Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (24 page)

‘How are you? Getting things ready for the trip?’

‘Captain Drake and Shannon have fully briefed me on the plan for the mission. I have checked their mission profile and I am quite happy with it. Obviously my previous experience with our destination makes my presence highly useful, though we do not know how conditions have changed. I believe this will be a most interesting mission.’

‘Yeah. Interesting is a word for it, but I don’t think you came down here to discuss that or for social reasons.’

‘Not entirely, though it is nice to see you. Is Ella not about? Ah, she’s still sleeping.’

‘A night out at a sex club. She needs the extra sleep.’

‘I am surprised. Her stamina always seems quite remarkable. However, it is Shannon I wish to talk about. I have discussed the matter with Captain Drake, but he was… evasive.’

‘She’s still not right, is she?’

‘She has recovered well, but the drugs she is using are not helping her mental state. I believe the clinical diagnosis would be mild depression. She seems relatively at ease when she is with others, but she seeks opportunities to be alone much more than she did. When she is she just sits and stares at the walls.’

‘She went through a bad experience and she’s taking time to readjust. This mission may be just what she needs to get herself back in stride. Aside from anything else, she’s going to get to be away from large numbers of people for several months. If that doesn’t help… I can try talking to her, but I don’t know what I can do that all her therapists haven’t.’

Aggy nodded. ‘I understand. I hope you are correct, but I wanted you to be aware of it. You are unique among the crew going to Earth in that she cannot hear your thoughts. This makes you the perfect person to help her if she needs it.’

‘Maybe. Don’t discount Drake. She might be able to hear him, but what she hears is that he loves her. Amazing what affection can do to help when you’re depressed.’

A yawn came from the bedroom door; Ella was up and padding towards the shower. ‘Hey Aggy. Nice to see you. Don’t mind me, I’m not awake yet.’ She walked into the bathroom and a second later there was the sound of running water.

‘Case in point,’ Aneka said. ‘It’s quite possible I’d be a nutjob if it wasn’t for that little nymphomaniac. She fell in love with me as soon as she saw me, and it’s really hard to ignore that even when you’ve discovered your entire life died a thousand years ago.’

‘Thank you, Aneka,’ Aggy said, smiling. ‘I had not considered that aspect of the dynamic. I will leave you to the remainder of your break time.’

‘See you soon, Aggy.’ The AI’s image vanished as it had arrived and a message appeared in Aneka’s view field saying the connection had been closed. Aneka looked towards the bathroom, and then she got to her feet, pulling her T-shirt up over her head. After the night before she felt like having her little nymphomaniac to herself and she really doubted that Ella was going to complain about it.

Part Three: Walking on a Moon

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‘Warp drive exit complete,’ Aggy stated. In truth, Aneka did not need the confirmation; she could see through the window of the flight deck.

‘All right. Have you got the directional lock on the Harriamon receiver?’

‘I am aligning the transmitter now. We are at maximum range. If I had my old transmitter this would be a lot easier.’

‘Well maybe we can get you a new one when we get back. I could sleep with Stephen again; he could probably swing the refit for free.’

‘Transmitter aligned. Sending message.’ The AI’s image appeared in the co-pilot’s seat. ‘I would not ask you to engage in intercourse just to improve my equipment, Aneka.’

Aneka laughed. ‘I was joking, Aggy. Mostly. Believe me, “engaging in intercourse” with Stephen Teldarian is not exactly an onerous task.’

‘I see. Well, Mister Teldarian’s company did originally construct the Garnet Hyde. Some of his technicians were involved in the review when we returned from Negral. It would be ideal if they could provide the new transmitter.’ She paused and then added. ‘The message has been sent.’

‘Okay, let’s get back into warp. It’s not like we’re going to get a reply.’

‘Of course, Aneka. Warp initiation in fifteen seconds.’

Aneka sat back to watch the stars change. They had stopped off after twenty days of a forty-five day trip to send off a short report. Basically it said, ‘We are about to leave communication range. Everything is going fine. See you soon,’ though there were a couple of side comments.

Ahead of her the stars blurred. She did not wait for Aggy to confirm that they had entered warp, but turned her seat and got to her feet to leave. ‘I’m going to my cabin to read, Aggy. Come chat if you feel the need.’

‘Thank you, Aneka. I must admit that long flights are not the most exciting thing in the universe.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Currently the only two people awake on the ship were Aneka and Aggy, if you counted Aggy as people, of course. Aneka did, and legally she was a crewmember, which meant that there were two members of the crew awake and that filled the regulation requirement. Everyone else was in cold sleep to reduce the resource requirements and allow them a more extended stay in the Sol system. It was, unfortunately, rather boring.

Admittedly, the trip out from New Earth to Harriamon had been longer, around twice as long in fact. She had been fine with that, but the closer she got to returning to the planet she had been born on, the more she had to face the fact that it was not actually going to be anything like the one she remembered. That was assuming that it was not a cinder.

Changing her mind about her destination, she went to the hibernation room instead of the habitation deck. The lights were out and the air circulation was off, but Aneka could see and she did not need to breathe all the time. There were eight pods, seven of them containing her friends, their bodies pumped full of chemicals which stopped cellular damage from the deep cold. Each white pod had a monitor on the side showing the activity within. There was barely any, of course, but there was a little. The chemicals allowed the body to continue functioning at a very low level rather than suspending it entirely. It meant that recovery was not resuscitation, which tended to result in a lot more side effects than reheating.

Importantly for Aneka, it meant that Ella was not neurologically inert. Not entirely anyway. Standing next to Ella’s coffin, Aneka closed her eyes and initiated the connection to Ella’s embedded computer. There was a moment of disorientation and then the sense impressions began to flow through. Everything was slow and somewhat fleeting. Ella was dreaming in slow motion.

Cassandra had showed them the trick. Both Aneka and Ella could transmit their full sensorium through their network connection. Aneka primarily used it to record what she saw in her memories; it was all internal. Ella could do the same, though she had less storage to do it with. Or they could share sensory data between them. Cassandra had demonstrated the effect by using her long, prehensile tongue on Ella while Aneka felt the effects in tandem. Right now Aneka was using it to observe Ella’s dreams.

As the sense impressions built up, she realised that dream was the wrong term. Maybe it was the cold, but Ella was having a nightmare about being trapped on Eshebbon. The chucks were hammering at the door, she was alone…

‘You’re not alone, love,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘I’m here. You’re safe.’ The sense of fear faded a little and, on a whim, Aneka unsealed her leotard, reaching in with one hand to stroke her fingers over her left breast. The banging on the door faded away. Smiling, Aneka teased her nipple into stiffness, knowing that to Ella it would feel as though her own body was being stimulated. The images from Ella shifted; there was a bed, red curtains around it and crimson sheets. Aneka squeezed her nipple and a moan echoed through her mind. She withdrew her hand, but Ella’s mind carried on the dream, rather more pleasantly than before.

Aneka disconnected. ‘Sweet dreams, love.’ Sealing her suit back up she headed out of the room and this time she did go up to the habitation deck.

‘Visiting Ella again,’ Aggy asked as she walked into the cabin. The golden woman materialised as she spoke, standing near the bed with her hands behind her back.

‘She was having a nightmare. I pushed her out of it.’

Aggy smiled. ‘I could tell you did something. Her neurological activity spiked.’

‘It doesn’t harm her, does it?’

‘If it did I would have said something before now. Minor spikes in activity are normal during cold sleep.’

‘Good.’ Aneka stretched out on the bottom bunk and pulled up the book she had been reading on the technology behind planetary navigation systems. A thought intruded. ‘Hey Aggy, how do you navigate? I mean, between star systems.’

‘Pulsars,’ Aggy replied.

‘Those are stars that send out some sort of signal pulse, right?’

‘A pulsar is a rotating neutron star which emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. You can only observe this beam when directly in its path and each one has a very regular pulse rate. If you know three which you can see, you can triangulate your position using them much as you can triangulate your position on the sea using lighthouses. It is obviously rather more complex at warp velocities, but the principle is the same. I actually use five references if possible and check my position every thousand seconds when in deep space.’

‘It’s kind of low-tech in a really high-tech way.’

‘There is no point in creating some incredibly clever solution to a problem when a far simpler solution exists.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Yeah, but that’s never stopped people trying to roller-skate uphill.’

‘An interesting visual metaphor,’ Aggy said, grinning. ‘I shall leave you to your reading.’

‘Later, Aggy.’ Settling back again, Aneka started reading. She really had to find something more enjoyable than technical books to read.

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Ella let out a groan and accepted the bottle Aneka was handing her gratefully. ‘Gillian can’t be awake yet, I can’t hear complaining.’ She popped the cap and sucked down half the bottle in one go.

Aneka checked the displays she was watching in-vision. ‘Almost there. Drake, Shannon, and Bash should be up first.’ Delta was already out of her pod, standing beside Monkey. The younger members of the team always seemed to recover first. Aneka went back to reading.

‘Are you reading something?’ Ella asked after a second.

‘Uh-huh. At least until you’re fit to get out of there and move. Aggy had a load of ebooks she got off the Internet. It’s better than technical manuals. Sally Goodfellow has just been kidnapped by the BEMs, and Chuck and Jerry are going to have to rescue her.’

‘What are you talking about? And what’s a BEM?’

‘Bug-eyed monster. Seriously, reading twentieth-century science fiction when you’re living in the future is hilarious, or occasionally surreal.’

Shannon was up, silent as she accepted a bottle from Delta.

‘That could be an interesting case study, actually. How right did they get it?’

‘I’m pretty sure that if you go looking you’ll find someone who got it almost spot on. There’s a lot of sci-fi out there and a lot of different visions of the future. Do people still write that kind of fiction?’ Aneka picked up a bottle and stepped over to the pod Gillian was in just as it popped open.

‘It’s a bit of a neglected genre…’

‘I am getting too old for this,’ Gillian moaned as she pulled herself into a sitting position. Aneka handed her the bottle which was going to vanish in one go.

Ella giggled. Gillian had been saying that every time she emerged from cold sleep for a long time. ‘People prefer romances, dramas, historical fiction.’

‘Historical fiction?’

‘Yeah, you know, explorers forging through the stars, finding new worlds, and then having sex with the alien women they find who know nothing of this thing we call kissing.’

Aneka blinked. ‘Right, and dramas are?’

‘Stories about deep social interaction, people vying for power and defeating incredible odds, and then having sex to celebrate.’

‘Uh-huh. I’d ask about romances, but I think I’m seeing a pattern here.’

‘And I think you’ve just grasped the essential elements of popular cultural writing,’ Gillian said. ‘Just so you don’t come away thinking that society has devolved entirely into sexual deviancy, I should point out that there are literary genres which do not involve sex.’

‘Really? And there I was thinking literature had finally got interesting.’

Ella climbed out of her pod. ‘You’re being sarcastic when we’re just out of deep sleep.’

‘Sorry. I’ll save it for later. I got some food and more water out of the stores so you can eat yourselves silly.’

‘First good idea I’ve heard in forty days,’ Drake said, starting for the door.

‘You’ve been in cold sleep for forty days, Drake,’ Bashford pointed out.

‘The irony has not escaped me. Has Aggy behaved, Aneka? Did you get that report off?’

‘Aggy has been a perfect companion,’ Aneka replied, ‘and I’m not just saying that because she threatened to flush me out the airlock if I didn’t.’

‘You promised not to tell him I said that, Aneka,’ Aggy’s voice said from corridor speakers. ‘Now I’ll have to kill the entire crew.’

‘As long as you let us eat first,’ Drake said.

‘Of course, Captain. I’m not cruel.’

‘Meanwhile,’ Aneka went on, ‘Aggy kept her sensors peeled and there was no sign of any ships outside of Harriamon, or indeed anywhere between there and here. That went into the report to Captain Gibbons.’

‘No pirates, terrorists, or creatures from the depths of space then?’ Monkey asked.

‘Or BEMs?’ Ella added.

‘None of the above,’ Aneka informed them.

‘Dad’ll be disappointed,’ Monkey replied.

Monkey’s father, Gillian’s ex-partner, had been at Harriamon when they arrived. Gillian and Monkey had had a suspicion that he was partially there to see them off. Aneka was damn sure he was. However, the official reason was that there had been some attacks on ships in the Rim, one of them at Harriamon.