The Cold Steel Mind (37 page)

‘Huh… I don’t think.’ She stopped abruptly as the first wave of intense pleasure hit her.

‘That’s right,’ Aneka said, ‘you don’t think, you just scream.’

~~~

Ella listened to the screaming for about ten minutes, pacing back and forth at first, then sitting down for about five seconds, and then jumping to her feet to pace some more.

The screaming did not stop, and finally she went to the bedroom she normally shared with Aneka. Here, despite the common wall with the room where Delaney was wailing, the sound was muted. She had had the room soundproofed for the sake of her neighbours, though Kat and Dillon would not have minded the kind of sounds Ella hoped to make there. Now it was useful to keep the sounds out. Most of them.

‘Computer, playlist seventeen, random shuffle, volume eighty.’ Almost immediately Linkin Park began blasting out over the room’s speakers, the opening chords of ‘Points of Authority’
blotting out the sounds from the other room.

Sighing, Ella lay down on the bed and tried to ignore what was going on out of her sight.

~~~

Aneka walked into the bedroom, startling Ella, and headed straight for the wardrobe where her guns were hidden in a secure cabinet.

Ella glanced at the clock beside the bed. ‘Two hours?’

‘Two hours, seventeen minutes,’ Aneka replied. ‘Too long. She’s tough, that one. I had to use all my pheromones as well as the neurostim. She’s going to be a mess when she wakes up.’

‘Oh. You got what you needed?’

‘I got it. I’m heading out to get Shannon. Winter’s sending some people, but I can get there faster. You’re staying here.’

‘But…’

Aneka turned in the middle of strapping on her gun belt. ‘You’re staying here. Don’t go in that room. If she comes to you could be in trouble. There will be agents here to pick her up in an hour, tops.’ Putting her rifle into a bag and wrapping herself in a long coat, Aneka started for the door.

‘Be careful,’ Ella called after her.

‘I always am, love,’ Aneka said, even if it was a lie.

Elm Tree Industrial Reserve.

It took just over fifteen minutes for Aneka to get out to the industrial estate on the north-west edge of the city where Delaney had said Shannon could be found. There were no elm trees that she could see on the grounds and it did not look much like an industrial estate. She would have called it a business park; there were a lot of fairly low buildings in white Plascrete with well-kept lawns and carefully maintained flower beds. There was also a high, chain-link fence around the outside of it and cameras mounted on posts scanning the area.

‘Camera scan fields intercepted,’ Al said as Aneka approached the fence. ‘There is a blind spot on the fence fifteen metres to the south.’ A map view of the area appeared in-vision showing the fields currently being scanned by the cameras.

‘I so could have used you back in my time.’ Finding the spot on the fence which had not been properly covered she began to climb.

‘Of course you could. The building we want is thirty-four metres inside the perimeter on a heading of two hundred and sixty-two degrees.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She dropped down on the opposite side, locating the building on the map. Safe where she was, she activated the digital zoom on her eyes and scanned in on the main entrance. ‘Guards,’ she said. ‘That looks like military grade combat gear.’ Stats flickered through her vision field as Al’s database analysed weapon silhouettes and suggested probable protective values of the suits the men were wearing.

‘White Sun mercenaries,’ Al suggested. ‘I believe that we are in the right place.’ A marker appeared on the rear of the building map. ‘City records indicate an emergency exit here. It is covered by a camera, but I have already accessed their security systems and looped the feeds.’

Looping around the outside of the compound was going to take time, but she had no way of knowing exactly what strength the forces inside were. A direct assault was too risky. Moving in bursts to avoid the camera fields, she moved as quickly as she could towards the back entrance. It was almost too easy. She really did wish she had had this sort of technology when she had been running ops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The door was solid, but there were no heat signatures visible on the other side. The locks clicked open as Al invaded the control systems, and she pulled it open, seeing no one in the corridor inside. She could hear nothing and no one; the place seemed to be empty.
A decoy?

‘There is a secondary set of security systems which appear to be protecting facilities beneath us,’ Al informed her. ‘I am having considerably more trouble gaining access there. I believe that Shannon may be being held in that area.’

‘Access point?’

‘I have no information.’

The building appeared to be a fairly basic design with a core utility area surrounded by open plan offices. If there was going to be a way down, it was likely that she would find it in the middle. ‘Cameras?’

‘On this floor I have them looped. There appear to be no guards on this level, except those at the front entrance.’

‘That’s not a good sign.’

‘It isn’t?’ Al sounded as though he was actually confused.

‘It probably means the lower level is impenetrable, or heavily guarded, or both. Or…’ She stopped. The alternative was that Quint had got what he wanted and left, with or without Shannon. If it was without then…

‘We will rescue her and stop Quint,’ Al said firmly.

Aneka pressed on, trying to keep that frame of mind in the forefront of her thoughts. She heard and saw no one as she moved down the spinal corridor and then circled the core block. ‘You have an external schematic?’ she asked once she had been once around it. A 3D image of the block appeared with doors marked. She had seen signs on several of the doors and these were marked as legends against those doors. One door was unmarked.

‘The unmarked door seems a likely target,’ Al suggested.

Aneka nodded. ‘And that’s why I’m going to try the janitor’s closet first.’ She moved around to the plain door with the simple sign on it. ‘Janitor. Keep Out.’ The handle turned easily; Al had released all the interior locks. Inside the room there were no buckets or mops, just a staircase leading down.

‘How did you know?’ Al asked.

Aneka shrugged, closing the door behind her and then starting down the stairs. ‘Experience. The position relative to the building core maybe.’ She slipped her pistols from their holsters as she went.

‘Intuition. Something I lack. I can make calculations, exceptionally good estimations, but I can’t…’

‘I don’t believe in intuition,’ Aneka replied. ‘Not as some sort of mystical property of the mind.’

‘The Xinti did. It was one of the things they thought separated them from AIs.’

‘They were wrong. We just calculate things without knowing how we’re doing it and call it intuition.’ Ahead of her, down a Plascrete corridor, two guards in combat suits noticed her. Their helmets hid their surprise, but their bodies, unmoving as she raised her guns, suggested they were not expecting to find anyone coming down those stairs. ‘So much for the quiet approach,’ Aneka muttered, her fingers closing on the triggers. Slivers of hyper-dense plastic filled the air, flashing to plasma as they hit the men’s armour. The two bodies jerked violently, falling back against the wall, and they were dead without firing a shot.

A horn began to sound. Something had triggered an alarm and there would be more of them coming. ‘I think you’ve made them angry,’ Al commented. ‘Left or right?’

‘Left,’ Aneka replied, checking down the right-hand corridor quickly before turning left, leading with her guns. ‘That’s just a guess.’

‘Apparently a good one.’ A figure in heavy powered armour was moving out of a doorway part way down the corridor ahead of her. Her rifle, she realised, could penetrate the suit’s chest armour, but her pistols did not have the power. ‘The limbs and faceplate are less well protected.’

Aneka raised the pistol in her right hand and fired. A couple of rounds burst into flame against the suit’s helmet, but most burned through the visor and into the head behind it. A blast of ionised air ripped past Aneka’s face, fired in reflex as the man inside the suit began to fall. A second blast came out from behind him, hitting her in the left bicep and pain seared through her body. Messages flashed across her vision.
Electron discharge impact. Dermal layer damaged. Internal damage. Function impaired.
Her gun slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor, as the second armoured man stepped forwards, raising his rifle to fire again. Biting back on pain she knew was more psychological than real, Aneka fired first. The needles flared against the suit’s chest plate, then throat, and then up into the faceplate. The rifle jerked upwards, blasting a hole in the ceiling and plunging the corridor into darkness, but there were no more of the armoured mercenaries ahead of her. Her left arm hanging limply at her side, she started down the corridor towards the door at the end.

The room looked like a cross between an interrogation suite and an operating theatre. Aneka swept around it with her pistol, but there was only one occupant. Shannon lay on a padded, bench-like table, her ankles and wrists in padded cuffs. She was naked, but apparently unharmed. Physically. As Aneka stepped up to her and looked into her eyes, her heart sank; Shannon looked up at her blankly. It was not that there was no recognition there, or relief, there was simply nothing.

The back wall of the room changed, appearing to vanish right in front of her. Aneka raised her pistol and fired at the figures she saw there, but the slugs flared into plasma leaving deep burns in the Polyglass wall. Flanked by two men in powered armour, the man Aneka guessed was Ardus Quint smiled at her. He was below average height, fat, and the right side of his face had a squashed look to it that made him appear lopsided. His hairline on that side receded more than the other, worsening the effect, but his lank, dark hair was long on the left. Both his legs and his left arm were artificial; obviously so since he was dressed in a pair of knee-length shorts and a light, sleeveless robe. His right eye was also cybernetic, though that took Aneka’s enhanced vision to detect; the heat signature was wrong.

‘Miss Jansen,’ Quint said, sounding every inch the jovial host, ‘I see now why Mistress was unable to affect your mind.’ Aneka glanced at her arm. It was the worst damage she had ever taken; the skin was burned off most of her upper arm and the woven fibre armour layer had a burned, half-melted look to it. ‘The woman from the past is a robot. An interesting piece of information which I’m sure will be wanted by some people, for a hefty fee.’

‘What’ve you done to Shannon?’ Aneka asked, trying to keep her voice level.

‘I have extracted the information I wanted.’

‘The location of Negral.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Delaney said as much. It took me a couple of hours to get the information from her.’

‘Yes, too long for poor Shannon. I was not able to finish the process, unfortunately. She would have made a fine addition to my collection once properly altered. I was only able to erase her mind, not rebuild it.’

Aneka’s hand tightened around her pistol’s grip. ‘Winter’s people are surrounding the building,’ Al informed her. ‘A squad is coming down now.’

Delaying Quint seemed like the best option. ‘I have to say, Quint, of all the people I’ve met since I woke up, you are absolutely the most disgusting. I’d kiss a leper before I touched you. I have seen more attractive corpses…’

‘I’m sure you’ll be one as soon as the Herosians discover what you are,’ Quint snapped.

‘They aren’t going to. You’ll never get out of here alive. And if you do, I’ll take great pleasure in hunting you down and blowing your brains out.’

One of the guards said something which Aneka could not hear before the psychic could respond. Quint glared at her. ‘You can try, Miss Jansen,’ he said, and then he turned, heading for a door at the back of his side of the room. The wall became opaque as Aneka fired once more, riddling it with burned pits, which did not penetrate, until the magazine was empty.

10.1.525 FSC.

‘How did he manage to escape?!’ Aneka roared. Ella flinched against her side and she did her best to calm down. Across the lounge, sitting with her legs crossed and meaning business in one of her grey suits, Winter remained impassive. ‘Sorry. But how?’

‘An escape tunnel,’ Winter replied. ‘By the time we were able to follow he was long gone, but we know where he is.’

‘Then…’

‘He is making no attempt to hide now. He has no less than three Representatives who are willing to state on the record that he has been with them for the past three days. At a party in the Islands, no less. We have no grounds to arrest him.’

‘He’s got the location of Negral, and he knows I’m not Human.’ Ella shifted again. Aneka was tensing and Ella was being very clingy even though six hours after her arm had been damaged there was only a patch of missing skin to show for it. The arm was not working properly yet, but it would be soon enough.

‘I am aware of this. Unfortunately, I can’t employ the usual means to stop him. I was able to make a search of his rooms and personal belongings. The information he has is stored in his head and I
am
sure he has communicated it to no one so far.’

‘How?’

‘All his communications are being monitored. His rooms are bugged. I have him under constant surveillance.’

‘As soon as he gets off-world that’s going to change.’

Winter nodded. ‘And I can’t stop him leaving. He is taking a shuttle to his private yacht from the spaceport at oh-eight-hundred this morning. The information in his head cannot be allowed to go with him, and we cannot be seen to do anything against him.’

Aneka looked across at the spy mistress. ‘Have you got a stable, airborne firing platform I could use?’

‘Something can be arranged.’

‘Aneka?’ Ella said, her voice soft. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to pay him back for what he did to Shannon. I’m going to empty his head.’

~~~