‘Yes, she was.’
‘Jackson…’
‘I don’t want you thinking that this is for personal reasons,’ he said firmly. ‘We have never worked out how he communicates with his handlers. He will continue to pass information to them and that must end.’
Aneka was silent for a moment. ‘I’ll need to think about it. It’s not what I do, but… Someone once told me that some of us have to do things we don’t like so that everyone else doesn’t have to.’
‘Winter,’ Elroy said. ‘She used to say something like that.’
‘Yeah…’
‘Make no mistake, Aneka; I’d do this myself if I had the slightest possibility of succeeding. I can’t make this a personal matter… but it is.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Aneka said, and then she turned from the window, picked up her gun cases, and left.
Yorkbridge Mid-town, 19.1.529 FSC.
‘He asked you to do that?’ Winter sounded surprised. She was currently in her blonde, teenage avatar, though Aneka guessed they were all a little lost without their guiding parent-mind. They might all drift a little, as Justine had.
‘Yes, he did,’ Aneka said. They were talking in the street, just a woman chatting to a young friend. ‘If I do it, it has to be subtle. I can’t just shoot him. And that limits my options for getting to him.’
‘Well, give me a couple of days. It’ll let you think about it and I can arrange something… subtle.’ She grinned, rather maliciously. ‘I think you should do it, by the way. He needs to be eliminated, and Elroy will feel obligated. The latter might be more useful than the former.’
‘Huh,’ Aneka grunted. ‘You realise that this is exactly what I didn’t want to end up doing?’
‘I am aware of that fact, yes. If you decide to go ahead, I’ll prime Elaine with some information I’ve collected. We should be able to nail almost all of the FSA moles in one night. That will just leave the ones that I’m quite sure exist in the Navy.’
Aneka grimaced. ‘One problem at a time, please.’
Beryum System, 20.1.529 FSC.
Beryum was an odd sort of place to put a colony. A trinary system, the colony had actually been established on the lone moon of one of the gas giants circling around the distant, third star, an orange dwarf. The two primaries were almost invisible, collapsed long ago into white dwarves, but at a minimum separation of two hundred AUs, Beryum never felt much of an effect from them.
The moon, which everyone referred to as Beryum, was small for a garden world, and the atmosphere was low on oxygen. It was not the warmest place to live either and there was often snow on the ground. Life had developed there, happy in the marginal conditions, but the colonists had got used to working in breather masks and heated suits when they were outside the domed environments which formed the cities. They had come for the minerals, of which Beryum was abundantly supplied, but the system also provided a lot of Helium-3 to the near systems, and there was also a line in various herbs and spices which could not be found anywhere else. The local fauna was inedible, but not particularly dangerous. The slightly difficult living conditions, and the proximity to Herosian space, had kept the world’s population down, which meant those who went to live there had more wealth to share around. The Jenlay who lived on Beryum had a comfortable life.
The government facilities on the planet were both a source of pride and a bone of contention, and they had been for half of the four centuries the colony had existed. Beryum had a substantial naval presence, which had helped in the construction of its large, and prestigious, spaceport, but some felt that such a large base so close to the Herosians was a provocative mistake. Part of the base was an FSA facility, generally considered to be there to keep an eye on the border region. It had Herosian and Jenlay staff, but that just made things worse; the Jenlay of Beryum were not especially fond of the Herosians since the world’s ownership had been contested early in the life of the Federation. It was generally considered a clear manifestation of the Herosian urge to own everything since they hated the cold, and Beryum was far from being a warm place.
None of this concerned Mizzy Tuft. She was far more concerned about the screen she was glaring at and the maths problem it was presenting to her. Her AI tutor was attempting to educate her in the joys of basic arithmetic, and Mizzy just did not seem to have a numeric sort of brain. That fact had been noted by the education network and her class programme had been adjusted accordingly. Several higher-level mathematics modules had been dropped from her curriculum and replaced with social studies. Mizzy would be able to do basic maths, but whether she knew it or not, she was on her way to becoming an administrator, maybe even a politician or lawyer. The network was good at working out people’s vocations, but at six, Mizzy was still a little young to be planning that far ahead.
‘Mom,’ Mizzy wailed, ‘the computer hates me.’
Donna Tuft grinned, put down the tablet she was reading, and wandered over to the desk her daughter was working at. ‘Speak Federal, dear,’ Donna reminded Mizzy. ‘You need to practise or the people on New Earth will think you’re a shazi.’ They spoke a lot of Rimmic on Beryum; the colony had started out long enough ago and been isolated enough that it remained their primary tongue.
‘Sorry, Mom,’ Mizzy said, in Federal. ‘We’re going soon, right?’
‘Next month, but now you need to attend to your schoolwork.’
‘But…’ The little red-haired girl flicked a glance at the basic bit of algebra on the screen. ‘What’s New Earth like?’
‘First the sum.’
Mizzy pouted, but she frowned fiercely at the screen. Incentive had been provided: one sum, and then she could ask about the Jenlay capital. ‘If three times A equals six… So move the three across…’
‘And…?’
‘And… Under! A is six divided by three!’
‘And what does that make A?’
‘I hate division.’
‘But…?’
‘Two?’
‘Well…’
Mizzy looked at the computer and said, ‘A equals six divided by three, which means that A equals two.’ A large, green tick overlaid itself over the simple equation and Mizzy clapped her hands gleefully. ‘What’s New Earth like?’ she repeated, just in case her mother had forgotten their deal.
‘Well, it’s a lot warmer than Beryum, and you can breathe outside without a mask. Your father says there’s a beach beside the city we can go to. You can sunbathe.’
Mizzy’s green eyes widened in the way only young children can manage. ‘Outside, on a beach, without a heatsuit?!’
‘Yes, dear. And we should have some time to go outside the city as well. There’s a big forest near it…’
‘With trees?!’ Mizzy had seen plants, but nothing on Beryum grew much taller than her. The only time she had ever seen a tree was in class, on her monitor.
‘With trees as tall as a house.’
Mizzy mouthed, ‘Oh wow.’
Donna glanced at the console. ‘Now, you’ve got history there. You like history. I’m sure there’ll be something about New Earth in your lessons.’
‘Okay,’ Mizzy said brightly and turned to her screen.
Donna went back to her chair, picked up her tablet and flicked it over to the news channel. There had been some noise about gathering tensions with the Herosians and she wanted to keep an eye on it. If, for some reason, travel became restricted, her husband’s business trip might be delayed, and that would require some expectations management. News tended to be slow in coming on the border, so far away from the core regions. You got used to learning about things so long after they happened that they no longer mattered.
She frowned at the main page of the local CFM site where a breaking news banner was scrolling text. Indications of space combat… Reports of dropships… She tapped a video icon and the image expanded to fill the screen. It showed several spacecraft, little more than black blobs in the distance, but apparently moving toward the camera. But
where was the camera…?
There was a noise in the distance, a sharp sound followed by a low rumble. It was followed by a second, closer, sound. Donna bolted to her feet. ‘Mizzy!’
Yorkbridge Mid-town.
‘The Herosian embassy became “home” to around two hundred extra citizens today as the Administration announced that all expatriate Herosians on New Earth were to be placed under strict supervision.’ The presenter spoke the words with an almost happy air, but they left Aneka cold. ‘Given the option of house arrest or moving to the embassy, the majority have moved. Ambassador D’Jarnis has protested the move by the newly centralised Jenlay Administration, but his words have fallen upon deaf ears after the attack on the Senate.’
‘Most of the Herosians on New Earth wouldn’t know what to do with a gun if it bit them,’ Ella said, her pretty face sombre. ‘They’re here to run businesses, not fight. Most of them are here because they couldn’t stand it there! They’ve less reason to want a Herosian invasion than we have.’
‘World War Two,’ Aneka said. ‘The Americans gathered up a hundred thousand or so people of Japanese decent and piled them into “War Relocation Camps.” Some of them were actually Japanese, but the majority were American citizens. Eventually there was a study and it was decided it was all unjustified, based on prejudice and hysteria, but that was fifty or sixty years later. They did the same with Germans and Italians, but they’ve never apologised for that. The British did something similar with the Germans and Italians, though it was primarily to avoid them being killed by rioters, supposedly at least. People do some… strange things when they’re scared.’
‘Given what’s happened already, the Herosians might be safer in the embassy compound.’
‘True, but it’s hardly set up to house double its normal population. And I still think a lot of that was down to people trying to stir up trouble.’
Ella was silent for a second, then, ‘Do you think people are fighting somewhere?’
‘No idea. Maybe. Given they have to get ships from one system to another it might take longer before the first battles… And we wouldn’t find out about it for days anyway.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘In my time the media had just started to get really immediate. I mean there were some people saying that traditional media would be overtaken by social media feeds, but we also had embedded reporters in fighting units, live reports from the front lines. There was this video taken in Baghdad of a cruise missile flying through the city, below the height of some of the buildings. Even in the Falklands War there were reporters on the Royal Navy ships. Now we’re back to reports filed days earlier. We’re sitting at home waiting for news from faraway places.’
‘Like Senator Elroy said, it’s a slow war.’
‘Yeah… I think it’s time to speed things up a little.’
High Yorkbridge, 21.1.529 FSC.
Aneka sat in the sun, eating a processed protein ‘hamburger’ and watching the short brunette beside her as she picked the pickle out of her own snack.
‘I hate these little green, slimy…’ Winter muttered. ‘I mean, are they actually supposed to be edible? They taste like gopi, and they feel like they were formed in a press out of bioplastic.’
Aneka shrugged. ‘I got used to them. Well, the version we had back then. These are actually nicer.’
‘It’s nice to know technology has improved crappy food.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’re impatient,’ Winter commented.
‘A little. I’d rather get this done before I change my mind.’
‘All right. That case has a small neural disrupter in it. It’s a field-effect weapon, causes a massive overload of the nervous system which should manifest as cardiac arrest. He’ll appear to have had a heart attack. Rare these days, but not unheard of, and the man is under a lot of stress. It’s short range. You’ll need to be in the room with him.’
‘Which presents a problem.’
‘Yes. He lives in the tower behind us, and that’s going to be the best place to do this. A suite on the hundred and tenth floor.’
Aneka did not look around; she had had a good view of the building as she walked up. It was a towering, white edifice, slim in the way only advanced materials could manage in such a tall building. There were broad balconies on several of the floors, though they tailed off at height. High Yorkbridge did not have a lot of housing in it, and what there was was expensive.
‘How does he afford a place like this anyway?’ Aneka asked.
‘Head of the FSA carries a sizeable salary,’ Winter replied. ‘However, in this case he was assigned it for security purposes. Mister Dowler has taken it a little far, however. He seals himself into his apartment at night. Won’t even let his bodyguards in unless he summons them.’
‘No way through the door then, and I assume he doesn’t use hookers?’
‘As far as I can determine, he’s celibate. He does have a very extensive collection of erotic videos, moderately excessive ones.’
‘Right… Air ducts?’
‘Alarmed. Sections can be sealed automatically, or by command.’
‘I’m almost happy about that, but how do I get in?’
‘The balcony. No one thinks it’s possible to get to it without detection so the locking mechanism on the windows is secure, but not that secure. Al should be able to hack it.’
‘Uh-huh. And how am I supposed to get to it if it’s supposed to be impossible?’
‘Ah, you’re going to like this…’
22.1.529 FSC.
Aneka strutted into the lobby of the tower wearing a long, black coat, a black choker, a pair of stacked high heels, and a long, black wig. There were guards; men in suits with suspicious bulges under their armpits who watched her walk toward the inner entrance, stepping out to block her way just as she stepped up to the Polyglass screen.
‘Excuse me, Miss,’ one of them said.
Aneka smiled at him. ‘Yes?’ Silently she spoke to Al. ‘Got the door yet?’
‘I’m working on it. Two seconds.’
‘You’re not a resident,’ the guard went on.
‘No, Mister Cutter, floor one-twenty-two, requested a companion for the evening. I’m Leticia, Confidential Companions.’ One of the nice things about not having a normal ident-chip, and having someone like Winter to provide backup, was that she could be a hooker for the evening. Maybe ‘nice’ was not the right term for that.
‘We’ll need to check under your coat, Miss.’ The second man was checking her pockets and finding nothing. As Winter had suggested, Mister Cutter employed the services of hired companions on a regular enough basis that they were not worried about that. Aneka had wondered why he needed to bother, but the explanation was, apparently, security. The companions he hired were security vetted prior to engagement.
‘Really? There’s nothing under there except me.’
‘It’s procedure.’
Shrugging, Aneka released her grip on the front of her coat and opened it up for them. They stared. She really did have nothing under it except herself.
‘Uh… that’s fine,’ the guard said.
Giving him a smile, Aneka closed her coat and pulled open the door. ‘Well done,’ she said to Al.
‘My pleasure, and may I say that your acting skills are coming along nicely.’
‘Acting like a naked prostitute just requires taking your clothes off.’
‘You still do it exceptionally well.’
‘Hush, I’ll tell Cassandra you’ve started lusting after my body.’
‘Cassandra does, why shouldn’t I?’
Aneka said nothing, and instead hit the call button for the lift. Inside she hit the button for floor 122 and waited.
‘I’ve invaded the lift control systems. We will appear to stop on floor one-two-two, but we will continue to the roof access level. The camera in here is now suffering intermittent failures. It will fail entirely in five seconds.’
‘Okay, activate the suit as soon as it does
.’
Six seconds later she felt her chocker spreading out to cover her body in black, living metal armour. It was a creepy experience, especially when it formed over her eyes. There was always a slight instant of panic before her vision returned courtesy of the full-spectrum sensors in the suit’s skin.
The lift doors opened and she stepped out onto the topmost level of the building. According to the map Winter had provided, the stairs onto the roof were to her left, and then it would be a sharp about face to the eastern wall of the building, the side Dowler’s suite was on. And then there was the bit which, despite Winter’s statement to the contrary, Aneka was fairly sure she was not going to like.
She stopped just inside the door and slipped off her shoes, picking up the right one and popping up the panel in the thick sole. Inside was a palm-sized device, smooth and simple, with a single button on one side where your thumb could rest easily on it. She pocketed that and then hid the shoes, and her wig, behind some pipes before walking out onto the roof.
There was a brisk wind at eight hundred metres above the ground, but her suit kept it out. Buttoning her coat closed and cinching the belt tightly around her waist, she walked to the edge and looked down. She would be a black, falling object in the dark night. It was highly unlikely anyone would see her, but she did have to dodge three other balconies as she fell. Activating the gravity harness built into the coat, she stepped off into thin air.
It took her ten seconds to drop to the right level, Al calling off the distance as she went. The harness dug into her armpits as she halted her fall entirely and drifted sideways to Dowler’s window. ‘Start on the door,’ she said as she slipped over the railing and started taking off the coat. Using the suit’s adaptive camouflage was probably overkill, but she was taking no chances. Winter had found no evidence that Dowler had cameras in his suite, but if there were any, they were not going to see her.
‘Lock disabled,’ Al reported. ‘Camouflage enabled. You’re clear to proceed.’
Aneka pulled the window aside slowly, mindful of sound, and checked the room beyond for infrared signatures before moving into it. It was a bedroom, and there was no one in it. Dowler was apparently burning the midnight oil. Listening, she could hear sound from the next room, so she slipped to the door and opened it slowly, just enough that she could slip through. That was wider than she would have liked and she once again cursed nature and the Xinti for giving her large breasts.
Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour Page 15