Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (14 page)

‘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.’

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‘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.’