Steel Beneath the Skin

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘What is?’ The water rushing over Aneka’s skin felt good. It felt like it was washing away her irritation with Ella.

  ‘The two of us avoiding everyone because someone else is in our partner’s bed.’

  The irritation made an attempt at coming back. ‘Huh. Well I could have been in there with them. Ella wanted me to be. I’ve just never had much fun with group sex.’

  ‘You haven’t?’ Patton sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘Nope. First time was in Bangkok. Two friends of mine persuaded me that a foursome with them and a Thai hooker would be awesome fun. Afterward I told them they were arrogant, selfish arseholes and I never spoke to them again. I kept in touch with the hooker for a couple of years afterward though. Then she got herself stabbed by a John.’

  ‘Huh,’ Patton grunted. She had no idea what a “John” was and was guessing at what “hooker” meant, but she got the overall picture.

  ‘And there was a friend I visited when she was in university. We ended up in bed with her boyfriend and she got narked because he wanted to fuck me more than her.’ Aneka cut off the water and grabbed a towel as she walked out of the cubicle. ‘All in all, I’ve yet to have a good experience with more than one partner.’

  Patton watched as Aneka crossed the room, her towel rubbing at her hair. ‘You need the right people. If I decide Drake’s getting any before we get back to New Earth, maybe we could arrange something. He’s good even if he did hook up with his old flame on no notice and not invite me. Or you could go pay a visit to Bash and Monkey wearing only a smile. Monkey’s a little shy at times, but the two of them could show you a good time.’ She was still watching as Aneka dried her body.

  Aneka put her foot up on the edge of the bed and began drying her leg. Patton did not stop staring. ‘I think with Ella it’s mostly just that she assumed I’d want to hump the pair of them. I’m not used to a society where recreational sex is a given.’ She swapped legs, letting her thigh swing wider open as she dried it. And why am I showing myself off to Shannon anyway? ‘I’m not saying people didn’t have sex for fun, but there were still a few issues that reduced that kind of activity. Now it seems to be “fuck anyone you think looks hot.”’ She reached back and dropped her towel on the table. Her leg stayed where it was, resting on the bedframe next to Patton’s hip.

  ‘Yeah, speaking of which,’ Patton said. ‘I can start up the air cycle in one of the spare rooms, or you can stay here if you want… but make a choice because I either need you or my vibrator about now.’

  Aneka smiled. ‘Thanks for giving me the option. Get the vibe, it’ll spice things up for both of us.’

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  Aneka walked with Ella to the hibernation chambers. On the flight deck, Drake and Patton were busy setting the flight plan to their ultimate destination, Bashford was setting things up for Aneka’s courses, and the remaining crew were already in their capsules. Cold-sleep was not exactly suspended animation, from what Aneka had been told. The body was drugged and fed with chemicals which prevented the formation of ice crystals, and then chilled down to sub-zero temperatures to slow body processes. It sounded distinctly unpleasant to Aneka, but she was not doing it.

  ‘We’ll all be waking up about five days before arrival,’ Ella said. ‘To do prep work and stuff.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka said.

  ‘I could, um, get up earlier to help you with your exams, if you’d like?’

  ‘Sure, why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well, maybe because I was an inconsiderate slut last night? I was so thrilled with the idea that I could get you and Paul at the same time I didn’t think about how you might feel about it?’

  ‘Huh. Yes, you were rather inconsiderate, but I wouldn’t call you a slut. You get so enthusiastic about things that you don’t think anyone else will dislike the idea. I’m not used to this society yet, Ella. I’m not used to people assuming I’ll want to sleep with them, and I don’t really like threesomes that much.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘I heard you managed to console yourself with Shannon.’

  ‘We bonded over our partners banging their exes. And she didn’t just assume, she gave me the option.’ For some reason Aneka felt like being a little cruel. ‘She’s really adept with a vibrator too. I came like a train.’ Sure enough, when Aneka glanced at Ella, she looked like a kicked puppy.

  ‘Oh,’ Ella said. The girl was so easy to read she might as well have had her emotions printed on her forehead.

  ‘Look, Ella, I don’t mind if you get up early, and I’ll be sleeping in the same room so if you do get up, I’ll be there. Just so long as you’ve got over your guilt. There’s no point. You had a good time, I had a good time, what’s the problem?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’ They turned into the hibernation room and Ella walked over to one of the white tubes lying in two rows down the room. She tapped in a series of instructions on the panel on the side and the clear plastic panel on the top opened up. ‘I’m getting up early,’ she said as she climbed in. She lay down and grinned up at Aneka. ‘I’ve got a couple of vibrators too.’

  Aneka laughed as the door closed over and Ella closed her eyes. There was a soft hiss as anaesthetic gas entered the chamber, and Ella’s body relaxed. Arms moved out from the top of the chamber, settling over Ella’s neck. Aneka turned back to the door rather than watch who knew what being pumped into the girl’s bloodstream. Patton was walking in.

  ‘Bash says to meet him in the cargo hold,’ she said as she headed for one of the empty sleep units. ‘Drake’s on his way down so you’ll be alone in ten minutes.’ She looked up from programming the unit. ‘Thanks for last night. The change was nice. Has Ella got over it?’

  ‘She will.’ Aneka started out and then stopped. ‘Doesn’t Drake have a first name?’

  ‘Mallory. He hates it. Everyone calls him Drake.’

  ‘Huh. See you in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah, morning for me anyway. Good luck.’

  Aneka headed out of the hibernation suite and back toward the rear section of the ship. The cargo hold was a big, open space, largely empty since it was supposedly going to be filled with things they found at their destination. Most of it was also unpressurised, but there was a small pressurised section, and that was where she found Bashford.

  He smiled at her as she walked into the room. ‘I figured we would kick off with something interesting.’ He waved at a packing case at the side of the room and she looked over at it. Three black cases were sitting on top of it and she recognised them immediately.

  ‘Those are the weapons cases from the xinti ship.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I cleared it with Gillian. We figured they were essentially part of your personal effects and xinti weapons are pretty well known so there’s no real scientific value. If that pistol is the kind of thing I think it is, it has a non-lethal setting so you can use it for target practice.’ He nodded down the hold to where he had set up a couple of paper targets. ‘I took the liberty of charging the power cells.’

  ‘Okay,’ Aneka said as she flipped open the cases. The pistol was big, but not excessively heavy. She lifted it from its case and hefted it, feeling the balance. It was slightly front heavy until she slotted one of the large, cylindrical cells into the hole in the back. Almost immediately a display opened up in her vision field showing power remaining, range to target, and an image of the wall. She turned the pistol around and the image shifted. There was a camera mounted under the large barrel. ‘Huh,’ she grunted. ‘Heads-up display. I’ve got picture-in-picture aiming.’

  ‘A lot of modern weapons have a system like that. Most people have to wear something to display it on.’

  Aneka gave him a grin and turned her attention back to the display. There was, indeed, a power setting, currently showing as “lethal.” A thought switched it to “pacify.” She aimed down the hold, lined up one of the targets in her sights, and pulled the trigger. A pulse of energy burst out from the muzzle and hit the target dead centre. There was
a sharp electrostatic ripping sound and the paper target shredded.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Aneka exclaimed. ‘Sorry. It says it’s on pacification mode.’

  ‘Oh, I think it is. It’s just damn powerful. I think that’s a pulsar pistol. They fire anti-matter pulses in lethal mode. The acceleration field is usually more powerful than a typical blaster. The Xinti used them extensively, we’ve never quite figured out the physics.’

  Aneka looked down at the weapon she was holding. ‘I don’t know about the physics, but I can build and repair this thing.’ She moved the pistol up and snapped off a shot from her hip, watching as the target disintegrated.

  ‘Perhaps on your off time you could draw up some schematics,’ Bashford said. ‘Might be another little money-spinner for you if they can be manufactured.’ He pulled two rolls of paper out of a box. ‘And don’t worry, I have more targets.’

  Aneka grinned at him. This was certainly more fun than reading textbooks.

  Part Two: Where Men Once Walked

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  One of the things Aneka had had to learn was the standard calendar. The federal authorities had set about defining a standard time system early in the life of the Federation. Jenlay, apparently, were more anal about that kind of thing than the other races, so jenlay standards had been used for a lot of things. A second was a second, defined using some aspect of a caesium-133 atom, a minute was sixty of them. A day was the same length as she was used to, but divided into twenty hours of four thousand three hundred and twenty seconds each. The year was three hundred and sixty days long, divided into twelve, thirty day months. Of course, each world had its own local calendar as well, and it all sounded very confusing. Her computer, however, did not consider it a problem. It popped up an application which let her keep track of multiple simultaneous clocks and calendars.

  Her computer was becoming more “helpful” as time went on. It did not seem to be sentient, as such, but there was certainly some degree of intelligence in there and it was showing itself more as she got more confident with her new body and the world she had found herself in.

  And she was becoming more confident. Her nights were spent in a personalised, virtual dream world where she could interact with characters who taught her how society functioned. She had learned how to operate the common computer interfaces, been to parties and listened to the things people chatted about, attended lectures on the history of the Federation, and had more wet dreams than she thought was entirely proper.

  She had been through the various training courses, initially with Bashford, then Monkey, and then on her own, though she was currently sharing the ship with Patton and Ella. Ella had got up four days ago to sit around looking nervous while Aneka did the exams. She had said someone had to since Aneka looked sublimely confident about it. Which was quite true. Monkey had told her that the questions were basically information recall and some problem solving. Well her computer-augmented memory was beyond perfect, she had discovered, and the kind of problem solving she was being asked for was little different than planning the kind of military ops she had done a hundred times before.

  The official report on her test scores was now waiting on confirmation by Drake and Bashford, and today was the day they would be emerging from the sleep pods along with Monkey and Gilroy. And assuming she had done as well as she thought, Aneka would become a resource for the preparations for planet-fall.

  Aside from providing stress relief during the exams, though considering she seemed to be stressing more than Aneka was, perhaps it was the other way around, Ella had given her a bit of a briefing on their destination. Alpha Mensae IV was a relatively warm planet on the edge of known space; known space for now, but actually quite close to Old Earth, or where they thought Old Earth was. Heavy, but small, it had a high mineral content in its crust which seemed to be why some early human colony had been sited there and rediscovered by a deep survey mission three years earlier. Now they were going out to look at it since it might shed considerable light on early human activity in space.

  ‘So we’re going to go look at some ancient human miners?’ Aneka had asked.

  ‘After a thousand years in a warm environment, I doubt there’ll be much left of the miners,’ Ella had replied.

  ‘I’d have thought there wouldn’t be much left of anything.’

  ‘There are ruins. The building materials we’re talking about don’t decay. Pretty much ever.’

  The three women walked down to the hibernation room together to wake everyone else up. With Aneka’s exams finished, they had gravitated into a threesome which Aneka had actually enjoyed; maybe Patton had been right about it needing the right people. Whatever, they had felt a little more like companions who should go together to see the others through the revival process. Aneka had seen three people come out of cold sleep now and she knew it was not exactly a pleasant process. You woke up cold and usually a bit nauseous, generally hungry and very thirsty.

  ‘I’m too old to be doing this,’ Gilroy groaned as she sat up and looked around at the others. She was the last one conscious and the others were all waiting for her to come around so that they could go find something to eat. Each was holding a plastic bottle of isotonic fluid, most of them had gone through half of it already. Patton handed Gilroy a bottle and she yanked off the sealed top and drained it in one go.

  ‘No you aren’t,’ Bashford replied. ‘You’ve been saying that for thirty years that I know of. Come on, we’ll get some food in us and take a look at Aneka’s test results. I’m keen to see what a xinti-built synthetic body can do for us.’

  Apparently the answer was, “quite a lot.” Bashford’s eyes widened as he sat in the mess with a fork in one hand and a data tablet in the other, the former apparently briefly forgotten before his stomach growled and he started on the food. Then he spent twenty minutes peering at the display and scrolling backward and forward through the results. Drake, whose signing off on the exams was more of a formality, looked a little surprised and dug into his food to await Bashford’s analysis. Gilroy was also gazing intently at a tablet, though that could not be Aneka’s test results.

  ‘Ninety-six per cent,’ Bashford finally said. ‘I didn’t score that highly.’

  ‘I only scored eighty!’ Monkey squeaked.

  ‘Well, a lot of it was just recall of procedures,’ Aneka said, feeling embarrassed, ‘and I seem to be able to remember everything now. I always used to hate that kind of exam.’

  ‘You were supposed to be a data collection operative,’ Gilroy pointed out. ‘I would imagine the Xinti wanted accurate information.’

  Bashford grunted. ‘Yes, your scores on procedure and documentation are perfect. The practical analysis scores are lower, but those are always a little subjective.’

  ‘I’m ex-military. I’m used to tactical analysis, insertion and extraction methods, site security… personal protection.’

  ‘Well, get some experience under your belt and you’ll be an absolutely first rate facilitator.’ He tapped the screen a couple of times, and went through the sign-off process. Drake nodded, apparently happy, and did the same.

  ‘Aneka Jansen,’ the captain said, ‘Facilitator First Rank, welcome to the crew.’

  Aneka gave him a smile. Ella positively beamed at them both. Then Aneka turned to Gilroy. ‘What are you staring at so intently, Doctor?’

  ‘Test results. The dream programme you went through took note of your reactions as well as providing education. The first part of your consultancy, if you will. I’m quite sure that your memory will fill in blanks in our knowledge, but your reaction to our world also tells us a lot about the differences. Of course, it will take some time to analyse the data. Ella’s the psychologist, she’ll be doing most of that.’

  Trying not to think about the amount of dream sex she had had, Aneka said, ‘About that… You know, I was a grunt soldier. I mean, history was never my strong point and I hated politics. I don’t know how much blank space I can fill in.’


  ‘My dear girl,’ Gilroy said, smiling warmly, ‘if you’d seen how much information we have on your time you’d realise that anything you could tell us would be valuable. We’re not even sure about half of the information we do have.’

  ‘Like,’ Ella said, pausing to think of an example, ‘we’ve never understood how the world developed the way it did under a monarchy.’

  Aneka frowned. ‘A monarchy?’

  Ella nodded, enthusiastically as always. ‘We have records of one of the kings so we know it was a monarchy, and it just doesn’t seem like the right environment for a largely commercial inter-stellar society to develop from.’

  ‘Uh… which king? There was a queen on the throne when I… left.’

  ‘King Elvis. Apparently he was famous for singing.’

  Aneka’s jaw worked for a few seconds before she managed to come out with, ‘Okay… Yes, maybe I’ll be more use to you than I thought.’

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  Aneka was busy checking perimeter security sensors in the pressurised hold when the announcement came over the ship’s intercom. It was Patton’s voice, sounding very matter of fact, ‘All hands. We will be dropping out of warp in five minutes. Orbital insertion in fifteen.’ A slight thrill went through Aneka; they were arriving at her first ever alien world. Apparently someone else had thought of that. ‘Aneka, please come up to the bridge,’ Patton added, her voice sounding as though she was grinning.

  Dutifully finishing the diagnostics on the unit she was working on, Aneka arrived at the bridge just as the warp field was collapsing. With the field up the light ahead of them was squashed to the point where it was invisible, frequency-shifted to gamma rays by their speed. As they slowed, space ahead of them turned blue, then grew darker, and suddenly rippled into normality. And there was Alpha Mensae IV.

  Whatever Aneka had been expecting, the planet did at least look alien. There was a reddish haze enveloping the globe, but she could just about make out large bodies of water and two land masses which looked very green, even through the red.