Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour (9 page)

Aneka shrugged. ‘It’s not her; she got her brains splattered across a courtyard. The Negral AIs could have done it, but their star system exploded. All the evidence points to the Herosians. They’ve been working on it since at least the start of the Federation. You can get really good at something if you practise for five hundred years.’

‘A valid point,’ Truelove conceded.

‘There is an aircraft heading in this direction from the city,’ Al said. ‘ETA is four minutes. The transponder indicates an FSA armed transport.’

‘Did anyone call for help?’ Aneka asked. They all shook their heads. ‘In that case, I suggest we leave. There’s something coming this way from the Agency. My car is about a kilometre away, but they won’t be able to track it as easily as yours, I suspect.’

Sharissa glowered at the sky to the south-west. ‘Lead the way,’ she growled. ‘We are going to have to do something drastic about this.’

‘I have a few ideas,’ Justine said. ‘Assuming that Elaine is willing to take point.’

FSA Headquarters, High Yorkbridge, 24.10.528 FSC.

Dowler came to a stop just inside the door of the outer office, his eyes on the young woman with the short, blonde hair sitting behind the desk.

‘Agent Truelove,’ he said, almost as though he had not been expecting her to be there.

She ignored the slip. ‘Mister Dowler.’

Dowler’s gaze shifted slightly. Justine was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. She had taken off the short jacket she commonly wore to conceal the large laser pistol in its holster under her left armpit. He looked back to Truelove and smiled. ‘How did the meeting go last night?’

‘It was a trap,’ Truelove replied. ‘The two agents you assigned to us were rogues.’ She went on before he could deny his involvement. ‘Not your fault, of course. I saw their records myself. Both apparently good agents with exceptional field experience. Clearly forged in some way. The Oversight Committee agrees with me. We obviously have some bad agents in our organisation.’

‘Uh…’

‘I’m instituting a full administrative review of all active agents. The committee is putting through the necessary paperwork to have external examiners brought in to interview everyone in this building.’

‘External examiners?’

‘Telepaths. I spent last night being checked out. Agents Torrence and Nivalis have been cleared to handle internal security. We’ll be working through the lower ranks first so that we can keep operations running as effectively as possible.’

‘Of course. Very prudent.’

‘Do you wish to take one of the early slots or wait until the end?’

The colour had drained out of Dowler’s face, but he managed to keep his voice steady. ‘I’ll check my schedule,’ he said, and then walked past Truelove’s desk to the office beyond.

Truelove glanced over at Justine and was happy to see that her bodyguard was having almost as much trouble keeping herself from laughing as she was.

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 1.11.528 FSC.

‘You’ve got more fan mail,’ Ella said from the console in the bedroom.

Aneka looked across at her from the bed and grimaced. ‘More?’

‘Uh-huh. We’ve got them from… two cruisers, fourteen frigates, the Admiral Wingate, and about a dozen shore stations on the Rim. I think enough sailors are jacking off to your poster to float a battleship.’

‘That is
so
not an image I needed.’ After her appearance on a chat show, polls had indicated that a pinup poster of Aneka would go down really well, especially with the Navy. It had taken several months of persuasion, but eventually she had broken down and spent an afternoon in a studio being primped and prodded into place for photographs. The eventual poster had been fairly artistic and quite tame compared to some of the similar artwork Aneka had seen. It barely qualified as a nude, actually; she was wearing silver bikini briefs and you couldn’t see too much breast. The Navy
had,
however, responded with vigour.

Ella giggled. ‘You should do another one. Something a little more risqué.’

‘I don’t think…’

‘Oh! Or you could do a set. You remember Doctor Wooten wanted to do a calendar.’

‘Isn’t it a little late for…?’

‘Modern printing technology. Print on demand. It’s just twelve pictures and Wooten’s really good. You’d get royalties, and lots more fan mail.’

Slipping off the bed, Aneka walked over to Ella and kissed her on the cheek. ‘The only fan mail I want is from you, not a bunch of horny Jenlay sailors.’

Ella giggled again. ‘One of these is from a Torem.’

Aneka groaned. ‘Put some clothes on. We’re supposed to be going over to Sharissa’s place.’

~~~

‘But Torem don’t even get any pleasure out of sex.’ The disbelieving voice was Truelove’s. After she had stayed with Janna and Sharissa following the FSA interrogations following Winter’s assassination, Janna had taken a liking to the young analyst, and Justine was just added icing as far as the elder Narrows was concerned. They both got invited over for meals on a regular basis.

‘Actually,’ Janna replied as she chopped vegetables, ‘that’s a common misconception. Torem have no apparent external genitalia, and get no stimulation from grinding their sex organs together like us ape descendants. However, they do have sensitive regions, erogenous zones if you wish, which can be stimulated to produce pleasure.’

‘Oh,’ Truelove said, blinking.

‘You know this how, Mother?’ Ella asked. She was in the lounge with Truelove, Sharissa, and Justine. Aneka was assisting in the kitchen.

‘A brief fling with a Torem woman,’ Janna replied. ‘It was a few years ago. There aren’t many of them who find Jenlay attractive, but it was worth it.’ She nudged Aneka conspiratorially. ‘They have very long, very nimble fingers.’

Aneka laughed. ‘I can’t say I’m in a hurry to find out, especially not with a xenophile Torem sailor.’

‘Your loss.’

Shaking her head, Aneka changed the subject. ‘How’s the mole hunt going?’

‘Well,’ Truelove replied.

‘Or badly,’ Sharissa added. ‘It depends how you look at it.’

‘We’ve arrested five people arrogant enough to believe the telepaths wouldn’t catch them,’ Truelove clarified. ‘We’ve also had sixteen agents suddenly go missing, and discovered irregularities in all their financial records.’

‘They were all recent transfers from the Herosian border region,’ Sharissa went on. ‘Not a big surprise, I guess.’

‘That many transfers and no one noticed?’ Aneka asked.

Truelove shrugged. ‘There’s a slight rise over last year, but well within the statistical range. People transfer out there, or are assigned, and transfer back all the time. Agents get an allowance for having to live long term off their native world. Out on the Rim that either means you live like a king or you return with a lot of savings. If you can stick it for a five-year tour or longer anyway. Some can’t.’

‘I thought the Rim was the edge of the Federation,’ Aneka said. ‘Surely the Herosian border is part of the core.’

‘Politically it is,’ Ella supplied, ‘but the culture is more like the Rim, and the worlds tend to be a bit less polished. They get less attention from both sides. The education and medicine are not quite as good, and the crime rates are higher.’

‘There’s more piracy out there,’ Justine put in. ‘Some of the worlds are a little more accepting of people with lower morals. It gets
really
bad at the triple boundary. They call it “Buccaneer’s Reach.” It’s where the Grand Market was before the Xinti War. There’s still a market there, but it mostly deals in dubiously obtained goods.’

‘I’ve heard of the Grand Market,’ Aneka said, ‘but I’ve no idea what it actually was. Aside from the obvious anyway.’

‘It was in the Gavell system,’ Ella, the resident historian, said. ‘Not a huge system, a binary with a couple of big gas giants and an asteroid belt. No one is quite sure how it got started, but the Herosians used to claim they built the first habitat there. Basically it was a cluster of asteroids and stations built to facilitate trade between the races. It
used
to be
the
place to go if you wanted something at a good price, or for hard to get items. It was always a little lawless, but since the war it has got really bad.’

‘The Herosians and Xinti had a battle there, right?’

‘And no one is quite sure why. Whatever the reason, the place was pretty badly shot up and the Herosian fleet was more or less wiped out.’

‘After that,’ Justine went on, ‘the Herosians were fighting a losing battle all the way to Herosia. And we all know what happened when they fought there.’

Janna stood up from putting food in the oven. ‘This is depressing,’ she said brightly. ‘How about a game?’

Aneka grinned at her. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Fives.’ Ella let out a small groan at her mother’s choice. ‘For clothes,’ Janna added. ‘It’s an excellent cure for depressing topics.’

‘Well,’ Aneka said, starting toward the lounge area, ‘that’s Ella naked in three hands.’

Ella pouted, even if she knew it was true.

21.11.528 FSC.

‘You have mail marked as urgent and private,’ the apartment’s computer announced.

Aneka glanced upward; force of habit. ‘Al, get that would you?’

There was a tiny pause and then, ‘The encryption is Old Earth, military grade.’

‘Old Earth? What’s in it?’

Al displayed the message in-vision. There was a list of names, the crew of the Garnet Hyde, basically, and a set of special coordinates, and a single line of text.
It is urgent that you come.

‘Send messages out to everyone on the list,’ Aneka said. ‘Tell Drake we need to take the Hyde out today. I’ll brief him when we’re in space.’ She got to her feet and headed for the bedroom where she had left Ella sleeping.

‘You’re going to take the message at face value?’ Al asked.

‘Yes. It’s written in English.’

FScV Garnet Hyde.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Drake asked, his eyes on the stars ahead of them, even though that view told him little.

‘That depends,’ Aneka replied from behind his flight chair. ‘I’m sure we have to go look. I have no idea what we’ll find when we get there.’

‘We’ll know in about thirty seconds,’ Shannon said.

‘Sensors showing anything useful?’ Drake asked.

‘Nothing,’ Ella replied from the console at the side of the bridge. ‘No… there’s a mass there, something pretty big.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Drake grumbled.

Aneka shrugged. ‘If it’s a trap, then someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to set it. It would be rude not to turn up.’

‘Right… Drake to all hands, warp exit in ten. Brace for evasive action and sudden death.’

Aneka rolled her eyes, but took a firm grip on the back of the pilot’s chair as the display suddenly shifted into the red and then flickered back into a normal view and…

‘Oh… wow,’ Shannon said.

Ahead of them and just off to starboard was a warship. You could tell it was a warship from the ring of turrets around its midsection, and the huge forward beam weapon jutting from its bow. It was cylindrical aside from a slightly sloping quality to its bow section and a rather bulkier, spherical profile to the rear.

‘The vessel has no reaction drive exhaust system,’ Aggy commented as she began displaying a schematic diagram of the ship on their consoles. ‘This indicates a reactionless drive. The vessel’s mass is approximately one hundred thousand tonnes. The form is unlike any Herosian or Xinti design.’

‘It’s from Earth,’ Aneka said, her voice soft.

‘They said they’d built warships,’ Ella said. ‘I didn’t imagine anything this big…’

‘I am receiving a radio broadcast,’ Aggy said, and then a new voice came from the speakers.

‘Federal Science Vessel Garnet Hyde, this is Captain Tasker of the Battle Cruiser Hand of God. Please respond.’

Drake glanced at Aneka and then hit a key on his console. ‘This is Captain Drake responding. We weren’t expecting to see an Earth vessel in our region of space, Captain.’

‘No, sir,’ Tasker responded, ‘and that’s why we stopped a quarter parsec away from your system and requested that you come out to meet us. We would rather not discuss it over open radio, however. We have a representative of the Council aboard who is anxious to meet you and explain. We have a berth waiting for you in our hangar bay.’

As she spoke, two huge sections of the armoured hull swung out, and then forward and aft to reveal a hole in the side of the ship. ‘We’ll see you shortly, Captain,’ Drake said, closing the connection and starting the Hyde forward.

‘You seem calm,’ Aneka remarked.

‘If they wanted to kill us, they wouldn’t be inviting us in.’

‘True.’ Aneka watched the vast bulk of the cruiser sliding toward them. ‘So it’s just capture and torture we have to worry about.’

BC-101 Hand of God.

The inner airlock door opened ahead of them and the crew of the Garnet Hyde walked through onto the deck of the cruiser, wondering exactly what they were going to see. What they did see were six men and women in dark blue versions of the black armour the Enforcers used to wear, snapping smartly to attention, and another woman standing at the far end of the honour guard dressed in the same outfit, but without the helmet.

Aneka figured the latter was Captain Tasker, a pretty woman with what looked like long, blonde hair twisted up into a tight bun. She stepped forward and executed a very sharp salute. Aneka was quite impressed that she addressed Drake, standing beside her, first.

‘Captain Drake, welcome aboard the Hand of God. I’m Charlene Tasker, her captain. I’d be honoured if you would accompany me on a tour of the ship later. I understand that you have some considerable experience of military vessels and, well, we would appreciate any advice you might give us.’

Drake hid his surprise well. The Enforcers had been, more or less, Yrimtan’s jack-booted thugs in black armour, and then a bunch of disaffected thugs unsure of their future. The Guardians, it seemed, had found their place and were a lot happier about it than might have been expected.