Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (22 page)

‘I’d better give Mom a call,’ Ella said, her voice coming over the network link rather than Aneka’s ears.

‘We should go over to see her,’ Aneka replied. ‘It’s been a while since we saw her and she came here last time.’

‘I suggest we take it easy next week,’ Gillian said, unaware of their conversation. ‘If you’ve relatives to see, take some time to do it then.’

‘We could go out mid-week and come back at the weekend,’ Ella’s silent voice said. ‘Spend a few days over there. You haven’t seen much of that continent and we’d get the chance to spend a few days with her.’

‘When we get back,’ Gillian continued, ‘we’ll be faces to the keyboard getting ready, but I expect to get a few days’ break before we leave.’

‘That sounds great,’ Aneka replied. ‘It’ll be nice to see Janna again.’

‘I think,’ Bashford said, ‘that we should be able to wrap this whole thing ready for at least three or four days’ break before we leave.’

‘And that’ll be time for Katelyn, Dillon, and Cassandra,’ Aneka said.

‘All together?’ Ella asked.

‘No, Cassandra will want us to ourselves.’

‘Works for me.’

‘I suggest we get things moving and then,’ Gillian said. ‘Drake and Shannon…’

‘We’ll be heading up to the Hyde to brief Aggy,’ Drake said.

‘Then we’ll start our recreation up there,’ Shannon added.

Bashford leaned towards Drake. ‘Make sure you’ve taken your vitamins. I’ll run the facilitation team through task assignment for when we get started. Once that’s done I expect Doctor Gillian Gilroy to report to her house for a full debriefing.’

Aneka leaned towards Gillian. ‘Make sure you’ve taken your vitamins.’

Gillian was blushing, which was both unusual and pretty. ‘I,’ she said, ‘will be working through the research planning with Ella before reporting for debriefing.’

‘Full debriefing,’ Bashford corrected.

Gillian swallowed. ‘Full debriefing.’

Barnard City, New Earth, 6.3.526 FSC.

Air travel in the future was just as tedious as Aneka remembered it being in the past, unless you took the sub-orbital, high-speed transport they had used last time. Since they had more time for this visit they had taken the standard jet transport. High-tech wonder-plane though it had been, it had still been a six-hour flight and Aneka had been happy to be on the ground. For starters, the in-flight entertainment had consisted entirely of children’s films and terrible sex comedies.

Now they were in a car which was driving itself into Barnard City. It was a city for workers, largely based around heavy industry. The inhabitants of New Earth liked to keep the things which allowed them to live there hidden away on the backside of the world. There were core world citizens there, but there were also a lot of people from the Rim who worked there for a few decades and then went back where the prices were lower and a Jenlay with savings could live well.

What would be the suburbs of a traditional city was all industrial plants. The central core was devoted to entertainment for the workers, which was where the club Janna worked in was located. And in a band between the two was the housing, mostly consisting of high-rise buildings, apartment blocks shorter than the ones in Mid-town, but still fairly tall. The car headed to one of these, dropping its passengers off at the door before driving off into the underground car park.

Janna lived up on the fifth floor in an apartment a little smaller than the one Aneka and Ella shared, but it had a spare room which they were going to sleep in. That was generally important because, while Janna and Aneka understood each other a lot better, putting the older Narrows in temptation’s way was not a good idea. Janna had a very liberal attitude to sex, even more so than her daughter, and had bedded every girl Ella had gone out with until Aneka. Janna thought Aneka was great precisely because she had been rejected. When the apartment door opened to reveal a smiling blonde woman, Aneka wondered whether all the caution had been necessary.

The blonde was tall, with the body of a dancer, all long, taught muscle, which was pretty obvious since she was wearing a G-string and nothing else. Her hair was short but wavy, her eyes a startling blue, she had a narrow sort of face a little like Aneka’s, but harder, and her breasts were not overly large, but featured prominent nipples with wide areolas. She seemed neither surprised nor abashed at opening the door half-naked to two women she had never met before; she simply turned her head and called out, ‘Janna, Aneka and Ella are here.’

Janna came hurrying down the corridor that connected the front door with the lounge. She was a near copy of her daughter, especially now that Ella had had the breast enhancements and was working out more. Her face was a little older, harder really, her eyes were brown, and her short hair was black, but Ella had inherited almost all her looks from her mother. Janna was topless as well, which suggested the blonde was more than just a passing acquaintance.

‘Let them in,’ Janna said, grinning. ‘Come on, you two, don’t be bashful. This is Sharissa. I told you about her, right?’

‘Yes,’ Ella replied, a little nonplussed, ‘but I didn’t know you two were still together.’

Sharissa was closing the door behind them. ‘It’s nothing official,’ she said. ‘We’re not
together
together, but I come visit whenever I get the chance.’

‘Which is not as often as I’d like,’ Janna added.

‘But when Janna told me you were coming here for an extended stay,’ Sharissa went on, ‘I thought I’d come down too. I got in late last night.’

Aneka looked at her, making sure that Janna could not see the narrowing of her eyes. Sharissa smiled back, twitching her eyebrows in a manner that suggested that further explanation would come. Sharissa was one of Winter’s people and had been assigned to protect Janna from Ardus Quint. She had, basically, picked Janna up and gone home with her; Janna was not supposed to know anything about it.

‘You’re a flight attendant, right Sharissa?’ Aneka asked.

‘I was when I met Janna. I work for the Federal Security Agency now. Just an office job, nothing special.’ Good idea; keep the lies to a minimum.

‘I’ve met your boss a few times.’

‘Uh-huh. The whole agency knows she likes to keep an eye on you.’

‘Winter?’ Janna said. ‘Winter likes to keep an eye on you? That doesn’t sound good.’

‘She’s nice,’ Ella replied, ‘in a weird kind of way.’

‘You’ve met her?!’

‘Uh-huh.’

Janna shook her head and headed off into the lounge. ‘My daughter is keeping company with the most mysterious woman in the Federation. Now that’s not something I ever thought I’d say.’

Ella giggled, following on behind. ‘That’s nothing. Aneka fucked Stephen Teldarian for coffee beans.’

Aneka let herself blush, but Janna just looked over her shoulder and said, ‘I want details. Including full measurements.’

~~~

The only person still fully dressed was Aneka. With a thorough description of Teldarian and his island given, Janna had moved on to her daughter. Aneka had never seen such a professional, almost technical, examination of a pair of breasts before. Ella had not consulted her mother about the operation and Janna had not seen the results up close yet. She went over every square centimetre of flesh checking for abnormalities of any kind. Ella had endured the scrutiny, eyes cast upward as her mother checked for scarring, bruising, stiffening, or anything else which might have indicated a problem.

‘You can never be too careful,’ Janna said as she settled back onto one of the two lounge couches beside Sharissa. ‘Honestly, I’ve seen my share of mistakes made in cosmetic surgery. I don’t want anything happening to you.’

‘I guess you would see quite a few enhanced body parts in your line of work,’ Aneka said.

‘You’ve no idea!’ She cupped her own breasts illustratively. ‘I had these pushed up a cup size and reinforced, of course. They’d be around my knees otherwise and the customers expect a girl with bounce, not swing.’

‘Yours are fairly tasteful,’ Sharissa said, ‘and you said you weren’t small before. Ella’s just matched up to you, so it’s not disproportionate. That friend of yours, Marilyn?’

‘Case in point,’ Janna agreed. ‘Four operations over seventy years, getting larger each time. She’s a miracle of science.’

‘Looks like a woman attached to two weather balloons,’ Sharissa interjected. Aneka and Ella giggled at the image.

Janna patted Sharissa on the thigh. ‘Not quite that bad, but… yes. You should see the men I’ve seen having operations though. They’re the worst.’

‘Uh… what kind of operations?’ Aneka asked. ‘I don’t really want to know, do I?’

‘Oh, not what you’re thinking,’ Janna said. Then she frowned and added, ‘Not
just
what you’re thinking. I have seen extensions, thickening, general enlargement…’ She ticked them off on her fingers, looking thoughtfully upward. ‘…scrotal padding, scrotal stretching, anal reinforcement, buttock padding…’

‘Wait up…
anal
reinforcement?’

‘The muscle’s not used to the kind of abuse some people put it through. The worst cases are the artificial muscle enhancements though. You get men with layers of extra muscle grown in regeneration tanks and then grafted in under their skin. It looks…’ She shuddered, which gave Aneka quite enough of an impression of what she was talking about.

‘High-tech steroid abusers,’ Aneka suggested.

‘Tends to look worse than that,’ Sharissa commented. ‘Steroids pump you up, but at least the muscle growth is your own. The bad cases of this look like walking slabs of beef.’

‘You see it a lot in Rim World erotic film actors,’ Janna added. ‘They actually seem to think it’s sexy. Then again some of the stuff being made out there is for a rather… restricted market.’ Aneka noticed Sharissa’s arm tighten slightly around Janna’s shoulders, but the dancer smiled brightly, maybe a little too brightly, and went on quickly. ‘Enough of that, however, I have some news myself.’

‘Oh?’ Ella asked.

‘I am retiring. My contract is up for renewal in a couple of months and I’ve decided not to.’

Ella blinked rapidly. ‘But you love dancing.’

‘And I’m not going to stop; I’m just changing my venue and switching careers.’

‘Mom, you’re being obtuse.’

Janna smirked across the small, Polyglass coffee table between the couches. ‘I start teaching at the University of New Earth at the start of month nine. Assistant to Doctor Zebrenev. I’ll be teaching several classes. General fitness and flexibility, pole work, erotic.’

‘The university teaches “erotic dancing?”’ Aneka asked. Then she shook her head. ‘Never mind. Of course it does.’

‘Are you going to need somewhere to stay?’ Ella asked.

‘No,’ Janna said, one hand squeezing Sharissa’s thigh. ‘Issa has an apartment in Yorkbridge…’

‘Which I’m not in enough as it is,’ Sharissa stated. ‘I have to travel a lot, though I’m hoping that’ll settle down soon, but Janna would really be doing me a favour moving in there. I mean, there’s someone to look after the place while I’m away…’

‘And a free sex toy when you get home,’ Janna finished. ‘Plus, I’ll get to see you more. When you’re not gallivanting across the galaxy.’

Ella beamed at her mother. ‘That’s so fridgy, Mom! Just so you remember, Aneka’s mine. No borrowing.’

Janna smirked. ‘I’ve got my own beautiful blonde. What do I need yours for?’

7.3.526 FSC.

Janna was up on stage, currently still mostly dressed and upside down on the chromed pole. It was her second set and Aneka, Ella, and Sharissa were watching from a booth nearby. Janna was exceptionally talented; she was going to make a good teacher. On the other hand, this was her second set so they had had one chance to be awed already.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, her eyes still on Janna, ‘why are you still here? Winter can’t be worried about her.’

‘Vashma no,’ Sharissa replied. ‘No I’m
really
here because
I
want to be. Sure I picked her up the first time because I was supposed to be guarding her, but… Well, neither Winter nor I thought I’d actually fall for her. It, err, wasn’t in the mission briefing.’

‘So she’s not in any danger?’ Ella asked.

‘If she is, I don’t know about it. And when I find out about it I’ll break its legs and feed it its fucking windpipe.’

Ella blinked at the vehemence of the statement and then giggled. ‘Okay, Mom seems to have lucked out almost as much as I did. Welcome to the family.’

‘Ha! Thank you.’

‘Isn’t she going to figure out what you really do for a living eventually?’ Aneka asked.

‘No. Well, not exactly. The story is that I’m training in security planning. It’s just bending the truth a little. I’m not as young as I was and personal security is… getting tougher. I am actually going into more of a supervisory position. Another year and I should be working primarily out of the Yorkbridge office which works for us, obviously.’

‘It sounds great,’ Ella said. ‘Mom hasn’t really had a steady partner since… Well, since we left Harriamon.’

‘She doesn’t talk about Harriamon much. I know enough to know she really loves her daughter.’

‘It’s mutual,’ Ella said, almost inaudible over the throbbing beat Janna was dancing to. ‘She deserves someone good after all this time.’

‘I’ll try to make sure I live up to that thought. Oh, I have a message from Winter. I was briefed on your… unique physiology, Aneka. And Winter asked me to decide whether we should tell Janna. I recommended that it be left up to you, but if Janna’s made aware of the situation, she’ll keep the secret.’

Beaming, Aneka leaned over, grabbed Sharissa’s head in both hands and kissed her. It was a chaste sort of kiss, but it still left the blonde blinking in surprise. ‘You’ve just made my week,’ Aneka said. ‘I
hate
keeping this a secret. Absolutely hate it.’

‘Well, I have to go back to Yorkbridge tomorrow, so save it until then. If she figures out I already know then it’ll bring up questions. She’s got a good head for people.’

‘I can do that.’ Aneka looked back at the stage. Janna had shed her clothes and was swooping around the pole like a gymnast. The audience was enraptured. ‘She is bloody amazing at that. I mean, I wish I was even a fraction as good at moving my body.’