Steel Heart

An Aneka Jansen Novel

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2013 Niall Teasdale

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents

Part One: Cold Comfort

Part Two: The Way Home

Part Three: Walking on a Moon

Part Four: Manu Dei

Part Five: The New World

Part One: Cold Comfort

FNf Delta Brigantia, 12.11.525 FSC.

The wall in front of Aneka was full of stars. Technically it was the wall in front of the current flight crew of the frigate she was on, the Delta Brigantia, but they were now about half an hour from their destination and the captain had wanted their advisor up on the bridge. Aneka considered that a wise move.

They were flying into the Negral system, something of an oddity as far as star systems were concerned. There was one planet left, a gas giant on the outer edge. All the other worlds there had been pulled apart; planetary engineering on a grand scale done in order to do something even more amazing. Negral’s brown dwarf star had been crushed until the matter it was made of had collapsed into ‘strange matter,’ a soup of quarks with incredible density. The residents of Negral lived on a huge space station in orbit around the most powerful source of energy ever created artificially. Or they had.

A little over a month earlier, Aneka had watched a video message from Negral which had seemed to show a Xinti battleship closing in on the station. The Xinti were supposed to be dead, every last one of them. Since they had kidnapped Aneka, scanned her brain, and turned her into a high-tech ghost in a robot body, she was not exactly mourning for them, but if they were back then the galaxy was in trouble. The Brigantia was going to find out whether that was actually what had happened.

‘Lieutenant Baron,’ the captain said, her gaze shifting briefly to the man sitting forward of her and on the left. ‘Sensor systems on full passive scan.’

Baron’s hands shifted over the controls on his console. In front of him, and on the sphere of displays around the captain, images shifted and changed as the ship’s sensors changed from navigation to tactical mode. ‘Full tactical analysis active, Captain.’

Commander Marilyn Anderson, the captain of the Delta Brigantia, shifted in her seat. It was not exactly a seat, more a harness which held her upright and stable, but still allowed her to turn in all directions to view her all-round, panoramic space vista. In combat the idea was that the ship’s captain could see everything around their vessel. Right now the sphere was semi-transparent and Aneka could see her. ‘We’re almost at the point where we meet up with the light that left Negral when the attack happened. The sensors aren’t good enough to get details at this range, but if there was a big enough battle then we’ll see some evidence of it.’ She turned forward again, watching the displays.

‘What are you expecting to see?’ Aneka asked.

‘Probably nothing much,’ Anderson replied. Aneka frowned as the ultrasonic whine from the ship’s very powerful warp engine grew louder. ‘A few flashes of light…’ The whine grew, threatening to make the captain inaudible. ‘…gamma emissions from that big cannon of theirs.’ She glanced back again. ‘Frankly I doubt there’ll be much…’

The ship lurched violently and Aneka was thrown forward against the captain’s sphere, catching herself only because her reflexes were enhanced and her balance system was artificial. The forward screen was a blaze of brilliant light for a fraction of a second before it went entirely black and the flight deck was plunged into darkness.

Yorkbridge Mid-town, New Earth.

Ella became aware of her surroundings and the fact that she was awake. She was in her apartment, in her bed, and Aneka was not there. The absence of her girlfriend had been the first thing she had thought of every morning since Aneka had left, and it was the last thing she thought of when she got into bed at night. She was quite sure that many of the people who knew her thought that she was just missing the sex, but she knew different. If she wanted that, there were plenty of people willing to supply it more recently than when Aneka had gone away. No, Ella was missing Aneka, just her presence.

With a sigh she climbed out of bed and padded towards the bedroom door. She needed a shower to clear her head before she went into the university.

As the water washed over her, she wondered whether Aneka missed her too.

FNf Delta Brigantia.

In the second or so before the emergency lights cut in, Aneka wondered whether she was ever going to see Ella again. Then the dull red light turned the darkness the colour of blood and people started to move, and then she had other things to think about.

‘Any injuries?’ The barked question was a good sign as far as Aneka was concerned; Anderson worried about her crew before she worried about her ship.

‘Bruises from my harness. That’s about it.’ That was Prentice, A-Shift’s pilot.

‘Be glad you’re not male,’ Hughes said. He was the gunnery officer. ‘I’m glad I’m not speaking in a falsetto.’

‘I’m fine,’ Baron added, ‘but I’ve got absolutely nothing here. Sensors are all down. As far as I can tell the computer’s offline.’

‘Did we drop out of warp?’ Anderson asked.

‘Yes,’ Aneka supplied. ‘I can’t hear the engine.’ She frowned. ‘It got a lot louder just before… whatever that was. Only time I’ve heard anything like it was when we went into Sapphira, and that was from gravity turbulence.’

‘We can worry about why later,’ Anderson said, turning herself around. ‘Right now I need to know what the state of my crew and my ship is.’ She hit the quick release on her straps then pushed on the back of the, now entirely transparent, Polyglass sphere. A section shifted a few centimetres and then stiffened. ‘Damn thing…’ Aneka put her fingers into the gap and pulled, cybernetic muscles and high-power motors making short work of levering the hatch upward. ‘Thanks. You know first aid, right?’

Aneka nodded, let the captain exit and then allowed the hatch section to fall back into place. Whatever normally kept it out of the way when not in use apparently needed power. ‘Part of the basic facilitator training.’

Anderson pulled open a panel on the rear wall of the room and took a large, white briefcase out of the space behind it. ‘Good. You’re with me. The rest of you stay here in case the power comes back on. We’re dead in the water near a potential combat hot spot. Stay alert.’

There was a manual unlatching system for the door, which was kept locked normally, and then Aneka had to drag the thing open to let them out. ‘Is the power supposed to go out like this?’ she asked once they were out into the corridor beyond.

‘No, but we haven’t lost the reactor. Artificial gravity is still working, so we have power, it’s just not getting through to a lot of systems.’

‘Life support?’

Anderson looked around as if trying to judge the state of the air. ‘Not that that’ll worry you too much. Life support has back-up power. As long as it’s not damaged we should be fine.’

‘I can survive for a while without air, but not indefinitely. I’m not indestructible.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t need to find out how long.’

The bridge was in the forward section of the ship, deep inside it behind a lot of armour, electronics and weapon systems. The walk to the habitation section amidships was not long, but then they had to manually open the door at the end of the access corridor. As soon as it was open a couple of centimetres they had help from the other side.

Ensign Lisa Cole’s pretty face grinned at them from the other side. ‘Captain, am I glad to see you. What happened?’

‘As yet unknown. Is anyone injured?’

‘Philip came down off his bunk pretty hard,’ Cole replied. ‘Alison’s looking after him. Couple of bruises otherwise. Chance went down to engineering. He was worried about Lieutenant Scotts.’

‘Walker’s got a first-aid kit?’ Cole nodded a reply. ‘All right, everyone’s to stay in the bunkrooms for now. We’re not sure what state life support is in. Jansen, let’s get down to engineering.’

It did not take too long. Engineering technically started just past the habitation section where the huge, toroidal warp drive that normally gave the frigate quite exceptional speed wrapped around the central corridor to the engine room. Basically the room was there to house monitoring equipment and give access to the warp drive, reactor, and the twin antimatter torch engines at the very rear. Aneka had not been terribly keen on being that close to that much antimatter, but she had been assured that containment failure was almost never a problem.

Chance had managed to get the door open. The handsome young man was kneeling over an older, but not by much, man who was lying on the floor near the rear bulkhead. Chance was his surname, but a lot of the crew called him that anyway because, according to Prentice, he would chance his luck on any woman he liked the look of. Right now he looked concerned, and the reason was probably the burn on Scotts’ arm.

‘Captain,’ Chance said as he heard them approach. ‘Can’t wake him, and…’ He indicated the burn.

Aneka planted the first-aid kit down beside Scotts and opened it up. Her eyes scanned the contents, her accelerated brain taking in the inventory with just a glance. ‘I’ll take care of him.’

‘Good,’ Anderson said. ‘Chance, let the woman work. Currently you’re our only functional technician. Damage assessment, Lieutenant.’

Chance got to his feet while Aneka produced a fine-bladed knife from the kit to cut away the burned remains of Scotts’ ship-suit sleeve. ‘I haven’t checked everything, Captain,’ he said, ‘but Brad got that burn from there.’ He indicated one of the panels on a side wall that had blown out. ‘We’ve lost one of the circuit breakers entirely and a load of the other ones have tripped. I can get most of them back up easily, but we’ll need to replace that one, and it’s one of the feeds to the warp drive.’

Anderson winced. ‘If it blew out like that…’

‘Could be damage to the drive, yeah.’

Aneka did her best to ignore them. She could worry about the drive later. Focus on the patient… ‘Al,’ she said inside her head, ‘could you interface with his ident-chip and check his vitals?’

‘Of course, Aneka.’ The voice was soft and male, and it sounded to Aneka as though its owner was standing right beside her, but Al was an artificial intelligence running on a computer in her chest somewhere. He had been put there as a support system, and that was exactly what he was. Aneka was not sure she could do without him anymore. Right now he was using their internal radio system to query a transponder implanted under Scotts’ collar bone. Mostly it served as a universal identity verification device; every Federal citizen had one. It also had bio-monitor functions. ‘He struck his head when the panel blew out. No signs of concussion. He is showing signs of mild shock.’

Aneka pulled a small spray can from the kit and began coating Scotts’ burn with a layer of blue, plastic-like material. Around her the conversation was going on uninterrupted; her conversations with Al took fractions of a second compared to the rate of normal speech.

‘It would be useful if we can get the sensors online, and the computer restarted,’ Anderson said. ‘Everything else can stay down until you’ve checked the engine.’

The synthetic skin in place over the wound, Aneka took another container from the kit, took off the cap, and jabbed the exposed needle into Scotts’ shoulder through his suit. The nice thing about bioplastic was that it would repair the hole pretty quickly. The vial emptied into Scotts’ blood stream; pretty soon the drug would be speeding up his body’s own repair processes.

‘At least I only need to open one panel,’ Chance was saying as he did so. Behind it were two heavy lever switches, both of them in the down position. A red light over each indicated that there was power coming in and not going out. ‘Computer’s back-up supply must’ve failed,’ he muttered as he pushed the two levers up and the lights went green. ‘We should have internal comms too,’ he said just as the speakers in the room screeched and then settled into Baron’s voice.

‘Bridge to Anderson. Captain, the sensors are coming back up, so is the computer. We’ll have a damage and situation report in about two minutes.’

Anderson looked down at Aneka. ‘Can you back Mister Chance up while he checks the drive?’

‘I can probably drag his smoking corpse out of the access tunnel if needed,’ Aneka replied as she jabbed a second hypodermic into Scotts, this time in the neck.

‘Gee, thanks,’ Chance said.

‘I’m going up to the bridge to see what trouble we’re in,’ Anderson said, heading for the door. ‘Give me a report as soon as you’re out.’

‘Will do, Captain.’ Chance turned, heading for a corner of the room where there were metal rungs set into the wall leading up to a hatch. ‘Do me a favour, Aneka?’

‘If I can.’

‘If you’re going to wake him up, save it until after I’m out. He hates it when people climb around in his engines.’

‘How’re his vitals?’ Aneka asked silently.

‘Holding steady. The analgesic is helping with the reaction to the burn. His blood pressure is holding and his breathing is now normal.’

‘Yeah, I can do that,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘You need me to do anything.’

‘Sure. If I scream, you can drag my smoking corpse out of the tube.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Chance?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t have a need to scream.’

University of New Earth.

The Dean appearing in Gillian’s office was generally not a great sign. That he had another man with him, a man in a suit so expensive it made Ella blanch, was odd. Then again, the history and archaeology departments at the university had become pretty famous recently. Maybe the guy was some benefactor and Dean Ajax was giving him the tour.

Ajax gave Ella one of his beneficent smiles. ‘Miss Narrows, this is Mister Hayward of Hayward Pharmaceuticals. Is Doctor Gilroy busy? We would very much like to discuss something with her.’

She was just supposed to say, ‘Of course, go right in,’ but Ella knew how much Gillian hated office politics. She tapped a key on her desk. ‘Doctor, the Dean is here to see you with a Mister Hayward.’

There was a slight pause, during which Ella imagined Gillian was sighing. ‘Send them in, Ella.’ Gillian had almost completely managed to get the weariness out of her voice.

The two men walked past, Hayward giving Ella a smile that managed to make her feel slightly dirty, and Ella went back to studying a document from the Xinti archives they had about early spaceflight. It was written, of course, in Xinti, a relatively complex language with various nuances, which made translation occasionally quite difficult, and she had managed to work her way through another hundred lines when Gillian’s voice came from her desk again.

‘Ella, could you come in here, please?’

Frowning, Ella locked her screen and walked through into the second office. ‘Yes, Doctor?’

Gillian was looking annoyed. ‘Never mind being formal for our guest, he wants something and I’m going to have to beg you to handle it.’

The Dean was looking annoyed, but also embarrassed. Hayward was continuing to smile his slightly lascivious smile. Ella frowned. ‘What’s up?’

‘Short version,’ Gillian said, ‘one of Mister Hayward’s research teams has got its hands on some Old Earth tech which appears to be oddly advanced. They have a load of documentation, but it’s in… English, Aneka calls it. Written documents, videos, and audio recordings.’

‘And they need someone to go over it and see what they actually have.’

‘And they won’t send it here, and I’m stuck here in case Negral contacts us again.’

‘We have a courier vessel leaving for Eshebbon on the first,’ Hayward supplied. ‘It will take very little time to get there and we can have you back just as quickly once you’ve done the work, and, in addition to our donation to the university, we would be able to compensate you quite handsomely, Miss Narrows.’

She had run up some fairly large expenses recently. ‘I’d need to be back before the end of the year. My girlfriend should be back by then and I want to be sure to be here when she arrives.’

‘I am sure that, with your expertise, you will be done long before then.’

‘Okay,’ Ella said, smiling. Aside from anything else, it would probably take her mind off missing Aneka.

FNf Delta Brigantia.

Aneka walked onto the bridge to find Anderson leaning over the sensor console with Baron. Prentice and Hughes were in their seats, but neither had much to do with the ship, still basically a dead lump of high-tech scrap. Anderson turned her head and raised an eyebrow.

‘I’ve put Scotts in my room for now,’ Aneka said. ‘He needs the rest while the Regelin works. No signs of concussion. The burn should heal fine. He’s awake, but I told him to stay put or I’d break his legs. Cole’s sitting on him.’

‘We’re going to need him, unfortunately,’ Anderson replied.

Aneka nodded. ‘I heard Chance’s report. Some blown out power conduits?’

‘Repairable. We have spares. Currently the main problem is the long-range sensors, which seem to be out. Without those we can’t go anywhere without maybe hitting something.’

‘And it looks like the FTL comms are out too,’ Baron added. ‘Probably damage to the external array. Only way to be sure is for someone to go out and look.’

‘So…’ Aneka said.

‘The problem is that there’s a lot of gamma radiation out there. That was that light flare we saw before the lights went out. We seem to have passed through the worst of it, but it’s still pretty bad. Someone goes out there, they fry.’

‘So I go.’

‘Did you hear what he said?!’ Anderson asked, her voice rising.

‘I’m more resilient to radiation than a Jenlay, and you don’t just repair the damage like I do.’

‘I should point out that sufficient damage from radiation will kill off the nanomachines that do the repairs,’ Al said.

‘Well does it look bad enough out there to kill us?’

‘Currently, no. I was just making a point. There is sufficient radiation to endanger your dermal layer.’

‘From the looks of this,’ Baron said, unaware of Aneka’s internal conversation, ‘the level is dropping away. If we can wait a day it could be a lot safer.’

‘Then we wait,’ Anderson said firmly. ‘I’m happy to send you out there, but we aren’t going anywhere for a while. Twenty hours is not going to make much of a difference.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Are we safe in here?’

‘The hull has to stand up to constant gamma-ray bombardment in warp, not to mention we’d all be sterile and bald if it didn’t stop cosmic rays.’

‘Oh… Space really sucks, doesn’t it?’

‘Outside a ship,’ Anderson said, nodding, ‘it’s a really nasty place to be.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 13.11.525 FSC.

Ella sat in the lounge of her apartment, sprawled on one of the cream-coloured sofas, looking at a woman who was not there. Aggy, technically Agroa Gar though no one used her full name anymore, was an artificial intelligence and she resided aboard the Garnet Hyde, one of the university’s research vessels. Right now, however, she appeared to be an attractive woman with golden skin, silver eyes, and honey-blonde hair sitting on the sofa beside Ella.

‘I must say, Ella,’ Aggy said, ‘that this method of communication is far more efficient.’

Ella giggled. ‘Glad you like it.’ At the suggestion of Delta Ling, one of the university’s facilitators, Ella had had her cybernetic eyes upgraded. She had always been a little ashamed of having them. Most Jenlay viewed cybernetics in a negative light and, while Ella would be blind without them, she had always considered them a nuisance. Then she had met Aneka and Aneka had Al. It had given her a new appreciation of what cybernetics could do for her. Along with the eye swap she had had a tiny computer put into her skull, complete with a short range communication unit to allow wireless networking and ‘in head’ calls. That meant Aggy could project her image directly into Ella’s vision field rather than using a wall screen or Ella wearing special glasses. Then there was the other thing…

‘I’m not sure why you…’ Aggy began.

Ella waved a hand. ‘It’s a surprise for Aneka. Now, you spent a lot of time analysing Old Earth writing and language, right?’

‘Obviously. My mission there was to assess candidates for the uplift programme. It would have been very hard if I didn’t understand the languages.’

‘Languages? We pretty much only know a couple. Aneka speaks English and, uh, Swedish, and she says Rimmic sounds like Chinese.’

The golden woman nodded. ‘Federal is very close to English. There appear to be words in it from other languages and the vowels have shifted. As is often the case, there has been simplification. Rimmic does appear to owe a great deal of its structure to Mandarin. But Old Earth had hundreds of languages, thousands.’

‘Well, I just need to be sure I’m brushed up on English. For a job. I want to just speak it some. I did practise with Aneka. She helped us understand the vowel shifts and stuff a lot better than we did, but she’s not here.’

‘No,’ Aggy said, her voice sad. ‘I miss her.’

‘Yeah, so do I, which is another reason you’re going to distract me.’

Aggy laughed. ‘Very well, a distraction I will be.’

FNf Delta Brigantia.

Aneka awoke from a dream where her skin was being stripped off, one flake at a time, by a searing wind. She found herself watching her morning diagnostics for any signs of radiation damage. Everything was, however, ‘optimal,’ and she slid off the bunk she had borrowed since Scotts was still in her bed.

The Brigantia had a crew of fifteen, but there were always five of them on duty. Technically there were enough beds and bunks on the ship that everyone could sleep at once, so long as two of them did not mind sharing a double. In practice, the twelve bunks in the bunkrooms were never all occupied and there was always space to stretch out on one if needed.

She checked the time and then reached for her ship-suit. Normally she wore an Ultraskin leotard, high-hipped, figure-hugging, and semi-transparent, mostly because she had grown to like it. Today she was going outside the ship and she wanted the added protection afforded by Xinti-manufactured super-materials. The suit was black and textured something like splint-mail, but it could easily stop a laser rifle beam. Add gloves, boots, and a helmet, and it was an exceptionally serviceable vacuum suit. Dressed and carrying her helmet, she headed for the mess.

‘External sensors indicate that the radiation level outside has dropped significantly,’ Al said as she walked. ‘However, I would recommend no more than twenty minutes outside before returning to allow our systems to repair the accumulated damage.’

‘Should be enough time for an inspection.’

‘I would imagine so, yes.’

Aneka turned through the open door to the mess hall and immediately spotted Anderson and Scotts talking to Chance at one of the tables. The room was not large, but you could pack the whole crew in if you really had to. Generally you did not have to since someone was always on duty. Right now it was fuller than usual because most of the crew were waiting to find out what they were going to do rather than doing it.

‘How are you feeling, Scotts?’ Aneka asked as she approached them. She had been amused to discover the Brigantia’s chief engineer was named Scotts, though explaining why would have been a waste of time. Sadly he had an accent more like something out of New England than Scotland.

‘I’m fine. Skin’s healed over well.’ He grinned. ‘You can have your bed back.’

Aneka gave a slight shrug. The cabin she was in was unassigned, one of two set off to the sides of the habitation block. Anderson had a cabin on the port side, Aneka’s was on the starboard, and she was mostly in it because it kept her out of the way of the crew while they were doing their jobs. ‘You can stay in there if you like.’

‘That’s an offer you shouldn’t refuse, Chief,’ Chance said, smirking.

‘And we all know you couldn’t, Chance,’ Scotts replied smoothly, ‘but I’ve actually got a sense of decency. I’ll be fine in a bunk…’ He looked around at Aneka thoughtfully. ‘If you’re feeling generous, Ensign Grant broke his wrist falling off that bunk and he’d probably be better off with more space to rest in.’

Aneka looked across the room to where Gunnery Technician Philip Grant was trying to eat with his right wrist encased in a Plastex cast. ‘Hey, Grant, want to sleep in the starboard cabin for a while?’

Caught by surprise, the young man who was probably older than Aneka looked at his captain. ‘She’s offering you more space in bed, Grant,’ Anderson told him, ‘not nights of untold pleasure.’

‘Oh, uh, I guess it’d be more comfortable with this damn thing on. Sure, thanks.’

‘I take it from your attire,’ Anderson went on, redirecting her attention to Aneka, ‘that you’re ready to go out and take a look at the sensor array?’

‘Al tells me I can spend twenty minutes out there without worrying. That should be enough for an inspection.’

‘All right, you’ll go out the forward airlock in ten minutes. Gives us time to set up monitoring.’

Aneka nodded and started for the door. ‘I’ll be ready.’

~~~

The stars were bright sparks in the darkness around her as she walked over the Brigantia’s hull. The Delta-class frigates were built for speed, both sub-light and superluminal. That did not, however, mean a streamlined thing of beauty. The Brigantia was basically a cylinder with a pair of huge engines mounted at the back, and a bulbous nose. Aneka had to walk through the darkness from the rear of the forward section, around to the craft’s ‘chin,’ where the primary forward weapons and long-range sensors were.

‘Almost there,’ Aneka said, or rather thought. Her thoughts were relayed through her internal radio and sounded from the speakers on the flight deck. All very efficient and convenient. ‘Radiation level is within tolerances, but I’m not exactly feeling happy about it.’

‘We’d be feeling worse,’ Baron replied.

‘Yeah… I can see the panelling over the forward sensor array. It looks like something blew out.’ She frowned, moving carefully closer. Her boots adhered to the hull using a nanofibre bonding system similar to the ubiquitous setaestrip. She knew that stuff could hold just about anything; it was the future version of Duct Tape. The surface on her boots, however, she always felt a little less sure of since it was electronically controlled by her suit. ‘No… I think we got lucky. Looks like something blew out one of the forward turrets. There are metal fragments embedded in the hull all around it.’

‘It’s not metal.’ That was Scotts’ voice. ‘The outer hull layer on the bow is a synthetic monocrystal. If its structure is disrupted like that it could be interfering with long-range sensor operation.’

‘Great. It’s covering a good few metres around the turret. How do we clear it?’

‘Start back,’ Anderson said. ‘You’re not going to do it straight away.’

Aneka turned and started for the airlock. There was no sensation from her artificial skin, but her sensors were telling her that her dermal layer had taken damage: minor radiation burns, even through the suit. It was nothing that could not be fixed, and quickly, but she was in no mood to test her healing capacity right now. ‘On my way. But how are we going to fix it?’

‘The good news is that we don’t have to fix all of it,’ Scotts replied. ‘The bad news is that someone’s going to have to go over the surface of the hull with a plasma torch. That should anneal the material, even out the refractive index across the surface. Right now we’re getting too much scattering.’

‘That’s going to take a long time at ten minutes every couple of hours.’

‘Yeah, but the warp drive isn’t going to be working much sooner. We’re going to have to scavenge parts from other systems, cut out some of the damaged conduits… This is not going to be easy.’

‘At least you’re not saying it’s impossible.’

There was a pause, which was a fraction of a second too long for her liking. ‘Not impossible. No.’

Aneka remained silent as she trooped back, one careful step at a time, to the airlock. Scotts was not entirely hopeful they could fix everything enough to get home. Aneka was not going to ask what the odds were. It was almost certainly better not to know.

~~~

Aneka turned off the shower and took a towel from the rack beside it. The showers in the Brigantia were not great, but the one in her room was more spacious than the ones in the Garnet Hyde. It would have been a little restricting, but you could have got two people in the little cubicle here and there was just no way you could do that on the Hyde. Aneka still preferred the Hyde, though that might have been because Ella was generally sharing the room with her. As she padded out of the washroom here, it was Philip Grant who watched her from the bed.

The man’s pale-blue eyes followed her around the room as she dried her hair, put the towel back, and walked over to the edge of the bed. In her own time she would have expected a man she was about to share a bed with to be doing that, simply because she was a very attractive woman. She had been before the Xinti got their hands, and claws, and saws, on her. Her body was all tight muscle, long-legged, narrow in the waist. Her breasts had been too large in her estimation; too large for someone with such an active lifestyle anyway. Sports bras had been her friend. The Xinti had turned her short, dirty-blonde hair into something more like silver, and they had made her breasts larger, firmer, and a little more pointed in the belief that what they saw on the Internet was society’s ideal in womanhood. Her face could have graced a catwalk model: thin, high cheekbones, with startlingly bright blue eyes. So Grant had a right to look, even if sex was off the cards, but she had a feeling that his attention was born of something else.

‘Are you watching my body, or a finely made piece of machinery?’ she asked.

He blushed and his eyes rose to meet hers. ‘Both, I guess. I mean, I know you’re a machine, but… damn they did an amazing job. There’s no way I could tell if I just met you.’

Aneka smiled and lifted her right foot up onto the bed, examining the skin on her thigh. An hour or so after she had returned to the ship there had been reddening and a few blisters; radiation burns showing up. Now there was nothing.

Grant waved a hand at her leg. ‘There’s that, of course. I’d still have the burn unless they dosed me with a load of radiation treatment and covered it in synthetic skin.’

‘And that’s why I went out and not one of you flimsy organics.’ She grinned at him. ‘I wasn’t exactly happy about getting stuck in a robot body, but there are times when it comes in handy.’ Lifting her leg down, she pulled the sheet aside and climbed into the bed. ‘Uh… this might seem a little weird. I don’t sleep, I go offline. I’m told I move and breathe, and generally act like I’m sleeping, but you won’t be able to wake me. Al’s under orders to monitor external sounds, so if you’re having trouble with that wrist I should come around. On the plus side, I don’t snore, and if you do I won’t notice.’

‘I should be fine, y’know? It’s just a bust wrist.’

‘Walker said I should keep an eye on you for the next couple of nights. Listen to your medi-tech.’

Grant gave a laugh. ‘These beds are more comfortable than the bunks. I think I can live with it.’

‘Good. Computer, lights out.’ The room sank into darkness and Aneka settled her head on the pillow.

When it was Ella sleeping with her she always waited for the little redhead to fall asleep before shutting herself down, and now she waited for Grant to settle. He had a little trouble finding a position he could sleep in, but eventually she felt his body relax and heard his breathing steady. Still she lay awake, looking up at the ceiling, quite visible to her despite the darkness.

‘Al, play me Ella’s last message,’ she said silently, her eyes closing.

A window appeared on the inside of her eyelids, black at first and then replaced by the video message Ella had sent to Sapphira while the Brigantia was on its way there. That had been their last port of call before heading out to Negral, the intention being to avoid going on if the AIs had contacted the Federation during the flight.

‘Hey there,’ Ella said. Her voice sounded cheerful, but it also sounded like she was forcing it. ‘I… Huh, I hate leaving messages like this. I’d imagine you’ve seen the message from Senator Elroy. Still no contact from Negral, so I don’t get you back early. Vashma but I miss you!’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘I told myself I wasn’t going to do that and I went and did it inside of ten seconds. I do though.’

‘I miss you too, love,’ Aneka replied, even though she knew she was talking to a recording.

‘I’ve decided to get my eyes replaced, like Delta suggested.’ She had rallied, getting the cheerfulness back into her voice. ‘Clarion May Detective Series. I know it sounds silly, but they have magnifying optics. I figure that’ll be useful on the job. They have fair night vision capabilities too. They won’t be anything like your eyes, but they’ll be an improvement. Uh, Gillian sends best wishes… So do Kat and Dillon… And Drake and Shannon. They’re back. She’s doing better. Still in therapy, but she’s more like her old self. I think Drake’s still a bit worried about her… Oh, this is getting depressing again. I wanted to be all happy and sound like everything was great, and it’s not because you’re not here and we’re worried about the Xinti and the damn Herosians. They’ve been pushing to send ships out to Sapphira…’ She put her hand over her eyes and stopped again. When she lowered it she was smiling. ‘Look, it’s time for bed here. I’m going to just lie back and think of you, and let the audio record what happens. Maybe you can join in…’

‘Stop,’ Aneka thought, and the image froze as the smiling redhead started to dip out of sight of the camera. When the message had arrived Aneka had been a little embarrassed at the rest of the message, even if she had played it the same way and no one else could hear it. Phone sex for the future. Then she had played it back again and she had joined in. Now she might never hear those sounds again, live and with the woman making them. ‘Damn,’ Aneka whispered into the silence of the room.

Dropping into oblivion had never felt quite so good.

21.11.525 FSC.

The plasma torch was an incandescent flare of blue-white in the darkness of space as Aneka played it over the surface of the hull, careful to keep her movements smooth, her pace even. She was, at least, not alone. The radiation levels were down to a more or less normal background level and the crew had been taking it in turns to go out with her, two at a time. Today it was Hughes and Daventry, the ship’s XO, but the important thing was that they were going to be the last party out there. The hull over the sensor array was not perfect, but it was showing less than one per cent distortion, and that was considered good enough that they could fly on it.

A slight change in the lighting suggested that one of her companions had shut off his torch. A second later Daventry’s voice sounded over the radio. ‘I’m basically done, and my air supply is getting low. I’m heading back.’

Aneka shut off her own torch, examining the surface in the ‘light’ from ambient radio emissions as well as the visible spectrum. ‘Yeah, I think this is as done as it’s going to get. Gareth?’

‘Yeah,’ Hughes said, killing his own torch. ‘Hadn’t realised we’d been out this long.’

‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ Aneka commented dryly. ‘Let’s get inside and we can see how much good we’ve done.’

Despite a strong desire to be out of her vacuum suit, Aneka headed from the airlock straight to the bridge. A-Shift was on duty, which meant Baron was on sensors and navigation, and was thus surrounded by people trying to work out whether everything was functioning properly.

‘We’re getting a four per cent drop in effective range,’ Aneka heard as she walked in. ‘Distortion is down to point-four-six per cent… This is all looking good, Captain.’

Anderson straightened up from where she had been crouched near the front of the small crowd of people. ‘Mister Chance, see if you can get us a little more range on the active systems.’ She turned and spotted Aneka. ‘Miss Jansen… frankly we’d probably still be blind if you hadn’t been here. You’ve done a good job.’

Aneka gave her a sloppy salute. ‘Just doin’ ma job, ma’am,’ she drawled. Anderson looked mildly confused for a second. ‘It’s a bad John Wayne impression… Sorry… You wouldn’t have a clue who that was.’

The captain grinned. ‘You must get that a lot.’ The fact that Anderson was grinning easily was a good sign. ‘Prentice, swing us around so that we can take a look at Negral. That’s what we’re actually here to check on.’

Prentice flexed her hands and took hold of the two joystick controls on the arms of her semi-reclined flight chair. The controls on the Brigantia were nothing like the ones on the Hyde, or even the Hyde’s shuttle. Here the pilot used twin control sticks to change attitude and control the various engines. A few short movements of the controls and Aneka heard the thrusters fire once, twice, three times, and the ship had realigned itself three degrees right yaw, seven upward pitch. ‘Should be on target, Captain,’ Prentice said.

‘Mister Baron, full passive analysis,’ Anderson ordered.

‘Processing,’ Baron said, ‘but… Shari, can you check that alignment?’

Prentice took her hand from the right joystick and tapped quickly over the keypad set behind it. ‘If your navigation data is right, then my alignment’s right, Ti.’

Baron grunted and his hands started moving rapidly over the console before him. Aneka watched, frowning. ‘What’s wrong, Ti?’ She asked.

‘I’m getting next to nothing in the way of useful data. It’s like the thing’s almost vanished… Very high neutrino readings…. I’m no astronomer, but I’d have thought there should be way more evidence of this thing at this range.’

‘That pretty much locks it down then,’ Anderson said, frowning.

‘You know what’s happened?’ Aneka asked.

‘Theory rather than fact, but you said that the only time you’d heard the warp drives behave that way was flying into a gravitationally unstable region, and there’s the intense gamma-ray wavefront we hit, and now we can’t see the star and we’re getting very strong neutrino emissions. I did some reading. I think that quark star of theirs went nova. Sloughed off a layer as high-energy gamma rays and collapsed the remains into an electroweak star.’

Aneka frowned. ‘That would have blasted anything in the system to… less than dust, right?’

‘Nothing survives being in a system when a nova happens,’ Baron supplied. ‘And that’s a normal nova, not some super-dense stellar eruption.’

‘The gravity wave would probably have ripped anything apart that the gamma burst didn’t vaporise,’ Anderson agreed.

‘The AIs did it,’ Aneka said, her voice quiet. ‘They blew their own star system up to take out the Xinti who attacked them.’

‘They could do that?’ Prentice asked.

‘Yeah, they could do that. How long before we can get out of here, Captain?’

Anderson looked at her, at the slightly nauseous look on her face, and nodded. ‘I want everyone fresh for when we power up that drive for the first time. First watch tomorrow. Mister Baron, I’d like as much data collected on Negral’s neighbourhood before then. Arrange it.’

Aneka gave Anderson a nod and started towards the door at the rear of the room.

University of New Earth, 26.11.525 FSC.

‘No word?’ Ella asked. She was standing at Gillian’s desk, her expression forlorn.

‘No,’ Gillian replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean anything yet.’

‘It means that Negral is staying quiet for more reason than just a desire to do so.’

‘True, but little more than that. The FTL transmitter on the Brigantia doesn’t have the range to reach Sapphira. There’s no point in worrying over it now.’

Ella grimaced. ‘That’s easy for you to say. I’m worried.’

Gillian was not really sure what to say. Almost anything would be empty platitudes. ‘Ella, Captain Anderson and her crew are supposed to be among the best in the Navy. Drake has heard of her and said good things. Aneka is a very resourceful woman. They’re going to find out what’s happened and come back to tell us.’ She gave her assistant a grin. ‘And you’ll be there to drag Aneka into bed and not let her out for a month.’

‘I know,’ Ella replied. Her smile did not return, which was a bad sign. ‘I just wish…’

‘What is it Aneka says? If wishes were horses…’

‘We’d all be riding Arabs. I never have understood the reference.’

FNf Delta Brigantia.

‘You know,’ Anderson said, ‘we have sufficient supplies that you don’t have to starve yourself.’

Aneka smiled at her across the mess room table. ‘And I have sufficient supplies of raw materials that I don’t need to eat. Frankly, this stuff isn’t appetising enough for me to want to.’

Anderson prodded one of the browner piles of mush. ‘Can’t say I blame you. It’s an acquired taste.’

‘They’ll be expecting us to have called in by now, right?’

‘If we got to Negral and found everything working, yeah. We should be back at Sapphira before they start worrying excessively.’

Aneka gave a short laugh. ‘Ella was probably worrying the moment I was out of sight. I never asked, do you have a partner?’

‘Sure. She’s a thousand tonnes of metal and plastic with a fusion reactor for a heart.’ She looked around at the ship. ‘She’s never failed me, doesn’t bitch about all the time I spend in space, and I won’t find her in bed with the neighbour when I come back to her.’

‘That sounds like bitter experience talking, but I won’t pry. I take it interpersonal relations between the crew are discouraged?’

Anderson shrugged. ‘They aren’t encouraged. There’s nothing in the regs saying people can’t fall in love. Kind of stupid to try to stop it.’

‘Didn’t stop them trying in my time.’

‘Huh. If one of my senior officers looks interested in someone of lower rank I give them the speech.’

‘The speech?’

‘Same one I give myself. I might have to send one of these people out to die. I can’t be making decisions based on personal feelings if that happens. They have to realise the same is true of them.’ She peered at Aneka, eyes narrowing. ‘You’ve commanded. Ever fallen for one of your people?’

‘Not even when I went private. Did sleep with one. Martial arts instructor. Neither of us was serious about it though. You’ve never…?’

‘Even Chance wouldn’t chance that. I don’t have any trouble finding dates when we’re planetside, and I don’t stop this lot hooking up when they need the relief. It’s way better than having frustrated crewmen making mistakes. I have to keep some professional detachment, however. Daventry’s the same, though he’s young enough to think he can still make something permanent work. He’s got a guy named Darren back on New Earth.’

Aneka chuckled. ‘Ella’d never manage this long without sex. You’ve obviously got more control.’

‘No, I’ve got a really good vibrator.’

Hayward Alpha Research Facility, Eshebbon, 7.12.525 FSC.

The air was freezing. Not literally: Ella had been on a world where the air was literally a frozen carpet on the ground which vaporised into puffs of gas when trodden on. Eshebbon was nowhere near that cold, but it was sub-zero and the ground was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice. Ella suspected the snow never really melted aside from when robots were sent out to steam clean the pathways.

‘We should hurry.’ The voice was that of Andrew Kottigan, the head of security at the station. He had been sent out to meet Ella when the shuttle had brought her down from orbit. ‘Spend more than a few minutes in this temperature and you’ll freeze.’

Ella nodded, though it was only her face that was feeling the chill. She was still in the ship-suit she had got on Negral and it was keeping her at a comfortable temperature. With her helmet on she would be fine more or less indefinitely, not that she had plans to need that. Kottigan was wearing a heat suit: a thick, thermal bodysuit.

‘Why put a research station on a frozen ball like this?’ she asked.

‘Security,’ Kottigan replied, ‘and safety. Very limited resources and it’s hard to farm on so it’s never been settled and there’s no indigenous life larger than a microbe. We do research here on some of the most virulent, dangerous diseases ever encountered. If there’s an escape there’s no one here to die except us.’

‘Comforting.’

‘Don’t worry. Most of the really dangerous stuff is over at the Beta Station. There’s two kilometres of ice between here and there. The stuff they’ve brought you in for is all here.’ He stopped in front of a thick, metal door with a wheel mounted on it. ‘The surface facility here is pretty open,’ he said as he turned the wheel to un-dog the door. ‘There’s a secure elevator down to the labs, but you’ll be up here on your off-time.’

The door was swung open and they stepped into a small chamber with another, inner door. Not exactly an airlock, more a weather shield. When the inner door was opened Ella could understand why; the temperature inside was easily twenty degrees hotter than outside. Kottigan stopped in the room beyond to start stripping off his suit. Beneath it he was wearing a light T-shirt and a pair of briefs.

‘I’ll get you set up with a room and Nayland will be up to sort out your work in an hour or so.’ The man pulled on what looked like sweat pants and then added running shoes. Formality was obviously not a big deal here. ‘You can get comfortable before you need to start.’

‘I’m pretty anxious to get going. Sooner I start, sooner I’m done.’

Kottigan laughed. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be here either if the pay wasn’t so good.’

He led the way out the rear door of the room and then up a circular, metal staircase into the tower structure above the entrance. Two floors up Kottigan opened another heavy door with a locking wheel and ushered Ella into a room. It was surprisingly comfortable looking. The walls were currently displaying a fairly pleasing scene of a summer day over fields of high, yellow grass, but there was a real window, not high but spanning most of the semi-circular outer wall. The bed was a double, and there was a shower cubicle taking up a corner. The room also had a computer console mounted into a desk.

‘This is one of the guest rooms,’ Kottigan told her, ‘for visiting dignitaries and the like.’ He gave her a grin; the heat seemed to have improved his humour. ‘You qualify as a VIP. I’ll tell Nayland you’re here.’ He turned and headed back out, pulling the door closed behind him and turning the wheel.

Ella checked the door. There was no way to properly lock it, but she figured she had some privacy. She would certainly hear if the thing was opened. She began stripping off her suit. A shower seemed like a good idea and then she would put on some clothes more suitable for the tropical conditions in the station.

~~~

There were no messages for her. Somehow she had hoped that the Delta Brigantia would have made contact during her flight and Gillian would have relayed the good news. There was nothing, but she had sent a short message back to New Earth saying she had arrived safely. She was wondering what she should do now when the door wheel turned with a squeak.

The man who stepped into the room was dressed in a white, Ultraskin suit and a Plastex lab coat. Ella wondered briefly whether she should have gone for something other than a T-shirt and shorts. However he gave her a smile, which looked fairly sincere, and moved forward, offering his hand.

‘Miss Narrows, I’m Alec Nayland, head researcher here on Eshebbon.’ He was tall, handsome, with a hint of age in his face, but his body was fairly athletic. There was a wisp of grey in his short, black hair which made her wonder whether the age was down to actual age; he would have had to be a couple of hundred years old if it was.

Ella went through the little handshaking ritual, returning his smile. ‘Mister Nayland, I understand you have some Old Earth records you want transliterating?’

‘Alec, please.’

‘Then it’s Ella.’

He nodded acknowledgement. ‘A survey team discovered a facility out beyond the Rim. Some sort of biological research facility with some quite remarkable technology, and some very dangerous micro-organisms. The written records we’ve been able to do a pretty good job of translating, but there are audio logs and videos, and we just don’t have the skill locally to work it all out in enough detail.’

‘Luckily enough, we recently came by a really excellent source of information on how to pronounce Old Earth English.’

‘Yes… Miss Jansen. I believe she’s your partner.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Excellent. We’re prepping your clearance now, but it’ll take an hour or so. Please feel free to get some food. There’s a canteen on the floor below. The coffee’s not great, but it’ll keep you awake. Obviously we don’t allow food in the labs. I’ll escort you down as soon as we’re ready.’

‘Thank you,’ Ella said. ‘Do I need a suit to go down there?’

‘Hmm? Oh, no. This is habit. The area you’ll be working in has nothing in it considered any more dangerous than the common cold, and those bugs are in the deeper labs.’ Turning, he left the room, dogging the door behind him and leaving Ella to work out what to do with herself.

She had just decided that she would go get some food and coffee when it occurred to her that Nayland had known she was with Aneka. It was not a secret, but not exactly public knowledge either. Well, it was a secure facility and they would likely want to know who was coming to visit. Shrugging, she started out and down to the canteen.

FNf Delta Brigantia, Sapphira System, 8.12.525 FSC.

Aneka heard the warp drive’s tone drop in pitch and knew they had entered the gravity field of Sapphira. The system had three, fairly widely spaced stars in it and the complexity of the resulting gravity tended to give warp engines a little trouble. For a second she held her breath, worried that the damaged drive would fail under the stress, but then the sound cut out entirely and the ultrasonic howl of the antimatter torches took over.

‘All hands,’ Anderson’s voice sounded over the cabin speakers, ‘We have arrived in the Sapphira system. We’re currently on full burn for Sapphira Three. Prepare the ship for reception.’

It had been an ‘all hands’ broadcast, but Aneka had nothing to do. She lay back on her bed and relaxed. Beside her, Grant was looking restless. ‘You’re still on official sick leave,’ Aneka pointed out. ‘The others can handle it.’

‘Huh. Hopefully I can get some bone regeneration done while the ship’s being repaired.’

‘If you do, you’ll have to go back to sleeping in the bunkrooms.’

Grant laughed. ‘No one’s going to believe I was in here this long and we never fucked.’

‘Alison would throw me out an airlock if I hurt your wrist. How long d’you think the repairs will take?’

He shrugged. ‘Five days? Give or take. I’m a gunnery tech, not an engineer. It’ll take a proper dry dock to repair that forward turret so we won’t be handling that here. You’re pretty keen to get back to that redhead of yours.’

‘Yeah. Ella… She liked me as soon as she saw me. Knowing what I was didn’t bother her at all. She’s believed in me even when I doubted myself and she’s got this smile… It’s like someone lets the sun into the room when she smiles.’

‘Sounds like a really beautiful woman.’

‘Oh yes. She certainly is beautiful, inside and out.’

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

‘Fourth of June, Twenty-one-oh-three. Subject Twelve was infected with culture Two-One-Nine-B at oh-nine-twenty-six. Immediate signs of discomfort. Skin ulcers appeared after fifteen minutes, thirty-two seconds accompanied by extreme pain. Convulsions followed at seventeen minutes. Death occurred thirty-six seconds later.’

There was no sign of a smile on Ella’s face as she listened to the recording. She had been going through them for four hours and so far she had discovered a litany of horrifying deaths. It had started with rodents, moved on to monkeys of some description, and now it was people. Whatever this mysterious ‘Tilton’ facility was that the Hayward team had found, it was apparently conducting bio-weapon research. Subject Twelve was only identified as a number; she knew nothing more about him or her, but whoever it had been they had died what sounded like a horrible, painful death so that more death could be inflicted on others.

Finishing the transcription, Ella got up from her seat in the sterile, white lab she had been given to work in. She needed to eat. She was not hungry, exactly, but she knew her blood sugar was getting low. Her bio-monitor was telling her that, the readout projected into her vision field.

There was one of Kottigan’s people outside the lab door ready to escort her back up to ground level. Her clearance allowed her in and out of the lab, but they still insisted on keeping tabs on her when she moved around down there. It was starting to make her feel paranoid, and they were all lousy conversationalists.

Nayland found her as she was sitting down in the canteen with some fruit and black coffee into which she had put too much sugar. He smiled at her, an expression she did not feel like returning. ‘How’s the transcription going?’

‘I’ve done maybe half the audio notes,’ Ella replied. ‘Honestly I’m dreading what I’m going to find in the later ones.’

‘How so?’

‘They were doing bio-weapon research, Alec. They were infecting Jenlay, well they were Humans back then, but living people. They were infecting them with incredibly virulent diseases and watching them die.’

Nayland nodded. ‘We got that from the written reports. That’s why it’s so important that we get this researched and vaccines made. Some of the viral material we found is still viable. Can you imagine what terrorists could do with this?’

Ella winced and forced herself to eat. The fruit tasted of bile. ‘I guess. When you put it like that.’

‘Exactly. Beyond that, studying the epidemiology of these diseases could help us improve future genetic treatments. Jenlay are resistant to a lot of diseases, true, but not all of them. We may be able to equip future generations with far greater resistance by studying how these ones infect and propagate.’

She managed a half-hearted laugh. ‘It’s just a shame I have to listen to a bunch of clinical sociopaths to do it.’

‘Scientists, Ella,’ Nayland replied. ‘They were scientists. Perhaps their methods left something to be desired, but they believed what they were doing was important, much as we do here.’

Ella kept the frown off her face as best she could; hiding her emotions had never been one of her strong suits. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I guess.’

Nayland gave her another smile and walked away, and Ella watched him go, glad to be rid of him.

FNf Delta Brigantia.

Captain William Goddard was not someone Aneka was anxious to see again, but there he was, standing just inside the aft airlock, waiting to be escorted up to the mess so that he could be briefed on the situation in the Negral system. Her one consolation was that he seemed to be displeased about the arrangement too.

Goddard was the officer in charge of the naval station on Sapphira, a relatively short man, but imposing. Aneka suspected that he made up for his lack of stature by beefing up on the muscle. Unfortunately he was a weak soldier, and a weaker politician, which was likely why he had ended up commanding a station on a planet almost eighty parsecs out from New Earth, well out on the Rim. It seemed likely that the one thing he had liked about it was that he never had to actually do anything, and now he had been stuck in the middle of a huge political incident. To some extent she could forgive him the sour expression he shot at her, but then again, it was not actually her fault he was having to get off his butt.

‘Captain Goddard,’ Anderson said as they approached.

‘Commander,’ Goddard replied, ignoring protocol, ‘and Miss Jansen again.’

Aneka looked at him, took in the irritation, but also the worry and distraction. ‘Don’t worry, Goddard, you won’t have to deal with me much. Captain Anderson will handle the briefing.’

For a second, Goddard looked confused. ‘Apologies, Captain. I’ve got New Earth sending messages every day. I mean, what are they hoping will happen? It takes eight days for my reply to get to them! I’ve got a Vice-admiral Crofton arriving in the system tomorrow and some sort of military advisor from the Herosians coming in the day after…’

‘Come on,’ Anderson said. ‘We’ll go up to the mess, get you and your team some coffee, and then I think we’ll make you happy.’

Goddard raised an eyebrow, but clearly decided that the coffee was a good idea and started in the direction Anderson and Aneka had come from. ‘We have a ship matching orbits with you now to handle the repairs,’ he said as they went. ‘We don’t have any genius mechanics floating around Sapphira spaceport, but they’ll get you patched up enough to get you back to New Earth safely.’

‘Good,’ Anderson said. ‘We jury-rigged a lot of stuff to get us back here.’

‘We can supply the parts you need and people to fit them.’ He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Miss Jansen, I’ve a request from the Administration that you go down to Sapphira Vista. There are some people down there who want to talk to you.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah, I can take you down when we leave, if that’s okay?’

‘I guess I can manage a visit to the surface.’

‘Good, saves me a headache.’

‘Because we’re all about saving him from headaches,’ Al commented.

‘Sure we are,’ Aneka replied.

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

Alec Nayland sat at his desk watching a display on his computer screen. It was showing Ella at work in the lab she had been given.

‘We’ve confirmed the presence of nanomachines in her system?’ he asked.

‘Full confirmation would require extracting blood.’ The voice came from the woman standing on the other side of his desk. Lisa Corazon was a pretty woman with shoulder-length, blonde hair and a trim figure. She wore a lab coat like Nayland’s, but complemented it with a sheer blouse and a narrow, fairly short skirt. ‘The bio-scans indicate the presence of some form of foreign material in her system. Nanoscale foreign material. Inorganic.’

Nayland nodded. ‘Find a reason to get a blood sample. Fake a minor outbreak or something.’

‘I’ll arrange something,’ Corazon said, turning on her heel. ‘How much of a hurry are we in?’

‘She’s working through the audio files fast. I think she’ll slow down when she hits the videos. We have a couple of days.’

Arlyn, Sapphira, 9.12.525 FSC.

Aneka watched her diagnostics scroll past on the inside of her eyelids. Everything was, as usual, optimal. Then she opened her eyes and looked out at the bright skies of Sapphira through the huge picture window of the room she had been given in the resort city of Arlyn.

Sapphira was a world of two sides. On one there was Arbonatura, a fairly large continent full of farmers. They did not have a particularly stunning lifestyle; they lived out on a world in the Federal Rim and made a living by making food that no one in the core really wanted. On the other side of the world was Sapphira Vista, and it might have been on a different planet. No one from Arbonatura wanted to work there so all the staff at the numerous resorts were imported from other worlds on fixed-term contracts. Almost all of the tourists were from the core: rich, spoiled, and hedonistic. The Rim Worlders who went there were generally richer and even more spoiled. Aneka had arrived in Arlyn the night before and already she wanted to leave.

Whatever, she had an appointment to see Representative Andrea Vaughn in an hour. She slipped out of bed and headed for the, extremely sumptuous, shower. Meeting Vaughn was, undoubtedly, going to be as much fun as a root canal and she wanted to be feeling fresh and happy before she started. It was unlikely she would be feeling the same way afterwards.

‘I’m picking up a range of radio wavelength and high frequency light signals,’ Al said as she stepped into the bathroom. ‘They correspond to patterns used in medical scanning equipment.’

Turning on her heel as though she had forgotten something, Aneka went back into the bedroom, found a small device in her bag, activated it, and carried it through into the bathroom with her before starting the shower.

‘Think they got anything?’ she asked silently.

‘I doubt it. The jammer is operating quite well; they won’t get anything now either.’

‘So the question would be, who bugged my bathroom with a med-scanner?’

‘I could make a list?’

‘I figure we’ll just wait for someone else to try something and narrow it down that way.’ She paused. ‘Didn’t Vaughn have something to do with Hayward Pharmaceuticals here?’

‘That was supposition. She is, however, a regional Representative and her position holds a responsibility to the businesses here.’

‘And the pay is probably better if she does nice things for the big medical corporation.’

‘Also true.’

~~~

Andrea Vaughn was a true citizen of the Federation. Her idea of a meeting dress was short enough and tight enough that Aneka would have found herself pulling the hem down every two minutes. It was also very low cut which showed off her expansive cleavage. Her long, dark-blonde hair hung around her shoulders in a manner designed to look casual while she had spent an hour getting it just right. The thing that told you most that she was from the core worlds was that she did not adjust her skirt at all. Not even when she sat down opposite Aneka and casually crossed her legs.

‘There has been a lot of confusion in the system recently,’ Vaughn said. The pleasantries had been shortened since they had met before. ‘There are a number of rumours, increased military activity. Of course, we heard the news from New Earth about this… Negral is it?’

She knew damn well it was. Aneka smiled. ‘Negral, yes.’

‘I received word that someone from the Herosian military is on his way?’

‘I heard that too.’

‘I really just wanted to find out whether we should be worried. Xinti so near to us. Herosians coming to visit. Increased patrols in the outer system. It’s worrying.’ She was trying to sound extra reasonable. Aneka’s sensors had detected the same med-scanner radiation in her office as had been used in her hotel room.

‘I’m sure it is. I’m sure you know I can’t talk about it and that a briefing will be issued by Federal Administration once they’re ready.’ Aneka brightened her smile a touch. ‘I can say that you have nothing to worry about. I think everything will be returning to normal soon.’

‘Well, that’s reassuring.’

Aneka nodded. ‘There’s no danger to Sapphira in anything that’s happening. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?’

‘Not me, personally. I received a request… Some researchers at Hayward were hoping to talk to you about potential knowledge sharing with these Xinti you discovered?’

‘Not actual Xinti, and I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. They’ll have to go through channels just like everyone else.’

‘A shame.’ There was the tightening around the eyes, almost too subtle to notice if your perceptions operated at Human speeds.

‘Sorry.’ Aneka rose to her feet.

‘Your flight back is later this evening. Do enjoy our resort until then.’

‘I’m sure I will. I have to say it’s impressive. And such extensive medical technology.’ She suppressed the grin which wanted to show as Vaughn’s jaw tightened. ‘Please give my apologies to Hayward Pharmaceuticals. I’m sure they can get the information they were after another way.’

‘I’m sure they can,’ Vaughn replied. ‘They are a very dynamic company.’

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

‘Miss Narrows?’ Ella turned at the sound of the voice to find a woman standing just inside the door of her lab. Blonde hair, pretty blue eyes, smallish breasts concealed primarily by her lab coat since the blouse beneath was sheer and white. Long legs were topped off by a skirt short enough to be something Ella might wear. ‘I’m Lisa Corazon, one of the senior researchers.’

‘Hi,’ Ella replied, wondering why the woman was there.

‘Just checking up on you. Alec asked me to look in, introduce myself, see how you were getting on.’

‘I’m fine.’ She glanced back at her console where she had transcribed the latest recording. ‘Well, a bit nauseated, but fine.’

Corazon walked over, peering at the transcript for a second. ‘Ah, yes. What they were doing was…’

‘Yeah. What I don’t get is the timescale. We’re a little unsure of exact dates, but we got a lot of information from Aneka that helped us figure out broad ranges. It seems like the bulk of this research was carried out during the Xinti War. I can’t imagine what they were hoping to achieve. I mean, the enemy was alien, not even organic, but they were experimenting on Humans.’

‘Nothing we’ve seen establishes a motive. They seemed to believe in their work. There’s no evidence of hesitation in doing what they did. Whatever they had planned, they thought it was for the best.’

‘Huh.’ Ella turned back to her screen and cued up the next recording. ‘I should get back to this. I really want to get through it and be done.’

‘Of course. My lab is just down the hall. If you need something, ask the guard to get me.’

‘Sure, thanks.’ Ella reached for the start button, waiting for Corazon to leave. The door closed and Ella frowned. There had been no surprise at the idea that the experiments were carried out during the war. Exactly how much did they know about the bio-technology they were dealing with?

Arlyn.

Aneka had spotted three people tailing her as she walked down the picturesque main street of the town’s central district. Two of them she did not recognise: men who looked too big and too focussed to be tourists, and who seemed to cross her path too often for coincidence. The third she did recognise and she got the distinct feeling that Peters was not really trying to follow her unseen. If he had been, he would have been a bad choice anyway; she recognised him immediately from her last visit to Sapphira.

The shops were typical tourist traps. Small snack bars sat beside high-ticket, designer clothing shops. Gift shops, expensive restaurants, and bars shared street frontage. It vaguely reminded Aneka of a ski resort, though the crystal mountains Sapphira Vista was famous for were a few hundred kilometres north, and the air temperature was way too high for snow. She had changed into a bikini top and a skirt for her trip out, but her body’s simulation algorithms had still decided that forming beads of sweat on her skin was appropriate. Aneka decided that a cold drink was even better, and headed into a bar which looked like it had shade and air conditioning.

Sat at the bar with a glass of some form of fruit juice in front of her, Aneka was unsurprised when someone sat down beside her, and pleased that it was Peters rather than anyone else. He gave her a nod which showed no recognition and she returned it, figuring he wanted to talk without revealing their acquaintance. He had had his dark hair trimmed back since she had last seen him. It was still neatly groomed, and he still had the same tightly muscled, fit body and handsome features, and there was still noticeable stubble on his jawline at barely midday. The man had to have testosterone almost oozing out of him.

‘There’s a couple of Hayward employees trailing you, y’know?’ Peters muttered, his drink close to his mouth to hide his lips.

‘I didn’t know they were Hayward. Blonde in the corner with the spray-on, white T-shirt and the muscles?’

‘That’s one…’

‘There’s another with a mousey crew-cut. Slimmer, black mesh shirt.’

Peters hid a grin behind his drink. ‘Why aren’t you working for Winter?’

‘She offered, I declined. I don’t want to do that kind of work… all the time. When she needs me for something she usually has a way of persuading me to do it. She send you to keep an eye on me?’

‘Not exactly. Last time you were here she wanted us to make sure you were looked after. We figured we’d best do the same when we heard Hayward had asked for you to be invited down here. They’re paying for your hotel room.’

‘They keep trying to covertly scan me. Would you believe a concealed scanner in the bathroom?’

‘I’d believe just about anything. Then I’d check. Hayward is supposed to be into some bad gopi, but there’s never been any solid proof.’

‘What kind of bad?’

‘Supposedly they engineer diseases as well as cures. Sell them outside the Federation, of course, but some of them find their way back in.’

‘Bio-weapons?!’ Aneka blanched.

‘Basically, yeah. It’s as illegal as it gets, but if they never get caught… In this case, though, I suspect they’re after some technology they think you have. Their main business is disease prevention.’

Aneka threw back the last of her juice. ‘The AIs on Negral injected the Jenlay on our team with some sort of nanomachine antibody system. If Hayward heard about it, they’ll think I have it too.’ She slid off her stool and started for the door past Peters.

‘Watch your back then,’ he said.

‘Always do.’

~~~

Aneka handed a T-shirt across the counter to a man who could not have been older than twenty. Well, she amended, he could have been older; age did not show on the face for a long time these days unless you let it. However, his looks, the way he moved, the slight hint of bashfulness when he looked at her, all suggested that he was actually young rather than just appearing to be.

The other thing that made her suspect he was young was that he was staring at her boobs, but then he said, ‘This isn’t SensiCloth. Do you want a size or so larger?’

The shirt was made of a stretchy, black mesh and had ‘See the Mountains of Sapphira’ printed on it in green, neon lettering. It probably would have done a good job of crushing her breasts, but then… ‘It’s not for me. My girlfriend is a little smaller in the chest.’

‘Ah, fridgy. That’s ten credits.’

It was kind of expensive for a gimmick T-shirt, but it was a gift; gifts did not count. Besides, she had had barely any expenditure the last couple of months. Taking the bag the shop assistant gave her, she headed for the door wondering absently whether she should go buy herself something. By the time she had reached the door she had remembered how much she hated shopping. The T-shirt was different; it was a gift, and gifts did not count.

There’s a pool at the hotel. Not like I can get sunburn.

‘Actually, your dermal layer can take damage from excessive infrared radiation,’ Al commented.

‘Not like it’s going to stop me.’

‘I don’t think you’ll suffer extensive damage, even in this heat.’

‘Glad to hear it. You think Ella will like the shirt?’

‘A humorous reference to the breasts barely hidden beneath a semi-transparent, very short T-shirt? Of course. That said, she would like it if you bought her a lump of rock.’

‘Huh. Wonder what she’s up to.’

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

Ella watched her screen the way one would watch the unfolding of a multi-car pile-up. You really want to look away. You feel somehow that you should stop watching, as though watching makes you some kind of sick, twisted person who revels in the destruction of others. Still you keep on watching because you cannot quite pull your eyes away.

The voiceover just made it worse. ‘Subject Nineteen has shown a new form of symptom. We have not yet determined whether the crystalline layer covering his skin is formed of the skin itself or extruded from it. We will begin cutting into it this afternoon to determine the state of the body. There has been no sign of metabolic activity for seventeen minutes.’

The body, its limbs contorted as though death had been agonising, wore a glossy sheen of glass-like material. Whatever it was it was coating every inch of skin, even displacing the hair which had once been attached to the man’s skull and pubic area. That was obvious since the figure was naked, a twisted, wracked, naked man who the narrator had infected with something which had a number for a name. Ella wondered whether they referred to their subjects by a number because a name would have made them Human.

She fumbled for the pause key as the door behind her opened and the crystal man was left frozen on the display. ‘Vashma!’ Corazon said. ‘I’m glad we’ve never encountered anything like that.’

‘You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that,’ Ella told her. ‘You needed something?’

‘Uh-huh, some of your blood.’

Ella blinked. ‘Pardon?’

Corazon smiled. ‘We may not have that kind of horror out here, but we do have a few unpleasant micro-organisms and someone got careless.’ She held up a hand. ‘It probably hasn’t got this far, but we’d prefer not to take the chance. Everyone is being tested.’

Glancing at the screen, Ella nodded. ‘Test away,’ she said.

Arlyn.

The sun was seriously hot on Aneka’s skin. She had to wonder how the other people lying around the pool were coping because she felt like she would broil in her own juices.

‘Unlikely,’ Al commented. ‘Your body is quite able to handle this temperature without stress. Just remember to drink fluids when you get inside.’ His tone was mildly amused.

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘I would not even attempt to replace your mother, Aneka. I am merely a concerned support AI.’

‘I think you’re more than that.’

‘A concerned friend?’

‘Your girlfriend used me as a sex surrogate to let her make love to you.’

‘A concerned friend with benefits then.’

Aneka chuckled, stopping when she heard footfalls coming closer. Whoever it was had shoes on and she had seen no one around the pool in footwear. Opening her eyes she looked around at the source of the disturbance.

The man was tall and attractive. That got kind of boring after a while. This one came with perfectly groomed, blue-black hair, a deep tan, and blue eyes. His body showed signs of a regular fitness regimen, but not of active work; he probably sat behind a desk a great deal. His suit, he was actually wearing a suit in this heat, was immaculate and very expensive. He was wearing a smile too, the kind of smile which said, ‘Happy to meet you, I plan to screw you over.’

‘Miss Jansen,’ he said, settling down on a lounger without being invited, ‘I’m Philip Deerforth.’

A touch of a button on her armrest lifted the back of Aneka’s lounger into a more upright position. ‘And what can I do for you, Mister Deerforth?’

The smile wound up a notch. ‘I’m with Hayward Pharmaceuticals. You declined our invitation so I thought I’d come to you.’

‘Ah…’ Aneka paused for a second to collect her thoughts. ‘Mister Deerforth…’

‘Philip.’

‘Mister Deerforth, the reason I declined your invitation is that the Federal Security Agency, Winter specifically, would roast me slowly over a bed of plasma torches for talking to you.’

‘We would simply like to plead our case for access to whatever technology…’

‘And that’s why you’ve been trying to covertly run bio-scans on me?’

The smile flickered. Whatever Deerforth’s job was at Hayward, he was clearly a fairly good politician as well. His façade slipped for a fraction of a second, no more. ‘What makes you think we’ve been doing that?’

‘Process of elimination. You’re too persistent. If you hadn’t come here I’d still be guessing. Now, my flight to the spaceport isn’t for another ninety minutes, but I think I’ve had enough of Arlyn’s hospitality. Goodbye, Mister Deerforth.’

She got up and headed for her room. Getting a message to Winter about Hayward’s zeal seemed like a good idea, but she was not sure she could trust the local communications system. It would have to wait until she got back to the Brigantia.

‘I don’t like this,’ she said silently. ‘See what you can dig up about Hayward.’

‘Accessing local network as we speak,’ Al replied.

~~~

‘Hayward Pharmaceuticals FRC is a very well-respected company originally founded in three-ninety-two by Justin Hayward.’ Al sounded like he was giving a lecture. Aneka smiled and let the taxi do its work as it carried her out of town towards the airfield which served the resort. ‘They held a patent on a particularly effective antibiotic which was used to treat particularly virulent microbial agents and have continued research in this area, but their best work in recent years has been in disease prevention rather than cure. They created a number of genetically modified, symbiotic bacteria which gave good results in fighting off infections that normal Jenlay find difficult to resist.’

‘Sounds great. I can’t see why they need to be so pushy. They seem like they’d be a shoe-in for the Galactic University, if it were ever going to happen.’

‘Indeed, but I suspect they are unwilling to wait. They have been beaten to the punch on a number of occasions recently by newer, smaller, more agile companies. Their nanotechnology research in particular has failed to bear fruit. Getting their hands on Xinti technology would give them an instant head start.’

‘So we’re just talking about an aggressive corporation looking to get ahead of the competition?’ Aneka relaxed a little in her seat.

‘Probably, but I did discover some information which might suggest another motive.’

‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’

‘There have been several, persistent rumours that Hayward supplements their income by engineering bio-weapons. It’s very illegal in the Federation, but they do their research outside the Rim. One rumour states that an influenza epidemic which wiped out most of a colony on Ybian Six was engineered by Hayward and deployed by an anti-Federation terrorist group. The nanophages that were implanted into your friends are benign, but the technology employed could be used to engineer weapons.’

‘But there’s no proof that they’re doing it?’

‘None that I can find. I think if there was solid evidence they would have been shut down.’ The taxi turned a corner and Al added, ‘We have deviated from the expected course to the airport.’

Aneka looked out through the tinted window of the cab. They had turned onto a smaller road which seemed to be heading towards a group of low buildings. She could see a high, chain-link fence with an open gate ahead of them. ‘Something’s wrong.’ She reached down to one of her bags, opening up a plastic case inside it and taking out a slim sub-machine pistol.

‘I’m detecting radio traffic,’ Al told her. ‘Encrypted transmissions. The pattern suggests at least four transmitters ahead of us.’

‘Great.’ Her pistol signalled its readiness by displaying targeting information and a view from its inbuilt camera in her vision field. Fully loaded, five hundred round magazine, set to automatic fire. She waited.

Two men in full body, black combat armour, the faceplates tinted to black, rushed out to close the gate as the taxi entered the compound. From the buildings Aneka guessed it was an unused warehouse facility; unused except as a kidnapping site anyway. The taxi came to a juddering halt ten metres from a third man. He was cradling a laser carbine in his arms, not feeling the need to aim it anywhere yet. Two more of the unknown assailants moved in from the sides as the doors on the cab slid out and back by themselves.

‘There are five,’ Aneka commented.

‘My radio sensors are good, but not perfect,’ Al replied. ‘They appear to be dressed in civilian-grade combat gear, equivalent to Peacekeeper armour.’

‘Aneka Jansen.’ The voice came from the one ahead of her, amplified by the suit and disguised with an electronic distortion. ‘Step out of the car.’

Aneka checked the positions of the five men, well, four men and a women if you were being picky. No clear line of sight to any of them. ‘I’ll stay where I am, if you don’t mind,’ she called back.

There was a slight pause and then the two at the sides moved in towards the doors. Aneka waited until they had moved to within five metres and then moved. Her left hand rose, palm spread, and the air rippled slightly as a force shield extended out to cover the door. The man on the right stopped in his tracks, trying to get his carbine up as he saw the pistol in her right hand swinging towards him. He never made it. There was a sound like ripping cloth as the pistol unloaded twenty slim, hyper-dense darts at a respectable percentage of the speed of light into his chest. Each dart was flash vaporised into a jet of plasma as it struck his armour and seared through into his body.

Not waiting for the body to fall, Aneka dropped onto the floor of the cab, swung her weapon around, and fired a burst at the woman on the left. Plasma jets burst against her stomach, her rising carbine, and then her chest and throat. Neither of them was getting up, but she had three more to deal with.

The windscreen exploded as a polychromatic laser beam hit the Polyglass, the tinting letting it absorb more of the light than usual. Aiming over the seat using the camera-sight, she fired off a burst into the leader’s helmet and was rewarded by a sharply cut off scream as her arc of fire intersected his visor.

Laser beams carved into the rear of the taxi. Polyglass exploded over Aneka and she grimaced. Two more and they did not seem to be giving up. Annoying. Where was their self-preservation instinct? Deploying her shield again and ignoring the crunch of glass under her bare knees, she moved out far enough to see one of the two gunmen and opened fire. His laser lanced out, a white beam which sparked as the air around it ionised, striking the invisible barrier Aneka was projecting where it flared and died. Then Aneka’s slugs bit into his chest and stomach, and there was no more shooting.

‘You want to drop that thing and come quietly?’ Aneka yelled, keeping the taxi between her and the last man.

Her reply was a loud crack as the laser ripped the air open. She heard structural bioplastic sizzle as the beam hit the cab. The thing was not going to give her much cover. She moved, stretching to aim her pistol around the back end of the dying vehicle, and saw the gunman’s back as he ran towards the fence at the corner of the compound. Aneka engaged the safety on her pistol.

‘Do we have network coverage?’

‘Of course,’ Al replied. ‘You’re going to let him go?’

‘He no longer represents a threat. Get a call through to Peters. I want Federal Security here, not the local Peacekeepers.’

‘A wise choice.’

Aneka was not entirely sure whether he was referring to the escaping gunman or calling the cops. Maybe both.

~~~

‘We found a bunch of flyers for the Knights of the Void as well as a data chip with a video claiming the Knights had taken you,’ Peters said. To his credit he was not looking convinced.

‘I’ve encountered the Knights before,’ Aneka said, her gaze on the body of the team’s leader, ‘they were disorganised, carrying random weapons. They lost their primary source of funds when Humanity First was beheaded, I kind of doubt they’ve got better.’

‘Unfortunately, I don’t think we can chalk this down to simple terrorism, no.’

‘Any identification?’

‘Oh yes, about four each. All fake. Professional-quality stuff too, another thing which suggests mercenary or criminal rather than fanatic.’

‘Huh. Are we finished here? Can I get a lift to the airport?’

Peters laughed. ‘We can do better than that. Due to this little incident you’re under the direct protection of the Federal Security Agency until we can hand you over to the Navy. We have an armed vertol ready to take you right to the spaceport.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Also, you missed your flight.’

Aneka looked around at the teams starting to put bodies into Plastex bags. ‘Are you sure you’re protecting me, or the local population?’

Peters started towards the rear of the compound and the vertol aircraft he had arrived on. ‘That’s kind of a tough call,’ he said.

Hayward Alpha Research Facility, 10.12.525 FSC.

‘What am I looking at, exactly?’ Nayland asked. His screen was showing blood plasma, erythrocytes, leukocytes, and thrombocytes; those he could recognise since he did actually have degrees in biology and xenobiology. The problem was the small, dark particles floating in there, apparently entirely inert. Comparing them to the erythrocytes, they looked to be less than a micrometre across and they were just floating there.

‘Those are inorganic, nanoscale robots,’ Corazon told him. ‘The things are through her entire system, inactive.’

‘Inactive?’

‘Unless we introduce a foreign agent.’ The image on the screen shifted suddenly and something else appeared in the mix of blood components.

‘Is that the influenza strain we made for Ybian?’

On the screen, the tiny black spheres shifted shape, blurring as impellers drove them towards the viral particles. ‘Yes, it is. One of the most virulent strains we’ve managed to engineer.’ A second later the virus was dissolving into proteins as the nanomachines tore them apart, and then they began destroying the proteins. ‘And these things destroy them in a matter of seconds.’

‘Perfect,’ Nayland crowed. ‘The ultimate viral weapon, and the ultimate defence against viral weapons, all in one attractive, redheaded package.’

‘She’ll complete her work today, tomorrow at the latest.’

Nayland hand-waved that away. ‘Miss Narrows is going to come down with a fever in a day or so. Quite a bad one, inducing delirium. She’s already been taking the drugs in her food. She’ll remember nothing and we’ll have free rein to examine her little friends while she’s out.’

Corazon smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

11.12.525 FSC.

‘As you can see,’ the voiceover said, ‘Subject Thirty-nine remains in the same crystalline state she has been in for the last seventy-two hours.’

Ella could not see that, exactly, but she could see the cocoon of glassy material which had grown around the body. The material was not exactly opaque, but the body within was more or less invisible, little more than a shadow. She had seen Subject Thirty-nine prior to her entombment; she had been a fit, attractive young woman who had started out banging on the window of her isolation chamber before sinking into a coma.

‘Scanning has shown continued biological activity within the cocoon,’ the voice continued. Ella had come to hate that voice. It was always the same one, a man, and he seemed far too excited by his work. ‘We believe that we have finally got a strain which functions correctly. Strain M-Nine-Sixty is going to be our greatest triumph yet.’

‘Bastard,’ Ella muttered, typing out the transcript. She had been feeling off all afternoon. The lab felt even warmer than usual and she was developing a headache. Turning to the list of material, she realised the next one was the last one. Relieved, she cued it up and started it playing.

The image showed a man’s face far too close to the camera. He was older than she had expected from his voice because when he started speaking she realised that this was the bastard she had been listening to for so many hours. His hair was greying at the temples, his skin sallow, and he looked scared.

‘Strain M-Nine-Sixty has…’ He glanced quickly to the side as though he had heard something. ‘It’s been more successful than we thought. It kills anyone exposed to it. We can’t stop them. They just keep…’ He looked away again and when he looked back his face had changed entirely. The fear was gone, replaced by an unnatural calm. ‘They’ve found me. I did this. I deserve this. God, I hope no one ever sees this recording.’ Something flashed in from the left of the screen and the face vanished, and then the image turned to snow before cutting out entirely.

Ella frowned, reaching out to the controls and rewinding the video. Even in slow motion the thing that had attacked the researcher was nothing much more than a blur. She backed it up again and went through it frame by frame, stopping at a point just as the man’s head was leaving the picture on the right. Was that a head? It looked like hair. What was it he had said? It kills anyone exposed to it. We can’t stop them. It did not make sense.

Re-cuing the video she started it again to get the transcript down. ‘Strain M-Nine-Sixty has… It’s been more successful than we thought.’ Ella typed that in and then stopped as the image blurred.

‘What…?’ she said, her voice sounding thick in her ears. The video played on as Ella keeled over, falling unconscious on the floor of the lab.

~~~

‘Get her on intravenous nutrients and fluids,’ Nayland said as he followed the cart carrying Ella deeper into the labs. ‘We need to make sure she looks healthy enough when she leaves. Don’t forget to set the dosage of the memory inhibitors and sedatives.’

‘It’s all prepared,’ Corazon told him. ‘I don’t think she completed the final transcript.’

‘Possibly, but I saw what she did get down. We do have that strain of virus, don’t we?’

‘I’ll check the records, but I seem to remember seeing vials labelled with that number.’

‘Good. I want it located in storage and prepared for analysis by tomorrow.’

‘If it’s as good as they thought, we’ll need some test subjects.’

Nayland nodded. ‘I’ll contact our usual supplier. It may take a few weeks, but we’ll get them.’

‘It’s easier in the stations outside the Rim, closer to the source.’

Nayland laughed. ‘I know you’re impatient, Lisa, but science takes time.’

‘Yeah,’ Corazon said, ‘unfortunately.’

FNf Delta Brigantia, 14.12.525 FSC.

Aneka slipped into the gunnery chair on the flight deck with a grin. Technically any of the three operations positions could perform any role, but the one she was seated in was generally used by the gunnery officer and the displays were set up for that purpose.

Prentice, seated in the pilot’s chair, glanced over at her. ‘You look like a woman on a mission.’

‘We’re heading back to New Earth,’ Aneka replied.

‘Uh-huh. Course is set, we went into warp…’

‘About an hour ago. I heard the drives kick in. I figured now that we’re up to spec, more or less, we could pick up the lessons again.’

‘What does Anderson say?’

‘She said it was okay if you were okay with it.’

Prentice chuckled, leaned forward, and tapped some keys on her console. The displays in front of Aneka reconfigured themselves into a copy of the ones in front of Prentice. ‘Okay, what’s our current speed?’

Aneka’s eyes flicked over the screens. ‘Point-four-nine light years per hour.’

‘Okay, so you remember the basics.’

‘Side effect of being basically a supercomputer. I remember everything.’

‘Huh.’ The pilot’s fingers flicked over her controls. ‘All right, switching over to simulation. I want you to drop us out of warp and then give me a two-G acceleration for nineteen seconds followed by a course correction of two degrees upward pitch, five degrees right yaw.’

Aneka made a point of checking that a flashing ‘Simulation’ indicator was blinking away on one of her displays before reaching out and taking hold of the joysticks on the arms of her chair. ‘Leaving warp in five,’ she said.

~~~

‘How are the pilot lessons going?’ Anderson asked. ‘Prentice seems to be enjoying them.’

Aneka smiled. ‘Yeah, I think she’s got kind of a sadistic streak. I’m enjoying it and I think I’m learning something. At least the basics. I doubt I could get a pilot’s licence…’

‘Don’t count on it. Our best pilot thinks she’ll have you up to qualification grade for the Navy by the time we get home.’ The captain shrugged. ‘Yeah, you’d need to do a load of procedural training, but I hear you’re good at that kind of thing.’

‘I’ll be happy if I can fly one of these things in an emergency. I’m all about being able to handle emergencies.’

Anderson laughed. ‘I got the report through about those supposed Knights of the Void on Sapphira. You handled that pretty well. Five dead.’

‘Four, I let one of them go.’

‘I was counting the taxi.’

‘I didn’t kill the taxi.’

‘The taxi was pretty dead when you were finished.’

‘Well… yeah… but I didn’t kill the taxi.’

‘Touchy subject?’

‘No,’ Aneka said, waving away the argument, ‘of course not.’ After a second she added, ‘But I didn’t kill the taxi.’

Anderson nodded. ‘Touchy subject.’

Hayward Beta Research Facility, 15.12.525 FSC.

Lisa Corazon watched the glickle as it gnawed on a large lump of Plastex. The things had to be kept in wire cages because they chewed their way out of the adanymax ones used for more or less everything else. The frown on Corazon’s face spoke volumes and the reason for it was that the glickle was still chewing on its brick.

‘It should be dead,’ she commented.

The lab technician sitting beside her looked in at the glickle. ‘Yes, ma’am. This bug was engineered, right? Maybe they engineered it to work on a specific genome. Glickles aren’t even vaguely related to anything from Old Earth. Neither are the other things we’ve tried it on.’

Corazon nodded. As far as their records showed, M960 had never been used on anything other than Humans. They had tried it on some Human tissue and it was viable, replicating correctly, but seemingly unable to work to full effect. Maybe it needed some specific organ, or would only work properly on a full body. Perhaps a certain mass of material was required. Whatever, she needed a Human subject and it was going to be weeks before Nayland could supply one.

‘I guess we’re on hold until we get some new bodies in,’ the technician said, his tone cheerful. ‘Gives us a chance to nail down the genome. We still haven’t managed to lock it down yet. Seems like it mutates at an abnormally high rate.’

‘Get the sequences rerun. Cool the samples down to a hundred kelvin, maybe that’ll stop it.’ She looked down at the technician as he started to type commands on his console. She needed some Human subjects…

Hayward Alpha Research Facility, 17.12.525 FSC.

‘How many affected?’ Nayland was looking annoyed, very annoyed.

‘Three showing symptoms. We’ve isolated everyone who was in or near to the culture room when the release occurred.’ Corazon was doing her best to look concerned, very concerned, but inside she was trying hard to contain her enthusiasm.

‘Do we know how it got out?’

‘Not yet. It seems to be able to mutate at an unpredictable rate. Maybe something evolved which could eat through the seals on the isolation cabinets.’

‘I hope not. Those seals are no different from any of the other seals in the facility. If it got out that way then it could have infected everyone here.’

‘A good point.’

Nayland considered for a second. ‘To be on the safe side, have Kottigan shut down all traffic between sites. Lock down the Beta site entirely. Anyone there stays there until we’re sure it’s contained. We’ll operate by remote from here where possible.’

Corazon had not considered that he would do that; she wanted to be over there, examining M960 at work. ‘But…’

‘That’s an order, Lisa. No one is to move between the sites.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Corazon said. ‘Of course. Safety first.’

New Earth, 20.12.525 FSC.

Winter’s eyes scanned rapidly over her console. Truelove watched her, still a little impressed at the woman’s speed of comprehension. Even after five years as Winter’s assistant, she still managed to be amazed at her boss’ ability to absorb information. The woman was a computer!

‘This business with Hayward concerns me, Elaine,’ Winter said, her eyes shifting up to look across the desk.

‘Yes, ma’am. The evidence that they are behind the attack on Miss Jansen is circumstantial…’

‘And I’d initiate further investigation and we would get nowhere… if it were not for the fact that Hayward has Ella Narrows on Eshebbon.’

Truelove nodded. ‘Orders, ma’am?’

Winter’s lips pursed for a second, one finger tapping on them. ‘Check for any outgoing flights to Eshebbon, have them blocked. Send the same orders out to any world with scheduled flights to Eshebbon. Get me a list of any in-flight vessels. I want a frigate in warp to Eshebbon today, orders to retrieve Miss Narrows.’

Truelove got to her feet and started for the door. Her cybernetics were already connecting to the local network to begin compiling the information Winter wanted. One thing popped up immediately. ‘The Delta Lantilla is in-system and ready for deployment after a crew training exercise.’

Winter nodded. ‘You deal with the rest of it. I’ll contact Captain DeMarco myself.’

Nodding, Truelove walked out. Maybe someday if she could remember the name of every ship captain in the fleet, she could be Winter.

Hayward Alpha Research Facility, 24.12.525 FSC.

Ella’s eyes flickered open and she saw blurred lights and quite clear diagnostic messages from her implants. There was nothing wrong with her eyes, it was her brain that was distorting the image. She let out a groan.

‘Get on your feet, girl.’ Male voice she felt she should recognise. Sitting up was hard. ‘Move it! Can you use one of these?’

A pistol was shoved into her hands. Up close she could focus on it. It was a laser and she knew how to use those. ‘If I can see anything, sure.’ She looked up again, seeing a man in combat armour. ‘Kottigan?’

‘Your memory’s coming back then? I’ve no idea what they dosed you with.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind that, we have to go.’

Ella’s bare feet hit the cold floor and the shock seemed to straighten her brain out a little. ‘Tahmada! I’m naked! What the fuck happened to me?’

‘Never mind that, we need to get up top and get out of here.’

Well, he was not wearing a helmet. Stepping forward, Ella rammed the barrel of her gun under Kottigan’s chin. ‘What. Happened?’

‘Look, I do security. I don’t ask what they’re doing and they don’t tell me. They’ve had you on drugs for days. Sedatives, memory blockers. Something to do with your blood. You have something in your blood. Something happened. One of their experiments failed over in the Beta facility. They had me lock the place down, but they got out. We need to leave.’

Ella felt her blood go cold. She lowered her pistol. ‘I need to get my stuff from my room or I’ll freeze.’

‘Yeah, I guess. Most of the ones infected here are still… Come on.’ He started off at a fast pace, out the door and down a long, white corridor. Ella had to stretch her legs to keep up with him. There seemed to be miles of corridor, though that was probably just an exaggeration.

It was as they turned a corner that she saw the first cocoon. It was lying against a wall, part-bonded to floor and wall. Ella stopped in her tracks. ‘Gopi!’

‘What now?’ Kottigan snapped. ‘They all go like that, but they’re safe in that state. It’s what comes out that you have to worry about.’

‘This experiment that went wrong? Did anyone mention M-Nine-Sixty?’

‘Uh… I think I heard Corazon say that once. Nayland shushed her.’

It kills anyone exposed to it. We can’t stop them.

Ella swallowed and flicked the safety off on her pistol. Immediately her computer interfaced with the gun’s sighting system and projected data into her vision field. She took in a deep breath. ‘What comes out of the cocoons, Kottigan?’

~~~

‘The first couple were contained,’ Kottigan said. He was standing beside the door of Ella’s room while she pulled on her suit. ‘That’s what I was told anyway. I’m not sure. They’re not exactly bright, but they can think, and they’re strong. They look like the people who went into the cocoons, but…’

‘But what?’

‘There’s nothing behind their eyes. They’re strong, like I said, and they won’t fucking die. Or…’

‘Kottigan!’ Ella snapped. ‘Focus. Or what?’

‘I don’t think they survive the disease. I don’t think they die because they’re already dead. Anyone they touch, anyone they even get too close to, they drop in a matter of hours. There’s a fever and then they go down. Then that cocoon forms and then it’s about four days until whatever they are comes out.’

‘You’re saying this bug is resurrecting the dead?!’

‘Resurrects, no. They aren’t alive.’

‘Animates then?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, they’re animated.’

‘That’s not possible, Kottigan. We don’t have that kind of technology. No one does. Not even the…’ She stopped, then sealed up her suit. ‘Where’s Nayland?’ she growled.

‘He went out to the landing pad with the survivors.’

Ella grabbed her helmet, pulling it on and sealing the neck to her suit. Grabbing her pistol she jumped to her feet and headed for the door. ‘Come on, I want a word with him.’

~~~

There were ten people on the landing pad, Nayland and Corazon among them. All were dressed in heat suits, and all were armed, but none of them were security personnel.

‘This is it?’ Ella asked as she walked towards the small group with Kottigan.

‘You were the last person I could find in the labs. Nayland didn’t want me going in for another sweep as it was.’

‘Bastard.’ She raised her voice as they got closer. ‘Nayland! This virus, or whatever it is, it’s fucking Xinti tech, isn’t it?’

‘Keep your voice down!’ Nayland hissed. ‘They don’t know we’re here yet.’

‘You brought technology back from some site,’ Ella went on. ‘Something some Humans got their hands on and developed out of something they got from the Xinti.’

‘We don’t know,’ Corazon answered. ‘We don’t know exactly where they got the nanovirus from. We know they didn’t develop the initial strain…’

‘Shut the fuck up, Lisa!’ Nayland shouted, ignoring his own advice.

‘What’s the point?’ Corazon replied. ‘We’re never getting out of here alive. None of us are.’

‘We get on the shuttle,’ Nayland began, ‘and…’

‘And what? The next supply ship isn’t due for days. The shuttle’s got air for twenty hours at best. We die down here, or we die in orbit. We don’t even have a pilot!’

Nayland raised his pistol, pointing it at Corazon. ‘Shut up! Shut up or so help me I’ll…’

Both Kottigan and Ella raised their weapons, levelling them at Nayland, but it was Corazon who spoke. ‘Go ahead. At least it’ll be quick.’

‘The shuttle,’ Ella said. ‘Everyone into the shuttle.’

‘We can’t fly it,’ Corazon reminded her.

‘No, but we can seal it and on the ground the air won’t run out. There’s heat in there too.’

‘She’s right,’ Kottigan agreed. ‘We can hole up in there, get food in. It’s our best chance of surviving until the next supply ship comes.’

With everyone aboard and the hatches sealed, people drifted into seats, largely attempting to avoid sitting too near anyone else. That was not difficult; the shuttle was a Concordia-class transport with two cabins and a small lounge. They were used for moving passengers up and down between New Earth and its orbital stations, and on those the lounge had vending machines for drinks. Here there were far more comfortable chairs in the lounge, but no drinks. Still, it was a good place to drag Nayland and Corazon to talk to them.

‘Okay,’ Ella said, ‘what do we actually know about this bug?’

‘We didn’t actually lie about anything we told you,’ Corazon said.

‘You didn’t tell me much, and I’ve never seen the written reports you said you had.’

‘Commercial secret,’ Nayland stated flatly.

‘Are you fucking nuts?! This virus wiped out the researchers who originally created it. They couldn’t control it. It killed all of them.’

Corazon looked resigned as she spoke. ‘The written reports went into a lot of detail about their initial studies, their attempts to re-engineer the virus, and their tests, of course. We have full specs on the eventual machines they constructed, but no reports on the final stages of the last tests.’

‘Yeah,’ Ella said, ‘because there was no one alive to write them up. Wait, it’s not actually a virus?’

‘Viral nanomachines. Organic, yes, and structured like a virus superficially. They have far more complex mechanisms for altering replication in living cells. You were right; the complexity is beyond anything we’ve ever encountered before. They never said they salvaged it from some Xinti site, but there’s no way that they could have created the basic system themselves.’

‘And you thought it was a great idea to experiment on these things?’

‘Have you any idea what advances we could make in medical science studying these machines?’ Nayland asked. He was covering up insecurity with anger. ‘Genetic defects can be altered after conception, on fully grown adults. Limbs can be regrown. You have cybernetic eyes. With this technology your eyes could have been entirely regrown!’

‘Uh-huh… and that’s why you drugged me and spent days analysing my blood.’ Ella had to admit, he was good; his passionate defence of his noble ideals stalled on his face for barely a tenth of a second. ‘The only thing I can think of that makes me any different from anyone else is the stuff the AIs on Negral put in me. They didn’t want us catching anything, so they gave us some sort of nanomachine antibiotic…’

‘Oh, it’s much more than that,’ Corazon interjected, her eyes lighting up. ‘Your machines attack just about any microbial or viral agent that gets into your blood. We introduced mutated blood cells to some of them and they were shut down quickly and efficiently. You’re probably immune to cancer. We found evidence that they’ve been cleaning out deposits in your blood vessels. Gopi, they’re cleaning plaque off your teeth!’

‘Okay,’ Ella conceded, ‘they’re engineered, perfect little body cops and you’d like to study them. Why the subterfuge? This is exactly the kind of technology we were planning to disseminate through the Galactic University programme.’ She paused for a second as both Corazon and Nayland looked away. ‘It’s not just competitive advantage, is it? If these things can destroy a bacterium, they can destroy a cell. You’re creating bio-weapons. The rumours are true.’

‘Doesn’t really matter, does it?’ Corazon replied. ‘We’re all going to die.’

~~~

Ella slipped onto the flight deck of the shuttle and settled into the co-pilot’s seat, leaning back into the slightly reclining position with a sigh. It was getting dark outside and she was hoping to get some sleep, but the last people she wanted to be near were the men and women who had drugged her into oblivion. Kottigan, sitting in the pilot’s seat, was not exactly on her favourite people list, but he had done nothing to harm her and had actually returned to the labs to pull her out.

‘Hope you don’t mind the company,’ she said, her voice low mainly because it felt like a good idea.

‘Huh,’ the grunt was half-laugh, about as much humour as he could manage. ‘I’ve had worse-looking people keep me company on guard duty.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Okay, a lot worse.’

Ella chuckled. ‘It’s okay, I wasn’t fishing. Have you got a partner? Family?’

‘Not really. One of the reasons I took this job was to get away from my last partner.’ He glanced across at her. ‘It wasn’t an entirely amicable break-up. I swore off anything committed for a while. Haven’t done without, y’know? But there’s no one to miss me and no one I’ll miss. You’re with that woman they found, right? The one from Old Earth?’

‘I found her. Aneka.’ The thought that she might not see Aneka again surfaced and was immediately suppressed. ‘What do we know about the things that come out of the cocoons?’ she asked to change the subject.

‘Not a lot. Uh… They’re stronger than average. The lasers burn them, but they don’t seem to care. I saw one lose a hand and it just kept coming. I hit one in the chest, should’ve killed it, but it didn’t. The cold doesn’t seem to bother them. Several of them walked over from the Beta site in indoor clothes. They act more like animals than Humans, and they go crazy when they’re wounded. Their skin looks… old, kind of dull and slack, and they stink. You can smell them before you see them. Oh, they, uh, they eat…’

‘Us?’ That just sounded like it rounded out the whole package.

‘Yeah, but they’ll eat their own kind too. We nailed one of them, laser right in the face and it went down. Several of them stopped coming at us and just started tearing into the corpse.’

‘Okay. Lovely.’ Ella frowned, looking out at the gathering gloom. Her eyes automatically adjusted, brightening the darkness. There was no sign of anything moving out there. ‘So they need to eat. Do they sleep?’

‘No idea.’

‘So we don’t know whether we can go out at night… It’s a neat solution. Objectively, it’s a clever design for a weapon. The disease converts people into a vector for the disease. The vectors spread the disease, but they also kill people uninfected, and then they’ll eventually kill each other for food… You said they stopped attacking to feed?’

Kottigan swallowed. ‘Yeah.’

‘So they aren’t inherently hostile. They kill for food. If they’re not hungry they won’t attack unless attacked. That could be useful to know. I don’t suppose we know how many there are?’

‘We had a complement of four hundred and change. How many were infected and how many were just killed I’m not sure.’

‘Over a hundred of them then, maybe a couple of hundred. Gopi.’

‘Yeah,’ Kottigan said. ‘Gopi’s right.’

25.12.525 FSC.

Ella blinked, not sure why she had woken up until she heard her name called again. She turned and looked at Kottigan. The man’s skin looked reddened in the dim overhead light and bore a sheen of sweat. Ella gasped.

‘Yeah…’ His voice was weak, barely audible in fact. He pointed at his carbine, leaning up against the flight console. ‘Think you can use one of those?’

‘Not well, but…’

‘It’s more powerful than the pistol, holds a bigger charge.’ Reaching to his waist, he plucked a short, thick cylinder from his belt, and then unbuckled the belt and handed it across to Ella. ‘Spare mags… two grenades. Careful with those. Directions on the case.’

Ella looked at the cylinders on the belt, and then the one Kottigan was holding. ‘What… what are you going to do with that one?’

‘I’m not going to become one of those things, kid. If I get lucky, maybe I can take a few of them with me.’

‘Right…’

‘Good luck.’ He climbed to his feet, wobbling slightly and catching himself on the chair back, and then started for the hatch behind the flight deck.

‘Goodbye, Kottigan,’ Ella said.

She waited in silence, listening for any sound, for seven minutes, according to her internal chronometer. When it came it was little more than a dull thud in the distance. She wondered whether he had managed to take any of the creatures with him.

~~~

‘Kottigan’s gone,’ Ella said as she walked into the lounge.

Corazon looked up at her from where she was sitting on one of the couches. ‘We lost two more last night. Maybe… maybe they went before they could infect anyone else.’

‘Have you any idea when it starts to get communicable? The sweating…’

‘The conversion process generates a lot of heat, hence the fever. That might also be a means of spreading it, but none of the notes gave a definite answer and I wasn’t able to determine one for sure.’

Ella looked at her for a second and then said, ‘But you think you know.’

‘I think we’re fucked,’ Corazon replied, her voice barely above a whisper. Then she raised her voice a little. ‘I won’t end up like them. See to it I don’t end up like them. Please.’

Ella looked at her, horrified. ‘I’ve never killed anyone…’

‘You won’t be. You’ll be shooting a corpse.’

26.12.525 FSC.

Ella slipped out of the forward hatch of the shuttle just as the sun was starting to rise, turning and pressing the close button. Kottigan’s carbine was slung over one shoulder, his belt with one grenade on it was over the other. When the hatch locked shut, she started walking towards the facility, watching for any sign of movement.

About halfway back she stopped and looked at the small disc-shaped device in her left palm. It was the cap of the second grenade. She had read the instructions carefully before she had handed the grenade body to Corazon. The woman was lying on one of the couches in the lounge now, her face red and covered in sweat. Waiting.

Ella placed her thumb over a red button on the inside of the cap, closed her eyes, and pressed down. The explosion was little more than a thud; all that fire and compression contained within the pressure hull of the shuttle. She remembered the look of gratitude on Corazon’s face. She remembered what Corazon had told her in the darkest hour of the night. The bitch had not deserved that much compassion.

She pressed forward towards the station. She needed to find food, which meant going to the canteen area before heading to her room. It would be dangerous, maybe, but without food and water she was going to starve before there was any chance of being rescued. Maybe she would run into Nayland on the way. Then she could shoot him in the face and do something good with the day.

The head creep of research had slipped out through one of the rear hatches after three more people had come down with the nanofever. Ella was not sure that he was infected, but given the incubation period Corazon had suggested it was pretty likely. He might still be on his feet, or he might already be a pupae somewhere. Really she did not care, but shooting him would have been nice.

So far Ella was showing no symptoms. She had had a sudden moment of panic mid-morning when it had felt as though her temperature was spiking, but that had subsided quickly. The only viable explanation was the nanobots in her blood. She vaguely recalled a programme she had watched on the potential horrors of nanotechnology and some expert claiming that if terrorists deployed nanotech weapons, nanotech defences could be made to destroy the invaders before they could do harm. If Ella’s ‘blood cops’ were doing rather more for her than had been initially suggested, maybe that included destroying attacking nanomachines.

She saw nothing all the way to the facility, but the doors were sitting open when she got there. She closed them behind her. If there was anything inside then sealing it in with her was not going to matter, and if there was not then maybe they were not intelligent enough to open the locking wheels. Besides, it kept the heat in.

The corridors were deserted, so was the canteen, for which she thanked any deity who might be listening, and the universe if they were not. She had decided that her room was the safest bet because it was high up, out of the way, and she thought she could secure the door. Theoretically the labs were safer, but she figured that there could be several of the creatures down there, and the emergency stairs would have been opened up for evacuation, which circumvented the facility’s security. Being underground had not seemed like a good idea either.

Finding a trolley in the store room at the back of the canteen, she loaded it up with whatever sealed food and water containers she could manage, and two brooms which were set against the wall in a corner, and headed for the central lift. The creatures had to be somewhere, but where she was not sure. Maybe they just did not know she was there yet. Maybe they were off somewhere killing each other for the meat. ‘Vashma, I hope so,’ she muttered as she waited for the lift to reach the top level where her room was.

The room was as she had left it, untouched. Her belongings, which she had not even given a thought to as she had escaped with Kottigan, were all still there. Pushing the door closed, she turned the wheel and then jammed the two adanymax broomsticks into it crosswise. When she tried the wheel again, it jammed against the sticks, which were jamming against the floor. Just to be sure, she took the desk chair and did her best to wedge that under the wheel too.

Ella nodded. Even if the things were stronger than normal, she doubted they were going to get through that. She was safe. Pulling off her helmet, she dropped onto the bed.

That was when she started crying.

FNf Delta Brigantia, 1.1.526 FSC.

‘As this old year turns and the new one begins,’ Aneka said, ‘we give thanks for all that has been, and look forward to all that is to come. The Long Dark is gone and we look into the light. Let this First Day be the first of many where we strive to be the best we can be and fight to keep the darkness at bay.’ She took a drink from her glass, along with the rest of the Brigantia’s crew, and then she added, ‘I have to find someone older than me to do this with.’

‘I’d say,’ Anderson said, ‘that you’ll have a tough time doing that.’

‘I’m only the oldest on a technicality.’

Anderson laughed. ‘Gets me out of doing it. On Navy ships it’s usually the responsibility of the most senior officer. Having you here gives me an excuse to shirk.’

‘Seems to be a common theme.’ Aneka looked down at the glass and sighed softly.

‘You okay?’

‘I usually do this with Ella. I was hoping I’d be back in time…’ She shook herself. ‘I’m sure she’s gone over to Gillian Gilroy’s place. In twenty minutes she’ll be giggling and suggesting a threesome in the hot tub.’

Anderson reached over and clinked her glass against Aneka’s. ‘Well then, I’m sorry you’re missing out. Chance and Shari would oblige if you gave them half a chance.’ She grimaced. ‘You know what I mean.’

Aneka smiled at her and then looked across at the pretty blonde pilot and the handsome technician. ‘Yeah… yeah they probably would.’ She looked down at her drink again, wondering what Ella was really doing.

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

Toasting the Renewal with water was not how Ella had wanted the year to start, but she knew her alcohol tolerance was lousy and the last thing she needed was a hangover. She had barely managed to struggle through the little speech as it was. The words had tasted sour in her mouth, she had been fighting back sobs most of the way through it, and Aneka was not saying them.

The last time she had had to recite the Renewal was when she was thirteen, over sixty years ago. She had been allowed to stay up for the first time, and she had been given a small glass of wine and a card with the words on. She had read it through three times before it got to midnight, determined that she would do a good job. The headache she had suffered through in the morning had almost been worth it. Ever since then she had been with someone older on First Day. She had never been alone before.

The reason she was not taking a chance on drinking was that she had worked out why none of the creatures had been around when she left the shuttle. Their numbers had been growing over the past couple of days. Putting it simply, most of the ones at this site had not hatched, and now they were coming out.

Still, she figured she had enough food to last her for a month before she had to try to find more. When she finished a bottle of water, she refilled it from the tap in her bathroom and put it aside. She was not sure that the facility’s environmental systems would keep functioning, but she was also not sure that drinking the water was safe. She was saving that for when the bottles ran out. Which just left her waiting.

Saying the Renewal had made her realise what she was really waiting for. She was waiting for Aneka to come and rescue her.

New Earth, 5.1.526 FSC.

‘The report from the Delta Lantilla has come in, ma’am,’ Truelove said as she walked into Winter’s office. The room was not large, and while the deep, red paint on the walls made it feel warm, it also tended to make it feel smaller still. The furniture, made from actual, real wood, was also dark in colour and quite large, and that did not help either. On the other hand, Truelove felt, it did make speaking to Winter in her office feel more intimate somehow.

‘I know,’ Winter replied. ‘I’m read… I’ve read it.’ She looked up from the screen. ‘No radio contact at all, signs of activity on the surface, but those signs are “unusual.”’

‘They sent detailed sensor logs. I could have one of the techs…’

Winter waved away the suggestion. ‘If we had the raw data they might be able to find something, but I doubt it. A frigate isn’t equipped to do that kind of analysis. It’s a shame the Delta class isn’t equipped with a shuttle. Well, this is an interdiction operation. Their orders under these circumstances are that no one goes down to that planet; anyone coming up is to be arrested. They are authorised to use deadly force.’

‘You don’t want to send an extraction team?’

‘Yes, I do. And that team should be arriving here in four days. I’ll need you to arrange some paperwork for me…’

New Earth Transit Station One, 9.1.526 FSC.

Aneka was annoyed. The Brigantia had arrived over an hour ago, docking with one of the two giant space stations in geosynchronous orbit over New Earth, and she had wanted to be off the ship and hugging Ella as soon as was humanly possible. Instead she had been told to stay in her cabin until ‘someone from the Administration’ arrived.

Most of the crew had disembarked. Scotts was in the engine room, going over the systems in preparation for an inspection by the engineers who would be refitting the ship after its brush with death. Anderson was in her cabin with Daventry going over all the mission reports and filing the last one to cover their flight back to New Earth. None of them had time to chat, so Aneka just sat in her room and fumed.

When the door chimed, she more or less screamed her response. ‘Finally! Come in!’

The woman who stepped through the door was a total unknown for about half a second. She was tall, long in the leg, tanned, and of course attractive. The long legs were enhanced by red thigh-high boots with spiked heels. Her face was kind of narrow, but her cheeks gave it more fullness, cushioning the hard edges. She had moderate breasts, but it seemed like her nipples were fighting a rear-guard action to push through the short, red dress, with mesh sides, that she was wearing. Her hair was short, wavy, and the kind of dirty-blonde colour Aneka’s had been before the Xinti had got hold of her, and the eyes were dark, though Aneka thought they were more like indigo than brown or black. She did not look like anyone from the Administration, and the ID pulse Aneka received almost immediately sort of confirmed that.

‘Miss Jansen, I’m Elaine Truelove, Lieutenant Commander with the Federal Security Agency. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

‘Well, you have, would you mind telling me why?’

‘No ma’am. I’m here to take you to the person who’s going to tell you why.’ She turned slightly. ‘Get Miss Jansen’s bags, take them straight to the Pegasus.’ She stepped aside and two very large naval officers walked in, heading for Aneka’s two cases which were sitting on the bed.

‘Now wait a minute,’ Aneka began.

‘Miss Jansen,’ Truelove said, ‘we really don’t have time to argue. Please come with me.’

Aneka wanted to punch her, but that was going to get her nowhere. She followed the blonde out of her cabin instead.

~~~

It was as they were walking down the second or third corridor Truelove had led her down that Aneka noted the small plastic plugs near the base of the girl’s skull, mostly hidden by her hair.

‘You’re a cyborg?’ Aneka asked.

Truelove’s hand went to the back of her neck. ‘Yes, ma’am. Most people don’t notice.’

Aneka shrugged, though Truelove could not see it. ‘Doesn’t bother me, obviously. I just don’t expect to meet them in this society. What do those do?’

‘There’s a fibre optic cable port and two chip slots. They connect into a computer in my skull. I can load various things in through the slots, mostly databases, but I can equip various programs in there that help in my work.’

‘Just the computer, or is anything else electronic?’

‘Just the computer, ma’am.’

‘Could you stop calling me that? Aneka is fine.’

‘No, ma’am, not while I’m working. If we went out for a drink I’d be happy to call you Aneka, but otherwise you’re ma’am, ma’am.’

‘Right… What exactly is your job, Truelove? Great name, by the way.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. I’m Winter’s personal assistant.’

Yeah well, it figured that this had to have something to do with Winter. ‘How come I’ve never met you before? She usually just appears like she’s been teleported and makes my life complicated personally.’

‘You’ve never needed to meet me before,’ Truelove stated before stopping at a door and hitting the button beside it.

The office was small, one of the ones set aside for the use of visiting military personnel. The furniture was stark and metallic, and sat behind the desk was Winter. The head of the FSA was wearing one of her grey skirt-suits with a sheer, white blouse, which meant she was going to be all business. She was not especially tall, her hair was a short bob of blonde, and her face, while attractive, had the quality of being sufficiently average that most people failed to recognise her, even after meeting her once or twice. The most telling thing about her was her eyes; they were a bright blue, and very pretty, but it was the way they seemed to hold a lot more age than her body showed that was the shocking thing.

‘I hear you’ve been learning to pilot a spaceship,’ she said by way of introduction.

Aneka frowned but said, ‘Uh, yeah. It was something to do on the flight and Lieutenant Prentice was willing.’

‘How’s that going?’

‘She seems to think I’ve taken it all in… Look, Winter, much as I love these chats I’m kind of anxious to get down to the surface and reacquaint myself with Ella.’

Winter nodded to the seat opposite her. ‘Sit down.’ She was not going to take no for an answer, so Aneka sat. ‘While you were away, the university received a request for assistance from one of their corporate benefactors. Some translation work. Old Earth material which they were having trouble understanding.’ Aneka felt her artificial digestive system sinking. ‘Since Doctor Gilroy was needed here, and Miss Narrows is a little better at spoken English anyway, she was the one who went to Eshebbon where Hayward Pharmaceuticals has a research facility.’

‘Fuck!’ Aneka muttered.

‘Indeed. When we got the report on your visit to Sapphira, I sent a frigate to retrieve Miss Narrows.’

‘Great, when’s she due back?’ Somehow, even as she said it, Aneka was quite sure it was not going to be that easy.

‘Four days ago we got a status update from the Delta Lantilla. They can’t raise the surface.’

‘You’ve sent something else then? I know the Deltas don’t have shuttles, but you’ve sent something else to get her out?’

‘No, I’m sending you.’

Aneka’s fists clenched. ‘You’ve wasted four days…’

‘During the summer,’ Winter interrupted, ‘using the Garnet Hyde’s engine as a guide and with a bit of help from Aggy, we built a test bed ship for a new class of frigate we’re hoping to build. Frankly, at the moment, it looks like we need a better power system to make it viable, but the ship’s sitting in dock waiting for you to take it out.’

‘Me?’

‘It’s basically a big engine with a lot of sensor gear. There’s room for a pilot, but there’s a cabin which can support two people, and it has anti-grav. You can fly it in, land it, get Miss Narrows out… and it’s got twice the warp rating of a Delta class. You can be at Eshebbon in five or six days.’

‘Is it armed?’

‘Defensive ECM only. If you need fire support the Lantilla is still in orbit and it can handle light ground bombardment. Frankly, I’m not expecting any resistance you can’t handle. You go in there with FSA authority, no one there is going to be stupid enough to shoot at you.’

‘When can I leave?’ Aneka asked, getting to her feet.

‘Truelove will take you over there now. I’ve just finished yelling at people to get the flight clearances. One thing… It’s a prototype. We’d like it back in one piece.’

~~~

If the Pegasus had been designed as a modern, up-to-the-minute ship, Aneka might have had more trouble with it. She had watched Shannon and Drake fly shuttles and the Garnet Hyde before, and the controls were significantly different from those on the Brigantia. Prentice had said that the more direct, joystick-based flight controls gave better handling in combat, but that it was basically that the Navy was full of Luddites who stuck to older methodologies. Not that she had used the word ‘Luddite.’

As it was, since the Pegasus was a prototype for a frigate, Aneka felt quite at home as she piloted the vessel out towards her warp entry point. It was even equipped with the same antimatter torch engines as the Brigantia.

‘Pegasus to New Earth Control,’ she said as the console told her there was fifteen seconds before she should engage the warp drive, ‘requesting warp clearance.’

‘Pegasus, this is New Earth Control. You are cleared for warp through to Eshebbon.’

Aneka cut off the radio and watched the counter. ‘Hang on, Ella, I’m coming.’ Then she hit the warp engage switch.

FScV Pegasus, Eshebbon System, 15.1.526 FSC.

‘FNf Delta Lantilla to FScV Pegasus, please respond.’

Aneka tapped the key on the arm of her flight chair which opened the radio connection. ‘Delta Lantilla, this is the Pegasus. Can you give me a status update?’

There was a slight delay; the two ships were still several tens of thousands of kilometres apart as Aneka took the powerful little ship in towards planetary orbit. ‘Captain Julian DeMarco here, and you’re Miss Jansen according to your ident. I was expecting… someone else. Nothing’s changed. We’re still reading unknown activity on the surface and there’s been no radio contact.’

‘Thank you, Captain. This thing has a great big sensor array that’s supposed to be used for making sure it’s not pulling itself apart in flight, but it should be able to make a higher definition sweep of the site. I’ll do one orbit over the facility and then I’m going in.’

‘Affirmative, Miss Jansen. Good luck.’

Aneka killed the connection. She was probably going to need some luck; she had never landed a hundred tonnes of spaceship on a planet before.

‘It has anti-gravity,’ Al pointed out. ‘Operating it within a gravity well is no different from operating it in open space.’

‘Yeah, but I can’t hit a planet in open space.’

‘You could always tell Winter that it jumped out in front of you.’

‘Uh-huh…’

Putting the ship in low orbit was easy enough at least. Tell the computer the point she wanted to orbit over and then follow the directions on the heads-up. She inserted over the north pole giving her about a quarter of an orbit to get the sensors ready to scan the ground. The array was not much different from the one on the Garnet Hyde. She had never had to operate that, but she knew the principles well enough. Setting the scan took her a couple of minutes and then it was just a case of waiting for the results.

‘If Ella was with us this would be a lot easier,’ she commented.

‘If Ella was with us would not need to do it.’

Aneka checked the time. ‘Should have inserted closer to the target.’ Al did not reply; okay so she was being impatient, but Ella was down there and possibly in trouble.

Thirty slow minutes passed before she was interpreting the results. Well, the ship’s computer and Al were doing most of it. The computer was less help than it might have been; the analysis software she had available was heavily physics oriented, designed for studying the warp field around the ship. The Garnet Hyde had much better software for topology and biological analysis. Luckily, Al was good at map-making so she had a relatively detailed, if only external, schematic of the two facilities. The other data she was getting was a little harder to figure out.

‘I’m seeing various humanoid shapes moving around on the surface,’ Aneka mused aloud. ‘They seem a little cold for Humans though.’

‘The surface temperature is low,’ Al pointed out. ‘Below freezing, in fact. Anyone on the surface would be wearing insulated clothing.’

‘Yeah… but then why are they on the surface? According to the data Winter gave us, it’s a biological research centre. They can’t be doing large-scale biological research on an ice block, can they?’

‘I would say not impossible, but unlikely. The full complement of the facility is four hundred and twelve. There are over seventy bodies visible on the surface.’

‘They’re out of radio contact and some of them are on the surface… quite a distance from the buildings. A fire…? At both sites? That doesn’t make sense. They study diseases, an outbreak?’

‘At both sites?’ Al repeated. ‘The two sites are a significant distance apart, isolated to prevent one event affecting both.’

‘Huh.’ Aneka’s fingers moved quickly over the console and the virtual displays reconfigured back into flight controls. ‘We’re obviously not going to find out from up here. We’re going in.’

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

Al had been right; with the anti-gravity system online the Pegasus handled like a dream, even a dozen metres above the surface of the planet. The main difference was the air resistance; the thrusters had enough power to shift the craft against it, but turning was a little more sluggish. The streamlining helped. The ship was a smooth, dart-shaped craft, even though it did not really need to be. Aneka had the feeling that someone had wanted the Pegasus to look fast.

She set the ship down on one of the three landing pads just south of what had been designated the Alpha facility. There was another craft on the ground nearby, a shuttle, and she turned the ship’s sensors on it more or less on a whim. The results were immediate as the Pegasus’ analysis software came into its own.

‘Internal structural damage,’ Al commented.

‘Yeah. That’s the right sort of blast size for a class-three grenade.’ She pushed her seat back and got to her feet. ‘All right, we’re going in loaded for bear.’

‘I don’t think bears are going to be an issue, but I feel we should discuss you wearing more armour.’

‘No time.’ Aneka strapped her gun belt in place with its two machine pistols, Bridget and Clara, in thigh holsters. Bessie, her heavy blaster, was strapped into a holster attached to her right boot with setaestrip: not pretty, but functional. She did not have a name yet for the huge sniper rifle, but that was slung over her shoulders. Settling her load a little, she nodded and headed for the air lock. ‘Show time, Al.’

‘Electronic warfare suite is ready. No sign of external radio activity.’

Aneka started the cycle on the airlock. ‘As soon as we’re out, seal the ship. Do we have anything indicating where we should make entry?’

‘There are no plans available for the buildings. If we can pick up a local network I may be able to obtain more information.’

The outer hatch opened and Aneka moved out, down a short staircase which unfolded from under the door. The air was, as Al had said, freezing: three below zero according to her skin sensors. Her body, capable of operating in much lower temperatures, ignored the cold as she looked around, took stock, and started towards the buildings nearby.

There was no sign of anyone initially. Aneka doubted anyone went outside in this weather unless they had to, but then that did not explain the bodies she had seen moving about. She was halfway along the icy Plascrete pavement when she spotted a group of people about a hundred metres away. There were three of them, crouched over something on the ice. Something about them seemed off, but at this range, even with the telescopic zoom on her eyes at maximum, she could not really tell what they were doing. She was considering getting closer when Al spoke.

‘We have an hour and forty minutes until dark, and the ship’s sensors are reporting a band of snow coming in from the north-west. We should keep moving.’

Aneka started walking again. ‘Any luck with the local net?’ Her hands dropped to her holsters, undoing the straps. There was something about the way the three people had been moving…

‘I have a connection,’ Al replied. ‘It’s not good, but the signal strength is improving. I’ve begun breaking their security.’

‘Good. I can see a door up ahead. If all else fails I’ll use…’

Aneka stopped as the figure of a woman moved out onto the path in front of her from behind some block of machinery. She was tall with short, thin, blonde hair, not the usual attractive body Aneka expected to see in Jenlay. That was not the problem, however. The woman was naked aside from what looked like the remains of a T-shirt hanging around her neck and one, torn, running shoe. Zoomed in, her skin looked dull, lifeless, and her eyes were dead. She looked towards Aneka, her lips twisted into a wild grin, and then she was charging towards her, arms reaching out with clawed fingers.

‘That is not normal,’ Al commented.

Aneka did not reply. Her pistol was in her hand and she was firing; three rounds, so close together they sounded like a single shot, hit the woman’s left knee, shattering bone and searing tissue. The woman fell, crashing onto the snow and ice, shook herself, and then started pulling herself forward.

‘The fuck… Lady, just stop!’ Aneka raised her pistol again, aiming this time for the woman’s head.

The woman looked up, opening her mouth and letting out something which might have been a word, but sounded more like an animal trying to mimic speech. One hand reached out and gripped the toe of Aneka’s boot. Aneka squeezed the trigger and Bridget reduced the woman’s head to Swiss cheese.

‘You know, crazy as this sounds, she looks kind of like a zombie.’ Aneka raised her eyes and saw six more figures moving towards her from the buildings. They did not shamble, or groan. In particular they lacked the feature of moaning ‘brains’ as they walked towards her, their pace quickening, but they looked like they had spent the last few days in a morgue freezer and the cold was not bothering them despite the fact that the most any of them was wearing was some badly torn sweat pants. ‘They,’ Aneka amended. ‘They look like zombies.’

‘Zombies are a myth figure, possibly representing the fear of loss of individuality,’ Al said. ‘They are not real.’

‘Funny,’ Aneka said as she pulled Clara free of her holster. ‘I thought they represented the fear of George Romero.’ She opened fire.

~~~

Ella had spent some time considering what to call the creatures, several of which had been trying to open the door of her room for the last couple of hours. ‘Non-sentient Humanoid Life-forms,’ had been a favourite for a while, but she could not work it into a good acronym. ‘Homo Moribundus’ sounded far too erudite. She had eventually settled on ‘Cannibalistic Humanoid Corpses,’ because then she could call them ‘chucks.’ Chuck was not a name you could be afraid of. Except that when they came to her door she found herself sitting against the opposite wall, her hands clutching her laser pistol so hard that they cramped, until the chucks gave up and went away.

These ones were more persistent than the others had been. Maybe they were hungrier, or not so hungry. She often heard a fight starting when the others had left, and figured they went off to kill one of their party for food. They did not seem to need to feed that often, but with the numbers of them out there, there was always someone hungry.

She had had plenty of time to study them, if from a distance. They seemed to be more adapted to light than dark, and did not stray far from the lighting around the facility at night. They also did not seem to need sleep. She had seen one of them sitting in the snow, doing nothing, but obviously awake for something like thirty-six hours. As Kottigan had suggested, they would eat their own kind. The single one’s lonely vigil had ended when three others had surrounded it and smashed its brains in with rocks. They had at least that much basic intelligence, and they remembered some of their past life. It was not enough to use anything more than the most basic of tools, however, since she had watched an ex-security guard smashing a fellow chuck’s head against a wall with a laser carbine still slung over his shoulder.

They knew words rather than speech. She had heard them outside the room a few times, when she had plucked up the courage to move closer to the door. ‘Food’ was the most common thing she had heard, the tones suggesting they knew a little inflection. It tended to be questioning when they came to the door and could not move the wheel. Then it tended to get demanding right before they started fighting.

She heard something now, just before the door wheel stopped moving. She was not sure what it was, but it did not sound like ‘food.’ Then there was another sound, a dull thud, but drawn out over a couple of seconds. Ella frowned. The sound had had a familiar sort of ring to it, but the heavy metal door had probably distorted it. At least the rattling at the wheel had stopped.

The wheel jerked violently, jamming against the broomsticks. Ella jumped, letting out a squeak which she suppressed as quickly as she could. Then she heard the voice.

‘Ella? Ella, are you in there? It’s Aneka. Open the damn door!’

Ella’s vision blurred and she blinked away the tears so she could see the broomsticks clearly. Yanking them free took more coordination than she seemed to have.

‘Ella?’ Aneka’s voice called out again. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes!’ The last broomstick came free and she spun the wheel.

The door pushed open, Aneka stepping through in one smooth movement before closing it again and spinning the wheel. ‘Lock it,’ she said, her voice firm. Ella just wanted to hug her, but she moved, picking up her wonderful locking mechanism again and jamming the shafts into place. ‘Nice trick,’ Aneka said, then she tossed her guns onto the bed and grabbed Ella, pulling her into a tight embrace.

‘I knew you’d come for me,’ Ella whispered.

‘Actually, it was kind of a close thing,’ Aneka replied, not letting go. ‘That can wait until we’re out of here.’ She put Ella down on the bed and stepped back. ‘God you’re a sight for sore eyes. Those things are everywhere and I thought… And then Al managed to pick you up on the security sensors, so I came up here… That suit really works for your figure you know?’

‘Uh…’ Ella began, a little stunned at the stream of consciousness speech coming out of Aneka.

‘I’m sorry, love, I’m a little hyped. I mean I don’t actually have adrenaline in my system anymore, but it feels like it.’ She grabbed one of her pistols and started swapping the magazine. ‘I used practically all of two five hundred round mags getting in here.’ She looked at Ella again. ‘Zombies, Ella! Fucking zombies!’

‘Uh… what’s a zombie? I’m calling them chucks.’

‘Chucks?’ Aneka stopped looking excited and switched to perplexed.

‘Cannibalistic Humanoid Corpses, chucks.’

‘Oh, well, zombies are reanimated corpses…’ Ella pouted a little. ‘But I guess we can call them chucks if you want… You cut your hair.’

Ella reached up a hand to touch her red locks, now several inches shorter than the last time Aneka had seen them. It had been red-orange and fell down around her shoulders, now it was a slightly more vibrant red and came down to her neck. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It makes you look a little older. More serious.’ Ella smiled and her face lit up. ‘Yeah,’ Aneka added, ‘I like it. Now we need to get out of here.’

Ella nodded. ‘I’m, uh… I’m going to complicate things though. We need to go down to the labs. We have to get the data they collected on the thing that’s causing this. It’s a nanovirus derived from Xinti technology. If anyone else gets their hands on it…’

‘Ella… I had enough trouble getting in here…’

‘This is important,’ Ella replied. ‘I’ve been here for weeks and I want out as much… more than you do, but we need that data.’

Aneka frowned at her. ‘It’s a good job you’re good in bed, that’s all I’m saying. Get your stuff together.’

~~~

Aneka moved down the staircase Al had found on the station’s plans, Bessie in her left hand, Bridget in her right. The stairs were designed as an evacuation route from the underground labs, and the doors at the top and the bottom had been wound open by the station’s computer as soon as Kottigan had declared an emergency. That had primarily helped the chucks who had been given an easy route to the surface.

‘According to the plans Al found,’ Aneka said, keeping her voice low, ‘there’s a computer room about fifteen metres left of these stairs. There’s no wireless network, but maybe we can find a terminal.’

‘I’ve got it covered,’ Ella replied. She forced her right hand to relax around the grip of her pistol. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you…’

‘It can wait until we’re on the Pegasus,’ Aneka said. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you as well.’ She checked the corridor at the bottom of the stairs. The lights were still on and the bright illumination seemed wrong for a horror movie. She turned towards the computer room, her location appearing on her in-vision map as she went.

‘Not all of it can wait,’ Ella replied. ‘I told you I had new eyes put in, right?’

‘Uh-huh, Clarion May Detective models, right?’

‘Uh, yeah, that’s right. I also had some other work done.’

Aneka stopped at a door and kicked it open, leading with her pistols. There were no chucks, but there was no terminal either, just racks of equipment, and nowhere near enough flashing lights. ‘No terminal,’ Aneka said.

Ella moved quickly into the room and located a switch box, removing her helmet as she went. There were several loose patch cables on top of it and she took one, plugging one end into an empty port. ‘I had a computer put in. Nothing like yours, of course.’ Reaching up, she pulled aside the hair at the back of her neck to reveal two little plastic plugs, similar to the ones Truelove had, at the base of her skull. ‘I don’t have an Al in here with me…’ She pushed the patch cable against one of the plugs and it slipped in, the cover snapping aside. ‘…but I can connect into the computer network here and find the data we need.’

Aneka looked at her, her mouth hanging open. Then she snapped her jaw shut and turned to the doorway, pistols swinging out to the sides so that she could watch both ways through the sights. ‘Sorry, I was a little surprised. I was that impressive?’

Ella closed her eyes to concentrate better on the data windows she was opening as her computer negotiated with and connected to the network. ‘I decided… I mean, if people are going to look at me funny for having cybernetic eyes, I might as well have the rest of the package.’ She scanned over the data connections she had. Her ident got her access to some of what she wanted, but not everything. A couple of thoughts and her computer started downloading the files she had been working on. ‘I’m grabbing some of the data, but they had more and I don’t have access.’

‘Ask her to open her wireless network,’ Al said.

‘Al wants you to open your wireless network,’ Aneka repeated.

A second later a window appeared in Aneka’s vision field showing the connection through to Ella’s computer. Her voice came along with it. ‘Oh wow! I hadn’t thought we could talk like this. Al’s bridging through me to their network and… Gopi he’s fast!’

‘Thank you, Ella,’ Al replied. ‘I am streaming the data you have collected to my storage. Yours is more limited and you may wish to remove the files later.’

‘Thank you, Al. You know, this is going to make that session with Cassandra so much more fun.’

‘This thing’s linked into your mind?’ Aneka asked.

‘Full sensory connection,’ Ella replied. ‘He’s through their firewalls and into the data files… Those ones, Al. The Tilton files. Grab everything you can.’

There was a loud crack and then an explosion as Aneka fired Bessie. ‘Put a rush on that, please. We have company.’

‘Downloaded to Ella’s local storage,’ Al said. ‘I can continue streaming the files to us while we make our escape.’

Aneka fired twice more, and two more zombie heads were blasted into bloody pulp. ‘We’re moving. Nothing between us and the stairs, yet. Ella, you lead. Let me know if anything shows up.’

Ella pulled the cable out from under her hair and started for the door. She glanced left and saw a dozen or so chucks walking down the corridor towards them. Aneka fired again, a head vanished, and the detonation of antimatter against matter hit the ones around it, pushing some back and others against the wall. Ella turned and moved towards the stairs at as fast a walk as she could manage. Behind her there was another pulse and explosion, and she pushed harder.

Something appeared from the stairway as she approached and Ella raised her pistol, sighting crosshairs appearing on her target’s head. She was about to say something to Aneka when she recognised the chuck coming towards her. Nayland had looked a lot better; his skin was grey, his hair was a lot thinner than it had been, and the keen intelligence was gone from his eyes. ‘Bastard,’ Ella said, and then she pulled the trigger. The air exploded in front of her as the bright white beam lanced out, burning into Nayland’s face until he fell to the floor, smoke rising from what was left of his head.

‘Any more of them?’ Aneka asked after the briefest of pauses.

‘Not yet,’ Ella said as she stepped over Nayland’s corpse, swinging her pistol around to look up the staircase. ‘Nothing up here either.’

Aneka’s blaster spoke again, three times, and then Aneka was at her shoulder. ‘That was almost professional. Keep moving.’

Ella reached down and plucked something from her belt, handing it to Aneka. ‘Maybe this’ll help?’

Aneka grinned at her and took the grenade. ‘You always know what to give me.’ Twisting the cap off, she set the primer button on the body and dropped it at their feet. ‘Run.’

Ella took the stairs three at a time, glad of the training she had done over the summer. Aneka was right behind her, and she waited until they got to the top of the stairs and had rounded a corner before she hit the firing stud. A dull thud sounded below them, followed by a rush of hot air. The two women kept moving, Ella struggling to get her helmet back in place as she went.

It was as they were opening the outer door of the facility that three of the things fell on them. Ella found herself facing flailing limbs and stepped back away from the one trying to grab her; Aneka ducked under one arm, jammed Bridget into the creature’s chest, and pulled the trigger. Fire burned through the back of the creature and it started to fall almost instantly. Her left hand swung up, still holding Bessie, and slammed the heavy weapon into the second chuck’s face. There was the crunch of splintering bone and dark blood spattered across Aneka’s arm, and the creature stumbled backwards as Aneka swung Bridget around. Still a little shocked, Ella backed up another step as her chuck followed her in, arms reaching out to grab her, and then pure survival cut in and she fired. The beam burned through the man’s leg and he fell at Ella’s feet, still reaching for her. That was when Aneka grabbed her wrist, pulling her through the door and over the chuck lying on the floor.

‘When did you turn into Miss Marine Five-Twenty-Six?’ Aneka asked, grinning at her.

Her heart pounding, Ella managed a giggle. She knew Aneka was trying to keep her confidence up, but right now she was willing to go with it. ‘I’m so not… but I am doing better than I thought I would.’

‘You’re kicking arse, girl, and don’t you let anyone tell you different.’ Silently, she added, ‘Al, when you can contact the ship, check the surrounding area on the sensors.’

‘The Pegasus is showing five of the creatures on the landing pad,’ Al replied. ‘You should be able to see them soon.’

Aneka glanced back. There was nothing following immediately. She held out Bessie to Ella; Bridget was already holstered. ‘Take this, point it back the way we came. Anything appears, shoot it. Shouldn’t be any harder than the laser and it’s got more punch.’

Ella took the big gun gingerly. ‘Uh… why?’

Aneka unslung her rifle and pointed it towards the landing pads. ‘Unwelcome guests,’ she said. Compared to the shot she had pulled off to kill Ardus Quint, two hundred metres was almost nothing. The rifle fired off again and again, three quick shots, change target, three more. A few seconds later Aneka shouldered her rifle and looked back towards Ella and the research station.

‘We can’t let those things get off-world can we?’

Ella shook her head. ‘No way. We’re going to have to make sure we’re decontaminated when we get out of here. It can’t affect you, and apparently I’m immune, but those nanomachines could linger on our skin… There’s no telling how long they can survive without a host.’ She looked up. ‘More coming.’

‘Al, unlock the ship.’ Aloud she added, ‘Let’s get aboard. We can give them a warm goodbye on the way out.’

Ella hurried on, slowing a little as she got a good look at the gleaming hull of the Pegasus. ‘Wow, that’s what you flew in on? Hey, wait. You can fly that thing?’

‘Learned on the Brigantia. Didn’t think I’d need the new skill quite so quickly…’

The hatch opened and the stairs dropped down as they approached, and Ella ran on ahead of Aneka. Al started the air cycle as soon as Aneka was in. ‘I’m going to suck it down to vacuum,’ he said, ‘and pump the air out through the external vents. That should cut down on the chances of us having uninvited guests.’

‘Ella,’ Aneka said, ‘keep your helmet on. Al’s going to pump the air out.’

Being in vacuum without a suit never felt great, but really she needed one for the temperature rather than the pressure. Space was cold, far too cold for her body to operate normally. Short exposures she could handle, but nothing extended. This was easy; she just had to remember not to try to breathe, because that was really uncomfortable.

‘The cabin’s aft,’ Aneka said over the wireless connection they still had up. ‘That’s right as we come out of the airlock. When the door opens, you go that way, I’ll get us airborne.’ Ella nodded a reply. ‘Once we’re in orbit and I’ve contacted the frigate that’s up there, I’ll come back. The cabin’s not much, but there’s a shower if you want to use it.’

‘I’ve barely been out of this suit for days,’ Ella replied. ‘I think a shower would be a really good idea.’

Aneka grinned at her. She could feel the air pressure rising again. ‘Should be soon. Al, can you run internal scans, see if anything’s showing as foreign matter?’

‘I can,’ Al replied, ‘but decontamination would still be a wise idea. The sensor systems on this vessel are not designed to detect nanomachines and may miss something.’

‘I’ll put it in the message to Winter before we warp out.’

The inner door of the airlock slid upwards and Aneka stepped through, unloading weapons and taking off her gun belt to leave them in the small interconnecting corridor. Ella gave her a quick smile and then headed to the right through the cabin door. Aneka went left, dropping into the pilot’s seat and hitting the button that slid it forward.

‘Al, what’s the zombie situation?’

A window opened on one of the flight displays showing an external view. There were a dozen or so of the creatures milling around the airlock hatch and Aneka could see more walking down from the facility over the nose of the ship. Her hands shifted over the controls and the craft began to hum with power. Anti-gravity systems engaged and the internal gravity field started up. She pressed a stud on the left-hand joystick, pulled it back, and the thrusters lifted one hundred tonnes of spacecraft into the air as though it were a feather. At thirty metres off the ground she gave a short breaking burst and let the ship hover.

‘Aneka?’ Al asked.

‘I said I’d give them a warm goodbye.’ She pulled back on the right-hand joystick and watched the horizon change. The artificial gravity made it feel as though they were still level with the ground, but a second later they were pointing almost vertically up at the stars. ‘Bye, chucks,’ she said. Her thumb closed on a second button on the left stick and she slammed it forward. Two antimatter engines burst into life driving the ship upwards on twin jets of superheated, radioactive plasma.

Al flicked the image on the screen to show the view below them as it receded. The Plascrete was still glowing from the heat for several seconds after the jets had stopped hitting it. Of the chucks who had been there, there was absolutely no sign.

Part Two: The Way Home

FScV Pegasus, 15.1.526 FSC.

‘Am I allowed to give you orders, DeMarco,’ Aneka asked. She had just finished giving the captain of the Delta Lantilla the short version of what had happened on the planet below. He had been surprised, to say the least.

‘No,’ DeMarco replied, ‘but you can give me recommendations.’

‘Okay. Got any nukes on that thing?’

There was a slight pause. ‘Uh, no. Nuclear warheads are not standard issue on Federation warships, except in time of war. Which means never.’

‘Damn. Then I recommend that you hold position here and stop anyone going down there. I’ll recommend that a gunship come out here and nuke that place into a smoking hole.’

‘You’re going to need some pretty solid evidence to get them to do that.’

‘Oh, I think we’ve got it. We’ll be in orbit for a few hours. Miss Narrows has been through a lot, but we need to have a report sorted out to send ahead of us.’

‘Right. Fair winds, Pegasus. Delta Lantilla out.’

Aneka blinked at the console. ‘Fair winds?’

‘I have no idea,’ Al replied. ‘Ask Drake when we get back. He’s ex-Navy.’

Shrugging, Aneka checked that the computer was happy holding orbit and pushed her chair back. ‘Start gathering a summary of the data you got from their computers. We’ll compile the report when I’ve checked on Ella.’

‘That might take several hours,’ Al said, his voice sounding amused.

Aneka smirked, rising from the chair. ‘God, I hope so.’

Picking up her weapons as she passed through the ship, Aneka stepped into the cabin and laid them down on the floor beside the crumpled heap of fabric that was Ella’s suit. The helmet and boots were lying alongside; it looked like the redhead had been anxious to get out of them. The sound of falling water could still be heard from the small washroom off to the right. Aneka sat down on the edge of the bed and began pulling off her heavy boots and the leggings she wore under them.

The water stopped and a second or two later Ella emerged from the cubicle holding a towel, but not drying herself. She looked oddly hesitant and Aneka could not quite figure out why until it hit her. Her eyes widened. ‘Ella… What have you…? You’ve got boobs!’

A timid grin spread across Ella’s face and she posed a little, pushing her chest out. Ella was a pretty girl, very pretty. Slim, but with impressive hips and a narrow waist. Her face was more like cute than attractive, though the change in hairstyle had pushed her away from that, and if Aneka were to think about it she would not have complained. Ella smiled a lot, which was good because when she did her green eyes lit up and she could turn a winter day into summer. Without a smile she always looked sad. She had inherited most of her looks from her mother, but the one thing she had not inherited was Janna’s breasts, which were impressively large. Ella’s breasts were not small, but they were on the smaller side of average… Or they had been. Now…

‘Do you like them?’ Ella asked, her smile starting to fade when she did not get an immediate answer.

‘I just… Why?’

‘Well, I went in for the eyes and the computer, and I thought… I thought I’d get these done… I thought you’d like them…’ Her arms rose, covering her breasts with the towel she was holding. ‘You don’t like them.’

Aneka was glad they had been covered up because she had been having trouble taking her eyes off them. She looked up into Ella’s eyes. ‘I liked them how they were. I mean, they look gorgeous, but you didn’t need… Why?’

Ella sagged a little further. ‘I… didn’t want to lose you. You can do better than me. And don’t say you can’t because I know you can! I wanted to be so gorgeous that you’d never want to go with anyone else, and this is the only bit of me I could really improve. I’ve been getting more looks from others, so I think it’s worked… But if you don’t like them…’

Aneka suppressed a sigh. It was crazy, but she thought she had got the hang of it. This had driven it home: the great hypocrisy underpinning Jenlay culture. Jenlay were naturally attractive, and with cosmetic surgery being a trivial matter anyone could fix any little defect they felt they had. Everyone was pretty, so they looked deeper when seeking out a partner; that was the idea. Except that Ella had lost her looks, and her eyes, to a disease and no one had wanted her until that damage had been repaired. If everyone was pretty, no one had to settle for ugly partners, and attractiveness was always relative anyway. Ella felt insecure about her looks despite having a body most people from Aneka’s time would have killed for.

‘Come here,’ Aneka said, her tone firm. Ella crossed the floor to stand in front of her, and Aneka pulled the towel away. ‘Arms at your sides.’ Reluctantly, Ella obeyed. Aneka reached up and ran her fingers over the sides of Ella’s breasts. Ella sighed. Cupping the twin globes Aneka lifted them, feeling the weight, and then began circling the nipples with her thumbs. Ella moaned. ‘They’re gorgeous. I can’t tell they’ve been enhanced.’

‘M-modern cosmetic surgery.’

‘Uh-huh, but have you considered the consequences?’

‘C-consequences?’

‘Big boobs were the bane of my life. I was stuck in sports bras most of the time. Getting anything sexy to fit was just about impossible. They bounce. Your back hurts…’

‘This is the future… oh, don’t stop… the future, remember? There are nanofibre supports laced through them and around my ribs. Added support for the spine. I had my ankles and calves done too… Can wear higher heels without mmmm… discomfort.’

Aneka shook her head. She was not going to go into that one. ‘What about the sweating?’

‘Sweating?’

‘Yeah, cleavage is a sweat trap. All this flesh pressed together. You’ll be all clammy in there.’

‘That’s what… what showers are for. I think my nipples are m-more sensitive than they were.’ Aneka leaned forward and sucked hard on the left one and Ella said, ‘Nnngggg! Vashma yes, they are.’

‘You’re crazy; I haven’t been able to sleep on my stomach since I was fourteen! I’ve no idea why you’d want that. And now I’ll have to learn your breasts again, but they’re lovely because they’re attached to you.’

‘Thank you. Now shut up and fuck me.’

Giggling, Aneka pulled her down onto the bed. ‘Yes, ma’am!’

~~~

Aneka lay spooned against Ella’s back. Ella lay in Aneka’s arms, squirming a little and panting. Aneka was enjoying Ella’s new breasts immensely.

‘It’s… really hard to… think with you… doing that,’ Ella commented.

‘You need to think?’ Relenting a little anyway, Aneka eased off her teasing, though it made only a little difference; Ella’s body was wired, the slightest touch was electric. ‘If you didn’t know they were this sensitive, does that mean you didn’t have sex while I was away?’

‘I… No… I didn’t feel like it. Then I wanted to save these for you. And then… ah! Then I came here. Did you?’

‘No. It was on offer on First Day, but I was missing you a lot. I think the frigate’s captain would have accepted an offer. And I said I’d invite Shari Prentice, the pilot who taught me to fly, for some recreation time. She’s cute and I thought you’d like her.’

Ella giggled. ‘Thank you for thinking of me. And if she taught you to fly, I think I owe her as much as you do.’

‘Well I’m proud of you.’

‘You are?’

‘Hell yeah! You going without for all that time? Weren’t you worried about things healing over?’

‘Hey!’ It was hard to pout with Aneka playing her fingers over sensitive skin. ‘How long is the t-trip back?’

‘About six days once we get going.’

‘Good. Don’t think you’re getting out of bed.’

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‘Okay,’ Aneka said, ‘we’re sure we’ve got everything in there that Winter needs to know?’

Ella nodded while leaning over the pilot’s chair, one of her breasts pressing on Aneka’s right shoulder. Her lips were pursed and she had obviously managed to drag her mind out of the gutter to be particularly serious about the report they were filing. Except for the part where she had suggested recording the video message naked. Okay, so the camera angle precluded anything showing, but the nudity was still fairly obvious. That had been pure Ella.

‘I can’t think of anything else she needs. Send it.’

Aneka tapped a key on the console in front of her and the data package they were sending to New Earth began to unspool into space as a stream of tachyons. She had no real clue how the FTL communications system worked, but it did, and it would get the information back to Winter, and let their friends know that Ella was safe, several days before the Pegasus would get there. She also knew it was a one-way process, at least for a ship. The beam had to be targeted precisely. The receivers for interstellar transmission were huge to allow for hitting a target light years away. Not only could a spaceship not carry a big enough receiver, but targeting one was a practical impossibility. They would have to wait until they got home for a reply.

Turning her head, Aneka found her face full of breast. ‘You know, I bought you a T-shirt on Sapphira and the assistant thought it was for me and said I’d need a size bigger. Guess he was right.’

Ella giggled. ‘A prophet on Sapphira, huh. You know me and T-shirts, the tighter the better.’

‘This is going to be more or less indecent… not that that’s ever stopped you. I guess we should get underway.’

‘Please. I want to get home. Well, I want to spend five or six days in bed with you and then get home.’

Laughing, Aneka began tapping keys on the navigation display. Given that no one, not even a woman whose mind was running on an ultra-fast quantum computer, could really fly a ship at warp speeds, it was basically up to the computer to handle it. All Aneka had to do was set the destination, get the ship to a designated warp entry point, and press a button. The computer provided her with a transit solution in a matter of seconds, including an orbital exit vector.

‘Okay… transit burn in five minutes, thirty seconds.’

‘Can I stay up here and watch?’

Watching someone flying a ship to a warp point was not exactly exciting, but Aneka was pretty sure that Ella was asking to stay close to her, not to watch her waggle some joysticks. ‘Sure.’

So Ella was there, hanging over Aneka’s shoulder, as she activated the main engines and the stars began to move across the view through the front window at increasing pace. ‘Wow, this thing really moves,’ Ella breathed.

‘Same drives as a Delta-class frigate. I think they’re rated at two-G.’

‘But the warp drives…’

‘Are twice as fast as a Delta, three times what the Garnet Hyde can do now.’

‘Wow,’ Ella said again.

‘Yeah, it’s great in theory, but there’s so much space taken up with engines and a huge antimatter reactor to power them, that there’s not much room for anything else. This was supposed to be a prototype for a new frigate, but I don’t think it’s viable unless they can develop a new power supply system.’

‘Huh.’

‘Okay, we’ll be at warp point in a few minutes, time to say goodbye.’ She tapped the comms key beside her hand. ‘Pegasus to Delta Lanilla. We are on our way out. Just checking in before we go. Warp in… ninety-eight seconds.’

DeMarco’s voice came over the speakers in response a second later. ‘DeMarco here. Fair winds, Pegasus. Say hello to New Earth for us.’

‘Will do, and I hope you can do the same soon. Pegasus out.’ She shut off the radio. ‘Fair winds?’

‘No idea,’ Ella replied. ‘There aren’t any winds in space.’

‘The Navy had some weird customs back in my time. Sailors are superstitious. Okay, warp in three, two… hold onto your knickers.’ The stars ahead of them blurred and became streaks which shifted ever bluer.

‘I’m not wearing knickers.’ The light from the stars filled the screen and flared up through a bright blue into nothing, and then the computer replaced the direct view through the Polyglass with an adjusted image. The stars were back, even if they were just computer-generated images of where the stars should be.

‘I’m very aware that you are, in fact, naked.’ Aneka’s fingers shifted over the console, checking the flight parameters just like she had been taught. ‘Al, you’ll monitor?’

‘As I did on the way here, of course. I’m not expecting problems.’

‘Neither am I, but she’s experimental. I’d rather not get stuck fifteen parsecs from the nearest port.’

‘A good point.’

‘Okay, course is set. Nothing to do now but wait until we get there.’ She gave Ella a nudge with her shoulder to push her back a little, and then slid the chair back so she could get up.

Ella did not give her the opportunity, stepping over her immediately and sitting down, straddling her hips. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice soft and her face serious.

‘For what?’

‘For coming to get me.’

‘Always, love.’

Ella leaned forward. The feeling of her breasts pressing against Aneka’s was still a little novel, but her lips felt the same and her pointy little tongue darting out to brush Aneka’s was just as it had always been.

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Even Ella, always enthusiastic about sex, could not manage six days of it without some sort of break. In practice she knew that she would get bored after a while, so she was not really planning to spend the whole time in a torrid re-enactment of every porn film she had ever seen. Right now she was going over the Tilton files in-vision while she sat on the desk chair specifically because it was not lying on the bed.

‘That shirt is too small,’ Aneka commented as she emerged from the shower room.

Ella giggled. Since Aneka’s baggage from the Brigantia had been taken straight to the Pegasus, Ella’s present had been in it and Aneka had given it to her. She had managed to get it on, but she looked like something from a men’s magazine in it. Her boobs were squashed together, and out of the bottom of the shirt, and there was no way she could wear it practically. Given that it was all she was wearing the overall look was ‘porn star waiting to go on.’

‘These files… You know, I never appreciated how useful you must find this. The reading things in-vision thing. I mean, it’s really great. I wish I’d done this years ago.’

‘It makes waiting in line for the coffee a lot more bearable,’ Aneka agreed. ‘The files?’

‘Oh, yeah. They had a lot more information than they were letting on.’

‘This is news?’

‘Not about the virus. I mean, yeah, they had all that data too, but there was a lot of information about this Tilton place. It seems to have been operating for years. They set it up not long after warp drives were first engineered.’

‘By “they” you mean Humans?’ Aneka said. ‘Old Earth Humans.’

‘Uh-huh. Seems like they were looking for somewhere to do… unsafe experiments. Genetics, nanotechnology, nothing as advanced as M-Nine-Sixty, but still some nasty stuff.’

‘That’s what it was, M-Nine-Sixty?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I think we should call it Chuck Disease.’ Ella gave another giggle. ‘What date does it give for this Tilton place starting?’

‘Uh… the first report is from twenty-forty-eight.’

Aneka whistled softly. ‘You always said the warp thing happened just after I was taken. Thirty-seven years after the Xinti grabbed me, Humans were opening secret, unethical research centres on another world.’

‘Some of the research there probably ended up in me, Aneka. It wasn’t all bad.’

‘It was the past.’ Aneka gave a shrug. ‘And I guess if some of the research turned Humans into Jenlay… Mostly it’s just that it was so soon after… My replacement really worked fast.’

The slightly distant look in Ella’s eyes went away and she focussed her attention on Aneka. ‘Your brother worked fast. He had help from this… Yrimtan, but it was him and the others working with him that cracked the warp drive the Xinti dropped.’

‘Alan was a bright kid. I didn’t see enough of him in the last few years, but whenever I was home he’d be talking about the latest sci-fi shows and some new development in physics.’ She grinned. ‘The last Christmas I was home he was all fired up because he was sure they were going to find the Higgs Boson that year at CERN.’

‘I know it was discovered sometime back then. That’s the thing. I think… Well, Gillian and I think that Humanity was selected for uplift because they were in a period of huge discovery in science. We know it was happening even before the Xinti stuck their oar in and what we’ve learned from you and from Aggy’s databases has just confirmed it.’

‘Makes sense, I guess. Before my time maybe they’d never have figured it out.’ Aneka grinned and walked over to the bed, settling down and leaning back on her elbows. ‘That doesn’t explain Roswell.’

‘Roswell?’

‘Supposedly a crashed alien UFO in New Mexico. And probably a hoax.’

‘Sure? The next crashed ship gave us warp drive.’

19.1.526 FSC.

‘Aneka, do you have the data Evolution gave you on the locations of the uplift projects?’

Ella was reading the Tilton documents again while Aneka lay in bed, her eyes shut. The morning had been very energetic and Aneka was a little bemused that Ella had the energy for data analysis. Everyone had their own way of relaxing, she guessed. ‘Probably. Why?’

‘There’s some data in these files about the location of the Tilton star system, and it’s relative to Earth, Old Earth. It’s all kind of vague though. It’s supply routes via a couple of other systems I don’t know and it’s just about how long it takes to get stuff to Tilton.’

‘The location of Earth was deleted from the uplift sites,’ Aneka replied. ‘The Xinti Scientists didn’t want to remember how badly they’d screwed up.’ She barked a laugh. ‘And if that doesn’t prove they weren’t AIs I don’t know what does.’

‘Yeah, but there’s an approximate location, right?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, with the approximate location in our old records, and that one, and this data, maybe I can narrow it down using the navigation data from the Pegasus.’

‘Al?’ Aneka said, aloud so that Ella knew she was doing it.

‘Connecting with Ella’s implant…’ the AI responded. ‘And good morning Ella. I have the data and I am streaming it through to your storage. I have taken the liberty of sending the subsection containing the Old Earth assumed region.’

Ella giggled. ‘So thoughtful. I wish I had an Al. My implant has a non-volitional embedded to handle the user interface, but it’s just there to do what I tell it. It can’t be helpful. Okay, let’s see. If I overlay the nav data with the two regions we get… Uh-huh, they intersect, so that narrows it down. Now if I can map these routes in…’ After a few seconds she was frowning.

‘Problem?’ Aneka asked.

‘There’s a lot of potential paths to check. It’s going to take ages.’

‘Perhaps I may be of assistance,’ Al suggested. ‘Obtaining the data… That’s very well presented, Ella. Running pattern matching…’

‘How long’s it going to take?’ Ella asked.

‘A little less than the time it takes for me to relay this reply using speech as a medium,’ Al replied, and Aneka thought she detected a hint of smugness in the AI’s voice. ‘Transferring the solution to your implant now.’

‘Wow,’ Ella said. ‘Quantum computing is really fast.’

Aneka smiled. ‘So, how many possible sites do you have now?’

‘Twelve,’ Ella replied.

‘Searching twelve star systems could take a while.’

‘Uh-huh, they’re spread across a pretty big volume of space, but… one of the routes ends in a G-two main sequence star with a trinary system one-point-three seven parsecs from it. That’s the first leg. “Earth to Alpha Station.” That… that has to be it.’

Aneka’s eyes snapped open and she pushed herself up onto her elbows. Ella was staring at her. ‘Ella… Are you saying you have a definite location for Earth? Old Earth? My Earth?’

Ella nodded, very slowly. ‘Yeah… Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.’

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Aneka and Ella were slow-dancing, naked, around the open space between the cabin door and the bed. The room’s speakers were playing ‘Black Velvet’ because Ella had found it while searching for material about Elvis Pressley in the Wikipedia dump the Xinti had taken, and she had decided that it was really moody and she wanted to slow-dance to it.

‘You think this is really about Pressley?’ Ella whispered. Her mouth was quite close to Aneka’s ear, a fact she was exploiting periodically.

‘Never thought about it, but it makes sense. That line about “Love Me Tender”? That was the name of one of his songs, and he did die before his time, so to speak.’

‘Mmm… I love this song. It’s so moody, and she’s got a great voice. Kind of throaty and raw and sexy…’ Aneka chuckled and Ella added, ‘Yours is kind of like that too. When you laugh like that it hits me right between the legs.’

A message appeared in Aneka’s vision field and she sighed, not stopping the slow movement of their bodies to the music. ‘Thirty minutes to warp exit,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ Ella replied, her arms tightening a little around Aneka’s waist. ‘I guess we’d better put some clothes on then.’

New Earth Transit Station Two.

‘Remind me why we put clothes on,’ Ella said as they walked into the blank, white-walled quarantine room.

‘I have no idea,’ Aneka replied. Once, a thousand years ago, she had been treated to a course on how to act during a biological threat situation. When it came down to it, nothing much had changed. They had been stripped, soaped, hosed down, dusted with powder, blasted with various wavelengths of light, hosed down again, this time with the application of scrubbing brushes, and finally ushered into the quarantine room in the station’s medical section.

‘Your clothing and belongings are being run through scanners now,’ said a voice from speakers mounted over the observation window which occupied one wall. ‘We can provide disposable clothing if you feel the need to wear something?’ Aneka turned to see a man in a white, Ultraskin bodysuit and a Plastex lab coat standing behind the window. He was tall, handsome, blah, blah… He actually looked like he should be starring in a hospital soap opera as the heartthrob young surgeon all the nurses were in love with, complete with the short, blue-black hair and blue eyes you could drown in. She expected his teeth to sparkle when he smiled. ‘I’m Doctor Alex Lindeman,’ he said. ‘It’s my job to make sure you haven’t suffered any ill effects from your exposure to this nanovirus you found.’ He smiled. There was no sparkle.

‘We didn’t exactly find it,’ Aneka said.

‘A turn of phrase. We’ll be scanning to make sure none of it managed to hitch a lift before we allow you out. Don’t worry, Miss Jansen, I’ve had my briefing on your… unique condition. I’m quite aware of the horrible fate which will befall me if I breathe a word of it.’ He smiled again and there was still no sparkle. ‘I’ll let you get settled in. If there are any problems, there are call buttons beside the beds.’

‘Thanks, Doctor,’ Ella said, smiling back. She waited for him to leave the observation room before adding, ‘I wouldn’t mind checking out his bedside manner.’

Aneka winced. ‘Please don’t make me think I’m featuring in one of those terrible sex comedies you make me watch.’

‘He’s cute,’ Ella replied, pouting.

‘Yeah.’ Aneka wandered over to one of the beds, lying down and stretching out, resting her head on her arms. ‘And I have a feeling that he’s going to be the most entertaining thing we’ll see for a few days, unless there are cute nurses to go with him.’

Ella wandered over to the second bed and lay down in more or less the same pose. ‘Cute nurses would be good. Not that any will be coming in here.’

‘Nope. We’re on our own for now.’

‘Aside from the cameras and the observation window.’

‘Not that that would stop you.’

Ella gave a shrug. ‘I’ve just had better than five days of unrestricted Aneka-time. I can wait until we’re alone.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I do have some restraint, you know. I managed without the whole time you were away.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘It’s not like I’m a nymphomaniac, you know.’

‘Not clinically anyway.’

Ella pouted harder.

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‘We’ve been over the data the Brigantia collected,’ Winter told them. She was sitting on a stool in the observation room with Gillian alongside her. ‘The best match we can find is the collapse of a strange star into an electroweak star. A nova, but the explosion of something more dense than a neutron star. Frankly, you’re lucky you survived hitting the wavefront from it.’

‘You build tough frigates,’ Aneka replied.

Winter smiled, it even reached her eyes. ‘Either way, it looks like you were right. They exploded their own star to destroy the Xinti attacking them. The data was relayed to the Herosians with a statement that we would not be needing reinforcements on our border.’

‘Are they going to accept that?’ Ella asked.

‘Not initially. They’ll suggest there might be more Xinti out there…’

‘There might be,’ Aneka interjected.

‘True, but we aren’t going to allow Herosian battleships in our region of space on a “might be.”’

‘So, they’re gone,’ Gillian said.

Aneka nodded. ‘It seems that way. At least these ones died doing something useful. They took out a threat to the peace of the galaxy.’

There was silence for a while and then Ella said, ‘So what happens now?’

‘Abraham is working with what we have,’ Gillian said. ‘He’s planning to write up everything he learned while we were there. Of course, it’s a fraction of what we could have learned, but it’s a step up. Combining that with what he’s learned from Aneka’s body he believes that several advances can be made which might have required decades, even centuries, to come up with on our own.’

‘I’ve ordered Eshebbon to be incinerated,’ Winter said. ‘An investigation is starting into Hayward’s involvement in the production of biological weapons, but they’re not stupid. I suspect they’ll wriggle out of this somehow. The best I think we can hope for is that they have to shut down their apparatus for a while. If I can keep the pressure up, the loss of income might finish them.’

‘And Old Earth?’ Ella asked.

‘I’ve suggested an expedition,’ Gillian replied. ‘It’s going to take some organisation, and funding.’

‘There isn’t really a security aspect to that discovery,’ Winter said, ‘but if I can bring any political pressure to bear, I will. I think rediscovering the Jenlay home world is something we should do.’

‘Vashma, yes,’ Ella agreed.

‘It would be the culmination of my life’s work,’ Gillian said, nodding.

Aneka said nothing and Ella glanced at her, seeing the conflicting emotions on her face.

~~~

‘Aneka?’ Ella was lying in Aneka’s arms. The room was dark and quiet, at least to her. She suspected that Aneka could hear things; sounds too quiet for Jenlay ears, or too high or low to hear.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I get the feeling you don’t want to find Old Earth.’

There was silence. Ella waited; she was not going to push the question. She was very open about her feelings, but she was quite aware that others were not, especially Aneka. Her background was psychology and anthropology, and she knew when to talk and when to listen. Even if she really wanted Aneka to open up, she would wait for it to happen.

‘I woke up,’ Aneka said, ‘and you told me everything I knew was gone. Even I wasn’t what I knew anymore. My world was dead, everyone I knew was dead. I guess I have the Xinti to thank for not going insane on the spot. They made me more… accepting. I adjusted far too quickly to being in a new world, but I think that’s partially because it was a new world. Nothing was the same so there was nothing for me to compare it to except memories. I didn’t have to deal with my world changing because I wasn’t in my world.’

She stopped speaking again and Ella waited. There was going to be more. Ella even thought she knew what was coming, but Aneka needed to say it.

‘If I go back, what am I going to find? You say it’s a cinder. Eve said there could have been survivors. I’m not sure I want to see my old home as a lifeless lump of rock. I’m not sure I want to find cavemen wandering over a bleak landscape either. Either way, I’m going to go home and it’s not going to be home.’

‘You haven’t really faced the fact that your home world is gone, and you’re not really sure you want to.’

Aneka made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me I should face up to it.’

‘No. My professional opinion is that facing this would be good for you, but I can’t be entirely professional where you’re concerned. It’s going to hurt and I don’t want you to be hurt.’

Aneka’s arms tightened around Ella’s waist. ‘You’re going though, aren’t you?’

‘Gillian needs her assistant, and I… I’ve studied this kind of history for a long time. I want to go, but I’d stay here with you…’

‘And hate me for missing out on the opportunity? Screw that. And if you’re going, then I’m going. You’d just get into trouble without me.’

‘I was managing fine on digs before you showed up, you know?’

‘Yeah, I know. But now I’m here and you’re not going to go hundreds of parsecs, out beyond the Rim, without me. Okay?’

Ella smiled. ‘Okay.’ Whatever they found when they got there, she was going to be there to help Aneka through it. But the important thing was that she was going to be with Aneka.

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Nurse Carter was as hunky as Doctor Lindeman, even wearing a huge, transparent Plastex bag over his head as a helmet. Nurse Bentall somehow did not look so good with her face slightly distorted by the disposable helmet, but she did have a body to die for. Both of them were wearing Plastex bodysuits; practical certainly, but it just made Aneka feel more like she was starring in Carry on Space Hospital. Ella was being all coy and suggestive as Carter took her temperature and blood pressure, which did not help.

The manual checks were being done to ensure there were no calibration or detection errors with the remote equipment. Lindeman had told them that there was at least one virus he had encountered which caused aberrant readings in instruments due to an alteration of the reflectivity of the skin. What Aneka was not so sure of was why Bentall was checking her at all, though she suspected that the woman just fancied her.

Lindeman wandered in while the nurses were finishing up their various tests, his own face obscured by a less than perfectly inflated plastic bubble. ‘We’re seeing no indications that the virus has affected either of you in any way, or managed to hitch a lift,’ he said, standing at the foot of Ella’s bed. He looked over at Ella. ‘We did see some odd proteins in your urine, Miss Narrows. Those were minute amounts when you arrived and seemed to have entirely flushed from your system now. That immune system boost you were given seems to have done an exceptional job.’

‘So we can go?’ Aneka asked.

‘We’d like to keep you here overnight. If nothing comes up then you can go down on the oh-eight-hundred shuttle service.’ Aneka tried her best to ignore the innuendo-laden elements of the last sentence; Ella was bad enough as it was.

‘Thanks, Doc,’ she said.

Just at that moment a window popped up in her vision field; Bentall had sent her contact details through using her ident-chip just as she started for the door.

‘I’ve located her staff photograph on the station’s internal network,’ Al said. The picture appeared beside Bentall’s contact details. ‘Her face is not actually that wobbly, and she’s a redhead.’

‘Figures,’ Aneka replied. ‘I wonder if Ella’s got Carter’s number.’

‘It seems likely. I detected a transmission tagged with her public key around the time Miss Bentall sent to you.’

‘Jenlay,’ Aneka said, inaudible to the Jenlay in the room, ‘at least you always know how horny they’ll be.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, New Earth, 25.1.526 FSC.

‘Do you think we should invite the nurses over?’ Ella asked as they walked out of the lift and onto the gantry which led to their apartment block. ‘You know, as a thank you for looking after us.’

‘Don’t you mean as a thank you for having a very substantial penis?’ Aneka replied.

Ella’s lips twitched. ‘Nurse Bentall didn’t have a substantial penis.’

‘No, she had big boobs. I think we should wait at least a couple of days. We don’t want to sound desperate.’

‘No, you’ve got a point.’ They started across the bridge, the mist obscuring the streets far below. ‘What about them, your pilot friend, Kat and Dillon at the weekend?’

‘Too many women.’ The door ahead of them opened and they walked in, heading for the stairs. Katelyn and Dillon, their neighbours, lived on the lower level; their own little flat was above.

‘What about that guy you mentioned? Chancer?’

‘Chance. Okay. Still a little girl-heavy, but better.’

Ella opened the door at the top of the stairs and the lights in the flat came on to greet them. ‘I notice you’re not saying no.’ As they walked in the walls came to life; a beach scene appeared around them, Ella’s favourite landscape view.

‘Well… I’m not saying I couldn’t use the recreation, and if I did say no I’m pretty sure you’d have changed my mind before the weekend anyway.’

Ella giggled. ‘You never say no to me.’

‘I had noticed that.’

Ella looked at her, face suddenly serious. ‘I hope you never have to.’

Sweeping Ella off the floor and draping her indecorously over her shoulder, Aneka started for the bedroom. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be needed any time soon.’

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The decision to go out to Gillian’s home in the suburbs of Yorkbridge had been made late in the day and they had rushed around the following morning to get together the ingredients Aneka would need to make a curry. She had gone with the replacement recipe for Thai Green Curry she had used before, because finding substitutes for the spices in something else would have taken hours. It had been worth it. They had turned up, cooked, enjoyed their meal, and now they were sitting in the hot tub in Gillian’s back yard as the evening sun started to colour the sky.

Gillian Gilroy was cuddled up to her partner, Leo Bashford, her dusky skin a stark contrast to his paler flesh. She was a good bit shorter than him too and of a more classical look. Aneka always thought she looked like a darker skinned version of a Greek statue, though her body had a more modern beauty. Her eyes were brown, as was her hair, which tended to hang in soft ringlets around her face, adding to the classical appearance. Bashford had the powerful body of a man used to manual labour, though his actual job title was ‘facilitator,’ like Aneka. He was bald, with upward pointing eyebrows and slightly oriental features; handsome in a relatively unique way for a Jenlay. When Aneka had first met them they were not, officially, together though she had got the feeling they occasionally indulged. There had been some sort of prior relationship, she thought, and they had drifted back together, though Bashford still maintained his own apartment and they were not together constantly.

Ella had planted herself on Aneka’s lap and was lying there with her arms around Aneka’s neck, her head on one shoulder. She was in an affectionate mood, which tended to happen when she had been through something traumatic and it was now resolved. First there was the over-enthusiastic sex, and then the affection.

‘I want to apologise,’ Gillian said, her voice soft. No one was speaking too loudly. It was that kind of evening.

‘What for?’ Aneka asked.

‘I should have been the one going to Eshebbon. I didn’t and Ella had to endure it because of that.’

‘I had to endure it because Alexis Hayward is a gowdeyinjing,’ Ella replied.

‘That sounds like a highly descriptive term,’ Bashford commented.

‘It is,’ Aneka said as her translation software picked apart the word and suggested its meaning. ‘And it might burn Gillian’s ears, so I won’t translate.’

‘She used to curse like a spacer when she was younger.’

‘I did not!’ Gillian said. ‘Well, maybe more than I do now. Too much time spent in university politics. Still, I feel I should apologise for letting the Dean push us into sending someone at all.’

‘There wasn’t much you could have done about it,’ Bashford countered, ‘and now you’ve something to hang over his head when it comes to setting up the expedition to Old Earth.’

‘You think he might say no?’ Aneka asked.

‘It’s going to be a long trip. I took a look at the location and spoke to Drake. Our best bet is to fly out to Harriamon and take on provisions, then go on from there. It’ll be eight months travelling there and back, aside from the time we actually spend there. Even if there’s nothing to see but ruins we’ll be gone for most of a year. It’s going to take a lot of funding.’

Gillian nodded. ‘We’ll need Federal money to do it, perhaps some private grants too. I’m afraid we will likely have to do more of that university politics, and I’m going to need your help for this, Aneka.’

‘Me?’

‘Of course. You’re the woman from Old Earth. If we put you in front of some wealthy corporate types and you apply some charm…’

Aneka sagged a little and Ella giggled. ‘You can do it, love. You can be very charming when you want to be.’

‘Huh.’ Aneka would do it, of course, because it would make Gillian and Ella happy. She hated politics. When she had been told about the political system in her new world she had been rather pleased. Politicians were selected rather than voted for. Theoretically they were given jobs based on their abilities, so it seemed that politics in the way she knew it was a thing of the past. As she had learned more she had come to realise that it was not so simple. Moving up the ranks still required support from corporations, the public, and your fellow politicians. And there was still the kind of office politics operating within companies and institutions which there had always been. Things were different, but they had the same sort of flavour.

Bashford gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Just wear a low-cut dress. Most of them won’t worry what you say as long as you look good doing it.’

‘True,’ Gillian agreed, sighing. ‘If I had your breasts, I could make Dean, no problem.’

‘You could have,’ Ella told her.

‘I wouldn’t complain,’ Bashford said, receiving a punch in the shoulder for his comment.

‘I’m not getting my breasts enhanced to move up the ranks,’ Gillian told them. ‘Besides, I don’t want that kind of responsibility. I like going out in the field and I can’t do that if I have to run a university.’ Her nose wrinkled as she grimaced. ‘As it is I’ll probably be grounded for a couple of years after we come back from Old Earth.’

‘Could be worse,’ Bashford said. ‘If the Garnet Hyde’s engines hadn’t been upgraded on Negral we’d be looking at a sixteen-month round trip. They’d never let you out of your office again.’

‘Thank goodness for small mercies.’

It was Aneka’s turn to frown. ‘How’s Aggy taking the news about Negral?’

‘Stoically,’ Gillian replied. ‘Cassandra went to see her when we finished analysing the data from the Brigantia. She’s still up there talking it over.’

‘Cassandra is a little worried,’ Al put in. Of course he had been talking to her; Aneka should have known.

‘Maybe I should go up and talk to her,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘She’s had more than a few shocks since she was brought back online. I can sort of relate.’

‘Check with Cassandra,’ Gillian suggested, ‘but I think that might not be a bad idea.’

FScV Garnet Hyde, 27.1.526 FSC.

Aggy’s golden body sat opposite Aneka in the Garnet Hyde’s mess. Or appeared to as far as Aneka was concerned. It made life easier; Cassandra neither needed nor used such ‘organic’ methods of communication, but Aneka still preferred to talk to Aggy one person to the other.

‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ Aggy was saying. ‘I am a ship’s AI, not a Human, or a Jenlay, or a higher AI. I accept what is rather than worry over what was or might have been.’

The projection gave none of the usual indicators Aneka would look for in an organic being, but still… ‘I don’t believe it’s that easy,’ Aneka said. ‘And I don’t think Cassandra does either.’ She glanced at the android sitting with them for confirmation.

Cassandra was stunningly beautiful. Long legs, wide hips, large breasts, and long, platinum-blonde hair: the perfect, sexy woman. This came as no surprise when you learned that her body was that of a sex android that had been fitted out with over-powered computer systems and brilliantly designed software, and had then woken up. She was what was known as an emergent AI, an accident in effect, and this gave her a unique insight when it came to the psychology of artificial minds.

‘I think that you may be affected by this more than you are willing to admit, Aggy,’ Cassandra stated. ‘Though your psychology is more like Al’s than mine, you have had to adjust to a lot of changes which I believe you may be less equipped to handle than an organic, or myself.’

‘She may be right, Aggy,’ Al put in. One of the nice things about conversations involving Aggy and Cassandra was that he could actually join in properly, even if doing so did not involve spoken words. ‘I was lucky. My programming revolves around Aneka. I have had to adjust to a different society from the one I was intended to be observing, but that does not change my circumstances. You were far more closely tied to Xinti culture than me, and the small part of that which we rediscovered has now gone.’

Aggy’s brow furrowed. Aneka was fairly sure it was an affectation for her benefit, showing that she was thinking. ‘It is true that the events of the last year have put a strain on my ability to adapt to new circumstances. However, as you have pointed out, my programming is more akin to Al’s than to Cassandra’s or to your mind, Aneka. My purpose is the key factor in my psyche, and my purpose is the safety of my crew and the pursuit of scientific discovery. I regret the loss of my original crew more than the loss of Negral, and I have a new ship, a new crew. I believe I have successfully transferred my… affections to this new crew. What I need now is to be part of an expedition of discovery again.’

Aneka grinned at her. ‘Well, it may take a few months to organise, but that should be coming. We’re going to go find Earth. Old Earth, that is.’

‘You have fixed a location for it?’ Aggy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, that will be an excellent voyage to undertake. Mankind returning to the world it came from.’

‘I’m a little less sure about it myself. I’m not sure I want to know how it’s changed, but it’s something I have to do.’

‘I agree,’ Cassandra said. ‘It will, I think, give you closure.’

‘Maybe.’ Maybe it would just prove, once and for all, that she had to live in the present. ‘I just hope there’s more there than a dead, radioactive ball of rock. Otherwise we’re going to go a long way to prove there was no point in going.’

~~~

Aneka slid into the bunk she usually shared with Ella and settled herself down to offline for the night. Aggy stood beside the room’s one table as she did so, watching her charge prepare for what passed for sleep. It was just for one night; Aneka would be flying back down to New Earth in the morning.

‘Thank you, Aneka,’ Aggy said.

‘For what?’

‘Coming here to see me. We could have had this chat without you making the journey up to the transit station. I could have easily projected myself down to the planet for you.’

‘Yes, I guess, but conversations like that one should be done personally, not on the phone.’ Aneka gave her a grin. ‘No matter how high-tech the phone is.’

The golden woman smiled. ‘That is what Cassandra said, more or less.’

‘She’s a wise woman.’

‘Indeed. I envy her. Her means of creation. It has given her remarkable insight.’

‘Everyone has their own talents, Aggy. Cassandra understands minds, especially artificial ones, and she’s got a few other talents which are… quite exciting. You have a phenomenal ability with data and science, and a built-in, strong loyalty to your crew. Just because you were programmed to do that, doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of how well you do it.’

‘And your talent is inspiring people to do what they do best?’

Aneka chuckled and closed her eyes. ‘No. I’ve got another talent, Aggy.’

Aggy waited, expecting Aneka to go on, but a second or so later her internal sensors notified her that Aneka was offline.

University of New Earth, 29.1.526 FSC.

‘The Dean is being most accommodating,’ Gillian said, ‘but it’s still going to take some effort, and time, to get the funding together and the expedition organised.’

‘Parties?’ Aneka asked.

‘An initial one to make the announcement that the location has been found is being organised for the ninth.’

‘Fridgy!’ Ella exclaimed. ‘That gives us plenty of time to get new dresses.’ Aneka sagged in her seat.

Grinning, Gillian went on. ‘We’ll be drumming up interest in corporate sponsorship then. I’d imagine there will need to be some…’

‘Schmoozing,’ Aneka interrupted.

‘…further entertaining of potential donors. “Schmoozing?” Not a word I know, but it does have a rather emotive ring to it.’

‘I think it’s probably Yiddish,’ Aneka said, ‘or derived from Yiddish. The language has some really great words that got dropped into English. Kibitz is my favourite, chutzpah, klutz, kvetch, kosher…’

‘That one is still used,’ Ella put in.

‘You still have bagels,’ Aneka said, nodding. ‘Not that they look or taste like bagels, but you have a form of pastry that’s called a bagel.’

Gillian was looking thoughtful; Aneka was not sure she liked it. ‘I believe I have an idea for the opening party,’ the archaeologist said. ‘I’ll talk to the Dean and see about getting it organised.’

‘Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like this?’ Aneka asked plaintively.

‘You’ll love it,’ Gillian replied, smiling in just the wrong way. ‘Trust me.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 1.2.526 FSC.

Aneka was half-lying, half-sitting on one of the couches in the lounge watching Katelyn, their downstairs neighbour, taking on all three of the men at the party at once. It was kind of spectacular in a pornographic way, but she could not see the attraction herself.

‘She loves that,’ Ella said from where she was lying against Aneka’s side. ‘Doesn’t get to do it very often.’

‘Looks kind of uncomfortable.’

‘You’ve got to be relaxed about it. Tense up and it hurts.’

‘So you’ve done that?’

‘Once or twice. I don’t really like it. Two at once, yeah, but three is too much.’

‘Yeah, definitely. That’s way too much stimulation. She definitely looks… over-stimulated.’

Ella giggled. ‘Girls, Aneka doesn’t want to be over-stimulated.’

Two female faces, one a nurse and one a pilot, looked around grinning. They started forward. ‘Oh no,’ Aneka said, which did not stop them. ‘Hey, come on, watch the show…’

‘It’s become an interactive,’ Bentall replied, slipping to her knees and pushing Aneka’s thighs apart.

2.2.526 FSC.

Aneka opened her eyes to see Ella leaning over her. ‘You’re awake,’ the redhead said, smiling. ‘I was starting to worry.’

‘Twenty-three hours of sex, my archiving software needed the extra run time.’

‘You didn’t offline while the rest of us slept?’

‘I didn’t want Kat or Dillon to notice anything odd. Anyway, there wasn’t that much sleeping. David woke up after a couple of hours and had me over the kitchen counter before he went back to sleep. Then Shari woke up, so I took care of her. And then Shari and Chance woke up and we were at it when Dillon woke up and joined in, and that was when everyone else woke up and it all started again.’

Ella giggled. ‘You could’ve slept. You act like any ordinary Jenlay when you’re asleep. No one would’ve noticed.’

Aneka shrugged, sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed. ‘I didn’t want to take the chance.’

‘You were looking a little tired by the time everyone left.’

‘It’s not exactly tired. It’s more like… Well, the technical bit is that my operating memory starts to get fragmented. I slow down. It gets harder to think clearly. I guess it’s like being tired, but there’s no fatigue.’

‘Huh. So while I was asleep, you were still at it.’

‘You caught up.’

Ella grinned. ‘And you keep saying redheads are bad.’

Reaching out, Aneka patted Ella’s behind. ‘You are. I just try to keep up.’

University of New Earth.

‘Good party?’ Gillian asked as her assistant and her research subject walked in.

‘Pretty good,’ Aneka replied.

‘Awesome,’ Ella countered. ‘I personally think that my first experience of giving a titty-fuck was made that much better since I was in a line with two other girls.’

Gillian laughed. ‘I don’t really have the chest for it, but I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. Now, we have the go-ahead for the ninth and I’m going to need some help with organising things, Aneka.’

‘Okay…’ Aneka replied warily.

‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing too terrible. I need buffet dishes which you think we can get made by the university’s cookery school. We’re doing an Old Earth buffet. I took the liberty of making a shortlist of things from that database Aggy had stored…’

‘Wikipedia.’

‘That’s the one. I thought you could narrow down the list a little, but your real job is going to be figuring out how to make the dishes taste the way they should.’

Aneka looked at her for a second, mouth hanging open, and then burst into action. ‘Where’s the list?! We’ve only got seven days! I need to get back to the mainland and start planning. Are you crazy?!’

Gillian held up her hands. ‘While the latter is subject to opinion, I have considered that this might be a tall order. Ella is going to take you over to the cookery school now. Doctor Halton has assured me that he can provide some useful help.’

‘Doctor Halton?’ Aneka said, her eyes narrowing. She needed a chef, not an academic.

~~~

Except that Doctor Gary Halton was both. The ‘Doctor’ title was handed out to people who had managed to get tenure, generally through being made the head of some department, or from academic achievement. Halton was the head of Culinary Science at the university, but he also ran a successful restaurant in Downtown Yorkbridge, one you apparently had to book a month in advance to get a table in.

Aneka was expecting young-looking and handsome, and she got them. Halton looked like he belonged somewhere in the south of France, probably running a high-end establishment in Cannes frequented by people who starred in movies, or invited people who starred in movies to their yachts. He had wild, black hair which fell around his shoulders, olive skin, something of a Roman nose, and dark brown eyes which flashed as he turned to look at the two women entering his domain. The question was, would they be faced with the kind of chef that Gordon Ramsey had made famous? Had anyone even heard of Gordon Ramsey now?

Actually what she got was a sudden shift in demeanour as Halton seemed to recognise them. He had a lot of very white teeth and he used them to dazzling effect. ‘Ah, Miss Jansen. I can’t tell you how enthusiastic I am about this project. Original Old Earth cuisine!’

‘Sort of original,’ Aneka replied. ‘We’ll need to do a lot of substitution of ingredients.’

‘It’s the taste that counts, the textures, the experience.’ Halton’s eyes sparkled. His smile was so broad Aneka wondered whether he might strain something.

‘Okay… Well Doctor Gilroy said you could help with the substitution.’

‘Indeed. Specifically I’m getting some of my best students together for a seminar tomorrow. We’ll brainstorm the entire thing. You bring your knowledge of what we’re looking for, I’ll bring the textures and flavours of dozens of worlds. Together we’ll create art!’

Aneka smiled at him, hoping it did not look too bemused. ‘Okay. If you send me the details I’ll be there with a long list.’

‘Excellent! Now, if you’ll excuse me. They’re first years and if I don’t keep an eye on them they’ll burn the water.’

‘Thanks,’ Aneka replied, turning and heading out.

‘Oh, Ella,’ Halton called after them. ‘Let’s get together and do lunch sometime.’

‘Sure, Gary. If we get the time,’ Ella called back.

‘Is he always so enthusiastic?’ Aneka asked as they walked out of the smooth-walled, white building which housed the cookery school along with a few other departments Aneka associated with home economics.

‘Oh yes. If it’s food-related anyway. He’s got an absolute passion for anything food. I mean, he’s really passionate about food. This project is something he can really get his teeth into.’

‘Uh-huh. I kind of got that impression.’ Her brow creased a little. ‘So, when he was saying you could do lunch…’

‘He likes making food and eating it off your body.’

They walked on in silence for a second before Aneka said, ‘I’m glad to learn the future still manages a few kinks I hadn’t thought of.’

Downtown Yorkbridge, 5.2.526 FSC.

Aneka and Ella were taking a day off from shopping around for spices, fruit, and vegetables at Rollins’ Market in Mid-town to go shopping for clothes in the biggest mall Aneka had ever seen. Aneka was not sure this counted as a day off. They had taken the subway to Downtown, several kilometres south of their apartment, and Ella seemed to be determined to check every clothing store which sold suitable evening wear. There were a lot of those.

Aneka emerged from a changing room in a Nusilk tube which hugged her body from chest to ankle and did a slow twirl for Ella. Ella appraised the red, slightly translucent garment with the eye of one looking for exactly the right look. Aneka was learning to hate that.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ Ella said, ‘but it hides your legs too much. Your legs are too good to conceal. Next.’

Turning and walking back to the cubicle, Aneka was quite glad. Frankly, she was not entirely sure the strapless dress was going to stay up without glue. Not that anyone would have minded a wardrobe malfunction, except for Aneka herself.

‘You do know that I could kill you in about a dozen ways that no one would be able to detect right?’ Aneka pointed out through the curtain.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Stressful situations could unleash my latent psychotic tendencies.’

‘You don’t have latent psychotic tendencies.’

‘Bloody psychologists,’ Aneka muttered as she stripped off the tube. Louder, she added, ‘I could wear my swarm dress, or the one I got for the last shindig. That long silver one.’

Ella giggled. ‘Shindig? Never mind. You need something different, and I’m going to wear my swarm dress.’

Aneka picked up the next dress, also in red, short, strapless, and made of a lace Bi-weave. ‘You bought a swarm dress?’

‘Uh-huh. I can control it with my implant. It’s so fridgy.’

Dressed, Aneka stepped out of the cubicle. The skirt was low mid-thigh, so she was not sure Ella would go with it. At least the fitted bodice felt like it would stay attached.

‘I like it…’ Aneka’s heart soared at the words. ‘…for a summer drinks and dancing party.’ And her hopes were dashed. ‘We’ll take the tube…’

‘But you don’t like the tube!’

‘For this. You looked gorgeous in it. We’ll take it. And I know just what we need. I saw it in Hadfield’s.’

‘But we were in Hadfield’s an hour ago. Why didn’t you get me to try it on then?’

‘I wasn’t sure about it then. Come on, we don’t have all day. You’ll need shoes too.’

Sagging visibly, Aneka trudged back into the cubicle. ‘I know some things about torture too,’ she muttered.

University of New Earth, 9.2.526 FSC.

‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen,’ Dean Ajax said, his voice ringing out across the huge, vaulted chamber which was the Great Hall of the university. ‘Welcome to the University of New Earth and welcome to what we’re calling the Old Earth Schmooze.’

Aneka, standing just behind the tall, dark-skinned man, focussed on not blushing. The name was… Well, yeah. But she also felt as though she was naked in front of a few hundred people. Ella’s idea of the perfect dress was a diamond of Nusilk covering her breasts, and a triangular skirt that fell from her left hip to her right ankle, just about managing to maintain her dignity. It was, at least, opaque. Well, unless you shone a strong light on it, and she was now standing on a spotlit podium.

Beside her, Ella was smiling brightly clad in a cloud of sparkling beads that hovered around her body. The tiny, buoyancy-neutral robots which composed her outfit had been programmed to hover within about half a centimetre of her body from her bust down to her ankles. Between the light the microbots were emitting and their constant movement she was more or less covered.

On the other side of Ajax, Gillian was wearing a white tube dress not unlike the one Aneka had tried on. She looked supremely confident. Aneka knew she had been practising her short speech for the last three days almost solidly.

‘We want to get to the main event as quickly as possible,’ Ajax continued, ‘so I’ll step aside and introduce our very own Head of Archaeology, Doctor Gillian Gilroy.’

Ajax stepped back, slipping behind Aneka and Ella, as Gillian stepped forward into a blaze of light from camera flashes. Aneka suspected that the bright light and Gillian’s dark skin were going to make for some very interesting pictures, and wondered whether Gillian had planned that. She was aiming to get as much attention as possible…

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the last time I was with many of you in this room we were announcing the discovery of a woman who had survived from the time of Old Earth.’ She looked back at Aneka, smiling, and there was another blaze of flashes. ‘Aneka Jansen has been one of the greatest sources of historical information about Old Earth we have ever discovered. The vessel she was found on, a Xinti science vessel which was studying our original home world, has yielded a lot of facts, but without Aneka we would still be getting things wrong, or interpreting them incorrectly. So I’m going to take the opportunity of having you all here to thank Aneka for everything she has done for my career over the last couple of years.’

There was laughter and more camera flashes. Aneka let herself blush, but she was paying attention to the crowd. Her eyes cut the glare, scanning primarily in the infrared so that she could see skin temperature variations and movements despite the darkened room and the bright lights. Everyone out there was Jenlay: no Torem, no Herosians. This was a Jenlay event, not one for the other two races of the Federation. One man near the front of the crowd was not press. His posture suggested he was holding a glass, not a camera, and his attention was firmly focussed on Aneka, even when Gillian began speaking again.

‘Now, we have learned a lot about Old Earth since rescuing Aneka from her deep space tomb, but my assistant, Ella Narrows…’ She gave Ella a nod and that was the cue for more camera flashes. ‘…recently made a discovery in some historical records which has the possibility to expand our knowledge of where we came from beyond anything we could have imagined.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a positive, confirmed location for Old Earth.’

Quite what the latest blaze of flashes was going to achieve, Aneka was not sure, but her vision whited out and she switched to infrared again. The man at the front was still watching her, with some interest if the heat flow around his groin area was anything to go by. ‘Sometimes I don’t want to know what my senses can tell me,’ she commented silently.

‘You can never have too much information,’ Al replied.

Aneka’s eyes flicked over the man again as the flashes died away, amplified, visible spectrum light adding in to the infrared, which dropped back into an overlay. He was tall, fit; the heat overlay showing through his immaculate, black suit suggested a firm muscle structure. Nothing new in any of that. His face was handsome, but relatively individual with a low brow, a ridged nose, and very sharp, blue eyes. His mouth was slightly feminine, quite wide and full. He had black hair, long at the back with a wisp trailing around his left brow. Aneka would have bet the look cost him a lot of money even though it looked as though it was done in five minutes with a comb after a shower. And he really was paying her a lot of attention.

‘Our plan,’ Gillian continued once the uproar had died away, ‘is to mount an expedition to that location this year, as soon as we can arrange funding and logistics. So that is the other reason you are all here. This is going to be a long mission. We’re going to need resources, both in the form of credits and help in preparing for what we might find there. Me and my team will be around this evening; we’d like to talk to anyone who thinks they can help. To move things along we have some food prepared by the university’s culinary department, and Chef Gary Halton, based on recipes worked out from Aneka’s memory and their knowledge of modern supplies. As Aneka says, it’s not quite authentic Old Earth food, but it’s as close as you’re going to get. Be warned, some of it is quite spicy. Please enjoy yourselves. Thank you.’

They got away without fielding general questions because Gillian was about to spend the next hour giving interviews in one corner of the hall, and the press knew that they could grab Aneka and Ella during the evening to ask questions. That was going to be fun, but they also had their targets. Well, Gillian, Ella, Bashford, and Drake did; each had various commercial figures they were aiming to talk to as the evening went on. Aneka had been given a ‘floating remit,’ because she did not really know many of the people who might help.

She had decided that she wanted to know more about her mysterious watcher, however, and she was about to head in his direction when she heard the voice. ‘Miss Jansen, Iain Patrick with Consolidated Federal Media. Would you mind giving us your feelings on the rediscovery of Old Earth?’

Mystery Man would have to wait. Setting her face into a smile, Aneka turned towards the camera being pointed at her. ‘Of course, Mister Patrick…’

~~~

Mystery Man was talking animatedly to Abraham Wallace when Aneka spotted him again. Abraham was a very, very tall man, stick thin and starting to show his age, which was considerable. His physiology came from being born on a planet with about one-third normal gravity. During almost his entire, long career in charge of Physical Sciences at the university he had had to wear a cybernetic support structure to help him move about and keep some of the stress off his body. Tonight he was wearing a stylish tuxedo-style suit and there was no sign of the metallic web he normally wore under clothes. Instead he was in his own, personal low-gravity field thanks to the AIs they had met in Negral.

Cassandra was nearby, smiling indulgently at her boss. She acted as Wallace’s assistant and it was generally considered that without her he would likely have been unable to do half of what he did. Since Cassandra was there, and she and Al had something of a complex intimate relationship, they had been talking. ‘Your new friend’s name is Stephen Teldarian,’ Al said as Aneka walked closer. ‘He’s the CEO and majority shareholder of Superluminal Design and Construction FRC. Basically, he makes spaceships. Apparently he’s something of a genius.’

‘Must be,’ Aneka replied. ‘Abraham doesn’t get that enthusiastic unless he’s talking about physics.’ Cassandra looked in Aneka’s direction and grinned. ‘Yeah, they’re talking about physics.’

‘I still don’t understand the synchronisation mechanism between the dual cores,’ Teldarian was saying. ‘I’ve been over it a dozen times and it still doesn’t entirely make sense.’ His eyes shifted as Aneka approached, scanning over her body from the six-inch heels upwards and lingering over her breasts. Aneka turned off the infrared overlay on her vision. ‘Frankly, I don’t know how you managed to get your head around it.’ Still able to talk while the blood was running away from his brain; the man had to be a genius.

‘It’s complex,’ Abraham agreed, ‘and I’d love to spend a few hours explaining it properly, but this is not a time for that. Instead, let me introduce you to Aneka Jansen.’

Teldarian smiled warmly. ‘Of course I know who you are, Miss Jansen, but it’s a pleasure to meet you properly.’

‘Aneka, this is Stephen Teldarian,’ Wallace went on, ‘one of the most gifted non-academic students of warp physics I know.’

‘A pleasure to meet you, Mister Teldarian,’ Aneka said, returning the bow of his head with her own.

‘Stephen. Mister Teldarian was my grandfather and I remember him as a crotchety old man, all business, never any fun.’

Aneka grinned. ‘And yet you’re at a function like this discussing work.’

‘Ah, but I enjoy my work. He didn’t. Frankly, I wouldn’t miss this event for anything. I get the chance to talk to Abraham about warp engines, and to meet you.’

‘Me?’ Aneka’s grin became perplexed. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’ve been interested in Old Earth history since I was a boy. I think I’ve read every book and paper Doctor Gilroy has published, as well as anything else I could get my hands on.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I even bought that music collection the university put out. My sister is quite fond of the heavier material.’

Aneka was not actually sure which of the vast amount of music Aggy had had stored, ripped from the Internet, had been released by the university. She had made her own collection. ‘I like the heavier stuff myself. Your sister has taste.’

There was a flicker of confused muscle-motion across Teldarian’s face, emotions vying for contention too fast for Aneka to differentiate them even with her accelerated brain. ‘Yes, she has. I’d like to have a chat with you about the world you used to know, a proper one.’

‘Well, I’m here all evening…’

Teldarian smiled. ‘Something a little longer than that. I’ll arrange something.’

‘All right,’ Aneka said, trying to keep the wariness out of her voice.

‘Excellent,’ Teldarian replied. ‘Now I just have to find time in my schedule for about twelve hours with Abraham and I’ll be a happy man.’

Wallace chuckled. ‘Cassandra will arrange something.’

~~~

‘I saw you talking to Stephen Teldarian.’ Aneka looked around to see Ella behind her, dress still sparkling as the microbots swirled slowly around her.

‘Yeah, apparently he’s interested in warp engines and Old Earth history.’

‘Also drinking, parties, and women. He runs the largest starship engineering company in the Federation. He’s worth… billions.’

‘So?’

‘Well…’

‘I’ve met rich, powerful men before. Quite a few of them couldn’t keep their eyes off my boobs either.’ She gave a slight grin. ‘That was back when I had smaller breasts. Anyway, if he’s loaded and interested in history then maybe we can get some cash out of him. Not that there would be any actual cash… You know, I kind of miss small change.’

‘Yes… He might be up for giving up some money,’ Ella said, not taking the change of subject, ‘but is it going to be worth the cost?’

‘Who says there’s going to be a cost?’

‘With people like him there’s always a cost.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 10.2.526 FSC.

The water from three shower heads cascaded down onto Aneka’s body as she lay back, her shoulders against the wall, and her body straining as Ella’s fingers worked inside her. The little redhead had been particularly wild, starting from when they had got home after the function. She had slept for no longer than Aneka had been offline, and had dragged Aneka into the shower to continue.

The familiar roar of sound began in Aneka’s ears. Electricity rippled up through her body. Light burned in her mind… and then it was over and Ella was grinning at her like a maniac.

‘You,’ Aneka said, trying to steady her breath, ‘are being more… crazy than usual.’

‘We’ve got two days off before we’re back on the campaign trail and I feel like fucking you silly.’

‘She’s worried about Teldarian,’ Al told her.

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s rich, good-looking, and he wants you, and Ella is insecure about losing you.’

‘You know, I’m not going to run off and leave you,’ Aneka said aloud.

Ella was terrible at hiding her feelings. Then again she knew she was. ‘You keep saying that.’

‘Maybe you’ll start believing it sometime.’ She hooked her hands around Ella’s behind and pulled her in hard against her. ‘Now, why don’t we get on with the fucking each other silly without the additional baggage.’

Ella giggled. ‘I can get behind that.’

University of New Earth, 12.2.526 FSC.

‘We have a package in from the Jenlay Historical Society,’ Gillian said, waving a hand at the wall screen in her office which was displaying various windows. ‘They’ll match any funds we get from industry credit for credit.’

Aneka looked over the screen. Each window was some sort of deal or deal in progress and everyone was there to take on anything which needed doing. Today even Shannon was there, though the vivacious blonde was still not looking quite herself. A psychic, Ardus Quint, had wiped her memory, and it had taken a lot of work from neuroscientists and psychic surgeons to get it back. It had taken almost a year of work to get her back to almost normal, but her own psionic abilities, which had been a problem for her since she was a child, were still not quite under control. To stop herself hearing the thoughts of anyone and everyone nearby, she was taking drugs to suppress her telepathy. Unfortunately it also dulled her mind in other ways.

Gillian was still going over her list. ‘We have offers of equipment coming in from Mason Robotics and Graystone-Collier. David and Delta, I need you to work with the Mason rep to see what we can make use of.’

‘They do some really amazing hazardous environment, semi-autonomous drones,’ Delta said. ‘If we are dealing with a radioactive environment, they could be really useful.’ Delta was a powerfully built young woman, the result of being born on a high-gravity world. Her face was kind of cute, which belied the muscular look. She had started growing her auburn hair longer since joining the team and it was really working for her; the old, short look had done nothing for her face and Aneka had suggested growing it out. Aneka had also put her onto corsets and bras which pushed her rather heavy breasts up. Thirty years in high gravity had done nothing for her in that respect, but a little uplift and she had bounteous cleavage, which Monkey greatly appreciated.

‘And this is why we have a robotics tech on the team,’ Monkey put in, grinning. He was looking happier, and better fed, than he had done when Aneka first met him. A little more confident too. He was Monkey to just about everyone, only his mother ever called him David. He still wore his hair as a slightly unkempt mass and sported a valiant attempt at a goatee beard. And he was still nowhere near as muscular as his girlfriend. However, especially since Delta had moved in with him, he had started looking like a man who could not believe his luck, and he tended to clam up less around attractive women.

‘Indeed,’ Gillian replied. ‘Delta, make sure he does some of the work. Bash and I will be handling Graystone-Collier. Maybe we can get our hands on some of that new ultra-hi-def lidar equipment they’ve been touting.’

‘Would be useful,’ Bashford agreed.

‘A company called Extreme Measures has offered survival equipment. Aneka, could you look over their catalogue and see what we could use?’

‘Sure. They sound like some of the trendy extreme sports companies from my time.’

‘They are,’ Bashford replied. ‘However, they do make some hostile environment equipment which could be of use. Some of it is almost military spec.’

Aneka nodded. ‘I’ll check it out.’

‘Drake and Shannon,’ Gillian continued, ‘the Administration wants to see a flight plan as soon as possible so they can run risk assessment.’

‘Almost done,’ Drake replied.

‘Another… day?’ Shannon suggested. ‘We need to rerun the resource plans.’

Drake nodded. ‘It’s a long trip and we’re being paranoid.’

‘A little paranoia is probably good,’ Bashford commented, nodding his own agreement.

‘And that leaves Ella,’ Gillian said, ‘who will be running the coordination here and keeping the various administrations off our backs so we can do our job.’

‘You pull the short straw?’ Monkey asked.

Ella gave him a sour look. ‘Pretty much.’

‘All right, troops,’ Gillian said, ‘we’ve got work to do. Let’s get on it!’

Aneka snapped off a jaunty salute. ‘Yes, ma’am!’

‘Less of that, young lady, or I’ll put you in the brig.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 13.2.526 FSC.

The head office of Extreme Measures FRC was only three stops north on the subway from Aneka’s apartment building and the look of it from the outside made the company seem even more amateur than the name. The front entrance was down on street level, below the layer of mist which pervaded that part of the city. There was what looked like a hand-painted sign over the door, though Aneka’s edge recognition software picked out features which suggested that the paint dribbles and haphazard-looking letters had actually been carefully designed. There were a half-dozen men and women hanging around outside the place dressed in dark, faux-leather clothing reminiscent of biker leathers and they were actually gathered around something that looked like a motorcycle dreamed up by H. R. Giger. Aneka heard, ‘Da de roofang,’ from the little group as she walked past and gave them a smile. Rim Worlders, probably.

‘Oh, wow!’ She heard the voice as soon as she walked into the huge reception room behind the Polyglass doors. ‘You came!’ She narrowed in on a man walking towards her fairly rapidly wearing a bright, neon-yellow T-shirt with Extreme Measures printed across it in red, a pair of knee-length khaki shorts, and bright red running shoes. ‘That is so amazingly fridgy!’ He looked like he belonged on a beach in Hawaii, or on a surfboard just off the beach, probably on the highest wave he could find. Wild blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, attractive, of course, with a tightly muscled body, and a deep tan. ‘I’m Eddie Leverson. The banks call me the CEO of this place.’

‘Actually he’s more like the den mother.’ The speaker was a woman, not old, very attractive, but with a far more serious look about her than Leverson had. Her hair was short and straw coloured, her eyes green-blue, and she had less of a tan than Leverson. Her body did suggest that she kept herself fit, however; there was a lot of tight muscle on her frame. Her outfit, shorts and a cropped company T-shirt, somehow worked in counterpoint to her serious expression.

‘And this is my partner, Annie Teach,’ Leverson said.

‘I’m the chief financial officer,’ Teach told her. ‘I also handle our advertising on an administrative level.’

‘And she’s also one of the best free climbers this side of the Rim.’

‘On break days,’ Teach put in. ‘Right now I’m all about the advertising. Getting some of our kit on your expedition gets us coverage we could really use. We’ve got good products here, but a lot of people don’t take us seriously because we come out of the sport scene.’

Aneka gave her a little shrug. ‘My boss said you had some interesting equipment and he’s a pretty serious guy, especially about what he uses in the field.’

‘He’s a rarity,’ Leverson admitted. ‘A lot of people look at our customers, see guys into skiing, skydiving, surfing… Then they go talk to a more traditional manufacturer.’

‘Okay… Well, what do you have that you think we can use?’

Leverson started for one side of the large room. It was, it appeared, part reception area, part showroom, part meeting hall for various sporting fanatics. ‘Well, we don’t really know what you’re facing out there, so I figure we’ll give you the tour and you can see what you like.’ He looked back and grinned. ‘We’ll start with Annie’s favourite area…’

In front of them was a climbing wall and there were several people busy using it. Teach picked up a pair of gloves from a stand and handed them to Aneka. ‘These aren’t something I use, but they’re damn useful for trekking. Gloves, boots, and knee-pads, usually. Based on the reactive setaestrip technology spacers use to keep their feet on the deck in zero-G. You come across something you can’t walk up, stick these on and pretty much anyone can climb a sheer cliff.’

‘We’ll need six sets,’ Aneka said immediately. ‘What kind of rope is that?’

‘Smart rope? Kind of a niche market.’

‘Mostly for people who aren’t so good at tying knots,’ Leverson put in.

‘It can be useful for quick ties,’ Teach said. ‘Hasn’t got the loadbearing properties of normal rope, but for climbing that isn’t usually an issue. Basically you can lock off half-metre sections by remote command. Your knots never slip, no matter how sloppy. You can even form them into a makeshift grapnel.’

‘We’ll drop a couple of bundles in,’ Leverson said. ‘Like Annie said, it’s niche, but you guys really don’t know what you’re going up against.’ He turned, moving around the room with a bounce in his step. ‘Oh, you’ll love this. I mean, it’s kind of silly, but you gotta see it.’

Teach rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not too busy, are you? He’ll show you every fridgy gadget we’ve got if we let him.’

Aneka gave her a grin. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. And he’s right, we have no idea what we’re going to find there. We need to be more flexible than usual so we need to entertain novel ideas.’

Leverson had a tablet in his hand, his fingers shifting over it. Beside him on a Polyglass stand was a metal box which Aneka thought she recognised. Her swarm dress, and Ella’s, came in a box like that which acted as a charging station and container for the microbots. Sure enough, a swarm of black beads emerged from the box and glided into the air forming a globe above them which then lit up brightly.

‘Firefly swarm,’ Leverson said. ‘Basically what you have here is a programmable, mobile light source capable of emitting light in any colour from infrared to ultraviolet. You won’t get daylight levels out of them, but they’ll let you see enough to read.’

‘I have a dress which uses this technology,’ Aneka told them.

‘Swarm dress?’ Teach asked. ‘I have one too. Eddie likes it.’

Leverson shrugged. ‘What can I say, she’s got a great body.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Yeah… How big a swarm can the box support?’

‘It’ll handle a five square metre swarm.’

‘Okay, drop one in. We normally work out of our shuttle, but we may be working at night and these things give a broader light field than a torch. We can fly them into tight areas to give light or send them up high…’

‘And this is why I keep saying we should get a trained facilitator on the payroll,’ Teach said.

Aneka chuckled, her eyes wandering around the room. ‘What the Hell is that?’

There were actually a couple of large devices on stands nearby, but the one which looked most out of place was a big, black pod with a lot of speedy looking stripes and flashes from the blunt bottom up to the narrower top.

‘Oh that,’ Leverson said. ‘That is the wildest ride you will ever take, but I doubt it’ll be much use to you to be honest.’

‘It’s an orbital dive pod,’ Teach explained. ‘Skydiving for crazy people. Rich, crazy people. I climb cliffs with almost nothing to hold onto, with every chance of falling to my death, but you wouldn’t get me in one of those.’

Aneka raised her eyebrows and Leverson was happy to oblige with further explanation. ‘It’s got a small rocket motor in it, enough to get it out of orbit. Then you’re in freefall, basically. The outer skin is an ablative heat shield which gets stripped away during re-entry and is jettisoned. You drop a hundred or so kilometres and then deploy the parachute for the final landing. Like I said, it’s a wild ride.’

‘And that’s extreme sports in the future?’

Leverson laughed. ‘That’s about as extreme as it gets. You might like this though…’ He picked up a large backpack, which seemed to be made of light structural plastic, and walked out into the middle of the room. Laying it down on the floor, he took a small box from a pocket on the side, stepped back, and pressed a button. The backpack’s top and sides unfolded, rods emerged, swinging out or extending, and pulling Plastex sheets along with them. It took only a few seconds and Aneka found herself looking at a microlight, complete with a small engine behind a reclined flight seat.

‘They’re easy to fly,’ Leverson said, ‘stable, perfect for recon flights, great for taking pictures from. They’re even just about invisible to radar.’

Aneka grinned. ‘Sold. I don’t even care if it will be useful.’ That got a laugh. ‘Okay… What do you suggest for radiation protection?’

‘Drugs,’ Teach replied, starting off across the room towards another stand. ‘You’ll never get enough material in a suit to provide proper protection…’

Aneka followed on behind her. They might have looked like a bunch of hippy sports nuts, but they seemed to know their stuff.

Yorkbridge North Beach, 16.2.526 FSC.

‘You,’ Katelyn panted, ‘are a gaisu machine.’

‘She is,’ Ella said, her voice languid. ‘Why do you think I don’t go running with her?’

‘Ten klicks! Ten klicks and she’s not even breaking a sweat!’

Chuckling, Aneka stretched out on a towel beside Ella. ‘Of course not. Gentlemen perspire, ladies glow, horses sweat.’ Ella giggled.

Dillon, lying on the other side of Ella, patted the towel beside him. ‘I think she’s saying you’re a horse, Kat. I’m not sure what a horse is, but bring your horse butt over here.’

Katelyn walked around to that side, but did not lie down. Instead she started stripping off her running gear. ‘I want to get this stuff off first. It’s clinging more than you do.’

Aneka smiled and closed her eyes, relaxing with her head resting on her arms. A minor benefit of Jenlay society was that no one had to struggle with changing under a towel on the beach. They went there fairly often, to the beach nearest their building, along with a fairly large number of Mid-town’s residents. To the north the beach had huge dunes along the western edge which blocked the view of the city, but here you could see the buildings perhaps a kilometre inland, and the smaller ones servicing the beach closer up. There was a station about three hundred metres away to the south, and the concentration of people down there was far higher, but there were small shops, cafés, and even the odd restaurant up as far as where the little group had set up camp.

There were a few families this far from the station, but the majority of people here were couples or small groups. The largest of these was a group of six teenagers: two girls and four boys. Well, Aneka had decided they were teenagers from the way they behaved, but ‘teenager’ did not quite mean the same thing as it had back when she had been one, and there seemed to be a bit of a range in the group. One boy was obviously a few years younger and was not as confident as his friends. One boy and one girl seemed a little older and were obviously a couple. Put together they seemed like a typical bunch of kids, complete with someone’s younger brother who was not really sure he wanted to be there.

‘That’s better,’ Katelyn said. Aneka opened one eye to see the dusky-skinned woman wearing a pair of bikini briefs. ‘Don’t know how you can run in a bikini either.’

‘Talent,’ Aneka replied, closing her eye.

‘You guys are being unfair,’ Dillon commented. ‘I’ve got a pair of tits on either side of me and you know how I am about breasts. Aneka’s being good.’

‘Don’t look,’ Katelyn suggested.

‘Not possible,’ Ella said. ‘Men are wired to look at breasts. It’s neurological.’

‘See?’ Dillon said.

‘Of course, even that doesn’t explain Dillon’s obsession. I think he’s just a little warped.’ All three women giggled.

‘Victimisation. I’m being victimised.’

‘Aww, poor baby,’ Katelyn said consolingly. ‘If you’re good I’ll take you up to the dunes later.’

‘I’ll be good.’

‘Uh-huh. You know, if you guys are going off on another expedition soon, this might be our last trip out here for a while.’

‘Maybe we should all take Dillon up to the dunes then,’ Ella suggested.

‘I am not fucking anyone on a beach,’ Aneka said. ‘The sand gets everywhere.’

‘You’re all going to be okay though?’ Katelyn continued. ‘I mean, this is further than you’ve ever been. You’re going way outside the Rim. Who knows what you’re going to find out there.’

‘There’s nothing out there that Aneka and Bash can’t handle,’ Ella told her. ‘If we meet it before we get to the surface, well Drake’s ex-Navy.’

‘That ship of yours isn’t armed,’ Dillon commented.

‘No, but it can run really fast.’ The big man laughed in reply. ‘Seriously, we know what we’re doing. We’ll be fine.’

Aneka’s nose wrinkled. Ella was just being reassuring, but it still seemed like tempting fate.

University of New Earth, 17.2.526 FSC.

Gillian was frowning when Aneka walked into her office. They had been going over the inventory which had arrived from Extreme Measures before Aneka had gone out for coffee. Now she was frowning.

‘Something up?’

Gillian looked up from her terminal. ‘I have a message through from the Dean’s office. A request from Stephen Teldarian for you to visit him on his island on Odanari, “to discuss Old Earth history.”’

‘Uh…’

‘I feel rather like someone made me into a brothel mistress when I wasn’t looking. I mean, if he wants to see you he should message you!’

‘He’s putting a chip down,’ Al said. ‘He’s attempting to suggest that your visit will result in a donation for the expedition. Therefore he makes the request through official channels.’

‘Politics,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘He’s making it official so it doesn’t look like he’s bargaining to get into my knickers.’

‘Do we have a reply? We don’t need his money that much, you know?’

Aneka pursed her lips, putting the coffee down in front of Gillian. ‘Well, we could use the money, and if he wants to play it all political, then I can too. Tell them to send a reply saying yes. He sent the message through them. They send the message back.’ She picked up her coffee and started for the door. ‘Now I just have to break it to Ella.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town.

‘You know, if you’re breaking up with me, you could take me to a better restaurant.’ Ella held onto her burger which came in paper from a street vendor and looked up at Aneka a little plaintively.

‘Well, if I was going to break up with you, I would have.’

‘Okay, so you took me out of the office, refused to give me a reason, and bought me lunch… What’s the bad news?’

‘Teldarian…’

‘Gopi! You are breaking up with me!’

‘Teldarian has requested that I go visit him on Odanari. He sent the message through the Dean’s office, so he’s… Could you close your mouth, or maybe eat something?’

‘He’s trying to get you into bed. He’s…’

‘Of course he is. Doesn’t mean he’s going to get me. He fucked up. He made it all political so I can play it right back. He wants to discuss history, so we’ll discuss history. If he wants to blackmail me into sleeping with him to get funds, then a recording of him doing so will turn up on some lucky media company’s news desk.’

Ella’s eyes widened. ‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Actually, I would, but… just hypothetically, what’s the problem with me fucking him to get the money?’

‘Well it’s wrong!’

‘Uh-huh, and people have been using sex, and anything else that gave them leverage, to get what they wanted since long before I was born. Since then sex became a recreation; it wasn’t in my time.’

Ella took a bite out of her burger and chewed it. It was an obvious delaying tactic. Ella knew full well that Aneka knew it was a delaying tactic too. That just made it more annoying. She swallowed. ‘That’s not fair. You’re using logic on me.’

‘I’m a real bitch like that. Look, you seem to think that this guy is going to steal me away from you, and…’

‘No I don’t! I… Okay, so part of me does. He’s rich. He’s attractive. He’s rich!’

‘You said rich twice.’

‘He’s very rich.’ She burst into a fit of giggles and Aneka joined her. ‘Okay, okay, so I’m being paranoid, but Vashma’s tits, Aneka, you have to admit he’s a huge temptation, isn’t he?’

‘Not really. He’s an attractive option for a bed partner, but that’s about it. Look, I didn’t go off with anyone else before, and now you’ve got these gorgeous new boobs…’ She tilted her head to one side and stuck the tip of her tongue out the corner of her mouth, and waited.

‘You said that didn’t make any difference… And it didn’t, and you’re making a point, and I’ll shut up now before I make more of a fool of myself.’

‘It’s cute that a woman who looks like you and has your absolutely beautiful personality would be so insecure about this, but it’s got to stop. I am not going to leave you. Your butt’s too cute.’

‘All right. I’ll try anyway. I’m a psychologist so I know you can’t just turn off your insecurities like a switch. I’ll try. And if you have to sleep with Teldarian to get the funds… Well, get video.’

Odanari, 19.2.526 FSC.

Odanari was more or less as Aneka remembered it: hot. Despite orbiting a cooler star than either of the Earths, the planet had an average surface temperature described as ‘hot tropical,’ and Aneka’s skin sensors put it around forty Celsius. The heat hit her as soon as she stepped out through the hatch of Teldarian’s private yacht, which he had sent to New Earth to collect her, and she was glad she had taken the precaution of dressing light.

‘Good flight?’ Teldarian stood at the bottom of the steps which had lowered from the side of the ship. He was dressed in pale cream slacks and a T-shirt. No shoes, which had to be tough when standing on a Plascrete landing platform.

‘Very good. That’s a really nice yacht you have there. You could hold an orgy in the beds.’

Teldarian grinned; there was the slight implication that he had. ‘Glad you liked the ship. My company makes those, of course.’

‘Of course. Maybe I’ll buy one when I become rich and famous.’

He motioned off towards the north and she walked beside him off the landing pad and onto a sand track. ‘You’re halfway there. You’re already famous.’

‘Huh, don’t remind me. Uh, just so you know, the last man who “invited” me to his personal island on Odanari turned out to be a sociopath and terrorist, with a god complex. I hope there’s not going to be a repeat.’

He laughed, and it sounded pretty genuine. ‘I’ve been called a narcissist, but never any of the others. Charles Hunter, right? Humanity First and their agenda to breed the perfect race of Jenlay.’

‘Except he used the old term, Humans.’

‘I got you here to discuss history and money, in that order. Though I figured while you’re here you might have some time to enjoy yourself. The island is a, very dead, volcano and the swimming in the lagoon is excellent. There’s walking. The view from the peak there…’ He pointed to the east where another volcanic remnant poked up into the sky. ‘… is quite spectacular, and you can get there on foot or climb if that’s your preference. I have a yacht, of the floating variety, if you’d like to take a trip off the island. Enjoy yourself while you’re here.’

‘I’ll give that my best shot, Stephen.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

They walked maybe two hundred metres through a band of trees before emerging onto a beach which looked like something out of a movie. Almost white sand stretched in a wide curve off into the distance around a lagoon of blue-green water. Aneka figured it had to be a kilometre from where she was standing to where she could see an opening out onto the ocean.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Teldarian said. ‘It’s pretty shallow, and safe, until you get towards the middle of the caldera. That’s deep. Very deep, but it comes up again at the ocean side so the water’s calm unless there’s a major storm brewing. Nothing dangerous in the water either.’

They walked on down the beach a few tens of metres and she saw the house. It was set back from the beach, but with easy access over hardwood decking. Single storey, but huge; Aneka was not going to try to guess the number of rooms. The entire front was Polyglass, but she could see room divisions and three of the rooms looked like bedrooms, or at least they had beds in them.

‘Oh, your choice,’ Teldarian said, ‘beachfront room, or one at the back. The view here is a little better, but some people don’t like the sound from the water. The back rooms have quicker access to the pool, and the trees aren’t bad to look at.’

‘Uh… beach, I think.’

Teldarian nodded and headed towards one of the rooms on the corner of the building. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of giving you guest access to the house already.’ He pushed open a sliding pane to allow them entry and walked in. ‘I’ll have someone down here with your bags, and access codes to the guest network. There’s a terminal in here in case you want to send a message to your partner, but if you’ve a PDA you can hook it in. Select whatever decoration you want. The bathroom is through the door at the back…’ He paused, apparently trying to think of anything else. ‘If you need anything, the staff can get it for you.’

The room was fairly bare currently, but she would be able to change that. She recognised the slightly matt quality to the walls which suggested that three of them, the ones not made of Polyglass, were video walls. The bed was big enough for four people, there was a seating area with two couches around a small table, and a desk with a three-screened terminal on it. There were three doors on the back wall.

‘The other doors?’ she asked.

‘Left-hand one is into the house, middle one is a closet.’

Aneka walked over and opened the middle door. The closet was big enough to house a costume exhibit. ‘I brought one bag, and there’s not much in that. Bikini, a couple of dresses.’

He laughed. ‘If you actually need more there’s a full fabrication suite on the grounds. Now, I’m sorry to be a poor host, but I have a few things to clear up before I can give you my undivided attention. I’m sure you’d like to get settled in anyway. I’ll meet you for dinner around sunset?’

‘That sounds perfect.’

Smiling, he headed for the left-hand door. Aneka could see an open space through it, filtered sunlight streaming down onto some sort of water feature with plants around it. ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said before closing the door.

With nothing much else to do until her case arrived, Aneka stepped over to the desk and sat down, tapping a glowing area for attention. The screens lit up, along with a keyboard and mouse pad. The display suggested that the system was configured for her use; Teldarian really had pre-programmed it for her ID. She selected the messaging software and began to compose an email to Ella.

‘Al?’ she asked silently.

‘There are three wireless networks operating. Two of them appear to be using very strong encryption algorithms: one a service network, by the looks of the data packets, the other a general use network. The third is likely for guest use. I’d imagine they’ll provide access to that one.’

‘Can we use it safely?’

‘If we need to.’

‘Would you think I was being paranoid if I wondered whether the room is wired?’ She finished typing a basic ‘I got here safe’ message and hit send, and then got up making a show of looking around the room. Well it was worth looking at.

‘Not entirely. I can detect no transmitters in the room, or within reception range. If there is anything, it’s wired.’

The bathroom was white tiles on all surfaces, a shower which had a ring of heads suspended over a drain, and a bath you could just about do laps around, and came with water jets. Aneka looked over the place carefully and could find no hidden cameras.

‘I’m almost disappointed,’ she commented. ‘I was hoping I could put him down as a pervert and be done with it.’

‘I am a little surprised he does not have the means to listen in on business conversations that might happen here,’ Al replied.

There was a knock on the door and when Aneka called out, ‘Come in,’ a slim man in a white T-shirt and slacks came through the door with Aneka’s case.

‘Miss Jansen, I’m Butler. If you need anything your terminal can get me at any time. Would you like me to unpack your case?’ Butler the butler… right…

‘Uh, no thanks. Just put it on the bed, I’ll take care of it.’

He nodded, placing the metal case on the corner of the big bed, and then placing a sheet of paper on it. ‘Access codes for the network,’ he said, ‘and a few other bits of information you might find useful. I’ll leave you to settle in.’

‘Thanks. Uh, Butler?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘I’m having dinner with Mister Teldarian later. Formal or casual?’

Butler gave her a smile. ‘Mister Teldarian is never formal when he’s at home, ma’am.’

‘Thank you, Butler.’

With him gone and the door closed, she opened her case and lifted out the clothes. Two mini-dresses, one black, one white, her bikini, and there was actually a pair of shorts and a cropped T-shirt as well as several pairs of shoes. These were all taken to the closet and put up on shelves or hangers, mostly because she figured she might as well use the room since it was there. Then she went back to her case, unlocked the false bottom, and checked that Bridget and the two spare magazines were there. Better safe than sorry. Locking them up again, she put the case away in the closet and picked up her bikini. There was nothing much to do until the sun went down; she might as well try out the lagoon.

~~~

Aneka went for the black dress and some matching mid-height heels, and was dressed and waiting when Butler knocked on her door to lead her through the house to the dining room.

It was quite a house. Large, certainly, but it somehow managed to maintain an intimate quality which she found rather pleasing. Right outside her room was the open area she had seen earlier, a sort of dividing line between the rooms at the front of the house and those further back. Two carp ponds ran from the outer edges of the room in towards a walkway, which ran from the main entrance to the rear of the building, and the walls and pond edges were lined with ferns. Well, that was the theory. The carp were not actually carp, and the ferns were not any kind of fern Aneka had ever seen, but the overall look was good, and also rather calming.

Behind the ‘pond room’ the central corridor split the house in half and, aside from a couple of doors on the left and a single one on the right, there was no indication of the function of the spaces on either side of it. Butler said nothing as they walked through, surrounded by a moving video of swirling light patterns. Aneka wondered absently whether they were supposed to be hypnotic. Maybe that was Teldarian’s secret: he hypnotised women into submission.

‘I think he just waves his private island at them and they ask what position they should adopt,’ Al suggested.

Aneka suppressed a laugh; they were reaching the end of the corridor anyway and there was no sign of strange desires to prostrate herself before anyone. Butler opened the door at the end of the hallway, and they walked into the interior pool room. It was not a huge pool, but you could have swum in it quite happily. The main purpose was relaxation, however, as evidenced by the bar on one side of the pool, near the outer wall, and the irregular shape. There was also an indoor hot tub set in a corner off to the right and a T-shaped, bridge-like structure arching over the main pool. Butler led the way up this and then turned right. Out beyond the T, Aneka could see the Polyglass wall which divided inside from outside, and also the underwater tunnel which allowed one to swim between the two pools. The outer pool was visible only as a blue glow through the window, but it looked kind of inviting.

Somehow Aneka had expected the dining room to be less cosy. In fact it was just a section of a room which seemed to occupy the back corner of the house. Shaped like a Y, more or less, there was a relaxed sort of area near the pool where you could sit and drink, the dining room with its view out over the pool, and a slightly more intimate lounge. The three rooms were set around a sculpture of some sort which occupied the centre of the room: a lot of crystal columns in geometric shapes. Light shone through it, providing much of the illumination in the room, though Aneka could see ceiling-mounted spots overhead which would hopefully give a little more light when the food was brought out.

The dining room table had space for ten people and was very modern in design, Polyglass topped with a sculpted framework of chromed adanymax holding it off the ground. The seats looked a little odd and not especially comfortable: tall-backed and quite narrow, with the same sort of chromed structure, and a seat and back which looked to be made of Polyglass. Butler pulled out a chair near one end of the table and Aneka sat down. The seat shifted as she sat, moulding itself to her behind. She looked up, seeing the high back which stretched up over her head, the frame curling over into horn-like structures on either side.

‘Aneka,’ Teldarian appeared across the table from her, pulling out the chair opposite and sitting down. ‘I’ve got to apologise again for my absence. Abraham fired my enthusiasm again for that dual-core engine design. I was so close to working it out I couldn’t put it down.’

Aneka gave him a grin. ‘I can forgive you. I’m glad you find your work so fascinating.’

‘I do, but now it’s time for my other enthusiasm.’ Aneka was not sure he would not say ‘sex,’ but instead he said, ‘Like I said, I’ve been fascinated by the ancient history of the Jenlay since I was a child. Uh, if you’ll pardon the use of the word “ancient” in that sentence.’

‘Well, I was twenty-nine when I was taken. In some circles back then that was just about dead.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I was ninety last year.’

‘Back then you’d be lucky to make it to ninety. Looking the way you do? Not a chance. Jenlay live… two or three times longer than Humans did.’

‘Thank you. I’m glad you think I look good.’

‘Stephen, I’d have to have some peculiar tastes in men to think you were ugly. Besides, there are more or less no unattractive people now. You, well the Jenlay, have spent a thousand years messing with their genome. I’m lucky I don’t look like a caveman in comparison to you people.’

Butler appeared from somewhere accompanied by two girls in short, white dresses, and Aneka stopped speaking. The women, who could have been twins aside from the fact that one was blonde, the other brunette, delivered plates with a salad of some sort on them, and then left while Butler poured glasses of white wine for Teldarian and Aneka.

‘We’ve really changed things that much?’ Teldarian went on once his servant had left.

Aneka nodded, taking a forkful of something vaguely like lettuce and chewing on it for a few seconds. ‘There was a movie, a vid, that my brother made me watch once. I think it was called Gattaca.’

‘Something to do with genetics? Not my speciality, but that sounds like nucleobase indicators.’

‘Yeah, Gattaca was the name of an organisation, but it was something to do with DNA. The idea was that the “best” children were carefully selected and they could get the best education, while the ones born at random were essentially relegated to second-class citizens. There was a lot of subtext about identity, but on the face of it it was a dystopian world full of genetic policemen. Everyone was beautiful, genetically perfect. This world could be the end result of that society.’

‘Except without the genetic policemen.’

‘Really? Babies are checked for genetic defects and watched for anti-social behaviour.’ She held up a hand as he opened his mouth. ‘I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. This society is peaceful, almost crime free. The people are long-lived, disease-resistant, and happy. I live in an area that would have been a demilitarised zone in my time. The people who look like they would knife you for a credit help old ladies across the road instead.’

‘You’re saying we’ve given up a few freedoms to have a better society. I think it’s worth it.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Well you would, it’s your society. Don’t get me wrong, it seems to work and I can’t really argue with it. But the technology used to create the Jenlay was only just beginning in my time. Genetic manipulation, especially on a species level, that was going to be a big political hot potato.’

He grinned. ‘I’m not sure what a potato is, but I get the picture.’ He was silent for a few minutes, letting her get some of her food into her mouth. ‘You know, I’ve had… how to put this… I’ve entertained women here who have a lot less money than some of the circles I move in.’

‘I’ll accept that. You’re loaded, I’m not.’

‘Most of them were a little uncomfortable about being waited on.’

‘Officer training. How to command troops, how to plan assaults and defences, and which knife and fork to use at high table.’ She took a drink of wine; very nice, but still not really wine. There was too much of a berry flavour to it. ‘I also did my fair share of business dinners, political functions, that kind of thing.’

‘I read a report saying you did bodyguard work.’

‘We called it personal security. I was moving out of that, though. Most of my ops before I left were hostage rescue.’

‘You were good at it?’

‘Me and my team, we were as good as it gets. We didn’t stand much chance against Xinti weapons though.’ Lifting her glass, she emptied it. Even if the alcohol did nothing to her, it felt good to be drinking it.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring back difficult memories.’

‘It’s the past. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘But you can go back to your home world and find out what became of it. I envy you.’

If he was trying not to bring up difficult memories, he was doing a terrible job of it. ‘Well, if it turns out that there’s anything to see, maybe you’ll be able to go there sometime.’

‘True.’ He poured her another glass of wine. Maybe he was hoping she would get drunk and go to his room for the night. ‘That would be a fine thing to consider when I retire. In another century or so.’

‘That’s a long time to be running a company.’

‘I promised my grandfather that I’d have someone to take over from me when I went. A child. He wanted it kept in the family. I haven’t met the girl I’d like to do that with yet.’

Aneka gave him a grin. ‘Stop looking for girls and find yourself a woman.’

He tipped his glass to her. ‘Sage advice. I just might do that.’

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The world outside the huge window of Aneka’s bedroom was almost pitch black. Her eyes caught flickers of ultraviolet from the wave crests on the lagoon; starlight only, Odanari had no moons. Still, she stood at the window and looked out, thinking.

Teldarian had not tried anything. If he was after her then he was patient about it. They had talked about political systems and governments. He had been fascinated at the idea that the world had had no overall governing body, that politicians were elected by a popularity contest. He had said it sounded disorganised, which it was, but then that disorganisation had been the source of her work.

She watched the sparkle of starlight on an alien ocean and tried to work out whether she missed any of it. She had been living in a different world for two years. She had adjusted to that change quickly and easily. Maybe far too easily.

‘You were conditioned to be more adaptable,’ Al said, his voice soft even though no one was going to be able to hear him. ‘It’s not surprising that you did adapt.’

‘Maybe. Or maybe I just supressed the anxiety. I mourned for, what, three or four days. I lost my whole world, my family… Four days.’

‘You had work to take your mind off it.’

‘And that helped, sure. I kept busy and that helped. But… What if I go back there and I break down?’

‘You won’t.’

‘I could get there and be no use to…’

‘Aneka, I’m inside your head, remember. I know you possibly better than you know yourself. Your professional pride won’t let you do that. And don’t think I won’t be watching for signs of excessive stress, just as Ella will be. You have both of us to fall back on if needed, but you won’t let it affect your work because of who you are.’

She smiled. ‘I’m glad someone has that much confidence in me.’

‘I’m not the only one. Now, you should offline. I think it would be wise to be conscious when the rest of the house wakes up.’

Aneka turned from the window, unzipping her dress. ‘Thanks, Al. For being there.’

‘It is not as though I have a lot of choice.’

‘Yes you do,’ she told him, ‘and thank you for making it.’

~~~

The brunette maid slipped into the bedroom, a tray in her hands, and gave Aneka a smile. ‘Would ma’am like some breakfast?’

Actually, Aneka neither needed nor wanted the food, but she said, ‘That would be great,’ and the tray was placed across her legs. She was still in bed, not really sure what she should do with herself and rather enjoying the view through the huge window. She had been out once, when the light first showed in the sky, to check for a reply to her message to Ella. There had been one, but it had been as short as the one she had sent out.

‘Mister Teldarian suggested you might like to meet him in his office when you’re done,’ the maid added. ‘It’s the right-hand door off the main corridor?’

‘Thank you…?’

‘I’m Melissa, ma’am,’ the maid told her, smiling brightly.

‘Thank you, Melissa. I’ll be out to see him soon.’

The girl bowed her head and left, and Aneka picked up the glass of banana-flavoured orange juice and took a sip. One of these days she was going to have to find out whether the fruit looked like a banana or an orange, or maybe an apple. The rest of the meal was light, designed for giving a burst of energy in a hot climate. Fruit, yoghurt, and something like honey which Aneka happened to know came from a berry, and coffee. The coffee was about as good as anything she had ever tasted. Sleeping with the man for money was one thing, but Aneka had thought about sexual bribery to get some of that coffee into the supplies for the flight. Food consumed, she slipped out of bed and wandered over to the window, coffee in hand.

Edge recognition and motion detection software drew her attention to the shape in the water a couple of hundred metres off the beach, and her eyes focussed on it, narrowing her view field and zooming in. It was a head; she had seen the long black hair. As it turned she managed to make out a tanned, young face, probably female. So there was another woman on the island… Of course it could have been another servant; Teldarian did not seem the kind to deny them access to the lagoon on their off periods. Aneka watched her upend herself, hips and then legs flipping up above the water line as she dived; there was no sign of a swimsuit.

Aneka sipped coffee and waited for the black-haired girl to reappear. Fifteen seconds passed; the girl had pretty good lungs. At thirty seconds Aneka put her coffee cup down on a table and pulled open the window. She was about to step into the water when the girl broke the surface, gasping for breath. Her eyes fell on Aneka, standing on the beach, though her expression was unreadable at this distance. Then she tilted her head back and began to float away, further out towards the middle of the lagoon. It seemed like a stupid idea, but the Little Mermaid was not Aneka’s problem. Turning, she headed back into her room.

Today, she had decided, called for casual. Walking into the closet, she put on her bikini, making sure the tie sides were pulled up high on her hips, and then put her shorts on over that. Footwear was more difficult. She had some heeled sandals which would be fine around the house and for walking short distances, and some running shoes which would be better for a hike. Either would work with her sporty-cum-sexy look, but she concluded that taking a leaf from Teldarian’s book was the best bet until she knew what they would be doing. She was barefoot as she padded out of the closet and headed for where Melissa had said the office was.

An identity request pulse hit her as she touched the access button on the door mid-way down the psychedelic corridor, and then the door opened without comment, sliding sideways and allowing her into the room beyond. It was big, though it did not quite occupy the entire space Al had plotted out between the front and back rooms and the corridor. Just inside the door, the floor dropped down three steps to a lowered central area which allowed for a slightly taller ceiling. There were no windows, but the video walls and ceiling currently gave the impression that they were standing in a bubble under enough water that the surface was invisible, but light still shone through. Aneka guessed it was showing a view taken somewhere in the lagoon.

Teldarian was sitting in the middle section, the sunken floor, surrounded by Polyglass desks and screens all displaying images which Aneka largely failed to understand. One of them, however, looked a lot like an exploded view of a spaceship. He was dressed in a cream T-shirt and slacks again, and concentrating hard on something.

Across the room, suspended on a Polyglass partition, were a number of models. Aneka recognised the yacht she had flown in on, an Admiral-class battleship, the type of shuttle used to ferry people up and down from the transit stations above New Earth, and one other one.

‘That’s the Pegasus.’

He glanced around at her, giving a quick smile before returning to the view on his desk. ‘The warp engine was designed by Abraham Wallace and his team, everything else was me. I understand you got to fly her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How was she?’

‘I’m not exactly a skilled pilot, but she handled beautifully.’

‘Thank you. She was done quickly. They wanted a prototype ready as fast as I could manage and we pulled out all the stops to get it done.’

‘You did a good job. Without her… things might have gone differently.’

‘As I understand it, you came back from Negral and then flew straight out to Eshebbon to rescue your partner.’ He straightened, dismissing the displays hanging around the room with a button press, and turned to face her. ‘She must be quite a woman.’

‘She is. She’s beautiful, intelligent, very open. Her thoughts are almost written on her face. She’s terrible at cards, but fantastic in bed. And when she smiles, the world lights up.’

‘She’s a lucky woman to have someone who loves her so much.’ There was a bittersweet quality to his voice as he said it.

Aneka shrugged. ‘I’m lucky to have her. Do you need to work? I’m sure I can find things to do.’

‘I’m told I need to relax more. If you were back on New Earth you’d be on mid-week break, so I think we should honour that. Perhaps I could take you around the island?’

‘Barefoot?’ Aneka asked, smiling.

‘Walking that distance? I’ll be putting something on my feet, I suggest you do too. The rest of your outfit should do nicely.’

~~~

The view was, indeed, spectacular. The cliff on the eastern side of the island was maybe two hundred metres in height, sheer on the side facing the island and with a steep slope into the ocean. You could, however, walk up either side of it if you were fit. Teldarian obviously was, and Aneka was basically a robot. He had taken her around the northern side of the island and then up, the trees fading quickly away, then the brush, until they were climbing bare rock. And now they were reaping the rewards.

‘It’s bigger than Hunter’s island,’ Aneka commented.

Teldarian laughed. ‘I’m richer.’

‘Maybe if he hadn’t been funding a terrorist organisation…’

‘I doubt it. Superluminal supplies ships to the Navy, the Administration, and more or less every commercial user of spacecraft. If it flies through space, we built it, or part of it.’

‘Are you trying to impress me, Stephen?’

‘Is it working?’

‘A little.’ It was Aneka’s turn to laugh. The view was actually more impressive than his company’s accomplishments. The island below them was about two kilometres north to south, a little more east to west, but the lagoon cut into that for almost a kilometre. Much of the middle of the island was forest. The trees were native to the planet, looking more like palms than anything else, but with a denser bark. Towards the south, but around from the landing platform and under the shadow of the arête, was a lake which looked moderately shallow, but was probably fresh water. Beside that was another building.

‘Another house?’ Aneka asked, pointing down towards the lake.

‘Ah, yes. My youngest sister lives there.’

‘Tanned with long, black hair?’

‘Yes, that would be her. You’ve seen her?’

‘She was swimming in the lagoon this morning. She likes taking risks. I almost went out to pull her in after she was under water for over half a minute.’

‘She does, yes,’ Teldarian said, his tone carrying a hint of annoyance. ‘However, she is an excellent diver. Her lung capacity is quite amazing.’ He smiled. ‘She’s a sweet girl, but a little disturbed. She rarely leaves the island and she’s not used to strangers. If you meet her, just act normally. It’s not like she’s dangerous or anything, but she will be wary.’

Aneka nodded. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Daniella, Daniella Bishop.’

~~~

Aneka opened her eyes to see Daniella standing nearby, beside the circular pool at the back of the house. She had come out to sunbathe while Teldarian was handling a message that had come in just after lunch needing an urgent reply. The girl was quiet, but Aneka’s hearing was very good.

She was not tall, and very slim. And she looked young. Aneka guessed she was in her very early twenties, but there was something in her blue eyes that spoke of experience, and not especially pleasant experience at that. She was wearing tiny, white bikini briefs and her small, high breasts were on display. Her blue-black hair fell down over them, stopping just short of her nipples. She was pretty, but she looked like she never smiled and could really do with trying it.

‘Hello,’ Aneka said. ‘I’m Aneka. You must be Daniella.’

‘You’re the visitor Stephen said was coming. You’re very pretty.’

‘Thank you. So are you.’

‘Stephen likes pretty women. All the women he brings here are pretty. He said you were special though.’

‘I was born over a thousand years ago, on Old Earth.’

Daniella’s lips shifted slightly; a hint of a smile. ‘He’s loved Old Earth history since I’ve known him. That would make you the first woman he’s ever brought here for a reason other than the obvious one.’

Aneka smiled. ‘He brings a lot of women here then?’

‘Yes.’ Aneka saw the micro-changes in expression, the flickers of disgust and anger around the mouth and nose. Daniella was good at hiding her feelings, very good. But she did not like her brother bringing home his conquests.

‘Daniella.’ Teldarian’s voice came from behind Aneka, the direction of the rear door of the house. ‘We don’t normally see you out here.’ Al popped up a voice stress analysis: Teldarian was worried. But worried about what? Was his sister actually dangerous?

‘I wanted to meet Aneka.’ Her expression turned plaintive.

‘I would estimate that her danger lies in that kind of expression,’ Al commented.

‘Of course,’ Teldarian replied, his tone softening. ‘Now you’ve met her.’

‘Yes.’ She half-turned towards the forest. ‘Have fun talking about Old Earth.’ Then she was padding back towards the trees at the end of the pool.

‘She’s pretty good at getting what she wants,’ Aneka said as Teldarian sat down on the lounger beside her.

‘I can never say no to her.’

‘I have the same problem with Ella.’

‘I suspect Ella can be reasoned with.’

‘Except when it’s “just one more time before bed,” yes.’

Teldarian laughed, but the strain was back in his voice.

~~~

‘What was your home like?’

Aneka glanced across the hot tub to where Teldarian was sitting. They had retired there after dinner and more conversation about Old Earth, following on from an afternoon which had been about walking, swimming in the lagoon, and random chatting. There had been silence for the last five minutes as they both relaxed into the hot water with glasses of cold wine. The question had come as something of a surprise.

‘Where I was born? Or where I spent most of my time? I was kind of an itinerant for a lot of my life.’

‘Any of it. I’m just interested in hearing what you have to say about the place.’

‘Not tired of the sound of my voice yet then… Okay… Well I was born in a town called Aldershot. It’s in Hampshire about… sixty, sixty-five kilometres west-south-west of London. My parents lived in Aldershot and, since I didn’t really have a place of my own, I used to have a room in their house. It wasn’t much, but it had all my stuff in it.’

‘Stuff?’

‘Yeah… stuff. The teddy bear I had as a kid. Uh, that’s a stuffed toy in the shape of a highly dangerous mammal. Not sure why kids were supposed to find them cuddly. My first Sindy doll. I got her because she was blonde. Barbie was the brunette. Sindy was dressed in the army uniform I altered to fit her from my Action Man. Not easy ’cos Sindy had the same problem as me and even if Action Man had a barrel chest…’

‘It stretched your sewing skills to the limit?’

Aneka giggled. ‘Yeah. There were a few photographs. A couple of family ones, and one of me with my team taken in Afghanistan. We look like a real bunch of badasses. Took us twenty minutes to stop laughing before we could take the picture. I’d spend Christmas there… That’s a festival at the end of the year with presents and food. And I’d get back there when I could, which was less often than I’d have liked. My brother lived there too, when he was home from college. They, my parents, had a fairly big house. Nothing too fancy, but spacious. They were out on the edge of the town and we would go for walks on the common land to the west.’

‘And when you were not there?’

‘Army barracks at first, then either in the field, hotels, or my company had a few flats in London that we could use between ops.’

‘And London was a city? I recall mention of it as the seat of government in your United Kingdom.’

‘Not as big as Yorkbridge, say, but a city, a pretty big one. It was the main political centre of the UK, and England before that going back to the Romans, I think. That’s a couple of thousand years.’

‘Four times the length of the Lorenti Federation.’

‘So far. And it was not one country all that time. I’ve no doubt the Federation will last a long time.’

‘No doubt?’

‘Little doubt,’ Aneka conceded. ‘The Herosians worry me. I think the only reason they’re part of the Federation is that it keeps everyone else from attacking them. If they ever manage to get the upper hand somehow…’

‘It’s probably a good thing, then, that they seem to lack the scientific aptitude of Jenlay or Torem. The culture back then was a lot different, wasn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh.’ The change of subject was a little jarring.

‘From what I read, it’s unlikely you’d be comfortable sitting naked in a hot tub with a strange man, for one thing.’

Aneka laughed, genuinely amused. ‘That rather depends. It wasn’t exactly common, but there were people who were into that kind of thing. And if I were invited to the private island of a very rich, attractive man I’d be expecting him to be after exactly one thing.’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘Yes, I’d imagine you would. However, the wine has gone to my head and I think it best that I retreat before I show myself up. Feel free to stay as long as you like. Olivia is on duty if you need anything.’ And with that he hauled himself out of the water and padded off to the bridge. As best she could tell, his private rooms were at the back on the north side of the house.

Aneka relaxed back into the water, deciding to finish her drink before returning to her room. ‘I can’t believe that worked,’ she said silently.

‘I can’t believe he’s that much of a gentleman,’ Al replied.

‘No. I’m not exactly putting up a fight. I pretty much told him I was expecting him to make a play, and he claims he’s too drunk and leaves.’

‘There was mild impairment of function, but nothing serious. He was making an excuse.’

‘Uh-huh. I didn’t notice any impairment of function where it counted.’ Plucking her wine from the side of the tub, she took a sip, letting the cold fluid send a chill through her body, a sharp counterpoint to the hot water on her skin. ‘There’s something a little weird going on here.’

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Daniella was out in the lagoon again. This time Aneka had seen her leave the house through the front door and run, naked, into the water, letting it reach mid-thigh before she dived forward and began a rapid crawl into deeper water. There was definitely something a little strange going on in the Teldarian household and she was not entirely sure she wanted to know what it was.

Forgetting about it, she hit the record button on her terminal and a small light came on to indicate the camera over the middle screen was working. ‘Hey, love. I figured I should send you another message, and flash my boobs at you in case you missed them. As yet I haven’t been propositioned. We’ve talked a lot, and gone for a couple of walks, but he hasn’t even made any non-verbal suggestions. Hopefully I’ll be back there in two or three days.’ Feeling a little self-conscious, she cupped her breasts, lifting them towards the camera. ‘Can’t wait to have your hands on these. See you soon.’

Reaching forward, she closed the recording, packaged it into a message and sent it off. It would be eight or nine hours before it arrived. According to Aneka’s chronometer that meant Ella would get it in the evening on New Earth. A second later a message appeared on the screen.

Meet me on the yacht in the lagoon. I thought we could have breakfast at sea. Stephen.

Okay. Actually, that could be quite nice. Walking to the closet she found her white dress and slipped it on before heading out through the window and turning up the beach towards the waiting boats. Daniella’s head bobbed among the shallow waves out in the pale-blue water, and the girl waved when she saw Aneka. Aneka waved back, and then the head was gone as Daniella dived. The girl was definitely a little strange, but nice enough.

The yacht was a twenty-foot, single-masted sailboat, though there were what looked like water jet outlets under the waterline at the back. There seemed to be more mechanical bits to the rigging system than Aneka would have expected too. Teldarian was on the rear deck behind a sleek cockpit, dressed in his usual T-shirt and slacks, and he grinned at her as she approached, his fingers moving over a panel. Immediately the sails began to unfurl; clearly this was a very high-tech sailing ship.

‘Come aboard,’ he said. ‘I’ve got food downstairs, but we can bring it out here once we’re out of the lagoon. Forecast is for reasonable, steady winds. It’s a good day for sailing.’

Aneka stepped down into the rear section, sitting down on one side, and suddenly the ship was underway. She heard motors winding in ropes; everything was automated. On the screen she could see a schematic map of the island and it took a couple of taps to set waypoints and then he was sitting beside her, the ship steering itself. It quickly picked an optimal course for the light wind in the bay and started tacking out towards the outlet to the ocean.

Looking around, Aneka finally spotted Daniella walking back up the beach towards the south side of the house. She looked a little hunched and her arms were wrapped around her body. Upset over something?

~~~

Aneka pressed the contact at the back neck seam of her dress and the setaestrip ‘zipper’ opened. The Bi-weave garment slipped off her arms like silk and she stepped out of it, dropping it onto one of the seats before padding up onto the thin walkways which ran along the side of the boat, and walking down to the forward deck. There she stretched out in the sun, quite aware that Teldarian could see her through the forward windows if he chose to look. He had gone below to put the breakfast dishes away.

It had taken twenty minutes to get out of the lagoon, another forty to reach the spot they were in now, and the time had been taken up with a conversation on dating in the twenty-first century, which had been more or less a continuation of what they had ended on the night before. He was, she thought, making his intentions a little more obvious and she was not entirely inclined to shoot him down.

Well away from the island, out in the open ocean, the wind was stronger and the boat was running fast, cutting through the waves at a good pace. Her navigation system was giving her a figure of about thirty kilometres an hour; they were around eighteen klicks from the island. The sunlight was doing a good job of counteracting the chilling effect of the wind. Salt spray spritzed her skin every so often as the bow broke through a slightly higher wave, but the boat stayed quite steady as it continued out from the land. According to the map Al had grabbed before they left for Odanari, the nearest large land mass was about eight days away at this speed. There was not a lot of land on Odanari. They were, for all intents and purposes, in the middle of a watery nowhere.

She heard his feet on the adanymax decking, the slight sticking sound of flesh on hard plastic, and opened one eye. He had rid himself of the shirt and slacks, and his opinion of the view was apparent from the semi-erection he was sporting, but he lay down beside her, sighing and closing his eyes against the sun.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to sleep with you just to secure that funding for the expedition.’

‘Having met and talked to you, I wouldn’t expect you to. You kept your end of the deal: you came here and let me grill you about Old Earth. I’ve enjoyed that more than you can imagine. I sent a message to my lawyers on New Earth last night authorising an initial half-million credit payment with another two hundred and fifty thousand contingency. So now you’ve no reason to sleep with me at all.’

Aneka was silent for a second, and then she moved, sitting up smoothly and then shifting across to straddle his hips. He looked up at her, raising an eyebrow, but she felt him stiffening under her. ‘There’s still one thing I need to negotiate,’ she said. Her fingers wrapped around his shaft, lifting it, and then she sank down, her eyes closing as she felt him filling her.

He let out a soft moan. ‘What… what’s that?’

She paused for a second, and then began a slow rise and fall motion. ‘I want a supply of that coffee you’ve got here.’

His hands moved up to grip her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh. She quickened the pace. ‘I’ll have… several tonnes… delivered.’

‘Tonnes?’ She sank down, pushing him in deep, and then began rotating her hips to keep the sensations growing. ‘I’ll be fucking you for days.’

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They sat in the aft deck area watching the stars as the yacht rode the waves back towards the island. It was after midnight and they were late heading back. Not all of the day had been spent in various forms of sex, but Aneka still felt that she had definitely settled her debt for the coffee, not that she expected several tonnes of the stuff to be delivered. Teldarian looked like a man who had spent a very pleasant day anyway.

‘I think I should head back to New Earth tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Or later today anyway.’

He was silent for a few seconds. She felt him move a little closer on the seat. ‘Of course, but… I was going to ask… Then I thought of the way you talked about Ella and I decided not to.’ She lifted her head, looking at him. He sounded like a tongue-tied teenager. ‘Now… I think I should ask anyway, because…’

She lifted her hand, pressing a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t. I’ll have to say no and that would spoil a beautiful day. Don’t.’

He moved back a little and his eyes dipped away. ‘Yes. You’re right.’

She watched him for a second and then turned, leaning over the rail of the boat and spreading her legs. He did nothing for long enough that she wondered whether she had really hurt him. Then he moved and a second later he was entering her. A chime from the navigation computer indicated that they were about to enter the lagoon and his hands joined hers on the railing.

‘At least I can have you now,’ he whispered as he started to thrust.

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 23.2.526 FSC.

‘I’m home,’ Aneka called.

Ella looked up from the couch and smiled, but it was a little more timid than usual. ‘I can see that. Did you get my last message?’

‘That Stephen sent the money through? I did.’ Aneka dumped her case beside the door and walked in, settling down beside Ella.

‘So you didn’t have to sleep with him to get it.’

‘Nope.’

Ella’s eyes narrowed. ‘But you did sleep with him.’

‘I did. On a boat.’

‘Uh… Why?’

‘Coffee.’

‘You fucked him for coffee!’

‘You haven’t tasted the coffee. But you will and then you’ll understand why. Besides… I wanted to. He’s a nice guy. Really.’

‘How was he?’

‘Good.’ Ella’s face fell. ‘You’re better, but he was good. He wanted to ask me to stay with him.’

‘Oh. But… but you’re here.’

‘Yes I am. He wanted to ask me, but even he could tell I wasn’t going to leave you.’

The little redhead smiled, timidly at first and then brightening. Aneka’s heart soared. ‘I’m kind of stupid sometimes,’ Ella admitted.

‘Yes, you are, but you’re still adorable. Now, I’m hungry.’

Ella bounced to her feet. ‘I’ll make you something. What do you want?’

Aneka caught her wrist. ‘Ella, I don’t get hungry for food.’

‘Oh… no.’ She was even prettier when she was smiling and blushing.

~~~

The afterglow of sex was better with Ella. Aneka lay with her girlfriend in her arms and enjoyed the feeling of intimacy which had not quite been there with Stephen. That was another reason for sticking with what she had.

‘There was something a bit weird going on with Stephen and his sister,’ Aneka said, voicing the third reason she had said no.

‘Trudy?’

‘The youngest. Daniella.’

‘Half-sister then. Same mother. There was a bit of a scandal a few years back. Daniella and her father. Stephen took her away and he’s been looking after her ever since, I think.’

‘He said she rarely left the island. She’s got this whole “wild nymph” thing going. Doesn’t seem like she’s all there. Wait… You said incest was kind of frowned upon, but not illegal?’

‘Not illegal, but she was very young and there were some rumours that it was violent.’

‘Shit… Well that explains her a bit more, but…’ Aneka shrugged. The girl had been strange, but maybe an abusive father covered that. ‘I thought that kind of thing would have been weeded out by your education system?’

It was Ella’s turn to shrug. ‘It usually is. Some people are too sick for anything to work.’

‘So much for the perfect society.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s claiming it’s perfect. I don’t think you can have a perfect society. Unless everyone is a drone.’

‘Well, I’m happy the Jenlay didn’t go there.’

Ella giggled. ‘Uh-huh. I doubt we’d be doing this if we had.’

University of New Earth, 24.2.526 FSC.

‘Well,’ Gillian began once her office was full of people, ‘thanks to Aneka’s closing of the deal with Stephen Teldarian, we now have quite enough funding to go ahead with the expedition to Old Earth.’ She paused, smirking. ‘I understand we also have a commitment from Superluminal to present one half-tonne of Ashtenna coffee beans to the Garnet Hyde at the start of each mission we undertake, from now until the ship is decommissioned.’

‘Shin chou!’ Ella squeaked. ‘Okay, I give in, it was worth it.’

Aneka laughed. ‘The coffee was good, but…’

‘Ashtenna coffee beans come from one world on the Rim,’ Drake said. ‘Ashtenna, obviously. They have to harvest them by hand, process them, and then ship them. They cost about a hundred credits for a kilo.’

‘So a half-tonne is…’

‘Fifty-K’s worth of totally wonderful caffeinated glory,’ Ella exulted. ‘If I give him a blowjob can we get a tonne per trip?’

‘I think half a tonne will do,’ Gillian interrupted. ‘We are now officially moving into the mission preparation phase. I suggest everyone makes sure they’ve visited relatives and such in the next month because on the second of the fourth we will be leaving for Harriamon. We have that long to get everything ready, and even if our worst fears are confirmed, we won’t be back home for over eight months.’

‘I’d better give Mom a call,’ Ella said, her voice coming over the network link rather than Aneka’s ears.

‘We should go over to see her,’ Aneka replied. ‘It’s been a while since we saw her and she came here last time.’

‘I suggest we take it easy next week,’ Gillian said, unaware of their conversation. ‘If you’ve relatives to see, take some time to do it then.’

‘We could go out mid-week and come back at the weekend,’ Ella’s silent voice said. ‘Spend a few days over there. You haven’t seen much of that continent and we’d get the chance to spend a few days with her.’

‘When we get back,’ Gillian continued, ‘we’ll be faces to the keyboard getting ready, but I expect to get a few days’ break before we leave.’

‘That sounds great,’ Aneka replied. ‘It’ll be nice to see Janna again.’

‘I think,’ Bashford said, ‘that we should be able to wrap this whole thing ready for at least three or four days’ break before we leave.’

‘And that’ll be time for Katelyn, Dillon, and Cassandra,’ Aneka said.

‘All together?’ Ella asked.

‘No, Cassandra will want us to ourselves.’

‘Works for me.’

‘I suggest we get things moving and then,’ Gillian said. ‘Drake and Shannon…’

‘We’ll be heading up to the Hyde to brief Aggy,’ Drake said.

‘Then we’ll start our recreation up there,’ Shannon added.

Bashford leaned towards Drake. ‘Make sure you’ve taken your vitamins. I’ll run the facilitation team through task assignment for when we get started. Once that’s done I expect Doctor Gillian Gilroy to report to her house for a full debriefing.’

Aneka leaned towards Gillian. ‘Make sure you’ve taken your vitamins.’

Gillian was blushing, which was both unusual and pretty. ‘I,’ she said, ‘will be working through the research planning with Ella before reporting for debriefing.’

‘Full debriefing,’ Bashford corrected.

Gillian swallowed. ‘Full debriefing.’

Barnard City, New Earth, 6.3.526 FSC.

Air travel in the future was just as tedious as Aneka remembered it being in the past, unless you took the sub-orbital, high-speed transport they had used last time. Since they had more time for this visit they had taken the standard jet transport. High-tech wonder-plane though it had been, it had still been a six-hour flight and Aneka had been happy to be on the ground. For starters, the in-flight entertainment had consisted entirely of children’s films and terrible sex comedies.

Now they were in a car which was driving itself into Barnard City. It was a city for workers, largely based around heavy industry. The inhabitants of New Earth liked to keep the things which allowed them to live there hidden away on the backside of the world. There were core world citizens there, but there were also a lot of people from the Rim who worked there for a few decades and then went back where the prices were lower and a Jenlay with savings could live well.

What would be the suburbs of a traditional city was all industrial plants. The central core was devoted to entertainment for the workers, which was where the club Janna worked in was located. And in a band between the two was the housing, mostly consisting of high-rise buildings, apartment blocks shorter than the ones in Mid-town, but still fairly tall. The car headed to one of these, dropping its passengers off at the door before driving off into the underground car park.

Janna lived up on the fifth floor in an apartment a little smaller than the one Aneka and Ella shared, but it had a spare room which they were going to sleep in. That was generally important because, while Janna and Aneka understood each other a lot better, putting the older Narrows in temptation’s way was not a good idea. Janna had a very liberal attitude to sex, even more so than her daughter, and had bedded every girl Ella had gone out with until Aneka. Janna thought Aneka was great precisely because she had been rejected. When the apartment door opened to reveal a smiling blonde woman, Aneka wondered whether all the caution had been necessary.

The blonde was tall, with the body of a dancer, all long, taught muscle, which was pretty obvious since she was wearing a G-string and nothing else. Her hair was short but wavy, her eyes a startling blue, she had a narrow sort of face a little like Aneka’s, but harder, and her breasts were not overly large, but featured prominent nipples with wide areolas. She seemed neither surprised nor abashed at opening the door half-naked to two women she had never met before; she simply turned her head and called out, ‘Janna, Aneka and Ella are here.’

Janna came hurrying down the corridor that connected the front door with the lounge. She was a near copy of her daughter, especially now that Ella had had the breast enhancements and was working out more. Her face was a little older, harder really, her eyes were brown, and her short hair was black, but Ella had inherited almost all her looks from her mother. Janna was topless as well, which suggested the blonde was more than just a passing acquaintance.

‘Let them in,’ Janna said, grinning. ‘Come on, you two, don’t be bashful. This is Sharissa. I told you about her, right?’

‘Yes,’ Ella replied, a little nonplussed, ‘but I didn’t know you two were still together.’

Sharissa was closing the door behind them. ‘It’s nothing official,’ she said. ‘We’re not together together, but I come visit whenever I get the chance.’

‘Which is not as often as I’d like,’ Janna added.

‘But when Janna told me you were coming here for an extended stay,’ Sharissa went on, ‘I thought I’d come down too. I got in late last night.’

Aneka looked at her, making sure that Janna could not see the narrowing of her eyes. Sharissa smiled back, twitching her eyebrows in a manner that suggested that further explanation would come. Sharissa was one of Winter’s people and had been assigned to protect Janna from Ardus Quint. She had, basically, picked Janna up and gone home with her; Janna was not supposed to know anything about it.

‘You’re a flight attendant, right Sharissa?’ Aneka asked.

‘I was when I met Janna. I work for the Federal Security Agency now. Just an office job, nothing special.’ Good idea; keep the lies to a minimum.

‘I’ve met your boss a few times.’

‘Uh-huh. The whole agency knows she likes to keep an eye on you.’

‘Winter?’ Janna said. ‘Winter likes to keep an eye on you? That doesn’t sound good.’

‘She’s nice,’ Ella replied, ‘in a weird kind of way.’

‘You’ve met her?!’

‘Uh-huh.’

Janna shook her head and headed off into the lounge. ‘My daughter is keeping company with the most mysterious woman in the Federation. Now that’s not something I ever thought I’d say.’

Ella giggled, following on behind. ‘That’s nothing. Aneka fucked Stephen Teldarian for coffee beans.’

Aneka let herself blush, but Janna just looked over her shoulder and said, ‘I want details. Including full measurements.’

~~~

The only person still fully dressed was Aneka. With a thorough description of Teldarian and his island given, Janna had moved on to her daughter. Aneka had never seen such a professional, almost technical, examination of a pair of breasts before. Ella had not consulted her mother about the operation and Janna had not seen the results up close yet. She went over every square centimetre of flesh checking for abnormalities of any kind. Ella had endured the scrutiny, eyes cast upward as her mother checked for scarring, bruising, stiffening, or anything else which might have indicated a problem.

‘You can never be too careful,’ Janna said as she settled back onto one of the two lounge couches beside Sharissa. ‘Honestly, I’ve seen my share of mistakes made in cosmetic surgery. I don’t want anything happening to you.’

‘I guess you would see quite a few enhanced body parts in your line of work,’ Aneka said.

‘You’ve no idea!’ She cupped her own breasts illustratively. ‘I had these pushed up a cup size and reinforced, of course. They’d be around my knees otherwise and the customers expect a girl with bounce, not swing.’

‘Yours are fairly tasteful,’ Sharissa said, ‘and you said you weren’t small before. Ella’s just matched up to you, so it’s not disproportionate. That friend of yours, Marilyn?’

‘Case in point,’ Janna agreed. ‘Four operations over seventy years, getting larger each time. She’s a miracle of science.’

‘Looks like a woman attached to two weather balloons,’ Sharissa interjected. Aneka and Ella giggled at the image.

Janna patted Sharissa on the thigh. ‘Not quite that bad, but… yes. You should see the men I’ve seen having operations though. They’re the worst.’

‘Uh… what kind of operations?’ Aneka asked. ‘I don’t really want to know, do I?’

‘Oh, not what you’re thinking,’ Janna said. Then she frowned and added, ‘Not just what you’re thinking. I have seen extensions, thickening, general enlargement…’ She ticked them off on her fingers, looking thoughtfully upward. ‘…scrotal padding, scrotal stretching, anal reinforcement, buttock padding…’

‘Wait up… anal reinforcement?’

‘The muscle’s not used to the kind of abuse some people put it through. The worst cases are the artificial muscle enhancements though. You get men with layers of extra muscle grown in regeneration tanks and then grafted in under their skin. It looks…’ She shuddered, which gave Aneka quite enough of an impression of what she was talking about.

‘High-tech steroid abusers,’ Aneka suggested.

‘Tends to look worse than that,’ Sharissa commented. ‘Steroids pump you up, but at least the muscle growth is your own. The bad cases of this look like walking slabs of beef.’

‘You see it a lot in Rim World erotic film actors,’ Janna added. ‘They actually seem to think it’s sexy. Then again some of the stuff being made out there is for a rather… restricted market.’ Aneka noticed Sharissa’s arm tighten slightly around Janna’s shoulders, but the dancer smiled brightly, maybe a little too brightly, and went on quickly. ‘Enough of that, however, I have some news myself.’

‘Oh?’ Ella asked.

‘I am retiring. My contract is up for renewal in a couple of months and I’ve decided not to.’

Ella blinked rapidly. ‘But you love dancing.’

‘And I’m not going to stop; I’m just changing my venue and switching careers.’

‘Mom, you’re being obtuse.’

Janna smirked across the small, Polyglass coffee table between the couches. ‘I start teaching at the University of New Earth at the start of month nine. Assistant to Doctor Zebrenev. I’ll be teaching several classes. General fitness and flexibility, pole work, erotic.’

‘The university teaches “erotic dancing?”’ Aneka asked. Then she shook her head. ‘Never mind. Of course it does.’

‘Are you going to need somewhere to stay?’ Ella asked.

‘No,’ Janna said, one hand squeezing Sharissa’s thigh. ‘Issa has an apartment in Yorkbridge…’

‘Which I’m not in enough as it is,’ Sharissa stated. ‘I have to travel a lot, though I’m hoping that’ll settle down soon, but Janna would really be doing me a favour moving in there. I mean, there’s someone to look after the place while I’m away…’

‘And a free sex toy when you get home,’ Janna finished. ‘Plus, I’ll get to see you more. When you’re not gallivanting across the galaxy.’

Ella beamed at her mother. ‘That’s so fridgy, Mom! Just so you remember, Aneka’s mine. No borrowing.’

Janna smirked. ‘I’ve got my own beautiful blonde. What do I need yours for?’

7.3.526 FSC.

Janna was up on stage, currently still mostly dressed and upside down on the chromed pole. It was her second set and Aneka, Ella, and Sharissa were watching from a booth nearby. Janna was exceptionally talented; she was going to make a good teacher. On the other hand, this was her second set so they had had one chance to be awed already.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, her eyes still on Janna, ‘why are you still here? Winter can’t be worried about her.’

‘Vashma no,’ Sharissa replied. ‘No I’m really here because I want to be. Sure I picked her up the first time because I was supposed to be guarding her, but… Well, neither Winter nor I thought I’d actually fall for her. It, err, wasn’t in the mission briefing.’

‘So she’s not in any danger?’ Ella asked.

‘If she is, I don’t know about it. And when I find out about it I’ll break its legs and feed it its fucking windpipe.’

Ella blinked at the vehemence of the statement and then giggled. ‘Okay, Mom seems to have lucked out almost as much as I did. Welcome to the family.’

‘Ha! Thank you.’

‘Isn’t she going to figure out what you really do for a living eventually?’ Aneka asked.

‘No. Well, not exactly. The story is that I’m training in security planning. It’s just bending the truth a little. I’m not as young as I was and personal security is… getting tougher. I am actually going into more of a supervisory position. Another year and I should be working primarily out of the Yorkbridge office which works for us, obviously.’

‘It sounds great,’ Ella said. ‘Mom hasn’t really had a steady partner since… Well, since we left Harriamon.’

‘She doesn’t talk about Harriamon much. I know enough to know she really loves her daughter.’

‘It’s mutual,’ Ella said, almost inaudible over the throbbing beat Janna was dancing to. ‘She deserves someone good after all this time.’

‘I’ll try to make sure I live up to that thought. Oh, I have a message from Winter. I was briefed on your… unique physiology, Aneka. And Winter asked me to decide whether we should tell Janna. I recommended that it be left up to you, but if Janna’s made aware of the situation, she’ll keep the secret.’

Beaming, Aneka leaned over, grabbed Sharissa’s head in both hands and kissed her. It was a chaste sort of kiss, but it still left the blonde blinking in surprise. ‘You’ve just made my week,’ Aneka said. ‘I hate keeping this a secret. Absolutely hate it.’

‘Well, I have to go back to Yorkbridge tomorrow, so save it until then. If she figures out I already know then it’ll bring up questions. She’s got a good head for people.’

‘I can do that.’ Aneka looked back at the stage. Janna had shed her clothes and was swooping around the pole like a gymnast. The audience was enraptured. ‘She is bloody amazing at that. I mean, I wish I was even a fraction as good at moving my body.’

‘She is,’ Sharissa agreed. ‘Mind you, you should see her table dancing. I mean… erotic doesn’t quite describe it.’

Ella was wearing an evil grin; Aneka really did not like the look of it. ‘She’s expensive isn’t she? For a private dance, I mean.’

‘Fifty credits, plus tip. Costs more if it’s really private, in one of the back rooms.’

‘So worth it…’

‘Ella,’ Aneka said, ‘there is no way you are going to get your mother to dance for you.’

‘Oh no. I’m going to get her to dance for you.’

Sharissa stifled a laugh. Aneka looked pained and whined, ‘Ella…’

‘It’ll be fun, and besides, she’ll wind you up so much you’ll be begging me to take you somewhere quiet.’

Aneka sagged back onto the couch. Why could she never say no to the girl?

8.3.526 FSC.

There was not really a whole lot to do around Barnard City, but Ella had decided that they should do something rather than hanging around in a strip club watching her mother dancing. So they had dropped Sharissa off at the airport, and then Janna off at the club, and then they had driven out of the city and into the countryside.

Aneka had been living in Yorkbridge for over a year, but they had never done the same there. It made sense to her; you never went sightseeing near your home. She had been to the edge of the city, for one thing Gillian lived there, but never really outside it. Yorkbridge seemed to be surrounded by grassland to the south, and forest further north. Barnard City was surrounded by what could best be described as scrub.

‘It’s not particularly attractive,’ Aneka commented as she drove them out of town. She had decided to drive. It had to happen sometime and Ella was not complaining.

‘Technically it’s a desert,’ Ella replied. ‘It gets about twenty centimetres of rain a year, but they brought in plants that could do well under those conditions so it’s not just sand. They even grow some crops a little further south where it’s a touch cooler.’

‘Okay, so what’s to see out here?’

‘A unique feature of the landscape,’ Ella replied, grinning. ‘Also, when we’ve seen that I’m going to take you somewhere off the road where we can have sex.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Redheads…’

They drove for about thirty kilometres to the south-west of the city, and then turned off the main roadway which, according to Ella, went on for another three hundred kilometres before it came to the nearest town. New Earth had a fair amount of space, and not that many inhabitants. The smaller road went on for another kilometre and then came to a stop in a car park which seemed to have no signs or other markings.

‘We have to walk from here,’ Ella said, opening her door, ‘but it’s not far.’

Not far, but uphill. Aneka was a little surprised at the sudden rise which started just beyond the car park. The rest of the land was pretty flat, but here there was a very broad, quite sharp incline and, after a hundred or so metres, a sign which said, ‘Sudden Drop. Caution.’ It was not joking.

Aneka came to a stop as the incline suddenly turned into a cliff dropping away from them into a huge bowl carved into the ground. Her navigation system did its work, calculating approximate dimensions based on shadows and the time of day. She was looking at a crater over a kilometre in diameter and perhaps two hundred metres in depth.

‘Welcome to the Great Crater,’ Ella said. ‘It’s not a very imaginative name, but it’s great and it’s a crater. Some people call it Havishaw’s Crater, after the man who discovered it, but the maps say “Great Crater.”’

‘A meteor impact?’

‘Uh-huh. Dating says it’s about thirty thousand years old. It’s the largest surviving impact crater on the planet.’

‘There’s one a bit like it on Old Earth. That’s called Meteor Crater, so I guess people tend to run out of ideas for naming these things. I think that one’s about this size. So this world gets impacts like the old one.’

‘Probably more of them, or it would do if we weren’t here. There’s supposed to be evidence of a really big one that hit the ocean north of here about two thousand years ago. Old Earth had a great big moon that probably kept a fair number of big rocks from hitting the planet. We have an agency that specialises in making sure nothing dangerous gets onto a collision course.’

‘They were talking about doing that back in my time. The last big impact killed the dinosaurs so we didn’t want to find out if we could survive the same.’

Ella nodded. ‘There’s evidence that this place was starting to develop land animals when that last rock hit the ocean. We’ve found some bones. The indigenous plant life never fully recovered. The animals were wiped out entirely. Given long enough, things might have picked up again, but then we turned up and took over.’

‘So, basically, this is proof that life is a crap-shoot. Uh, craps was a dice game.’

Ella giggled. ‘Yeah, you could put it that way. It’s like we said when you woke up. Life is just about a certainty. It appears anywhere it’s even vaguely possible. Getting it to last long enough to get complex, that’s harder. Really simple stuff usually survives events like this better too. I mean, if the Torem hadn’t figured out warp physics when they did, they’d be gone. The Xinti seem to have gone digital because something happened to force them to. It takes millions of years, maybe billions, to turn basic life into something intelligent, and most species just don’t get that long.’

‘We got lucky.’

‘Really lucky.’

~~~

Ella was giggling a lot, which made Janna giggle too. After the outdoor sex, which Aneka had enjoyed as much because Ella had found a shady spot to do it as because it was outdoors and therefore a little illicit, they had returned to town and gone shopping. The results of the shopping had been used to make a meal, which had come with a bottle of wine. Now they were sprawled in the lounge with a second bottle of wine, and Ella was reacting in her usual manner to the intake of that much alcohol.

Still, Aneka had prepared the meal, and got the wine, for a reason. ‘How drunk are you, Janna?’ she asked.

‘Tipsy,’ Janna replied, grinning. ‘Just tipsy enough to start making suggestions I don’t expect you to agree to, and to find my daughter hilarious.’

Ella pouted. ‘I’m not that dru-hic!’

‘Of course, not, dear.’

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, ‘I need to tell you something, but I need you to understand that it’s a secret, a really serious one.’

Janna’s grin stayed in place, but her eyes narrowed a little. ‘Alcohol and a serious secret. You’re a little worried about how I’ll take this.’

‘A little, but it’s… It’s important that you know. Important to me anyway.’

‘Me too,’ Ella said. ‘But you can’t tell anyone else, Mom. Really. I mean… really.’ She giggled. ‘I’m drunkerer than I thought.’

Janna’s face had straightened now. ‘Is this just personal, or something Winter and her people would be involved in?’

‘It’s personal,’ Aneka replied, ‘but the reason I couldn’t tell you before is that Winter wouldn’t let me. It’s a “we will kill you if you tell” secret. If you don’t think you can cope with that…’

‘I’ll probably die of curiosity now if you don’t tell me, but I also think you’d be very disappointed if you couldn’t.’

Aneka nodded. ‘The people I care about, I hate not being able to tell them. The people I work with all know, but Kat and Dillon don’t. I really wish I could tell them. Winter said I could tell you if I wanted. She thinks you can be trusted to say nothing.’

‘All right, hit me with it.’

Aneka took a deep breath. ‘Okay, you know that Ella found me on a derelict ship that the Xinti had been using to spy on Old Earth.’ Janna nodded. ‘The story was that they had put me in stasis, the ship’s reactor failed, and that left me as the only survivor, frozen in deep space for a thousand years and change.’

‘Just about everyone knows that.’

‘And it’s almost the truth, except that they were on their way back from Negral with me when the reactor blew, and… I didn’t exactly survive.’

Janna’s brow furrowed. ‘You don’t look dead, dear.’

‘Aneka Jansen died on the way to Negral. They dissected her, me. They cut me up into bits to see how I worked. I was the last. They’d already done the same to the rest of my team. They killed us in about as horrible a way as I can think of. I remember the saw cutting…’ She stopped, swallowing.

‘They kept her brain alive,’ Ella said. She was sounding less drunk. ‘You know the Xinti were digital minds in computers. I’ve told you that. They took Aneka back to Negral and they did the same thing to her as they did to themselves. They mapped her brain, her mind, into software and they put that into a new body which they built for her.’

‘This body,’ Aneka said. ‘I’m basically a robot with the ghost of Aneka Jansen inside it. It’s a very good simulation. I couldn’t tell until Ella told me. But I’m fusion powered, my muscles are artificial, my brain is one computer and I’ve got a second one in my chest that provides advice and handles some of my functions. I don’t sleep; I go offline for four hours so that my memory can be archived into long-term storage. I never forget anything.’

‘But even if she’s a simulation,’ Ella put in, ‘she’s a perfect simulation of a real woman who lived on Old Earth all those years ago.’

Janna was staring at Aneka, a frown on her face, and she remained that way for what felt like hours, but was actually about ten seconds. Then she leaned forward, lifting her hand. Aneka locked her muscles to avoid flinching. Janna’s fingers trailed over Aneka’s cheek and then a single tear rolled out of the corner of her eye.

‘You poor child. What you’ve been through… I’d have gone quite mad.’

‘The Xinti started doing some… conditioning, they called it. They broadened my perspective to make me accept the change better.’

‘They never finished it though,’ Ella said. ‘The reactor accident interrupted it.’

‘I really don’t care,’ Janna said. ‘If they hadn’t done all that to you I’d have never met you, and neither would Ella. What they did to you was horrific, but the result is something beautiful.’

Aneka smiled. ‘You’re okay with this?’

‘Okay? Aneka, if you were not here my daughter would be dead! Instead she’s happier than I’ve seen her since she was a child. Okay really does not say enough. I don’t care what you are. I just care who you are.’ She frowned. ‘I can, however, see why this needs to be kept quiet. You needn’t worry, I’ll say nothing. Does Issa know?’

‘She will do. She’s FSA. I’ll make sure she’s briefed on it.’

‘Good. She’s the one person outside this room I don’t want to keep secrets from.’

Aneka poured more wine. ‘I think we need more alcohol. Everything’s got really serious.’

Janna lifted her glass and grinned. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 10.3.526 FSC.

Aneka dropped her case by the door of the apartment and started pulling off her clothes. It was not that difficult given that she was in a mini-skirt and T-shirt. ‘I’m going to have a shower, and then I’m going to offline for a while,’ she told Ella.

‘I’ll come with you. I can never sleep on night flights.’

‘And that’s why I need to offline for a while.’

Ella giggled. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘Well, someone told me to wear a skirt on the plane and used the fact to molest me all night whenever she thought the attendants weren’t watching. If it wasn’t you then I need to file assault charges against someone.’

More giggling; tired giggling, but still giggling. ‘I just can’t sleep on night flights, and it takes ages to fly that route. And anyway, that attendant, David, he knew exactly what we were doing.’

Aneka laughed. ‘So did the other two. It wasn’t like we were the only ones from the noises I heard. I’m not bothered about it, but now I need some sleep.’

‘Uh-huh, so do I. We’ve got tomorrow to do something with before we have to start work. Maybe when we wake up we could go out to a club…’

Aneka turned the shower on and pulled Ella into the streams with her. ‘Haven’t you had enough of clubs?’

‘I thought we could go to Shin You. Maybe see if Kat and Dillon want to go.’

‘That place with Kat and Dillon… All right, but you’ll be sleeping it off most of tomorrow.’ She plucked a tube of wash gel from a rack, squeezed some out and began soaping Ella’s back.

‘I know, but we’re going to be working our asses off the next few weeks. I think we should play hard before that.’ She sighed and moved a little closer to Aneka. ‘That feels so good.’

Aneka smiled. ‘All right, Shin You it is.’

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Aneka sat in the lounge, reading. It was gone midday and Ella was, as predicted, still asleep. Aneka had lain beside her for a couple of hours after waking, but had eventually given up and left the exhausted redhead to sleep.

Shin You, the Rimmic for libido, was basically a swingers’ club, even if the term was no longer used. Patrons went there for sex, and the club supplied alcohol and various inhibition-reducing, legal drugs to help that along. Kat and Dillon were big fans, Aneka less so. It always seemed a little forced to her. It seemed a bit like it was there just to enforce the idea that the Jenlay had such a free, wonderful society that you could have a place where it was perfectly safe to go and bang total strangers for fun. It was, kind of, fun, and Aneka turned her sex pheromones on whenever they went there because if you were going to go to a place like that you might as well get into the swing of things. But Shin You represented the most decadent aspects of Jenlay culture, and Aneka really only enjoyed it because Ella did.

‘I have a communication request coming in from Aggy,’ Al told her.

Closing the book she was reading, Aneka said, ‘Put her through,’ and the golden-skinned woman appeared, standing a few metres away. Aneka pulled her legs up from where they were propped on the couch. ‘Hey, Aggy. Have a seat.’

‘Thank you.’ Aggy grinned. ‘Not that I’m really sitting, but the thought is nice.’

‘How are you? Getting things ready for the trip?’

‘Captain Drake and Shannon have fully briefed me on the plan for the mission. I have checked their mission profile and I am quite happy with it. Obviously my previous experience with our destination makes my presence highly useful, though we do not know how conditions have changed. I believe this will be a most interesting mission.’

‘Yeah. Interesting is a word for it, but I don’t think you came down here to discuss that or for social reasons.’

‘Not entirely, though it is nice to see you. Is Ella not about? Ah, she’s still sleeping.’

‘A night out at a sex club. She needs the extra sleep.’

‘I am surprised. Her stamina always seems quite remarkable. However, it is Shannon I wish to talk about. I have discussed the matter with Captain Drake, but he was… evasive.’

‘She’s still not right, is she?’

‘She has recovered well, but the drugs she is using are not helping her mental state. I believe the clinical diagnosis would be mild depression. She seems relatively at ease when she is with others, but she seeks opportunities to be alone much more than she did. When she is she just sits and stares at the walls.’

‘She went through a bad experience and she’s taking time to readjust. This mission may be just what she needs to get herself back in stride. Aside from anything else, she’s going to get to be away from large numbers of people for several months. If that doesn’t help… I can try talking to her, but I don’t know what I can do that all her therapists haven’t.’

Aggy nodded. ‘I understand. I hope you are correct, but I wanted you to be aware of it. You are unique among the crew going to Earth in that she cannot hear your thoughts. This makes you the perfect person to help her if she needs it.’

‘Maybe. Don’t discount Drake. She might be able to hear him, but what she hears is that he loves her. Amazing what affection can do to help when you’re depressed.’

A yawn came from the bedroom door; Ella was up and padding towards the shower. ‘Hey Aggy. Nice to see you. Don’t mind me, I’m not awake yet.’ She walked into the bathroom and a second later there was the sound of running water.

‘Case in point,’ Aneka said. ‘It’s quite possible I’d be a nutjob if it wasn’t for that little nymphomaniac. She fell in love with me as soon as she saw me, and it’s really hard to ignore that even when you’ve discovered your entire life died a thousand years ago.’

‘Thank you, Aneka,’ Aggy said, smiling. ‘I had not considered that aspect of the dynamic. I will leave you to the remainder of your break time.’

‘See you soon, Aggy.’ The AI’s image vanished as it had arrived and a message appeared in Aneka’s view field saying the connection had been closed. Aneka looked towards the bathroom, and then she got to her feet, pulling her T-shirt up over her head. After the night before she felt like having her little nymphomaniac to herself and she really doubted that Ella was going to complain about it.

Part Three: Walking on a Moon

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‘Warp drive exit complete,’ Aggy stated. In truth, Aneka did not need the confirmation; she could see through the window of the flight deck.

‘All right. Have you got the directional lock on the Harriamon receiver?’

‘I am aligning the transmitter now. We are at maximum range. If I had my old transmitter this would be a lot easier.’

‘Well maybe we can get you a new one when we get back. I could sleep with Stephen again; he could probably swing the refit for free.’

‘Transmitter aligned. Sending message.’ The AI’s image appeared in the co-pilot’s seat. ‘I would not ask you to engage in intercourse just to improve my equipment, Aneka.’

Aneka laughed. ‘I was joking, Aggy. Mostly. Believe me, “engaging in intercourse” with Stephen Teldarian is not exactly an onerous task.’

‘I see. Well, Mister Teldarian’s company did originally construct the Garnet Hyde. Some of his technicians were involved in the review when we returned from Negral. It would be ideal if they could provide the new transmitter.’ She paused and then added. ‘The message has been sent.’

‘Okay, let’s get back into warp. It’s not like we’re going to get a reply.’

‘Of course, Aneka. Warp initiation in fifteen seconds.’

Aneka sat back to watch the stars change. They had stopped off after twenty days of a forty-five day trip to send off a short report. Basically it said, ‘We are about to leave communication range. Everything is going fine. See you soon,’ though there were a couple of side comments.

Ahead of her the stars blurred. She did not wait for Aggy to confirm that they had entered warp, but turned her seat and got to her feet to leave. ‘I’m going to my cabin to read, Aggy. Come chat if you feel the need.’

‘Thank you, Aneka. I must admit that long flights are not the most exciting thing in the universe.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Currently the only two people awake on the ship were Aneka and Aggy, if you counted Aggy as people, of course. Aneka did, and legally she was a crewmember, which meant that there were two members of the crew awake and that filled the regulation requirement. Everyone else was in cold sleep to reduce the resource requirements and allow them a more extended stay in the Sol system. It was, unfortunately, rather boring.

Admittedly, the trip out from New Earth to Harriamon had been longer, around twice as long in fact. She had been fine with that, but the closer she got to returning to the planet she had been born on, the more she had to face the fact that it was not actually going to be anything like the one she remembered. That was assuming that it was not a cinder.

Changing her mind about her destination, she went to the hibernation room instead of the habitation deck. The lights were out and the air circulation was off, but Aneka could see and she did not need to breathe all the time. There were eight pods, seven of them containing her friends, their bodies pumped full of chemicals which stopped cellular damage from the deep cold. Each white pod had a monitor on the side showing the activity within. There was barely any, of course, but there was a little. The chemicals allowed the body to continue functioning at a very low level rather than suspending it entirely. It meant that recovery was not resuscitation, which tended to result in a lot more side effects than reheating.

Importantly for Aneka, it meant that Ella was not neurologically inert. Not entirely anyway. Standing next to Ella’s coffin, Aneka closed her eyes and initiated the connection to Ella’s embedded computer. There was a moment of disorientation and then the sense impressions began to flow through. Everything was slow and somewhat fleeting. Ella was dreaming in slow motion.

Cassandra had showed them the trick. Both Aneka and Ella could transmit their full sensorium through their network connection. Aneka primarily used it to record what she saw in her memories; it was all internal. Ella could do the same, though she had less storage to do it with. Or they could share sensory data between them. Cassandra had demonstrated the effect by using her long, prehensile tongue on Ella while Aneka felt the effects in tandem. Right now Aneka was using it to observe Ella’s dreams.

As the sense impressions built up, she realised that dream was the wrong term. Maybe it was the cold, but Ella was having a nightmare about being trapped on Eshebbon. The chucks were hammering at the door, she was alone…

‘You’re not alone, love,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘I’m here. You’re safe.’ The sense of fear faded a little and, on a whim, Aneka unsealed her leotard, reaching in with one hand to stroke her fingers over her left breast. The banging on the door faded away. Smiling, Aneka teased her nipple into stiffness, knowing that to Ella it would feel as though her own body was being stimulated. The images from Ella shifted; there was a bed, red curtains around it and crimson sheets. Aneka squeezed her nipple and a moan echoed through her mind. She withdrew her hand, but Ella’s mind carried on the dream, rather more pleasantly than before.

Aneka disconnected. ‘Sweet dreams, love.’ Sealing her suit back up she headed out of the room and this time she did go up to the habitation deck.

‘Visiting Ella again,’ Aggy asked as she walked into the cabin. The golden woman materialised as she spoke, standing near the bed with her hands behind her back.

‘She was having a nightmare. I pushed her out of it.’

Aggy smiled. ‘I could tell you did something. Her neurological activity spiked.’

‘It doesn’t harm her, does it?’

‘If it did I would have said something before now. Minor spikes in activity are normal during cold sleep.’

‘Good.’ Aneka stretched out on the bottom bunk and pulled up the book she had been reading on the technology behind planetary navigation systems. A thought intruded. ‘Hey Aggy, how do you navigate? I mean, between star systems.’

‘Pulsars,’ Aggy replied.

‘Those are stars that send out some sort of signal pulse, right?’

‘A pulsar is a rotating neutron star which emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. You can only observe this beam when directly in its path and each one has a very regular pulse rate. If you know three which you can see, you can triangulate your position using them much as you can triangulate your position on the sea using lighthouses. It is obviously rather more complex at warp velocities, but the principle is the same. I actually use five references if possible and check my position every thousand seconds when in deep space.’

‘It’s kind of low-tech in a really high-tech way.’

‘There is no point in creating some incredibly clever solution to a problem when a far simpler solution exists.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Yeah, but that’s never stopped people trying to roller-skate uphill.’

‘An interesting visual metaphor,’ Aggy said, grinning. ‘I shall leave you to your reading.’

‘Later, Aggy.’ Settling back again, Aneka started reading. She really had to find something more enjoyable than technical books to read.

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Ella let out a groan and accepted the bottle Aneka was handing her gratefully. ‘Gillian can’t be awake yet, I can’t hear complaining.’ She popped the cap and sucked down half the bottle in one go.

Aneka checked the displays she was watching in-vision. ‘Almost there. Drake, Shannon, and Bash should be up first.’ Delta was already out of her pod, standing beside Monkey. The younger members of the team always seemed to recover first. Aneka went back to reading.

‘Are you reading something?’ Ella asked after a second.

‘Uh-huh. At least until you’re fit to get out of there and move. Aggy had a load of ebooks she got off the Internet. It’s better than technical manuals. Sally Goodfellow has just been kidnapped by the BEMs, and Chuck and Jerry are going to have to rescue her.’

‘What are you talking about? And what’s a BEM?’

‘Bug-eyed monster. Seriously, reading twentieth-century science fiction when you’re living in the future is hilarious, or occasionally surreal.’

Shannon was up, silent as she accepted a bottle from Delta.

‘That could be an interesting case study, actually. How right did they get it?’

‘I’m pretty sure that if you go looking you’ll find someone who got it almost spot on. There’s a lot of sci-fi out there and a lot of different visions of the future. Do people still write that kind of fiction?’ Aneka picked up a bottle and stepped over to the pod Gillian was in just as it popped open.

‘It’s a bit of a neglected genre…’

‘I am getting too old for this,’ Gillian moaned as she pulled herself into a sitting position. Aneka handed her the bottle which was going to vanish in one go.

Ella giggled. Gillian had been saying that every time she emerged from cold sleep for a long time. ‘People prefer romances, dramas, historical fiction.’

‘Historical fiction?’

‘Yeah, you know, explorers forging through the stars, finding new worlds, and then having sex with the alien women they find who know nothing of this thing we call kissing.’

Aneka blinked. ‘Right, and dramas are?’

‘Stories about deep social interaction, people vying for power and defeating incredible odds, and then having sex to celebrate.’

‘Uh-huh. I’d ask about romances, but I think I’m seeing a pattern here.’

‘And I think you’ve just grasped the essential elements of popular cultural writing,’ Gillian said. ‘Just so you don’t come away thinking that society has devolved entirely into sexual deviancy, I should point out that there are literary genres which do not involve sex.’

‘Really? And there I was thinking literature had finally got interesting.’

Ella climbed out of her pod. ‘You’re being sarcastic when we’re just out of deep sleep.’

‘Sorry. I’ll save it for later. I got some food and more water out of the stores so you can eat yourselves silly.’

‘First good idea I’ve heard in forty days,’ Drake said, starting for the door.

‘You’ve been in cold sleep for forty days, Drake,’ Bashford pointed out.

‘The irony has not escaped me. Has Aggy behaved, Aneka? Did you get that report off?’

‘Aggy has been a perfect companion,’ Aneka replied, ‘and I’m not just saying that because she threatened to flush me out the airlock if I didn’t.’

‘You promised not to tell him I said that, Aneka,’ Aggy’s voice said from corridor speakers. ‘Now I’ll have to kill the entire crew.’

‘As long as you let us eat first,’ Drake said.

‘Of course, Captain. I’m not cruel.’

‘Meanwhile,’ Aneka went on, ‘Aggy kept her sensors peeled and there was no sign of any ships outside of Harriamon, or indeed anywhere between there and here. That went into the report to Captain Gibbons.’

‘No pirates, terrorists, or creatures from the depths of space then?’ Monkey asked.

‘Or BEMs?’ Ella added.

‘None of the above,’ Aneka informed them.

‘Dad’ll be disappointed,’ Monkey replied.

Monkey’s father, Gillian’s ex-partner, had been at Harriamon when they arrived. Gillian and Monkey had had a suspicion that he was partially there to see them off. Aneka was damn sure he was. However, the official reason was that there had been some attacks on ships in the Rim, one of them at Harriamon.

‘Was a little weird,’ Aneka commented. ‘Ships attacked, crew killed, nothing taken. Does seem like terrorists rather than pirates, but you’d think even terrorists would loot the things.’

‘Maybe it was the Ghost Fleet,’ Monkey offered. His grin looked a little forced.

‘I still don’t really understand how a bunch of rational, even scientific, people can be scared of a space ghost story.’

‘Well,’ Ella said, ‘if you’re into reading at the moment, try Childress Dane’s The Ghost Fleet. It should be in the library. That’ll tell you all you need to know. Just don’t read it aloud.’

‘What’s it filed under?’

‘Historical fiction, but there’s no sex. Well, not what you’d call sex.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Aneka was not convinced. ‘Right after Sally gets rescued.’

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The Ghost Fleet was a fictionalised account of what the author claimed was a genuine investigator’s search for the truth behind the legend. It was not a bad read, though Aneka thought the idea that anyone could have survived the eventual reveal plotline kind of took away from the idea behind the story.

The plot followed the investigator, Anne Carter, as she seeks out people who claimed to have seen strange ships, mysterious sensor echoes, and the aftermath of Ghost Fleet attacks. It worked nicely to build up the tension with each tale from some terrified, hardened spacer building on the last. Eventually Carter thinks she has spotted a pattern in the attacks and books passage aboard a ship she believes could be the next victim of a recent string of assaults. Of course, her ship is hit and she spends two days hiding in air ducts and almost getting caught a number of times. There were numerous descriptions of things the creatures from the fleet did to the passengers and crew ranging from simple, but very violent, murder, through torture, to the rape of both sexes, apparently simply to brutalise rather than for any sexual gratification. Eventually the fleet leaves, Carter is picked up, and the story is supposedly told to the author in a room in an insane asylum.

The creatures were interesting. Dane never named them, calling them ‘creatures’ or ‘things’ throughout. They were described as being not particularly large, six-limbed, with four eyes, two forward-facing and two at the sides of the head. They were strong and viscous, and clearly technologically advanced, and they seemed to work very closely together in teams. What struck Aneka the most was that Dane could have gone for the typical huge, muscled, fanged, and clawed evil alien, but the description made them seem more like ants or some highly social species of monkey. Maybe that was what made it sound believable.

‘It’s not bad,’ Aneka said to Gillian and Ella. ‘I mean, I still don’t quite understand why everyone gets freaked by it, but it’s a good read. The aliens are believably not the kind of thing you’d expect.’

The two scientists were going over potential starting sites with her in the ship’s lab and they had taken a break to give their brains time to digest the options. Ella looked surprised. ‘You finished it? You only started it last night and it’s a long book.’

‘I read really fast when I want to. Electronic media anyway. Also, I don’t sleep as much as you mortals.’

‘Huh.’

‘Well,’ Gillian said, ‘Anne Carter was obviously fictional. No one has ever survived an attack attributed to the Ghost Fleet. With one caveat. Dane did the research herself and the part about finding a pattern in the attacks is pure fiction. All the stories she tells come from actual interviews with people who claimed to have seen things, and from reports on vessels discovered afterwards.’

‘You said there was a caveat?’

‘Yes. Dane started doing the research because she was on a ship that was first on the scene at an attack. They found one person, a woman, who was still alive when they got into the ship. She managed to give a description of the creatures which had… Well, you read the book, you know the kind of things they did. Then she died of her injuries. So, no one has ever survived for more than a few minutes. Dane’s book purports to tell a real story and a lot of people believe that story.’

‘The other thing is,’ Ella said, ‘that for all the horrible things that are done to the victims, there’s a feeling that it could be worse. There are always a few people missing from the ships. Maybe they get spaced, but most people believe the creatures take them away with them. And if they do all that to the people they don’t take, what kind of horror gets done to the ones they do?’

‘Huh,’ Aneka responded. ‘Yeah, I guess I can see it, but it’s still just a ghost story when it comes right down to it. It’s much more likely that people are seeing sensor anomalies and pirate attacks. I mean, if I were a pirate I think I’d use this as cover.’

‘Yes,’ Gillian agreed. ‘That is the rational explanation. Rationality, however, does not always cut it with people, and the Ghost Fleet appears in both Torem and Herosian legend going back to before the Xinti War. There is just a possibility that it’s real.’

‘And a possibility, no matter how remote, is enough to keep that kind of thing alive and scaring people.’

‘Precisely. Now, I’m not sure continuing this planning is going to be fruitful. Tomorrow we should start getting some basic information on the system. Not enough to know what’s there, but enough to know where the planets currently are. When we know that we should have a better idea of our best route.’

Aneka sank the rest of her coffee. ‘That sounds like a plan to me.’ She sighed. ‘Even if Stephen was crap in bed, this coffee would have been worth it.’

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‘And we’re getting this every trip?’ Delta said, pointing at her coffee mug.

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied. ‘As long as the Hyde is flying.’

‘Which I hope will be many years to come,’ Aggy commented. Her image was currently residing in the mess room wall next to a schematic of the Sol system.

‘Agreed,’ Aneka agreed. ‘So, if I’m reading that display correctly, we should come in on the side Saturn is on.’

Aggy turned and looked towards the display, even though she was obviously not really looking at it, and a dotted line moved in from the bottom right side. ‘Yes, Aneka. I would assume then that you would prefer to drop out of warp in the Saturn system and insert into an orbit around Titan?’

‘If we’re coming in that way anyway,’ Gillian said, ‘then I’d like to see whether the Xinti left anything of the facility there. Then… What about swinging clockwise around the Sun to Mars, take medium-range scans of Earth from there before moving in for a closer look?’ She looked towards Drake.

‘With Earth and Mars in close proximity like that… Yeah, I think that makes sense and we can use Venus to give us a slight slingshot. I’ll run the fuel usage projections, but it should work.’

‘Titan,’ Bashford said, stroking his chin. ‘We’ll need suits. It’s cold, relatively high air pressure. I’ll prepare a briefing on potential hazards.’

‘We don’t even know if there’s anything worth looking at yet,’ Gillian pointed out.

Bashford gave her a grin. ‘If there’s anything down there you’ll want to look, and I have time to prep this so I see no point in delaying.’

‘You know me far too well, Leo Bashford.’

‘I should do. Well, we have a plan.’

‘Yes,’ Drake agreed, ‘we do. Aggy, would you make the course adjustments please? We’re going to Titan.’

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Aneka stood behind Shannon’s flight chair, hands on the back of it, her fingers gripping the adanymax as she waited for the view to change.

Shannon’s hands moved over the console. ‘Warp exit… now.’

Aneka gasped. Ahead of them sunlight lit up the billions of icy moonlets that made up the rings of Saturn. ‘I never thought I’d see this,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘Never. I’ve seen pictures from probes. Everyone has, but no one had been out here by my time.’

‘It’s a good ring system,’ Drake agreed, ‘but that planet is too damn big for comfort.’

‘Problem?’

‘Not especially. Shannon, put us into an orbit around the gas giant. We’ll scan from here and then you can go in for a closer look on the shuttle. It’s got anti-gravity.’

‘Fair enough. How’s the EM?’

‘Out there,’ Shannon said as she trimmed the course, ‘you don’t want to know. Shielding is keeping it out. Five minutes to orbital insertion. Titan is in sensor range. Gillian, you should be getting telemetry through.’

Gillian’s voice came from the speakers; she was in the lab with Ella. ‘We are. Nothing artificial yet. I’m reading five thousand one hundred and fifty kilometre diameter, point-one-four-G surface gravity, one-point-four-five normal surface pressure… almost ninety-nine per cent nitrogen, the rest is hydrocarbons. Surface temperature is about ninety-four kelvin. It’s a real garden spot.’

‘Why did they even bother coming out here?’ Aneka asked. ‘I seem to remember something about there maybe being life on this rock…’

‘Less rock, more ice ball,’ Gillian replied. ‘The main reason for coming here was hydrocarbons. There were seas of methane down there. More useable hydrocarbons than on the whole of the Earth.’

‘They were drilling for oil?’

‘Basically. I’m sure there was a scientific component to the station, but commercial interests probably dominated.’

‘So we’re probably looking for a commercial facility? If it wasn’t bombed into oblivion.’

‘Yes. I’m reading evidence of cryovolcanism; there are definitely areas of lesser stability. It’s tidally locked… Are we inserting near it?’

‘Targeting a slightly wider orbit, ten thousand klicks retrograde,’ Shannon supplied.

‘Excellent. I’d expect them to build on a stable area on the side away from the planet, if possible.’

‘It looks kind of orange,’ Aneka commented.

‘That’s tholins in the atmosphere. And I’m reading a metallic structure,’ Gillian said, a triumphant note in her voice.

Aneka let go of Shannon’s chair and straightened up. ‘I’m on my way down. Looks like we’re going down.’

Titan.

Aneka swung the shuttle in from the eastern side of the station, flying into the wind. There was a storm coming in from the small world’s west, ahead of them, and the wind had been getting stronger the closer they flew to the buildings. Aneka could see lightning bursts flaring in the orange-tinted clouds.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘you picked a really interesting time to evaluate my piloting skills.’

In the co-pilot’s seat, Bashford smiled. ‘You’re at least as good as I am. I had to check you out some time, and this is a good test.’

‘You think I’m as good as you?’

‘I’ve got more experience; you’ve got faster reflexes and better coordination. The Xinti knew how to build a body.’

‘Huh.’

Ahead of them, through the faintly orange haze, the shadow of a low structure became visible and Aneka cut back on the thrust a little. ‘You seeing that, Gillian?’

There was no answer for a second. Gillian was in the back at the science station and they could not see her working over the sensors, but they knew that was what she was doing. ‘Structure seems intact. No signs of any damage. Either the Xinti didn’t spot it or they didn’t care.’ A pause and then a surprised tone entered her voice. ‘I’m registering low levels of EM.’

‘There’s something powered in there?!’

‘It… appears so. I have no idea what could be powering it, but there is something in there generating electromagnetic signals. Electronics, I think. Could you drift us around to the north side?’

Aneka checked the telemetry her in-vision display was giving her. ‘Not asking much,’ she muttered, and then nudged the vessel sideways, keeping its streamlined nose in the oncoming air.

The station was becoming more obvious. It had been streamlined itself: low, smooth buildings with metallic shielding over them and no windows. There seemed to be two main sections on a north-south alignment. The larger one was to the south and had various pipelines leading into it. Aneka figured that was processing for the methane, but it seemed rather small. The northern building had a dome on top of it which she figured contained communication and sensor equipment. The ship was not detecting radar emissions, so if the base was powered it was not looking out for visitors.

‘There!’ Gillian said suddenly. ‘Do you see those? North and west of the northern building? The pits?’

There was a black circle just north of the smaller building, maybe forty metres across. Aneka’s enhanced vision suggested that it was, indeed, a hole in the surface of the planet, the walls made of a different material than the icy crust. ‘You think that’s a landing area?’

‘That would be my guess. It gets incoming ships out of the storms. There’s a much bigger one further to the west, probably for methane transports. My guess would be that the closer one connects to the main habitation block.’

‘All right…’ Aneka glanced over at Bashford.

‘Be careful when we drop into the hole,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to cut back the engines pretty quickly, I suspect, and there could be some turbulence.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Like you said, you’ve got the experience. Everyone hang on, this could get bumpy.’

Edging the ship into position over the hole in the ice was easy enough. The shuttle had cameras which let her see all around it and she could patch them into a view in her vision field so that she could see ahead of her and in a three-sixty field under the ship. As soon as they got within a couple of metres of the surface, she could feel the irregular updraft trying to push them up and into the western wall. She adjusted the thrusters and continued dropping.

‘It’s around a hundred metres deep,’ Gillian said.

‘Al, give me a range to the bottom, please,’ Aneka asked silently. Green digits appeared in-vision showing the readout from the sensor array. One-hundred-point-two metres. Ninety-nine-point-five…

The wind cut back alarmingly from the west and the ship bucked forward. Aneka cut power to the main engines and hit the forward thrusters. There were a few shouts from the rear cabin, but the ship settled itself quickly.

‘We’re okay,’ Aneka called out. ‘Turbulence is settling too. Landing here can’t have been popular.’

‘I’m detecting what looks like a docking bridge on the southern side,’ Gillian said. ‘I doubt we can use it, but it should have an airlock.’

Aneka checked her telemetry: thirty-two metres to the ground and there was still some disturbance in the air, but it was getting far easier to keep the craft stable. ‘If we can wire into it with something, Al can probably hack the security system. Twenty metres to the ground. Looks clear.’

‘Dropping the landing gear,’ Bashford said. ‘All right everyone, when we’re down I want everyone ready with full suits. Aneka and Delta will go out to hack the door. Once they’re in, we’ll go into the facility as a group, but I want Delta and Monkey guarding Gillian and Ella at the airlock until Aneka and I have determined that it’s safe. Everyone goes in armed. I know it’s unlikely that there’s anyone in there, but we take no chances.’

The shuttle settled onto the bottom of the pit and Aneka shut down the propulsion systems. The gravity shifted from a normal one-G to the much lower pull of the small world. Aneka pushed her chair back and almost bounced out of it. ‘Okay then… Get your helmet on, Delta, time to go to work.’

~~~

The thick air swirled around them as they worked, like a slow tornado that tried vainly to push them over as Delta finished wiring a small computer unit into the external control panel of the airlock. Thunder roared through the air, sounding distant, but still threatening.

‘I think… Yeah, that should do it,’ Delta said. ‘This thing is kind of primitive.’

‘Hopefully that makes this easier,’ Aneka replied. ‘Al?’

‘I am connected to the slave unit and attempting to determine the control system’s protocols. Between me and Aggy’s database of security measures from your time, I believe this should go smoothly. Give me a moment… Done.’

‘That was a very short moment.’

‘I’m very good.’

Aneka drew Bridget, flicking the safety off. A little startled, Delta aimed her carbine at the doorway. ‘Okay, Al, open it.’

The heavy door levered itself open, swinging to the left. The airlock was about five metres long and lit only by a dim, red light over the door at the far end, but there was nothing in it which suggested trouble.

‘Aneka to shuttle, door’s open, we’re clear to proceed.’

Bashford’s voice replied over the radio. ‘We’re on our way out.’

‘Is there any sign of life?’ Ella asked.

‘Only electrical,’ Aneka replied ‘There’s what looks like an emergency light on, and the door was obviously under power. All we’ve got open is the airlock, so there’s not much to see.’ She gave Delta a nod. ‘You want to disconnect that and close up the panel while they’re coming over?’

Delta re-slung her carbine and got to work on the wires. ‘Do you, uh, think there’ll be bodies?’

‘No idea, but a good point. Ella? You’ll check for biohazards in there, right?’

‘Of course,’ Ella replied.

‘I think we won’t find any,’ Gillian said. ‘Bodies that is. The sensors saw nothing in the way of ships. I believe that, if anyone was actually here when the Xinti came, they left at some point after the attack.’

‘Good,’ Delta said. ‘I realise I’m going to have to see dead bodies on this job sooner or later. I’d just prefer it if it wasn’t on some abandoned, isolated station.’

Aneka grinned. ‘Yeah, that would be the stuff of horror movies.’ The rest of the team was emerging from the nearest airlock on the shuttle. Aneka watched them, just in case anyone had trouble in the swirling wind.

‘And you used to watch that kind of thing for fun?’ Delta asked.

‘It’s not like it was real. No such thing as ghosts, or zombies, or vampires.’

‘Vampires?’

‘Dead people who rise from the grave to suck the blood of the living.’

‘There are chucks,’ Ella commented. ‘You called them zombies.’

‘Uh-huh. Hopefully I’m not going to find out I was wrong about ghosts and vampires too.’

‘Right, now let’s worry about current and present danger,’ Bashford said. ‘Delta, Monkey, take the rear.’ He indicated that Aneka should lead in and then followed her.

There was a panel beside the door which looked like it was the airlock controls, and since the buttons were glowing dimly Aneka figured they would work. She glanced at Bashford, got a nod, and hit what looked like the button to cycle the air. Behind them the door swung closed with a clang.

‘The air is cycling,’ Ella said after a couple of seconds. ‘The pressure is approaching normal…’ Her eyes widened. ‘I’m actually getting oxygen showing up.’

‘Can we breathe it?’ Delta asked.

‘Hang on…’ The light above the door went from red to green and the door started to open. Aneka and Bashford immediately shifted to cover it. ‘We’d suffocate,’ Ella continued. ‘Oxygen is too low, carbon dioxide is too high. I think the air-processing system is offline and this is what’s left after a thousand years. I’m showing trace ammonia, methane… No organics. I think Gillian’s theory is right.’

Aneka and Bashford moved into the corridor on the other side of the door. It burrowed straight to the south, at least a hundred metres. Aneka could see another door at the end, this time secured with a locking wheel. The walls were metal, probably steel, and they looked pretty rough and ready, but solid.

Gillian had her own scanner out. ‘Steel plating over a polymerised ceramic. This place predates bioplastic construction. No Plascrete, none of the adanymax variants.’

‘Huh,’ Aneka grunted. ‘Good, solid, old-fashioned construction.’

‘Indeed,’ Gillian replied. ‘I’m amazed it’s lasted so well.’

‘Let’s see how well,’ Bashford suggested. ‘Close the airlock, but stay by it. Aneka, I’ll take your advice and let you lead once we’re through that door at the end.’

Aneka nodded and headed down the corridor. There was a small porthole in the door which showed clear air and a staircase on the other side. She slipped Bridget back into her holster and turned the wheel. A millennium of lack of maintenance made the big door stiff, but it gave way to Aneka’s artificial muscles. Pulling both pistols, the displays from them appearing at the sides of her vision field, Aneka moved on up the open, steel steps.

She emerged into what looked for all the world like the reception area of an airport. The room was moderately large and had seats in rows. She could imagine people waiting here to embark a shuttle on their way back to Earth. The lighting was dim; maybe half the ceiling lights were still working and a couple of those were flickering. It looked like there were actual fluorescent tubes behind the panels, and the overall effect was spooky.

With only one obvious way out, Aneka took it, finding a short corridor leading to a crossroads. Signs on the walls pointed to ‘Central Control’ straight ahead and a couple of habitation blocks to the north and south. ‘Straight on?’ Aneka suggested.

‘If there’s anything here, I think that’s going to be the first place we’ll find it.’

Aneka went on down the corridor. There were doors on either side which remained closed as they passed. All of them were labelled and seemed to be administrative offices. Aneka realised as they went on that she was getting tenser and forced herself to relax. The chances of anyone or anything being here were too small to calculate. The corridor ended in a double door. Aneka nudged the button beside it with a pistol muzzle and the doors scraped open, one of them jamming two-thirds open.

Central Control was a hexagonal room on two levels. A walkway ran around the edge at the level they were on; ladders dropped down to the floor below at the four compass points. On this level there seemed to be various instrument panels and Aneka spotted one close by with an active display.

‘I think I know why it’s still powered, Doc,’ she said. ‘There’s a panel here that’s showing readouts for a geothermal plant. Looks like there’s a reactor as back-up, but that’s been shut down.’

Bashford was looking at some of the panels on the other side of the doorway. ‘All these systems seem to have been closed down. I mean really closed down. Someone did an orderly shutdown of the entire facility. Only the very basics were left running, like they were thinking someone might be back to bring it up again.’

‘Well,’ Gillian replied over the intercom, ‘we’re here.’

‘We’ll see about that in a bit.’

Rather than going down the ladder, Aneka relied on her enhanced body and the low gravity and dropped from the walkway to the floor below. Her guns swung up and around as she landed, spreading her visual field, but there was nothing to see aside from computer consoles and chairs. There were two offices behind glass walls at north and south, one labelled ‘Security’ and the other containing a bigger chair, probably the commanding officer’s office.

Aneka lowered her guns. ‘We can sweep the habitation areas, Bash, but I think we’re being excessively paranoid.’

Bashford looked down at her from the walkway and nodded. ‘Okay, you four get up here to the control room. It’s straight through from the air lock, no deviations. That means you, Doctor Gillian Gilroy.’

‘As if I would,’ Gillian replied. ‘I want to see this control room.’

Bashford’s laugh was throttled some by the intercom. ‘You can see if any of these systems can be brought back from the dead. If we can get a breathable atmosphere in here it’ll make working easier. Aneka, you check the northern habitat. I’ll go south. We might as well be sure there are no breaches at least.’

Nodding, Aneka stepped up to the ladder, bent her knees, and jumped. She had to grab the railing at the top to stop herself flying into the ceiling. ‘Okay… So I’m not quite adjusted to low gravity yet.’

‘That’ll teach you to have super-muscles,’ Bashford commented as he turned for the door.

29.8.526 FSC.

They were still in their suits, but their helmets were now just being kept close. It had taken most of the night for the atmospheric processing system to bring the oxygen level up and scrub the excess carbon dioxide, but they were effectively in a shirt-sleeve environment. It was just that no one entirely trusted it.

Aneka wandered through the northern habitation block with Ella, carrying two helmets and being there just because the regulations said so, though it did get her out of trying to get the station’s computers to reboot. Monkey and Delta were on that duty while Bashford and Gillian went through the southern wing. Ella was having a veritable field day, and Aneka suspected that Gillian would have been bouncing in glee if Gillian did things like that.

‘This is fantastic,’ Ella said for the… Well, Aneka had stopped counting really. ‘They left in an orderly fashion, but they obviously decided to take minimal effects with them. Photographs, books, mementos… We could probably spend months here cataloguing this stuff.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied.

‘You’re not very excited.’

‘All this stuff you’re amazed and excited by? Half of it I could have bought on Tottenham Court Road in my time.’ She picked up a thin tablet device from the lower of the two bunks in the room and pointed at the logo. ‘This is a bloody Kindle! They were like the in thing if you were into reading. It’s not one I recognise, but my brother had one of the earliest ones.’ She dropped the reader back onto the bed and shrugged. ‘This is… ordinary.’

‘Oh… I guess. But this is what archaeologists live for. I mean, it doesn’t matter what period you’re studying, it’s the personal artefacts that really tell you a lot about the people.’

‘Yeah,’ Aneka conceded, ‘that’s true. I just doubt the people here were much different from the ones I knew. A bit different, I guess. I mean, the ones here before they closed down would be… a century more advanced. Interstellar travel would be relatively common. They’d met aliens…’

‘Some of them. We don’t think there was much intermixing. Maybe some ambassadors visiting. Most of the general populace would have never actually seen a Herosian or a Torem, except maybe on vid.’

‘They’d know they existed though. A lot of people thought there would be mass panic if we ever had solid proof that aliens were out there. You’d have to be nuts to think that Earth was the only world with intelligent life, but most people just didn’t think about it. No proof, no worry.’

‘There could have been. We don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out when we get to Earth.’

Aneka grinned. ‘Have you noticed? Everyone’s just calling it “Earth” now, not “Old Earth.”’

Ella giggled. ‘I hadn’t, but you’re right. I guess…’

She was cut off by Monkey’s voice coming over the radio. ‘Mom, Ella, you might want to get back up to Control. My glorious and very skilled Amazon has managed to get this heap of silicon junk to talk to us.’

‘On my way,’ Gillian’s voice replied immediately.

‘Come on,’ Ella said, bolting for the door.

Running was not a good idea in the low gravity, but they made their way as fast as they could to the main junction and then down to the control room. Monkey and Delta were sitting in front of one of the consoles, apparently trying to get it to respond to them. All Aneka heard as she dropped to the bottom level was a female voice saying, ‘Unauthorised access,’ and grunts of annoyance from Delta.

‘Trouble getting in?’ she asked.

‘Please tell me we don’t have a working computer we can’t get into,’ Gillian said as she arrived at the top of the ladder.

‘It’s being… stubborn,’ Delta replied.

Aneka leaned over her shoulder and looked at the console. Fairly standard design. It was not running some sort of Windows. There was a button showing ‘Login’ and nothing else. Reaching out she slid the mouse pointer over it and tapped the pad. The screen said ‘Verifying…’

‘Security Officer Andrea Johnson verified,’ the voice said. ‘Your last login was… unknown.’ Aneka blinked. The screen was changing to show a plain, blue background, which the system began to decorate with icons.

‘It… seems to know you,’ Delta said.

‘As someone called Andrea…’ Aneka trailed off. ‘Can’t be,’ she said, her voice soft. She stumbled backwards, the effect softened by the low gravity, and Ella caught her.

‘Aneka?’ Ella asked.

‘The other me. Yrimtan. She was here. She was here when… She wasn’t on Earth when the Xinti attacked.’

~~~

The room was stark, undecorated, and largely empty. It was one of the larger ones reserved for senior staff at the station, and it had a double bed as well as the more basic facilities of a desk and a couple of chairs. According to the staff roster, this was the room which had been assigned to Andrea Johnson.

Aneka pulled open the drawers of the desk and then slammed them shut again. ‘Nothing. Not a single piece of paper. No pictures. Nothing.’

Ella emerged from the small bathroom holding a glass. ‘Not nothing, exactly. She had a boyfriend.’

Aneka frowned at her and then noticed the old-style, double-edged safety razor sitting in the glass along with a very dry-looking toothbrush. ‘It might have been hers…’

‘You don’t have to shave your legs; I really doubt she would have needed to.’

Aneka nodded a little reluctantly. ‘I guess. Besides which I used to use a plastic disposable one, not one of those metal things. That’s really old-fashioned. Has more of a male feel to it.’ She looked around, still seeing nothing useful. ‘So we know she had a man, and he had a preference for old-style shaving implements, and that’s about it.’

Ella took the razor out of the glass, turning it over and examining it. ‘And something happened to him before they left the station.’

‘Where do you get that from?’

‘Well, let’s say they had weight restrictions on the ships they used to leave and they could only take a few personal artefacts. The other rooms we’ve gone through have a lot of stuff in them which I’d have thought they would take, but nothing really personal. I’m not seeing pictures of couples. Only a few family pictures or pictures of kids. So they took everything they could.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, a man who shaves with something like this… This is about as personal an object as it gets and I bet he wouldn’t be able to replace it. He’d have taken it. Maybe the computer can tell us more. We can check through the personnel files…’

Nodding, Aneka headed for the door. ‘What was she doing out here pretending to be a security officer anyway? According to Eve she was supposed to be this big influence on the space programme. You can’t do that if you’re on a gas station in the arse end of the system.’

‘We’re not sure, but we think the war was going for as much as fifty years before the Xinti came here. Maybe she decided she wanted to be out of the way. Didn’t want to kill Xinti, couldn’t help Humanity in the war.’

‘Maybe. You know… this means she could be alive.’

‘It still seems pretty unlikely,’ Ella replied. ‘Even if she is, she could be almost anywhere.’

‘Yeah… Yeah, I know.’

~~~

The activity up in Central Control was rather more animated than it had been. Gillian was actioning the ‘kid in a candy store’ plan for handling the sudden acquisition of a lot of useful data; she was flicking through file directories, reading the names of files, and randomly opening some to see what was in them. She would settle down after a while and start being systematic.

Monkey looked up from the console he was sitting at when Aneka landed softly on the deck beside him. ‘Well, we got some useful information already,’ he said. ‘The earliest data file in the system was created in twenty-thirty-seven, so we figure that’s when the base was established. The last entry in the commander’s log is in twenty-one-thirty-seven. So it was running for almost exactly a century.’

‘The personnel records suggest a staff of around four hundred and fifty,’ Gillian went on. ‘Three hundred working the refinery in shifts, the rest handling administration and scientific work.’

‘So they were doing some sort of science here,’ Ella stated.

‘It seems to have been a largely commercial operation with government oversight,’ Bashford said. He was tapping at another console which he suddenly seemed to have some success with. ‘Yes! This thing has a file system like a trail of glickle droppings.’ They all looked up as the large screen which took up much of the southern wall changed to displaying a schematic of the station. The majority of it was on or close to the surface, as they had suspected, but there was what looked like a drilled tunnel leading down from the main structure beneath the link tunnel between Control and the refinery. The schematic just cut it off after a couple of hundred metres. It did similar things to the pipelines into the refinery.

‘I am detecting wireless network activity,’ Al said. ‘Attempting to negotiate connection.’

‘I got the primary networks up,’ Delta said triumphantly from up on the walkway. ‘We should have data access to the refinery, security cameras… We could get the external sensors up if you’d like.’

‘What about that pipe sticking out the bottom of the station,’ Aneka asked. ‘Anything on that?’

‘Uh… There’s a panel over on the south side says something about an observation lab hoist.’

‘Network link established,’ Al said into Aneka’s head. ‘I have managed to replicate your double’s login details so we have extensive access.’

‘Download all the personnel records for the station and start going through them for details on Andrea Johnson,’ Aneka instructed. Aloud she said, ‘Think we should take a look at that hole?’

‘I think that’s not on the plans,’ Bashford replied. ‘That I can find anyway. Only way we’re finding out what it is is to go look.’

~~~

The chamber under the base had all the signs of something put together on short notice, but it did have a feature which was interesting.

‘The sensors suggest that this is later construction,’ Gillian said. ‘There’s something much more like modern Plascrete behind the metalwork.’

‘They built this far later,’ Bashford said. ‘Makes sense. It would explain why the full structure isn’t on the plans.’

The room had various monitoring stations which suggested that this was the primary control suite for the geothermal system, and one very heavy looking metal door. Aneka looked over some of the displays and then wandered over to the curved pressure door.

‘It said “hoist,” right? So they must have drilled down to make the geothermal system and… this is a way to get down to the machinery at the bottom?’

‘It also said that it was the hoist for an observation lab,’ Ella replied. ‘The geological sensors suggested a decoupled crust. I suspect this leads down to a lab that sits under that, in whatever is underneath.’

Aneka looked around at Bashford who was standing at a console in the middle of the room. He pressed something and the huge door levered outward and then to the side. Behind it, set into a metal-lined tube, was a lift car which looked like it could withstand the pressure at the bottom of an ocean. Another button opened the car’s heavy door. There was room inside for three people if they stood very close together.

Bashford grunted. ‘I suppose we want to send someone down there?’

‘I’d like it checked for anything interesting,’ Gillian said, ‘but only if it’s safe.’

‘Everything up here seems to suggest the systems are intact,’ Monkey said.

The lead facilitator stroked his bald head, looking thoughtful and worried. ‘Aneka, Ella, are you up for this?’

‘Of course,’ Ella replied.

Aneka shook her head, grinning. ‘If she’s going, then so am I. Put your helmet on, love, we don’t know what the air will be like down there.’

With helmets set firmly in place and Ella interfacing three different sensor units to her implant computer, they climbed into the pressure vessel that was the lift. Aneka looked out at Bashford and gave him a nod.

‘The two of you keep in radio contact,’ Bashford said, then he punched a couple of buttons.

The two doors slid into place, sounding very solid as they locked. That was reassuring. There was a shudder, Aneka caught Ella as she stumbled, and then they were moving down. Ella looked up at Aneka; she was not smiling.

‘Al, link me through to Ella’s implant. Just voice.’

‘We’re going to be good, right?’ Ella’s voice sounded in her head immediately.

‘We’re going to be fine. They wouldn’t have built this thing without taking into account every contingency.’

‘That was a thousand years ago.’

Aneka’s navigation system was telling her that they were dropping at around thirty metres per second now. ‘I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Even if I have to climb the cables with you on my back.’

Ella grinned at her. ‘I don’t think it’s got cables.’

‘So I’ll crawl up the sheer wall. It won’t come to that anyway.’

Bashford’s voice intruded through their helmet speakers. ‘How’s it going down there?’

‘So far so good,’ Aneka replied. ‘This thing’s moving pretty fast.’

‘Yeah. We’re monitoring that here. By our calculations, you’ll drop out of range for the suit radios in about ten seconds.’

Aneka looked around, spotting a speaker box on the wall with a button under it. She pressed the button. ‘Are you hearing this?’

There was a pause and then Gillian’s voice came from the speaker. ‘We are. Are the sensors picking anything up, Ella?’

‘Nothing much. The walls on this car are too thick. I am getting some readings of electromagnetic activity. I think this thing’s running on some sort of maglev system.’

‘That seems likely. I’m not sure there’s much we can do except wait. Let us know if anything changes, and…’

‘Check in every five minutes,’ Bashford cut in.

‘Will do, Boss,’ Aneka replied, and let go of the switch.

‘I wonder how long we’ll be going down,’ Ella said, her voice sounding in Aneka’s head.

‘No idea. How thick is the crust?’

‘Not sure.’

Aneka gave her a grin. ‘Then we’ll be at the bottom sometime.’

~~~

The car shuddered and Ella grabbed onto a rail which ran around one side. They were slowing down after fifty-five minutes of dropping through the crust of the little planet.

Aneka reached over and hit the intercom button. ‘We’re slowing. There are no horrible grinding noises, so I figure the slowing down is on purpose.’

‘It seems like a steady drop,’ Bashford’s voice replied. ‘Looks like you’re getting to the bottom.’

‘Vashma I hope so,’ Ella said. ‘I’m not looking forward to going back up.’

There was a loud clang and the car jolted to a stop. Then there was silence.

‘Are you reading anything?’ Aneka asked.

‘I’m not reading anything troubling. The electromagnetic effects have shut off.’

There was a dull noise from outside the car, and then the door swung out. Aneka turned on her helmet lights; wherever they had arrived at, it was pitch dark, the light from the lift only revealing the dim outline of a short corridor. The torch beams did not reveal much more. Out of habit more than anything, Aneka pulled one of her pistols, and then stepped forward into the corridor.

‘There’s a corridor ahead,’ Ella said for the benefit of those above. ‘We’re going to go in. Hopefully there’ll be an intercom in here somewhere.’

‘If not, check back here in five minutes,’ Bashford instructed.

The corridor was no more than five metres long, and it ended in a pressure door with a window in it. The room inside was dark, but there was no sign of water, or any other fluid, on the other side. Aneka located the controls and hit the open button, and the door levered away from them into the room.

It was circular, perhaps four metres across, and if it was a laboratory it was an odd one. A bed occupied one side, a metre from the curving wall. On the opposite side of the room a couch of some description sat facing outwards. There was a console in the middle, and they moved towards that. Aneka found a switch on some tubes mounted above it and fluorescent lights flickered into life. Almost immediately Ella spotted the intercom.

‘Uh… Hello from the dark room at the bottom.’

Gillian sounded relieved, even over the intercom. ‘You found something?’

‘Yeah. It’s kind of weird. It’s like someone had a bedroom down here. Bed, console, a sofa…’ She looked up at the blank, metal ceiling. ‘There are no overhead lights, just some lamps over the console.’

‘There’s a reading light beside the bed,’ Aneka said. She returned her attention to the console. ‘It said it was an observation lab…’ She hit a button. Behind them the door closed.

‘What was that?’ Gillian asked, alarmed.

‘The door on the room closed,’ Aneka replied. There was another sound, a faint but audible squeaking. In the dim light from the console lamps, they could just about see the walls moving. That was when they realised that the walls were actually some sort of glass with metal shielding over it. ‘There are windows. The shields over them are moving down, and… Oh wow…’

‘Aneka?’

Lights illuminated another world outside the structure. Visibility was not great, but they could see water, or maybe some other fluid, kilometres of it stretching out until the slight haze obscured everything. Metal rods blocked the view in a few places, extending down from the ice above them into the depths below, and there were pillars of ice too, reaching down from the underside of the crust like massive, glittering stalactites.

‘Aneka?!’

‘Sorry. We’re okay. The view is… quite something.’

Ella pulled herself together and moved over to the window in front of them. Taking one of her sensor units in hand, she directed it out through the glass. ‘Okay, this is a diamond-like crystal lattice structure, about twenty centimetres thick. The scanner is getting readings from outside… Water, ammonia, various hydrocarbons. That explains why the water is a liquid. Temperature is just over one-sixty kelvin… I’m getting organic signals.’

Aneka blinked. ‘There’s something alive out there?’

‘No. Well, unlikely. Amino acids though, some other precursors. Warm this place up and you might start getting life.’

‘Any safety concerns?’ Bashford asked.

‘Structural analysis is coming back sound on radar and ultrasound. I think we’re safe enough. Air is… breathable.’

‘All right. Scan whatever you need to, take pictures, and call us when you’re coming back up.’

‘I’d like to take an hour or so down here,’ Ella replied. ‘Aside from anything else, I want a break before I have to ride that car back up.’

Bashford gave a snort of a laugh. ‘First sign of anything worrying, you get out of there.’

‘Oh, we will,’ Aneka told him. ‘Talk to you soon.’ She turned off the intercom and looked at Ella. ‘This isn’t going to take an hour. Not even close.’

‘Nuh-huh. But there’s a bed. How many times do you think I’ll get the chance to have sex under a planet?’

‘You’re nuts.’

‘Yes, but I’m adorable too.’

~~~

Aneka sat on the couch, Ella’s head in her lap, watching the light play on the currents and eddies that swirled in the water outside the crystal window. It was pretty, but a little dull. Still, she could see the attraction of spending time down here. There was no sound, nothing to disturb you. It seemed kind of odd to have an observation area down here since there seemed to be very little to actually observe. The instruments on the console registered water temperature, cold, water pressure, very high, and the various chemical constituents, which sounded pretty inimical to life, but Ella assured her that things lived in much worse conditions.

Maybe the main use for the room was what they had just done. The sex had been carried out in near silence since every tiny moan seemed to be very loud. It was surreal, exciting, and carried that thrill of danger knowing that they were making love somewhere surrounded by tonnes of freezing, watery death.

‘I have managed to determine some information about Andrea Johnson,’ Al said. His voice sounded hushed; even he was infected by the silence of the room. ‘She was contracted to the station on secondment from a United Nations security organisation. There is no indication that this was unusual, perhaps it was common practice for an international organisation to provide policing.’

‘Anything on her background?’

‘Yes, but certainly faked. Born in London in twenty-one-hundred, no family, parents dead. She entered the UN Interstellar Security Organisation in twenty-one-twenty-three and was posted to Titan in twenty-one-twenty-six. There is a registration of cohabitation record for her and a Captain Andrew Innsbruck.’

‘That’s it?’

‘In the personnel files. I believe, given that the station’s computer thinks you are her, that we could access her personal files.’

‘We should be getting back up,’ Aneka said aloud. It was true; they had been down there for almost an hour.

Ella sighed. ‘Yeah. It’s so peaceful down here. Shannon would love it.’

‘A hundred klicks of ice between her and the nearest mind? Yeah, she would. Come on, get your suit on.’

With their suits back on and their helmets in place, just in case, Aneka hit the close button on the shutters. Metal rose up to cover the view outside, the lights staying on until the last moment, and then the room was plunged into near darkness. Ella flicked off the desk lamps and they headed back towards the lift for the long journey back to the surface.

30.8.526 FSC.

‘Video diary, fourth of June, twenty-six.’ The voice was Aneka’s, the face on the screen was Aneka’s, but the woman who had recorded this centuries ago was not the Aneka watching it. The Xinti had changed the design a little: this one had golden-blonde hair, neither the white she now sported nor the dirtier colour she had originally had. It looked like they had dispensed with the exaggerated boobs too.

‘Today is my first day on the job here at Titan Station. What a shithole. Three hundred assorted refinery workers who are out here for the danger pay, sixty-two administrative personnel who couldn’t care less what happens as long as the liquid methane gets shipped, twenty-six scientists studying the organics and trying to work out the methane cycle in the atmosphere, twelve prostitutes, both sexes, five command staff, and me. I get to field the security for the entire station. Not that I can’t do it, it’s just that it’s dumb. Still, I wanted to get off Earth. Be careful what you wish for.

‘On the plus side, the pilot of the ship I came over on is still here. I’m pretty sure he likes me, and he’s cute. He ships out in two days so I’d better move fast. Signing off.’

The screen went dark and then displayed the list of entries again. They were not made every day, but there seemed to be a reasonable record of what ‘Andrea’ had been up to while she was on Titan.

‘She sounds like me,’ Aneka commented silently.

‘Unsurprising,’ Al replied.

Aneka selected another entry, not quite at random. Andrea looked tired, which was quite a feat considering.

‘Video diary, twenty-sixth of December, twenty-six. Boxing Day. The plant’s been running on a skeleton crew for the last two days. They’ll resume full operation tomorrow. Everyone’s been celebrating. So that’s eighteen drunks sleeping it off in the cells, three fights I had to break up resulting in two men in the infirmary, and one assault on a prostitute. That resulted in a man in the infirmary, but that’s because I bounced the arsehole’s head off the deck. I need to offline for a few hours, my head’s swimming. At least Andrew comes in day after tomorrow. I swear he’s the only good thing within a light-minute of this hole. Signing off.’

‘Huh. Seems like she liked her dashing space captain.’

Al popped up a portrait, likely an ID image, of a handsome man of around thirty-five with blue eyes and stylish, black hair. ‘He appears to be quite a handsome man.’

Aneka hit the next entry in sequence, which was eight days later. Andrea was now grinning: quite an improvement. ‘Video diary, third of January, twenty-seven. Yeah… Can’t get the stupid grin off my face. Andrew left this morning and we’ve been fucking just about non-stop since he arrived. I actually feel Human again. Well, you know what I mean. Once the morons at the refinery were back at work and not nursing hangovers, things calmed down a lot and I could take a rest, but instead of that I’ve been fucking like a bunny. It’s a good thing I’m not Human or I’d be walking funny. God he’s good. And let’s face it, in this gravity you can get up to some pretty amazing gymnastics. We…’

The video cut off as Aneka stabbed a button. ‘I really don’t think I need to hear the details of what she got up to with her boyfriend.’

‘What are you up to?’ Aneka looked up to see Ella standing in the doorway of the security office, which was where Aneka had decided to sit to review the diary.

‘I’m sitting in Andrea’s chair, reading Andrea’s diary.’

Ella walked around and stood behind her. ‘Let’s see her then?’

Aneka selected another entry. ‘Video diary, sixteenth of February, twenty-seven.’ The mildly depressed look was back.

‘I think I prefer your hair,’ Ella commented absently.

‘It takes so long to get news out here,’ the recording went on. ‘We just got word that there was a battle between Xinti and Herosian forces at the Grand Market. There was a lot of damage and the Herosian fleet was just about wiped out. The war isn’t going well. I still don’t understand why this is happening. I haven’t had any contact with Negral since it started, but I don’t believe they would start a war like this. I don’t believe they’d just destroy what they sent me to build. I feel… betrayed. All that hard work for this. Fuck it. Signing off.’

‘She doesn’t seem happy,’ Ella commented.

‘About the war, no. Of course she wouldn’t have known the Herosians started it. To her it seems like the Xinti just turned around and started attacking the results of their uplift projects. She’s in love with a pilot though. He cheers her up.’

Ella giggled. ‘Is he handsome?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, keep watching. Those diaries are probably really valuable as a historic record aside from anything else. Especially considering what she was sent to do.’ Grinning, she headed for the door. ‘Your breasts are way better too.’

Shaking her head, Aneka started another recording.

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Aneka stood in front of the main screen in the control room with the rest of the team on chairs at the consoles. ‘Okay, well it took a while, but I’ve gone through my double’s diary. When I get the time I’ll write up my thoughts on it, and given she’s almost certainly long gone, I don’t think she’d mind you going over it. It’s personal in places. I think I know her better now.’

‘Did her opinion of the war change?’ Ella asked.

‘She never understood why it happened. The later entries are more bitter than the one you saw. However, that’s not what I wanted you to see. I found these three recordings, which I think you should see.’ Al activated the video feed and Andrea’s face filled the view screen.

‘Video diary, ninth of February, thirty-one. We just got reports through from the news agencies embedded with the main fleet…’ She stopped, looking down at her lap. ‘The Herosians are a bunch of shits. It’s not really that the Xinti have reduced their solar system to a pile of rocks, it’s that everyone knows we’re next. I don’t…’ She shook her head and frowned. ‘Can’t keep saying that. It doesn’t matter why they’re doing this anymore. We’re screwed. Seems like they’re going to wipe the slate clean and start again. Signing off.’

The next video began playing almost immediately. Andrea was wearing a flat expression as she stared at the camera. ‘Video diary, uh… It’s March, the fifth I think. Twenty-one thirty-two, the year the world ended. We’ve been running silent now for three days, but we’ve been listening. That’s how I know… We picked up a distress call from the New England yesterday. They were under attack, so Andy’s dead. From what we’ve been hearing they’ve been nuking the major cities for two days now. The Mars bases are gone. Either they haven’t got to us, they haven’t noticed us… or they don’t care. I can’t believe they’re holding back because I’m here.’

She shifted in her seat. ‘Assuming we survive the next few days, the plan is to hole up here for a while, see if there’s anything to go back to on Earth. We think we can manage at least five years on the supplies we have if we make a few adjustments up here. The geothermal system will help, of course… I keep thinking about going down there and letting the water in.’ She looked down again. ‘Thing is, I’m not even sure it’d kill me. Signing off.’

There was a pretty drastic change in the face that appeared in the third video. Now she looked determined rather than dejected, but there was something Aneka did not like about her eyes. Ella was also frowning; she had seen the change too.

‘It’s May third, twenty-one thirty-seven and this is going to be the last entry I make here. I’m going back to Earth. We’ve had pretty much no information from there in five years, but we know there were a few survivors. The others have decided to take the Melbourne and head out to one of the colonies away from Xinti space. They’re hoping the Xinti haven’t killed everyone. I need to save the people on Earth. The Xinti can go fuck themselves to Hell, but I can’t stop myself doing what they wanted me to do. They told me to uplift Humanity. I need to go do that. Again. Hopefully I’m not going to have to start by genetically engineering Humans from radioactive slime, but even if I have to do that, they’re coming back!’ She reached forward towards the screen and the image went black.

Aneka looked around at the others. ‘So, there you have it, a potted history of the end of the war as far as Earth was concerned. Then Yrimtan got on a ship and went home. Obviously, I don’t know if she got there or what she found, and she’s probably dead…’

‘But the suggestion is definitely that she thinks there are people on the planet,’ Gillian said.

‘Or there were.’

Gillian nodded. ‘Drake? Are you getting this?’

Drake’s voice sounded from a small comm-unit sitting on the console in front of Gillian. ‘We got it. Right now we can’t confirm or deny anything. Given where we are in relation to the Earth and Sun, we’re detecting just about nothing. The solar corona is a lot noisier than anything they might be putting out. We’re seeing nothing in the way of ground lighting at the moment, though the photosphere makes observation a little difficult. Smaller settlements would be missed.’

‘So we won’t really know more until we can get a closer look,’ Gillian said, frowning.

‘That’s the basics. We’re in an even worse position with Mars.’

‘Thank you,’ Gillian said. ‘Aneka, would you gather every piece of data you can find and get access to? Everyone else, we continue documenting the site. Drake, you’re mapping Titan, yes?’

‘Not that it’s the most exciting place, but yes.’

‘Okay. We’ll aim to be out of here and on our way to Mars in two days.’

Part Four: Manu Dei

FScV Garnet Hyde, 6.9.526 FSC.

Aneka was up on the bridge again. The view was, frankly, far less spectacular, but Shannon was busy putting them into orbit around Mars and Aneka had really wanted to be there. It was Mars. Fucking Mars! Okay, so she was not going to meet any little green men, or a high-jumping Earthman named John, or even Marvin, but…

‘It’s fucking Mars!’

‘Uh-huh,’ Ella said from the sensor console. ‘You kind of said that already.’

‘About a dozen times,’ Shannon added.

‘Alan would have loved…’ Aneka began and then stopped. ‘You know, it’s never occurred to me before, but maybe my brother actually got to see this stuff. If Yrimtan had him working on the warp engine project, maybe he actually did get to see Earth from space, or the surface of Mars.’

‘It’s quite possible,’ Gillian commented from the lab. ‘As far as I know the development was rapid. It’s not impossible that he saw other star systems.’

Aneka smiled. ‘He’d have loved that.’

‘I’m getting multiple radiation sources,’ Ella said. ‘No confirmation yet, but I don’t think we’re going to find much down there that’s worth looking at.’ She could have been down in the lab doing this, but she had wanted to be there when Aneka saw Mars. The glee had not been disappointing, but the sensor readings were.

‘Let’s run a mapping sweep,’ Gillian suggested. ‘We can determine the state of things on the surface and then focus on Earth.’

Aneka watched as the Red Planet appeared to swing around until it was above them. Of course it was the ship doing the rotating. ‘Mars was the planet of choice for so many stories. First it was War of the Worlds and then John Carter, and then it moved on to stories about colonies and ancient civilisations. This was the world Mankind wanted to go to, the next one out.’

‘Well,’ Drake said, ‘give it a couple of hours and we’ll know how well they did.’

~~~

‘We’re guessing a little,’ Gillian said, ‘but judging by the fallout distribution, we think there were around ten facilities on the Martian surface when the Xinti attacked.’

She was standing in front of the main screen in the mess, which was displaying a Goode homolosine projection of the planet’s surface. Aneka recognised a few of the features, but Martian cartography had, amazingly, not been included in her courses on land navigation. Lime-green shading showed the radioactive areas; to her there looked like fewer than ten of them, but Gillian and Ella had spent several hours working on the analysis so she was sure they were right.

‘They put something at the foot of Olympus Mons?’ Aneka asked, partially to show off that she knew at least one thing about Mars.

‘If that’s what they called that huge volcano, yes. Most of the facilities seem to have been for mining. The sensors are picking up subterranean tunnels, mostly collapsed. Everything else is a guess. The Xinti did not waste bombs, but they destroyed everything quite efficiently nevertheless.’

‘So… pretty much a waste of time going down there?’

Gillian smiled. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be setting foot on Martian soil.’

‘Meh, I got to set foot on Titan’s soil… Titan’s ice. I think I can manage without getting red dust in any cracks.’

‘You could actually roll around in it,’ Ella commented. ‘The rest of us would need pressure suits.’

‘A pleasure I’ll forego.’

‘I’ll get you in the sand one day.’

‘Dream on, love. Dream on.’

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There was a new map up on the mess room screen and the shapes of the continents were very familiar. Aneka stood in front of it, looking for differences while everyone else looked on, waiting. She was supposed to be telling them what they were looking at.

‘Uh…’ She turned and looked at the assembled team. ‘Sorry. I never thought I’d see this again.’

‘It’s okay,’ Gillian said. ‘Take your time.’

Aneka smiled back and then turned. ‘This large continent on the left is America, North, South, and Central.’ She tapped the screen as she named each place. ‘This is what your Mericiana is named for.’

‘And North America was the major political power back in your time,’ Ella commented.

‘Yes, but China, Europe, and Russia were significant powers. Uh, this bit’s India, down here is Australia, this chunk is Africa, and down at the bottom, looking kind of small in this projection, is Antarctica.’

‘And where did you live?’

Aneka tapped the display. ‘This tiny little squiggle? That’s Great Britain.’

‘I thought it was the United Kingdom.’

‘The big part was Great Britain,’ Gillian interjected. ‘It was the UK when you included a bit of the island next to it.’

‘Northern Ireland,’ Aneka said, grinning. ‘The expert in Old Earth history wins. And I was about…’ She traced her finger over the northern part of Africa. ‘…here when the Agroa Gar took me.’

A small, flashing light appeared roughly where she was pointing and Aggy’s voice said, ‘Here to be precise.’

‘Are we getting any EM emissions at all?’ Drake asked.

‘None,’ Aggy supplied.

‘And the night side is showing no signs of major settlement,’ Gillian added. ‘At this range we can’t make out buildings. If civilisation re-established itself, there should be some signs, but we may need to get much closer. It’s equally possible that the survivors reverted to a relatively simple lifestyle.’

‘For a thousand years?’ Aneka replied. ‘Humans not trying their hardest to regain their technology for a millennium? I don’t buy it. In my time half of them thought their eyes had been plucked out if they couldn’t access Facebook for ten minutes.’

‘Well,’ Drake said, ‘there’s no radio emissions, so no radar. We can go take a closer look without spooking anyone who is down there.’

‘Then I suggest we go take a closer look,’ Gillian said.

Drake climbed to his feet, followed by Shannon. ‘We’ve come all this way. Seems stupid not to,’ the captain said.

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‘It’s got rings,’ Aneka said, her voice carrying a hint of surprise. They were thin, nothing like the rings of Saturn, but definitely there, circling the equator a few hundred kilometres out.

‘Metal, some silica,’ Ella said from the sensor console. ‘Satellite debris.’

‘Eve said they targeted communications systems. I guess they destroyed all the satellites before hitting the planet.’

‘A bit of a navigation hazard,’ Drake commented. ‘We’ll orbit outside them. It’ll be close enough.’

‘I’d like a full mapping sweep before we decide on a landing site,’ Gillian’s voice said from the speakers. ‘We’re still seeing no EM, but if there’s anyone down there they must be in settlements of some sort.’

‘Orbital insertion in five minutes,’ Shannon informed them. ‘Standard polar orbit.’

Aneka looked out through the window at the blue and white ball ahead of them as it began to rotate for the orbital injection. Earth from space, the kind of thing people dreamed about seeing and few ever did. Even now that was the case. How long had it been since anyone had seen this sight?

She turned away, suddenly feeling cold. ‘I… I’m just going to go down to my cabin for a bit.’

‘Are you okay, love?’ Ella asked.

‘Yeah. I mean, I will be. It’s just… a lot. I need to lie down.’

Ella nodded, looking concerned, but she let Aneka go. Some things you just had to deal with, especially if you were Aneka; Ella had figured that out.

Aneka stopped outside the flight deck, steadying herself against the wall. Even Al was letting her handle this herself. The world she knew had had no rings, had been humming with various forms of radio emission, and it had lit up like a Christmas tree at night. Out there was Earth, but not the one she knew. That world was gone. Really gone, and there was no going back.

Clenching her fists, she focussed on putting one foot in front of the other as she made her way towards the cabins.

~~~

Aneka opened her eyes and looked towards the door. As expected, it was Ella who had opened it, but she was just standing there, not willing to disturb unless Aneka was willing to be disturbed. Shifting over on the bed, Aneka indicated that she was by raising an arm, silently inviting the redhead to join her.

‘Feeling better?’ Ella whispered as she settled onto the bed, her back against Aneka’s stomach.

‘Feeling functional,’ Aneka replied. ‘This is all kind of… in my face. I can’t fantasise about that place being just as I left it. It’s there, below us, and it’s not the same.’

‘Technically it’s above us, but yeah.’

Aneka swatted one of Ella’s Plastex-clad thighs. ‘Pedant. How long before they have the mapping run done?’

‘It’s going to take a day, basically.’

‘The full transition of the planet’s surface will require another eighteen-point-seven hours,’ Aggy supplied.

‘We should get some useful data before then,’ Ella pointed out.

‘Can we get an estimate on the current local date?’ Aneka asked.

‘Today is the twenty-fifth of June, Aneka,’ Aggy said, ‘based on the calendar in use at the time of your extraction. I am currently unable to give a precise value for the year on the Gregorian calendar system.’

Ella obviously caught the same thing Aneka did. ‘You can’t give a precise year? Does that mean you can give an approximate one?’

‘Based on the variation in position of navigation pulsars between then and now, I can make an estimate, yes. It would, however, just be an estimate.’

‘It would be better than what we have now, Aggy,’ Aneka pointed out.

‘If you insist,’ Aggy replied, her tone suggesting she was unhappy handing out data she was unsure of. ‘My estimate is that the current year on Earth using the extant calendar of Aneka’s time is thirty-one eighty-six with a probability of ninety-seven per cent.’

‘And that’s a guess? Ninety-seven per cent?’

‘An estimation,’ Aggy corrected.

‘Okay… That means it’s been one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five years since I was down there.’ She seemed to consider this for a second. ‘Forty-seven generations. Almost twelve centuries.’ She hugged Ella a little tighter. ‘It’s too big. I can’t wrap my head around it. That’s been the trouble all along. It’s not denial exactly; it’s just that I can’t get my mind around any of it. It’s too big.’

‘Not denial,’ Ella said, ‘but you can’t accept it either.’

‘I guess. I think I need something smaller I can confront. Something I can look at and know the world’s changed.’

‘It’s difficult to think what we could find to fill that role. There was a war, and a thousand years. I can’t believe there’s going to be much left that’s recognisable.’

‘I guess we won’t know until the mapping is done and we can find somewhere to look at.’

‘Uh-huh. This time tomorrow.’ Aneka folded herself up around Ella, trying to curl into a ball with a redheaded core. Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think I can bend that much.’

Aneka nuzzled at Ella’s neck. ‘When I’m over this we’ll see how bendy you are, but right now I just want to hold onto something solid, okay?’

‘You know it is, love,’ Ella replied softly.

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‘There are settlements on the North American continent,’ Gillian said, ‘primarily around this north-central region.’

‘I think that was their main food production region,’ Aneka said. ‘They called it the Breadbasket, if I’m remembering right. I was never too clear on that. I always thought it was more towards the middle, but I’d have thought that area made sense.’

‘The villages we’re detecting would appear to be farming settlements,’ Gillian said, nodding. ‘There are variations of the same sort of structures in Europe and China. Nothing on any of the other continents.’

‘Nothing?’

‘It’s quite possible there are people there,’ Ella said. ‘We’ve detected several large animals. At this range, Humans would be too small to identify.’

‘We do have several options for a survey,’ Gillian went on. ‘So which do you think we should try?’

Aneka blinked. ‘You want me to pick one?’

‘You know the planet best,’ Bashford told her.

‘I knew the planet, eleven centuries ago.’

‘We talked about it last night and decided you should pick the target.’

‘You’re not getting out of it,’ Gillian added. ‘Choose.’

Aneka looked up at the map. ‘Aggy, could you zoom in on England, please.’ The map narrowed in on the western side of Europe. There were several markers in England. In fact, close up it seemed like there were more there than in any other concentration. ‘That northern region, in the centre. They used to raise sheep up there. It’s hilly. We could likely land somewhere out of sight.’

‘It sounds perfect,’ Bashford said.

‘We can observe long distance,’ Gillian suggested. ‘There’s a small town there in the foothills. If there’s no sign of potential trouble we can make contact.’

‘We’ll want to be very sure of our potential hosts first.’

Gillian gave Bashford a nod. ‘Of course, but I don’t believe they’ll be a substantial threat. If they aren’t even using radio their technology could well be limited. We can always retreat to the shuttle and leave.’

‘All right. Let’s get ourselves ready for a surface mission.’

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Aggy had managed to locate a tourist map she had downloaded centuries ago which seemed to indicate that the area they were heading for had once been known as Matlock. The town itself was settled in a three-pronged river valley and surrounded by quite high cliffs. Aneka had piloted the shuttle in as the light was just starting to show in the sky, keeping low over the hills and hoping there were no shepherds along their path. They had managed to ascertain from high up that the cliff to the north-west of the town was unpopulated, so that was where they were going in.

Bashford’s eyes scanned the sensor display in front of him as Aneka guided the ship forward on anti-gravity and thrusters. He was looking for a suitable landing site, though Aneka spotted the one he was going to go for half a second or so before he said anything.

‘Thirty metres over on the right?’ he said. His fingers flicked over his console and a marker indicator appeared on Aneka’s HUD. ‘Some tall, old trees there and the ground seems smooth enough.’

Aneka drifted the shuttle into position over the clearing, images from the underside cameras sliding into position once again around her vision field. ‘Some scrub down there, but nothing too bad. We voting for here?’

‘I’m registering a couple of anomalies which look like fallen masonry,’ Ella said from the back. ‘Nothing too tall though. I’ll mark them for you.’ A few rough clumps which Aneka had assumed were just bushes were highlighted. The shuttle slewed three degrees to the right and then dropped towards the ground below.

Bashford was on his feet as soon as the engines started winding down. ‘All right, I want a perimeter ring of sensors up before it gets light, so let’s get moving. Ella, is there anything we should be worried about in the atmosphere?’

‘Nothing detected so far. If you want to be safe wear filter masks until we have a full analysis.’

Bashford paused halfway to the rear door, then turned around. ‘Monkey, pull four masks from the back there. This place was nuked. We’re not reading anything, but still…’

Aneka took the deeper forest to the north of the landing site because it was closer to the town, and the dim light made no difference to her. The plan was to place passive sensor units out at about one hundred metres all the way around the ship. Aneka was to push out to two hundred metres as well, placing sensors on what she considered strategic points. She walked with Bashford out to the north-east corner of their planned surveillance area, mainly so that Aneka could ensure he did not fall down the cliff.

‘That’s… unexpected,’ Bashford said as the ground seemed to decide to drop away from under them without warning. The light was still a little dim as the sun hauled itself up to the horizon, which meant surmounting the hills on the other side of the gorge.

‘I think I vaguely remember this place,’ Aneka said, her voice low. ‘I’ve got a memory of driving through that valley in my Dad’s car. I think I was six or something.’

‘How far down is that?’ He was peering out over the edge of the chalky cliffs, frowning. ‘I wonder if we even need to worry about instrumenting this side…’

‘It’s about one-thirty-seven metres, but it’s scalable. The biggest mistake anyone ever makes when setting security is to assume a route is impossible. That’s how I got into Harriamon spaceport.’

Bashford grunted. ‘You have a point. Besides, if I run the sensors along the edge here Gillian and Ella can monitor that track down there.’

Grinning, Aneka reached up and placed a sensor on a tree that was trying its best to join the rocks at the foot of the cliff. ‘See you in thirty minutes.’ She headed off to the north-west in a shallow arc, placing sensors every ten to fifteen metres and it did not take too long before she made it to the opposite side of the band of trees. She was settling down in the brush to wait for Delta to meet up with her when she heard the voices.

There were three of them, two men and a woman. Aneka backed up a little, making sure she was out of sight, and listened. At first she could not understand a word they were saying, but gradually, as her universal translation software began to work, she began to recognise English with a very thick northern accent. Whoever they were, they were in good humour. It sounded as though the two men were making a few ribald comments at the expense of the woman. When they came into view the reasons became more obvious: all three were young, barely out of their teens. It sounded like the kind of banter she would expect from youthful Humans.

‘Roddy thinks you’re cute,’ one of the men said.

‘He doesn’t?!’ the girl responded.

‘He does,’ the second male affirmed. ‘He thinks your arse is really tight.’

‘No!’ It was almost a squeak. The girl was wearing fairly tight breeches in a material which could have been denim. Roddy’s opinion seemed quite accurate.

Aneka checked Delta’s position and the direction the three locals were going, and then connected through her internal radio. ‘Delta, don’t say anything, just drop out of sight. There are three locals heading your way. I think they’ll stay outside the wooded area, but be careful.’ She heard a pair of clicks over the radio; Delta responding to her suggestion.

‘Aneka, this is Gillian. What are you seeing?’

‘Three Humans,’ Aneka replied. ‘Young ones. Early twenties, maybe even late teens. I’ll patch video and audio through.’

‘Wait a minute,’ the girl said. ‘Isn’t Roddy seeing Lisa?’

‘Well, yes,’ the first boy replied, ‘but he still thinks you have breasts like twin moons.’

‘I thought you said he said he liked my arse.’

‘Yeah, well…’

‘What language are they speaking?’ Ella asked.

‘It’s English,’ Aneka replied. ‘They’re just speaking with a very thick accent.’

‘You don’t talk like that. Have you ever heard an accent that thick?’

‘Geordies, Brummies, Liverpudlians… To be honest, this is pretty indecipherable, but there’s been a thousand years of drift.’

The voices were getting distant now. ‘You guys are having me on…’

‘They sound no different from teenagers back in my time though,’ Aneka added. ‘The boys are teasing the girl. Probably because one of them fancies her. Or both.’

‘Well,’ Gillian said, ‘we can both speak English. Do you think they could understand us?’

‘Oh yeah. It’s going to be you understanding them that’s the problem. They’ve moved on. I’m going to finish up this sensor net and come back to the ship.’

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‘You know,’ Aneka said, ‘I kind of figured that Gillian would want to be up here. Taking point, as it were.’

Ella’s eyes were glued to a large pair of binoculars even as she unwrapped a snack bar of some description. ‘I’m the anthropologist so I get to observe the townspeople.’

Aneka lay back on the foam mat she had set up and relaxed. ‘I guess that makes sense.’ They were in what amounted to a high-tech hide. From the inside the tent was essentially transparent. From the outside it blended into the landscape perfectly, at least from a distance. Aneka figured you could get within about five metres of it before you had a chance of spotting it and given the fact that it was in trees on the edge of a cliff it was unlikely that anyone was going to get that close.

‘You know, this is fascinating,’ Ella said for perhaps the tenth time. They had been watching now since dawn and it was after midday. ‘Do you want to take a look?’

‘I’m looking. I’ve got all the passive sensors and your viewer slaved in-vision. I can see everything you see, and everything around us.’

‘Oh. It’s fascinating, right?’

Aneka chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put it that way myself, but it is… kind of weird.’

‘Why weird?’

‘Well… We’ve seen ground transport, right? But only trucks and tractors, nothing personal. They walk everywhere. The trucks we’ve seen are roughly equivalent to something I could have driven a thousand years ago. They have internal combustion engines. They don’t seem to have personal communications equipment.’

‘It does seem a little anachronistic.’

‘Uh-huh. It’s almost like a medieval farming community that’s got its hands on some modern equipment they don’t know much about.’

‘Gillian’s doing her best to examine some of the vehicles on the track near the shuttle. Maybe she can figure some of it out.’

‘Maybe. Then there’s the clothes. I’d swear that girl I saw yesterday was wearing denim jeans. Tight ones, which takes relatively modern manufacturing techniques, but denim.’

‘So?’

‘Denim is a cotton fabric. You can’t grow cotton in this country.’

‘Which would imply overseas trade, but we’ve detected no aircraft or surface ships.’

‘That’s my point. I think we’re missing something.’

‘Drake and Shannon are running the high-def scans now. Maybe they’ll be able to pick up something we couldn’t detect on the mapping run.’

‘Uh-huh. But sooner or later we’re going to have to go talk to them.’

‘Yes. I can’t wait. We’ll be doing it.’

‘The anthropologist and the robot girl with the magic linguistic software?’

Ella giggled. ‘Basically, yeah.’

‘It’s a good thing we have that little nanofac then.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we are not going in there in plastic spacesuits.’

‘Oh, true.’ Ella was silent for a minute or so, watching the people in the town below. ‘I think I’ll look pretty good in those breeches.’

‘I thought you were allergic to opaque clothing.’

‘I’m prepared to compromise my semi-nudist principles in the furtherance of science.’

~~~

A lot of the town’s life seemed to revolve around the central square. It was not a square, but that was what they were referring to it as. In practice it was an irregular area framed by the meeting of the three roads that fed into town from, very roughly, north-east, north-north-west, and south. A river followed the course of the north-westerly to southerly road, more or less, and there were a couple of bridges across that linking the neighbourhoods.

The majority of the town’s housing seemed to be on the north side. The buildings were stone with slate roofs, some of them larger than others, but all within what Aneka would have considered a middle-income size. There were a few larger residences out on the eastern side of town, and the flat area to the south of the square looked like it was set up as a livestock market. There were pens there, with aluminium poles set into the ground to hold up temporary shelters.

Today, it seemed, was something of a day off and the square had got quite busy as the day went on. Older people, and that meant people too old to be working, along with the town’s children, appeared first, finding places to sit in the summer sun. As that sun began heading towards the western horizon, the age spread got more even as teens and adults came out of houses or in from fields. As the sun started to go down and large lights set around the square came on, Aneka figured just about the entire town had gathered.

‘Analysis says four hundred and sixteen, plus or minus five,’ Ella said. ‘I think over a third of those have come in from out of town.’

‘It looks like a party,’ Aneka commented. ‘The clothing is a lot more… Well, “Sunday Best” is the first thing that springs to mind.’

‘Sunday was some sort of holiday, right? Religious thing?’

‘For Christians and atheists.’

Ella actually took her eyes away from the binoculars to look at Aneka. ‘How can it be religious for atheists?’

‘Believe me, some people were pretty religious about their Sundays off.’

Ella put her eyes back against the eyepieces of the binoculars. ‘I see what you mean about the clothes though. Pressed shirts, very white whites, and vibrant colours. All the clothes are new or kept for best.’

‘Bash to Aneka.’ The voice intruded through Aneka’s internal radio.

‘Go ahead, Bash.’ Aneka replied aloud, mostly so that Ella would know she was talking on the radio.

‘Looks like they’re all gathering in the square. We’ve seen nothing on the roads for almost an hour. We’re heading back to the shuttle. Gillian wants to watch the proceedings on a decent monitor.’

‘Understood,’ Aneka replied, switching to a silent reply. ‘I doubt I could move Ella if I wanted and she has food packs. I’ll get her back to the ship later if she doesn’t fall asleep with her eyes glued to the binoculars.’

‘Don’t forget you need to sleep sometime.’

‘I know, but I’m kind of interested myself. This is a bit of a strange society. It’s like I stepped into some sort of weirdass utopia version of rural England, with early twenty-first-century technology.’

‘Fair enough. We’ll be here if you need us. Bashford out.’

‘They’re heading back to the shuttle?’ Ella asked.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘It has gone very quiet on the roads. Nothing much for them to watch. Hey, I think there’s a band starting up. This really is a party.’

Aneka sat up and turned a parabolic microphone towards the square. Music filled their heads as the microphone transmitted it to their internal radios. Aneka identified a fiddle, some sort of drum, and probably a bass cello or something similar. The tune was folky dance music and Ella’s foot started tapping in time to it almost immediately.

She glanced at Aneka. ‘Not your kind of music?’

‘You’ve heard my taste in music, I…’ She stopped as a voice joined in the melody, strong and female, and clearly trained. ‘Now that… That’s a bit better. Reminds me a bit of Nightwish.’

‘Oh that… Nemo wasn’t it?’

‘One of my favourites, yes.’

‘I can… sort of hear the similarity. She does have a beautiful singing voice.’

Aneka lay back down and closed her eyes, though she could still see several sensors and the view of the town square. ‘Yes, she does.’

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‘I agree that the technology is unusual,’ Gillian said as they sat around the shuttle over breakfast. ‘Not unusual in its form, but more its distribution. The society appears largely agrarian. Very simple for the most part. As you observed last night, the entertainment seems to be in the form of performance, dancing…’

‘And a couple of the younger ones were making their own entertainment,’ Ella added. ‘Out of sight of their elders.’

‘To be expected I’d imagine,’ Gillian continued. ‘Their farming methods are relatively simplistic.’

‘The livestock are native Earth species,’ Delta put in. ‘Unmodified as far as we can tell. I think you said they were called sheep and cows, Aneka?’

‘Yeah,’ Aneka agreed. ‘The pictures you took look like the same animals I’m used to. Sheep can give wool for fabric and then meat. Cows give milk or meat. You can take the hide off both species for tanning. There are cattle pens down in the town that look like they could be a market area.’

Gillian nodded. ‘But then they have vehicles using internal combustion engines.’

‘The exhaust fumes suggest a biodiesel fuel,’ Bashford told them. ‘That suggests a production facility somewhere, but we’ve seen no sign of it.’

‘It also indicates that they are not drilling for oil,’ Gillian added. ‘We have still not picked up radio communications, but David tells me there are wind turbines in the hills.’

‘We saw them when we went out to take a look at the livestock,’ Monkey said.

‘And some of the buildings appear to have solar panels on the roofs,’ Bashford said. His gaze shifted to the window. ‘Not that those are going to be much use today.’

The rain had started just before dawn; big, heavy drops of water were still falling. ‘Don’t count on it,’ Aneka told them. ‘This is England in the summer. Give it an hour and we could be in blazing sunlight with high humidity. English weather is the definition of changeable.’

‘I’d like to continue my observations anyway,’ Ella said.

‘Of course,’ Gillian said. ‘As do I.’

‘If yesterday was a Sunday,’ Aneka said, ‘then today you should see a lot more work being done. I’m not exactly big on farming, but summer is a busy time as far as I know.’

Gillian nodded. ‘David, Delta, we could use soil samples from as large an area as possible, but be sure you aren’t seen.’

‘It’s not too hard to avoid people,’ Monkey replied. ‘There’s a lot of empty space out there and not too many people in it. I got the impression Old Earth was pretty densely populated.’

‘It was,’ Aneka told him. ‘There were billions of people on this world when I was taken. I think the UK was somewhere around sixty million.’

‘That’s more than the entire population of New Earth!’

‘Uh-huh. There’s not a lot of people left here. After a thousand years I’d expect more.’ Her eyes moved to the window and the rain streaking down it. ‘The Xinti must’ve come damn close to wiping out everyone.’

~~~

‘You were right about there being more activity,’ Ella commented.

‘Uh-huh. Monday morning, always the worst day of the week.’ Aneka was back on her foam mat, eyes closed, watching the world around them from a dozen points of view.

‘I’ve seen a dozen or so trucks passing through the town in the last couple of hours. And a lot more people going out on foot.’

‘When are you going to want to go in there?’

‘What? Oh, uh… Well, now. But we need to observe more. We need a better idea of the society. I mean, how will they react to people coming in from outside? I don’t want to go in and then have to shoot our way out.’

‘Uh-huh, I can get behind that. Have we seen any weapons down there at all? I’ve seen a few agricultural implements. A pitchfork can be a nasty weapon.’

Ella paused for a second and then said, ‘I’ve seen something that could have been a hunting rifle. One of the people going out to the north was carrying it on their back. It was a bag, but it looked rifle shaped.’

‘Al, could you review the footage and find that?’ Aloud she added, ‘So they have firearms… Why take them out on a trip to the fields?’

‘Hunting? Hang on… Ground team to Garnet Hyde…’

‘Aneka? Shannon here.’ The response was almost instant; clearly Shannon was on the flight deck.

‘Have you guys done the high-def scans of this area?’

‘We made the local area a priority.’

‘Have you got anything suggesting either dangerous animals or something worth hunting?’

‘In your region? No. We’ve catalogued some larger animals in the far north. Scotland, right? Big things with branching horns. There are some large herds in the south-west too.’

‘Deer,’ Aneka replied. ‘There were herds of them in those areas in my time. So, no wolves or anything else that might eat sheep?’

‘I’m not sure what a wolf is, exactly. I mean, I know the word and the association, but I’m not sure what an Earth one looked like.’

‘Big dogs, basically. Grey fur.’

‘Nothing remotely like that. Nothing predatory. Not there anyway. There’s some evidence of predation down in the ruins to the south, but nothing much outside that area.’

‘Huh… Okay, thanks.’ The ‘ruins to the south.’ They had seen them on the low-definition maps and Aneka had known exactly what she was looking at. London, perhaps a little expanded over her time, had been reduced to a radioactive hole surrounded by a wide ring of blasted buildings.

‘So it’s not hunting, and it’s not protecting the flocks?’ Ella mused. ‘What does that leave?’

‘Target practice?’

‘I believe this is the weapon case Ella was talking about,’ Al said, displaying a still showing a man with what did certainly look like a rifle case slung over his back. ‘I found four other firearms while searching for this one. They appeared to be double-barrelled shotguns.’

‘Al spotted some shotguns too,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘Doesn’t make sense. Not properly. People didn’t routinely carry guns in my time. There was no need.’

‘Maybe there’s something we haven’t seen.’

‘Huh, yeah… Aneka to team. We’re seeing people carrying firearms. Not many, but a few. I can’t think of a reason for it which may mean there’s something dangerous out there.’

Monkey’s voice came back over the radio. ‘We’ve seen someone with a double-barrelled firearm slung over his shoulder. One of a party heading out towards the flocks on the north-west side. None of them looked very worried though.’

‘Take precautions anyway,’ Bashford put in.

‘We’re being pretty cautious as it is,’ Delta said. ‘Right now we’re stuck because there’s a group of farmers about forty metres away having a snack. They don’t seem worried either. There’s some joking around. Well, there’s laughter so I guess there are jokes.’

‘Right. Watch yourselves,’ Bashford told them.

‘We will,’ Monkey replied.

Aneka thought for a few seconds and then activated her radio again. ‘Shannon, you still there?’

‘I am,’ came the response.

‘Could you talk to Drake about scheduling a detailed scan for life signs in this area after dark?’

‘Hold on…’ She was silent for a minute or so before the connection reopened. ‘Yeah, we’ll run that tonight. We should have the global maps complete by then.’

‘Thanks. I’d like to solve this mystery if possible.’

‘Well, that’s what we’re all about, right? Solving mysteries.’

‘Yeah, we’re a regular bunch of Scoobies.’

‘Uh…’

‘Don’t worry about it. But Ella is definitely our Daphne.’

~~~

Gillian was replaying video footage they had recorded late in the evening as the sun was starting to go down. ‘We spotted them walking up from the south,’ she said. ‘We didn’t think too much about it until we got a closer look…’

There were four figures walking along the southern road, a woman and three men. The men were carrying guns fairly openly. Two had assault rifles of some sort; the third carried a three-barrelled weapon that appeared to be a small Gatling machine gun. They were loaded for a heavy fight. The woman was different, noticeably more attractive, but more frail, and wearing clothes closer to those worn by Federation Jenlay than the people they had seen on Earth. Her short dress and leggings looked like they were made of a form of bioplastic. The dress, or tunic maybe, was white with a pair of black tramlines marked down the long sleeves. The leggings were black and she had white boots on. She walked with her head held high, but she also looked nervous.

‘We saw them when they walked into the town,’ Ella said. ‘Aneka remarked on the guns.’

‘A lot more advanced than the stuff the townspeople are carrying,’ Aneka commented.

‘It gets more interesting,’ Gillian said. ‘We scanned them and there’s significant electrical activity in the woman’s head. We’re fairly certain she’s a cyborg. Probably nothing more than the same sort of computer implant Ella has, but…’

‘Where would someone from this kind of society get an implant computer from?’ Aneka said, her brow knitting. ‘This place makes no sense.’

‘Quite.’

‘That group was well received in town,’ Ella said. ‘There seems to be a mayor or something. He was spending a lot of time at the party they had making sure everything went well, and that everyone saw he was making sure it went well. Anyway, he came out to greet them.’

‘I would have said “deferentially,”’ Aneka said. ‘He acted like he was greeting royalty.’

‘The fabrics, weapons, and cybernetics suggest a group from a higher technology society,’ Bashford said.

‘And this society isn’t totally lacking,’ Monkey put in.

Aneka frowned at him. ‘How so?’

‘We found a dead sheep,’ Delta replied, grimacing. ‘He insisted on getting some tissue samples.’

‘His mother’s son,’ Bashford said, grinning.

‘And while the tissues were degraded,’ Gillian went on, ‘the analysis showed up some interesting information. There is evidence of genetic manipulation in the animal. Without a full genome analysis we can’t be sure what for, Aggy is working on that now, but there are certain telltales which indicate that someone, at some point, altered these “sheep” artificially.’

‘The soil samples,’ Bashford said. ‘We found isotopes of barium and zirconium in the soil suggesting radioactive decay. Maybe someone was modifying them to be more resilient to radiation.’

Aneka had pulled some stills Monkey and Delta had taken of the dead sheep. ‘I’m more interested in how it died,’ she said.

‘There was a lot of damage to the skull,’ Monkey said.

‘No kidding. The head looks like it was hit with a truck.’

‘It was pretty badly bashed in,’ Monkey agreed. ‘Maybe a heavy, blunt weapon and a lot of muscle.’

‘Okay… Drake, you online?’

‘We’re here, Aneka,’ Drake replied from the speakers. ‘Your hunch was right. We’re seeing several bands of Humans moving around the hills. Some are associated with the animals and we think those are night guards, but there are definitely some others moving around who aren’t townspeople.’

‘Bandits of some sort? That would explain the guns the visitors were packing, and the ones being taken out to the fields.’

‘Maybe, but they move more like hunting packs.’

‘But you say they’re Human.’

‘As far as the scanners are able to determine,’ Shannon said. ‘They’re roughly the right shape and mass. From here that’s about as good as it gets.’

‘Huh. You know, if this was Star Trek you’d be able to tell me the species, sex, and what colour their underwear was.’

‘Most of them are wearing black thongs,’ Drake said flatly.

‘One has a matching pink set,’ Shannon added, ‘but he really needs a better-fitting bra.’

‘Ha ha, yeah, make fun of the Earth girl.’

When the laughter had died away, Gillian said, ‘I think we’ve learned all we’re likely to from distant observation. I think we send in Ella and Aneka tomorrow.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Yeah, but we want to be sure those visitors have moved on first.’

‘Why?’ Ella asked, frowning.

‘Because I have an idea.’

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‘I was kind of looking forward to wearing some of those jeans,’ Ella said as they walked up the road towards the town. They had had to go a fair way down the cliff edge before dropping down to the road on one of the ropes Aneka had got from Extreme Measures. A simple command and it had dropped down after them. They had been walking for a while.

‘Yes, but the group we saw had one of the higher-tech people and the rest looked like local bodyguards given some better weapons.’

Ella grinned. ‘So… You’re my bodyguard…’

‘Let’s go with guardian. That sounds good.’

‘My guardian then, and I’m from a high-tech town somewhere, and everyone was very deferential towards that other one…’

Aneka shook her head, grinning. ‘Yes, I’ll have to defer to you.’ Ella giggled. ‘Don’t push it.’

‘I won’t. Promise. How much further?’

‘About a kilometre and a half. Don’t tell me you’re tired.’

‘Of course not. I’m Jenlay, enhanced by years of genetic engineering. Plus you’ve been training me and I’ve been lifting Dillon’s weights.’

‘Is that a euphemism?’

‘You know full well I prefer to have you there when I’m doing anything else with Dillon. I like sharing.’

‘You’re a very sharing person.’

‘Anyway, no I’m not tired, but you’ve got the inertial navigation system and I was wondering how far we had to walk.’

‘Around a klick and a half.’

‘Around?’

‘One-point-three kilometres?’

‘Okay.’ Ella gave a nod. ‘Around a klick and a half.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And then that mayor-type will come out and say hello, and presumably feed us. What’s the food like?’

‘Uh… I guess we’ll be eating a lot of mutton. That’s… I have no idea how to describe what that tastes like. There’ll likely be potatoes, carrots. Lancashire Hotpot should be local dish, I think. It’ll be an experience.’

‘I can’t wait.’

~~~

The locals might have been deferential to the other group’s leader, but they looked nervous to Aneka. As they walked into town and saw more of the people still there, there was an obvious tendency for people to avoid looking directly at them. It did not bode particularly well.

‘They look like they’re scared,’ Ella said, her voice relaying over Aneka’s radio. With her implant and Aneka’s entire body, they really were the best people for an operation like this. They could talk without being overheard and Aneka could relay video and audio back to the shuttle.

‘Yes,’ Aneka replied, ‘they do. Keep your back straighter.’

‘I’m really not the haughty type.’

‘Pretend, Ella,’ Gillian told her.

‘Haven’t you ever played at being a princess?’ Aneka asked.

‘No,’ came the reply, but she straightened her back more and lifted her chin.

The mayor, or whatever his title was, appeared ahead of them at a fast walk as they approached the square. He was late middle-aged, balding, and a little overweight. He limped on the right side, badly enough to need a cane. It was actually refreshing to meet someone who was not a specimen of perfect physical form. He was accompanied by a much younger woman who was also a lot more attractive. Both were dressed in shirt and jeans, though his clothes were baggier, probably to try to hide the overhang above his belt.

Aneka and Ella stopped at the edge of the square and he rushed over, smiling in a manner which said he was not pleased to see them, but he was trying hard to make them think he was. Close up he looked worse. His cheeks were thickening, and he had a rather bulbous nose, but he did look very cheerful, if nervous.

‘Good morning, Citizen,’ he said, ignoring Aneka entirely. ‘I trust your journey has not been too arduous. I am Daniel Linden, Reeve of Matlock.’

‘Reeve was an old medieval title,’ Aneka commented silently. ‘Nice to know the town still has the same name.’

‘Good morning, Reeve Linden,’ Ella replied after she had deciphered his accent. ‘I am Ella Narrows, this is my guardian, Aneka. I am conducting a survey in this area and I’ve come here to continue it.’

Linden did his best to avoid showing any of the fear he was feeling and, to his credit, he did a good job of it. ‘A… survey?’

‘He’s scared shitless,’ Aneka said. ‘Hiding it well, but that did not go down well.’

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Ella said, trying not to hurry her words. ‘I just want to talk to some of your people, look at their farming practices, check their health. It’s possible that we may be able to improve things for you in the future.’

‘I see…’

‘He doesn’t believe a word,’ Aneka said.

‘I’m starting to wonder what kind of society has developed here,’ Ella replied.

‘I’m starting to get worried about it,’ Aneka agreed.

‘You must be tired after your travels,’ Linden went on. ‘This is my daughter, Abigail. She will take you up to one of the guest houses where you can refresh yourselves. I’ll have lunch brought to you immediately.’

Abigail bobbed them a curtsey. She looked to be in her late teens, pretty, fit, and a little flat-chested. She had to have got her looks from her mother. ‘If you’ll come this way, Citizen,’ she said. Aneka thought she recognised the voice. Her father was already hurrying away, presumably to organise their lunch. Anything was going to be better than the rations they had been eating on the shuttle.

They went out to the east, towards the larger houses. Not too surprising really. They were soon off the main roads, which were tarmacked, and onto narrower lanes with cobbles.

‘This is a crazy way to make a road surface,’ Ella commented.

‘It’s a very old way,’ Aneka replied. ‘It’s very hardwearing, but obviously pretty labour intensive. On the other hand it doesn’t need the heavy machinery that the tarmac does, or something like a Plascrete surface would.’

‘Huh. And the tarmac started, what? Half a kilometre from the town?’

‘Roughly.’

‘That bonded surface you’re discussing,’ Bashford said, ‘isn’t used too much, but there are longer stretches of it further south, according to the maps Drake and Shannon have done.’

Abigail turned off the cobbles, opened a gate into a hedged garden, and made her way up a paved path to the front door of one of the larger cottages. The garden was well kept, the lawn manicured, and there were climbing roses scaling the stone walls of the house. It looked idyllic, almost like a postcard photograph. The door was not locked either.

The door led into a small porch with coat hangers on the wall, and then into a lounge with bright wallpaper keeping up the roses theme. The decoration looked almost new, the furniture, a large couch, one big armchair, and a coffee table, was less new, but well maintained and clean. There was no dust anywhere.

Abigail turned and gave them a smile which actually touched her eyes, but did not remove the hint of nervousness. ‘I hope this is to your liking. I’m afraid our very best guest house was in use last night and I haven’t had a chance to clean it thoroughly.’

‘This appears to be quite suitable,’ Ella replied, smiling back.

Looking a little surprised, as though she had expected a rebuke, Abigail went on. ‘There is a small kitchen at the back with fresh water and tea. Upstairs are the bedrooms and bathroom. We have running water, hot and cold. The master bedroom is ready for use.’ She looked uncertain. ‘I could make up another room if you need one. Citizens usually travel with a, uh, sleeping companion, I…’

‘One bed will be sufficient,’ Ella assured her. ‘For my survey to be accurate I need to disrupt your town as little as possible, Abigail. That means that I don’t want to take you away from any other duties taking care of me.’

Again the surprise showed briefly. ‘Oh, it’s no trouble. Keeping up the houses and taking care of visitors is my duty. I’ll let you settle in and go to get your food.’

Aneka took off the rucksack she was carrying and her rifle case, placing both in the space under the stairs which led up off the right-hand side of the room, and then removed her gun belt before heading into the kitchen. It was a slim room leading from the lounge to the back door, with one inner door which, on inspection, led to a utility room. Given that the utility room, with its washing machine, drier, and cleaning implements, was undecorated she got the feeling that the guests were not meant to use it. The kitchen on the other hand was light and airy, with white cupboards, a refrigerator, and a small cooker. There was an old-fashioned, stove-top kettle on the worktop beside the cooker and Aneka smiled, eagerly searching the cupboards.

‘They really have tea!’ she enthused over the radio.

‘Tea? Well, we have tea,’ Ella replied.

‘No you don’t. Pretty soon you’re going to realise that. I’m making some.’ She was busy filling the kettle as she spoke. ‘It does beg the question of where they got it from though.’

‘Another import?’

‘Tea grows in India, Ceylon, China, certainly not in the English countryside.’

‘So we continue to see trade with other parts of the world, despite there being no way for it to get here,’ Gillian commented.

‘Uh-huh. Right now, I’m more interested in drinking real tea.’

‘The bedroom is nice,’ Ella said. Obviously she had gone upstairs. ‘More of this flowery paper on the walls…’

‘It’s called wallpaper,’ Aneka supplied.

‘Oh, right. The bed looks comfy. Sheets and blankets. I’m guessing this place isn’t that well insulated. The bathroom is… Well, there’s no shower, and the bath isn’t especially big, but there are two taps marked H and C.’

Aneka laughed. ‘You really sound like a girl from the future. This place is not really much different from any house from my time. We got by fine.’

‘Huh. Did you notice she seemed a little uncomfortable about a same-sex relationship?’

‘Yes. Well, I’d have said it was more like surprise. She’s not used to it. She expected us to use one bed though.’

‘More contradictions.’

Aneka turned at the sound of the door opening in the lounge and stepped out of the kitchen. ‘Abigail’s back.’ Aloud she said, ‘Hello again.’

Abigail glanced around the room and then gave Aneka the most genuine smile she had seen so far on a townsperson. She put the wicker basket she was carrying on the table and began taking plates out of it. ‘Uh, there’s cheese, some fresh butter, and bread baked this morning.’ Aneka’s nose was detecting the last of those already and she sighed. ‘I hope that’s good enough for some lunch…’

‘Anything is better than travel rations. Ella will be pleased. She’s upstairs.’

The girl blinked and lowered her voice. ‘She lets you use her first name?’

Aneka kicked herself. ‘Insists on it. Wait for her to tell you to, but she will. You might want to warn your father.’

‘Oh… A-and you and her… I mean they hate being alone so she’d want you to sleep with her, but do you… It’s just that some of the men have wanted… If she likes girls I…’

Aneka stepped forward and put a hand on Abigail’s shoulder, stopping the stream of steadily worsening gibberish. ‘I’ve been with her for a while. What she wants here is to gather her data and move on. You don’t have anything to worry about, and neither does anyone else here.’

In the kitchen, the kettle began to whistle. Abigail smiled uncertainly. ‘You were making tea? I’ll do that, you cut the bread.’

‘Okay,’ Aneka replied. Inside her head she said, ‘You hear that?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Ella replied. ‘This is going to be a lot harder than I thought if none of them trusts me.’

Aneka found the bread knife and cut into the cob loaf; the smell of fresh bread filled the room. ‘We’ll work on it. I suggest you get down here and try this food because the bread smells wonderful.’

There was the immediate sound of footfalls on the stairs and Ella let out a sigh. ‘Oh, that bread smells wonderful,’ she said, repeating Aneka’s words. ‘I am really going to enjoy this.’

Abigail walked in from the kitchen carrying a tray with a teapot and some cups on it. ‘Thank you, Citizen.’

‘Please call me Ella. If possible, I’d like to talk to your father this afternoon, about my survey.’

Abigail put the tray down, gave a little curtsey, and started for the door. ‘I’ll tell him, Cit… Uh, I’ll tell him, Ella.’

Ella watched her leave before sitting down with a frown and accepting the slice of bread Aneka handed her. ‘This is really going to be hard.’ She bit into the cheese and bread, chewing thoughtfully. Then her face relaxed. ‘This is… At least the food is good.’

Aneka chuckled. ‘We’ll think of something to make it easier.’

~~~

Abigail was a chatty drunk, which was useful. The conversation with her father had been full of agreement with whatever Ella wanted to do, and also very stiff and formal. So when Abigail had returned with the evening meal, and it had included a bottle of wine, Ella had insisted that the girl stay to have a drink and talk. She had been a little reticent until half the glass had gone into her; she had worse alcohol tolerance than Ella.

‘We’re quite proud of our flocks,’ Abigail was saying. ‘You’ll see tomorrow. Best sheep in the country, we think. It’s our main income, though Dad is trying to expand a little. We’re building a cattle herd down near Carsington Water. It’s a bit of a distance away, but we’re working with the villagers in Wirksworth. We’ve got the market, see? And they’ve got the land, so it’s a good match.’

‘That’s very progressive,’ Ella said. ‘You seem to trade with a lot of people too. For tea, for example.’

‘Oh that’s traders up from the Prime City. You’d know that, of course, cos you’re from there. They come through every month and we trade for what we want.’ She giggled. ‘Tea is a favourite. Everyone likes tea. And fuel for the tractors comes in monthly. Bridger can handle repairs mostly, but he can’t make parts or fuel.’

‘Bridger?’

‘He runs the garage. He’s a good mechanic. Best in the area.’

‘And what do people do for entertainment around here?’ Aneka asked. ‘It seems very quiet.’

‘On a Sunday, in summer, we all meet in the town square.’ Well, that confirmed that that had been Sunday then. ‘We have books, music… I like singing.’

‘She was the one singing at the party,’ Aneka said silently. ‘I thought I recognised her voice.’

‘Sing for us,’ Ella said, smiling.

‘Oh, I’m terrible, especially without accompaniment.’

‘I bet you aren’t. I’d really like to hear you.’

Blushing, Abigail sat up straight, lifted her head, opened her mouth, and sang. It was a soft, almost melancholy song, perhaps a lullaby, and they sat there and listened to it in silence. Aneka did not recognise it, either the tune or the lyrics; people were composing new music still it seemed. Abigail had a clear, strong voice, maybe a soubrette. It was really quite beautiful, and the silence when she ended lasted long enough that she was starting to look a little worried when Ella spoke.

‘That was amazing. You’ve got real talent, Abigail.’

Abigail’s eyes dipped and she went scarlet. ‘Oh, I don’t…’

‘Yes, you do,’ Aneka said. ‘I don’t recognise the song…’

‘It’s something Mum used to sing to me when I was younger and scared of the ogres in the hills.’ Her face went still. ‘And then they took her.’ Looking forlorn, she finished her wine. ‘I should be getting back… We’ve an early start in the morning.’

‘You’re coming with us?’ Ella asked. They had arranged to go out to see one of the flocks in the morning, but there had been no mention that Abigail was coming.

‘Yes. It’s my job to make sure you’re tended to and, well, the others aren’t used to talking to citizens. I’ll be back in the morning to make breakfast and get you up.’

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Ella replied.

~~~

‘Do you know what an ogre is?’ Ella asked.

Aneka gave a little shrug and the bathwater shivered around them. The bath was big enough for two if they both sat up or, as in this case, one lay in the other’s lap. ‘An ogre was a fairy tale creature. Big, strong, not very nice. I think they’re supposed to eat babies. Unless you believe in Shrek. Uh… don’t ask about Shrek.’

‘Okay, so Abigail thinks her mother was taken by monsters.’

‘Well, there are those groups of Humans in the hills that the Hyde spotted moving around at night. The dead sheep with the crushed skull. I’m guessing that there are bandits out there who dress up and scare people by playing on the ogre myths.’

‘Makes sense.’ There was silence for a few seconds. ‘You know, I think I could get used to this.’ She was currently using Aneka’s breasts as a pillow. ‘Maybe I should get a bath put into the apartment.’

‘There’s no room, love.’

‘It’s warm and comfy, and a bit weightless. I’ll see if I can make room.’

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Aneka opened her eyes, making out the shape of Abigail edging through the dark room, guided by a tiny torch. Assuming the usual twenty-four-hour day still applied, it was four-thirty in the morning and Aneka was glad she had insisted on Ella going to bed early.

Abigail stopped at Aneka’s side of the bed, started to reach out, and then stopped. ‘You’re awake,’ she whispered. ‘We need to get going soon. They’ll be heading out as soon as the sun is up. There’s breakfast downstairs.’

Aneka nodded and turned to Ella, giving her a light shake. ‘Time to be up, Ella.’ The shaking and the words probably would not have worked, but the signal to her embedded computer was not something her brain could ignore.

Groaning, Ella reached out to turn the bedside lamp on, pulled the sheets aside, and climbed out of bed. ‘Don’t get in my way. I’m going to the bathroom before I change my mind and go back to bed.’

Aneka grinned and slid her legs free of the sheets. She looked up to see Abigail staring. ‘What?’ Aneka asked.

‘Uh, you’re both… very attractive. And naked.’

‘Thank you. Does it bother you?’

‘Uh, well, no. I’m just not used to… I’ve never seen a Citizen who looked so fit and you… the muscles…’

‘She believes in keeping her body healthy. I’m sorry, we’re not very modest.’

‘It’s all right. Really. I should go down and put the breakfast on plates.’

Aneka rose to her feet and started for the door. ‘And I’ll make sure she hasn’t fallen asleep in the bath.’

~~~

The three shepherds they were out in the fields with were named David, Mark, and Marie. David and Marie were brother and sister, and there seemed to be something going on between Marie and Mark. Ella figured that they had been working together for a few years, which would either breed contempt or the opposite. It made some sense. Aneka got the feeling that the trio had been bribed to take on the two outsiders and Abigail by virtue of the large amount of food the Reeve’s daughter had brought along, apparently for all of them. Aneka had taken the heavy basket off Abigail almost immediately. The complaints lasted until it was noticed that Aneka seemed to be barely feeling the weight on the end of her arm.

They had reached the field in which the flock had been penned the night before about half an hour after sunrise. It seemed to surprise the shepherds that they had not been slowed up by the two visitors.

‘David,’ Ella said as they walked through the flock towards a set of wooden poles which were set up in the corner of the field, ‘what are you planning to do today?’

‘Uh… Well that depends. Lambing’s done, shearing too. We check the flock, see if the ogres got any in the night. Open the next field up to them. Then it’s mostly just watching. Before nightfall we’ll pen them up again.’

‘So you rotate the fields they feed on?’

‘Yeah. We’ve got eight fields. We move them around one every day. It keeps the grazing fresh, but next year we’ll need to move them onto the second pasture.’

Ella nodded. ‘That sounds efficient. Everyone here follows the same pattern?’

‘Yeah. Have done for generations.’

‘What do you know about animal husbandry?’ Aneka asked silently.

‘Right now I’m pretty good at it,’ Ella replied. ‘I slotted a skill chip before we came out here. Animal husbandry and farming.’

‘Oh. You got many of those?’

‘A few. I’ve got basic chips for several skills none of us have. Gillian figured it was worth the expense since we got way over our required budget.’

‘It’s looking like rain,’ Marie said, looking up at the sky. ‘We should set up the shelter first. Make sure our guest doesn’t get wet.’

Ella opened her mouth to protest, and then obviously thought better of it, frowning instead. ‘I’ll do it,’ Aneka said, partially to assuage Ella’s guilt. ‘You get started on your flock.’

The three shepherds looked at each other, unsure, until Abigail said, ‘Go on. We can handle it.’ Looking distinctly unhappy, Ella put down her own small rucksack, extracted a sensor unit from it, and went out after the shepherds.

The shelter was basically a tarpaulin, hidden for the night under some rocks, which went up on the poles to form an open-sided box which was likely at least waterproof. Abigail started to help as Aneka lifted the fabric up, and then stopped trying as the robot woman just yanked the sheet into place with very little apparent effort.

‘Tie it off,’ Aneka instructed. ‘I’ll hold it.’

‘You’re, uh, very strong.’

‘People tell me that, yes.’

‘Did, um… Did they do something to you?’

‘Who?’

‘The people from the city. Ella.’

Aneka laughed. ‘No. No, they didn’t do anything to me. What makes you think that?’

‘Well… We hear stories. They all have these plugs at the back of their head, and they do experiments all the time.’

‘Ella just collects data. No experiments. And none of them experimented on me.’

Abigail tied off the last of the cords and looked around. ‘What’s she doing now then?’

‘Sensor analysis of the sheep. She’s checking blood oxygen levels, nutrition, temperature… Basically she’s checking their health.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘Sometimes she needs help.’

‘She doesn’t look very happy,’ Abigail said, nervously. ‘Do you think she’s found something wrong?’

‘No, she just isn’t really happy about not being liked.’

‘What?!’ It was almost a squeak.

‘Abigail,’ Aneka said. ‘It’s pretty obvious that everyone’s nervous about her. You seem to have eased up a little after last night, but these three had to be bribed with food to be happy about us coming along. She’s not stupid. She’s just here to take some notes, not hurt anyone, and she doesn’t think she deserves the hostility. Not that she entirely blames you, but it doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it.’

‘Oh. She seems quite nice, but…’

‘She’s from the city?’

‘Yes.’

Aneka tried not to sigh. Obviously her idea to have Ella be one of the smart visitors had been a really lousy one.

~~~

The rain came mid-morning. It was not actually too bad; large, warm, summer drops fell, making an impressive sound on the tarpaulin. Aneka raised her face to it, smiling. Marie looked up from where she was checking one of the ewes, shook her long, dark hair, and then went back to work. Ella was almost pushed into the shelter by Abigail and Mark.

‘I bloody hate this,’ Ella grumbled into Aneka’s head.

‘I’m sorry, love. If I’d known we’d have both come in as locals.’

‘No… If they’d seen my implants they’d have been suspicious, and this is probably making it easier to get the data we want. It was a good idea, even if I hate it. David’s looking a little tense.’

David was a slim man with a lot of corded muscle, probably from manhandling sheep, and short, dark hair. Right now he was holding the shotgun he had brought with him as though he might have to use it. His eyes were on the sheep, more specifically on his sister out among the sheep.

‘You expecting trouble?’ Aneka asked.

‘There have been a few reports of ogres moving about in the day.’ His voice carried the same tension as his body; ogres were real, it seemed, and something of a threat. Aneka glanced at her rifle case on the ground just inside the shelter. ‘They usually stick to night raids, but every so often they get bold.’ She flicked open the straps on her holsters, just in case. ‘They like the rain. Harder to hear them…’ He stopped, reeling back and to the left just as Aneka registered the sound of the shot.

In-vision Al popped up a directional indicator showing where the shot had come from. Aneka was already drawing her pistols and turning to the right. Targeting images showed in her vision field, the right one zooming in as she saw the figure in a classic shooting stance over one of the low stone walls which divided the field. He was shifting his aim, but not towards her.

‘He’s lining up on Mark,’ Al said. ‘He wants the men dead.’

‘I’m affronted,’ Aneka replied, and pulled the trigger. A stream of needles shredded the air and then the chest of the man with the gun. He jerked violently, staggering backwards and then falling behind the wall. Aneka was pretty sure that he was dead, but she was not going to get the chance to check immediately.

There was a roar from her left and she swung Clara around ahead of her body, the camera picking up three more men in rough clothing charging towards them from the next field. Her overclocked brain took in details even as she was swinging herself around to bring both pistols to bear. Abigail was screaming. Mark had not moved yet, but he was starting to react. David was still moving; at least he was not dead. The three men running towards them had melee weapons: two carried little more than thick tree branches, the third had a knife. Their clothes were not just rough, but tied on, and their skin looked odd, sallow, thick, and rough. They would be on her in a second…

The air filled with bullets as the horrendously powerful machine pistols swept in twin arcs across the space occupied by the three men. They looked, if anything, surprised and they did not seem to have time to register any pain before they were sprawling onto the grass. Aneka registered the fact that the sheep were starting to panic and Ella was screaming something as she grabbed for her rucksack. Then something that felt like a sledgehammer crashed into the back of Aneka’s head and she staggered forward a pace, turning as she did so.

Another of the strange men was behind her, recovering from swinging what was actually a sledgehammer at her. There were messages flashing across her vision indicating that she had taken damage to her dermal layer, but her skull was living metal, very thick, and pretty much immune to hand-powered weaponry. This close she could see the thickened brow, heavy jaw, dense muscle structure, and skin that looked like greyish orange peel. The ogres were Human, she was sure of that, but there was something wrong with them. It really did not matter. She rammed Bridget’s muzzle into the ogre’s belly, angled her upward, and pulled the trigger. Blood, flesh, and bone fragments exploded upward as his body thrashed and jerked on the stream of hyper-dense plastic and force pulses.

‘Marie!’ Mark’s scream drew Aneka’s attention away from the dead ogre and she turned. Another of them had grabbed Marie and was running for the top of the field at an alarming pace for a man carrying a woman slung over his shoulder.

‘Fuck,’ Aneka snarled, slamming her pistols into their holsters. She dropped to one knee and grabbed her rifle case, unzipping it quickly and pulling the huge weapon free.

‘He’s too far away,’ Mark said, his voice despairing.

‘Not for this baby,’ Aneka replied. She raised the rifle to her eye and sighted through the scope while targeting information appeared in-vision. Range: 40m. Target velocity: 2.4m/s. Wind: negligible. Aneka squeezed the trigger. There was a sound like the world had split open in such close quarters and the ogre’s right leg exploded just above the knee. Dropping her rifle onto its case, she got to her feet and started running. Mark was close behind when they started, but she got to the fallen ogre a full two seconds before he did.

Marie was lying on the grass several metres away where she had scrabbled to when she had been dropped. As far as Aneka could immediately see, she was unharmed; the ogre was far from unharmed. A trail of blood led from where he had been hit to where he had crawled. He had to be losing blood quickly, but he was still moving, dragging himself across the ground. Aneka pulled Bridget from her holster and levelled it at the ogre, but did not fire.

‘Kill it!’ Mark yelled as he ran up.

‘He’s no danger to anyone. He’s going to be dead in a few minutes anyway.’

‘They heal fast. Really fast.’

Aneka swallowed. ‘See to your sister.’

‘But…’

‘I won’t repeat myself.’

The ogre had stopped moving. He rolled onto his back and tried his best to snarl at Aneka, pulling a long knife from his belt.

‘Are you fucking crazy?’ she asked him, but she got no reply. The effort had been too much and the knife slipped from nerveless fingers as he collapsed, unconscious but not dead. Aneka stepped closer and looked down at the misshapen form.

‘Clearly Human,’ Al commented, ‘but also somewhat regressive. Almost Neanderthal.’

‘Aneka,’ Gillian’s voice said over the radio, ‘get blood samples.’

‘That won’t be difficult,’ she replied.

‘If you let him live,’ Al said, ‘I suspect Mark will use that shotgun on him.’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’ Aiming carefully, she fired five rounds through the man’s right eye and the breathing stopped.

Mark was carrying Marie back towards the shelter and Aneka stalked after them at a fast walking pace. Ella was already working on David when she got back, ahead of the couple. ‘How is he?’ David’s shirt had been cut open at the shoulder and there was a patch of artificial skin pressed over a wound on his left bicep.

‘The bullet went through,’ Ella replied. ‘I’ve stopped the bleeding and patched the wound. Medi-scanner says there’s no serious internal damage, but that arm’s going to be useless for a while.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Abigail. I need you to walk, not run, into town. Get some people to come out here and help with these bodies and the flock.’

Abigail got to her feet, nodding rapidly. ‘May I walk quickly?’

‘You may walk as quickly as you wish.’

Nodding again, Abigail hurried away while Aneka turned to Ella’s rucksack to retrieve a sample container. There was plenty of ogre blood around, getting a sample was not going to be too hard.

‘Thank you,’ Marie said. ‘Both of you.’

‘I’m just doing my job,’ Aneka replied.

‘Not that many citizens would help like this,’ Mark said. The hint of anger in his tone suggested that he had not met any that would.

Aneka shrugged and went to find blood to put in her bottle.

~~~

Linden looked as though someone had rained on his parade as well as his bald head, but he was there along with his daughter and half a dozen of the townspeople, four of them armed. His pace quickened as he spotted Aneka watching his approach, her rifle cradled in her arms, but he hurried as best as his limp would allow past her to the shelter where Ella was sitting, her attention on David.

‘Citizen, were you harmed?’ the Reeve asked, worry obvious in his voice, though Aneka did not think it was actually for Ella’s safety. ‘I must apologise for this terrible incident…’

Ella looked up at him, blinked once at the stream of apologetic garbage pouring from his mouth, and snapped. ‘What the fuck are you apologising for, man? I’m not angry.’ She was, in fact, shouting loudly and angrily, which seemed to confuse Linden more than anything. ‘We were attacked by ogres. It’s not something you can control. I asked to be out here, you didn’t force me, so unless you’re saying you have some means of telling the mutants to not attack people, this is not your fault. You’re not saying that, are you?’

‘Of course not…’

‘So it would seem then that it was a very good thing that we came up here today. If it were not for Aneka, Mark and David would be dead, and Marie would currently be playing house with the ogres!’ Her annoyance reaching a crescendo, Ella took a deep breath and turned back to her patients. ‘Now, David took a bullet, but I’ve stabilised the wound, strapped up his arm, and given him a shot to increase cellular regeneration. He should be fine in a day or two, but he is to get some rest whether he wants it or not. Marie also needs rest…’

‘I’m fine,’ Marie began, ‘really I…’

‘You have a mild concussion and severe bruising on the shoulder from the fall,’ Ella replied sharply. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you favouring your right arm, even if my scanner hadn’t detected the clotting.’ Ella looked back up at Linden. ‘I’ve given her something for the disorientation and pain. The bruising should go soon enough, but she is to spend the rest of the day in bed. Both of them should be good to walk back into town, with some help. We’ll need some people up here to take care of the sheep and dispose of these bodies. Any questions?’

‘I love it when you take charge,’ Aneka said over their intercom.

‘I am feeling rather assertive,’ Ella replied. ‘I guess a couple of days of being simpered at is enough to make me want to smack someone.’

Linden’s jaw was still working up and down. ‘I’ll see to everything personally,’ he managed. ‘Thank you for assisting our people.’ He looked around at Aneka, properly acknowledging her for the first time. ‘And thank you for dealing with the ogres. Are you hurt? There’s blood in your hair.’

‘One of them clipped me with a sledgehammer,’ Aneka lied. ‘I got lucky, just a scrape really, but you know scalp wounds. They bleed like crazy.’

Linden’s brows knitted. ‘A… sledgehammer?’

‘Yeah.’ She turned slightly, pointing to the body they had dragged over to join his three dead friends. ‘That’s him.’

Linden wandered over to the bodies, looking down at the figure of the ogre. Abigail, who had come back up with him, walked over to stand beside him. ‘Dad, didn’t the one who took…’

‘That’s the one. The sledge is one thing, but I’ll remember that face until the day I die.’

Abigail looked back at Aneka and Ella. ‘The one who took my mother used a sledgehammer. He shattered Dad’s knee with it before carrying Mum away.’

That explained the limp. He turned, looking back at Aneka. ‘I owe you doubly for your work today.’

‘Why do they take women?’ Ella asked.

Linden glanced at her. ‘It’s thought their own women cannot carry to term. They steal Human women to mate with and then, so the legends say, they eat the children who come out too Human.’

‘Hence the name,’ Ella said, nodding. She shivered and looked to Aneka. ‘I am going to have to think of a special reward for you for this one.’

~~~

‘Is this my special reward?’ Aneka asked. She was head down in the large sink in the kitchen while Ella washed the fake blood out of her hair.

‘You’re lucky the blood matted your hair over the wound,’ Ella said in reply. ‘He split your skin right down to the bone. I can see metal through there.’

‘It’s healing already,’ Aneka told her. ‘Come morning it’ll be good as new.’

‘Uh-huh, and your hair should hide it tonight, but make sure Abigail doesn’t get a good look at the back of your head.’

‘I think I can manage that.’

‘And no, this is not your special reward. We’ll get to that later.’

Aneka straightened up, feeling water cascade over her breasts and down her back. Ella handed her a towel. ‘Going to give me a hint?’

‘No. That would spoil the surprise.’

‘Huh.’ Aneka started out of the kitchen rubbing at her hair and being careful not to disturb the wound. She was heading for the stairs to get a clean shirt from their room when Abigail came in carrying her basket. ‘Hey, Abigail. Bringing dinner?’

For a girl who seemed slightly uncomfortable with same-sex relationships, Abigail was fascinated with Aneka’s breasts. ‘Uh-huh,’ she managed to get out, still staring.

Suppressing a grin, Aneka walked on, moving her towel to cover the back of her head as she turned. ‘My shirt’s covered in blood. I’m just going to get a fresh one.’

Freed of her optical paralysis, Abigail started for the kitchen. ‘I’ll wash that for you. My mother taught me a great trick for getting blood out of cotton.’

‘Okay, thanks.’ The shirt looked like cotton, but was actually Bi-weave bioplastic. It would clean itself given a bit of time, but Aneka was not going to tell Abigail that. Instead she spoke silently through her connection to Ella. ‘Abigail’s on the way to the kitchen, you might want to put your dress back on.’

‘Too late. The girl’s got a breast fixation.’

‘Just as long as she’s not the special reward.’

‘Not my plan. You could likely have her if you wanted. Glass of wine and those sex pheromones you can give off…’

Aneka dug through her rucksack and pulled out another beige shirt. ‘I am not going to use chemicals to seduce that poor girl. She would feel terrible in the morning.’

‘I know. I was just joking. I’m here to observe these people, not to educate them in the joys of Sapphic sex.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. How’s the food looking?’

‘Looking good. You know, I’m sure there’s a little more than usual. And there’s two bottles of wine.’

‘I guess Linden thought we should have a special reward too.’

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Things had started getting a lot better the morning after the incident with the ogres. Townspeople had started coming to the cottage to be interviewed by Ella not long after the sun was up. They varied in age, sex, and profession so she got a broad cross-section of the town’s population, and they all seemed to be a little nervous but quite happy to be volunteering their time. Word had, apparently, got around that this Citizen was not quite like the ones they were used to.

Aneka had busied herself making tea for Ella and their guests, and letting Gillian listen in on, and watch, the interviews as they went on. And she was doing the same again the following morning.

‘It would appear,’ Gillian said over the radio, ‘that your actions in the field have gained a considerable degree of trust.’

‘Seems like it,’ Aneka replied. ‘We’ve had several people calling us “Manu Dei’s Blessing” or something like that. Little old ladies smile at us in the street.’

‘Manu Dei?’

‘Not sure. Sounds like Latin, and my Latin’s not that good. Uh, “Dei” sounds like it’s to do with God… Son of God, maybe? Might be a reference to Jesus.’

‘It seems to be a reference to the person who leads the citizens,’ Ella said. ‘Maybe a title, but definitely referring to a living person.’

‘Are we getting any further on this “Prime City” they’ve mentioned?’ Aneka asked.

‘Not really,’ Gillian replied. ‘There is, or was, a city in the south. London, I assume. However it was badly damaged during the Xinti attack. The Hyde’s sensors are showing significant radiation even after this time. The bombs must have been enhanced to give particularly long-lived fallout. The central part of the city is little more than a hole about two kilometres across. The ruins stretch out a long way.’

‘Could they have built under London?’

‘If they have, the surface entrances are well hidden. I think that you should pull out tomorrow morning. Perhaps our best course of action would be to go down there and take a look.’

‘I’ve gathered about as much information as I’m going to here,’ Ella put in.

‘Fine by me,’ Aneka said. ‘We can tell Abigail tonight. What are Drake and Shannon up to?’

‘They’re taking a leisurely trip out to the Moon,’ Bashford replied. ‘There were several facilities up there, we think. They’re going to map it and see whether there’s anything still standing.’

Picking up the tray with its pot of tea and other crockery, Aneka started into the lounge where Ella was interviewing a woman who had to be almost ninety. ‘Well, we shouldn’t need back-up from them. I think Mrs Broadstairs here can be considered fairly safe.’

‘I suspect the worst thing we’re going to have to contend with in London is the radiation,’ Bashford said. ‘These city dwellers seem to be less than wonderful people, but we’ve seen no evidence of actual hostility.’

‘That’s assuming we can find them.’

‘I hope we can,’ Gillian replied. ‘If they have more technology they may have far better records of history since the war. I would really like to meet them.’

Aneka poured the tea. ‘I’m not sure I would, but I guess they may be more open to meeting the Jenlay. They could be the best hope for reuniting this world with the Federation.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Gillian really did sound hopeful. Well, they would find out in a few days.

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Aneka brought the anti-gravity system online, checked its functional status, and retracted the landing struts. ‘You’re just getting me to fly this thing because it means you don’t have to, right?’ she asked Bashford who was in the seat across the cockpit from her.

‘You said yourself that you lack experience,’ he replied smoothly. ‘Now you’re getting some. Sensors are picking up no activity nearby. We’re good to go.’

Aneka’s hands shifted over the controls and the shuttle began to rise upwards on its thrusters. ‘That is just an excuse,’ Aneka persisted.

‘Yes, it is. I’m not overly fond of fiddly shuttle manoeuvring, and you are really good at it. Get us up to about a kilometre and then you can cut in the main engines.’

Aneka grinned at him. ‘Yes, Boss.’

They had left town late because Abigail had insisted on making sure they had eaten before going, and then they waited for her to get some packed food ready for them. And then Linden, David, Marie, and Mark, and several other people, had come out to say goodbye. Then, of course, they had been unable to take off until nightfall, but that had been fine because the people who had been left on the shuttle for the last few days got to try the food Abigail had made up. Also, they were in a spacecraft and getting to their intended landing site was going to take well under an hour.

‘Computer’s coming back with the genetic data,’ Gillian said over the cabin intercom as they rose into the night.

‘Anything interesting?’ Aneka asked, not really paying attention.

‘Just looking,’ Gillian replied, her voice sounding distracted by the data she was looking at.

Aneka checked their altitude, set the navigation system on a course to the general area of what had once been Luton, and powered up the big fusion engines at the back of the shuttle. The light cloud began scudding past at an ever-increasing pace.

‘Yes,’ Gillian said just when Aneka had almost forgotten the question, ‘there is something interesting. The ogres have significant genetic manipulations…’

Aneka began taking more interest. ‘Someone engineered those things?’

‘Engineered is a little extreme. They made some modifications to assist in survival and, since we know rather more about Humans than we do about sheep, I can tell you the functions of those changes. It would appear that they were modified for survival following the war. Their lungs are less susceptible to inhaling pathogens and dust. Their bodies are more resilient to radiation tissue damage. They have significantly enhanced tissue-regeneration capabilities, including the capacity to rapidly replace tissue damaged by radiation. There are also modifications to their retinas to improve their night vision. The thickened skin is from adaptations to improve cold resistance.’

‘So… someone engineered the ogres to survive the fallout from the war?’ Aneka asked.

‘No,’ Gillian replied, ‘probably not.’

‘Huh?’

‘The blood I got from David,’ Ella said, ‘is showing most of the same modifications. They’re just expressed to a far greater degree in ogres. And sheep. Now that we have the comparison data between Jenlay and modern Humans we can see several of the same gene-mods in the sheep.’

‘The ogres,’ Gillian added, ‘are likely a mutation. Either whatever caused the gene-mods had a more pronounced effect on them, or they’ve mutated since.’

‘Something modified a number of surface species to survive the fallout from the war then,’ Aneka said. ‘Someone with a more advanced technology than the stuff we’ve seen up here.’

‘Which would seem to indicate the city dwellers are responsible,’ Gillian said, ‘but that would suggest that they had extensive genetic manipulation capabilities a thousand years ago.’

‘And that’s unlikely?’

‘The planet was bombed into the Stone Age. How would they have mustered the resources, let alone the science?’

‘Fair point.’ Aneka checked their flight path. ‘Well we may know more in forty-six minutes.’

~~~

It took a little longer before they dropped down to ground level in the area Aneka had once known as St Albans just outside an irregular ring of shattered roadway which had once been the M25, the orbital motorway around London.

‘They built out further after I was taken,’ Aneka commented as she glided the shuttle in to settle on one of the embankments overlooking the dead motorway. ‘Those buildings on the other side? That was green fields in my time. Those look like big buildings.’ Or they had been once. Now they were broken concrete teeth just over the rise across the road.

‘Between fifty and sixty stories from the structural analysis,’ Ella said. ‘Composition suggests an early form of Plascrete.’

‘How’s the radiation?’

‘Here it’s fine,’ Bashford replied. ‘We’ve got increasing emissions about a hundred metres beyond that rise. We’ll dose up on the anti-rad drugs and take readings, but from here it’s not looking too bad.’

‘Not that I’d want to spend extended periods in there,’ Gillian added. ‘I suggest we wait until morning. Drake and Shannon’s mapping scans showed some life signs and thermal markers in the ruins.’

‘Things are living in there?’ Aneka asked. ‘In the radioactive ruins, on the planet where things have been genetically altered to survive the effects of radiation?’

‘Yes. And that is why I think we should wait until there’s light.’

‘Sounds great,’ Monkey said from the back. ‘I’ll break out the carbines.’

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‘I get the feeling no one has lived here in a long time,’ Aneka said. The flat they were in had long ago lost all but scraps of paint and most of the plaster from the walls. It was five stories up, in one of the buildings right on the edge of the ruins. There were two stories above them, but the building was even less secure up there than it was here and neither she nor Bashford had been willing to allow anyone higher. Only Delta and Ella were with her; the others had stayed at ground level.

‘I think you’re right,’ Ella replied, ‘but I think people were in here after the bombing.’

Aneka walked through from what had probably been a lounge to the single bedroom where Ella was. The redhead was poking at some scraps of what looked like blankets which occupied a corner of the room. There were a few empty and very rusted tins in another corner.

‘This does look a little like someone’s campsite,’ Aneka agreed. She focussed on the column of indicators on the left side of her vision field. ‘Radiation is a little lower up here than ground level. I guess it was back then too. Maybe someone came up here for that. Or they felt more secure up here and survived a little longer due to the lowered exposure.’

‘There’s definitely something living here,’ Bashford said. ‘I’ve got some form of animal droppings here. Nothing I recognise, though I’m no tracker anyway.’

‘Nothing much up here aside from cockroaches,’ Delta commented.

‘You recognise cockroaches?’ Aneka asked.

‘Huh. There are cockroaches on just about every Jenlay world. Tough little bastards.’

‘About the only places they haven’t managed to get a foothold on are the worlds where something considered them a light snack,’ Gillian supplied. ‘They’re mostly harmless, and most of the ecosystems don’t suffer because of them. There have been a couple of cases where they’ve become dangerously overabundant, but a biological control generally works when that happens.’

‘We can go down,’ Ella said, straightening up. She, like everyone, was wearing her suit. It provided additional protection against the radiation in the area as well as any pathogens they might find, though nothing like that had come up in the scans.

Aneka turned, heading back to the stairwell they had climbed up. Maybe ‘ascended’ would be a better word since they had come up a rope on motorised ascenders. Trusting the staircase itself had not seemed like a great idea. She looked down to where Monkey was waiting for them. ‘Ella, you go first. Ready down there?’

‘All clear below,’ Monkey replied.

Ella clipped onto one of the three boxes attached to the thin, high-tensile line, and let herself slip out over the edge of the balcony. The wall had given way long ago so at least they did not have to climb over it. Holding the box, she pressed the down button, and glided smoothly to the ground.

With all three of them down, they went outside to find Bashford looking down at several elongated pellets lying against a wall. They were around ten centimetres in length and tapered, and Aneka frowned at them thoughtfully.

‘You know, if I didn’t think they’d come from a large dog, I’d say those were rat droppings.’

Ella came up beside her. ‘They are way too big for a rat, but they also do look rat-like.’ She grimaced. ‘Seen a few rat pellets in my time. Psychologists love the little buggers.’

‘If those are from a rat,’ Delta said, ‘I do not want to meet it.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t have to,’ Gillian replied, ‘but I’d like to go a little deeper. See if we can find any more recent habitation. Or even signs of people moving through the ruins on the way to somewhere else.’

‘We can go look,’ Bashford said. ‘I’m betting we won’t find anything in this area. The radiation and the animals…’ He looked up at the buildings around them. Aneka followed his gaze; it was a perfect sort of place to set up an ambush. ‘This is a bad place to travel through, day or night.’

‘About a klick west of here,’ Aneka said, ‘there’s a road… Well, there was a road anyway. The M-One, it was one of the main routes into London. If the Twenty-Five is still more or less here, then the One might be there too and it would be a pretty wide, open space to move into town on.’

Gillian looked around at the decaying concrete structures around them. ‘I believe that I’m going to go with that assessment. If there is something to see here I doubt it’s worth the risk.’ She shivered. ‘Besides, something about this place gives me the creeps.’

‘There were about fifteen million people in the Greater London area in my time,’ Aneka said. ‘There must have been even more when the bombs fell. Millions dead or dying of radiation poisoning in half-crushed buildings… That’s a lot of ghosts.’

Gillian started back towards the shuttle. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, Aneka.’

‘Neither do I, but I can feel them. All around us.’

No one said anything for a while as they trudged through the dead streets. ‘Yes,’ Gillian said eventually. ‘So can I.’

~~~

‘The radiation levels outside are getting significantly higher,’ Ella commented.

‘Dangerous?’ Aneka asked.

‘Not while we’re in the shuttle,’ Bashford replied. ‘Cosmic rays in space are worse. We’re well shielded in here. If we go out we’ll use the airlock and the dust scrubbers when we come back in.’

Aneka continued gliding the shuttle down the broken roadway surrounded by once towering structures. ‘We’re coming up on Edgware. The city began there in my time. All this… This I don’t remember. It’s like they put up a large number of new buildings in the years after I left.’

‘Perhaps a migration towards the cities,’ Gillian suggested. ‘The increase in technology. The rise of off-world workers and the need to house their families while they were away. Perhaps the new technologies simply resulted in a greater carrying capacity.’

‘Carrying capacity?’

‘A world has a certain capacity for population, known as the carrying capacity. Generally higher technology results in greater efficiency in the use of resources, the capacity to produce food, recycling. Frequently, at lower tech levels, the population expands to fill the carrying capacity.’

‘That makes a lot of sense.’

‘Hmm, yes. It’s almost common sense. At very high levels of technology, carrying capacity is effectively infinite. Generally population does not grow to that level, but before extensive interstellar flight develops a world can become very overcrowded.’

‘It certainly looks like that happened here,’ Aneka said, shifting in her seat.

‘It makes you uncomfortable?’ Bashford asked.

‘It seems like such a shift. The Xinti drop a ship onto the planet and the entire world changes in the space of a generation. I’m not sure I’d have wanted to be around to see that.’

Bashford was about to reply when Gillian spoke up again. ‘Aneka, I’m getting some anomalous readings from something to starboard. Can you see anything?’

Both Aneka and Bashford peered out through the windscreen, looking for anything ‘anomalous.’ The buildings in the area were still large and new to Aneka, but… ‘I’m not seeing anything weird,’ Aneka said. ‘More of the same new-build constructions, which means they must have demolished a chunk of Edgware to put…’ She stopped suddenly as something came into view.

‘Vashma,’ Bashford said. ‘Maybe you should come up here and look for yourself, Gillian.’

Both Gillian and Ella appeared up in the cockpit a second or two later, staring silently out across the broken buildings to the thing beyond. It was large, metallic, and built on a smooth curve, but it was clearly not of Human design, and had probably not come to be there on purpose. The rear part of it was a slightly crumpled engine exhaust.

‘That looks Xinti,’ Aneka said. ‘You think they managed to shoot it down during the war?’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Gillian replied. ‘Look at the buildings. It looks more like they were put up around it. Can we take a closer look?’

Aneka glanced over at Bashford. ‘Looks like there’s plenty of open space to set down in,’ he mused. ‘Take us in, put us down on one of the plazas, and we’ll see where we go from there.’

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, shifting the shuttle sideways and lifting it upward to clear the housing structures. Here the concrete was newer, the sensors suggesting something a lot more like Plascrete than the buildings further out. The buildings were a little taller too, with a more complex design. They also seemed to have survived the bombs and the millennium of decay afterwards better.

‘What’s that?’ Ella asked, pointing out towards the ground beneath where the huge exhaust stood above a plaza shadowed by its bulk. ‘Down at the base of the ship where it hits the ground. Are those doors? Glass doors?’

Gillian leaned forward over Bashford, shifting the configuration of his console to display sensor data. ‘You don’t mind do you, Bash?’ she asked rather absently, and after the fact.

‘Having a nubile young woman in a skintight suit leaning over me? I don’t mind at all.’

Gillian blushed. ‘We’ll discuss your terrible flattery in bed later. It’s Polyglass. Practically identical to the modern material. The hull material is a synthetic, monocrystalline structure similar to the high-end hulls made for the military today. Well beyond anything produced by Humans during the war, but equally not the laminate constructs used in Xinti craft.’

‘Well, it can’t have crashed after these buildings were built,’ Aneka said.

‘I think,’ Gillian said, ‘that this deserves closer inspection.’

The shuttle glided into position beneath the cone of the exhaust, in front of the eight doors set into a portico which had been built into the hull. ‘You know,’ Aneka said, ‘that looks a lot like the entrance to a museum.’

With helmets on they exited the ship through the port airlock. The four facilitators moved out with ready weapons, but there was no sign of anything moving among the buildings. Neither Aneka’s eyes nor any of the sensors could detect anything on the inside. Aneka tried one of the doors. It rattled.

‘Locked,’ she said. ‘Feels like a standard, physical locking mechanism.’

‘I got it,’ Delta said, stepping forward with something from her belt in her hand. Aneka moved back, away from the door, scanning the surrounding buildings for signs of movement. A few seconds later there was a click from behind her. ‘These old mechanical locks are easy when you’ve got a nanotech lock-pick,’ Delta commented absently.

‘Let Aneka go in first,’ Bashford said. ‘It’s dark in there and I think we’d best check it before we proceed.’

‘Thanks for thinking of me, Bash,’ Aneka said, drawing both of her pistols before pushing through the door. Her eyes picked up little in the way of infrared, some ultraviolet back-scatter through the doors, and almost no visible light. She scanned the room carefully, getting the sense of a large atrium with something in the middle of it, something large and, if the trace radiation was anything to go by, metallic.

Reaching to a pouch on the back of her belt, she extracted a box and flicked it open. A swarm of glowing microbots floated free of the container and moved forward under Al’s direction. The radio bursts from the command signals outlined more edges and surfaces; the object in the middle of the atrium looked like it was some sort of monument. As the light swarm moved closer it became obvious that she was looking at a sculpture of the ship she was in, surrounded by a ring of people, each facing outward.

‘It’s clear,’ she called back, and then started towards the sculpture. There was a plaque mounted on the front of it and she had the lights hover closer above it. On this site on 23rd May 2023 the vessel you are standing in crashed killing 723 people and injuring 2145. They died that we might rise into the heavens. ‘Oh my God… This ship… This was the ship the Xinti crashed on Earth. They made a museum out of the hull.’

Gillian and Ella appeared on either side of her. Both of them let out gasps. ‘Twenty-third of May, twenty-twenty-three,’ Gillian said. ‘We’ve never known the exact date.’

‘Twelve years after I was taken,’ Aneka said. ‘This place could have a lot of information about the history of the crash and what happened afterwards.’

The two scientists activated their helmet lights. ‘This is going to be fascinating,’ Gillian said. ‘Absolutely fascinating.’

~~~

There was not really that much for Aneka to do so she wandered through the halls of the vast museum, playing at being a tourist, albeit a tourist in a spacesuit wandering around a dead tourist attraction. It seemed like the contents of the old Science Museum had been transferred over to the new site, and then they had added to the collection with huge displays concerning the theory and development of warp engines, the history of materials development, and the general progress Mankind had made in the century after the crash.

It was not entirely a waste of time. Her eyes recorded everything she looked at as she wandered past the exhibits. Gillian and Ella could go over those records on the shuttle later and decide on areas they wanted to see personally, or the areas which could be skipped. She was walking through a hall containing large models of several of the early warp-capable spacecraft Mankind had built when she heard Ella’s voice in her head.

‘Aneka?’ The redhead sounded a little concerned, which immediately had Aneka worried. Al had a map and shortest route to Ella up in-vision before Ella could get the next word out. ‘We think there’s something here you should see. We’re in the famous scientists section.’

The interior of the ship, the body of the museum, was vast, enormously spacious. It had to have been some sort of heavy transport vessel before the Xinti repurposed it as a means of educating lesser races, but whatever the case it took her almost ten minutes to get to the room they had named the ‘famous scientists room’ for obvious reasons. Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Hawking, Aneka walked past lots of stands with portraits and names she recognised until she reached the end where Ella and Gillian were standing.

Aneka stopped, staring at the display ahead of her in the light from the cloud of microbots that were hovering over it. The picture that took up the left side of the display was both familiar and not. It showed a man in his late middle-age, tall and slim, good-looking in a Nordic way with soft, blonde hair and blue eyes. The last time she had seen that face he had been an eighteen-year-old boy, but even aged thirty or more years she could recognise him.

She looked around at the rest of the display. Alan Jansen, the Father of Warp Physics, born in nineteen-ninety-two, he had almost single-handedly discovered the secrets of the alien warp drive and gone on to pioneer research into gravity control which had resulted in inertial damping technology allowing far greater acceleration in spaceships. He had died in twenty-seventy-two leaving two children.

‘Seventy-nine,’ Aneka said, staring at the picture. ‘He made it to seventy-nine. He did so much with his life while I… floated around in space.’ Closing her eyes to block out the image, she turned away from the display. ‘I need to get out of here. I… I’ll go back to the sh-shuttle.’ She started away from them.

‘I’ll come with…’ Ella began.

‘No,’ Aneka replied, biting back tears. ‘I need… some time.’

~~~

Ella found Aneka sitting in the pilot’s seat. It was tipped back and she was lying still, her eyes closed. The skin beneath them was red and puffy; she had been crying, but now she was asleep, or offline.

She was, but Al was not. Ella saw the connection being made to her implant and then heard his voice. ‘She cried for over an hour before falling asleep. I think she’s actually started to come to terms with it.’

‘Thank you for watching over her, Al,’ Ella said in reply.

‘That is what I… what we do. I would have contacted you if you were needed. She will awaken in two hours, fifty-two minutes. I believe she would find it comforting if you were here when that happened.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

~~~

Aneka finished watching her diagnostics scroll past in-vision and then opened her eyes. She turned her head and saw Ella in the co-pilot’s seat. The console was displaying lidar maps of the museum and Ella’s attention remained focussed on them even though Aneka was moderately sure that she had noticed her companion awakening.

‘You haven’t been sitting there since you came back, have you?’ Aneka asked.

‘Just the last fifteen minutes or so.’

‘They’re dead, Ella. All of them. My family. Even Alan’s children must be long gone. I never even got to meet them.’

‘You know he had kids. There could be relatives of yours still alive.’

Aneka smiled, a little bleakly. ‘Do you think they’d want to meet the robot version of their great-great-great-ad infinitum-aunt? I’d imagine that would weird them out a little.’

‘If it were me, I’d be so excited I’d faint.’

That coaxed a laugh out. ‘Yes, but that’s you. I think… I think I needed that. The world I grew up in is really gone.’

‘And now you believe it?’

‘Yeah, I knew it, but now I believe it. The Xinti made me more adaptable, so I’ll accept it and adapt.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Probably not.’

Ella smiled. ‘Good. Hiding behind your conditioning is still just hiding.’

‘No more hiding. Not even from myself.’

18.9.526 FSC.

Aneka sat in the cockpit watching the darkness outside. Everyone else was asleep in the back. There was almost no moonlight, but the stars were bright overhead, very visible in a clear sky with no light pollution at all. That was almost the biggest change on this new Old Earth: she was sitting on the outskirts of London and she could see millions of bright specks of light above her.

She could also see shapes moving among the buildings and occasionally trotting across the open spaces around the shuttle. At first she had thought they were wild dogs, large ones. None of them seemed smaller than an Alsatian, most were a little larger. She could only see them by infrared initially, but when a small group of three stopped ahead of the shuttle, she turned the ship’s sensors on them and got a full multispectral and lidar image along with a lot of other detail. They were not dogs.

Morphologically they looked like rats. There was no tail and the legs appeared longer than usual. The incisors were even longer in proportion than normal, emerging from the front of their mouths, and appeared very sharp; these creatures might have been rats once, but now they were some sort of carnivorous version. She knew predators generally had forward-facing eyes, which these things did not, but they were giving off ultrasound signals, according to the sensors; they had replaced precise vision with sonar.

‘Wolfrats,’ she said to no one. ‘I think we’ll call them wolfrats.’

‘Likely a result of the radiation,’ Al commented. ‘Natural evolution would be unlikely to produce those from normal rats in only a thousand years. I suspect that they will show the same genetic modifications as the sheep and Humans. Someone made radiation-resistant rats which allowed them to survive mutations that would have killed them.’

‘Which kind of suggests someone came up with a way of altering pretty much every form of life on the planet.’

‘Indeed. Quite a remarkable feat of technology.’

‘A nanovirus. Something like the one that infected the people on Eshebbon. It’s the only thing I can think of which could basically spread a specific set of genetic modifications to more or less every species.’

‘And someone created this virus over a thousand years ago.’

‘Yeah. I think Yrimtan made it back to Earth. She could have designed it. She’s the only person I can think of who could have.’

‘A reasonable theory, though she was not designed to withstand the range of environmental conditions you were. A high-radiation environment may also have damaged her skeleton, as it would yours.’

Aneka nodded, watching as the wolfrats padded off into the darkness. Well, if her sibling’s last act had been ensuring the Human race survived here, that was not a bad way to go.

~~~

‘Wolfrats?’ Ella said, looking at the image on the science console.

‘Well,’ Aneka replied, ‘they’re rats the size of wolves, and they’re predators, so wolfrats.’

‘And they’re nocturnal?’ Bashford asked.

‘I saw a few movements out there once the sun went down, but they didn’t appear in numbers, or move out of the buildings, until full dark.’

‘We’d best be careful going back into the museum. Some may have snuck in.’

Aneka nodded. ‘I’ll take Monkey and Delta in there. You keep an eye on our charges out here until we’ve checked the near area.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ He turned and looked at Gillian and Ella. ‘However, you make sure you have two people with guns with you at all times.’

Ella gave a little grimace. ‘No arguments here. Have you seen the size of those teeth?’

~~~

Up near the roof of the museum was a room full of planets. Not really planets, of course, but there were spheres strung from the ceiling, each printed with the image of a world Humanity had colonised in the time it had had warp drives. There were not huge numbers of them, but to Aneka it seemed like a lot to achieve in a hundred years.

Near the door were models of the Moon, Mars, and Titan. Information boards on the floor beneath each explained what kind of facilities had been put there. Mars and the Moon, it seemed, were as much locations for recreation as anything else. The Moon produced solar energy exported back to Earth through microwave beams, and large amounts of Helium-3, which was used in fusion reactors. Mars produced various ores. But there were also lots of resort hotels on both worlds; Humanity had taken to easy space travel with a will.

Next out was not actually a world, but a very large space station of some description which was apparently in orbit around Alpha Centauri. It was a staging site, a hub for warp-capable transport ships and, of course, tourist vessels.

And then there were the other worlds, garden worlds mostly, which had been used as expansion room by the Human race. The Chinese and Americans, in particular, had expanded outward and upward into space. They had given their new homes names like Haven, New Hope, and Eden, and it took Gillian and Ella a while to find one they actually recognised.

‘Nova Amazonia,’ Gillian said, looking up at a large world with large oceans and landmasses coloured entirely in green. ‘It’s hot and wet, and covered in a vast rain forest. The colony there is supposed to go back to long before the Xinti War. Apparently that is not simply boasting.’

‘Where is it?’ Aneka asked.

‘It’s a core world,’ Ella replied, ‘but it’s pretty far out. I guess you’d say culturally core, physically it’s on the Rim.’

‘This side of the galaxy,’ Bashford added. ‘It’s not too far away from here, relatively speaking.’

‘That’s the only one you recognise?’ Aneka looked around at the twenty or so worlds displayed in the room, and then noticed the boards on the wall. She started towards them.

‘That’s the only one that still exists,’ Gillian replied. ‘At least, the only one within the Federation.’

‘So… Can we assume that the others were either wiped out or they were in other areas of space?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Ah,’ Aneka said, starting to read the wall, ‘and those are only colonies. There are lists here of smaller outposts. Looks like mining operations, science stations, that kind of thing… Alpha Mensae is here.’

‘Tilton?’ Ella asked flatly.

‘No. Amazingly the super-secret bio-chemical weapons research facility isn’t listed on the wall in a museum. To be honest, there’s very little detail here. I think it’s just meant to look impressive. “Look at all our commercial and scientific interests in the galaxy,” sort of thing.’

‘There is more information on the colony worlds,’ Gillian said. ‘Including information on their locations, if we can translate them into modern coordinates.’

‘We have one we know,’ Bashford pointed out. ‘It should be possible to work out the maths.’

‘You’re thinking we may be able to find other lost colonies?’ Aneka said.

‘I’m sure we can,’ Gillian replied. ‘I think it may be for other people to rediscover them, however. We can supply the locations and see what can be found.’

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘Well I am, but realistically these could be spread across vast areas of space far outside the Federation. Jenlay are long-lived, but it could take many decades to reach all of these locations.’

Ella giggled. ‘And you’re getting too old for all that cold sleep.’

Gillian laughed. ‘Exactly. The thought is enough to alleviate my displeasure at missing the discoveries. Come on, we need pictures of everything in here for later analysis.’

~~~

Aneka watched the wolfrats moving among the buildings and frowned. They seemed to be avoiding certain areas this evening, where they had been everywhere the night before. It was not until the sun went down entirely and the sky darkened to speckled black that she figured out why. A few humanoid heat signatures became visible briefly, moving out from within the buildings and then deeper into the surrounding town.

‘Bash?’ she called out, waiting for the man to walk into the cockpit before adding, ‘I think there are ogres out there, but they’re acting oddly.’

‘How so?’

‘I didn’t notice them last night, but they came out of the buildings over there…’ She pointed towards the broken tower the shapes had come from. ‘…and then went out into the streets beyond. It’s almost like they were watching us and then left when we packed up for the night.’

Bashford frowned, obviously considering. ‘It’s too dangerous with those rat things…’

‘Wolfrats.’

‘If you insist.’ He grinned at her. ‘With the wolfrats out there it’s not safe to go look. Or at least unnecessarily dangerous. We’ll check it out tomorrow. You take Monkey over there. The tape we put on the doors of the museum should have kept the wolfrats out, but Delta can check in there before Gillian and Ella go in.’

‘Okay. I’ll keep an eye out for them coming back in the morning. Right now I’m going to offline so I can be up when you guys turn in.’

Bashford nodded, patting her on the shoulder as he turned to go back into the main cabin. ‘Sleep well.’

19.9.526 FSC.

‘So there was no sign of these things last night?’ Monkey asked as he and Aneka walked across the plaza to the tower block she had seen the ogres moving out from.

‘I didn’t see any of them, but there could be wolfrats hiding out from the light, so let’s be careful.’

Monkey looked down at the laser carbine cradled in his arms. ‘This is about as ready as I get.’

‘You’ve got the infrared overlay on your visor turned on?’

‘Uh… Have now.’

Aneka smiled, said nothing, and carried on walking towards the building. She had seen the ogres leaving via an entrance on the side of the structure. There was a gap between the tower blocks there which turned out to be a pedestrian walkway. Lumps of crushed, decaying Plascrete in the middle of it suggested that there had once been planters.

‘This place probably looked nice once,’ she commented. There was what looked like a fire exit, or would have if the door had still been attached to its hinges, in the wall. She moved closer.

‘I figure they needed to build the housing,’ Monkey said, ‘but they were trying to make it into a monument. So, planters, pretty plazas, a museum…’

Aneka nodded and crouched down to examine the frame. ‘This door was broken in recently. There’s no corrosion where the hinges were ripped out.’ She frowned. ‘You know, even if they were ogres I’m a little surprised they could smash a door off its hinges like this. This door was supposed to open outwards for one thing.’

‘Maybe they’re stronger than they look.’

‘Maybe, but I got hit on the head by one. With a sledgehammer. If they could do this I think my ears would still be ringing.’ She looked up into the space beyond: an emergency stairwell, the staircase rising up to the next floor. ‘It looks safe. Stay behind me.’

‘I won’t be much use if I’m behind you and something happens.’

‘Maybe, but if you get hurt Delta will cut off my limbs with a rusty hacksaw.’

‘Would that actually work?’

Aneka pulled her pistols and moved into the stairwell. ‘I’m unwilling to find out whether it would or not.’

The access doors on the first two floors were still closed, but the third-floor door had been smashed through in a similar manner to the outside door. There was one long corridor from that door to the far side of the building, and no windows, but there was light showing about halfway down from an open door on the side nearest the museum. Moving as quietly as she could, Aneka edged forward, unsure of her footing. She stopped at the side of the doorway, listening. Hearing nothing, she turned into the open door, guns rising to cover the room within.

She found herself looking into an empty room: a lounge, probably. There was a large window in the wall opposite the door and the remains of furniture, a couch, and a flat-screen TV, sitting on a rotten carpet. There were two doors, one to the left and one to the right. Aneka moved into the room, edging to the left around the couch. She waved Monkey towards the right-hand door.

On the left was a bedroom. The bed was still almost intact, though the sheets had long-since decayed into nothing. There was an attached bathroom, which was as empty of ogres as the bedroom and lounge. Aneka turned back to the lounge, looking out across the room to where Monkey was exiting the other door and walking towards her.

‘It’s a kitchen,’ he said. ‘There’s no ogres…’

There was a dull thud and Aneka saw the air ripple in front of her. Whatever the pulse was, it slammed into Monkey’s left arm, picked him up off the ground, and slammed him into the window. Glass exploded out of the room from where he impacted it, and he was gone.

Aneka turned towards the door, her guns rising up and firing as soon as she saw the figure in black combat armour. Hyper-dense needles, each flashing into a searing burst of plasma as it hit the man’s armour, burned through his body and he fell. Then the second of them rounded the doorway, lifted his rifle, and fired.

It felt a lot like being kicked in the chest by a bull. Aneka stumbled backwards into the room she had just walked out of, braced herself to keep from falling, and started back towards the lounge. She saw something bounce across the floor in front of her and the world exploded into white light.

~~~

Bashford watched Delta as she removed the tape they had used to seal the museum door and then moved inside. He was not expecting trouble from that direction, but it was safest to check. Looking to his right he could see Monkey and Aneka. They seemed to have found a way into the tower block and, sure enough, a second later they were gone.

‘I wonder what the ogres were doing in there,’ Ella mused.

‘Probably just looking for a place to sleep,’ Bashford replied. It made a degree of sense, but he did not like the way they had behaved according to Aneka’s description. There was something not quite right going on and he had half a mind to call it a day and leave the area. On the other hand the Garnet Hyde was not due back in orbit for a few days, so if they did leave they would be stuck in cramped quarters for that long. The shuttle only had four bunks and he was not sleeping that well in one of the chairs…

Something made him turn his head towards the other side of the plaza. It was a sound, a soft roar that seemed to be growing in volume. He frowned. There was something there, two somethings. Two objects moving towards them…

‘Get down!’

The warning came too late as two small missiles impacted the ground near their feet. For the briefest instant Bashford thought he was dead, but the warheads exploded into a cloud of vapour which enveloped them quickly and almost immediately began to solidify into strands of clinging plastic. He tried to struggle, but the fibres just tightened until he was completely immobile.

‘Aneka!’ he yelled into the microphone in his helmet. ‘Monkey, Delta? Do you read? We’re under attack!’ There was no reply, and he realised that he should probably be able to hear Gillian and Ella yelling over the radio too, but all he could actually hear was static. Someone was jamming their signals.

~~~

Delta scanned the interior of the museum, visually and with a sensor tuned to detect the electrical impulses living organisms tended to produce. As far as she could tell there was no one there. It had not exactly been likely.

‘Delta to Bashford. Nothing here, Boss. You can bring them in.’ She waited for a reply, starting back towards the doors. ‘Bash? Are you receiving?’ Her pace quickened when there was still no reply. What she did hear was what sounded like an explosion muffled by distance and the museum doors. She started running.

Bursting through the doors she saw four men in black armour standing over what looked like three cocoons of spider webbing lying beside the shuttle’s airlock. Whoever they were, they were up to no good. Raising her carbine, she sighted carefully, and fired. It was as if the incandescent beam of light had hit nothing. All four of the men turned, two raising rifles, the others raising short tubes which they placed on their shoulders. She felt twin impacts on her chest which slammed her backwards into and then through the door, and then the world exploded around her.

~~~

Diagnostic messages danced in front of Aneka’s eyes. Her right leg had lost motor function, she had extensive bruising of her dermal tissue and some internal systems damage, but she was mostly functional. For a second her systems had been sufficiently upset that she had, effectively, blacked out. She was lying against the wall, beside the bed, and her pistols were nowhere to be seen. Monkey…

She started to try to stand, and then let out a gasp as her head was slammed back against the rotten plaster and concrete. One of the men in black armour was standing in the doorway, his rifle levelled at her. He fired again and she felt the shock of the force beam slamming into her face through the suit’s visor. She felt fake blood running down from her nose over her lip.

‘Tough bitch, I’ll give you that,’ the black figure said, his voice made more menacing by some form of electronic modulation. He raised his rifle once more.

Aneka raised her right hand as though warding off the next blast. Various stress alarms were going off to tell her that she was going to take significant damage if this kept up. She set the pulse weapon in her hand to lethal mode and fired it. For a brief instant a tiny maelstrom of conflicting gravity fields came into existence inside the man’s head. His face went blank and he fell, collapsing to his knees, his mouth working. She fired again and this time the light went out in his eyes entirely.

Struggling to keep herself moving, Aneka tried to stand and failed. Giving up on that, at least until her repair systems had done their work, she started crawling towards the door. She made it halfway across the lounge before she collapsed.

~~~

Monkey let out a groan. His head felt as though a dozen men were beating on it with big hammers and he was not entirely sure why. Something had happened. He had been in a building, scouting it with Aneka and then… He remembered falling.

‘Monkey to Aneka,’ he said, wincing slightly at the pain this invoked.

‘David?’ It was Delta’s voice that replied. She sounded close to tears. ‘Thank Vashma. I’ve been trying to raise you for thirty minutes. No one else is answering.’

Monkey turned over, blinking and trying to regain some semblance of vision. ‘Delta? Where are you?’

‘The entrance to the museum. I’m trapped. A beam fell on my arm, I think it’s broken. There were men in armour. I shot one and my carbine did nothing. They… I couldn’t stop them.’

‘I’m coming.’ Struggling to his feet, Monkey started running towards the museum’s entrance which looked as though it had been remodelled with explosives. All the doors were gone and part of the portico had collapsed. He tried running faster, but that just made his head throb more and he had to slow down before he threw up.

He found Delta half-buried in rubble with an I-beam lying on her right arm. ‘What happened?’ he asked as he cleared the Plascrete away from her.

‘I lost radio contact with Bash so I started out the door and there were four men in armour beside the shuttle. They must have used some sort of riot control weapon on the others. They were wrapped up in these weird cocoons. I fired at one, and I know I hit him, even if I’m not really great with a carbine, but it did nothing to him. Then they fired back and…’ She looked up at the new skylight. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I’m not sure. I think I got blasted through a window. My helmet took most of the impact, but it knocked me cold.’

‘Aneka?’

He did not look at her, concentrating on the I-beam instead. ‘I’m not sure. You can’t raise her?’ Delta shook her head. ‘I’ll get you out of here and into the shuttle, then I’ll go look for her. She’s stupid tough. Either she’s okay, or… Or waiting a few minutes won’t matter. You’re going to have to help me with this.’

Leaning towards him, she braced her left hand against the beam and started to try to lift it. ‘David… I think they took your mother, and Bash and Ella. They sure as Hell weren’t ogres.’

Monkey swallowed and tried to sound as confident as he could. ‘Well, considering what ogres kidnap women for, that’s probably a good thing. Now shut up and lift.’

~~~

‘Is she dead?’ Delta looked down at Aneka, lying on one of the bunks. Her own arm was now in a Plastex cast, but when they had got Aneka out of her suit she had felt like a broken arm was nothing. Aneka’s body was more or less one livid bruise, and she lay on the bunk unmoving, unconscious.

‘Sensors say there’s electrical activity in her body, so I’m going to say no,’ Monkey replied. He was feeling a lot happier, but that was mostly because he had recently pumped himself full of the most powerful analgesic on the ship and his endorphin levels were spiking like crazy. He gave a small shrug. ‘It’s difficult to tell. I mean, technically she isn’t alive in the same sense as we are. As far as I know, if she isn’t atomised she can come back from it, but if something damaged her brain enough… All we can really do is wait.’

‘What about the others?’

He walked back to one of the consoles and tapped at it, frowning at the results. ‘We’re not picking up their suit transmissions. No bio-readouts, no location… no radio at all. Either they’re out of range or they’re still being jammed.’

‘Gopi, David! What do we do?’ There were tears in her green eyes again. He turned to her and pulled her into his arms.

‘There’s not much we can do. Not the way we are right now. We’ll wait until Aneka comes around. Maybe then we can try searching from higher altitude. That might work.’ He felt tears on his neck. She was crying, silently, but still crying. ‘It’ll be okay. Somehow. Maybe it’s the painkillers talking, but we’ll be okay.’

Maybe it was the painkillers, or maybe he just had to keep thinking that. Otherwise he would start crying too.

Prime City, 6th August 3186.

Ella opened her eyes and looked up at a ceiling of soft, artificial lights behind plastic panels. Her head felt fuzzy, unfocussed, and she was having some trouble focussing on where she was and what had happened to her. Drugs. I was drugged. She pushed herself up on one elbow.

Gillian was lying on a bench similar to the one Ella was on; the room had four of the slim bunks, two on either side. Bashford was on a third, sitting up, looking dazed, and being examined by a woman in an outfit Ella recognised. There was a short, long-sleeved, white plastic dress, this one with red lines down her arms, black leggings, and white boots. The woman was a citizen. Aside from the benches and the ceiling lights, the room was pretty featureless.

‘Good, you’re awake.’ Ella turned her head at the sound of the voice to see a man walking up to her dressed in basically the same outfit as the woman. He lifted a scanning unit of some sort, aiming it at her. The device had no display so she figured that it connected directly with the man’s implant. ‘Vital signs are strong,’ he said. ‘Your brain activity is coming back to normal. I’d imagine you’re still feeling groggy?’

‘Uh… yeah. Where am I?’

‘The Prime City, of course. Please lie still. The drug they gave you will wear off soon, then you can move around.’

‘Why are we here? Why did those men kidnap us?’

The man smiled. ‘The Enforcers detained you for questioning. We weren’t informed why. We’ve no need to know.’ Ella looked at him. The smile was far too happy, almost brainwashed. ‘We attempted to access your implants,’ he went on, ‘but the protocols are different.’

‘Uh, yeah, I guess they would be. Are my friends okay?’

The smile became slightly confused. ‘Friends? We assumed they were guides or servants.’

Ella blinked, perplexed for a second herself. Then it hit her. ‘They don’t have implants so you assumed… Not everyone where I come from has them. I’m a rarity, in fact.’

The smile was replaced entirely by confusion. ‘How do you run your society?’

‘We talk to each other, I guess. People haven’t been very keen on cybernetics since the Xinti War.’ His confusion continued. ‘You don’t know about the Xinti? The war? Why this world is in the state it’s in?’

He frowned. ‘There’s something wrong with our world?’

‘I suppose that depends upon who you ask. Look, what’s going to happen to us?’

As if on cue, the only door in the room opened and two of the black-clad Enforcers entered. Each was carrying a rifle with two wide barrels. They stopped beside Ella’s bunk.

‘Is this one the leader?’ The voice was filtered through some sort of electronics to sound slightly mechanical, and more menacing.

‘No.’ Everyone turned to look towards Bashford. ‘No, I’m the leader here, hard as that might be for you people to believe.’

The Enforcers looked at the medi-tech. He shrugged. ‘She said they were friends, not servants.’

The Enforcer who had spoken looked towards Bashford. ‘On your feet. Manu Dei is handling this personally.’ Bashford stood up and started towards them.

‘Bash,’ Ella said, her tone urgent, ‘don’t go with them.’

Bashford gave her a smile which did not reach his eyes. ‘I don’t think we have much choice in the matter. Don’t worry. I’m sure this… Manu Dei, whoever he is, just wants to talk.’ The Enforcers moved out behind him and the door closed.

Ella looked at the medi-tech again as the female one moved towards Gillian to check on her. ‘What about the others? There were six of us. Where are the other three?’

‘Sadly,’ the man said, ‘you were the only survivors.’

‘No,’ Ella said, her stomach sinking. ‘I… don’t believe that.’

‘Well, if there is one fault the Enforcers have… Once they go after someone they tend not to leave them alive. And they have no reason to lie.’

‘No…’

London, 20.9.526 FSC.

The diagnostics were telling something of a different tale than their usual ‘optimal.’ Right leg: motor systems, inoperable – repairing. External communications: inoperable – repairing. Auditory systems: right sensor partially damaged – repairing; left sensor inoperable – repairing. Right arm: 70% functional – repairing. Dermal layer: damaged – repairs delayed. She opened her eyes.

She was lying on one of the four bunks situated behind the cockpit. The bottom two bunks were more or less at floor level. Turning her head she saw Monkey and Delta lying opposite her. She smiled; Delta was a big woman and looked incredibly cute curled up in his arms. One of Delta’s arms was in a cast…

Memory returned. The cast she was unsure about, but Monkey had been blasted through a window. He had to have dropped three stories onto the plaza outside, but he looked fairly undamaged. The suits the Negral AIs had given them were really pretty amazing. She wondered how much more damage she would have taken if she had not been wearing hers.

‘David?’ she said, keeping her voice soft. Both of them opened their eyes anyway.

‘You’re awake finally,’ Delta said.

Aneka checked her last downtime period: over eighteen hours. ‘Yeah, but I’m not fixed yet. Another… twenty hours for full repair. My leg’s fucked. I can barely hear.’

‘And your skin is definitely not supposed to be that colour,’ Monkey added. ‘Hey, you called me David.’

‘Yeah, well you must’ve got me out of that room, and Delta looks like she needed some help. Monkey sounds like a nickname for a kid, and you’re not one. Where are the others?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘I saw four men in black uniforms,’ Delta explained. ‘They had the others wrapped up in some sort of cocoons, and then they blew me up.’

‘When I came to,’ Monkey went on, ‘they were gone.’

‘Not all of them,’ Aneka replied. There was a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of what she chose to call her stomach and her mind was trying to freeze up, and she was trying hard to ignore all of it.

‘Uh, no. I assume you killed the one that was up there with you.’

‘Yeah. I got one. You’ve tried their telemetry? Radio?’

‘Everything I could think of. With you out of action and Delta’s arm busted, and my head throbbing like a bitch for hours too… I couldn’t think of a way to track them. I just…’ He stopped, set his jaw, and then continued. ‘I figured when you could move we’d try again from the air…’

‘Yeah. Maybe. I’m fuck all use to them as I am anyway. Get some rest. When it gets light I’m going to move us out of this area. They might come back and I’d rather not be here if they do.’

Monkey lowered his head to the pillow again and Aneka saw Delta’s eyes close. Then she lay there thinking. There had to be some way of finding the others. There had to be.

~~~

‘Internal systems are now sufficiently repaired to allow communication,’ Al said. Aneka had never been so happy to hear his voice.

‘Are you up to date on what’s happened?’ she asked rather than gushing at him. He knew how she felt anyway.

‘I was able to hear your thoughts, but the hardware allowing me to speak was disabled.’

‘Any thoughts on locating them?’

‘Currently, none. However, I should point out that I am a computer. While I have the ability to work through many possibilities and come to conclusions some of my less self-aware brethren would never reach, I lack a certain degree of intuitiveness which you have. Also, my mind is less complex than yours. You are smarter than I am.’

‘Huh, I don’t generally get that impression. You know more than I do for starters.’

‘Don’t confuse access to a large amount of data and the ability to search it rapidly with intelligence. I augment your thought processes by intercepting ideas, running those ideas against my data, and returning results. It makes me seem smarter than I am. I haven’t bothered disabusing you before.’

Aneka suppressed a laugh; Delta and Monkey were still asleep. ‘Cheat. So, why tell me now?’

‘Because you need to realise that you are the one who needs to come up with the ideas. You, or David, or Delta. I can assist, but you need to have the ideas for me to work with.’

‘Okay. Well I’ll get right on that. How are the repairs going?’ She turned, pulling herself around so that she could sit up. Lying down was getting boring, but her dragging right leg did not help with her feeling of well-being.

‘You’re right arm is now fully functional. Full auditory functionality will be restored in around forty minutes. Your leg will take considerably longer, but I have now been able to divert repair nanobots to your dermal layer. The bruising will start going down soon.’

‘Good, I look like a plum.’ Her eyes fell on her discarded suit and helmet. ‘Al, Delta said those men were wearing suits a bit like ours.’

‘Yes, she did. Possibly slightly more resilient. Actual battle armour rather than simply advanced survival suits.’

‘Uh-huh, and our suits have distributed computer systems in them, yes?’

‘That is also correct.’

‘So if we went and got that body from the tower block…’

‘Do I think I could hack into his suit’s computer? Aneka, you wound me with the thought that I might not.’

Aneka grinned.

Prime City, 6th August 3186.

‘I’m all right, Ella,’ Gillian said. ‘I’m worried about Bash, but physically I’m fine. Though I would prefer not to be wearing a paper hospital gown.’

Ella grinned bleakly. The garments they had been put in were more like short dressing gowns, but they were made of some sort of disposable, tough paper, and they were in an institutional shade of green. Whatever Gillian said, Ella could see that the worry was eating at her.

‘And I don’t believe Aneka is gone,’ Gillian added. ‘Vashma forbid, Delta and… and David, but Aneka? The woman is almost indestructible.’

‘She’s not though. I mean, if someone damaged her brain enough…’

‘And that is behind a skull of living metal. She’s tough, and very persistent, and she won’t stop looking for us because she won’t rest until she finds you.’

Ella nodded. ‘No. You’re right, she won’t. Bash has been gone a long time. What does this Manu Dei want with us?’

‘If he’s been questioning Bash all this time, then I assume the answer is information.’

‘What information do we have?’

‘Where we came from. How we got here. What our intentions are. A better question would perhaps be “Who is Manu Dei?” He seems somewhat paranoid. A controlling individual. Something of a dictator.’

‘That doesn’t exactly bode well.’

‘No, perhaps not. Hopefully we’ll have more information when they bring Bash back. He will have at least met our mysterious host.’

London, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘You’re sure you’re all right to do this, Delta?’ Aneka asked as she set the redhead’s helmet in place for her. The suit had adjusted itself around her cast well at least; the wonders of super-high-tech clothing.

‘I’m not letting him go alone, and your leg’s not working yet. I can carry the body over my good shoulder and he can shoot anything that moves.’

Aneka nodded. Of course it was a good plan, but… ‘If any of those men are there…’

‘This is the only way we’re going to find Mom and the others,’ Monkey said. ‘Trying from the air was a longshot and we both know it.’

‘Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t even be suggesting this. I’ll have the shuttle ready to take off as soon as you’re back aboard.’ She checked the seal on Delta’s helmet and gave her a nod, and then they stepped into the airlock while Aneka limped off towards the cockpit.

The waiting was beyond annoying. She had finished the pre-flight checks by the time Monkey reported that they had made it to the room without incident. Then she just had to wait more while they made their way back, slower now with Delta lugging an armoured body. She saw them walking back, every step seeming to take an eternity, and powered up the anti-gravity system as soon as the console indicators showed the airlock’s outer door was closed.

There was a thud from the back. ‘We’re in,’ Monkey’s voice said from the speakers.

Aneka hit the thrusters and the ship jerked into the air, the inertial compensation making it feel like a gentle rise. She pulled the ship up and out of the plaza, engaging the main engines and pushing them north once they were above the buildings. A kilometre or so out, she dropped into the low valley of the M1 and continued out at barely thirty metres above the ground.

‘A bit low, aren’t we?’ Monkey asked from behind her.

‘I’m not picking up radar emissions, but I’m also not taking chances. I’m going to get us out of the area of the city and then put her back down.’

‘Okay. I’ll go see if I can crack the seal on this guy’s suit. I assume we’re going to need access to the inside?’

‘I am detecting no foreign wireless transmissions,’ Al said. ‘I believe we will need physical access.’

‘Yeah, looks like it.’

Between the road and the ruins of St Albans she spotted a ragged clump of trees which the maps they had gathered showed had various clearings in it. Swinging over that, she dropped into the first gap she could find. It seemed to take far too long to shut down the flight systems and even longer to limp her way back to the lab area where Monkey and Delta were standing over the body looking slightly disgusted.

They had managed to get the man’s helmet off. He had brown, crew-cut hair and looked like a bit of a thug: not an unattractive thug, but a thug. There was also a cable sticking out of the back of his neck which disappeared under the collar of the suit.

‘He’s wired into the thing,’ Monkey said. ‘I mean… yuck!’

Aneka grinned and settled down beside the body. ‘You haven’t been spending enough time around Ella recently. It’s just fibre optics. Ella has a port at the back of her skull not too different from this.’ She reached to the back of the man’s head, located the release stud beside the port, and pulled the cable free.

‘Like I said, yuck,’ Monkey commented.

‘Don’t let Ella hear you say that, and pass me a fibre wireless bridge.’ Delta handed over a box from one of the storage units and Aneka plugged the cable in. ‘Al,’ she said silently, ‘can you connect it up?’

‘I can, but the transmission protocols are different from the ones normally used by Federation technology. I’ll need to rewrite the bridge’s software and then discover the correct commands… This will take some time.’

Aneka tried to keep the disappointment from her face as she looked up at Monkey and Delta. When she did, however, Delta was holding her pistols out. ‘We found these too. They look kind of damaged.’

They did, one worse than the other. Aneka figured the more broken one was Bridget; her right side had taken the brunt of the explosion, so Bridget was the likely candidate. ‘Well, Al’s going to be a while breaking into the suit. I guess I’ll see what I can do about fixing them while we wait.’

Monkey produced a scanner and medical kit. ‘And Mom would rip me a new one if I didn’t get tissue and blood samples off this guy. Work’ll keep my mind off things.’

‘Then I’ll help where I can,’ Delta said. ‘I haven’t lost someone I actually love, but I’m worried too.’

‘I know,’ Monkey said. ‘Help me get some cheek swabs, then you can run the DNA while I check the biochemistry.’

Prime City, 7th August 3186.

The sound of the door opening woke Ella. Two medi-techs were carrying Bashford back into the room and Ella started to get up, but then a pair of Enforcers moved in, one of them aiming his rifle at her. She stopped, and the medics carried on to the bench Bashford had been on before. He was unconscious, but she could see his chest moving.

‘What did you do to him?’ she asked. Across from her Gillian was waking too.

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ one of the Enforcers said. ‘On your feet. Manu Dei wants to talk to you.’

‘No!’ Gillian snapped. ‘I should be next. You can’t…’

The second Enforcer turned his rifle towards Gillian. Ella got quickly to her feet. ‘It’s okay! I’m coming. See to Bash, Gillian. When he wakes up he’s going to need you.’

She started for the door, Gillian’s eyes on her the whole time. She heard the door close behind her and took four more steps before something touched the back of her neck and everything went black.

Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘How are the repairs coming along?’ Monkey asked.

Aneka was busy reassembling one of her pistols at a table. Her skin was back to a more normal colour at least. ‘Well, there were several parts damaged that I couldn’t replace, but I’ve managed to get one working gun from two. Meet Claret, who will hopefully do Bridget and Clara proud.’

‘I guess one gun is better than none. We got the results back on the DNA from our black-clad friend.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Uh, well I’m not Mom or Ella, but the computer’s pretty good at working on Jenlay… uh, Human genetics. That guy is closer to a Jenlay than he is to the people back in Matlock. A lot of markers suggesting an extended lifespan, higher intelligence, disease resistance, health… In fact, aside from some neural-sensory response coding in common, we could be looking at two different sub-species.’

‘What’s this common area?’

‘Uh… Not sure. I think it has something to do with scent. Probably increases certain neural responses to smells, though I’m not a neuroscientist so I may be wrong. Oh, and these people probably have better night vision than normal.’

‘Better night vision. And they don’t have the adaptations to radioactive fallout that the surface people have?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘So they were kept somewhere away from the fallout, where the radiation wouldn’t be a problem. That’s why we haven’t located the cities; they are underground. They probably didn’t have huge amounts of power to waste when they were modified. The lighting would be dim and they’d never see sunlight.’

‘But where?’

‘Not London. Probably away from the major fallout areas.’ Aneka shook her head. ‘Hopefully when Al cracks this suit’s computer we’ll know.’

Prime City, 7th August 3186.

The room was dark aside from the single spotlight which lit Ella. The light was uncomfortably bright, but she could close her eyes to take away some of the glare. The rest of her discomfort was harder to ignore. She had awoken strung up in some sort of frame. Her wrists were in metal cuffs high over her head, her neck was in a metal collar which kept her chin from moving down to avoid the light, and her legs were spread apart by a pair of manacles locked around her ankles. She was also naked, but the room was warm, almost too warm. She was not sure whether she was sweating because of the heat or the fear.

Her implant told her she had been stood there for almost an hour with no sign of the mysterious Manu Dei, or any other interrogator. The idea was, she was sure, to disorient her and let the fear factor build. Well it was working, she was afraid.

‘Hello, Ella.’ The voice came from the darkness: soft, female, and somehow familiar. ‘Your friend Leo told me a lot of very interesting things and I had to take care of some of them before I came to talk to you. I apologise for the delay.’

Ella mustered as much courage as she had available. ‘The delay I can accept. I’m not so happy about the bondage.’

‘It’s necessary, for now, that you don’t resist what I’m going to do.’ The voice was closer. Ella thought she could make out a shape: tall, slim, the suggestion of short hair. ‘You’re going to enjoy… some of it.’

The voice… It can’t be… ‘Aneka?’

‘I haven’t used that name in a long time, Ella.’

‘Then… then you’re Yrimtan. You were Andrea Johnson on the Titan base, Aneka Jansen before that. The Xinti called you Yrimtan.’

‘Now I go by Manu Dei.’ She stepped forward into the light. ‘It means “Hand of God,” just as Yrimtan does.’ She looked almost exactly like Aneka, of course. Her hair was a pale, yellow-blonde, gold strands instead of Aneka’s silver. Her breasts were smaller and more naturally shaped, and they were covered only by some strings of silver beads. Her entire outfit seemed to be made of strings of silver pearls, barely covering her body, and her ample height was augmented by a pair of silver pumps. Despite her fear, Ella felt her skin heating.

‘Y-you’re using the sex pheromones.’

‘Yes, I am. I’m using the other ones too. It’s interesting that you know about them. Leo didn’t.’

‘We d-didn’t tell everyone.’ Ella squirmed slightly in her cuffs. She was uncomfortably aware that she was becoming wet and trying to fight it. ‘We didn’t want people to think she was influencing them when she wasn’t. She doesn’t use them.’

Yrimtan gave a throaty chuckle and reached out a hand, her palm alighting on Ella’s right bicep and stroking downwards. ‘I use them all the time. I engineered a susceptibility to them into the people here. I find it useful.’

A soft tingle began in the skin of Ella’s arm. ‘That… that feels like…’ The tingling grew, spreading outwards from Yrimtan’s palm until it reached out across her breast and her nipple began to stiffen. ‘A neurostim… You’re using a neurostim.’

‘I’m not familiar with the word, but I understand the reference. I understand that my counterpart has force generators in her palms. A defensive measure.’

‘Y-yes,’ Ella moaned.

‘I was made to educate. I have neural induction elements in my hands which allow me to push thought patterns into a brain, should I need to.’

‘You used… oh… that to help Alan.’

‘Indeed. The same technology can be used to stimulate other nerves in different ways. Pleasure if you tell me what I want to know…’ The achingly beautiful tingling feeling changed in an instant. As if a switch had been flicked over it felt as though someone was running a blowtorch over her arm. Ella screamed, and screamed, until the pain faded away. ‘Or pain if you don’t,’ Yrimtan said softly.

‘What… What do you want to know?’

The golden-haired Aneka smiled. ‘I want to know everything you know about the other me.’

Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘I have gained access to the suit’s computer system,’ Al announced.

‘Finally!’ Aneka replied.

‘I’m sorry it took so long. Strangely the protocols include no security or encryption. It took considerable trial and error to get the transport layer protocols right and then determine the command sequencing…’

‘Al,’ Aneka interrupted, ‘I don’t really need to know the details.’

‘I know. I just wanted you to know that I haven’t been dawdling.’

‘Al, I never think you’re dawdling. Can we get access to any useful geographical data?’

‘I am downloading everything I can find from the suit’s databases now. I will begin searching soon.’

‘Let me know when you have something.’ Aloud she said, ‘Al’s got into the suit’s computer. He’s working on finding a location for the city.’

‘Good news, at last,’ Delta said.

Aneka gave her a smile. ‘Yeah, good news. Then all I have to do is figure out how to sneak into an underground city guarded by soldiers with gravity pulse weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers. Then I have to sneak the others out so we can all escape this rock and get back to the Hyde.’

‘Doesn’t sound easy,’ Monkey commented, ‘but if it’s possible then you can do it. It’s going to be good to be back on the Hyde.’

‘Amen to that,’ Aneka agreed.

FScV Garnet Hyde.

‘Drake to Shannon,’ Drake’s voice came from the console speakers on the Hyde’s flight deck. ‘How’s things?’

Shannon shook her head. He was down in their cabin, supposedly resting, but he could not help checking up on her. ‘Everything’s fine, Drake. I’m fine. You don’t need to check up on me every ten minutes.’

‘It’s been over an hour.’

‘Still… either get some sleep, or come up here and fuck me. There’s nothing happening. We’re on a standard trajectory back to Earth. No course corrections needed…’

‘Isn’t that a bit tame for you?’

‘Gonna let that stop you?’

There was a laugh. ‘I can’t sleep anyway. I’ll be up there in ten.’

Shannon grinned, reaching for the tube of lubricant she kept under the flight console. Her eye caught something moving on the sensor display and she frowned. Reaching out she tapped the dot on the display and it zoomed in. One dot became three and the computer identified them almost immediately: missiles.

‘Gopi! Aggy, how long before impact?’

‘Sixty-two-point-nine seconds at current trajectory,’ Aggy replied. ‘Recommend evasive action.’

Shannon’s hands shifted over the controls, the Hyde spun on its axis, and the main engines fired jerking it sideways, relative to the missiles. She could see them adjusting their tracking and she shifted course again, twisting the ship violently away from its course.

‘Fifty-two-point-three seconds,’ Aggy said. ‘The missiles are tracking us and their engines are allowing them greater acceleration than we have.’

Swallowing, Shannon looked back at the display. She was not a military pilot and the Hyde was not a military vessel. There was no way she could pull them away from missiles homing in on… ‘Aggy, are we picking up any active sensor pings from them?’

‘No, Shannon. They appear to be using a passive homing technique.’

‘All right…’ She swallowed again. It was going to be a terrible risk, but she had to hope it worked or they were screwed. ‘On my mark I want you to power down everything except life support and your basic systems.’

‘Yes, Shannon. Ready when you are.’ Just like that, no questioning, no second guessing. A Xinti AI always believed that an organic mind knew what it was doing.

Vashma, I hope she’s right. Shannon twisted their orientation again, lining the ship up on Earth, and hit the main drives at full throttle.

‘Fifteen seconds, Shannon,’ Aggy said, her voice calm.

Shannon counted to five. ‘Mark!’ Darkness enveloped the cockpit as all the displays went dead. She grabbed the arms of her chair to stop herself floating away as the gravity cut out, and then fumbled for her harness. Out of the window she saw three exhaust flares going past, and she held her breath…

Something jerked the ship violently and it began to tumble, slowly, end over end. As it inverted completely Shannon was able to see the dying explosions that had taken place where she had cut the power. Deprived of whatever they were homing in on, the missiles had detonated at the Hyde’s last known position. Shannon exhaled.

The flight deck door opened and Drake pulled himself in through the door. ‘What the Hell just happened?!’

‘It seems like someone doesn’t like us,’ Shannon replied.

Prime City, 7th August 3186.

The sight of Bashford stirring, finally, brought a smile to Gillian’s face. The medi-techs had left her alone with him about thirty minutes earlier, apparently satisfied that he was healthy. She had been sitting on the edge of his bunk waiting for him to regain consciousness ever since.

He blinked at her, confusion and lack of recognition clear in his eyes. ‘Gillian?’

‘Yes, Bash. It’s me. How are you feeling?’

‘Uh… My throat’s dry.’

Reaching down to the floor beside the bench, Gillian picked up a bottle of water the medics had left. Lifting his head, she put the bottle to his lips and poured a little of the liquid into his mouth. His eyes closed in pleasure as the cool water soothed his throat, and she poured more until he nodded that it was enough.

‘What did he do to you?’ Gillian asked.

‘She,’ Bashford replied. ‘Gillian, it’s Yrimtan. Manu Dei is Yrimtan.’

‘Are you serious? She’d have to be… Well, I suppose there’s no reason Aneka can’t live that long, but…’

‘It’s her,’ Bashford asserted. ‘She wanted information. Who we were, where we came from. She got very interested when I told her about Aneka. Then she asked about the Hyde. She wanted the transponder code and frequencies. I told her, Gillian. Anything she wanted.’

‘Aneka’s pheromones can make you do whatever she wants,’ Gillian said softly. ‘She never uses them, but…’

‘That wasn’t all of it.’ Gillian frowned as she realised he was pulling at her robe. ‘Some kind of neurostim device. Pleasure and pain, over and over…’ A hand slid under the paper robe and up her right thigh.

‘Bash, I don’t think this is an entirely appropriate time to…’

His hand curled under her butt, pulling her closer. His breathing was becoming rapid. As she spoke she felt his grip tighten on her buttock and he jammed his eyes closed. ‘I don’t know if I can stop myself,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Gillian pulled his head against her shoulder and held him there. ‘Yes you can, lover,’ she whispered. ‘You’re strong, and we’ll work through this together.’ She felt his arms move, his hands tighten against her back, and hoped that she was right.

FScV Garnet Hyde, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘So I remembered that story you told me,’ Shannon said, ‘about the pirates who were targeting ships by tuning their missiles to transponder frequencies.’

‘So you guessed that that was what these had been programmed to do,’ Drake said. Reaching out, he pushed a strand of blonde hair from her face. ‘Quite a risk.’

‘I didn’t think it could be worse than letting three missiles hit us.’

‘Three nuclear missiles.’

‘That too.’

‘You were fucking brilliant,’ Drake said, shifting his hips just so.

Shannon groaned. ‘Sex in zero-G isn’t easy, but it’s so worth it.’

‘I think you deserve a reward for saving our collective butts. Besides, it’s a day and a half to Earth orbit as close as I can figure. There’s nothing much to do until we get closer and with Aggy down to basic maintenance we can’t even watch vids. So I’m going to keep rewarding you until you tell me to stop.’

‘A day and a half?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I can do that.’

Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘Aldershot,’ Aneka said. ‘It’s under Aldershot.’

‘Does that mean something?’ Monkey asked.

‘It’s where I used to live. My parents’ house anyway. My family lived there.’

‘Could be a coincidence,’ Delta pointed out.

‘Yes,’ Aneka agreed. ‘Aldershot was an army town. There were probably bunkers under it which could be used in the event of some sort of war. They could have used it when the bombs started dropping.’

‘Well, the map shows some buildings still standing,’ Monkey went on. ‘Logically, if there’s an entrance then it’s in one of those. But how are you planning on getting in?’

Aneka looked around, her eyes arriving on the body of the man she had killed. ‘Al, could you hack his implant? They must have identity coding similar to the mechanism the Federation uses. He had no other ID on him.’

‘I see no reason why not,’ Al replied. ‘They seem to employ the “arrogant ignorance” school of security. They simply don’t believe anyone would try to attack their security.’

Standing up, Aneka walked over to the body, took the bridge off the cable into the suit, and then reconnected it into the man’s neck port. ‘Got a connection?’

‘Yes. His implant still has power. I’ll begin working on it immediately.’

‘What are you doing?’ Monkey asked, looking a little disgusted.

‘I’m going to get ID from this guy, dress up in his armour, and walk in the front door.’

‘Uh,’ Delta was looking unconvinced, ‘isn’t it going to be a bit tight in certain areas?’

Aneka laughed. ‘Maybe, but I figure it’ll refit like our suits, and he’s pretty barrel-chested. It’s the best plan I can come up with.’

‘It’s too risky,’ Monkey replied.

‘No, it’s not. Nothing would be too risky. Nothing.’

Prime City, 7th August 3186.

Ella was screaming. The pain had been burning through her chest for the last… Time had lost its meaning. All there was was the pain spreading out from Yrimtan’s palms where they cupped Ella’s breasts.

The hands slid down to her ribs, her waist, her hips, and the pain subsided, replaced by tingling and then pleasure. The tingling spread, stiffening her nipples and settled as a throbbing pulse between her legs. She moaned. The sensation was intensely stimulating, but not nearly enough to get her off.

‘Tell me about her, Ella,’ Yrimtan said, her voice soft. ‘Tell me all about her and there will be no more pain. Tell me about her and I’ll make you feel better than you’ve ever felt before. You know I can. You’ve felt it. Tell me.’

‘N-no… If you use that too much…’ They had a neurostim back at home. It was capable only of delivering pleasure, and they had discovered very quickly that using it too much would lead to addiction. ‘How… how much did you use it on Bash?’

‘Oh… Leo took a long time to break. I used it on him a lot.’

~~~

Gillian woke to confusion. There was air on her skin where she expected her gown to be, hands sliding over her skin. She blinked and managed to focus, and she saw Bashford’s face over hers, pain written all over his features.

‘I can’t… I need…’ She could hear the pain there too. He was trying so hard to control himself.

What did the bitch do to him? ‘It’s all right, Leo. I’m here and you’re safe now.’

‘Gillian… I need to feel…’ His body pressed down and she felt him, hard against her pubic mound. ‘I shouldn’t… give in. But…’

‘It’s all right.’ She lifted her legs, spreading them to either side of his hips, and he was in her before she had time to say anything else.

8th August 3186.

Yrimtan lifted her hands from Ella’s body, turning and walking away. The redhead strained in her bonds for another few seconds before sagging, her head lolling backwards. Drool coated her chin and mixed with the sweat soaking her body. She was entirely spent, which was just as Yrimtan wanted.

Outside the door to the interrogation room, an Enforcer waited at attention, his rifle slung at his side. Yrimtan closed the door behind her and turned to him. ‘The ship?’

‘We detected three detonations and no further transponder signals,’ the Enforcer responded.

‘Good. I want this cleaned up with clinical precision. Send a team to destroy their shuttle and burn the bodies at the museum. Let Leo have his fill of the scientist and then execute them. Everyone in Matlock is to be eliminated. A viral outbreak, I think. We can repopulate it in a few months. The loss of produce will be inconvenient, but I want no one who has met them left to talk about it.’

The Enforcer nodded. ‘The medi-techs?’

‘No one who has met them below Enforcer level.’

‘Yes, Manu Dei. I’ll begin preparations.’

‘Oh, the girl in there. Sedate her and take her to my private rooms. The small bedroom. Don’t bind her, she’s not dangerous.’

‘Yes, Manu Dei.’

Turning, she started down the black-walled corridor with its faintly yellow lighting, smiling to herself.

Aldershot Camp, 22.9.526 FSC.

The little aircraft flew on wings of almost transparent Plastex, its engine barely making a sound as it carried Aneka in a slow circle around the ruins which had once been the army base at Aldershot. She had flown over the town once, but there was nothing there aside from rubble. Here some of the buildings were still almost intact and on her second pass she spotted the black-clad figures outside a facility she did not recognise. Probably built after she had left, maybe a lot later since she thought she recognised the signature of Plascrete in its walls.

North-west of it was what had once been an athletics track, and it still had an area of flat grass she could put down on and some walls which would provide cover. Turning the microlight, she swung around, dropped down low, and slid the small craft in over the stands and onto the field. She scanned the surrounding area, seeing no one, unstrapped herself, and climbed out of the bucket-like seat. Equipment was quickly removed from the space behind the seat, then she triggered the folding mechanism and hid the suitcase in some bushes. Using the aircraft to escape was out of the question, but she did not want it found either.

‘As far as I can tell,’ Al said as Aneka started running across the rubble-strewn wasteland outside the stadium, ‘we can be anyone we wish to be. There was trivial encryption on the man’s identification. Primarily a verification mechanism, I believe. I’ve given you what I believe to be a moderate rank in their military.’

‘And you can just tweak the data and do that?’

‘Yes. They simply don’t think anyone would actually change their details, so there is nothing to stop it from happening.’

Spotting another guard ahead of her, Aneka slowed to a walk. ‘If this works I almost feel like finding their boss and talking to him about his lousy security.’

‘I am going to assume you are joking.’

There was a pause as they got closer to the other black-clad figure. In-vision an identity panel appeared for the woman walking towards them: no name, just an ID number and rank, which was low. Aneka waited for the snap of a salute, and got one, before returning it.

‘It looks like we’re in the clear,’ Aneka observed.

‘Apparently. I’m seeing no unusual changes in radio activity from Corporal Nine-One-Two-Seven-Three.’

‘Who am I?’

‘Lieutenant Commander Eight-Seven-Five-Three-Nine,’ Al replied, flashing up the ID data he had manufactured based on the dead man.

‘Enforcer? That’s what they call these people?’

‘Apparently. Not a name which invokes a feeling of trust.’

‘Less military, more secret police.’ She rounded a corner of the building she expected to find the city entrance in and marched towards the steps leading up to the front door. Two guards with rifles snapped to attention and saluted as she started up the stairs. ‘They certainly have discipline.’

‘I am picking up wireless network signals,’ Al announced in lieu of a reply. ‘Connection achieved… Go through the doors and head directly forward. There are a set of lifts opposite the door.’

‘That was quick.’

‘Their computer system is very responsive,’ Al replied. ‘The technology behind it rivals that of the Xinti, or seems to. I have a map of the city, but if we are to attempt to locate Ella and the others I would suggest finding somewhere to sit down. If we keep moving we may draw undue attention to ourselves.’

‘Let’s worry about getting down first. How big is this city?’ An Enforcer held the door for her as she walked into the building and she gave him a quick salute in reply to his. Being an officer was always better than being a grunt.

‘Approximately ten kilometres in circumference and fifteen stories deep.’ As Al spoke, he displayed a rough schematic diagram showing the below-ground structure. ‘The widest axis goes from here to the south-east. The shape is not quite a circle and some levels extend out in various directions in different ways. The first occupied level is twenty metres under ground level, but that is relatively small and central. Four metres below that is the first major level which the lifts go to. There are, approximately, seventy-five thousand people living here.’

The inside of the building was bare and concrete with a couple of large blockades set halfway down the big room. Turrets sat atop the concrete blocks. Network security was clearly not considered an issue, but physical security was. No weapon was turned towards Aneka as she walked between the walls, and she immediately saw the bank of lift doors, all of them curved outward suggesting cylindrical cars. No one stopped her; no one even spoke to her as she walked up to one of the pairs of doors, pressed the button beside them, and waited.

The car, when it arrived, had a clinical, white, plastic look to it. Aneka stepped into it, waited while the security system verified that only authenticated personnel were in the car, and relaxed when the doors closed. Her accelerometers were barely sensitive enough to detect the car starting on its way down.

‘The map shows some sort of open concourse outside the elevator exits,’ Aneka said silently. ‘Maybe there’s somewhere there I can sit down to go over the maps and come up with a search pattern.’

‘A good plan, if there is somewhere…’ The doors opened and Aneka found herself looking out on a wide, vaguely triangular plaza with a tall, domed ceiling. The walls were curved with one extending out from the lifts and two curving inward towards the only exit at the far side. In the middle of the floor was a water feature and there were tables and chairs set around it, more at various outlets on the side walls. A number of people were sitting at the tables dressed in the white coat-like garments Ella had worn to go into Matlock, and in Enforcer uniforms. ‘All right,’ Al conceded, ‘this looks perfect.’

Aneka trotted down the steps and headed for one of the groups of tables in the corner on the right side. It looked quiet and the light was a little dimmer, not that the light was particularly bright anyway. She could see other, real, Enforcers sitting at tables with their helmets off, so she removed hers and sat down, setting her helmet on the table and shaking out her hair. The long, black wig had taken an hour to fabricate, but it hid her neck which was missing the ports the others had. She had to admit, it did not look too bad on her.

‘Enforcer?’ Aneka looked up to see a handsome young man, maybe twenty years old with short, blonde hair, standing beside her table. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘Coffee? Black, no sugar.’

‘Of course. Coming right up.’

‘They’re polite,’ Aneka commented silently.

‘They are,’ Al agreed. ‘They are also drastically stratified in their social structure, and so predisposed to obeying the rules. That means that they don’t hack computer systems, which is good for us. I’m searching for anything concerning Ella, Gillian, or Bash.’

‘Let me know when you have something.’

‘Of course. They’re quick too.’

Aneka turned her head to see the young man walking towards her with her coffee. ‘How did you know he was coming? I wasn’t looking that way.’

‘He’s connected to the network, which provides location information. They all are.’

‘Your coffee, Enforcer.’ The waiter put her mug down.

‘Thank you.’

He looked pleasantly surprised. ‘You must be Infiltration Division.’

She smiled at him and went with it. ‘And what would make you think that?’

‘You’ve got manners. Enjoy your coffee.’

‘Interesting,’ Al commented as the man walked away.

‘Yeah. Infiltration Division, huh? Must be… people trained to interact with the surface dwellers?’

‘That would seem reasonable.’

Aneka sat in silence and drank coffee. It was, to her slight surprise, very good coffee. Somewhere on this world, someone was growing coffee beans just like the ones she was used to. Not quite up to the standard of the Ashtenna beans, but good. Around her people sat drinking various things, some eating pastries. It could have been a food court in any shopping centre she had ever been in, except that everyone wore the same sort of clothes, differentiated only by the stripes on their sleeves. The uniformity was disconcerting.

‘I have located a room I believe Gillian and Bash are being held in,’ Al informed her. ‘Ten floors down on the other side of the city. The area appears to be a secure medical facility. I believe some urgency is required. The area has been closed off and the staff in that area are going offline.’

‘Offline? As in…’

‘Someone is working through the area killing everyone in it, Aneka.’

Grabbing her helmet, Aneka started towards the entranceway into the city. Whatever was going on, she needed to get there as fast as she could.

~~~

Ella opened her eyes and found herself looking at a white-painted ceiling. She was no longer in the interrogation room, but the fact of that did not immediately hit her. What did hit her was the need. She needed Yrimtan’s touch like a drug. She closed her eyes tight and clenched her fists, and fought back the desire. She heard a sound, half-sob, half-whimper, and realised she had made it, but she won, for now.

Opening her eyes again, she sat up and looked around, frowning at what she saw. The room was not large, just big enough for the single bed she was lying on, the desk against one wall and a bookcase. There was only one shelf of books, the rest contained framed photographs and certificates. Light came from a bedside lamp on a small table, and beside the lamp was another photograph. She picked it up and her frown deepened. The picture was of four people, smiling at the camera. One she recognised immediately: Aneka, but with dirty-blonde hair and a smaller bust. By association, and from the picture in the museum, she managed to work out that the others were Alan, and Aneka’s parents, Hugo and Lauren. Ella swallowed as she felt a sudden burst of loss; she was never going to meet Aneka’s family and she would have really liked to.

Putting the picture down, she walked over to the bookcase. There were more family photographs and another with Aneka and a group of men, all in desert camouflage. The certificates were for marksmanship, a commendation for actions in Afghanistan, a framed letter from someone Ella had never heard of thanking Aneka and her team for rescuing him and his family in Iraq… Then she spotted the fat, stuffed animal on the bottom shelf, and beside it the blonde-haired doll in the military fatigues.

‘Vashma,’ she breathed. Aneka had told her once about the room she had had in her parents’ house. About the ‘teddy bear’ and the doll she had named Lara because of its bust. ‘This is…’

‘My room,’ Yrimtan said, stepping out of the shadows in the corner. ‘I assume she told you about it. I wondered whether she had, which is why I had you brought here.’ She was still dressed only in beads and the sight was appealing, but Ella did not feel the overwhelming lust she had felt before.

‘What do you want from me?’ Ella asked, stepping back.

Yrimtan did not follow. ‘It’s been… a long time since I’ve had a companion. You love her, and you know all about who and what I am. I wish to see whether you could be that companion. Frankly, I prefer men, but…’

‘The Xinti opened you to new possibilities.’

The blonde woman’s brow furrowed. ‘The Xinti… Yes.’

Ella swallowed. The last thing she wanted was to be this woman’s ‘companion,’ whatever that actually meant. She went for derailing the conversation. ‘What happened to you? We know you left Titan on your own.’

Yrimtan turned, walking over to the desk and just staring at the wall. Ella began to wonder whether she was going to get an answer. ‘With Andy gone, I had no reason to stay with the Humans, but my programming… I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. I’d done everything they wanted. Humanity had moved out among the stars, met the Herosians and Torem, joined the galactic community. Then the Xinti began killing everything they could find. It seemed… meaningless. I felt betrayed.’

‘It wasn’t them.’

‘What?’ Yrimtan turned to look at Ella, frowning.

‘The Herosians started the war, not the Xinti. They found and attacked Xinti colonies, the Xinti fought back. The Herosians persuaded us and the Torem that the Xinti were the aggressors…’

‘Ah.’ Yrimtan looked away again. ‘That makes sense I suppose. It made little difference to me at the time. I was made to make Humanity the best it could be. I returned to a broken world and started again. I gathered scientists here, had this city constructed, and began to engineer the survivors to continue living rather than dying slowly.’

‘But you succeeded. Why didn’t you try to contact any of the other Human worlds?’

There was a short, humourless laugh. ‘Safety. There have been visitors to this world since the war. In twenty-four-ninety-nine the Pinnacle came with their warships. We destroyed them before they could take over and enslave us as they’ve done to other worlds. I decided that isolation was the best course of action. No one who comes here leaves. My people are unaware that there are Humans, or aliens, out there among the stars. Here in the cities they work to create a better life. On the surface they make food, mine, whatever is needed to keep the cities supplied. We have a good life here, Ella, and you are uniquely suited to joining us.’

‘I… I am?’

‘I can re-programme your implant to interoperate with our systems. You’ll be a Citizen. Your skills and intelligence make you a suitable candidate for the role of scientist, which carries considerable benefits.’ She turned closing the distance before Ella could respond, her hands grasping Ella’s shoulders and holding her firmly. ‘And providing me with companionship has additional benefits, of course.’ The tingling began, spreading down Ella’s arms.

‘No…’ Ella moaned, trying feebly to back away. ‘Please no.’ The tingling spread into her throat and over her chest. ‘I don’t w-want this.’

‘Your body says otherwise. Must I employ the pheromones?’ Yrimtan turned, pulling Ella with her, and then pushed back. Ella felt the edge of the bed against her calves and was lowered onto the blankets.

‘No,’ Ella whispered, and it was not really clear whether it was a general statement or an answer to the question.

Yrimtan’s hands slid down Ella’s arms and onto her hips. Ella let out a whimper, her legs spreading on autopilot. ‘Good girl,’ Yrimtan said, lowering her mouth to Ella’s mound.

~~~

Aneka slipped through the door into the medical wing, eyes scanning for any sign of someone noticing that Al had breached the lockdown. There was no one. In fact, she could see no one at all until she rounded a corner and spotted the first body. This one was a woman: tall, slim, attractive up to the point where she was wearing two smiles. Despite the fact that her throat had been opened along the jawline, the woman was wearing an expression that could only be described as blissful.

Slipping her pistol out of the bag she was carrying it in, Aneka moved in the direction of the secure room Al had located towards the rear of the zone. What was going on? Why were people being killed here and by whom?

The answer to the second question came first. Aneka heard the dull thuds of pulse weapon fire ahead of her. She turned a corner to see an Enforcer standing over a prone figure, a man in a red-striped dress lying on the floor wearing a blissful smile. The Enforcer aimed his rifle straight down at the medic’s face, and fired. Even from where she was, Aneka could see the skull deforming from the impact. Aneka doubted the target was going to survive a hit like that, but the shooter was taking no chances; another pulse of energy pushed the medic’s face in as though he had been struck by a steel fist. Blood began to spread from the crack that had opened in the man’s skull. The Enforcer looked up, seeing Aneka walking towards him. His head tilted slightly to one side: a quizzical gesture.

‘How many of them are there in this area?’ Aneka asked, her voice stiff even inside her own mind.

‘He is one of three,’ Al replied. ‘I am detecting three more Citizens, none of them moving.’

‘Right,’ Aneka said, raising her pistol. The look on the Enforcer’s face changed from quizzical to alarmed, and his rifle started to rise. He was not even close to fast enough, and Aneka was aiming for his faceplate. The man’s body fell backwards as a dozen shards of plastic flashed to plasma and burned through his face.

Aneka swept onward, picking up his rifle as she went, turning the next corner to see the last two Enforcers moving into a room, their rifles rising. Aneka’s eyes narrowed her view and focussed on the one occupant of the room she could see; Gillian looked afraid, very afraid.

~~~

Gillian had decided it would be very nice to have a shower soon after waking up. Unfortunately she was not likely to get one since the room they were in had only a small cubicle off it with a sink and a toilet. Cleaning up the mess was going to have to wait until they got taken somewhere else.

Bashford had been practically an animal the night before. It was quite a change given that he was quite a considerate lover most of the time. Occasionally he would be more forceful, but he had not gone wild on her as he had the night before for a long, long time; since their time together after she had left Ape in fact. If she were honest, she had not been ready or happy about the way it started, but she had got into it fairly quickly. It was not as though she was being assaulted by a stranger and he had clearly needed the relief. He was not taking it so well, however.

The big man was sitting in a corner, huddled up and avoiding looking at her. Apparently the medics had decided that his behaviour was an issue since two of them had come in to check on him. They stood over him, running sensor heads over his body and muttering. Bedside manner was not one of their strong points, in fact Gillian got the feeling that these people were as much scientist as medical technician. She was about to tell them that they should leave Bashford alone when they both sank to the floor and lay there, smiling blissfully and writhing a little.

‘What the Hell?’ Bashford said, his self-recrimination forgotten briefly.

Gillian was already dropping to her knees beside one of the medics. ‘Elevated pulse, rapid breathing, capillary dilation… If it wasn’t for the fact that she isn’t, I’d say she was having sex.’

Bashford glanced at the slight bulging visible at the front of the male medic’s clothing. ‘I think they’re both reacting as though they were. Some sort of disabling effect triggered through their implants?’

‘But why?’

The door opened and two Enforcers entered the room, each of them raising their rifle and aiming. Gillian swallowed. Then one of the men in the black suits was catapulted forward, tripping over a fallen medic and sprawling on the floor beside Bashford. The second turned towards the threat and got a face full of darts for his effort. Bashford shifted, grabbing the fallen Enforcer’s head to hold it down. He saw the suit tightening, bunching like muscle, and despite putting his full weight on the body he was still finding it hard to hold the man down when another Enforcer walked into the room, raised a large pistol and fired it. Bullets riddled the fallen man’s back. He stopped moving.

Gillian was looking at the pistol. ‘Aneka?’ she asked.

The Enforcer dropped the rifle and pistol, and reached up to take off her helmet. Long dark hair cascaded down, but it was Aneka’s face that grinned at Gillian. ‘Who else is going to come save your butts?’

‘You haven’t yet,’ Bashford commented, ‘though I admit that was an impressive start. And what’s with the hair?’

‘I don’t have plugs in my neck. If I had to take the helmet off, I needed to hide that. We need to get you into another room, out of the way. Where’s Ella?’

Gillian and Bashford looked at each other. ‘She took her,’ Bashford said. ‘She… questioned me and then took Ella.’

‘She?’

‘Manu Dei,’ Gillian replied. ‘Aneka… she’s…’

Aneka’s eyes narrowed. ‘Me?’

~~~

Ella sat on the bed, her legs pulled up to her chin. Yrimtan lay across the foot of the bed, one leg pulled up, her arms trailing back towards the floor. She was smiling.

‘Why didn’t you let me… return the favour?’ Ella asked.

‘It’s unnecessary,’ Yrimtan replied. ‘I haven’t been able to feel that way since Andy died. No one has been able to, um, get my juices flowing, as it were. Perhaps, given time…’

‘You’ve gone a thousand years without having an orgasm?’

‘I didn’t want to feel that kind of pleasure without Andy. It felt like I’d be betraying his memory.’

‘A thousand years without anyone in your life at all?!’ No wonder she had turned out the way she had. She had turned in on herself with the death of one man. No, with his death at the hands of the beings she had considered her creators. ‘We always wondered why the Xinti even bothered giving you the capacity to experience sex…’

‘They didn’t. Not exactly anyway. All the nerve pathways are there, but it’s the mind that chooses to perceive the physical sensations as stimulation, excitement, and then climax. I… choose not to feel those things.’ She laughed softly. ‘I rode your Leo like a stallion and felt nothing. A collection of neural impulses which meant nothing to me.’

‘You addicted him to the neurostim, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You did it to me too. I can feel it gnawing at me.’

Another soft laugh. ‘I’ll feed you again soon enough, little firebrand. It’s true what they say about redheads.’

‘Ella, can you hear me?’ Ella struggled to keep the shock and delight off her face. The voice was inside her head. ‘Ella?’ The thought that Yrimtan was playing a trick hit her. But then, why? ‘Ella?’

‘I can hear you. She said you were gone.’

‘I’m not that easy to get rid of. Is she with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has she hurt you?’ The tone convinced Ella that this really was Aneka: tense, angry, but trying hard to stay calm.

‘Not really. I mean, yes, but she hasn’t hit me or anything. Where are you?’

‘In the city. I’m on my way to you now. This signal’s piggybacked on the city network. It’s encrypted, but she may detect it…’

Yrimtan slid off the bed. ‘I have something I need to deal with, Ella. You’ll stay here until I return.’

‘She knows,’ Ella said inside her head. ‘She’ll be waiting for you. Aneka, go. Get Bash and Gillian, and leave…’

‘No.’ The connection was gone. Ella was not sure whether it had been cut off or Aneka had disconnected. She heard the door locking behind Yrimtan, and she tightened her arms around her knees. Sure, now she starts saying no to me.

~~~

Aneka stepped into a room which looked, if anything, like an audience chamber. The walls were black, the lighting dim. There were four thick pillars which had to be there only for decoration, and at the far end was another pair of doors, a large chair set in front of them with a desk in front of that. She took a step forward, heading for the inner doors, and she heard the locks closing on the door behind her.

Yrimtan stepped out from behind one of the pillars. She was dressed in some sort of black catsuit, complete with high-heeled thigh-high boots and she held a copy of Aneka’s blaster, Bessie, in her right hand. There was a thick, metal disc strapped to her left wrist. She stepped in front of the desk and smiled. ‘I like what you’ve done to your hair.’

Aneka reached up and pulled off the wig; there was no need for deception here. Tossing it to one side, she shook out her hair. ‘They kept you more like we really looked.’

‘You were built to infiltrate, ingratiate, and study. I was meant to blend in and educate.’

‘So I was told. How much did you have to help Alan?’

Yrimtan smiled, rather proudly, Aneka thought. ‘Very little. He was as bright as we thought he was. A couple of tiny pointers and he worked all the rest out for himself. I’m sure he could have done it all himself with more time, but I was told to speed things along.’

‘I saw his biography in the museum. He must have been happy, seeing all that science fiction become real.’

‘He was. Mum and Dad were very proud of him. They were happy too. They got to see their first grandchild born. They went to the Moon once on holiday. Alan and I saw to that.’

‘Thank you.’ Aneka watched the other Aneka’s body shifting slightly and knew what was coming. ‘We don’t have to do this.’

‘I’m afraid there can only be one Manu Dei.’

‘That’s fine by me. Give me Ella and we’ll leave. You’ll never see me again.’

Yrimtan smiled benignly. ‘And how will you do that? I’ve destroyed the vessel you came here on. My Enforcers will see to it that no one you’ve met lives to tell of it…’

‘What happened to you? You’re me. I’d never…’

‘You’ve been asleep for the last twelve hundred years.’ Anger flared in Yrimtan’s blue eyes. ‘I’ve been awake, alive, living on a world the Xinti shattered. They made Humanity what it was and then tried to wipe out an inconvenient mistake.’

‘The Herosians…’

‘Yes, Ella told me. The Herosians started it, but the Xinti chose to destroy everyone.’

‘The Warriors took over,’ Aneka said. ‘The Scientists lost power and the Warriors went crazy with their new strength. It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re dead. All of them are long dead.’

‘No,’ Yrimtan said, raising her blaster, ‘there’s one left.’

Aneka threw up her left arm, energy blossoming from her hand, spreading quickly out into a shield of force just before the pulse of antimatter hit it. White light flared in front of Aneka and the shield flickered out of existence. She felt the heat from the blast hit her face and messages flashed past in-vision indicating that her dermal layer had taken damage. She pulled her pistol and fired back. She saw a similar shield burst into life in front of Yrimtan, emerging from the disc on her wrist. Each slug burst into fire as it hit the energy field, the jets of plasma blasting through and then dying against the black suit.

Screaming in rage, Yrimtan threw the blaster at Aneka and then charged after it. Aneka pushed the thrown weapon aside, only to be hit in the chest by Yrimtan’s shoulder. She was driven backwards, slammed into the door behind her hard. She felt her pistol being twisted from her grip and heard it clattering across the floor, and drove her knee upward. Yrimtan stopped it with a downward blow, twisted her body, and threw Aneka over one leg, slamming her into the ground. Aneka saw a stiletto heel driving towards her scorched face and rolled aside. She rolled again, this time pushing herself upwards and regaining her feet.

‘Fighting in high-heels?’ Aneka said.

‘We have perfect balance, and I’ve had a thousand years’ more experience in combat than you.’ Yrimtan reached behind her back and withdrew a long combat knife. ‘You’re dead.’ She darted forward, the blade slashing at Aneka’s stomach. Aneka tried to dodge away, but the blade connected, failing to penetrate her suit. Before Aneka could counter, another strike hit her right arm, then a foot slammed into her left thigh.

‘You’re as fast as me, as strong,’ Yrimtan said. ‘Your armour is about as good as mine. We can both keep doing this for hours. But I’ve been fighting for centuries longer than you.’

Aneka felt the blade carve through the skin of her left palm. She backed away, but Yrimtan kept coming. A fist hit her stomach and then the blade was swinging at her face. She felt the edge of it scoring through her cheek and gasped. Her back hit the desk and she rolled aside before Yrimtan could press that advantage. A boot slammed into her back and she stumbled head-first into a wall. She turned, felt her wrist being caught and twisted. Her legs were swept from under her and she was on her back again, but this time Yrimtan was on her, straddling her waist. Aneka’s arms came up at the last instant, braced across Yrimtan’s wrists as she brought the dagger down towards Aneka’s face.

‘We’re both just as heavily armoured,’ Yrimtan said as she forced the blade downwards against Aneka’s arms. ‘That skull of yours could take a hit from a steam-hammer, but there’s one weak spot.’ She leaned forward, pushing harder. Aneka slammed a knee into her back, but it seemed to make no difference. ‘I push this through your eye and it’s straight through into that computer you call a brain.’

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Aneka grunted. The other Aneka was right, and she had the advantage. Aneka could feel her grip slipping. It was just a matter of time.

‘I’m sorry, but I really do.’

Aneka swallowed and let go of Yrimtan’s wrists with her right hand. The blade slipped down six inches, piercing into Aneka’s right eye, before it was stopped as Aneka’s palm braced against Yrimtan’s forehead. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘What for, dying?’

‘No, for this.’ Aneka fired off her pulse weapon and a burst of random gravitons appeared briefly within Yrimtan’s brain. The knife jerked away from Aneka’s face, and then down again. Aneka fired again, and again, and kept firing until the charge indicator in her vision field said that the weapon’s capacitors were entirely depleted. She pushed sideways and Yrimtan’s body tumbled off her, sprawling onto the floor of the chamber and lying still.

Part Five: The New World

Prime City, 22.9.526 FSC; 8th August 3186.

The door slid open and Ella looked up half-expecting to see Yrimtan walk back in. Instead she saw Aneka and her expression shifted from worry to horror.

Aneka swallowed. ‘Do I look that bad?’

Ella gave a slow nod and then hopped off the bed to see whether there was anything she could actually do. Fake blood dripped from the hand Aneka was cradling, and from the cut in her cheek which started at her jawline and ended near the corner of her eye. That eye was currently a milky white colour, and had a puncture wound which almost split it in two. Ella could see armour mesh through the flesh of Aneka’s chin, bare metal poked out of a burned nose. Ella hung back, her arms rising as she looked for some method of helping. Then she gave up and rushed forward, hoping for a hug. She got one.

‘Yes, you look that bad,’ Ella whispered. ‘You also look absolutely fabulous. The most beautiful sight I’ve seen in decades.’

Aneka giggled. ‘You’re just saying that because I’m rescuing you.’

‘Again,’ Ella agreed.

‘Yeah, well we still need to get out of here. There are a lot of people in this city and I’m not sure how happy they’re going to be that I’ve killed their boss.’

‘Actually,’ Al said, patching himself through Ella’s implant so that they could both hear him, ‘I think that we may have an entirely different problem with the people here.’

Aneka and Ella separated enough that they could frown at each other. ‘What problem?’ Aneka asked.

~~~

An eerie silence seemed to have sucked all the sound out of the entire city as the small group of visitors left the medical block where Gillian and Bashford had been hiding. Out beyond the kill-zone the Enforcers had set up it was more obvious that something was wrong. Everyone, Citizen and Enforcer, was lying around on the floor or seating, wherever they had happened to be when it had started, and they were doing nothing at all.

‘It’s like they’ve all been affected by the same thing that hit the medics,’ Gillian commented as they passed yet another fallen Enforcer lying in a corridor, sprawled as though he had collapsed on the spot without warning.

‘I think,’ Al said, ‘that this is the result of a virus passed through the city’s wireless network to their implants. There is a core computer facility at the bottom level, in the centre. I believe that if we are to resolve this we must go there.’

Ella and Gillian had stopped beside the fallen Enforcer, taken off his helmet, and were examining him. ‘Alive,’ Gillian commented, ‘apparently responsive at the reflex level, but there’s no awareness of outside stimuli…’

‘Al thinks they’ve got a computer virus,’ Aneka commented. ‘Maybe some sort of booby-trap Yrimtan set up.’

Ella stood up and dusted off her knee. ‘That doesn’t seem likely. If it was caused by her death, I think it was accidental.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘She was kind of insane,’ Ella replied, ‘but she believed that what she was doing was for the best. She was following the programme, making better Humans. She wouldn’t have wanted them dead.’

‘Well, Al thinks that we need to go to the main computer room if we want to fix it.’ Aneka pointed towards some lifts at the end of the corridor. ‘Down all the way and then north, roughly.’ Her in-vision schematic zoomed in towards the computer core as she spoke. ‘Wow… This place has a pretty big computer centre.’

‘Big and bulky, or big and sophisticated?’ Bashford asked. Aneka had been watching him since they had collected him and Gillian from the medical wing; he seemed tense, wound up, and so far she was not sure why.

‘I couldn’t really say from the data I have here. Why?’

‘Big and sophisticated may indicate an AI, which might be annoyed at us for killing Yrimtan.’

‘I doubt that,’ Ella said, ‘for the same reason I don’t think they’re all unconscious on purpose. She wouldn’t want something out there that was smarter and more in control than she was.’

‘Makes sense,’ Aneka agreed. The lift doors opened for them, closed behind them, and started down.

‘How does it know where we’re going?’ Ella asked.

‘Al’s in contact with the city network. Actually, that’s another reason to think this isn’t on purpose. Al says the security here is just about non-existent.’

‘You think she figured she’d never die, so why have fail-safes in place?’

‘Again, it makes sense.’

The lift doors opened and they were faced with another corridor with black-painted walls. Yrimtan seemed to have liked that look for her more private areas. The short corridor led to doors which opened for them as they approached.

‘I did not do that,’ Al commented as they passed through.

Aneka frowned, but kept walking. The corridor fanned out into a circular room with five huge monitors mounted on the walls and no obvious signs of controls. Only two of the screens were actually active. The one opposite the entrance was displaying scrolling text messages, operational notes, and diagnostics for the city around them. The second active screen was displaying rapidly shifting waveforms of some description.

‘Those are neuro-cognitive induction systems,’ Ella said. ‘Thousands of them… If I had to guess, I’d say that someone’s running teaching programmes for the entire implanted population.’

‘Teaching what?’ Aneka asked. A third screen came to life, text flickering past at a rate too fast for normal comprehension. Aneka watched it move, her overclocked perception slowing it to a near standstill. ‘I was wrong. She did have a back-up plan in case she died.’

‘And?’ Bashford asked. ‘Do we need to worry about a city trying to kill us on the way out?’

‘No. Apparently it’s removing the controls she had on them. It’s preparing them for a life without Manu Dei watching over them. There’s even some stuff in there about setting up a proper democratic system.’ Aneka looked away. ‘Maybe she wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. Maybe she really did have what’s best for them in mind. Maybe…’

‘She couldn’t give it up,’ Ella interrupted. ‘She was so wrapped up in making sure that Humanity became what she thought they should be that she couldn’t let them do anything without her. She probably knew she was stunting their development, but she couldn’t stop.’

‘Are you saying that she wanted to die?’ Aneka asked, frowning.

Ella shrugged. ‘She was alone. She hadn’t taken a new partner since that man on Titan. I don’t know if she wanted to die, but I think she was ready.’

‘Oh.’ Aneka started back towards the doors. ‘I think maybe we should dispose of the body before they wake up.’ She stopped and looked around. ‘I think I should dispose of the body.’

‘Are you sure you want to do that alone?’ Gillian asked, her tone uncertain.

‘No… But I think it’s something I should do.’

~~~

There was an incinerator in one of the various laboratories around the city which, according to what Al had found, used fusion torches to reach an interior temperature of around seven thousand kelvin. It was meant for burning dangerous chemicals and biological samples, and it seemed like enormous overkill for anything, but Aneka was pretty sure that it would do a proper job of destroying Yrimtan’s body.

Placing the body on the induction platform, Aneka stood back, her thumb resting on the start button. Her twin looked like she was asleep, lying there on the pristine, ceramic surface.

‘We’re sure she’s dead?’

‘There is no electromagnetic activity from the body,’ Al replied. ‘Her mind is silent. I think if she were alive she would be trying to avoid this.’

Aneka sighed. ‘Goodbye, Aneka Jansen,’ she said aloud. ‘I never really got to know you, but you seem to have done well by your children. I hope you’re at rest now.’ She pressed the button.

The platform slid into the hole in the wall behind it and a heavy hatch made of gleaming metal closed over it. A few seconds later a roaring noise began. Aneka blinked away a tear from her good eye and started for the door.

~~~

The shuttle came in for a slightly shaky landing on the field Aneka had put her microlight down on. The engines had barely been shut off before the large rear hatch opened up and Monkey and Delta emerged, the former making a beeline for his mother to wrap her in a hug.

Delta grinned at them for a few seconds before turning to look at Aneka. ‘You look like someone went over you with a sandblaster.’

‘You should see the other me,’ Aneka replied.

Delta looked perplexed. ‘The other… Yrimtan? She’s alive?!’

‘Not anymore. Let’s get inside. I want to get out of this stupid suit and into something more comfortable. Then we can figure out what to do next.’ She started up the ramp, undoing the seals on her suit as she went.

‘Well we contact the Hyde, don’t we?’ Monkey suggested.

‘That could be a problem,’ Bashford said, swallowing hard as he finished and almost choking off the last word.

‘Yrimtan said she’d blown it up,’ Aneka explained.

‘I gave her the transponder frequencies,’ Bashford added. ‘I…’

‘I went through what you did,’ Ella interrupted sharply. ‘There’s no way you could have resisted her.’

Aneka began to peel her suit off and looked back at him as he walked up the ramp. He glanced up at her and then quickly averted his eyes. ‘No one resists torture, Bash. Except in the kind of vids you people don’t make anymore. No one does, and she had every trick in the book to work with.’

‘On the other hand,’ Ella went on, ‘she said Aneka, Monkey, and Delta were dead, and that’s clearly not the case.’ She frowned at Delta’s arm in its cast. ‘Battered and a little broken, maybe, but not dead. I say we can’t call it either way until we can’t contact them.’

Aneka found her leotard and began to pull it on. It felt really good to be slipping on a garment she had once considered far too risqué for her tastes. ‘I agree. Shuttle to Garnet Hyde, please respond.’ There was silence for a few seconds and everyone looked at each other. ‘Shuttle to Garnet Hyde. This is Aneka. Is anyone receiving this?’

‘Garnet Hyde here, Aneka,’ Aggy’s voice came from the speakers around the cabin. ‘Captain Drake and Shannon are asleep. We were attacked from the surface, but Shannon’s quick thinking avoided the majority of the explosions. We have sustained minor damage to the ship’s sensor arrays, but we managed to attain a stable orbit. We have been observing radio silence in the hope that you might contact us.’

Monkey let out a whoop of joy. Aneka grinned brightly. There was a lot of smiling. ‘You have no idea how happy we are to hear your voice, Aggy,’ Aneka said.

‘I think,’ Bashford said, starting towards the cockpit, ‘that we’ll lift off and come up to join you.’

‘I will wake Captain Drake and Shannon for your approach, Mister Bashford,’ Aggy replied. ‘I am sending rendezvous vectors to your navigation system and stabilising our orbital tumble now. I assume that I can stop pretending to be orbital debris?’

‘Yeah,’ Aneka told her. ‘There shouldn’t be any more missiles.’

‘We’ll be docking in… thirty-five minutes,’ Bashford said from the bow. ‘Everyone hold onto something, I want off this rock as fast as possible.’

Aneka heard the ultrasonic hum of the anti-gravity system and the main engines starting up. He really did mean to get away as fast as he could. Of course, they felt barely anything of the acceleration as the shuttle climbed into the sky.

FScV Garnet Hyde, 23.9.526 FSC.

Aneka sipped her coffee, sighed, and relaxed back into her seat. Her right eye was still non-functional, but her skin had mostly healed over or returned to the colour it was supposed to be. She had put a synthetic skin patch over her damaged eye, mostly because Delta had been grimacing every time she looked at it.

They had taken a fair bit of damage between them. Delta had her broken arm, but it was the less visible hurt afflicting Ella and Bashford which had Aneka worried. Ella was fidgeting, and had been since the shuttle had made it out of the atmosphere. Bashford was showing less outward signs of discomfort, but he would not look at any of the women and was particularly avoiding Gillian’s eyes. Yrimtan had worked a number on both of them and the exact outcome of that was yet to be seen.

They had finished bringing Drake and Shannon up to speed on what had happened on the surface. Now it was Drake’s turn. ‘All right, here’s the situation. Currently the main navigation sensors are offline. Shannon is pretty sure she can repair them, but until she does we can’t risk warp speed. The bigger problem is fuel. Dodging death by nuclear missile used up a lot of our reserves. We’ve likely got enough to get us out of orbit and heading back towards Harriamon, and we don’t burn fuel in warp, but it’s tight.’

‘We will not have sufficient fuel to reach Harriamon after warp exit,’ Aggy supplied.

Shannon winced. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’d rather be low on fuel than be scattered wreckage,’ Drake replied firmly. ‘You got us out of real trouble. Quit kicking yourself for it.’

Shannon gave him a smile. ‘I’m not promising anything, but I’ll try.’

‘Captain,’ Aggy interrupted, ‘I am detecting surface radar pulses.’ The room fell into silence as they waited, half-expecting to hear the announcement of another attack. ‘Pulse modulation and frequency indicate an imaging radar system, not a targeting one.’

‘If we need to run,’ Bashford said, ‘can we?’

‘Aggy,’ Drake said, obviously keeping his voice steady on purpose, ‘let’s get the main engine online and…’

‘I am receiving a radio broadcast,’ Aggy interrupted again. ‘Putting it on speaker.’

‘…unknown space vessel, please respond. I repeat, this is Prime City to unknown space vessel, please respond.’ The voice was male and none of them recognised it. Everyone looked at Drake; he was the captain after all.

‘Prime City,’ Drake said, ‘this is the Federal Science Vessel Garnet Hyde, Captain Mallory Drake speaking. We are an unarmed exploratory mission from the Lorenti Federation.’

There was a short pause and then the voice replied. ‘Captain Drake, this is Councillor Jerome Harper. I am informed that your vessel is damaged. We… are unaware of your Federation, but would like the opportunity to learn more. Perhaps we can be of assistance with your repairs?’

Drake looked around the room. ‘Councillor, could you hold for a second while I confer with my colleagues?’

‘Of course.’

‘I have muted communications, Captain,’ Aggy informed them.

‘Some help would be useful,’ Shannon stated.

‘They have pretty advanced technology in the cities,’ Aneka said. ‘We wouldn’t be revealing anything they don’t already know.’

‘But can we trust them?’ Drake asked. ‘You were down there.’

‘I think, yes,’ Ella replied. ‘If Yrimtan was still running things… Well, she’d have blown us out of orbit. The fact that they haven’t says a lot.’

‘Frankly,’ Gillian said, ‘the scientific value of re-examining their culture would be considerable. We did not have the opportunity to see the cities anyway, and now we may be able to.’ Bashford looked about to say something, but bit his lip instead.

‘All right,’ Drake said, heaving a sigh, ‘it looks like we’re staying for a while. Aggy, reopen the link.’

‘Done, Captain.’

‘Councillor, we would welcome your assistance. We’ll send a party down to you tomorrow so we can talk.’

‘We look forward to it, Captain. Harper out.’

Aneka closed her good eye and sagged back against her seat. They would be going back down to Earth, this time as envoys for the Federation. She was not sure how the citizens would react to her, considering that she looked like their recently vanished ex-dictator, and she was not entirely sure she wanted to find out. Somehow, though, she felt she had to go back to find out what state her twin had left the people of Earth in. She was supposed to be the observer; maybe her Xinti programming was rearing its head. Finally Yrimlos was going to be doing what she had been designed for. The world she was supposed to do that in was gone, and she had finally accepted that. There was a new world, with new Humans, for her to discover a few hundred kilometres below her, and she could accept that too.

‘Are you okay?’ Ella asked, her voice low and a little concerned.

Aneka opened her eye and gave Ella a small smile. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I am. I really think I am.’

###

This is the end of the Steel Beneath the Skin Trilogy.

Aneka Jansen will return in The Winter War.

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still loved the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

The Thaumatology Blog: http://steelbeneaththeskin.wordpress.com

Other Books by this Author

Steel Beneath the Skin (ASIN: B00FJIQ85O)

The Cold Steel Mind (ASIN: B00D4MN40O)

The Thaumatology Series

Thaumatology 101 (ASIN: B006IYIESW)

Demon’s Moon (ASIN: B006JPN7A0)

Legacy (ASIN: B006OKR8PK)

Dragon’s Blood (ASIN: B0072S1DOU)

Disturbia (ASIN: B007GNICZO)

Hammer of Witches (ASIN: B007YG2I44)

Eagle’s Shadow (ASIN: B008E17TYW)

Ancient (ASIN: B00923F8AS)

Dragonfall (ASIN: B00AKV95XW)

The Other Side of Hell (ASIN: B00AS0NF54)

For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll (ASIN: B00BNSQ4AS)

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study (ASIN: B006ZAJ7TY)

Tales from the Dubh Linn (ASIN: B0080XPD88)

Table of Contents

Part One: Cold Comfort

Part Two: The Way Home

Part Three: Walking on a Moon

Part Four: Manu Dei

Part Five: The New World