The Cold Steel Mind

by Niall Teasdale

  Looping around the outside of the compound was going to take time, but she had no way of knowing exactly what strength the forces inside were. A direct assault was too risky. Moving in bursts to avoid the camera fields, she moved as quickly as she could towards the back entrance. It was almost too easy. She really did wish she had had this sort of technology when she had been running ops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  The door was solid, but there were no heat signatures visible on the other side. The locks clicked open as Al invaded the control systems, and she pulled it open, seeing no one in the corridor inside. She could hear nothing and no one; the place seemed to be empty. A decoy?

  ‘There is a secondary set of security systems which appear to be protecting facilities beneath us,’ Al informed her. ‘I am having considerably more trouble gaining access there. I believe that Shannon may be being held in that area.’

  ‘Access point?’

  ‘I have no information.’

  The building appeared to be a fairly basic design with a core utility area surrounded by open plan offices. If there was going to be a way down, it was likely that she would find it in the middle. ‘Cameras?’

  ‘On this floor I have them looped. There appear to be no guards on this level, except those at the front entrance.’

  ‘That’s not a good sign.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ Al sounded as though he was actually confused.

  ‘It probably means the lower level is impenetrable, or heavily guarded, or both. Or…’ She stopped. The alternative was that Quint had got what he wanted and left, with or without Shannon. If it was without then…

  ‘We will rescue her and stop Quint,’ Al said firmly.

  Aneka pressed on, trying to keep that frame of mind in the forefront of her thoughts. She heard and saw no one as she moved down the spinal corridor and then circled the core block. ‘You have an external schematic?’ she asked once she had been once around it. A 3D image of the block appeared with doors marked. She had seen signs on several of the doors and these were marked as legends against those doors. One door was unmarked.

  ‘The unmarked door seems a likely target,’ Al suggested.

  Aneka nodded. ‘And that’s why I’m going to try the janitor’s closet first.’ She moved around to the plain door with the simple sign on it. ‘Janitor. Keep Out.’ The handle turned easily; Al had released all the interior locks. Inside the room there were no buckets or mops, just a staircase leading down.

  ‘How did you know?’ Al asked.

  Aneka shrugged, closing the door behind her and then starting down the stairs. ‘Experience. The position relative to the building core maybe.’ She slipped her pistols from their holsters as she went.

  ‘Intuition. Something I lack. I can make calculations, exceptionally good estimations, but I can’t…’

  ‘I don’t believe in intuition,’ Aneka replied. ‘Not as some sort of mystical property of the mind.’

  ‘The Xinti did. It was one of the things they thought separated them from AIs.’

  ‘They were wrong. We just calculate things without knowing how we’re doing it and call it intuition.’ Ahead of her, down a Plascrete corridor, two guards in combat suits noticed her. Their helmets hid their surprise, but their bodies, unmoving as she raised her guns, suggested they were not expecting to find anyone coming down those stairs. ‘So much for the quiet approach,’ Aneka muttered, her fingers closing on the triggers. Slivers of hyper-dense plastic filled the air, flashing to plasma as they hit the men’s armour. The two bodies jerked violently, falling back against the wall, and they were dead without firing a shot.

  A horn began to sound. Something had triggered an alarm and there would be more of them coming. ‘I think you’ve made them angry,’ Al commented. ‘Left or right?’

  ‘Left,’ Aneka replied, checking down the right-hand corridor quickly before turning left, leading with her guns. ‘That’s just a guess.’

  ‘Apparently a good one.’ A figure in heavy powered armour was moving out of a doorway part way down the corridor ahead of her. Her rifle, she realised, could penetrate the suit’s chest armour, but her pistols did not have the power. ‘The limbs and faceplate are less well protected.’

  Aneka raised the pistol in her right hand and fired. A couple of rounds burst into flame against the suit’s helmet, but most burned through the visor and into the head behind it. A blast of ionised air ripped past Aneka’s face, fired in reflex as the man inside the suit began to fall. A second blast came out from behind him, hitting her in the left bicep and pain seared through her body. Messages flashed across her vision. Electron discharge impact. Dermal layer damaged. Internal damage. Function impaired. Her gun slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor, as the second armoured man stepped forwards, raising his rifle to fire again. Biting back on pain she knew was more psychological than real, Aneka fired first. The needles flared against the suit’s chest plate, then throat, and then up into the faceplate. The rifle jerked upwards, blasting a hole in the ceiling and plunging the corridor into darkness, but there were no more of the armoured mercenaries ahead of her. Her left arm hanging limply at her side, she started down the corridor towards the door at the end.

  The room looked like a cross between an interrogation suite and an operating theatre. Aneka swept around it with her pistol, but there was only one occupant. Shannon lay on a padded, bench-like table, her ankles and wrists in padded cuffs. She was naked, but apparently unharmed. Physically. As Aneka stepped up to her and looked into her eyes, her heart sank; Shannon looked up at her blankly. It was not that there was no recognition there, or relief, there was simply nothing.

  The back wall of the room changed, appearing to vanish right in front of her. Aneka raised her pistol and fired at the figures she saw there, but the slugs flared into plasma leaving deep burns in the Polyglass wall. Flanked by two men in powered armour, the man Aneka guessed was Ardus Quint smiled at her. He was below average height, fat, and the right side of his face had a squashed look to it that made him appear lopsided. His hairline on that side receded more than the other, worsening the effect, but his lank, dark hair was long on the left. Both his legs and his left arm were artificial; obviously so since he was dressed in a pair of knee-length shorts and a light, sleeveless robe. His right eye was also cybernetic, though that took Aneka’s enhanced vision to detect; the heat signature was wrong.

  ‘Miss Jansen,’ Quint said, sounding every inch the jovial host, ‘I see now why Mistress was unable to affect your mind.’ Aneka glanced at her arm. It was the worst damage she had ever taken; the skin was burned off most of her upper arm and the woven fibre armour layer had a burned, half-melted look to it. ‘The woman from the past is a robot. An interesting piece of information which I’m sure will be wanted by some people, for a hefty fee.’

  ‘What’ve you done to Shannon?’ Aneka asked, trying to keep her voice level.

  ‘I have extracted the information I wanted.’

  ‘The location of Negral.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Delaney said as much. It took me a couple of hours to get the information from her.’

  ‘Yes, too long for poor Shannon. I was not able to finish the process, unfortunately. She would have made a fine addition to my collection once properly altered. I was only able to erase her mind, not rebuild it.’

  Aneka’s hand tightened around her pistol’s grip. ‘Winter’s people are surrounding the building,’ Al informed her. ‘A squad is coming down now.’

  Delaying Quint seemed like the best option. ‘I have to say, Quint, of all the people I’ve met since I woke up, you are absolutely the most disgusting. I’d kiss a leper before I touched you. I have seen more attractive corpses…’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be one as soon as the Herosians discover what you are,’ Quint snapped.

  ‘They aren’t going to. You’ll never get out of here alive. And if you do, I’ll take great pleasure in hunting you down and blowing your brains out.’


  One of the guards said something which Aneka could not hear before the psychic could respond. Quint glared at her. ‘You can try, Miss Jansen,’ he said, and then he turned, heading for a door at the back of his side of the room. The wall became opaque as Aneka fired once more, riddling it with burned pits, which did not penetrate, until the magazine was empty.

  10.1.525 FSC.

  ‘How did he manage to escape?!’ Aneka roared. Ella flinched against her side and she did her best to calm down. Across the lounge, sitting with her legs crossed and meaning business in one of her grey suits, Winter remained impassive. ‘Sorry. But how?’

  ‘An escape tunnel,’ Winter replied. ‘By the time we were able to follow he was long gone, but we know where he is.’

  ‘Then…’

  ‘He is making no attempt to hide now. He has no less than three Representatives who are willing to state on the record that he has been with them for the past three days. At a party in the Islands, no less. We have no grounds to arrest him.’

  ‘He’s got the location of Negral, and he knows I’m not Human.’ Ella shifted again. Aneka was tensing and Ella was being very clingy even though six hours after her arm had been damaged there was only a patch of missing skin to show for it. The arm was not working properly yet, but it would be soon enough.

  ‘I am aware of this. Unfortunately, I can’t employ the usual means to stop him. I was able to make a search of his rooms and personal belongings. The information he has is stored in his head and I am sure he has communicated it to no one so far.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘All his communications are being monitored. His rooms are bugged. I have him under constant surveillance.’

  ‘As soon as he gets off-world that’s going to change.’

  Winter nodded. ‘And I can’t stop him leaving. He is taking a shuttle to his private yacht from the spaceport at oh-eight-hundred this morning. The information in his head cannot be allowed to go with him, and we cannot be seen to do anything against him.’

  Aneka looked across at the spy mistress. ‘Have you got a stable, airborne firing platform I could use?’

  ‘Something can be arranged.’

  ‘Aneka?’ Ella said, her voice soft. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to pay him back for what he did to Shannon. I’m going to empty his head.’

  ~~~

  ‘We’re two kilometres from the spaceport.’ The pilot’s voice in Aneka’s earphones had a matter-of-fact tone, as though discussing the weather. ‘Any closer and they’ll be asking what we’re doing here.’

  ‘It’s close enough. Height?’

  ‘Seven hundred metres.’

  She checked the time: seven-fifty. ‘Open the door.’

  One side of the vertol aircraft opened up and the wind whipped at Aneka’s hair as she looked out towards the spaceport in the distance. From here it was a complex of white shapes: high walls surrounding the landing pads, tall control towers jutting up from the centre. Aneka was laid out on the floor of the cargo bay, her rifle on a bipod in front of her. She lowered her eye to the sight out of habit, but the image from the targeting system filled her vision entirely, zooming rapidly in. A second of alignment and she could see the pad Quint was about to use, the shuttle there waiting for him.

  From this angle it was not going to be the easiest of shots. He would appear from behind the wall for maybe five seconds before he walked onto the shuttle. She would have to acquire the target, set her aim, and fire in that time, but she did have one advantage.

  ‘Snow Queen to Snow Eagle,’ Winter’s voice said over the comm-link. ‘Black King is on the move.’

  Aneka settled herself, stilling her breathing entirely and replying inside her head. ‘Snow Eagle to Snow Queen. Confirm status.’

  A man in combat armour appeared in her viewfinder. Not Quint, this man was a mercenary, a bodyguard. Behind him, Quint followed on, flanked by two women in white mini-dresses, both blondes. Aneka could imagine the looks in their eyes; blank, emotionless, just like Shannon’s had been. There were two more mercs bringing up the rear, but Aneka was now focussed on Quint. Range two thousand, two hundred and thirteen metres. Wind was not a problem, nor was flight time of the projectile. She tracked upwards, making the estimation of where his head would be as he reached the bottom of the steps up to the shuttle. Three seconds.

  ‘Snow Eagle,’ Winter said, ‘Status is go.’

  Letting herself sink into the shot, learning the slight motion of the vertol and timing it just right. Quint’s lank hair appeared in the centre of her scope. She paused for a tenth of a second as the vertol shifted slightly upwards and then down, and then she squeezed the trigger. Blood exploded across the back of the forward bodyguard. The two blondes kept walking, oblivious to their falling master as his body tilted forwards onto the steps.

  Aneka rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling of the cabin. ‘Get us out of here.’

  Capstone Hospital, Yorkbridge.

  Aneka stood outside another Polyglass window, this time looking in at Shannon. Ella was pressed firmly against her right side, Drake stood on her left. He had his arm in a sling and a bruise on his face which suggested he had been hit by the butt of a rifle. The two agents who had been guarding them had been less lucky; both were in a morgue in the southern part of the city.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Aneka said.

  ‘For what?’ Drake replied. ‘She’s not dead, or one of that bastard’s mindless dolls. The doctors say that they can rebuild her mind. It’s all in there, just…’ His voice choked off.

  ‘I could’ve been faster.’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘I could have stopped five armed men from taking her. We both know that’s so much gopi, and we’re both in denial over what we could have done.’

  ‘Huh.’ Aneka’s eyes stayed on Shannon. The vibrant, intelligent woman was gone, replaced by a blonde shell which lay there staring at the ceiling. Was her mind still full of the thoughts of others? Or had that been suppressed along with what had made Shannon into Shannon?

  ‘I just wish I could have five minutes alone with the perverted bastard who did this,’ Drake said.

  ‘He’s not going to be doing this to anyone ever again,’ Aneka replied.

  ‘They told me he’d got away.’

  Aneka turned away from the window and looked at Drake. ‘Trust me. He’s not in a position to break another woman like this.’

  Drake looked back into her eyes, saw the hardness in them, and knew what she had done. ‘Good,’ he said.

  Elrane Medical Facility, Yorkbridge, 14.1.525 FSC.

  ‘She’s been asking for you for the last three days,’ the man in the white coat said. Unlike the doctors Aneka was used to, this one’s coat was Plastex and he was wearing an Ultraskin bodysuit beneath it which resembled a shipsuit. ‘I read the report on what happened to her…’

  Aneka felt like she could hear the accusation in his voice. ‘Why’s she in restraints?’

  ‘It’s the only way we could be sure you’d be safe going in there. She’s on drugs to suppress her psionic talents as well, that’s why she’s looking doped. I’m afraid it affects the cognitive functions quite badly; she may not make much sense.’

  ‘So why use the drugs?’

  The Doctor grunted. ‘On her first night in here she managed to push suggestions on a junior doctor and two guards.’

  ‘Trying to escape?’

  ‘No.’ He looked in at the figure sitting in a steel chair behind soundproof Polyglass. She was writhing, slowly twisting and turning, rubbing her thighs together, her arms shifting under the straight jacket they had her locked into. ‘She had all three of them on her. We had to tranquilise her before she would let them go, and the expression of… frustrated loss. We’re hoping you might be able to get through to her.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ Aneka replied, ‘but I don’t think it’ll make much difference. Delaney was a sadistic hedonist before and I doubt anything I can
say is going to change that.’

  ‘She’s being transferred to an off-world facility tonight,’ the Doctor said. ‘I feel we need to try everything we can.’ Shrugging, Aneka headed for the door at the side of the observation window. ‘We’ll be monitoring. If anything goes wrong we can be in the room in a minute.’

  ‘Did you bring it?’ Delaney asked as soon as Aneka appeared in the doorway. Her blue eyes peered out from the curtain of her blonde hair, still bright despite the drugs.

  ‘Bring what, Delaney?’

  ‘The… thing. The thing you used. The thing I need…’

  ‘No, I didn’t. After what your boss did to Shannon I’m inclined to feel no sympathy for you.’

  Sinking back in her chair, Delaney’s mass of golden-blonde hair slid away from her face and she pouted. ‘You got what you wanted. Give me what I want.’

  ‘You need to come down off that. It’s not good for you.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Delaney replied in a purr. Her voice turned hard. ‘I need it.’

  ‘Become comfortable with disappointment. I have. Quint left Shannon as a senseless lump of meat.’

  ‘If he’d finished with her she’d be worse. He’ll get me out of here, y’know?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘He’ll come for me and there’s nothing you can…’

  Aneka leaned forwards, her lips beside Delaney’s ear. ‘I already did.’ She straightened up and turned towards the door. ‘He’s not coming, Delaney. Get over it. And celibacy might be a good idea for a while. Go cold turkey… Not that you know what a turkey is, but you get the picture.’

  ‘Jansen!’ Delaney shrieked as Aneka walked out through the door. ‘Jansen, give it to me! Jansen!’

  Aneka let the door shut behind her, cutting off the screams. She looked at the man in the white coat. ‘I can’t help her, Doctor. Addicts have to help themselves.’

  Yorkbridge Mid-town, 15.1.525 FSC.

  ‘You want to see if Kat and Dillon are free tonight?’ Ella asked as she pulled on a T-shirt. It did not take much pulling on, being short enough to expose the lower parts of her breasts.