The Cold Steel Mind (27 page)

‘Half of this stuff is going to take smarter people than me to analyse,’ Edge said, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

Peters nodded. ‘Look Barton, we’ve seen no evidence of coercion. Miss Jansen’s been so open it’s almost embarrassing. Do we need to keep going over this now?’ Aneka tried not to smirk; he had not looked embarrassed about anything he had seen, even the sex.

Edge frowned, thinking. ‘Is there anything else you want to add, Miss Jansen? If you can provide all of this as data files we can just make a report on what we’ve seen and they can sort out the rest on New Earth.’

‘There is one thing. We all agreed on it and it was our idea, not the AIs.’ The only people on this ship who know where Negral is are me and Aggy. Aggy is under orders not to reveal that information and I won’t be including it in my deposition. It’s the one way we have of ensuring that, say, the Herosians won’t go there and blow it up.’

‘Your idea,’ Edge asked, ‘not theirs?’

‘I can show you the discussions we had on it. Honestly, they were pretty keen to be out here talking to people. They’ve been isolated for a long time. It’s Gillian that pulled me up and stopped me from ordering them to let us go. You saw that. We’re being more cautious than they’d like, but they’re bowing to our greater knowledge of current galactic politics.’

Edge shrugged. ‘It’ll go in the report, but if it wasn’t their suggestion then it’s not relevant to the task at hand. We’d better get on with the others.’

Aneka laughed. ‘I admire your dedication, but you’d better take a break. You’re tired and tired people miss things. Check with your boss, but I think she’ll agree.’

‘She’s right,’ Peters said. ‘We should at least get some coffee in us. If we go to the mess we can do some informal chatting. People are more likely to slip that way and we get a rest.’

‘That’s very underhanded,’ Aneka commented. ‘I’m glad we have nothing to hide.’

~~~

Aneka re-entered the cabin to find Ella lying on the bunk with an arm draped over her eyes. Her session had been only two hours, but it looked like it had been pretty intense. Aneka figured she had been subjected to the full package and had come down as soon as Edge and Peters had turned up to collect Bashford.

‘You okay, love,’ Aneka asked as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘Two hours with a bright light shining in my eyes. I’ve got a headache. I’ll be fine once the painkillers kick in.’

‘Huh, yeah.’

Ella removed her arm and propped her head up on it. ‘You actually got trained to resist that kind of thing?’

‘Yeah, with the added benefits package.’ Ella gave her a quizzical look. ‘Stress positions, waterboarding, isolation, sodium pentothal.’

Ella giggled, and then winced. ‘They used truth serums back then?’

‘Most people thought they were useless, but we had to know what it felt like being under them. I’m surprised they haven’t made a real one by now.’

‘Nope. We’ve got psychics. You can’t drug someone into telling the truth, just make them a bit more trusting and gullible.’ She grinned at Aneka. ‘As I recall you have pheromone emitters that can do that.’

‘Huh. Don’t remind me.’

‘How about turning on the sex ones? I like those ones.’

Aneka shook her head. ‘You don’t
need
sex pheromones to make you horny. And I thought you had a headache.’

‘Didn’t you know? Orgasm is great for headaches.’

‘Sure it is,’ Aneka replied, but she started undressing anyway. One day she would have to say no to Ella. Just not today.

Arbonatura, Sapphira, 8.11.524 FSC.

The scouts had decided that there was nothing dangerous about the Garnet Hyde or its crew, but wanted a couple of days to go over their data and check for anything they might have missed. That was fine by the crew who wanted the opportunity to drop down to Sapphira. Killian agreed that that was fine as long as they did it in shifts and took Peters with them when they went.

So it was that the Garnet Hyde’s shuttle settled onto a landing pad just outside one of the northern towns of Arbonatura late in the morning. The town was called Chance and it had, apparently, been the first major development on the planet after colonisation about two hundred and fifty years earlier. That was the main reason it hosted the planet’s university, a sprawling complex of buildings and fields, primarily devoted to agricultural research.

Wallace was aboard. He wanted to talk to David Reman, which was a reason other than ‘taking a break,’ so his trip had been planned first. Gillian had decided that it was always good to see another university, so she was going too. Aneka and Ella were mainly just along for the ride, though Ella was Gillian’s assistant. Aneka still had such enthusiasm for different planets that no one could deny her visits to them. Shannon was along as pilot, and they had their guide, Peters, with them, which made quite the busload for Anthony Shaw who had come out to the airfield to pick them up.

‘You didn’t have to come out to be our taxi service,’ Gillian said to the politician.

Shaw gave her a shrug. ‘Our distinguished visitors from New Earth? Yeah, I did.’ He nodded to Wallace. ‘Reman is waiting for you, Doctor Wallace. Impatiently, I might add.’

Wallace smiled. ‘Let’s not keep the man waiting then.’

Chance was the kind of thing you expected to see in Hollywood films set in small towns in the middle of America. There were no buildings taller than two stories, the streets were wide. As they headed in through the northern side they were surrounded by single-storey houses which looked to Aneka as though they had seen better days, though the structures seemed solid and most of them had up-to-date paintwork. There was pride in the place; it had just been there for a long time and there was not that much spare cash going around.

‘It’s a nice little town,’ she commented.

‘You’ll get prettier and more modern over on Sapphira Vista,’ Shaw replied, a hint of pride in his voice, ‘but not with such nice people. People here care about their town. And they’re damn proud that they host the university. Oldest settlement on the planet.’

The town centre definitely looked like something out of the Mid-West, except that the buildings were largely Plascrete and various structural plastics. Aneka had seen little of New Earth, and Harriamon and Corax were underground. This place, the first major aboveground settlement she had seen outside the core, looked more like home. Not her home, maybe, but Old Earth. There was another thing about it that differentiated it from New Earth.

Aneka leaned towards Ella and lowered her voice. ‘You know, the people here wear clothes.’

Ella giggled. ‘We wear clothes.’

‘Yes, but they wear clothes which are actually opaque and not glued to the skin. This place could be an ordinary town in America.’

The big car, which Aneka would have classed as a pick-up of some sort, except that it was fully enclosed with two wide, bench seats behind the driver, turned left as they left the town’s central business district. There was no auto-drive on this vehicle; Shaw was doing all the driving. The thing seemed to have an automatic gearbox, but that was about it. From the sound of it, it was powered off some sort of internal combustion engine as well.

And then they were driving through a lot of low buildings. They were old-looking, probably built when the town was and with a sense of grandeur. The university too had the feeling of an American university campus rather than the high-tech,
Star Trek
look of the University of New Earth. There were trees between the buildings to provide shade, and students sitting under them. This looked more like New England than the Mid-West, but it still felt more like home than any other place Aneka had been.

Shaw pulled up in front of a large, low building with huge windows and mock brickwork walls. ‘This is the sciences building. Most of what goes on here is agricultural. Not much call for theoretical work, literature, that kind of thing, but we cater for it.’

‘Mister Reman has written several very interesting papers,’ Wallace said. ‘His work is exceptional, even compared to theoreticians from the core and the Torem seats of learning.’

‘Oh, we’re proud of him. Anyway, I can take you through to his office. Is everyone coming?’

‘I will,’ Gillian replied.

‘I think I’d like to stay out here in the sun,’ Ella said looking out at the dappled light coming down through the trees. ‘Even if I wish I’d changed clothes.’

Peters looked torn. ‘I guess I should go in.’

‘I’ll drop them off and come out to make sure Miss Narrows doesn’t get into trouble,’ Shaw offered. ‘I’m not exactly into all that science stuff.’

‘I’ll stick with Ella,’ Aneka said, opening the door. ‘I’m not a scientist either.’

‘Right,’ Shaw said. ‘I’ll be out in five or ten minutes. Don’t stray too far.’

Ella was following Aneka out of the door. ‘We’ll be right here, under a tree.’

Stretched out under the nearest tree she could find, Ella closed her eyes and smiled. Even if she was dressed in one of the Xinti shipsuits, it felt good to be out in real sunlight. ‘Is this place really like Old Earth?’

‘Bits of Old Earth. Mostly places I’ve seen on TV and in movies, uh, vids.’

‘I’ve been around you long enough to know what TV was,’ Ella pointed out, grinning.

‘Huh, yeah. This place looks kind of like some of the Ivy League universities they always seemed to be showing on TV. I’m not exactly sure what the Ivy League actually was. I think maybe Harvard was in it. The buildings here are fake brick instead of real brick, and I don’t think we’d have got the looks we’re getting here.’

‘You’re half-naked, I’m in a figure-hugging vacuum suit, and they’re dressed to meet their virgin aunts. A few looks aren’t surprising.’

‘There’s less lust and more suspicion.’

‘Oh. They probably don’t see many core worlders.’

‘We aren’t, but I don’t suppose they know that.’ Shrugging, Aneka settled down beside her girlfriend, but she did not close her eyes. Something felt off and, with the warning Winter had given her, she was taking no chances.
Should have brought a gun.

‘I don’t think that would have gone down well,’ Al commented. ‘Peters is armed if it comes to that, and you are not exactly helpless.’

‘True, but using the pulse weapon would take some explaining.’

‘Not if you use the lethal mode. No visible effect and it’ll be days before they figure out anything odd happened.’

‘That’s still a last resort.’

It took Shaw seven minutes and sixteen seconds to emerge from the sciences building. Aneka noticed that most of the academics around the area relaxed noticeably as soon as he was with them. It seemed that having a local politician nearby gave some sort of stamp of approval.

‘Are you two happy here?’ he asked. ‘We can take a walk around campus if you like.’

Ella stretched and climbed to her feet. ‘Sure. It’s a lovely campus. Aneka says it reminds her of places on Old Earth.’

That seemed to impress the man. ‘Really? The architects were building something modern when it was put up, but that was over a century ago.’

Aneka stood up, smiling. ‘Not many places I’ve seen remind me of home. And actually, this doesn’t, but it reminds me of places I’ve seen.’ She sighed. ‘Still, I’ve a new home now. Ella’s flat is gorgeous, but I’m still not really used to living in a city.’

They started off towards a fountain they could see across the grass, not quickly, no one was in a hurry. ‘No real cities in Arbonatura,’ Shaw said. ‘We’ve a population of thirteen million spread across a huge area. There’s a small city over on Sapphira Vista, but here it’s towns and farmsteads. A lot of the population live on the farms.’

‘It sounds idyllic,’ Ella commented, though Aneka knew she quite liked Yorkbridge where she lived.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. We work hard. Sapphira has a pretty eccentric orbit and making sure the crops grow is a fairly complicated process. Irrigation in the summer, just surviving through the winter. Animals have a hard time in the cold months. You’ve arrived in late spring. You’re lucky. It’ll get really hot in another month.’

‘I don’t mind hot,’ Ella replied, grinning. ‘Though I get the feeling nude sunbathing might be frowned upon.’

‘Uh… Well…’

Aneka’s eyes caught the slight glint of sunlight on metal and her attention snapped to the gun in the hands of a man who did not really look like a student. She saw the weapon rising, saw that its owner had clothes more like a farm worker than an academic, saw his expression of fear mixed with determination. She was moving before she realised it, closing the distance between herself and the gunman. He had not even seen her, his focus was elsewhere. Aneka realised with a start that he was aiming for Shaw.

‘Gun!’ The word snapped through the air as Aneka took the final pace. The only person who reacted was the gunman, his attention suddenly drawn to the tall, white-haired woman who was suddenly so close. His focus broken, he had no idea what to do as her left hand wrapped around the barrel of his pistol, twisting it upward, and her right struck his wrist briefly paralysing his fingers. The gun came free; Aneka was dimly aware of an identification image appearing in-vision stating that it was a seven-point-five millimetre caseless automatic with zero threat potential to her. Her fist was busy burying itself in the would-be assassin’s solar plexus as she took in the information. As he doubled over her elbow slammed into his back, and then he was down and her knee was pinning him while she put him in a hammer lock.

Suddenly there was noise. Men and women were screaming; Aneka thought one of them might have been Ella. Looking up at Shaw she yelled, ‘Don’t just stand there, get some cops!’

~~~

‘That was… amazing!’ Ella said, again. ‘I mean, I didn’t even really see him and then he was just… Wham! On the floor.’

‘That’s what I used to do for a living, Ella,’ Aneka replied.

‘Take down gunmen?’ Shaw asked.

‘I did personal protection details, hostage rescue, that kind of thing. I guess the training never lets go. Why would someone want you dead, Representative?’

‘A very good question,’ Peters put in. He had quietly and with no fuss taken over the investigation from the Peacekeepers, leaving them to cart off the gunman.