‘Al? Please tell me you’ve got into their network.’
‘In and busy cracking their file system security.’
‘Good. I really would prefer not to have to let him do what I’ve suggested he can do.’
‘I’m working as fast as I can, Aneka.’
‘I know.’ Aloud she said, ‘You’re really making a name for yourself. Now that Captain Kade is gone, people will need a new man to look up to.’ She put a little emphasis on ‘man’ and he glanced back at her, smiling.
‘Kade was good, but she took too many risks. She hit the Pinnacle too hard and risked bringing their wrath down upon Haven. We are not strong enough to go against them. I make do with the small victories luck hands to me. She wanted to stop them entirely, bring them to their knees. It is a laudable goal, but not one she had any hope of achieving.’
Which was true enough. ‘She gave people hope, I guess.’
‘False hope.’ He walked over and handed her a glass before settling down beside her. ‘These latest attacks of hers were pride running away with her. Hitting border stations, seeking to steal their weapons and stop them from attacking a world they covet. She overstepped her bounds and she paid for it… But she was a fine woman.’ He raised his glass in salute and took a sip of his drink.
Aneka followed suit; it was not that fine a whiskey, and it was a blend. ‘I came here hoping to ship out with her, but she’s gone.’
‘You fancy yourself a pirate?’
‘I can fight. I’m fast and I’m stronger than I look. I can shoot too.’
‘The life is more than that, though. There are long flights between the fights. Much tedious waiting.’
She grinned. ‘There’s always something to do while waiting. Card games perhaps.’
‘Yes. The Eye is a small ship, but powerful. There is not too much room so we play a lot of poker, among other things.’
‘Oh, I’m terrible at poker. I always lose my shirt.’
He laughed. ‘That explains much.’ His drink was placed on a small table beside the bed, which meant he was preparing to make his move.
She grinned and pushed her chest out. ‘You like the outfit?’
‘I would be a very stupid man to say I did not.’ His hand came down on her thigh, tracing up over the fishnet. ‘It is most becoming. If you joined my crew, I would have you lead the battle. The crewmen we face would be too busy staring to fight back.’
She giggled, sipped her drink and looked into his eyes as her tongue slid over her lips. ‘Any time now would be good, Al.’
‘I am searching through the ship’s records. The man has the organisational ability of a teenage boy.’
Sorien leaned forward, pausing with his lips an inch or so from Aneka’s mouth before pressing closer. His hand slid up her body, over her hip, and then she lost it as it traced over her corset. It returned cupping her left breast, and she gave a little moan as he continued kissing her.
‘There are,’ he said, shifting to kiss her cheek and then moving off toward her neck, ‘of course, other pursuits which can be undertaken on long journeys.’
‘Oh… yes…’
His hand moved again, finding the buckles holding her cincher together and starting to undo them. ‘More pleasant ones than cards.’
‘Mmm…’
‘I may be able to find a place for a new crewman…’
Data began to stream across the inside of Aneka’s eyelids. They were message records, each one detailing a target ship the Eye was to hit. Every once in a while, there was a rendezvous with a Pinnacle transport for meetings or supply transfers. From the quantity of them, it looked as though Sorien had not made a move without Pinnacle direction since he had started.
Sorien had managed to get past the row of buckles and the corset came free, sliding out from under the harness, which was the next line of defence. He was going to have to remove that and the boots and bracers before he could get past the fishnet.
‘Fishnet,’ Al commented as he put up another set of emails, ‘such an appropriate term, though it seems to be remarkably good at catching men.’
The new emails detailed the rumours Sorien was to have spread about the missile warheads the Pinnacle were supposedly stockpiling. Sorien had questioned the method of dissemination, but his bosses had replied with a statement that their sociometric team had determined the best mechanism with the least risk of discovery.
‘Sociometry,’ Al said, ‘more Speaker’s area of expertise than mine.’
‘There is one thing I’d like to know, before I consider signing up,’ Aneka said aloud.
‘And what is that?’ Sorien replied, still kissing her neck.
‘Did the Pinnacle catch you stealing this tub, or did they set you up with her so you could come here and spy for them?’ His hand froze on the buckle nestled between Aneka’s breasts. ‘I think it was the latter because they seem to be going to a lot of trouble to keep up your pretence of being a pirate.’
He rolled away from her, sitting up at the side of the bed and sinking his whiskey. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Though,’ she went on as though he had not spoken, ‘you do attack ships. Ships they want you to attack. What’s that? Taking out supplies going to places they want to acquire? Weakening their economy? I’ve seen that done before, thirty years ago and halfway across the galaxy. It’s not a bad strategy, especially if it can’t be traced back to them. But it can, because you kept all their messages.’
He swept to his feet, raising the pistol he had hidden under the bedside table. He held it tucked into his side in a good, close-quarters shooting position.
Aneka raised her hands. ‘Hey, I’m unarmed. I’m practically naked.’
‘Yes, I shall see to it that a knife is found with your body. A Pinnacle spy sent to assassinate the captains. That should work.’
‘It won’t. Look, you’re finished. You’ve got two choices. Pull the trigger and try to make a run for it, and you’ll get blown apart before you get a thousand klicks out, or you can do as we say, keep things ticking over with your masters and walk away to do whatever you like at the end.’
He laughed. ‘You are a brave woman. You lie there making threats while I hold a gun on you and you look so confident. It will be a shame to kill you.’
Aneka lowered her right hand. ‘Put that thing down before you hurt yourself.’
‘I was really thinking of hurting you.’
Aneka fired her pulse weapon. Sorien let out a grunt as the air was forced from his lungs and he was catapulted across the room to slam into the wall. ‘Or I could hurt you instead, obviously,’ she said. She slid off the bed and turned to look at him. He remained standing for a second, blinking at her, his gun held limply in his hand. Then he sank to his knees and keeled over, falling face-first onto the deck.
‘Call Trin,’ Aneka said. ‘Tell her to get everyone she can over here.’
‘We won’t be able to keep this secret anymore,’ Al replied.
‘Thankfully that isn’t an issue. It’s time we got the rest of Haven involved in this.’
Pirate Cove, 13.1.560 FSC.
They had gathered quite a crowd by the time Kade walked into Nightside flanked by Aneka and Ella, and with Al’s avatar, Cassandra, Trin, and Lanyon behind them. It was partially because Ella, Al, and Cassandra were carrying rifles, Al’s his huge, fully automatic machine gun, but it was mainly because Kade was back. They had watched her being launched into space, a corpse, and here she was walking into the bar.
Kade marched up to the counter, gave Naseena an unreadable look and then climbed up so that everyone could see her. ‘Are we ready?’ she asked Aneka.
‘You’re patched through the entire station announcement system.’
‘Right. Everyone?’ The captain’s voice could be heard repeated in the walkways outside even as the chatter in the room continued. ‘Let’s have some quiet. You’ve got questions and I’ve got answers, but just shut up so I can give them.’ The chatter die
d away and she gave a nod. ‘Yesterday some of my people took Captain Sorien into custody. His ship has been disabled and him and his crew have been locked in. Now I’m back from the dead. The reason for both is a simple one with far-reaching consequences. Sorien was a Pinnacle spy.’
Everyone started shouting, which was expected, and Kade let it go on for a while. The decision to lay everything on Sorien had not been an entirely popular one, but even Trin had had to admit that the others were not exactly working of their own volition, and several of them had been quite convinced that their work prevented the Pinnacle from taking more drastic action against Haven. It was quite possible that it did.
‘Okay, quiet down. Okay, yes, this means that the Pinnacle know exactly where we are. They’ve known for longer than Sorien has been around. While my friends were trying to hunt down whoever set me up at station two-oh-six, they discovered some equipment built into our communications hub which has to have been in there since it was built. They’ve known about us since the very beginning.’
‘Then why haven’t they come here?’ someone shouted.
‘Because Haven gives all those slaves out there hope. Hopeless people, people with nothing to lose, they don’t work as hard, they consider doing drastic things. People with hope are better slaves than people without. But what we’ve been giving them is false hope and it has to stop.’
‘So… what, we quit this place? Just leave?’
‘Yes.’ The sound broke out again, but this time she shouted over it. ‘Yes, we leave Haven and we go to somewhere better. Somewhere they don’t know about. A new Haven on a planet where we can really become a society to give people real hope.’
‘How are we going to move everyone out of the system? It’ll take months!’
‘What do we do when we get there? We’ll have nothing!’
‘We’ll have,’ Kade yelled over the questions, ‘help. I met a few new friends recently. Friends who make the Pinnacle look like children. We can do this! We’ll have homes, farms, medical aid you can’t dream of. And we’ll be free of the Pinnacle for good!’
The shouting died away, even if the conversations continued. It looked as though Kade had got through to them. What most of them wanted was a quiet life away from the Pinnacle. This might mean pulling up stumps and moving everything they had, but right now they knew it was just a matter of time before their homes were blasted to rubble.
‘Now all we have to do,’ Ella’s voice said in Aneka’s mind, ‘is actually pull this off.’
Part Eight: New Haven
Amethyst Hyde, 15.1.560 FSC.
The briefing room table was hosting a schematic of the Haven system with five green dots which were not normally there in the mix. They had been in the system for six hours, and they were going to be there for another two days.
‘The loading is going smoothly,’ Winter said, ‘for a given value of “smoothly.” Obviously there are some wrinkles.’
‘Wrinkles?’ Kade asked.
‘People with some incredibly important family heirloom which has to be treated with care. People who want to ship the entire contents of a station with them. People who want to be sure that the family pet odd-little-creature-the-kids-love is going to be all right on the flight.’
‘Oh, wrinkles. Is three days going to be enough?’
‘To clear the smaller stations, yes. We’re hoping the process can be streamlined significantly for the larger ones. They tend to be closer together for one thing. Travel between them is less of an issue.’
‘What about when they get there?’
‘We’re transitioning everyone through Wormhole Junction. They will have medical checks and a vocational assistance interview.’
‘A what interview?’
‘We’ll assess their needs on arrival and ensure that they have them, and we’ll also check them out to be sure we’re not taking any unknown Pinnacle agents to the new site.’
‘Huh. It’s almost like you’ve done this before.’
Winter smiled. ‘I haven’t, but I did run the Federation’s intelligence agency for five hundred years. Besides, it’s the other AIs who are dealing with that. Speaker has an army of interviewers ready to handle this and his people are exceptionally good at picking up the smallest important detail. Everything will be filtered and cross-referenced through him so our chances of missing anything are within acceptable risk parameters.’
‘Just don’t ask what “acceptable” means to them,’ Drake suggested.
Kade frowned. ‘We can’t take risks with this.’
Drake shrugged and looked at Winter. ‘What’s Speaker’s estimate on this one?’
‘One in fourteen billion, but the uncertainty is higher due to sentients being involved rather than physics. He’s unwilling to officially state better than one in twelve billion.’
‘But…’ Kade was looking confused. ‘There are only forty thousand people in Haven.’
‘Statistics don’t work like that,’ Ella said. ‘Yes, at Speaker’s worst estimate there’s a one in three hundred thousand chance of missing a spy, but this could be that one chance. It’s just… pretty unlikely. That’s why Drake said not to ask. Us mortals tend to have a less perfect view of perfection than they do.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, I’ll try not to lose sleep over it. I mean, one in three hundred thousand. It’s almost a certainty.’
‘Nah,’ Aneka said. ‘One in a million, you’ve got problems. Anything else you’re home free. My main worry is that we don’t know what the Pinnacle are up to. We don’t know they’re in the dark over this.’
‘I’m hoping they are not,’ War said, her voice calm.
‘You decided on a strategy then?’
‘Yes. In concert with Speaker. We believe a demonstration of our capabilities is in order.’
‘I’ve been dropping probes into Pinnacle systems for the last couple of days,’ Winter added. ‘I’ve been able to determine that their military spending is rising at the moment. It seems that they are gearing up for another run at the galaxy, or at least Old Earth.’
‘Has anyone told Abby?’ Aneka asked.
‘We’re keeping her apprised of the situation. She has indicated willingness to assist if required. They are on-board with handling the Pinnacle slave women. Frankly, if anyone can provide them with a new home, it’s the Old Earth Humans. Speaker believes we may be able to bring the Pinnacle over as a whole, if they can be persuaded to moderate their behaviour. They would make a powerful ally in this part of the galaxy.’
‘If they can be persuaded to stop enslaving everyone else.’
‘That is one of the behaviours they would need to moderate, yes.’
‘Moderate… right. You need to get out in the field more, Mother Dearest. You’re starting to sound like an AI.’
‘I am an AI, Aneka,’ Winter replied, though she looked rather pleased at Aneka’s choice of endearment.
‘Yes, but you used to sound like a Jenlay.’
War leaned towards Aneka and stage-whispered, ‘I don’t think her avatars have been getting enough sex.’
Ella, watching quietly from one of the chairs, giggled. ‘Looks like it’s party time tonight then.’
Winter gave her sister AI a glower and then shrugged. ‘Well, I’m not going to say no.’
~~~
‘It kind of seems like these AIs run your entire Collective,’ Kade said as Aneka walked her to the airlock and the bridge to Pirate Cove.
‘They do. At first it was a bunch of individual governments and a system of diplomatic channels. But the AIs are so good at solving problems. Everyone began deferring to them whenever something came up. The Herosians are a little more independent, but even they tend to come to Shadataga when there’s a trade dispute or something. We have the best mediators in the galaxy. Now… The Jenlay in particular really just let the AIs dictate policy. There’s still a Jenlay government, and a Navy, but what they do is mostly down to what Shadataga thinks would be for the best.’
‘And no one minds?’
‘Some do. Most have worked out that their lives are not really that different from what they were, but they have better toys. Better medical care, better transport, better communications.’
‘Better weapons?’
‘We don’t let the really nasty stuff out to anyone. I suspect they’re going to use one of those as their demonstration to the Pinnacle.’
Kade raised her eyebrows. ‘Some sort of bomb? A death ray?’
Aneka laughed. ‘If they do what I think, it’s some sort of bomb. It’s just… Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.’
‘I’m not fond of surprises.’
Shrugging, Aneka opened the airlock. ‘Some are worth the wait.’
16.1.560 FSC.
Aneka opened her eyes and looked up at what would have been a dark room if she were organic. She had shut down next to Ella when the redhead had finally given in to near exhaustion. She checked the time and found that just over two hours had passed which meant that Al had woken her early, but it was Aggy’s voice which sounded in her head.
‘Aneka, I have detected a message going out from the Pirate Cove comms system. The destination designator is a Pinnacle enforcement base eight parsecs away.’
‘Lenora?’
‘The message was sent in the clear from a public terminal near Nightside. I have been able to grab an image from a station security sensor and have identified the sender based on the transmission time. It was one Rendan Marlow, one of the Baleful Eye’s crewmen.’ A grainy picture appeared in Aneka’s vision field showing a dark-haired man with a compact, tightly muscled body.
‘The Eye’s crew are supposed to be on the Eye.’
‘Apparently one of them has got off the vessel. I have no information on him and the security sensors in the asteroid are… patchy at best. My last sighting of him suggests that he is heading for the hangar bay.’
‘Crap. Whoever he is, he’s going after Kade.’ Aneka swung her legs out of bed and reached for her suit. ‘Get a message through to the Hope and tell them to be careful. This guy got off a sealed ship. He’s dangerous.’
Aneka Jansen 7: Hope Page 22