The Cold Steel Mind (28 page)

‘I… You’re sure he was after me?’

‘Absolutely sure,’ Aneka told him. ‘He didn’t even know I was there until I was standing in his face.’

‘Well… No, I don’t think anyone…’

‘You’re selling yourself short, sir,’ Peters said. ‘You’ve made a few enemies since coming to office.’ Well, it seemed the security people on Sapphira were actually up to their job. ‘You had strong support to get into the position, but the guy you beat came from one of the old farming families. Word is they aren’t pleased.’

‘I didn’t think you had elections anymore,’ Aneka interjected.

‘We don’t,’ Ella replied. ‘When one Representative leaves office, however, the replacement comes from a pool of candidates and is selected by a committee of the other Representatives and the world’s Senator. There can be a lot of political jockeying to get in.’

‘Then there’s the pressure you’ve been putting on the local smugglers.’ Peters went on. ‘Either of those groups could have sent someone after you.’

‘Smugglers?’ Aneka asked.

‘They traffic drugs into the Federation, people out. Every so often one of their operations gets nailed, but they’re good, slick. Representative Shaw has been putting additional funds into a task force that’s trying to take them out for good.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Maybe this guy was put up to it, but he didn’t come directly from either of those. I’d expect a hired assassin from a family operation. An outsider with no connection to them. A professional gang would send a professional too. This was a guy with a low-tech pistol. You’ll need to interrogate him to find out why he did it, but I suspect he’s just nuts.’

‘Nuts?’ Shaw said, frowning. ‘Why would anyone decide to kill me because they were insane?’

‘Lots of reasons. You’re a popular politician in the public eye. Shoot you and they get their face plastered all over your news networks. Maybe it was to impress a friend, or a girl. The Secret Service, uh, the people charged with protecting one of the heads of state on Old Earth, they used to call them “jackals.” They were hard to protect against because they were just ordinary people, right up until they shot someone. There was one guy shot someone famous because he thought it would impress an actress he was fixated on. They usually turn out to be psychologically disturbed.’

‘It wouldn’t happen in the core,’ Ella commented. ‘That kind of behaviour is detected in childhood and treated.’

Shaw’s eyes narrowed. ‘Huh. I’d expect a necro to come out with a comment like that.’

Aneka saw the hurt in Ella’s eyes and spoke first. ‘I realise you’re in shock, but there’s no need to be rude. Ella was born on Harriamon. It’s an underground mining colony on the Rim. She’s quite well aware of the less perfect medical and educational systems you have because she grew up with them.’

‘I… apologise, Miss Narrows. I’m not quite myself.’

‘I’m a psychologist,’ Ella replied. ‘I can understand your disorientation. And I don’t really look like a lunyen wan nijen.’

‘I really must learn Rimmic,’ Aneka said. She pointed at Shaw. ‘And you should think about getting a bodyguard.’

The Representative grimaced, sighed, and then turned a grin on Aneka. ‘I don’t suppose you’re available?’

‘I have enough trouble keeping myself alive,’ Aneka replied wryly. ‘I don’t need someone else to worry about.’

~~~

‘What did you mean?’ Ella asked. She was curled up in the crook of Aneka’s arm as they lay on their bunk. ‘You said you had enough trouble keeping yourself alive.’

‘Winter’s message. She tracked down the mercs who attacked us on Corax. She thinks someone else is trying to get their hands on me. Doesn’t know who yet.’

Ella’s voice took on a slightly accusing tone. ‘And you were planning on telling me when?’

‘When we got back to New Earth. She didn’t think there was any chance of them getting someone here fast enough and I didn’t want to worry you until you needed to be worried.’

‘So when you saw that man…’

‘I was a little surprised when I realised he was targeting Shaw, yes. I think if my brain was slower I wouldn’t have worked it out until afterwards.’

The annoyance was gone in an instant; that was so Ella. ‘Thank Vashma for a Xinti combat chassis, again.’

‘Oh no, that was all me. I’m faster now, but I didn’t need to be. I could have done that when I was Human.’

‘Wow.’ There was silence for a second. ‘I’ve never really seen you… work before. There was that guy you pulled off me on Odanari, but I couldn’t see anything really. He just went backwards into darkness and died. This time… You just… moved. Like you knew exactly what you were doing and how to deal with him. I’ve never seen you like that.’

‘Sobering isn’t it? You’re sharing your bed with a trained killing machine on a hair trigger.’

Ella shifted, snuggling tighter against Aneka’s side. ‘You didn’t kill him.’

‘I could have. In about ten different ways. I’m lethal. I was even before the Xinti gave me super-strength and a virtually indestructible body.’

‘Maybe,’ Ella said softly, ‘but I don’t think I’ve ever felt safer.’

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The flight back to New Earth was going to take just over thirty-eight days and Ella had decided the day before they left Sapphira that she was going to stay awake. She claimed the reason was entirely educational. She was going to speak Rimmic the whole time until Aneka’s translation software had it figured out and she could understand it. Al estimated that it would take no longer than two days to reach the same competence in the language as Ella, but the redhead was clearly in one of her affectionate moods and putting her in cold sleep for a relatively short trip would have been cruel. It was Drake’s decision, ultimately, but he was not that mean either.

‘If she comes out of this “educational” trip only able to translate moans, expletives, and the names of erogenous zones I’ll never let you stay awake again,’ Drake told Ella as he settled into his plastic coffin. He was the last one in, as always.

‘I’ve got Cassandra to keep me in line,’ Ella replied.

‘She doesn’t know any Rimmic,’ Drake told her, ‘so we will be conducting tests of Aneka’s vocabulary when we wake up.’

Ella pouted briefly and then added, ‘I honestly don’t think even I could spend thirty-eight days doing nothing but sex.’

Drake’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t try,’ he said firmly, and then flashed her a grin before lying back in the pod.

Ella grinned back, and waited for the pod to close and Drake’s eyes to close before she headed for the door of the cold-sleep room. ‘Aggy, you can close down the air circulation in here.’

‘Thank you, Ella,’ Aggy said from the ceiling. ‘Aneka is currently in the hold area and has asked that you make your way there.’

‘The hold?’ Ella frowned.

‘Yes, Ella. The pressurised section, obviously.’

Confused, Ella headed down one of the ladders between decks to the hold area. She found Aneka pulling the last of four thick, padded mats into place in the middle of the hold. The tall robot woman was stripped down to just her leotard, her boots and leggings lying near one of the walls.

‘Aneka? What’s up?’

Aneka grinned at her. ‘I figured that if you’re teaching me Rimmic, I should teach you something too. So you’re going to learn some self-defence.’

‘I am?’ Ella asked, her expression sceptical.

‘You are. And I think we’ll put you on a bit of a fitness programme, tone up those muscles a little.’

Ella looked down at her body sheathed in Xinti-engineered super-cloth. ‘You think I need toning up?’

‘I think that if we make you a little stronger and a bit more trained, I won’t need to worry about you so much and you’ll be more confident about yourself.’ Aneka looked at her.

‘Okay, so I have a few little insecurities. Who doesn’t?’

‘No one I know of,’ Aneka replied, grinning, ‘but maybe we can get rid of some. You’ll love it. Lots of rolling around on the mats with me. Get those boots off and we’ll get started.’

Bending down Ella began unstrapping her boots. Well, the rolling around sounded good and… ‘I guess I’ll look better in a cropped top if I tighten up my abs.’

Aneka chuckled. It was not as though Ella was shallow, but she came from a culture that tended to view beauty as a given, and an ideal. ‘Okay, the first thing you need to learn is how to fall without hurting yourself.’

‘That sounds like it’s going to hurt.’

‘That’s why you’ll learn quickly.’

Ella let out a groan.

~~~

‘Wu yu wuda ooshang yushang,’ Ella said over the sound of the shower.

‘What did she say?’ Cassandra asked.

‘Uh… She’s complaining about being bruised. “I have bruises on my bruises,” I think.’

The android was on the top bunk; there was, they had decided, no point in using more than one room when Aneka and Ella only ever used the bottom bunk. Looking down she said, ‘That software of yours works fast.’

‘It’s still guessing a lot, but it’s got the basic tenses sorted out and it’s building vocabulary. She’s been complaining about bruises a lot.’

‘Na shu ye wuy wa chung shan tung tao ting ta chung she,’ Ella said as she emerged from the shower.

‘You are not,’ Aneka replied. ‘There are several parts of your body which aren’t purple.’

Ella’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ne chu shutzi soor tzi pebeen sing chen qua.’

‘Now she says I’m just doing this to get out of sex.’

‘That seems unlikely,’ Cassandra commented. She had returned to lying flat on the bunk. ‘I can’t recall you ever actually refusing her.’

‘No, I…’ Aneka was interrupted by a long series of syllables which left her blinking at Ella.

‘What was all that?’

‘There is no way I’m translating that,’ Aneka replied. ‘For one thing, I didn’t understand half the words, and for another what I did understand involved what she was going to do to me when she can move properly again.’

Cassandra peered over the edge of the bed at Aneka. ‘I can’t imagine why you’d be bashful about it. I’ll probably be in the room when she does it to you.’

‘She does find Human behaviour quite fascinating,’ Al observed. Aneka was not sure, but it sounded a lot like he was trying not to laugh.

‘Wer chum ye tamada yuchoi,’ Ella said, grinning like a wolf that has just spotted a wounded animal.

‘I’m not translating that either,’ Aneka stated flatly.

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Aneka hit the mat on her back and Ella immediately went for an arm lock which would have worked perfectly on another Jenlay. It was not quite as effective on someone with motorised joints, but Aneka went with it since she was trying to teach Ella to fight people, not robots.

‘You are getting quite good at this,’ Aneka commented.

‘And your Rimmic is just about perfect,’ Ella replied. ‘Of course, this isn’t a real situation. I think I’d freeze if someone really attacked me.’

‘That’s why we drill it into your muscles. When your body can do this without you having to think about it, you’ll just react.’

Ella let go of Aneka’s wrist and helped her up. ‘There’s more to it than that though. When you took down that assassin you were so relaxed, but you seemed to know what you were doing, where you were going.’

‘That takes experience, practice. You don’t need to be able to do that. You need to know how to get out of dangerous situations, and that usually means running like hell. What I’m teaching you is for when that doesn’t work.’ She checked the time. ‘We’ll take a break. You need food and fluids.’

They were walking to the mess when Al spoke. ‘Aneka, I have a… proposition.’

‘Uh, what kind of proposition?’

‘Well, as you know, Cassandra is a rather physical entity. With regards to her… expression of affection.’

‘Yeah, it was mentioned, but you don’t have a body and she can’t express her affection for you that way.’

‘Yes. We have something we would like to try. A practical trial of a theory we have come up with, but it would need your help.’

‘Uh… You said you couldn’t control my body.’

‘And I can’t, but I do have access to your mind. I generally limit myself to your conscious thoughts and I almost always back out entirely when you and Ella are being intimate. The overload of sensory data is… a little alarming, but I can “feel” everything you feel.’

Aneka frowned. ‘You’ve been with me long enough to know that’s not all there is to it. Part of sex is the shared experience. It would be me making love to Cassandra even if she was doing it with both of us.’

‘I think she should explain that part. The summary is that she feels that the interaction might satisfy her needs and… If you’re willing I would like to try.’

‘I need to talk this over with Ella. This is a bit more intimate than her orgies with the neighbours. That’s recreation, this is deeper.’

‘Cassandra said you would wish to do that,’ Al replied calmly. ‘She agrees that Ella should be willing to allow you to participate and won’t go ahead without that agreement.’

‘You two have thought about this a lot.’

‘On and off for the past two months.’

‘Right.’ Aloud she said, ‘Ella, Cassandra and Al have something they want to try out.’

‘Yes,’ Ella said.

‘You haven’t even heard what it is?’

‘Cassandra wants to have sex with you, which is kind of like having sex with Al. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to work for Al, but I think you should give it a go.’ Aneka blinked. ‘I don’t need you to do the basic training you taught me. You can have the cabin all to yourselves this afternoon.’

‘Uh… You realise…’

‘That it’s more intimate than sharing you with Kat and Dillon, or Gillian, or Drake and Shannon. Uh-huh, but it’s more like you’re acting as a surrogate. She won’t be making love to you, exactly. I’d imagine they’ll be communicating with each other all the time. Actually, I’m more worried about you.’

‘Me?’ Aneka squeaked. Ella had obviously come up with the same idea and thought about it a fair bit herself.
So why didn’t I?

‘Yes. You might come out of this feeling a bit… used.’

‘Oh. I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

Ella nodded. It was a professional, psychologist sort of nod. ‘I think you should think of it just like the situation with Kat and Dillon. Ignore the emotion and just view it as something recreational. Be a little detached about it.’