Aneka moved, stepping forward to close range, her arms rising. One hand locked under Three’s chin while the other braced on the back of her skull, and then Aneka was swinging all of her weight around a pivot not designed for that kind of stress. There was a wet crunch and Three went limp.
‘It’s a woman,’ Two was saying. Aneka noticed that he had left his position and was moving in toward the clearing.
‘The northern team appears to be four individuals with carbines,’ Al said. ‘They will be in firing positions in ten seconds.’
Aneka bolted for the clearing. ‘Relay the data to Justine. Tell her to get down; the guy on the south side is her problem.’ She pulled her pistols. ‘And pop the smoke.’
‘That will reduce the effectiveness of the sensors.’
‘More important to blind them.’
There was a sequence of small detonations ahead of her and suddenly Aneka was running toward a cloud of white smoke which sparkled and showed up as a shifting, solid mass on her infrared overlay. Hot prismatic smoke; it would mask heat signatures, restrict the view in other frequencies, and reduce the effectiveness of laser weapons firing through it. Aneka burst through the cloud to see her three friends lying on the grass. Justine had a pistol in her hand and was facing the south-west side of the clearing. Sharissa was lying half on Truelove, who was looking displeased at the protective posture.
Not waiting to find out how that potential argument might come out, Aneka swung her pistols around and launched twin firing arcs into the northern side of the clearing. The cloud might make lasers less effective, and make targeting haphazard at best, but suppression fire using thousand-round-a-minute machine pistols had the primary effect of making people duck. Aneka walked forward, her arms swinging in smooth curves as she kept up the firing. She could hear small explosions as the darts from her pistols hit wood, flashed into plasma, and blew chunks out of the trees.
‘I am detecting radio traffic,’ Al said. ‘Attempting to isolate. Movement detected, right, thirty-eight degrees, five metres.’
Aneka shifted Bridget, her right-hand pistol, and fired into the smoke guided by a heads-up display marker which gave an approximate location for her target. Or not so approximate.
‘Target fully visible and down,’ Al said. ‘Movement away from the clearing. One target, left, twelve degrees, twenty metres. The tree density will make that shot impossible.’
‘He’s retreating, ignore him. What about the other two?’
‘Nothing detected. You may have eliminated them with the suppression fire.’
There was the crack of a laser firing, the explosion of gas around the beam as it lanced through the air. Aneka turned to see Two, a surprised look on his face, crumpling to the ground with a hole in his chest. Justine had nailed her target.
Something shifted in Aneka’s peripheral vision and she turned. The camouflage on the men’s suits was good, but the gunman had just emerged from the smoke and it clung around him, sparkling in the light from the lamps in the clearing, and his gun was not so well covered. Having one of them alive might be useful, even if they had had little luck with captured assassins before.
Aneka pushed the carbine upward with Bridget and rammed Clara, her other pistol, up under the man’s chin. She could see him making the decision. Her pistol was right there and his gun was going to be useless in this position, but she had not fired yet which meant she wanted him alive… He started swinging the carbine toward her face and she pulled the trigger. The top of the man’s skull exploded into a sizzling plume of blood, brain, and bone as the machine pistol’s deadly stream of darts punched through.
‘I didn’t want you alive that much, sunbeam,’ she commented silently. ‘What about the last one?’
‘I’ve located another corpse,’ Al replied. ‘It appears that you caught him in the open when you first opened fire.’
Nodding, Aneka slipped her pistols into their holsters and ordered her suit to contract. She turned toward the middle of the clearing, speaking as soon as her mouth was uncovered. ‘Anyone hurt? Aside from the bad guys, obviously.’
Truelove was climbing to her feet. ‘I’m okay, aside from the bruises where Sharissa tackled me.’ She stabbed a finger toward Aneka. ‘You are starting to make a habit of this.’
‘Janna would have beaten me to scrap if I’d let her sexy blonde get killed.’
‘The sexy blonde owes you one,’ Sharissa said. ‘I’d offer my body in payment, but Janna would be pissed she couldn’t join in.’
Aneka rolled her eyes. ‘I assume you managed to find something that marked Wilcox’s death down as murder?’
Sharissa gave a curt nod. ‘I had a full biochem sequence run on his body. It’s not easy to detect, but he had several psychotropics in his system. Inhibition reducers, sensory boosters, and also a sedative. Asking around the clubs we found a bartender who remembered him leaving with a woman about an hour before he died. I’m willing to bet the records of the investigation will be gone when I get back to HQ.’ She smirked. ‘Not that it matters. I’ve got duplicates with me. What happened to my other agent?’
‘Broken neck. She was going to hit you with smoke or gas grenades before the squad attacked. Not like you to let two bad agents on your team.’
‘They were assigned,’ Truelove growled. ‘Recent transfers to New Earth. Supposedly they had expertise in this kind of operation in wooded country.’
‘Dowler made the assignment?’
‘Yes, but I saw the field reports. If they’re faked then they’re good fakes. He’s covered. It looks like a prudent decision.’ Truelove shook her head. ‘No, if Dowler’s dirty then he’s got people behind him who are, quite frankly, a lot more competent than the Herosian military. This whole situation is too clever for them. If I didn’t think it was utterly ridiculous I’d say Winter was behind it. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who could organise something this complex and well hidden.’
Aneka shrugged. ‘It’s not her; she got her brains splattered across a courtyard. The Negral AIs could have done it, but their star system exploded. All the evidence points to the Herosians. They’ve been working on it since at least the start of the Federation. You can get really good at something if you practise for five hundred years.’
‘A valid point,’ Truelove conceded.
‘There is an aircraft heading in this direction from the city,’ Al said. ‘ETA is four minutes. The transponder indicates an FSA armed transport.’
‘Did anyone call for help?’ Aneka asked. They all shook their heads. ‘In that case, I suggest we leave. There’s something coming this way from the Agency. My car is about a kilometre away, but they won’t be able to track it as easily as yours, I suspect.’
Sharissa glowered at the sky to the south-west. ‘Lead the way,’ she growled. ‘We are going to have to do something drastic about this.’
‘I have a few ideas,’ Justine said. ‘Assuming that Elaine is willing to take point.’
FSA Headquarters, High Yorkbridge, 24.10.528 FSC.
Dowler came to a stop just inside the door of the outer office, his eyes on the young woman with the short, blonde hair sitting behind the desk.
‘Agent Truelove,’ he said, almost as though he had not been expecting her to be there.
She ignored the slip. ‘Mister Dowler.’
Dowler’s gaze shifted slightly. Justine was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. She had taken off the short jacket she commonly wore to conceal the large laser pistol in its holster under her left armpit. He looked back to Truelove and smiled. ‘How did the meeting go last night?’
‘It was a trap,’ Truelove replied. ‘The two agents you assigned to us were rogues.’ She went on before he could deny his involvement. ‘Not your fault, of course. I saw their records myself. Both apparently good agents with exceptional field experience. Clearly forged in some way. The Oversight Committee agrees with me. We obviously have some bad agents in our organisation.’
‘Uh…�
�
‘I’m instituting a full administrative review of all active agents. The committee is putting through the necessary paperwork to have external examiners brought in to interview everyone in this building.’
‘External examiners?’
‘Telepaths. I spent last night being checked out. Agents Torrence and Nivalis have been cleared to handle internal security. We’ll be working through the lower ranks first so that we can keep operations running as effectively as possible.’
‘Of course. Very prudent.’
‘Do you wish to take one of the early slots or wait until the end?’
The colour had drained out of Dowler’s face, but he managed to keep his voice steady. ‘I’ll check my schedule,’ he said, and then walked past Truelove’s desk to the office beyond.
Truelove glanced over at Justine and was happy to see that her bodyguard was having almost as much trouble keeping herself from laughing as she was.
Yorkbridge Mid-town, 1.11.528 FSC.
‘You’ve got more fan mail,’ Ella said from the console in the bedroom.
Aneka looked across at her from the bed and grimaced. ‘More?’
‘Uh-huh. We’ve got them from… two cruisers, fourteen frigates, the Admiral Wingate, and about a dozen shore stations on the Rim. I think enough sailors are jacking off to your poster to float a battleship.’
‘That is so not an image I needed.’ After her appearance on a chat show, polls had indicated that a pinup poster of Aneka would go down really well, especially with the Navy. It had taken several months of persuasion, but eventually she had broken down and spent an afternoon in a studio being primped and prodded into place for photographs. The eventual poster had been fairly artistic and quite tame compared to some of the similar artwork Aneka had seen. It barely qualified as a nude, actually; she was wearing silver bikini briefs and you couldn’t see too much breast. The Navy had, however, responded with vigour.
Ella giggled. ‘You should do another one. Something a little more risqué.’
‘I don’t think…’
‘Oh! Or you could do a set. You remember Doctor Wooten wanted to do a calendar.’
‘Isn’t it a little late for…?’
‘Modern printing technology. Print on demand. It’s just twelve pictures and Wooten’s really good. You’d get royalties, and lots more fan mail.’
Slipping off the bed, Aneka walked over to Ella and kissed her on the cheek. ‘The only fan mail I want is from you, not a bunch of horny Jenlay sailors.’
Ella giggled again. ‘One of these is from a Torem.’
Aneka groaned. ‘Put some clothes on. We’re supposed to be going over to Sharissa’s place.’
~~~
‘But Torem don’t even get any pleasure out of sex.’ The disbelieving voice was Truelove’s. After she had stayed with Janna and Sharissa following the FSA interrogations following Winter’s assassination, Janna had taken a liking to the young analyst, and Justine was just added icing as far as the elder Narrows was concerned. They both got invited over for meals on a regular basis.
‘Actually,’ Janna replied as she chopped vegetables, ‘that’s a common misconception. Torem have no apparent external genitalia, and get no stimulation from grinding their sex organs together like us ape descendants. However, they do have sensitive regions, erogenous zones if you wish, which can be stimulated to produce pleasure.’
‘Oh,’ Truelove said, blinking.
‘You know this how, Mother?’ Ella asked. She was in the lounge with Truelove, Sharissa, and Justine. Aneka was assisting in the kitchen.
‘A brief fling with a Torem woman,’ Janna replied. ‘It was a few years ago. There aren’t many of them who find Jenlay attractive, but it was worth it.’ She nudged Aneka conspiratorially. ‘They have very long, very nimble fingers.’
Aneka laughed. ‘I can’t say I’m in a hurry to find out, especially not with a xenophile Torem sailor.’
‘Your loss.’
Shaking her head, Aneka changed the subject. ‘How’s the mole hunt going?’
‘Well,’ Truelove replied.
‘Or badly,’ Sharissa added. ‘It depends how you look at it.’
‘We’ve arrested five people arrogant enough to believe the telepaths wouldn’t catch them,’ Truelove clarified. ‘We’ve also had sixteen agents suddenly go missing, and discovered irregularities in all their financial records.’
‘They were all recent transfers from the Herosian border region,’ Sharissa went on. ‘Not a big surprise, I guess.’
‘That many transfers and no one noticed?’ Aneka asked.
Truelove shrugged. ‘There’s a slight rise over last year, but well within the statistical range. People transfer out there, or are assigned, and transfer back all the time. Agents get an allowance for having to live long term off their native world. Out on the Rim that either means you live like a king or you return with a lot of savings. If you can stick it for a five-year tour or longer anyway. Some can’t.’
‘I thought the Rim was the edge of the Federation,’ Aneka said. ‘Surely the Herosian border is part of the core.’
‘Politically it is,’ Ella supplied, ‘but the culture is more like the Rim, and the worlds tend to be a bit less polished. They get less attention from both sides. The education and medicine are not quite as good, and the crime rates are higher.’
‘There’s more piracy out there,’ Justine put in. ‘Some of the worlds are a little more accepting of people with lower morals. It gets really bad at the triple boundary. They call it “Buccaneer’s Reach.” It’s where the Grand Market was before the Xinti War. There’s still a market there, but it mostly deals in dubiously obtained goods.’
‘I’ve heard of the Grand Market,’ Aneka said, ‘but I’ve no idea what it actually was. Aside from the obvious anyway.’
‘It was in the Gavell system,’ Ella, the resident historian, said. ‘Not a huge system, a binary with a couple of big gas giants and an asteroid belt. No one is quite sure how it got started, but the Herosians used to claim they built the first habitat there. Basically it was a cluster of asteroids and stations built to facilitate trade between the races. It used to be the place to go if you wanted something at a good price, or for hard to get items. It was always a little lawless, but since the war it has got really bad.’
‘The Herosians and Xinti had a battle there, right?’
‘And no one is quite sure why. Whatever the reason, the place was pretty badly shot up and the Herosian fleet was more or less wiped out.’
‘After that,’ Justine went on, ‘the Herosians were fighting a losing battle all the way to Herosia. And we all know what happened when they fought there.’
Janna stood up from putting food in the oven. ‘This is depressing,’ she said brightly. ‘How about a game?’
Aneka grinned at her. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Fives.’ Ella let out a small groan at her mother’s choice. ‘For clothes,’ Janna added. ‘It’s an excellent cure for depressing topics.’
‘Well,’ Aneka said, starting toward the lounge area, ‘that’s Ella naked in three hands.’
Ella pouted, even if she knew it was true.
21.11.528 FSC.
‘You have mail marked as urgent and private,’ the apartment’s computer announced.
Aneka glanced upward; force of habit. ‘Al, get that would you?’
There was a tiny pause and then, ‘The encryption is Old Earth, military grade.’
‘Old Earth? What’s in it?’
Al displayed the message in-vision. There was a list of names, the crew of the Garnet Hyde, basically, and a set of special coordinates, and a single line of text. It is urgent that you come.
‘Send messages out to everyone on the list,’ Aneka said. ‘Tell Drake we need to take the Hyde out today. I’ll brief him when we’re in space.’ She got to her feet and headed for the bedroom where she had left Ella sleeping.
‘You’re going to take the message at fac
e value?’ Al asked.
‘Yes. It’s written in English.’
FScV Garnet Hyde.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Drake asked, his eyes on the stars ahead of them, even though that view told him little.
‘That depends,’ Aneka replied from behind his flight chair. ‘I’m sure we have to go look. I have no idea what we’ll find when we get there.’
‘We’ll know in about thirty seconds,’ Shannon said.
‘Sensors showing anything useful?’ Drake asked.
‘Nothing,’ Ella replied from the console at the side of the bridge. ‘No… there’s a mass there, something pretty big.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Drake grumbled.
Aneka shrugged. ‘If it’s a trap, then someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to set it. It would be rude not to turn up.’
‘Right… Drake to all hands, warp exit in ten. Brace for evasive action and sudden death.’
Aneka rolled her eyes, but took a firm grip on the back of the pilot’s chair as the display suddenly shifted into the red and then flickered back into a normal view and…
‘Oh… wow,’ Shannon said.
Ahead of them and just off to starboard was a warship. You could tell it was a warship from the ring of turrets around its midsection, and the huge forward beam weapon jutting from its bow. It was cylindrical aside from a slightly sloping quality to its bow section and a rather bulkier, spherical profile to the rear.
‘The vessel has no reaction drive exhaust system,’ Aggy commented as she began displaying a schematic diagram of the ship on their consoles. ‘This indicates a reactionless drive. The vessel’s mass is approximately one hundred thousand tonnes. The form is unlike any Herosian or Xinti design.’
‘It’s from Earth,’ Aneka said, her voice soft.
‘They said they’d built warships,’ Ella said. ‘I didn’t imagine anything this big…’
‘I am receiving a radio broadcast,’ Aggy said, and then a new voice came from the speakers.
‘Federal Science Vessel Garnet Hyde, this is Captain Tasker of the Battle Cruiser Hand of God. Please respond.’
Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour Page 7