Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (11 page)

‘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.