. ‘That is the wildest ride you will ever take, but I doubt it’ll be much use to you to be honest.’

  ‘It’s an orbital dive pod,’ Teach explained. ‘Skydiving for crazy people. Rich, crazy people. I climb cliffs with almost nothing to hold onto, with every chance of falling to my death, but you wouldn’t get me in one of those.’

  Aneka raised her eyebrows and Leverson was happy to oblige with further explanation. ‘It’s got a small rocket motor in it, enough to get it out of orbit. Then you’re in freefall, basically. The outer skin is an ablative heat shield which gets stripped away during re-entry and is jettisoned. You drop a hundred or so kilometres and then deploy the parachute for the final landing. Like I said, it’s a wild ride.’

  ‘And that’s extreme sports in the future?’

  Leverson laughed. ‘That’s about as extreme as it gets. You might like this though…’ He picked up a large backpack, which seemed to be made of light structural plastic, and walked out into the middle of the room. Laying it down on the floor, he took a small box from a pocket on the side, stepped back, and pressed a button. The backpack’s top and sides unfolded, rods emerged, swinging out or extending, and pulling Plastex sheets along with them. It took only a few seconds and Aneka found herself looking at a microlight, complete with a small engine behind a reclined flight seat.

  ‘They’re easy to fly,’ Leverson said, ‘stable, perfect for recon flights, great for taking pictures from. They’re even just about invisible to radar.’

  Aneka grinned. ‘Sold. I don’t even care if it will be useful.’ That got a laugh. ‘Okay… What do you suggest for radiation protection?’

  ‘Drugs,’ Teach replied, starting off across the room towards another stand. ‘You’ll never get enough material in a suit to provide proper protection…’

  Aneka followed on behind her. They might have looked like a bunch of hippy sports nuts, but they seemed to know their stuff.

  Yorkbridge North Beach, 16.2.526 FSC.

  ‘You,’ Katelyn panted, ‘are a gaisu machine.’

  ‘She is,’ Ella said, her voice languid. ‘Why do you think I don’t go running with her?’

  ‘Ten klicks! Ten klicks and she’s not even breaking a sweat!’

  Chuckling, Aneka stretched out on a towel beside Ella. ‘Of course not. Gentlemen perspire, ladies glow, horses sweat.’ Ella giggled.

  Dillon, lying on the other side of Ella, patted the towel beside him. ‘I think she’s saying you’re a horse, Kat. I’m not sure what a horse is, but bring your horse butt over here.’

  Katelyn walked around to that side, but did not lie down. Instead she started stripping off her running gear. ‘I want to get this stuff off first. It’s clinging more than you do.’

  Aneka smiled and closed her eyes, relaxing with her head resting on her arms. A minor benefit of Jenlay society was that no one had to struggle with changing under a towel on the beach. They went there fairly often, to the beach nearest their building, along with a fairly large number of Mid-town’s residents. To the north the beach had huge dunes along the western edge which blocked the view of the city, but here you could see the buildings perhaps a kilometre inland, and the smaller ones servicing the beach closer up. There was a station about three hundred metres away to the south, and the concentration of people down there was far higher, but there were small shops, cafés, and even the odd restaurant up as far as where the little group had set up camp.

  There were a few families this far from the station, but the majority of people here were couples or small groups. The largest of these was a group of six teenagers: two girls and four boys. Well, Aneka had decided they were teenagers from the way they behaved, but ‘teenager’ did not quite mean the same thing as it had back when she had been one, and there seemed to be a bit of a range in the group. One boy was obviously a few years younger and was not as confident as his friends. One boy and one girl seemed a little older and were obviously a couple. Put together they seemed like a typical bunch of kids, complete with someone’s younger brother who was not really sure he wanted to be there.

  ‘That’s better,’ Katelyn said. Aneka opened one eye to see the dusky-skinned woman wearing a pair of bikini briefs. ‘Don’t know how you can run in a bikini either.’

  ‘Talent,’ Aneka replied, closing her eye.

  ‘You guys are being unfair,’ Dillon commented. ‘I’ve got a pair of tits on either side of me and you know how I am about breasts. Aneka’s being good.’

  ‘Don’t look,’ Katelyn suggested.

  ‘Not possible,’ Ella said. ‘Men are wired to look at breasts. It’s neurological.’

  ‘See?’ Dillon said.

  ‘Of course, even that doesn’t explain Dillon’s obsession. I think he’s just a little warped.’ All three women giggled.

  ‘Victimisation. I’m being victimised.’

  ‘Aww, poor baby,’ Katelyn said consolingly. ‘If you’re good I’ll take you up to the dunes later.’

  ‘I’ll be good.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You know, if you guys are going off on another expedition soon, this might be our last trip out here for a while.’

  ‘Maybe we should all take Dillon up to the dunes then,’ Ella suggested.

  ‘I am not fucking anyone on a beach,’ Aneka said. ‘The sand gets everywhere.’

  ‘You’re all going to be okay though?’ Katelyn continued. ‘I mean, this is further than you’ve ever been. You’re going way outside the Rim. Who knows what you’re going to find out there.’

  ‘There’s nothing out there that Aneka and Bash can’t handle,’ Ella told her. ‘If we meet it before we get to the surface, well Drake’s ex-Navy.’

  ‘That ship of yours isn’t armed,’ Dillon commented.

  ‘No, but it can run really fast.’ The big man laughed in reply. ‘Seriously, we know what we’re doing. We’ll be fine.’

  Aneka’s nose wrinkled. Ella was just being reassuring, but it still seemed like tempting fate.

  University of New Earth, 17.2.526 FSC.

  Gillian was frowning when Aneka walked into her office. They had been going over the inventory which had arrived from Extreme Measures before Aneka had gone out for coffee. Now she was frowning.

  ‘Something up?’

  Gillian looked up from her terminal. ‘I have a message through from the Dean’s office. A request from Stephen Teldarian for you to visit him on his island on Odanari, “to discuss Old Earth history.”’

  ‘Uh…’

  ‘I feel rather like someone made me into a brothel mistress when I wasn’t looking. I mean, if he wants to see you he should message you!’

  ‘He’s putting a chip down,’ Al said. ‘He’s attempting to suggest that your visit will result in a donation for the expedition. Therefore he makes the request through official channels.’

  ‘Politics,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘He’s making it official so it doesn’t look like he’s bargaining to get into my knickers.’

  ‘Do we have a reply? We don’t need his money that much, you know?’

  Aneka pursed her lips, putting the coffee down in front of Gillian. ‘Well, we could use the money, and if he wants to play it all political, then I can too. Tell them to send a reply saying yes. He sent the message through them. They
send the message back.’ She picked up her coffee and started for the door. ‘Now I just have to break it to Ella.’

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  ‘You know, if you’re breaking up with me, you could take me to a better restaurant.’ Ella held onto her burger which came in paper from a street vendor and looked up at Aneka a little plaintively.

  ‘Well, if I was going to break up with you, I would have.’

  ‘Okay, so you took me out of the office, refused to give me a reason, and bought me lunch… What’s the bad news?’

  ‘Teldarian…’

  ‘Gopi! You are breaking up with me!’

  ‘Teldarian has requested that I go visit him on Odanari. He sent the message through the Dean’s office, so he’s… Could you close your mouth, or maybe eat something?’

  ‘He’s trying to get you into bed. He’s…’

  ‘Of course he is. Doesn’t mean he’s going to get me. He fucked up. He made it all political so I can play it right back. He wants to discuss history, so we’ll discuss history. If he wants to blackmail me into sleeping with him to get funds, then a recording of him doing so will turn up on some lucky media company’s news desk.’

  Ella’s eyes widened. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘Actually, I would, but… just hypothetically, what’s the problem with me fucking him to get the money?’

  ‘Well it’s wrong!’