It took him nineteen. The crew had set up a crossfire in the main corridor which the access ladder from the reactor room dropped into. Barricades of crates had been set up. Behind them men waited with pistols.
‘They are also attempting to bypass the security lockdown on the door,’ Al told her. ‘I am currently successfully blocking them.’ A klaxon of some sort began to sound in the reactor room and red lights began flashing. ‘And that is the reactor powering down its fuel feeds. In about ten seconds they will be switching over to auxiliary power and their weapon systems will be out of action.’
Aneka waited the ten seconds before unplugging and moving to the door. She switched her pistol over to plasma warheads and smashed her hand against the emergency button beside the door. It levered aside and she fired the first round before it was fully open. The next followed it a second later, each of them curving off in different directions at the bottom of the access tunnel. Then she followed them, pulling herself down the ladder in quick bursts until ‘gravity’ took over and she was falling. Explosions pulsed below her and she dropped into an organised resistance which had suddenly fallen into confusion.
A lot of the men were still standing, but their barricades had largely been flash-burned into molten plastic. She still had to deal with the ones who were upright and she raised her pistol, firing off a hail of darts to her right. Someone hit her in the side with a blast of force, but the nanosuit was built to withstand far worse than a small pulse pistol and she barely noticed it. Turning, she opened fire again, and then there was silence apart from a few moans. Not all of them were dead; she would need to rectify that.
‘More are coming,’ Al stated, displaying a picture of one of the corridors. There were, indeed, more of the Pinnacle soldiers running along it armed with pistols and what looked like shock batons.
‘Yeah… Well, it’s easier than having to go to them.’
~~~
‘Active scans show no indications of movement aside from you, Aneka,’ Gwy informed her. ‘I am detecting no life signs from anywhere in the station. You are alone.’
Aneka looked around the control room at the bodies of the various command staff who had been operating it. They had fought to the last, but they had had no chance. ‘What about the ships?’
‘Radiation levels on some of the vessels are making accurate determination difficult but are also suggesting that my scans are redundant.’
Five thousand people, dead. In just over forty minutes. Aneka shook her head and felt the cable plugged into her neck tug. ‘Al, can you open the hangar bay from here?’
‘On it.’
‘Right. Gwy, get in and get docked. I want everything we can drag out of these computers filed away and analysed. The Hope of Sanctuary is going to arrive tomorrow and I want to be ready when it does.’
‘How do you plan to play it?’ Cassandra said. Aneka was somewhat pleased that the android sounded a little unhappy. Her voice was calm, a little too calm. Gwy was her usual, bright self, but Cassandra was feeling the carnage.
‘I’m not absolutely sure what the situation is… So I think I’ll check out this pirate ship and then work out what I should do from there. You and Gwy will hold off and be ready for an extraction if it’s needed.’
‘You believe Ella may be under some duress?’
‘No… I don’t think so, but we’ll assume she is until we know she isn’t. We know too little about Kade not to play it safe. Al, when Gwy is docked, patch the data feeds to her directly and we’ll go meet them. I want out of this place.’
Gwy.
‘This doesn’t bother you at all?’ Cassandra was asking as Aneka walked into the cabin. Gwy was looking at her as though she did not really understand the problem.
‘What doesn’t bother her?’ Aneka asked.
‘Well… all this death,’ Cassandra replied, sounding a little reluctant to go on since Aneka was now there.
‘Ah. I’m just glad it bothers you. I told you you’d be better off out of it.’
‘And you were right. It is disturbing in a way I find difficult to explain.’
‘Because it’s not entirely necessary, but I wouldn’t mind knowing how Gwy is taking it so well myself.’
Al’s android avatar came to life at that point as he devoted some runtime to animating it. ‘Gwy is, or was designed as, a warship,’ he pointed out.
‘I was,’ Gwy agreed. ‘I have made myself more than that, with your help, but my primary purpose is to execute covert military actions. I have just assisted in the execution of an entirely successful covert military action. I believe I can, intellectually, understand the problem now that Aneka has defined it, but I am not “bothered” by performing my designed purpose as well as I can.’
Aneka nodded. ‘Makes sense.’
Cassandra sighed. ‘It does. As with Al, Gwy has emotions, quite strong ones, but she also has a designed purpose which affects them. You and I are emergent intelligences. We made up our own purpose, and even if you are a soldier, killing on this scale is not in your nature.’
Aneka chuckled softly. ‘Everyone is who they are.’
‘Very… pithy,’ Al said.
‘Huh, but you’re wrong, Cassandra. The actual volume isn’t what bothers me, but it’s that there should have been another way, and it had to be done by subterfuge, and none of them stood a chance with those stupid guns they use. It was slaughter, mass murder, and I don’t believe I’m a murderer.’
There was silence for a few seconds, because no one really knew what to say. Aneka began undressing as she started for the shower.
‘I have managed to find the orders issued to these ships for this operation in the feeds I am getting,’ Gwy said as Aneka got to the door. ‘If it is any consolation, these people planned to give no quarter to the Hope of Sanctuary. They were planning a slaughter. There were to be no survivors.’
‘Thanks, Gwy,’ Aneka said. ‘It helps a little. I’m going to take a shower and then we’ll plan out what comes next. If you finish grabbing the data before I’m out, head into empty space and wait.’
BES-206, 20.12.559 FSC.
‘Point five gravities… standard nitrogen-oxygen mix at a touch under an atmosphere… no contaminants that I can detect so far. Still no EM signatures.’
Aneka watched the small team of pirates and Ella, as the latter went through a standard environment scan with a scanner which she had to think was archaic.
‘No sound, no movement,’ Kade’s voice was hushed even though there was no indication of anyone being around to hear it. ‘It’s…’
‘A ghost ship?’ Lanyon, the big, four-armed, bare-chested man, suggested.
‘Let’s keep talk like that to a minimum, shall we? Okay, you take two men and check out the cargo bay. I’ll go through to control. If we’re going to find out what happened here, that’s probably the place to do it.’
Waiting until they moved off, Aneka uncurled from where she had been hiding, camouflaged, in a corner of the entrance room from the hangar bay. She had decided that the easiest way to get aboard the pirate ship was to simply hitch a ride on one of their shuttles. And that meant waiting for them to arrive on the station. So she had put her pistol in a camouflaged pack along with a few other essentials of the infiltration business, and set out to wait. She had been waiting for six hours, and it was a good thing her muscles did not cramp.
‘Ella did not appear to be under any duress,’ Al said as Aneka slipped through the airlock and onto the craft the pirates had arrived on.
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘Should we not talk to them?’
‘I still want to know more about this bunch before I do that. Gwy, what’s the ship doing?’
‘It’s sitting there running scans of the station and the Pinnacle ships. No communications traffic, but I believe they are monitoring. As am I.’
‘Keep me informed if anything comes up.’ The shuttle was basic, seating for eighteen people in a bay designed for marshalling troops.
Fairly basic seats with gravity harnesses lined the walls. It was not going to be a comfortable ride for the passengers. The thing was bristling with weapons, but Gwy’s estimate of the reactor power output suggested it could not run them all at the same time. The whole thing seemed… second hand.
‘They do seem to be operating on largely outdated technology,’ Al commented. ‘Some more modern, like that pistol Ella had on her boot.’
‘Yeah… Don’t get me started on the outfits. What is this? Are they on some sort of pirate adventure holiday in space?’
‘It was the swords I was wondering about, and that enormous axe Lanyon had.’
‘That actually makes a little sense. The Pinnacle aren’t in armour and at close quarters a melee weapon isn’t a bad choice, if you know how to use it. If the Pinnacle are going to cripple themselves to avoid breaking their ships, then I guess they deserve to get carved up with blades. Ella and Kade were in heels!’ Casting around, she located a door at the back of the cabin and headed for it.
‘They did seem to be a little, uh…’
‘Pirate costumes supplied by Frederick’s of Hollywood?’ Aneka suggested sourly.
‘You do realise that barely anyone alive would actually understand that reference.’
The door gave access to a small cargo bay along with the turrets mounted to either side of the hull. It would make a good place to hole up and wait to be taken aboard the Hope. ‘I know. But you do, and Ella will when I point it out to her.’
‘Education is a wonderful thing.’
Hope of Sanctuary.
Lanyon had sent the shuttle back to the Hope to get extra men to strip the station, and that had given Aneka the perfect opportunity to sneak onto the pirate ship. She had slipped past the crewmen in the hangar bay with no trouble, but then she was at something of a loss for what to do.
‘Gwy? The crew complement seems a little thin?’
‘Estimating based on vital signs detected, it is. I would suggest that Kade operates a skeleton crew in the off-watches.’
Aneka gave a nod, mostly to herself. ‘Okay. I want somewhere to hole up where we can tap into their computer network and you and Al can run over their data. Any suggestions?’
‘The vessel is equipped with a thirty-gigajoule spinal antimatter particle weapon. In the midsection, where you are, that occupies the core of the structure. It is manned, but you should be able to find somewhere there which is sufficiently obscured by equipment.’
Picking a direction which looked inward, Aneka set off. ‘How are you getting this without active scans?’
‘Interpolation, mostly. I am detecting echoes from the vessel’s wireless network interacting with the hull, radiation from the reactor. I have had some time to observe the ship and determine external details, and make educated guesses regarding the internal layout.’
‘And you say you aren’t the most awesome ship in the galaxy.’
‘Aggy would have achieved the same result faster and better.’
Grinning in the nanosuit was not easy, but Aneka had found an access ladder which seemed to fit the bill and she climbed it, finding herself beside something which really gave the impression of being a big, mean gun. The whole thing seemed to be coils: huge, bulky, electromagnetic coils in a long row which ran the length of the room, which was a good third of the length of the ship. Cables ran down from ducts in the ceiling, presumably providing power. Other cables ran out to various control stations around the room, the displays indicating they were used for monitoring at least most of the time.
There were three men in the room, all of them looking less like pirates and more like technicians at a fancy dress party. They were bored. A little wired given they were in Pinnacle space surrounded by dead ships, but bored. Aneka found a panel in one corner of the room which had not been secured properly, eased it open and squirmed into the ducting behind it.
‘Ten metres ahead,’ Al said. ‘There is a small network switch box we can tap. I should have access to everything in minutes.’
‘Good,’ Aneka said, starting to slide herself along the duct. ‘We’ll wait it out here until they go to sleep, and then we’ll go see Ella.’
~~~
‘They have returned to the ship,’ Al said.
Aneka shifted her attention from the accounting information her AI had located among Kade’s personal files. ‘How’s the mood?’
‘Confused, annoyed, and worried, I think. They were expecting to attack the station, extract some antimatter warheads and be gone. Now they have a mystery on their hands and no big payout.’
‘Huh. Well, these accounts are interesting. Kade needs to learn to hide her tracks better.’
‘Perhaps she is not worried about doing so.’
‘Maybe. I recognise some of the names here from our little gun-running investigation. She’s selling some damn dangerous weapons to people with the morals of a louse. I know for a fact that Warret Shingen was selling nukes into that civil war on Tenethis. Antimatter warheads… She’d be pulling in a big payout all right.’
‘I suspect she wants some for her own use.’
‘Quite possibly, but they were talking about a couple of hundred. She could sell half of them and have enough to destroy the Pinnacle home world and buy an army to do it with.’
‘The Pinnacle did create a lure which Kade would find very difficult to resist. I am tracking Ella through the security cameras in the corridors. She… appears to be accompanying Kade to her cabin.’
Closing her eyes, Aneka rested her head on her hands. ‘Is there surveillance in the cabins?’
‘No. I could tap the room’s audio pickups?’
‘Do that.’
A second or two later Aneka could hear sounds, but nothing which really resolved into anything she could identify until Kade spoke.
‘You’re really getting used to this.’
‘I’ve seen bodies before. Lots of bodies. That was… carnage.’ Ella sounded tired and shocked; well, that was probably to be expected.
‘And it should have been us. Someone set us up. Eight cruisers and a dreadnought, plus the station. We’d have been debris before we knew what hit us.’
‘But if they were planning to attack Iyonvrie… maybe?’
‘Doesn’t work. There were no warheads, and that fleet is too small for an invasion. The Pinnacle have ten of those hulking bastards. Had ten. They’d have sent six, and a lot more cruisers, and logistics vessels, transports for troops… No, those were there because they were expecting us. They dangled a big, juicy worm in front of me and they knew I’d have to take it and then… What the fuck happened to them?’
‘I don’t know. Something major. Something very coordinated. Meticulous.’ There was a pause; Aneka could almost hear Ella’s mind going over the possibilities. ‘I’d almost say… But that would be crazy.’
There were sounds, but nothing Aneka could identify. Ella thought the destruction looked like Aneka’s work; she was only dismissing it because it seemed so highly unlikely that Aneka could actually be there.
Then she heard Kade say, ‘I know a better way of making the ghosts go away. And I’m not drunk this time.’ Well, that explained the sounds.
Aneka cut the feed off from her own mind. ‘Let me know when they’re asleep. Keep an eye on the crew. When it goes quiet, we’ll go in.’
‘You’re disappointed in her?’
‘Not sure yet. I wouldn’t say no to Kade myself. I’m just not keen on Ella bedding a woman who seems to care more about her revenge on the Pinnacle than pretty much anything else.’
21.12.559 FSC.
There was no one on duty in the gun compartment. The weapon was powered down, dormant, and she ship was running on a minimal active complement. There was no need for anyone to be in the dark room, so there was no one to see Aneka slip out of her hiding place.
Her nanosuit was a belt around her waist now and she paused to strap her holster to her thigh before moving out. Her screens could provide concealmen
t if she needed it, but Al was monitoring the corridor cameras and they were showing empty halls. The crew were sleeping, or in rooms and on duty. In the engineering section, a small, plump man was tinkering with some small gadget. Data feeds Al had tracked suggested that about half the crew were actually awake and watching porn. Well, there were relatively few women on the crew, so that was, perhaps, to be expected. The cat-girl was on duty on the bridge; Al had seen one other go in with her.
‘Gwy? Situation?’ Aneka asked.
‘We are in orbit at one of the Trojan points of the largest of the system’s gas giants, approximately three light seconds from the station. I am standing off at two thousand metres. Cassandra is worried.’
‘I’m not… worried as such,’ Cassandra’s voice cut in. ‘Concerned, perhaps. I think Ella may take all this badly, and I believe we have found at least one spy on Haven.’
‘Oh?’
‘We found an image which had been transmitted to the system’s main network. It contains embedded data which we cracked using one of the Pinnacle’s military encryption systems. It was little more than an acknowledgement of receipt of a report, but it seemed to indicate that someone informed the Pinnacle when the Hope left.’
‘Could you have found it without the stuff we stole from the Pinnacle?’
‘Found it? Yes. Decrypting it would have taken longer. Nothing Haven, or Kade herself, has access to could have broken it within an acceptable time frame.’
‘I’m shaky on the whole “acceptable time frame” thing…’
‘Several centuries.’
‘Okay… Just so you know, I’m going to be pretty shitty to Ella for a while. I need to find out where Kade’s loyalties lie.’
‘That’s fine,’ Cassandra said. ‘I think she deserves it.’
Letting herself grin, Aneka dropped down the access ladder to the lower floor and then followed the route Al had worked out from the security cameras to Kade’s cabin on the upper level.
‘Okay, cut all the comms in and out of the room, and unlock the door.’
‘The door,’ Al said, ‘is not locked. It appears that the locking systems all through the ship have been disabled centrally. They could be activated, but they do not automatically seal.’
Aneka Jansen 7: Hope Page 16