Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (29 page)

‘Well,’ Drake said, ‘give it a couple of hours and we’ll know how well they did.’

~~~

‘We’re guessing a little,’ Gillian said, ‘but judging by the fallout distribution, we think there were around ten facilities on the Martian surface when the Xinti attacked.’

She was standing in front of the main screen in the mess, which was displaying a Goode homolosine projection of the planet’s surface. Aneka recognised a few of the features, but Martian cartography had, amazingly, not been included in her courses on land navigation. Lime-green shading showed the radioactive areas; to her there looked like fewer than ten of them, but Gillian and Ella had spent several hours working on the analysis so she was sure they were right.

‘They put something at the foot of Olympus Mons?’ Aneka asked, partially to show off that she knew at least one thing about Mars.

‘If that’s what they called that huge volcano, yes. Most of the facilities seem to have been for mining. The sensors are picking up subterranean tunnels, mostly collapsed. Everything else is a guess. The Xinti did not waste bombs, but they destroyed everything quite efficiently nevertheless.’

‘So… pretty much a waste of time going down there?’

Gillian smiled. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be setting foot on Martian soil.’

‘Meh, I got to set foot on Titan’s soil… Titan’s ice. I think I can manage without getting red dust in any cracks.’

‘You could actually roll around in it,’ Ella commented. ‘The rest of us would need pressure suits.’

‘A pleasure I’ll forego.’

‘I’ll get you in the sand one day.’

‘Dream on, love. Dream on.’

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There was a new map up on the mess room screen and the shapes of the continents were very familiar. Aneka stood in front of it, looking for differences while everyone else looked on, waiting. She was supposed to be telling them what they were looking at.

‘Uh…’ She turned and looked at the assembled team. ‘Sorry. I never thought I’d see this again.’

‘It’s okay,’ Gillian said. ‘Take your time.’

Aneka smiled back and then turned. ‘This large continent on the left is America, North, South, and Central.’ She tapped the screen as she named each place. ‘This is what your Mericiana is named for.’

‘And North America was the major political power back in your time,’ Ella commented.

‘Yes, but China, Europe, and Russia were significant powers. Uh, this bit’s India, down here is Australia, this chunk is Africa, and down at the bottom, looking kind of small in this projection, is Antarctica.’

‘And where did you live?’

Aneka tapped the display. ‘This tiny little squiggle? That’s Great Britain.’

‘I thought it was the United Kingdom.’

‘The big part was Great Britain,’ Gillian interjected. ‘It was the UK when you included a bit of the island next to it.’

‘Northern Ireland,’ Aneka said, grinning. ‘The expert in Old Earth history wins. And I was about…’ She traced her finger over the northern part of Africa. ‘…here when the Agroa Gar took me.’

A small, flashing light appeared roughly where she was pointing and Aggy’s voice said, ‘Here to be precise.’

‘Are we getting any EM emissions at all?’ Drake asked.

‘None,’ Aggy supplied.

‘And the night side is showing no signs of major settlement,’ Gillian added. ‘At this range we can’t make out buildings. If civilisation re-established itself, there should be some signs, but we may need to get much closer. It’s equally possible that the survivors reverted to a relatively simple lifestyle.’

‘For a thousand years?’ Aneka replied. ‘Humans not trying their hardest to regain their technology for a millennium? I don’t buy it. In my time half of them thought their eyes had been plucked out if they couldn’t access Facebook for ten minutes.’

‘Well,’ Drake said, ‘there’s no radio emissions, so no radar. We can go take a closer look without spooking anyone who is down there.’

‘Then I suggest we go take a closer look,’ Gillian said.

Drake climbed to his feet, followed by Shannon. ‘We’ve come all this way. Seems stupid not to,’ the captain said.

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‘It’s got rings,’ Aneka said, her voice carrying a hint of surprise. They were thin, nothing like the rings of Saturn, but definitely there, circling the equator a few hundred kilometres out.

‘Metal, some silica,’ Ella said from the sensor console. ‘Satellite debris.’

‘Eve said they targeted communications systems. I guess they destroyed all the satellites before hitting the planet.’

‘A bit of a navigation hazard,’ Drake commented. ‘We’ll orbit outside them. It’ll be close enough.’

‘I’d like a full mapping sweep before we decide on a landing site,’ Gillian’s voice said from the speakers. ‘We’re still seeing no EM, but if there’s anyone down there they must be in settlements of some sort.’

‘Orbital insertion in five minutes,’ Shannon informed them. ‘Standard polar orbit.’

Aneka looked out through the window at the blue and white ball ahead of them as it began to rotate for the orbital injection. Earth from space, the kind of thing people dreamed about seeing and few ever did. Even now that was the case. How long had it been since anyone had seen this sight?

She turned away, suddenly feeling cold. ‘I… I’m just going to go down to my cabin for a bit.’

‘Are you okay, love?’ Ella asked.

‘Yeah. I mean, I will be. It’s just… a lot. I need to lie down.’

Ella nodded, looking concerned, but she let Aneka go. Some things you just had to deal with, especially if you were Aneka; Ella had figured that out.

Aneka stopped outside the flight deck, steadying herself against the wall. Even Al was letting her handle this herself. The world she knew had had no rings, had been humming with various forms of radio emission, and it had lit up like a Christmas tree at night. Out there was Earth, but not the one she knew. That world was gone. Really gone, and there was no going back.

Clenching her fists, she focussed on putting one foot in front of the other as she made her way towards the cabins.

~~~

Aneka opened her eyes and looked towards the door. As expected, it was Ella who had opened it, but she was just standing there, not willing to disturb unless Aneka was willing to be disturbed. Shifting over on the bed, Aneka indicated that she was by raising an arm, silently inviting the redhead to join her.

‘Feeling better?’ Ella whispered as she settled onto the bed, her back against Aneka’s stomach.

‘Feeling functional,’ Aneka replied. ‘This is all kind of… in my face. I can’t fantasise about that place being just as I left it. It’s there, below us, and it’s not the same.’

‘Technically it’s above us, but yeah.’

Aneka swatted one of Ella’s Plastex-clad thighs. ‘Pedant. How long before they have the mapping run done?’

‘It’s going to take a day, basically.’

‘The full transition of the planet’s surface will require another eighteen-point-seven hours,’ Aggy supplied.

‘We should get some useful data before then,’ Ella pointed out.

‘Can we get an estimate on the current local date?’ Aneka asked.

‘Today is the twenty-fifth of June, Aneka,’ Aggy said, ‘based on the calendar in use at the time of your extraction. I am currently unable to give a precise value for the year on the Gregorian calendar system.’

Ella obviously caught the same thing Aneka did. ‘You can’t give a
precise
year? Does that mean you can give an approximate one?’

‘Based on the variation in position of navigation pulsars between then and now, I can make an estimate, yes. It would, however, just be an estimate.’

‘It would be better than what we have now, Aggy,’ Aneka pointed out.

‘If you insist,’ Aggy replied, her tone suggesting she was unhappy handing out data she was unsure of. ‘My estimate is that the current year on Earth using the extant calendar of Aneka’s time is thirty-one eighty-six with a probability of ninety-seven per cent.’

‘And that’s a guess? Ninety-seven per cent?’

‘An estimation,’ Aggy corrected.

‘Okay… That means it’s been one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five years since I was down there.’ She seemed to consider this for a second. ‘Forty-seven generations. Almost twelve centuries.’ She hugged Ella a little tighter. ‘It’s too big. I can’t wrap my head around it. That’s been the trouble all along. It’s not denial exactly; it’s just that I can’t get my mind around any of it. It’s too big.’

‘Not denial,’ Ella said, ‘but you can’t accept it either.’

‘I guess. I think I need something smaller I can confront. Something I can look at and know the world’s changed.’

‘It’s difficult to think what we could find to fill that role. There was a war, and a thousand years. I can’t believe there’s going to be much left that’s recognisable.’

‘I guess we won’t know until the mapping is done and we can find somewhere to look at.’

‘Uh-huh. This time tomorrow.’ Aneka folded herself up around Ella, trying to curl into a ball with a redheaded core. Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think I can bend that much.’

Aneka nuzzled at Ella’s neck. ‘When I’m over this we’ll see how bendy you are, but right now I just want to hold onto something solid, okay?’

‘You know it is, love,’ Ella replied softly.

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‘There are settlements on the North American continent,’ Gillian said, ‘primarily around this north-central region.’

‘I
think
that was their main food production region,’ Aneka said. ‘They called it the Breadbasket, if I’m remembering right. I was never too clear on that. I always thought it was more towards the middle, but I’d have thought that area made sense.’

‘The villages we’re detecting would appear to be farming settlements,’ Gillian said, nodding. ‘There are variations of the same sort of structures in Europe and China. Nothing on any of the other continents.’

‘Nothing?’

‘It’s quite possible there are people there,’ Ella said. ‘We’ve detected several large animals. At this range, Humans would be too small to identify.’

‘We do have several options for a survey,’ Gillian went on. ‘So which do you think we should try?’

Aneka blinked. ‘You want me to pick one?’

‘You know the planet best,’ Bashford told her.

‘I
knew
the planet, eleven centuries ago.’

‘We talked about it last night and decided you should pick the target.’

‘You’re not getting out of it,’ Gillian added. ‘Choose.’

Aneka looked up at the map. ‘Aggy, could you zoom in on England, please.’ The map narrowed in on the western side of Europe. There were several markers in England. In fact, close up it seemed like there were more there than in any other concentration. ‘That northern region, in the centre. They used to raise sheep up there. It’s hilly. We could likely land somewhere out of sight.’

‘It sounds perfect,’ Bashford said.

‘We can observe long distance,’ Gillian suggested. ‘There’s a small town there in the foothills. If there’s no sign of potential trouble we can make contact.’

‘We’ll want to be very sure of our potential hosts first.’

Gillian gave Bashford a nod. ‘Of course, but I don’t believe they’ll be a substantial threat. If they aren’t even using radio their technology could well be limited. We can always retreat to the shuttle and leave.’

‘All right. Let’s get ourselves ready for a surface mission.’

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Aggy had managed to locate a tourist map she had downloaded centuries ago which seemed to indicate that the area they were heading for had once been known as Matlock. The town itself was settled in a three-pronged river valley and surrounded by quite high cliffs. Aneka had piloted the shuttle in as the light was just starting to show in the sky, keeping low over the hills and hoping there were no shepherds along their path. They had managed to ascertain from high up that the cliff to the north-west of the town was unpopulated, so that was where they were going in.

Bashford’s eyes scanned the sensor display in front of him as Aneka guided the ship forward on anti-gravity and thrusters. He was looking for a suitable landing site, though Aneka spotted the one he was going to go for half a second or so before he said anything.

‘Thirty metres over on the right?’ he said. His fingers flicked over his console and a marker indicator appeared on Aneka’s HUD. ‘Some tall, old trees there and the ground seems smooth enough.’

Aneka drifted the shuttle into position over the clearing, images from the underside cameras sliding into position once again around her vision field. ‘Some scrub down there, but nothing too bad. We voting for here?’

‘I’m registering a couple of anomalies which look like fallen masonry,’ Ella said from the back. ‘Nothing too tall though. I’ll mark them for you.’ A few rough clumps which Aneka had assumed were just bushes were highlighted. The shuttle slewed three degrees to the right and then dropped towards the ground below.

Bashford was on his feet as soon as the engines started winding down. ‘All right, I want a perimeter ring of sensors up before it gets light, so let’s get moving. Ella, is there anything we should be worried about in the atmosphere?’

‘Nothing detected so far. If you want to be safe wear filter masks until we have a full analysis.’

Bashford paused halfway to the rear door, then turned around. ‘Monkey, pull four masks from the back there. This place was nuked. We’re not reading anything, but still…’

Aneka took the deeper forest to the north of the landing site because it was closer to the town, and the dim light made no difference to her. The plan was to place passive sensor units out at about one hundred metres all the way around the ship. Aneka was to push out to two hundred metres as well, placing sensors on what she considered strategic points. She walked with Bashford out to the north-east corner of their planned surveillance area, mainly so that Aneka could ensure he did not fall down the cliff.

‘That’s… unexpected,’ Bashford said as the ground seemed to decide to drop away from under them without warning. The light was still a little dim as the sun hauled itself up to the horizon, which meant surmounting the hills on the other side of the gorge.