Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (13 page)

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.’

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‘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.’