Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (28 page)

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.

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‘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

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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.’