Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame (27 page)

‘I need Al concentrating on
my
support. If he’s splitting his attention between me and his drone he’ll be less efficient at both tasks. I go in alone. They won’t know I’m even there until I come out with the hostages.’

‘And then you’ll have a battalion of troops trying to kill you,’ Ella said.

‘Trying, yes.’

‘I read the specs on your new systems, you know. If they can concentrate enough fire they can penetrate that shield of yours. You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously.’

Sighing, Aneka sat down on a chair facing the two women. Al’s drone was sitting quietly on the bed behind them, not getting involved beyond the odd statement of fact; he knew that it was Aneka’s job to do the persuading.

‘To be honest, I’m having a lot of trouble not seeing this as a brilliant opportunity to test my new body out under combat conditions. I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to be facing off against trained soldiers armed with state-of-the-art weaponry to rescue civilians caught up in this mess. It’s what I
wanted
to do before the Xinti took me. It’s what I trained to do. It’s what I’m good at.’ She lifted her head and looked at them, her gaze intent. ‘I’m really,
really
good at killing people to save other people. Let me do what I’m good at.’

‘You…’ Ella began, swallowed, and then went on, ‘you’re really good at some other things too.’

‘Eating you out does not count under the circumstances.’

Ella looked at Cassandra, who nodded.

‘We think it does,’ Ella told her.

Behind them, Al began to chuckle.

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Gwy looked at Aneka and Ella, a distinctly timid expression on her obsidian features. Her body had changed in the virtual environment of the flight deck. There were some elements of definition that had been added which she was not entirely comfortable with, but also very excited about.

Cassandra had decided, as they flew back from Sapphira, that the AI was part of their little family, but was missing out on an aspect of that relationship. So she had adapted the sensory modules the higher AIs had fitted her and Al with to Gwy’s systems, and worked with her to create a more… complete avatar, at least for private use.

Since they were only a couple of days from Eshebbon, and Ella was almost constantly demanding what she was worried would be the last sex she ever had with Aneka, it had been decided that it was high time to test Gwy’s new features.

‘I… I am unsure that this is a good idea,’ Gwy said. ‘What if I lose control of my engines? What if I forget…?’

‘Pretty much every system on this ship has a subsidiary control AI handling the details,’ Aneka said. ‘You know full well that your job is to supervise them all, not to keep control of everything.’

‘Y-yes, but…’

Ella stepped closer and reached out, tracing her fingers down Gwy’s right arm. The AI fell silent as the new sensations hit her mind.

‘If you’re really worried about this,’ Ella said softly, ‘we won’t do it. Now.’ The fingers traced back up over the smooth skin. ‘Later, when things have calmed down…’

Aneka moved around to stand behind the avatar and pushed her soft, pale-blue hair aside. Lips met neck. The skin was cool and very smooth. ‘If you want to stop, we can,’ Aneka said, planting another kiss.

‘M-maybe a little more?’ Gwy breathed, even though breath was something she definitely did not need.

Ella reached for the nearest nipple. They were sort of moulded. It had been decided to stick with the solid feeling of the normal avatar, but there was enough give in the virtual flesh that when Ella squeezed, the reaction was immediate.

‘Oh…’ Gwy moaned. ‘I… I think I see… why you like this.’

‘Oh Gwy,’ Aneka whispered as she pressed her body against Gwy’s back and reached down between her legs, ‘you don’t know the half of it.’

12.3.531 FSC.

‘The station will be in darkness in a little over one hour,’ Gwy said. ‘I am detecting a full range of sensor systems in operation. Active scanning is being used from the ships in orbit and the facility itself. The layout of the buildings is as indicated in the probe data we received.’

Aneka watched the wall screen for several seconds, noting the shifting positions of vessels. It looked like the Navy had made a fairly classic mistake.

‘We’ll go in over the northern pole,’ she said. ‘They’ve concentrated all their ships in equatorial orbits. The cloak should stop them seeing us anyway, but there’s no point in taking risks when they’ve given us such a huge opening.’

‘The mountain range a klick north of the facility would seem to offer the best cover for a landing,’ Al suggested.

Aneka nodded. ‘When I’m out, you give me twenty minutes and then you come out, low, and wait at the edge of the foothills.’ She glanced at Ella, who was trying her best to pay attention and ignore what was going to happen soon at the same time.

‘Twenty minutes?’

‘That’ll give me time to get in. I won’t need to contact you before then and there’s no point in being exposed, even with the cloak, longer than you need to be.’

‘Okay… If the data from the probes is right, the larger building is the research centre and the civilians are probably in there. The other one is the virus fabrication plant.’

‘And we have something special lined up for that, but we need these people out first. It’s going to need pretty amazing timing. You signal for the pickup and then you move. They’ll probably detect the transmission.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ella replied. ‘We’ll be out of there the second we call in the cavalry.’

‘Good. Just don’t forget to pick me up, okay?’

‘Well, do we have time for one more shower before we go down?’

‘Not really, and we’ve all been banging each other senseless for the better part of three days.’

‘Well then… I’ll
try
to remember…’

Eshebbon.

The scope of Aneka’s rifle picked out cameras and active sensor arrays, and the blind spots which no one had bothered to fix because who was going to be able to get this close anyway?

‘Overconfidence,’ Aneka commented silently. ‘You know, if I ever turn evil I’m going to need someone to make sure I don’t do things like this.’

‘Should you decide that evil is a valid career choice, I will be available for ego-pricking,’ Al replied. ‘However, they may not be being quite so foolish. Does the ground about one hundred metres out look disturbed to you?’

Aneka looked, zooming in the scope as far as it would go. ‘You’re right. Mines.’ They were in a loose ring, not very evenly spaced, but close enough that it would be hard to get past them.

‘Standard Navy munitions have a computerised, radio-controlled safety system. I should be able to hack it if we get close enough to one of them. They may detect the intrusion, however.’

‘Chance we’ll have to take. We’re not getting past them any other way that doesn’t involve a lot of noise. After that… Perimeter guards, two pairs which is not enough. We can time our entry to avoid them. Go in cloaked to the building wall…’ She scanned over the low, Plascrete structure. ‘There’s roof access if we can… huh, there’s a ladder on the south side. Must be a fire escape. It’s nice to know they considered health and safety in their secret base of mass destruction.’

‘I admit,’ Al said as Aneka began to make her way forward, moving boulder to boulder as she closed on the minefield, ‘that I find this mode of operation rather more enjoyable than carrying a machine gun into battle.’

‘You were pretty good with that thing. I’m going to start teaching you to use weapons properly when we get this mess cleaned up.’

‘And I would appreciate that, but this is how I was designed to operate and I find it more pleasing than more direct action. Like this, I feel like part of a carefully tuned whole, rather than one component in a team.’

‘Huh.’ There was silence for a few seconds and then Aneka said, ‘It’s an interesting notion though. We could probably rope Ella in. If we all ran software to synchronise our efforts, the three of us could take on just about anything.’

‘You would put Ella in that position?’

‘Not if I could avoid it, but there have been times when avoidance isn’t possible. A good offence isn’t always the best defence, but when given no choice I’d rather we were the best offence ever.’ She paused, glancing out from behind the low rock she was hidden behind. ‘Are we close enough?’

‘I’ve already started hacking the nearest mine.’

A marker appeared in-vision showing the position of the bomb he was working on. Two guards in Marine armour were walking past. Aneka estimated two minutes until they were far enough away that they would not see her crossing. If she had to wait for five minutes, the next pair might see her…

‘Mine disarmed,’ Al stated, interrupting her train of thought. ‘They are standard anti-personnel weapons, visual and vibration sensors, with a range of thirty metres. Be careful of the one to the left.’ Another marker appeared, this one with a thirty-metre circle around it marked on the ground. Aneka checked where the guards were, cut in her shield and cloak, and started across the space to the building.

Here there was light, but the large spots which illuminated the building had been fitted to cover areas people were expected to be in and that left large areas in shadow or darkness. Still, Aneka took the ladder carefully, making sure that she made no sound as she climbed up to the roof and made her way to what did seem to be an emergency exit doorway set in the middle of the flat roof. Al had the locking mechanism hacked inside of a minute and they climbed down another ladder and into something like a vision of Hell.

The room was, roughly, square with a door taking up one corner to the north. There were various instrument panels and control displays on desks around the centre, but the outside walls were all taken up by cells containing what had once been Herosians.

Herosian chucks looked worse than Jenlay ones. The flesh was pulled back from their mouths revealing sharp, yellowed teeth, pointed and vicious. Their eyes were also yellowed, except for the bloodshot quality. Their claws looked longer and the loss of body mass gave them a horrifically skeletal quality. Herosians were carnivores: these things were cannibal carnivores, and they all looked hungry.

‘I’m glad they can’t see us,’ Al commented.

‘I suspect they’d make a lot of noise if they could.’ Aneka went to the door, hitting the open button and hoping that did not set the creatures off. They appeared to ignore it and there was no one in the corridor outside. ‘Left or right?’ Aneka mused.

‘The northern side of the structure had windows. I believe we want the southern end.’

‘Good point, but left or right?’

‘I doubt that matters.’

Aneka went left. The corridor turned left again and then went south through what looked like the main entrance hall and into a whitewashed area which looked like it might contain labs, and perhaps the holding cells for the prisoners. She had gone another ten metres before she found the unmarked door with the two guards on the opposite side of the wall. She could tell by the heat signatures that they were facing into whatever was on the other side, and you did not guard a door like that unless you were aiming to keep things
inside
the room.

Raising her arms, she lined her palms up with the heads of the men on the other side of the wall, determined range, set her force weapons, and released. The two guards fell to the floor as random fluctuations of gravity tore apart their brains from the inside. It was probably a fairly quick way to go and Aneka was not going to lose any sleep over it, especially after she saw what was on the other side of the door.

The white corridor was lined with cells. Many of them were empty, but blood on the floor of several suggested that they had once been occupied and the inhabitant had met with an untimely end. The inhabitants who were still there looked weary, thin, and some of them were bruised or cut. They sat or lay on their beds and did not move even when Aneka dropped her cloak as she walked past.

Until she reached one cell where the naked girl on the inside looked up and then darted forward, rushing to the transparent wall and banging on it. Aneka recognised Daniella immediately, though the girl was thinner than she had been and her skin was paler. Her fists hammering on the Polyglass produced barely any sound on the outside.

‘Al, can you open the cells?’

‘I have negotiated the control mechanism.’

‘Open this one.’

Daniella stepped back as the wall in front of her sank into the floor. ‘Stephen sent you to find me?’ Daniella asked almost immediately.

‘He wanted me to find you,’ Aneka replied, nodding. ‘It’s taken a while. Sorry.’

‘I don’t even know where I am.’

‘Eshebbon. I doubt you’ve heard of it. We need to get you out of here.’

‘Melissa’s here. We… Olivia wasn’t there when they did the last test on us.’

‘Right… Let’s see who else we have.’

There were eighteen survivors, five of them Torem who could barely stand without their exoskeletons. Aneka was not sure how many there had been to start with, but she guessed there were a lot more than thirteen Jenlay taken to experiment on. She looked around at the scared people, all of them hoping they were about to get out of this somehow, but wondering why a single woman was there to rescue them. Taking out her left hand pistol, she started swapping the magazine.

‘All right, we’re leaving, but it’s not going to be as easy as walking out the door. There are soldiers out there who will try to stop us. I’m going to take care of that. Your job is to get out through the main entrance and head away from the building. You will be met by some ships which will take you out of here. I need some of you Jenlay to help the Torem and anyone who can’t walk well. Stick together and you’ll get out of this alive.’

‘How are
you
going to stop all the guards?’ one of the men asked.

Aneka smiled. ‘Believe me, I’ll manage it for long enough that you can break out. You go out of here, turn right, and then straight up to the main entrance. It’s on your left. You give me two minutes to clear the way and then you come out. Don’t run, but move as fast as you safely can. If you leave anyone behind, anyone, I will shoot you myself. There will be some things coming down to cover you to the ships. They have guns, and they’re big and scary, but they’ll be shooting at people in uniforms. Don’t worry about them, just keep going. And, lastly, it’s below freezing outside and you’re all naked. Don’t dawdle when you get out the door.’