Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (2 page)

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.’