Aneka Jansen 7: Hope

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Really? How… egalitarian, or something. When we get in, lock down all the doors in the midsection.’

  The room was dimly lit, but Aneka’s eyes were the highest spec Winter had been able to fit into her body. Kade was lying on her back, sprawled out on a lot of cushions, which seemed to be her idea of furniture. Ella lay on her side, face buried in a cushion, nearby. Both of them were naked and Aneka suppressed a sudden burst of anger. This was not the same as Ian Devor.

  Stepping smoothly across the room, Aneka stood over Kade, one foot between her spread legs, and aimed her pistol directly at the pirate’s face. ‘Al, turn the lights on.’ Light flooded the room.

  Kade’s eyes flickered open. ‘What the fuck?’ Green eyes focussed on the wide barrel of the gun sticking in her face. ‘Oh shit!’

  Ella stirred, turning onto her back and blinking as she tried to work out what was going on, eventually realised who was holding the gun… ‘Aneka!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Aneka said, her gun remaining quite level. ‘“Oh shit, it’s Aneka.”’ For some reason, the irrational anger was back and it was not as hard as she had expected to act the outraged spouse.

  ‘But–’

  ‘First I hear you’ve been kidnapped. Then I hear you’ve been shagging Ian fucking Devor behind my back. Then I find out the people that grabbed you were probably Pinnacle. And when I finally track you down you’re shacked up with Pirate Queen Barbie here!’

  ‘Yes, but how are you here? How the Hell did you find me?’

  Aneka barked out a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, that was actually pretty damn easy. I’ve spent months developing contacts in the region. One of them put me on your track. If you’d stayed in Haven I’d have caught up with you days ago. Instead, I have to come here to save your sorry butt.’

  ‘You did–’ Kade began.

  ‘Yeah. You were wondering what happened to those ships and the station? Well, I happened to them. I killed five thousand, four hundred people so they didn’t kill you. Now you better explain to me why I bothered pretty fucking fast or I’m going to pull this barge apart with my bare hands!’

  Part Six: The Death of Captain Kade

  Hope of Sanctuary, 21.12.559 FSC.

  ‘Can I at least get dressed before you kill me?’ Kade asked.

  ‘I’m enjoying the view,’ Aneka replied, but she lifted her pistol and stepped back, turning away as she holstered her weapon.

  ‘What the Hell kind of gun is that anyway?’ Getting to her feet, the captain began collecting her clothes.

  ‘Now you’ve done it,’ Ella muttered as she followed suit.

  ‘This little beauty,’ Aneka said, patting her holster, ‘is Racine, a fifteen-millimetre, gravity pulse smart-gun with micro-replicator ammunition feed. She’s capable of firing twenty three-millimetre projectiles at roughly seventy per cent of light speed in one second, or a variety of situational combat rounds, including non-lethal projectiles and micro-missiles, at lower velocities, all selectable as required by the user. She features integral sighting through a multi-spectral, high-zoom imaging system and integrates fully with my internal targeting mechanisms. I came up with the concept, but it took a genius and two of the most intelligent AIs in the galaxy to actually make it work. Any questions?’

  ‘Uh… Yeah. Who the Hell are you, lady?’ Kade had managed to get her composure back, and with it came the anger.

  ‘Aneka Jansen, born third of March, nineteen-eighty-three. That’s a bit over twelve hundred years ago. I was kidnapped by the Xinti and turned into a robot, and then a Xinti AI gave me this body, which is far superior to either of the old ones and quite capable of ripping off your arms and legs so I can bludgeon the rest of you to death with them. So, aside from the fact that I didn’t want my cheating partner to die, why did I just kill a lot of people?’

  Any answer she might have got was postponed by the banging on the door. ‘Boss?’ It was Lanyon’s voice. ‘Boss, are you okay? Someone heard shouting and all the doors have locked. Boss?’

  ‘Unlock it,’ Aneka said silently.

  The door opened and the big man was left blinking at the scene in front of him. He put two and two together, got a fairly accurate answer and, letting out a roar of rage, charged.

  ‘Lanyon! No!’ Ella shrieked.

  Aneka let him get a pace into the room before raising her left hand. The air rippled in front of it, and Lanyon gasped as the air was blasted out of his lungs and he was pushed back to the doorway. He staggered, blinked at them and then keeled over backwards. The door slid closed.

  ‘Lock it,’ Aneka instructed. Then, aloud, she said, ‘He’ll probably be fine once the shock wears off. You were saying, Barbie?’

  ‘Who’s Barbie?’ Kade asked.

  ‘She was a child’s doll,’ Ella mumbled. ‘She had… large breasts and an out-of-proportion figure. They made costumes for her.’

  ‘Hence “Pirate Queen Barbie,”’ Aneka explained. ‘I mean, seriously, have you looked at yourself in a mirror? Remind me to see if I’ve got Pirates of the Caribbean in the library as at least you’d be wearing slightly more authentic bad pirate costumes.’

  Ella sighed. ‘Johnny Depp…’

  ‘I feel like I just walked in on a conversation I have no clue about,’ Kade growled. ‘You seem to know a fair bit about me. Surely you’ve figured out I’m trying to stop these bastards taking over the galaxy?’

  ‘Nope. I see a woman hell-bent on revenge for the loss of her people who’ll go to just about any lengths to destroy the Pinnacle, but that’s got nothing to do with stopping them. You want them gone, and you don’t really seem to care who gets hurt while you do it.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Ella said. ‘She saved me. She’s saved a lot of people. She–’

  ‘Sells nuclear weapons to arms dealers who I know sell those on for use against civilians. Lives within a culture which idolises brigandry and is scared of every last pirate it busily idolises. And at the same time they’re enslaving captured Pinnacle women. For use in brothels.’

  Ella shrank back, wrapping her arms around her chest and clutching her clothes to her breasts.

  ‘They–’ Kade began.

  ‘Is it true?’ Ella asked. Her voice was quiet, but there was so much hurt in it that Kade stopped.

  ‘Ella–’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘There are some…’ Kade trailed off as Ella closed her eyes.

  ‘The Pinnacle are assholes, but one of their core beliefs is their superiority over the other subspecies. They’ve internalised it. I could see it in their eyes while they were torturing me. They didn’t care, because I was little more than an animal. You’re taking women like that and making them into sex toys for people they’d probably think were beneath them anyway. As far as they are concerned, every day, dozens of animals come to fuck them, and they don’t have any choice but to accept it.’ Ella opened her eyes and looked at Kade. ‘And they’re right. They are being fucked by animals.’ She marched toward the door, screaming in frustration when it would not open. When it did, she pushed past Lanyon, who was standing there looking very uncertain, and hurried off down the corridor.

  ‘Track her,’ Aneka said.

  ‘I am following her,’ Al replied.

  ‘Well, that went better than expected,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘She hasn’t totally lost her sense of taste. You have space in your hangar bay for a hundred-tonne ship. I want to bring mine in and dock her.’

  ‘Are you… crazy?’ Kade asked.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s suggested I am, but I do need to talk to you about all this and what you’re going to do next, so I dock Gwy in your hangar, or we have to piss about with docking tubes.’

  ‘You don’t trust–’

  ‘There’s an implosion bomb attached to your reactor. If you try anything I’ll leave you stranded here for the Pinnacle to find when they turn up to investigate the station.’

  ‘I don’t recall us planting such a device,’ Al commented.<
br />
  ‘We didn’t. I wonder how much effort she’s going to spend trying to find it.’

  ‘Dock the ship,’ Kade growled at her.

  ‘Very reasonable of you, Captain.’ Turning on her heel, Aneka headed for the door. Lanyon stepped quickly aside as she approached, but she waved for him to follow her. ‘Come on, big guy, you’ve probably got broken ribs and I want you checked for internal injuries. We’ll have you back to fighting strength in no time.’

  ‘Uh…’ he started.

  ‘Move!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am!’

  ~~~

  Ella lay on her bed with her eyes closed, trying not to think about anything. She had never really mastered it as a technique. In fact, she really sucked at it. Her mind tended to work at full speed all the time, and then it had been overclocked. When the door of her cabin opened, she knew exactly who it was without opening her eyes.

  ‘Fuck off, Ana.’

  ‘I just wanted a chance to explain.’ From the sound of it, the captain had stayed just outside the door, which was an improvement.

  ‘You lied to me, and you covered up how bad things are on Haven. You needed a pilot and… Or is it that you’re hoping to get Shadataga to side with you? Were you planning to use me for that too?’ There was a long enough pause that Ella knew she had at least considered it. ‘You know what? Get out. In a bit I’ll go and beg Aneka to take me back with her, and you can go fuck yourself.’

  ‘Okay, so I thought about it. And okay, so I maybe could have checked the dealers I was selling to better, but the slaves thing? That was in place before I ever got to Haven. I’ve never brought a woman back there from the Pinnacle. I hit military ships and bases. They don’t put women on those.’

  ‘Have you ever tried to stop it?’

  ‘Uh… no.’

  ‘You’re all just proving them right. Sure, they take slaves, so you have to go one better and make them do the most degrading thing they could possibly be forced into. I’m willing to bet they never sell arms to other species either. Go away, Ana. Let me get my self-recrimination over with so I can work on my begging.’

  Gwy.

  ‘All right, strip.’ Aneka stood in the medical bay, which had not been there until Gwy had reconfigured the space, hand on her hip, and stared at Lanyon.

  ‘Uh…’

  ‘Are you going to undress, or do I have to knock you out and cut those britches off you?’

  He had been acting a little oddly all the way to the hangar bay. It was as if he had had a shock to his self-esteem and was treating Aneka as the new alpha female. Now he regained a little of his former composure, crossing both sets of arms and lifting his chin. ‘Think you can? Without whatever it was you hit me with? Felt like a Pinnacle force pistol, but stronger.’

  ‘Same basic technology, different source.’ She stepped forward, placed her hands on his hips and lifted. There seemed to be no effort to it; she just lifted him off the deck and stood there, holding him. ‘Yes, I think I can knock you flat on your tight little arse.’ His eyes widened and she lowered him down again. ‘Now show me your tight little arse or I will.’

  He was reaching for his belt before she had finished the sentence.

  ‘I did some research on his subspecies,’ Cassandra’s voice said into Aneka’s head. ‘There is quite a lot of data in the Pinnacle databases we took. Polymelians are strong, physical creatures and respond to strength. Demonstrating that you are physically superior will tend to make him more easily influenced.’

  ‘Huh. Well, he seemed the type, and he has gone rather submissive on me all of a sudden. I feel like I just got a new puppy.’

  ‘Let’s hope he’s housebroken.’

  Aneka turned as Lanyon began pulling his boots off and glanced at the medical pod. It swung around from horizontal to a more vertical position and opened up. It was a bit over two metres in height, a metre across, which was going to be just about big enough to contain its patient. The interior was padded and the lid transparent.

  ‘Okay,’ Aneka said, ignoring the slight erection Lanyon was trying to cover up, ‘in you get. It’ll close and you’ll go to sleep. Shouldn’t be more than about ten minutes and it’ll fix up whatever damage I did to you.’

  He looked down at the livid bruise which was starting to form across his lower rib cage and all across his stomach. ‘I don’t feel… particularly good,’ he admitted. Settling into the box, he rested his head back as the lid closed over him. A second later, his eyelids fluttered and then closed and the box began to fill with a bluish fluid.

  ‘Okay, fix him and run a full bioscan. I want to know if he’s using anything stronger than painkillers, and anything else you can find.’

  ‘Initiating cellular repairs now,’ Gwy responded.

  ‘Great. Cassandra? Would you mind vacating the cabin for a while? I think that Mister Lanyon might be an interesting source of information.’

  ‘Of course, but it’s unlikely he’ll trust you with anything we don’t already have.’

  Aneka grinned and looked at the body now submerged in nanotech medical agent. ‘Oh, I think I know how to get him to talk to me.’

  ~~~

  Ella straightened her top and waited for the inner door on the airlock to open. She had thought about wearing the grey dress but had decided that the pirate gear was better. She looked sexy in the pirate outfit and she was going to need all the help she could get to persuade Aneka not to be so angry anymore. A bit angry was pretty much to be expected, but… Anyway, at worst she was turning up and saying, ‘Look, I brought eye candy,’ which was something.

  The door opened and Ella saw Gwy’s avatar standing on the other side. ‘Gwy! Uh… I’m happy to see you, but I wanted–’

  ‘I’m afraid Aneka is busy at the moment, Ella,’ Gwy said, smiling.

  ‘It won’t take long I just–’

  ‘She asked not to be disturbed.’

  ‘Yes, but–’

  ‘She is entertaining Mister Lanyon.’

  ‘O-oh. I… I guess I can come back… later.’

  Gwy’s smile broadened as the door began to close. ‘I look forward to seeing you again, Ella.’

  ~~~

  Aneka was smiling as she walked into the office space which Cassandra was currently occupying. ‘Anything interesting?’ the android asked. ‘Aside from multiple orgasms, obviously.’

  ‘What did the medical scans turn up?’

  ‘He’s suffered multiple bone breaks over his lifetime, some of them at a young age. The system corrected several faults in the bone structure while they were taking care of the bruising. You hadn’t done anything life-threatening to him, but he would have spent days recovering.’

  ‘There was no indication of drug use at all,’ Gwy put in. ‘I doubt he even takes much in the way of pain medication.’

  Aneka nodded. ‘He basically thinks the sun shines out of Kade’s arse. He handles buying equipment more than the sales, but he’s been at several meetings where she’s been negotiating sales. I wouldn’t say she looks too hard at her buyers, but she does seem concerned about where the weapons are going. To be honest, he’s sort of a nice guy with a lousy history and he’s loyal. I get the feeling Kade inspired that in him rather than it being some sort of hero worship.’

  ‘So she may not be as bad as she seems?’ Cassandra asked.

  ‘Maybe. I hope not. I’m going to talk to the Felix. You said she was the XO, Al?’

  Al’s avatar was sitting in the office’s second chair, quietly admiring his paramour in her simple, white tank dress. He stirred as Aneka spoke. ‘That seems to be the case, though she is referred to as the first mate.’

  ‘Very nautical. I’ll talk to her. Lanyon was going to relieve her on the bridge.’

  ‘I should mention that Ella was here earlier,’ Gwy said. ‘While you were “talking” with Mister Lanyon.’

  ‘Oh? How did she take it?’

  ‘She seemed… unsettled. She said she would return later.’

  �
�Right. With a bit of luck it’ll be while I’m talking to Trin.’

  Hope of Sanctuary.

  Trin raised an eyebrow at the tall, white-haired woman standing in her cabin doorway, but she stepped aside and waved Aneka in before heading for her drinks cabinet.

  ‘So you’re this Aneka that Ella was talking about? Want a drink? I need one.’

  ‘Is that rum?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘No thanks. It tastes like paint thinner and the alcohol does nothing to me.’

  Trin poured a glass, raised it to Aneka, emptied it and poured another. ‘Nothing at all?’

  Aneka watched as the girl sprawled out on some cushions on the floor. ‘This body is synthetic. I’m pretty much a robot. My mind is an emulation running on a computer in here. I can eat and drink, but I only bother for the taste.’

  ‘That is some very fine craftsmanship,’ Trin replied, grinning. ‘You didn’t come here to discuss rum, or feminine aesthetics.’

  Aneka settled onto the cushions near the cat-girl. ‘No, I came to discuss your captain.’

  ‘Direct, forthright, I like it, but do you really think I’m going to spill my guts just because you walk in and ask?’

  ‘I think that you’re the first mate and Kade trusts you, so you’re aware that she’s hoping Ella can be a vehicle to get Shadataga in on this fight of yours.’

  ‘She… may have mentioned–’

  ‘Well, now I’m here and you’re going to have to convince me. Speaker is going to view this as outside their remit. War might be able to persuade him that striking at the Pinnacle now will prevent greater loss of life later. He’s the social scientist, and she’s the strategist.’

  Trin sipped her rum and stared at Aneka with unblinking, amber eyes. ‘So you simply want me to justify what we do to you so you’ll decide we’re worthy of your assistance.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You’re not worth it.’

  Aneka laughed. ‘Good answer. Explain it to me.’