Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Tough bitch, I’ll give you that,’ the black figure said, his voice made more menacing by some form of electronic modulation. He raised his rifle once more.

  Aneka raised her right hand as though warding off the next blast. Various stress alarms were going off to tell her that she was going to take significant damage if this kept up. She set the pulse weapon in her hand to lethal mode and fired it. For a brief instant a tiny maelstrom of conflicting gravity fields came into existence inside the man’s head. His face went blank and he fell, collapsing to his knees, his mouth working. She fired again and this time the light went out in his eyes entirely.

  Struggling to keep herself moving, Aneka tried to stand and failed. Giving up on that, at least until her repair systems had done their work, she started crawling towards the door. She made it halfway across the lounge before she collapsed.

  ~~~

  Monkey let out a groan. His head felt as though a dozen men were beating on it with big hammers and he was not entirely sure why. Something had happened. He had been in a building, scouting it with Aneka and then… He remembered falling.

  ‘Monkey to Aneka,’ he said, wincing slightly at the pain this invoked.

  ‘David?’ It was Delta’s voice that replied. She sounded close to tears. ‘Thank Vashma. I’ve been trying to raise you for thirty minutes. No one else is answering.’

  Monkey turned over, blinking and trying to regain some semblance of vision. ‘Delta? Where are you?’

  ‘The entrance to the museum. I’m trapped. A beam fell on my arm, I think it’s broken. There were men in armour. I shot one and my carbine did nothing. They… I couldn’t stop them.’

  ‘I’m coming.’ Struggling to his feet, Monkey started running towards the museum’s entrance which looked as though it had been remodelled with explosives. All the doors were gone and part of the portico had collapsed. He tried running faster, but that just made his head throb more and he had to slow down before he threw up.

  He found Delta half-buried in rubble with an I-beam lying on her right arm. ‘What happened?’ he asked as he cleared the Plascrete away from her.

  ‘I lost radio contact with Bash so I started out the door and there were four men in armour beside the shuttle. They must have used some sort of riot control weapon on the others. They were wrapped up in these weird cocoons. I fired at one, and I know I hit him, even if I’m not really great with a carbine, but it did nothing to him. Then they fired back and…’ She looked up at the new skylight. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I got blasted through a window. My helmet took most of the impact, but it knocked me cold.’

  ‘Aneka?’

  He did not look at her, concentrating on the I-beam instead. ‘I’m not sure. You can’t raise her?’ Delta shook her head. ‘I’ll get you out of here and into the shuttle, then I’ll go look for her. She’s stupid tough. Either she’s okay, or… Or waiting a few minutes won’t matter. You’re going to have to help me with this.’

  Leaning towards him, she braced her left hand against the beam and started to try to lift it. ‘David… I think they took your mother, and Bash and Ella. They sure as Hell weren’t ogres.’

  Monkey swallowed and tried to sound as confident as he could. ‘Well, considering what ogres kidnap women for, that’s probably a good thing. Now shut up and lift.’

  ~~~

  ‘Is she dead?’ Delta looked down at Aneka, lying on one of the bunks. Her own arm was now in a Plastex cast, but when they had got Aneka out of her suit she had felt like a broken arm was nothing. Aneka’s body was more or less one livid bruise, and she lay on the bunk unmoving, unconscious.

  ‘Sensors say there’s electrical activity in her body, so I’m going to say no,’ Monkey replied. He was feeling a lot happier, but that was mostly because he had recently pumped himself full of the most powerful analgesic on the ship and his endorphin levels were spiking like crazy. He gave a small shrug. ‘It’s difficult to tell. I mean, technically she isn’t alive in the same sense as we are. As far as I know, if she isn’t atomised she can come back from it, but if something damaged her brain enough… All we can really do is wait.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  He walked back to one of the consoles and tapped at it, frowning at the results. ‘We’re not picking up their suit transmissions. No bio-readouts, no location… no radio at all. Either they’re out of range or they’re still being jammed.’

  ‘Gopi, David! What do we do?’ There were tears in her green eyes again. He turned to her and pulled her into his arms.

  ‘There’s not much we can do. Not the way we are right now. We’ll wait until Aneka comes around. Maybe then we can try searching from higher altitude. That might work.’ He felt tears on his neck. She was crying, silently, but still crying. ‘It’ll be okay. Somehow. Maybe it’s the painkillers talking, but we’ll be okay.’

  Maybe it was the painkillers, or maybe he just had to keep thinking that. Otherwise he would start crying too.

  Prime City, 6th August 3186.

  Ella opened her eyes and looked up at a ceiling of soft, artificial lights behind plastic panels. Her head felt fuzzy, unfocussed, and she was having some trouble focussing on where she was and what had happened to her. Drugs. I was drugged. She pushed herself up on one elbow.

  Gillian was lying on a bench similar to the one Ella was on; the room had four of the slim bunks, two on either side. Bashford was on a third, sitting up, looking dazed, and being examined by a woman in an outfit Ella recognised. There was a short, long-sleeved, white plastic dress, this one with red lines down her arms, black leggings, and white boots. The woman was a citizen. Aside from the benches and the ceiling lights, the room was pretty featureless.

  ‘Good, you’re awake.’ Ella turned her head at the sound of the voice to see a man walking up to her dressed in basically the same outfit as the woman. He lifted a scanning unit of some sort, aiming it at her. The device had no display so she figured that it connected directly with the man’s implant. ‘Vital signs are strong,’ he said. ‘Your brain activity is coming back to normal. I’d imagine you’re still feeling groggy?’

  ‘Uh… yeah. Where am I?’

  ‘The Prime City, of course. Please lie still. The drug they gave you will wear off soon, then you can move around.’

  ‘Why are we here? Why did those men kidnap us?’

  The man smiled. ‘The Enforcers detained you for questioning. We weren’t informed why. We’ve no need to know.’ Ella looked at him. The smile was far too happy, almost brainwashed. ‘We attempted to access your implants,’ he went on, ‘but the protocols are different.’

  ‘Uh, yeah, I guess they would be. Are my friends okay?’

  The smile became slightly confused. ‘Friends? We assumed they were guides or servants.’

  Ella blinked, perplexed for a second herself. Then it hit her. ‘They don’t have implants so you assumed… Not everyone where I come from has them. I’m a rarity, in fact.’

  The smile was replaced entirely by confusion. ‘How do you run your society?’

  ‘We talk to each other, I guess. People haven’t been very keen on cybernetics since the Xinti War.’ His confusion continued. ‘You don’t know about the Xinti? The war? Why this world is in the state it’s in?’

  He frowned. ‘There’s something wrong with our world?’

  ‘I suppose that depends upon who you ask. Look, what’s going to happen to us?’

  As if on cue, the only door in the room opened and two of the black-clad Enforcers entered. Each was carrying a rifle with two wide barrels. They stopped beside Ella’s bunk.

  ‘Is this one the leader?’ The voice was filtered through some sort of electronics to sound slightly mechanical, and more menacing.

  ‘No.’ Everyone turned to look towards Bashford. ‘No, I’m the leader here, hard as that might be for you people to believe.’

  The Enforcers looked at the medi-tech. He shrugged. ‘She said they were fri
ends, not servants.’

  The Enforcer who had spoken looked towards Bashford. ‘On your feet. Manu Dei is handling this personally.’ Bashford stood up and started towards them.

  ‘Bash,’ Ella said, her tone urgent, ‘don’t go with them.’

  Bashford gave her a smile which did not reach his eyes. ‘I don’t think we have much choice in the matter. Don’t worry. I’m sure this… Manu Dei, whoever he is, just wants to talk.’ The Enforcers moved out behind him and the door closed.

  Ella looked at the medi-tech again as the female one moved towards Gillian to check on her. ‘What about the others? There were six of us. Where are the other three?’

  ‘Sadly,’ the man said, ‘you were the only survivors.’

  ‘No,’ Ella said, her stomach sinking. ‘I… don’t believe that.’

  ‘Well, if there is one fault the Enforcers have… Once they go after someone they tend not to leave them alive. And they have no reason to lie.’

  ‘No…’

  London, 20.9.526 FSC.

  The diagnostics were telling something of a different tale than their usual ‘optimal.’ Right leg: motor systems, inoperable – repairing. External communications: inoperable – repairing. Auditory systems: right sensor partially damaged – repairing; left sensor inoperable – repairing. Right arm: 70% functional – repairing. Dermal layer: damaged – repairs delayed. She opened her eyes.

  She was lying on one of the four bunks situated behind the cockpit. The bottom two bunks were more or less at floor level. Turning her head she saw Monkey and Delta lying opposite her. She smiled; Delta was a big woman and looked incredibly cute curled up in his arms. One of Delta’s arms was in a cast…

  Memory returned. The cast she was unsure about, but Monkey had been blasted through a window. He had to have dropped three stories onto the plaza outside, but he looked fairly undamaged. The suits the Negral AIs had given them were really pretty amazing. She wondered how much more damage she would have taken if she had not been wearing hers.

  ‘David?’ she said, keeping her voice soft. Both of them opened their eyes anyway.

  ‘You’re awake finally,’ Delta said.

  Aneka checked her last downtime period: over eighteen hours. ‘Yeah, but I’m not fixed yet. Another… twenty hours for full repair. My leg’s fucked. I can barely hear.’

  ‘And your skin is definitely not supposed to be that colour,’ Monkey added. ‘Hey, you called me David.’

  ‘Yeah, well you must’ve got me out of that room, and Delta looks like she needed some help. Monkey sounds like a nickname for a kid, and you’re not one. Where are the others?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘I saw four men in black uniforms,’ Delta explained. ‘They had the others wrapped up in some sort of cocoons, and then they blew me up.’

  ‘When I came to,’ Monkey went on, ‘they were gone.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Aneka replied. There was a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of what she chose to call her stomach and her mind was trying to freeze up, and she was trying hard to ignore all of it.

  ‘Uh, no. I assume you killed the one that was up there with you.’

  ‘Yeah. I got one. You’ve tried their telemetry? Radio?’

  ‘Everything I could think of. With you out of action and Delta’s arm busted, and my head throbbing like a bitch for hours too… I couldn’t think of a way to track them. I just…’ He stopped, set his jaw, and then continued. ‘I figured when you could move we’d try again from the air…’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. I’m fuck all use to them as I am anyway. Get some rest. When it gets light I’m going to move us out of this area. They might come back and I’d rather not be here if they do.’

  Monkey lowered his head to the pillow again and Aneka saw Delta’s eyes close. Then she lay there thinking. There had to be some way of finding the others. There had to be.

  ~~~

  ‘Internal systems are now sufficiently repaired to allow communication,’ Al said. Aneka had never been so happy to hear his voice.

  ‘Are you up to date on what’s happened?’ she asked rather than gushing at him. He knew how she felt anyway.

  ‘I was able to hear your thoughts, but the hardware allowing me to speak was disabled.’

  ‘Any thoughts on locating them?’

  ‘Currently, none. However, I should point out that I am a computer. While I have the ability to work through many possibilities and come to conclusions some of my less self-aware brethren would never reach, I lack a certain degree of intuitiveness which you have. Also, my mind is less complex than yours. You are smarter than I am.’

  ‘Huh, I don’t generally get that impression. You know more than I do for starters.’

  ‘Don’t confuse access to a large amount of data and the ability to search it rapidly with intelligence. I augment your thought processes by intercepting ideas, running those ideas against my data, and returning results. It makes me seem smarter than I am. I haven’t bothered disabusing you before.’

  Aneka suppressed a laugh; Delta and Monkey were still asleep. ‘Cheat. So, why tell me now?’

  ‘Because you need to realise that you are the one who needs to come up with the ideas. You, or David, or Delta. I can assist, but you need to have the ideas for me to work with.’

  ‘Okay. Well I’ll get right on that. How are the repairs going?’ She turned, pulling herself around so that she could sit up. Lying down was getting boring, but her dragging right leg did not help with her feeling of well-being.

  ‘You’re right arm is now fully functional. Full auditory functionality will be restored in around forty minutes. Your leg will take considerably longer, but I have now been able to divert repair nanobots to your dermal layer. The bruising will start going down soon.’

  ‘Good, I look like a plum.’ Her eyes fell on her discarded suit and helmet. ‘Al, Delta said those men were wearing suits a bit like ours.’

  ‘Yes, she did. Possibly slightly more resilient. Actual battle armour rather than simply advanced survival suits.’

  ‘Uh-huh, and our suits have distributed computer systems in them, yes?’

  ‘That is also correct.’

  ‘So if we went and got that body from the tower block…’

  ‘Do I think I could hack into his suit’s computer? Aneka, you wound me with the thought that I might not.’

  Aneka grinned.

  Prime City, 6th August 3186.

  ‘I’m all right, Ella,’ Gillian said. ‘I’m worried about Bash, but physically I’m fine. Though I would prefer not to be wearing a paper hospital gown.’

  Ella grinned bleakly. The garments they had been put in were more like short dressing gowns, but they were made of some sort of disposable, tough paper, and they were in an institutional shade of green. Whatever Gillian said, Ella could see that the worry was eating at her.

  ‘And I don’t believe Aneka is gone,’ Gillian added. ‘Vashma forbid, Delta and… and David, but Aneka? The woman is almost indestructible.’

  ‘She’s not though. I mean, if someone damaged her brain enough…’

  ‘And that is behind a skull of living metal. She’s tough, and very persistent, and she won’t stop looking for us because she won’t rest until she finds you.’

  Ella nodded. ‘No. You’re right, she won’t. Bash has been gone a long time. What does this Manu Dei want with us?’

  ‘If he’s been questioning Bash all this time, then I assume the answer is information.’

  ‘What information do we have?’

  ‘Where we came from. How we got here. What our intentions are. A better question would perhaps be “Who is Manu Dei?” He seems somewhat paranoid. A controlling individual. Something of a dictator.’

  ‘That doesn’t exactly bode well.’

  ‘No, perhaps not. Hopefully we’ll have more information when they bring Bash back. He will have at least met our mysterious host.’

  London, 21.9.526 FSC.

  ‘You’re sure y
ou’re all right to do this, Delta?’ Aneka asked as she set the redhead’s helmet in place for her. The suit had adjusted itself around her cast well at least; the wonders of super-high-tech clothing.

  ‘I’m not letting him go alone, and your leg’s not working yet. I can carry the body over my good shoulder and he can shoot anything that moves.’

  Aneka nodded. Of course it was a good plan, but… ‘If any of those men are there…’

  ‘This is the only way we’re going to find Mom and the others,’ Monkey said. ‘Trying from the air was a longshot and we both know it.’

  ‘Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t even be suggesting this. I’ll have the shuttle ready to take off as soon as you’re back aboard.’ She checked the seal on Delta’s helmet and gave her a nod, and then they stepped into the airlock while Aneka limped off towards the cockpit.

  The waiting was beyond annoying. She had finished the pre-flight checks by the time Monkey reported that they had made it to the room without incident. Then she just had to wait more while they made their way back, slower now with Delta lugging an armoured body. She saw them walking back, every step seeming to take an eternity, and powered up the anti-gravity system as soon as the console indicators showed the airlock’s outer door was closed.

  There was a thud from the back. ‘We’re in,’ Monkey’s voice said from the speakers.

  Aneka hit the thrusters and the ship jerked into the air, the inertial compensation making it feel like a gentle rise. She pulled the ship up and out of the plaza, engaging the main engines and pushing them north once they were above the buildings. A kilometre or so out, she dropped into the low valley of the M1 and continued out at barely thirty metres above the ground.