Dyson's Drop (21 page)

And Anneke, for all her wealth of experience in dealing with would-be lovers, was at a complete loss. The problem was that they didn’t speak the same language.

For instance, when Anneke said
no,
Yosira thought she meant
yes.
And when Anneke said
never,
Yosira heard
maybe.

Hoping Yosira just liked a challenge, Anneke considered trying some reverse psychology. But she was afraid to go down that path.

Interestingly, Yosira seemed to be taking on the aggressive courtship role of a male. Maybe she was picking up on Anneke’s feminine pheromones. She realised she’d have to mention that problem to Arturo Ramid some day; maybe she could get a partial refund on her full metal jacket.

Either way, it didn’t help Anneke, who spent as much time avoiding Yosira as she did working out how not to get caught and killed in the short term.

By the time they were nearing their destination, Anneke was in real trouble. On both scores.

She’d grown a full three centimetres, which she handled by leaking a rumour that Jinks Heller had a problem about his height and was wearing lifts. Embarrassing, sure, but better than being dead. Her hair and skin colour were also changing and her body mass was realigning itself, some of it to her chest region.

So she diligently coloured her hair and touched up her skin pigmentation. As for her increasing perkiness, she resorted to old-fashioned wrapping and a thick tunic.

The other problems weren’t as easily dealt with.

Training exercises for the upcoming mission were inevitable. Jinks Heller could not get out of them without a doctor’s certificate and she definitely could not go to the ship’s medic.

Some exercises required stripping down to skivvies. Indeed, a lot of the guys just wore shorts. Anneke had reached the point in her transformation where she could no longer do that without giving the game away. So once again she had to wrap a thin layer of film around her chest, flattening her burgeoning breasts, and wear a loose training tunic, the kind that didn’t have big gaps under the arms.

‘Forget to do your laundry, Captain?’ asked Coign, good-humouredly when Anneke arrived wearing the training tunic. All the others were wearing loose singlets or going topless, including some females - there were few social taboos about nudity.

‘That’s right, Coign. Washed everything with my pink frilly knickers - now everything’s the same colour. You want to borrow something?’

Coign laughed and moved on to ragging someone else. This time Anneke was okay, but Yosira gave her an odd look.

Later in the mess hall, Yosira dropped into the vacant seat next to Anneke and hit buttons on the autochef Plates of steaming food slid from the chute. Yosira peeled back wrappers and inhaled the aromas deeply.

‘Nothing like chow time, huh, Captain? I mean, when you’re hungry, you have to eat, right? That’s just natural, isn’t it?’

Anneke rolled her eyes internally. Spare me from heavy innuendo, she thought, though not unkindly. She liked and admired Sergeant Yosira. She just didn’t like and admire her in
that
way.

Shovelling food into her mouth, Anneke mumbled a reply.

‘You want to play a round of hardball later? I have a court booked.’

‘Love to,’ said Anneke. ‘But I have to finish another tactical simulation report.’

Yosira cursed beneath her breath. ‘How do they expect you to do your job if they won’t tell us where we’re going? That’s just plain crazy.’

Anneke sucked at her teeth. ‘Ours is but to do and die.’

‘That’s an old quote, isn’t it?’

Anneke nodded. ‘I think so. Not exactly sure what it means, though. Old army slang talk, I reckon.’

‘You know a lot of stuff like that. Funny, you never talked like that the first time we met.’

‘I was drunk, remember?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Yosira spooned in food, chewed and swallowed. ‘You know you look different these days? I’d swear you’re growing. And losing weight at the same time. You okay? Maybe you should see the medic.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Anneke. just a bit stressed. You know, I was catapulted into this job pretty suddenly. Don’t want to screw up like Argus did.’

Yosira nodded. It was the sort of explanation everyone bought. Quesada wasn’t a bad bunch to work for, but the
noblesse oblige
of command could be gruelling and unforgiving; the Company did not tolerate mistakes. Indeed, since Brown had become CEO, there tended to be nasty consequences attached to screw-ups.

Anneke made some excuses, finished her meal in double time, and returned to her quarters. Thank god she qualified for her own cabin. If not, this whole charade would have been over days ago.

But that night the whole thing was taken out of Anneke’s hands.

Three things happened.

One. They slid into orbit around Kanto Kantoris, though officially the crew was still in the dark about the identity of the planet they now swung about in geosynchronous orbit.

Two. Anneke’s exfoliation accelerated. If she hadn’t been on extreme pain inhibitors and the
neuronosis
she would not have been able to sleep or to move at all.

Three. At two in the morning, a body slid into bed beside Anneke and cuddled up to her. Anneke woke, dimly aware something was wrong.

Then the light went on.

Anneke blinked, and reacted too slowly. The blanket was pulled back, exposing her bare chest. She’d also shed several kilos and almost returned to her normal height.

Sitting up in bed beside her, naked to the waist, was Yosira, her mouth hanging open. ‘You’re a girl.’

‘So it seems,’ Anneke said. For wont of nothing better to do, she got up, dressed quickly in full combat gear, including body armour and the tiny portable field generator they all wore when going into action. While she dressed, she explained who she was. She didn’t see any point trying to deceive Yosira. She hoped the girl understood the necessity of her masquerade and appreciated there was nothing personal in her deceit.

Yosira said, ‘So you’re a spy? For RIM?’

‘Something like that, though I’m not flavour of the month at RIM either right now.’

‘What’s your name?’

Anneke told her. Yosira gasped softly.

‘I’ve heard of you. People say you’re the reincarnation of Arial Naproxa. That raid you pulled on Arcadia. Everybody, I mean
everybody,
was talking about that for months afterwards. Those you didn’t alienate, that is. You definitely got the biggest brassiest pair of - okay, well, you don’t. But you know what I mean.’

‘Thanks. I think.’

‘So you know where we are going?’

‘I believe it’s Kanto Kantoris.’

Yosira frowned. ‘The hell we’re going there for? That is one ugly place from what I hear.’

Anneke sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded Yosira steadily. The girl was sitting there, still half-dressed.

‘Yosira, I have to get off this ship. I’ve timed the internal sensor sweeps. In about twenty minutes the ship’s AI is going to detect that, not only has it lost one male crewmember, it’s also gained a stowaway. A female one.’

Yosira nodded. She understood this. ‘And you want to know what I’m going to do?’

‘It would help.’

Yosira said nothing for a few seconds, then she got up, dressed, and turned to Anneke. ‘Guess I’m going to help you.’

‘You don’t have to do that. You can just go back to your quarters, say I turned you down. If anyone checks, they’ll know you came in here.’

‘They’ll know I was here after you reverted.’

‘I could have been dressed, I could have kept the lights off’

Yosira shook her head. ‘I’ve been here too long.’ That was true. The girl was implicated either way.

And when Brown discovered Anneke Longshadow had been on board his vessel all along and had fooled him, like some neophyte agent, he would be looking to roll not a few heads.

‘Okay. We don’t have long.’

‘What happened to the realjinks Heller?’

‘He’s safer now than he would have been here right now. We just had him mothballed for a bit. He won’t remember a thing.’

‘I’m glad. I like him.’

‘I know.’

They both laughed quietly.

As Anneke readied to leave, she asked, ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘You saved my life. Along with everybody who counts with me. So I owe you.’

‘I saved my own life, too.’

Suddenly, the internal ship alarms blared. Anneke glanced at her watch. ‘Spiffie. That’s early.’

‘Must be a random sweep,’ said Yosira. ‘They do that sometimes.’

‘Yeah, but I was counting on it not happening right now. Let’s move.’

They left at a run, needing to put distance between themselves and the cabin. Anneke had activated sensor neutralisers, which meant the ship’s AI couldn’t track them inside the vessel, but it could, if requested to do so, perform a minute three-dimensional grid sweep, looking for blind spots.

It would take three quarters of an hour, but it would locate them, unless they were near
ann-space
generator. Or no longer on the ship.

‘We need to get to an escape pod. Fast.’

‘Follow me.’ Despite having been on the ship for several weeks, Anneke still did not know the vessel like the crew who habitually manned her. She just hoped they didn’t run into anybody, especially anybody she knew and liked.

Which they did.

Corporal Coign stumbled round a corner, still doing up his zipper. He never did get it fully done up, freezing as he ran straight into Anneke and Yosira, and Anneke’s blaster zeroed him.

‘Hands up, Coign,’ said Anneke. Coign complied.

His trousers slid down around his ankles. ‘Nice shorts. I see you took me up on the pink. Cute.’

Coign frowned, then looked at Yosira. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Heller. He was renovated.’

Coign’s eyebrows crawled up his skull. ‘You kiddin’ me?’

‘No, she’s not kidding you. Listen, Coign, nothing personal, but you gotta go sleepy-bye. I apologise for the headache you’ll have when you wake.’

Coign grinned weakly. ‘Hey, lady, I owe you. You do what you have to. And hey, take care, okay?’

‘Thanks, Coign. Listen, do up your trousers first, huh?’

Coign did so, and then Anneke hit him with a stun blast. He slid to the floor. She checked his breathing and pulse, saw he was okay, then hurried on to the nearest bank of escape pods.

Here they ran into a three-man search squad, a group neither Yosira nor Anneke knew well, as Brown had brought them on board.

That suited Anneke perfectly.

She got off one blast, saw their deflector fields were handling the overload, and launched herself at the two nearest. From the corner of her eye she saw Yosira take on the third.

They were well trained, Anneke gave them that, but her Normanskian musculature gave her a natural advantage. And her determination to get out of there certainly helped. She feinted in fast on the nearest, ducked, slammed a fist in the solar plexus of the second, and dropped, hooking out with a sweeping kick that took her opponent’s feet from under him. She then rolled onto her back and pistoned up her leg, catching the guy wheezing from the plexus jab full in the jaw. The kick lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the nearest wall. He slid down, not out, but too groggy and too neurally short-circuited to do anything except moan.

Meanwhile, the guy she’d knocked on his backside rolled out of the range of her legs, having assessed her superior strength. Which meant he was good. She made a testing move in his direction and out flashed a lethal vibroblade. She nearly lost a finger then and there. She didn’t need the nail.

Suddenly, the man lunged. Anneke met blade with blade. The energy discharge as the blades connected made Anneke and her attacker blink.

Then Anneke was locked in a whirling deadly frenzy of slashing thrusting blades and tight visceral grunts as each combatant forced their body to respond to lightning fast moves. Behind her, she heard Yosira finish off her opponent and knew it was time to get going.

She feinted again, then double-feinted and went with the first move, having deliberately shifted her own balance point in the direction of the second, real feint. Her opponent bought it, and she caught his knife arm and thrust the vibroblade into his ribs. It wasn’t a serious wound, but enough to disable him. She then snatched away his blade.

At that point, as she raised her blaster, he expected to be finished off. It would be a nice surprise for him when he later woke. She hit him with the stun pulse and he collapsed like jelly.

Two minutes later Anneke and Yosira reached the bank escape pods. Anneke quickly reprogrammed one of the pods and set the destination coordinates. Within seconds, it was jetting away from the main ship and dropping them towards Kanto Kantoris.

Everything was going well.

Until an energy beam lanced out from the ship, hitting the escape pod square. The brief blinding flare of the explosion could be seen from the planet’s surface.

BLACK tasted the bitterness of his defeat. By anyone else’s estimate, the strike against Dyson’s Drop had been a resounding success. They had ousted Myoto from direct control, frozen their assets, and enjoined Dyson’s Enterprises to accept a nominal ‘garrison’ force solely to provide protection against future takeover bids, which made their raid appear altruistic.